Ep #156: The Intersection of Astrology and Feminism with the AstroTwins

This is Feminist Wellness, and I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner, Functional Medicine Expert, and Life Coach, Victoria Albina. I’ll show you how to get unstuck, drop the anxiety, perfectionism, and codependency so you can live from your beautiful heart. Welcome my love, let’s get started.

Hello, hello, my love. I hope this finds you doing so well. I just had such a great conversation with Ophira and Tali from the AstroTwins. I mean, they are the AstroTwins. So, they are two amazing, incredible women, identical twins, thus the twins part, and they are astrologers. And they’re just so great. They’re so fabulous.

I’ve actually been a fan of their work for a while. And so we connected around sharing a conversation about astrology and feminism and how we can use astrology as a guide for our lives.

It was a really fun conversation and I’m so delighted to share it all with you. And they read my chart, which is so fun. I’ve shared on here that I’m a Leo, because, of course, Leos are going to tell you they’re Leos. But they share so much more about my chart during this conversation. I’ll link to the chart – like you can actually see the map of the stars when I was born on August third, 1979, in Mar del Plata, Argentina. You can see that on my website. So, if you go to victoriaalbina.com/156, which is the episode number for this show – also, wow, I’ve done 156 of these. That’s bananas.

But if you go to there, you can see the chart, which is super fun. So, you can follow along when Tali is like, “Well, if you look down here, it’s the North Node…” you’ll be able to see what she’s talking about.

I hope you enjoy this conversation. I had so much darn fun. And yeah, check out their work. They are a blast. Alright, here we go.

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Victoria: Hello, hello. Oh my goodness, I’m so delighted you all are here.

Ophira: I’m so happy to be here.

Tali: Feminism is a favorite topic of ours. I don’t know if you know this or not, but Ophi was an editor at Ms. Magazine with Gloria Steinem and we used to publish our own feminist magazine with a focus on women. It was intersectional feminism before that word was out there. I was called Hues, with an intersectional group of women. So, this has been like the grounding truth in so much of our work.

Ophira: Yeah, we don’t always get to bring the two together though.

Victoria: I love that.

Tali: I pounded on my desk by accident…

Victoria: I love excitement. I mean, we’ve got three firesides in one tiny Zoom room, so a lot of emphasis is bound to happen. So, I am so excited for the two of you to be here to talk about astrology and feminism and the intersection thereof, and how we can really, in learning about our astrology and what’s up for us planetarily, how we can support ourselves and our growth path.

Tali: Astrology is such a great tool for that. And obviously, most of us know our sun signs, and that’s a great tool for just illuminating – the sun in the chart is your energy source. It’s your personality. It’s your fuel. And it’s always going to be a really important directive. But you can look at other planets for just finessing, the outer planets especially? From Jupiter to Pluto are really the ones – and also the nodes, the lunar nodes which are associated with eclipses. When you’re ready to really do that inner journey, trauma healing, transformational wellness work, get past Mars and then the party starts.

Ophira: Plan the deep space mission. It’s interesting because we actually found feminism and astrology at the same time in our lives. So, we were students of the University of Michigan, I guess 18 or 19 years old, and trying to figure out who we were, and also how to find our voices in the world as new adults, adultish, and both gave us access points that we hadn’t had before in very different ways.

And when we were running our magazine Hues, we found that astrology – we were talking about all these different identities and identity politics, and managed to do it in a non-polarizing way. But we were still very much talking about our differences. So, astrology was almost a relieving way of allowing us to have differences that weren’t about the body that we didn’t choose to be born in, you know. Who knows? That’s questionable if you believe in reincarnation…

Victoria: Question mark on that…

Ophira: But it just transcended the politics of appearance and it had more playfulness and it balanced it out. But nowadays, I think both astrology and feminism mean different things to different people. So, not to become the interviewer on your show, but I am a Sagittarius, so that was going to happen at some point…

Victoria: At some point… it happened pretty fast, but go for it. I loved it. It was fast. I was impressed.

Ophira: We love a question.

Victoria: So, my love, before we dive in, I would love to hear from you. How do you define feminism and can you talk about how it intersects with astrology for you?

Tali: Go ahead, Ophi, why don’t you?

Ophira: Yeah, well we’ve seen feminism through a lot of different waves. We were born in 1972, the same year that Ms. Magazine was founded. When I worked there for nine months, I was reminded of that often. But I feel like it’s such an interesting point because gender is just totally being deconstructed, redefined, expanded. And feminism was created in a genderized environment. So, it’s much needed of course, still, because the majority of the world has not adopted the progressive take on it. But enough of a critical mass of people have. So, that’s not really an answer, except for I think that that’s where astrology is helpful, that it pluralizes versus narrows down.

