2016-11-07



>>Download the Free PDF: Planets, Astrology and Tarot with Sashastrology

As a Tarot reader, I’ve been exposed to astrology, but every time I try and learn about it I feel overwhelmed and stressed.

If you’ve ever felt the same way, this podcast is for you. Sashastrology joins me on today’s podcast to share how Tarot readers can connect with astrology, and more specifically, the planets, using Tarot and intuition as a guide.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

An intro to the seven main planets and what they represent

How these planets affect us

How Tarot readers can begin to incorporate planetary energy into their readings

How to use the Tarot cards to unpack the planets

How to combine Tarot and astrology intuitively without overwhelm

I learned so much about how to use astrology and planets in my #Tarot readings from this interview…
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Additional Resources:

Biddytarot.com/Blog

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Sashastrology

Podcast Transcript

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Brigit: You’re listening to the Biddy Tarot Podcast, and this is Episode 51: Planets, Astrology and Tarot with Sashastrology.

Voice-Over

Welcome to the Biddy Tarot podcast, where you will learn how to connect more deeply with your intuition and live an empowered and enlightened life with the Tarot cards as your guide.

Listen as Brigit and her guests share their very best tips and strategies to help you read Tarot with confidence.

And now, here is your host Brigit Esselmont.

Introduction

Brigit: Hello and welcome back to the Biddy Tarot podcast. As always, it’s an absolute delight to be talking with you about Tarot.

I don’t know about you, but as a Tarot reader, I’ve been exposed to astrology, but every time I try and learn about it, I get this feeling of overwhelm and stress. I think, “My goodness, there is so much to learn about astrology!” So instead of trying to read through these books, I quickly put them back on the bookshelf and I forget about it until another time.

Mind you, those astrology books keep looking back out at me and I can’t help but think, “Oh, maybe one day. One day, I might learn to read astrology.” Well, today I’m inviting a very special guest, Sasha from Sashastrology who happens to know a thing or two about astrology and Tarot cards.

In today’s interview, she’s going to discuss how Tarot readers can start to connect with astrology, and more specifically the planets, using Tarot and intuition as a guide.

Sasha runs the website Sashastrology.com. She’s also on Instagram and YouTube sharing her knowledge and her passion about all things spiritual.

She’s a young reader and I love that she has that youthful energy because she brings a new perspective to astrology and Tarot, yet she also brings her wisdom to both of these tools to work with them in an intuitive way.

I think you’re going to really enjoy this interview today because Sasha shares a lot of her knowledge and helps to simplify what is quite a complex topic.

Without further ado, let me welcome Sasha.

Brigit: Welcome Sashastrology! It is so good to have you here on the Biddy Tarot Podcast.

Sasha: Thanks so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Brigit: Now I would love to share a little bit about you with the listeners. How did you find Tarot? How did you get into all of these beautiful spiritual things? Where’d it all begin?

Sasha: Oh gosh, well, I think like for a lot of us it really all began when I was a young teenager and I was into witchy things. I consider myself to be pagan. I found astrology first.

I found astrology because everybody had always told me, you’re such a Virgo. You’re such a Virgo. I was like, I’m not. I don’t feel like a Virgo.

Then I discovered moon signs when I was around 16 years old and that is when the astrology bug bit me and I got really obsessed with it. I’ve been studying it ever since.

Since around, I’m guessing, (time is strange for me. I feel like it is for a lot of intuitives) 2011, I started to accept Tarot as something that I could  study.

I watched a lot of pagan YouTubers and they were all using these Tarot cards. I always the conception of Tarot that it wasn’t as deep as astrology could be.

But during a certain astrological transit, I really opened to different forms of expressing my intuition and Tarot was one of those tools. It clicked with me immediately. It really hasn’t let go since.

It’s been about a year since I’ve had my Tarot and astrology business. I love it.

Brigit: Wonderful. It’s interesting to listen from the perspective of going from astrology to Tarot.

Obviously, for me, I’m a Tarot reader, and then I’m looking over at my bookshelf at the moment. I’ve got probably about three big astrology books with the hope that one day I might learn astrology, but I’ve always been so scared off by the amount of knowledge you have to know. I’ve just stuck to Tarot because it’s what I know.

Did you feel the same way when you were like looking at Tarot? Did you think, “Oh my goodness, there’s so much of it to learn?”

Sasha: At first I did. Then I put on my astrologers’ cap and realized that there are so many different ways of looking the cards. I stepped away from having to feel like I had to learn all 78 cards. Like, I have to know how all of them connect and it’s going to be rote memorization.