I think we’re in a deconstructing phase right now of everything, and I think feminism is ready for yet another wave of redefining, which is what you’re doing with your show. So, for me, when I found it, having grown up with teenage magazines – I was just looking at some 1980s ads yesterday and remembering how I used to feel when I would open a magazine, because that’s, growing up in the 70s and 80s, what we had, and just being assaulted with these images of – they were so compelling and yet I knew I would never look like that. And I just remember the feeling it created in me.

So, for me, feminism was a platform where I could create other stories or models of what it meant to be a girl or a woman. But the option to be anything but a girl or a boy or a woman or a man was not even – we still thought Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres were going to settle down with a nice guy when their shows were on, you know.

Tali: It’s true. And for me, I think all that Ophi said. And on a very simple note, feminism to me means that the feminine is respected and given equal credibility and respect to the masculine.

Ophira: Yeah, no matter who it exists in.

Victoria: Right, as sacred constructs, not gendered constructs.

Tali: Yeah, teachers, classic women’s work, are still buying school supplies and vastly underpaid fields where women, or women-identified people are shuttled to which nurture and uphold our society, which are still the most underpaid and undervalued. And so, across all – and that’s what it is for me, transforming the whole concept of nurturing being devalued. And with a Cancer South Node in our charts, we can relate to some of the very classically feminine arts, but not wanting to be pigeonholed or categorized by them.

So, astrology set me free to actually be like, “Okay, so I like making pompoms by hand. But you know what? I also was, like, the top student in my calculus class, so screw you.” I could go on.

Victoria: Yeah, freeing ourselves emotionally, physically, energetically from binaries, and within that, finding agency and choice, and from an intersectional feminist framework, recognizing that we don’t all have the exact same agency due to different and varying privileges and working to move towards more equity, equality but equity in the world.

Tali: Even just break up the whole damn paradigm. When we throw a bomb in that and start over, I think I’ll be satisfied.

Victoria: I mean, I’m with you. Let’s go. We ride at dawn, right? So, one of the things that I hear when I tell folks that I’m into astrology is, you know, this sort of – what I think they’re getting to when they’re like, “I’m not into that garbage,” I mean, there’s probably a lot of fear under there, distrust, taking us back to distrust of the feminine nurturing aspect. But also, I think people are surprised I’m into astrology because so much of my work is based in looking at or cognitions, our thoughts, our metacognitions, and really coming to understand how our habitual thinking from our conditioning, our socialization, our family blueprints, the patriarchy white settler colonialism, the thoughts that we carry as fact, how they create our feelings, lead us to take action, create the results in our lives.

So, when that’s the framework for living, people are like, “Wait, you think the stars rule your life?” And I’m like, this is not an either or, babes, this is a both and. So, what does that spark for you?

Ophira: Nonbinary there, please. I totally get it because I had to tell Gloria Steinem that I was leaving Ms. Magazine to work on my astrology business. And she was super cool about it, like, “I had my chart done in India in the 60s,” but I could tell she was like, “Well, the thing about astrology is it’s always so genderized at the back of the magazine.” And I was like, it is, it’s true. I got it.

But from what you’re saying, I think one of the advances for women has been in education. It’s been shown that the poverty rate for women decreases as you give a girl or a woman an education. So, we’ve kind of rightly come to cherish our intellect, academic credentials, and wow, we get to show how fricking smart we are because we’re outnumbering guys at college now.

So, it could feel like you were going backwards to say that you’re into astrology ostensibly. But the truth is, great thinkers and intellectuals and scientists have always acknowledged that there’s a divine force at play that we can’t explain. So, I always, when people – because I do regularly. We went to the University of Michigan, I almost went to engineering school, art school, we did not mean to be astrologers. We have quite an academic family and background.

So, what I always tell people is you need to know the difference between a cynic and a skeptic. Because a cynic just dismisses something outright, and a skeptic is what a scientist is. They try it, and if it works for them, great, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. They gather evidence and data based on trying something out. So, if you are really are an advocate of science, take a scientific approach to astrology and try it. Get your chart done.

Tali: I’d like to introduce some visual evidence to the conversation. This little spinning orb called the Moon that was the foundation of the lunar solar calendar, the world’s oldest calendar, that planting cycles have been built around, that menstrual cycles are built around. So, of course, astrology, I always say, is math and myth together too a little bit. And Pythagoras of the Pythagorean Theorem was an astrologer and a numerologist…

Ophira: Galileo, yeah, Copernicus.

Tali: But at the same time, we’re spiritual beings having a human existence. To try to understand life just through the lens of the intellect and the human construct denies what we’re all kind of reaching for through feminism, to be able to be free. Like, one of the most damaging aspects of all the isms out there is that they don’t allow full, free expression for people of all backgrounds, genders, et cetera. Only a small sample pool gets to form a Masons society and Illuminati, and everyone else has to be trapped and on this narrow data set that they’re able to interact with. So, we are spiritual beings. There’s more overhead. We don’t even know how many stars there are and galaxies and dimensions.

Ophira: Also, it gives you access to meaning. We want our lives to mean something and to take the things that give meaning and divine support away from the populations that work the hardest for everyone else, that’s like taking away our supports, unconditional support, you know.

Tali: Don’t mess with the moon. Don’t mess with my moon.

Victoria: I think part of that pushback is also, like, why would I let astrology, like some book, tell me what my personality is?

Tali: And you shouldn’t. And that is good pushback. One of our astrological mentors is Steven Forrest. He’s an evolutionary astrologer. He practices choice centered astrology, as do we. And we always have intuitively, even before we met him. The idea that your chart is not – it is descriptive and prescriptive in some ways, but it’s a tool not a rule. You were born with the planets in these placements, but there’s nature and nurture involved in that. You’re always cocreating and it’s a fascinating blueprint to look at for your tendencies. But it’s also the best tool for self-growth and transformation.

Because, for example, we were born with the moon in Scorpio, as well as Mercury, Venus, and Mars, which was shocking to us when we found that out because here we are, Sagittarians, you know, happy-go-lucky travelers, sounds great. But why was a storm brewing inside, you know?

Ophira: Why did we want to solve every unsolved mystery or whatever? Yeah, your chart is like your factory settings. It’s like you wouldn’t buy a new phone and just not put your own apps on it. Think of it as a snapshot of your soul at birth and almost like the starting point of your life’s GPS trajectory. But you get to choose the different routes you take. And when you know what the stars are doing, you can be like – it’s like using Waze, “That doesn’t look as bumpy, I think I’m going to go that way.”

And I also say, if it doesn’t work for you, if you try it and it doesn’t work then stop using it. Find another system. But for many people it does work. But of course, it’s carrying a heavy load of woo-woo fortune-teller bullshit that it has partly rightly earned. It’s an unregulated, uncertified industry, so anyone can be an astrologer and can tell you anything they want. So, I’m sure people have had poor experiences with it too.

Victoria: Yeah, and I think you really got to the point I wanted to make. I love that you said that it’s not rules. It’s about choices. It’s about how you choose to interact with the descriptions and the prescriptions.

Ophira: We’re pro-choice astrologers, okay.

Victoria: Pro-choice astrologers, I love that. Yeah, let’s send some of that energy to the Supreme Court, huh? Right as the US is entering it’s Saturn returns…

Ophira: Pluto returns. First one ever, yeah, oh my gosh.

Tali: Pluto being the planet of the unconscious, the shadow. Pluto is such a slow-moving planet, so it’s returning to the same point it was in when the Declaration of Independence was signed, the country’s official birthday on record. So, it’s really been happening since 2008 on a long cycle, 2008 to 2024. And we’re right in the exact deep part of it now. But yeah, we’re in it, what’s happening now.

Ophira: There’s Neptune opposition too with the USA’s chart. So, it’s a simultaneous Pluto return and Neptune opposition. And there was Neptune either return or opposition at the civil war and World War II Pearl Harbor, and now again. I know, it’s pretty wild. Let’s hope that doesn’t mean a war, but you know, we won’t go there.

Victoria: Where’s my local bomb shelter? But we won’t go there.

Tali: Well, you said we ride at dawn…

Ophira: We can stop this next insurrection. We can with the power of the stars, right?

Victoria: Right on. So, something I was thinking about as you were talking about the rules and agency is astrology has been so helpful in my life because it’s helped me to really frame the things that I always thought were a problem about me in a different light. And I’m really excited to get into talking about my chart, if y’all are still game to do that.

Tali: Yeah, would you like to screen share so people can see it?

Victoria: Oh sure, but where I was going was just, like, all this fire – we’ll dive into it in a second. and when I was a little girl, I was always told I was too much, I was too big, my mom is a Cancer of the very emotional side. My dad’s the beginning of April, Aries, of the very also shut-down sort. I was too much for them.