That isn’t really how I stepped into astrology, so I thought I’m not going to step into Tarot in this way. It became a lot more of an intuitive practice for me working with different decks.

The first Tarot deck I ever owned was the Shadowscapes Tarot. I don’t know if you’ve ever owned it yourself, but it was a really emotional experience. That was how I stepped into astrology as well – having come from the very analytical science of astrology, as opposed to Tarot, which is a lot more intuitive, or at least that’s how it seems.

I think nowadays, the new age movement of astrology that I fell into when I started studying it is a lot more aware of the fact that there are so many intuitive aspects to astrology. What we actually pick out in a chart instead of just seeing “all the things” is akin to Tarot where, instead of just seeing all of the cards, you focus on what you’re drawn to and what works for you.

It was definitely daunting at first, but once I realized that I didn’t have to do it all at once, it got a lot easier to actually learn the cards.

Brigit: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s really good advice for anyone who’s learning Tarot or maybe astrology, is you don’t have to know everything at once.

I’m guilty of that because I just want to know everything right away and I think that’s probably why I’ve been scared of learning more about astrology.

How are you using astrology and Tarot in your life now both personally and professionally?

Sasha: That’s a good question. Astrology is sort of my life. I check where the planets are daily. I keep track of charts of my friends’ and my own chart, and even sometimes clients’ charts. It’s all in my head all the time. But with Tarot, it can be a far more conscious experience when I sit down to read the cards.

To use them in conjunction, I always keep in mind what the astrological energies are at the time. I usually ask my clients for their birth chart just so I can keep that in the back of my head. Unless they explicitly do not want me to, which is completely fine. And I use that sort of background to set the stage for my intuitive readings.

Brigit: Interesting. So with astrology, are you using it more for that bigger picture or do you also use it to zone in on particular situations and what’s going on in the now?

Sasha: I do both. Really it depends on what my client is asking me for. If they come to me just asking what is my natal chart, who am I at my core. I, of course, first remind them that we are a person; we’re not our charts. So I let them know that this is one perspective of their self. I give them that bigger picture if they ask for it.

But ordinarily, if someone is dealing with a specific issue, I ask for specific dates in mind that they have – pivotal dates in their life. Maybe recently they’ve broken up with a partner or they’ve shifted jobs. And I’ll look at what that energy was on that day compared to their innate selves, their natal chart, and I paint a picture of what is actually relevant.

Because a pitfall for newbies, like you and other star students out there, is they think they have to know all of it at once, and they get overwhelmed with all the information out there.

But really, if you know how to zoom in on what the actual issue is, there are only a few key points that you can string together into a useful message. That’s what I try to do. I try to make astrology as simple and as human as I can for my clients. And I hope that other astrologers out there do as well.

I hate when people just start listing random aspects and say “This is what your answer is.” That’s cool, but how did you actually get there? Astrology doesn’t have to be that way and I’m trying to not keep it that way.

Brigit: Awesome. Fabulous. You’ve prepared a small tutorial for helping Tarot readers get a bit of insight into astrology. Do you want to kick off with that?

I’d love to hear the entry point. If you’re a Tarot reader, how do you enter the world of astrology without completely freaking out, like I often do?

Sasha: Absolutely. I thought a lot about this because it’s difficult to at first conceptualize how I would actually start to teach Tarot readers about astrology, but then I realized I have the perfect players in mind. I have the perfect tools at hand. It’s the planetary bodies that we work with in astrology.

For those of you Tarot readers out there and new star students who might not know this, in astrology, we work with each of the planets in our solar system and even some asteroids. It’s not just about all the Zodiac signs.

That’s actually not what we’re going to be talking about today because, in reality, we all have imprints of these planets within ourselves.

What I propose here is that we all call on these planets in our readings if we so choose, sort of like how one would call on say a goddess or a god or even a spirit, if you’re working with mediumship in that way. You would call on these energies for specific reasons based on what the planet actually represents.

So the seven planets that I’ll be talking about today represent our personal lives, our personal imprint of information that we were given in this life.

The first planet is actually a luminary body – The sun. It’s not a planet technically. Our sun signs are the signs that everybody knows. I believe, Brigit, you are a Taurus, right? And I am a Virgo.

I say I am a Virgo because the sun, that luminary body, represents our ego and our personal power. So you can call on the sun in your reading to work with this issue such as, “Where am I going in life? How can I better express my truth?”

Brigit: Do you know that’s just kind of clicked for me. I’ve always wondered why we stick with say our sun sign and assume that’s what we are. You’ve just totally brought that together for me. Now, I can see the sun is the ego. No wonder we say “I am Taurus” or “I am Virgo.” Awesome.