Ophira: For them…

Victoria: Exactly. I thought it was because I was the problem. And Astrology has been one really helpful tool to help me see, it’s not that I was the problem, it’s my kind. My kind is like, fire, fire, fire, Leo, Leo, Leo, big, which also means big love, big generosity, big loyalty, big care, big giving. And also, I talk very loud in a quiet theatre. Like, it’s just my kind, right? It doesn’t mean I have to change. I have learned to modulate, like I’m really grateful to be a more mature Leo than my 20-year-old self.

Ophira: Yeah, totally, you become an evolved Leo. We learn, those are my tendencies but maybe they don’t work in every scenario.

Victoria: Right, it’s been really helpful to take the blame off me, take the shame off me and just be like, this is my kind and I can work with it instead of against it.

Ophira: perfectly said. That’s exactly what we’ve found it to be good for…

Tali: Making room for four planets in Scorpio…

Victoria: That’s a lot…

Tali: Yeah, the private universe that dwelled within, the shame around from a Capricorn rising was transformed into embracing mysticism and feminism and, just, okay…

Ophira: There are no accidents and that’s what I also love about the astrology chart. Because it’s our nature as humas to be judgmental of each other too, and you know, I partake in that because it gives you a little feel good, feel bad lift sometimes to do that. But when you look at someone through their chart you’re like, “This is how they were designed. It’s perfect.” And they’re here to learn a set of lessons, grow in a set of ways. It’s a choose your own adventure within these parameters kind of way.

But you can play with it when you have the realization that you did, when you have that moment of self-acceptance. That’s where I’ve found astrology to have things in common with our feminist work. Because we did a lot of body image work. At that moment of radical self-acceptance that, you know what, I’m not perfect compared to the narrow paradigm that I’ve been given, and I’m perfect. So, where do we go from here now?

Victoria: Yeah, and I’ve been thinking about it like I am the most perfect expression of this astrology.

Ophira: Yes, exactly.

Victoria: It’s been really helpful.

Tali: And people should know that only someone born the same minute in the same time zone as you shares your chart. We’re four minutes apart and we have a tiny difference in our chart. Like, our degree of our rising sign is different by one. And it has made a difference with certain lower planets crossing over that Capricorn point. So, it’s so unique. Like, the likelihood of planets lining up the exact same way, you know, because they all move at different speeds and retrogrades, it’s so highly unlikely that – maybe it’s happened before, but probably not when you were alive. So, you are a special snowflake in astrology.

Victoria: I love that. And I love what you were saying, Ophi, about empathy and how knowing someone’s chart, even just their big three, a moon, sun, rising, really can help us to see the whole person as their whole design. One of the tools I teach is a tool towards radical acceptance is the tool of Of Course They Did.

So, when someone does the same thing they always frigging do, and you knew they were going to do it but you’re somehow surprised, and that surprise comes, of course, from not being in radical acceptance, wanting them to be different, thinking they should be different, thinking if you guilt and shame them enough, they’ll change, if you will them enough to change, they will, if you live their lives for them and fix them enough they will change. And a beautiful way to step out of that is, like, of course they did. So codependent, right?

Ophira: Borrowing that one, thank you.

Victoria: Please do, it’s a really good one.

Tali: I think I spent at least four to five figures on therapy without that, “Well, why did they do this?”

Victoria: “Why aren’t these other humas the ones I want them to be?” Right, because then we get into that martyr shit. If I suffered more on their behalf, if they only saw how much pain they’re causing me by being themselves, they would be someone else. That’s one of those core codependent thoughts. But if you’re like…

Ophira: I know nothing about that…

Victoria: Right, never heard of it. But if you’re like – my sister has a Torus sun and she’s the most perfect human ever made. I mean that earnestly. Hi, Gene, I love you. But also, she’s a stubborn little shit sometimes.

Ophira: She is probably somebody you apply that tool to very often.

Victoria: Yeah, and I’m sure she applies it to me when she gets some wicked loud 6AM, like, “Hi Gene…” text message. And she’s like, “Whoa, Torus needs a minute this morning.” And we can both lovingly set those emotional boundaries for ourselves and say of course they did with the other person.

The other tool we talk about is the Manual. We walk around in our relationships believing people in certain roles should behave certain ways. Like, I remember my mom, we would walk into a store – I’m from Argentina. When you walk into a store, everyone always says, “Hello, ho ware you?” It never doesn’t happen, do you know what I mean? And she would get so pissed off. She’d walk into CVS and walk up to the counter and they would just take her items. And she’d be like, “Hello, how are you?” And the poor kid is like, “Yo, I make minimum wage and this is my third job today, and okay hi, how are you? I’m tired.” You know what I mean? So, there was a manual there.

And then, we have manuals for partners, for parents, for children. We tell these stories about who they should be. And I think pausing to reframe that with their astrology to give them some space to just be themselves, for their own blueprint, is such a gift.

Tali: Ironically, astrology can be a manual, but it’s a manual for individuality. It’s not a manual for uniform behavior at all. Quite the opposite. It’s an ability. It’s a lens of understanding.

Ophira: It’s a helpful manual versus a preconceived one. But I love that and I love how you summed up something that people can suffer with their entire lives into a single tool with a couple of words. I guess astrology does that too. It’s like a tool, an archetype, a device so you’re like, “Okay, I’m not going to suffer.” She’s a Leo, she’s loud, get over it. She’s a Torus, she’s still in bed at nine and you’re up at the crack of dawn because Leo is ruled by the sun.

Our mother is a Leo and I can still hear the 1970s shades snapping up, “Rise and shine, girls.” I’m like… now I work with a Leo who is my right-hand woman and she’s Canadian and she’ll leave me a little Voxer message she’s like, “Hiyaa…” every morning. And I’m like, you’re my mom… But I’ve actually come to love the Snow White sing-song morning call from her. Now I’ll be like, “Of course she did.”

Victoria: Of course she did. That’s her kind. I love it. Alright, so I’m going to be super Leo… can we talk about me now?

Tali: Of course. Would you like me to pull your chart up to share?

Victoria: Oh sure, and I can put, for folks listening in, a link to it on the show page.

Ophira: So symbiotic because Sag’s love to give advice, so it’s like a perfect win-win.

Victoria: Look at all of us just standing in our glory here. It’s a beautiful thing.

Tali: It truly is. You know, also, everyone who’s listening may be interested in doing their own chart, which you can do for free on our website at astrostyle.com/birthchart, that’s your moment of birth chart, one word, and we all have quite a few things I common on our chart. They’re called the planets. There’s no getting away from it, you’ve got a sun sign, moon sign, Mars, Venus, Mercury, all of it. But they all wind up in different signs and houses, so that’s what makes us unique. So, through our commonalities we can find and embrace our differences. So, yes, Victoria, this is your chart, okay. This is you…

Ophira: Look at the lovely bowl…

Tali: Yes, so basically what we’re looking at is all the planets orbiting, they’re moving at different speeds, and then we freezeframe them at your exact moment of birth. Now, this would be like a science class diagram except the Earth is at the center instead of the sun because it’s all about us in astrology. So, here you are taking your first breath, probably three, around there…

Victoria: Probably around 3AM. People weren’t really paying that much attention, I think. But that’s fine.

Ophira: It happens.

Tali: Yeah, it does. So, here we go, this is you. So, all of the planets – we freezeframe the planets and put them on this map.

Ophira: Can I make a little note before that though, Tali? Because if you have all the smart people on they’re going to say, “But the constellations have shifted.” So, what this really is, I always say imagine you’re lying on your back in a grassy field looking up at the sky, this was your view of the sky from wherever you were on Earth. Or imagine your mother is lying on her back about to deliver you, that’s what she would see if she was giving birth in a planetarium, instead of a hospital or home. So, it’s based on the position of all the planets from our view on Earth, not the constellations. Okay. Go on, Tali.

Tali: So, these 12 outer 30-degree segments are the 12 zodiac signs. And on that node of the constellations, they used to be aligned with this. This is the Leo part of the sky, this one 12^th of the wheel, you know, long ago yes, the constellations aligned, but they’ve drifted. They were markers of this wheel. And then these other pizza slices here are the houses. And you need to know your time of birth to really get accurate on the houses. But just for the sake of it all, since you were around there – we don’t know your exact rising sign, which is interesting. But we’ll talk about that in a minute.

Now, because you were born in Argentina, so close to the equator, all these houses are pretty equal in size. But someone born in Australia or Alaska will have some teeny weeny slices…

Victoria: And I was actually born about as close as Maine is to the equator. That’s how close to the equator I was. Argentina is really – yeah, Antarctica is part of Argentina. We’re pretty – it’s super duper south, like Joburg is on the same line as us.

Ophira: Wow, interesting that your houses are so well proportioned.

Victoria: Well thank you…

Ophira: Although the sixth and the 12^th are a little smaller, which does happen. I’ve seen some Scandinavians who have, like, three or four signs within one of those houses.

Tali: So, here is a cluster of Leo planets, as you mentioned, including the sun. So, when planets are together like this, it’s almost like they’re an ensemble cast. They’re a chorus. They’re singing together. They’re creating harmony. So, here you are with this Leo sun, and that is the essence of your personality. It’s who you are. It’s in the third house, if the houses are right, which is all about broadcasting, communication intellectual ideas. It has a lot of similar qualities to Gemini, which is the third sign, wo it’s the third house. But it’s amplified by its next door neighbor Jupiter here, which maximizes everything. And so, your Leo is a big Leo, which is not shocking news to you.