Sasha: And it makes sense because we revolve around the sun. Everything revolves around our ego.

The other more important thing – well, in my opinion – is this. My favourite luminary body in astrology is the moon and our moon signs. This is actually the sign I discovered for myself. My moon sign is Aquarius that got me really into astrology because I thought, “Yes, my moon is an Aquarius. This is so much better than my sun in Virgo.” No offense to any suns in Virgos out there. We are very self-deprecating people.

But, regardless, the moon in astrology represents our inner world, our emotions and our psychic intuition. It’s opposite to the sun in a way – How the sun and the moon are a polarity that we deal with across all spiritual backgrounds.

So you would call on the moon to figure out how a particular moon phase or moon sign is currently is affecting you and your intuitive abilities.

If that seems kind of strange to you, do an intuitive reading about your intuitive abilities. It can be really helpful to lay that groundwork and start to understand how the moon is working with you. Because the moon shifts signs every two and a half days, so the energy shifts very quickly and in that way, it’s a really great learning tool.

Next, the planet Mercury represents our logical mind, communication, and our intelligence really, how we think, sort of the step-by-step process of how our thoughts become words. It’s notorious for going retrograde and freaking everybody out.

So you could call on Mercury to figure out how it is aiding in your expression. I mean, literal expression, not the creative expression that the sun deals with. And also aiding in how you’re going to start a manifestation process as well.

If you’re looking to start a project for yourself, maybe even start a new relationship, Mercury is a really good planet to call upon because it’s that spark of inspiration within us all.

Brigit: My Tarot brain is going on overload right now. Does Mercury then link to the suit of Swords? Do you see any linkages between these planets and the Tarot or am I jumping ahead of things?

Sasha: You’re not. Actually I’m working on – maybe it will be out by the time this episode is out – a document discussing certain planets with the court cards. And Mercury, in my mind, is attributed a lot to the Pages.

In terms, of the suit of Swords, I could see it. I could definitely see it. There are so many different opinions out there as to how the Tarot and astrology work together.

Brigit: It’s the case with many integrations, like with Tarot and astrology or numerology, where there could be all sorts of combinations. I think at the end of the day, you’ve got to just choose what’s working for you and what resonates with you.

Because otherwise, you could get somewhat lost with the Golden Dawn astrological associations. I’m sure many other people have different opinions of how it’s all connected.

Anyway, carry on. This is fascinating. I’m enjoying it.

Sasha: So there are four more planets. And I sort of divided them into pairs. We have Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Let’s start with Venus.

Venus is the archetypal feminine. Within us all, we carry masculine and feminine energy. Our Venus signs and wherever Venus is transiting in our sky right now, represents where we are being receptive, where we are being magnetic and attracting what we need and desire to us.

We can call upon Venus if we happen to have a question about love, perhaps self-love or even relationships. But really it’s more of a planet of sitting in your power and being receptive.

It’s a great planet to work with if you’re dealing with questions of abundance and that limbo point where you feel like you have to keep doing something, but really you just have to stop doing things. That’s the Venus energy coming in and asking you to revel in your power – in your feminine power.

Next is Mars and it’s the opposite of that really. It’s the archetypal masculine in us all. It’s dynamic energy. There’s passion and action. And whereas Venus is sort of that side of love that is very romantic and kind of flighty, Mars is deep passion and it’s our sexual drive. Let’s just be honest.

Within us, if our Mars is having a tough time where we’re feeling perhaps like we don’t have the drive to do anything, you would call upon Mars in your readings to help you figure out how it is that you can get the ball rolling again.

Jupiter and Saturn are interesting because I don’t think they’re traditionally seen as being complete opposites, but in my practice, they are.

Jupiter is the biggest planet in our solar system. It’s huge. And in that way it represents expansion and luck, abundance and opportunity.

Wherever we have Jupiter in our natal charts, or wherever it’s transiting – currently, it’s in Virgo – it’s where we have the most potential, but we have harness that potential in order to not blow things up out of proportion.

We would call upon Jupiter if we’re feeling like we are getting too ‘big picture’ and maybe we need to stop the expansion a bit and narrow in on what the seed of our project really is.

This is going to happen a lot if you’re you’re a creative person and you’re working on, say an album or a book, and you get really scared or too ‘big picture,’ and you can’t really get back to the core essence of your project. Or, really, what your essence is. Jupiter is a great energy to call upon for that because it is inherently positive. I love Jupiter.