Ophira: Your Leo was born with a global megaphone, basically.

Tali: Yeah, you have an extra mic because Mercury, the planet of communication is next to your sun, and a very loving mic because we’ve got Venus, the planet of love and fashion – your Venus and Leo is also probably a big fashion…

Ophira: From the second half, yeah.

Tali: Yeah, you were born to inspire. You were born to sing. You were born to dance…

Ophira: And look good doing it.

Victoria: Can you two come on and repeat that every week forever? Okay, cool, thanks. That’s now what Feminist Wellness is.

Tali: I’ll hand the wheel to Ophi in a minute, but I’ll do your big three. So, here at this nine o’clock point on the wheel is the rising sign, and that is the zodiac part of the sky formally known as a constellation. Not anymore. That was there on the Eastern horizon when you were born. So, because we don’t know your exact time and it’s the very last – you’re either a Torus or a Gemini rising…

Ophira: Tough call too because I could see you being either.

Tali: Yeah, Torus rules the throat, but Gemini is also communication, so broadcasting.

Ophira: I would put money on Torus, personally. What about you, Tali?

Tali: Yeah, because the rising sun is kind of your outward personality. I don’t know, but you have the undercut on one side and the long on the other. There’s a lot of Gemini in there too, you do the voices well. I don’t know. Unfortunately we may not know. You’ll just have to play with both.

And here’s your moon. So, the sun, moon, and rising are the big three. They’re not being called – the sun being, like, this is me, this is my personality. If the sun makes you blue, the rising sun will make you powder blue or navy. It tints your appearance in the world. And I think you’re a bright cobalt, like the zebra. And then the moon is the part of you that comes out as people get to know you more, which doesn’t take long for you because you’re a Sagittarius moon, so it’s like out with it, my emotions are front and center and you are going to know me, I’m going to speak my truth, I’m going to wear it on my zebra sleeve and that’s how it’s going to go. Now, Ophi, do you want to talk about her nodes? I think that’s a really important one.

Ophira: Sure, and just notice also that all of your planets are in – aside from the moon and Neptune – but they’re all in the lower half of the chart there. So, you have what would be called a bowl shape chart. There are seven classical chart shapes. So, when that many of your planets are clustered in the personal houses, it’s a person who is very much into their home or family, their immediate life. They don’t necessarily have the huge desire to be out in the big world traveling all the time and teaching. They like to do things from the comfort of their own known environment.

So, even though you’re a Leo, the big voice and the small town, you’re like the Music Man or something of your town, you know. Not disclosing where you live, obviously, but you are happily living as a Leo in a smaller community, so that would be indicated by your planets being there, even though I’m sure the pandemic had plenty to do with it. If you like a more localized community and to shop locally and support local artists and that kind of thing.

Victoria: Absolutely, for sure. I’ve always been a nester, always, always, always.

Ophira: Yeah, and this – I don’t know if you can see my mouse, but down here, this other thicker line is called your IC, and that’s your foundation, that’s your home, family, and just kind of what anchors you. And you have Saturn right on there, which is a teacher and it’s in Virgo, the sun of health and wellness. Saturn is also an authority, so you are an authority on all things Virgo, which is also psychology and how people work, what makes people tick. Then the fourth house is about family and empathy…

Tali: Virgo’s also great at coming up with manuals and these little memorable soundbites that are chock full of mantra-worthy life lessons. So, thanks, Saturn and Virgo in the fourth.

Victoria: Thank you so much, yeah, grateful.

Tali: The needlepoint versions of these, of course they did. Can you sell that needlepoint on Etsy?

Ophira: Yeah, an Etsification of that would fit your chart very well.

Victoria: I love that.

Ophira: Well, your North Node, that’s your karmic destiny – so unfortunately this chart doesn’t show the South Node. Tali is pointing to it. So, there are two key points in the chart called the South Node and the North Node and they kind of bottom line what you’re here for, what you came from and what you’re here for.

So, when people come in asking, “What am I meant to do with my life?” you can look here. They tend to be in everything in our world polarized and made binary. But we’re into nonbinary nodes as well. In other words, seeing them as in support of each other. So, if you read up on the nodes or get curious about yours, they change every 18 months and they represent a cluster of people that are born to learn the same set of lessons, in our opinion.

So, the South Node has been seen as it’s where you come from, so it’s bad. You have to put it away. And the North Node is good because that’s what you’re here to learn. So, our evolved…

Tali: To that, we say bullshit.

Ophira: Exactly, so the South Node, they’re your natural gifts. If you over-rely on it it’s like overusing a muscle that’s already developed instead of developing the other ones. So, you want to use it but in service of building the opposite muscles.

So, your South Node, your quote unquote past life or natural gifts and talents is in Pisces and it’s actually in the ninth house, which is very worldly. So, from an astrological interpretation, whether you believe in this or not, what astrology would say is that you’ve had many lifetimes as a worldly traveler and healer and shaman. And your childhood often reflects it.

So, if you don’t feel a deep need to travel all the time or you feel satisfied, it’s not that you’re afraid of it. You just already feel like you did that. That may be something you’re like, “I’m okay in my local community because I’m meeting people from all over the world anyway, or I’m connecting with them through my podcast, or I have a sense that I’m a worldly person, even if I’m in a yurt surrounded by 500 people somewhere,” or whatever.

So, you came in with the archetype of this Pisces healing magical mystical world traveler. And in this lifetime, your North Node is in Virgo, and the third house, which is the local community area. So, you’re here to bring teaching to a community to – you don’t have to get very hands on and involved. You could be the person who opened a popup or build things. If you do it virtually, the third house is, as Tali said, it’s about multimedia teaching, writing, podcasting.

Tali: To add to that, Pisces and Virgo are the healer signs. So, you are on a healing path and wellness oriented path. Pisces really deals with a lot of things that are core to your work, the subconscious healing, being an empath, a highly sensitive person, trauma, boundaries and codependence. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac and it’s really akin to that elderly state where you’re almost helpless and yet you’re having these visions and you’re half here and half there and in and out of multiple dimensions and worlds and you’re disoriented, disoriented energy.

Whereas Virgo is this very clear compass of you are here to help people who are feeling disoriented and out of sorts, you know. Maybe even just walking down the street and traveling, you know, and helping them find that path that feels like home, I would say. Does that resonate for you?

Victoria: Absolutely. And what’s really interesting is – so my work is I have this community, this six-month program called Anchored, and that’s what I do. That’s my whole world is this community.

Tali: We did not know that…

Ophira: And Saturn is this anchor sitting at the bottom of your chart.

Victoria: Yeah, and it’s a healing community. It’s about coming together to reclaim our self-worth, our self-love, our self-trust. And I started working on that and conceptualizing that a decade ago. And many years before I’d ever really dipped my toe beyond my sun sign. And so I just love now hearing how all the things line up with what I had already been creating. Of course, it’s coming from science, coming from such a nerdy place. It’s so validating both of my path and of my belief in astrology.

Tali: It’s so weird. That’s why we love astrology, right there, because it explains so much. But it also opens up these pathways of possibility. And you don’t discover it all at once. In fact, there are three planets which I like to think of as the planets of higher consciousness going outwards, which are the outer three planets, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto. And for the type of work that you do with people, I think these are really important ones for people to look at.

They are more generational. They shape – because they move so slowly, Uranus spends seven years in a sign, Neptune 15, and Pluto 12 to 20 because it has a quirky orbit. You have Uranus and Scorpio, which people, in the seven-year – so, Uranus is the higher mind. It’s like that third-eye energy. You’re still in your body.

I think of it as when you’re in that early part of your meditation, you know. You’re still aware of your body. Maybe it’s yoga, you know, because you’re doing a moving meditation but you’re just letting it work on its own, you know. And so, Uranus and Scorpio, it’s like what you’re here to rebel against, revolutionize and change because you feel this higher calling…

Ophira: In your sixth house of health and wellness, and Scorpio is this transformational sign, so…

Tali: She also rules sexuality and power, and it’s a big theme for people born in the late 70s and early 80s to really – I mean, that was a time when the AIDS crisis – you were born in Uranus in Scorpio, when we had to talk about condoms in high school for the first time and there was teen pregnancy not being hidden away in some, “She just went away for a semester,” you know. So, yeah.

Ophira: I was going to say that anyone who has Uranus in Scorpio in their chart is going through what’s called the Uranus opposition right now because Uranus is in Torus, on the opposite side…

Tali: you’re going through your exact one right now. Holy kundalini rising, you must be waking up with a buzzing…

Victoria: Very buzzing in such a great way.

Tali: It’s like a magical current going through you that we don’t even quite know how to surge protect. And maybe you shouldn’t. It’s not a hot flash. It’s Uranus on position, an astrological hot flash.

And then here’s Neptune, which rules the subconscious. And Neptune is in Sagittarius. We also have that born in 72. And so, Neptune is when you’re really here to transform spirituality and your dreams and the collective dream that we all share…

Ophira: And heal people.