Last, but not least, Saturn is a planet that gets a lot of flack because it’s the opposite to Jupiter in that it represents reduction, hardships, reality checks, and getting down to business. Really getting real. It’s the most earthly planet of all the planetary bodies in the Zodiac.

It represents when we have to get real with ourselves. You can call upon Saturn if you have very pressing earthly issues. Perhaps money concerns, health concerns, but also if you are dealing with any sort of depression or anxiety, Saturn is a great planet to call upon in your readings. Saturn isn’t necessarily here to just beat us down; it’s here to help us help us. That’s the ultimate lesson of Saturn.

Brigit: I often know of Saturn through the Saturn return. Is that at 29? I’m going to show that I know hardly anything about astrology.

Sasha: No, it’s good that you know that though because it’s true. Around the age of 28, 29, 30, we all experience our Saturn returns, which – work with me here guys.

When we are born, we are sort of given a thumbprint of the astrological energy that was happening at that time, so whatever sign Saturn was in, say it was in Sagittarius, where it is now, when Saturn goes back into Sagittarius you have your Saturn return. That happens around your late 20s, early 30s.

And you sort of get the biggest reality check of your life and you become an adult quote unquote. You really come into yourself.

It can be very hard for some people, but ultimately, most everyone looks back on that time and realizes, “I really owned up to who I am and it was probably the best hardship I’ve ever had to go through.” I’m really looking forward to that. You can sense my sarcasm.

I keep saying you would call upon these planets in your readings, so what do I actually mean by that? Well, personally I love spreads. I love actually knowing what the cards mean, where the cards go.

But, in this case, when we’re working with energies that are living, really they’re moving throughout our sky daily, they create relationships between one another depending on where they sit at a particular time. They aren’t stagnant. So I didn’t feel comfortable necessarily giving you a set of spreads, but instead wanted to suggest that you would have conversations with these planets.

By which I mean, that you would ask your cards, “What does Saturn have to show me today?” Say you pulled a Two of Pentacles. Okay, you need to work on balance, perhaps financial balance, dualities. Am I falling off the edge or am I staying balanced?

Then you would keep that conversation going with this planet and build your own story, build your spread because it’s never going to be the same. Especially with how the moon moves through our signs, some days you may be more emotionally inclined to work with Saturn on a positive level. But some days you might feel really down in the dumps and the message the Tarot can give you in that Saturn lens will be totally different.

Does that make sense? Do you often do that? Do you just pull some cards and see what happens?

Brigit: Yeah, absolutely. I really like working organically with the cards and see where they take me. It’s interesting again to relate that back to astrology. The planets are in constant movement so I can totally understand why it’s often changing.

Is it the case that you would choose one planet that you want to work with or are you using all seven?

Sasha: I think you can definitely call upon all of them and pull a card for each planet, but I think the best thing to do would be to just think of your situation and try and attribute what planet is really working with that situation.

Again, we’re trying to keep it less complex because we all know what these energies are within us. Besides the Akashic Records and having all the knowledge that we ever need within us already, we intuit these energies naturally.

I’ve seen it time and time again. I get readings a lot from my reader friends – support people in the community – and I know what the astrological energies are at a time, but my friends might not, and I realize that they are tapping into that no matter what.

This exercise is a way for people to dip their toes into astrology, but not get lost in the jargon. This is a way for people to start to intuit and learn what these terms and energies really are, and then start to recognize them within themselves and realize that they’ve been working with this all along.

Brigit: That’s really clever. Say as a Tarot reader, if you’re feeling quite confident with the cards and you’re using the Tarot to help unpack the astrological planets, it’s giving you that frame of reference that you already know to explore astrology in a safer, more known environment.

And then you can start using to Tarot to, for example, start to understand what Saturn looks like. Not just Saturn as standalone planet and its energies, but how does it look like in my life and how’s it playing out for me? I think that’s really clever.

Sasha: Yeah, and this is a good way to start to look at your birth chart then and you’ll know what Saturn means. You’ll know what the moon means.

So when you see that your moon is in Gemini, for instance, all you really have to understand is what Gemini means and you’ll attach that to the fact that your moon sign is your inner psychic abilities, how you see yourself, as opposed to what you project out there, and who you are as a child.

There are so many things that the planets represent. It can get really complex, but if you start with baby steps – and maybe this seems a little too oversimplified for any astrologers out there – I think we can all recognize that sometimes you need to have a simpler lens that isn’t actually that simple.

I think there’s so much information out there that we can intuit and simply know. We don’t always need all of these turns and aspects and complexities. We have ourselves and that’s all we need.

Brigit: Yeah, I really like that. Because the thing that has been so off-putting for me with astrology is just going “Holy moly, how will I ever know north node and aspects of degrees?”

Sasha: Oh my gosh.

Brigit: I’m out.

Sasha: That comes with time. Trust me. When I first started, I just ignored the stuff that I couldn’t understand, which is probably a good and bad thing because it let me focus in on what I did care about. But then you start to incorporate more and more as you get more curious.

It’s the same thing with Tarot and any sort of mantic system. Stop trying to do it all at once – I think I’ve said that five times in this interview already, but it’s true, guys. It’s so true. Baby steps are key.

Brigit: And I think also feeling your way into it and intuiting astrology – I think that’s a really big take-away for me from today.

I’ve always thought of astrology as sort of knowledge or information, therefore you must learn it, remember it, and write lots of notes.

But it sounds like it’s very similar to Tarot where yes, you can go down that path to memorize stuff, or you can feel into it and use it as a tool to connect in with your own inner wisdom versus having to learn set things.

It’s interesting to hear that’s possible with astrology as an entry point.

Sasha: Well, I hope you can use this information as well, Brigit. Look up your moon sign. Look up your natal chart. It’s so exciting when you just start to sink your teeth into it.

I didn’t even realize that I had Aquarius traits until I became aware of my moon sign and maybe I’ll find out that your moon is in Capricorn, I don’t know. You know yourself better than I do. I love astrology.

Bright: Yeah, I can see it. I can feel it. Absolutely.

Well, this has been really good information and it’s a really great entry point for Tarot readers, in particular, to make a connection to astrology without feeling overwhelmed.

Thank you so much for sharing this today. I really appreciate it. And I’m sure the folks listening to will appreciate this new knowledge. Although, probably for some, they’re like, “Oh, astrology, yeah, whatever. I’m good at that already.” Beginners mind. Beginners mind.

So what other kinds of projects are you working on at the moment?

Sasha: Well, currently I’m working on an intuitive Oracle deck, channelling astrological energies in a new way.

It should be out soon, but you can go ahead and pop over to my website, Sashastrology.com and check out updates on that project. I’m also on Instagram. That’s where my tribe is. You can find me at Sashastrology. And I make YouTube videos as well. I’m pretty much everywhere.

Brigit: Wonderful. That’s where I found you – on Instagram. I should have you back another time to talk through Instagram strategy because goodness me, that’s a whole other ball game. Wonderful.

And the Oracle deck sounds really, really fascinating. Is there anything more that you want to share about that? I’m curious how astrology and Oracle comes together.

Sasha: Yeah, I didn’t step into this project thinking, I want to make an astrology oracle deck. Really, it just came to me as a concept and I realized after working with it, after channelling this information that these were the astrological signs.

It’s essentially a deck that helps the user connect to astrological energies on a far more intuitive level. You don’t need any astrological knowledge to work with the deck, but you’ll gain it through the cards, which I’m really excited about.

My artist just sent me during this interview a few cards and I’m so stoked for how this is coming about. It’s completely self-published. It’s all coming from me and my little home in New York City. I’m excited.

Brigit: Wonderful. It sounds really, really good and particularly if you get to learn astrology while you play with cards, that sounds right up my alley. Wonderful.

We’ll make sure that we post the links to your website, Instagram and YouTube in the show notes, but for now I just want to say a big, big thank you for being a part of the podcast and sharing your knowledge. It’s opened up my mind and my curiosity again for astrology.

Sasha: Thank you so much for having me and making this podcast. It’s such a joy to listen to every week. I’m a podcast nerd, so when I discovered you I was like “Yes! Tarot in my ears every week.” Thank you so much, Brigit. It’s been a pleasure.

Brigit: Wonderful. All right, well you have a great day.

Sasha: You too.

Brigit: Bye.

LEARN MORE ABOUT SASHA AND SUBSCRIBE

Brigit: So there you have it. I hope you enjoyed that interview with Sasha as much as I did. And perhaps you’re even a little bit inspired now to work with the planets and your Tarot cards to see what is coming up for you ahead.

If you want to get the show notes or find out more about Sasha, make sure you head on over to BiddyTarot.com/51 and you’ll find a copy of the transcript. I can’t wait to see Sasha’s oracle deck when it’s released. Awesome.

Well, again, I’m so grateful for having you listening to this podcast and talking with you about Tarot and today about astrology.

If you love this podcast, I would love for you to write a review on iTunes and you can also subscribe in order to get these podcasts downloaded to your mobile device whenever a new one is released. You can do all of that via iTunes.

All right, I hope you have a wonderful week and I can’t wait to speak with you again next week all about Tarot. Bye for now.

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