Tali: Yeah, so a lot of – I mean, Hues Magazine, that’s what we called our magazine, and it stood for Hear Us Emerging Sisters. It was very much in the Sagittarius. We were so tired of this thin, blonde, white beauty standard being imposed. Ophi actually has a book, an anthology she edited called Adios Barbie. Now Body Outlaws, which is a collection of essays by women about body image, but from their perspective. It’s not all about weight or this or…

Ophira: There’s a couple men in there and one trans person. It came out in 1997, so I feel proud of that.

Victoria: We actually read it in what was then called women’s studies at Oberlin College.

Ophira: You did?

Victoria: We did, in seminar. It was curriculum, I know, isn’t that wild.

Ophira: That was wild for me. You know, Sagittarius rules universities, so healing work at the university level, it’s definitely something that Neptune and Sag’ people can do, and that’s people born in the second half of the 60s – well, 69, 67 on, so yeah. I want to say about the Uranus opposition in relation to wellness, what’s very interesting, I read, is it’s when the kundalini energy rises. So, for men, or male-identified people, it’s supposed to open up the heart chakra, and for women, the throat chakra.

And I find it very interesting that around that age, early 40s, is when a lot of women have thyroid issues happen because we get this blast of energy, and perimenopause for a lot of women. These outer planets that Tali was talking about, when they go through these transits of import every seven or 14 or 29 or 42 years, it can be a momentous time. If you know what those cycles are, you can also expect that too, like, “Why am I feeling?” We’re in our Chiron return now at 49 and everything’s sort of undefined to redefine. And if I didn’t know about that, I would feel like, you know, there’s questions I’m being asked and I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t really know how to answer that to make me feel better and put a choice that I’m making in place. The only answer I can come up with is my Chiron return is happening.” So, I’m going to deconstruct before I reconstruct. So, you’re just going to have to wait.

Victoria: Yeah, I love how it just reminds us of our choices. Behind the camera is my calendar for the year where I have my progress chart written out, and it just cause my eye that my progress moon is in Cancer until November 8^th, 2023, in the second house. So, just knowing little things like that.

It just reminds me I have so much choice in life, which is a wicked privilege of course, but I have that internal agency. So, that’s an invitation to connect with the earth, to do healing work with myself and my connection with the earth, but in a paced way. And when I hear that and I hear what y’all are saying about my natal chart, it’s like, “Oh, wait, this is a beautiful choice I can possibly make for myself.”

Tali: For your entire life it’s like, these are buckets of opportunity. Which leads us to Pluto, which is one that’s very often overlooked because we go from Uranus, the higher mind, Neptune, the subconscious, to Pluto, the unconscious, the shadow, the stuff we never want to look at until it gets into our faces, you know. Or we just keep doing the same – this is where we spend thousands of dollars and the therapists, it’s like, of course they did, see you next week.

Victoria: Yeah, “I want to stay in judgment…” right?

Tali: So, Pluto in Libra, which we also have – this is a big generational thing. So, Gen X, millennial crossover, I think people born in 83 finally get to be Pluto in Scorpio somewhere in the year. But Pluto and this desire to figure out what’s fair or not fair is a thing…

Ophira: To just destroy things that aren’t…

Tali: Or relationships, you know, unconsciously following these relationship patterns and then the wakeup comes of, like, “This doesn’t work anymore.” But then, what do you do? Pluto creates a mess a lot of times, you know.

Ophira: All these Pluto and Virgo people born in the 60s and 50s who will not go to doctors, and it’s completely irrational to me, but there’s something they’re just like, “No.” And they know all this information and they’re scientific, but they just have a block, you know.

Tali: Also, I mean, for us, and our Pluto Libra people, I’m not getting married until I have to do X, Y, Z first, or the whole thing of getting stuck or getting trapped…

Ophira: Losing yourself, yeah, there’s this struggle, all this existential struggle and a lot of projection where you get to – I’m sure you have a tool for that, of course I did, maybe…

Victoria: That actually is a tool of ours, yeah.

Ophira: Well, that might be a Pluto one.

Tali: You know, people born in the late 80s or early 90s have Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune in Capricorn and then some in Aquarius in this cluster and they’re all getting married earlier. Like, no big deal. One of my friends who’s born in 1992, and her partner, they’re both in 92 and they’ve been together since high school and of course they’re getting – I’m like, I really…

Ophira: What, they don’t want to rebel?

Tali: Pluto and Libra, it’s like, oh my god, that’s a death sentence. And that’s the thing with Pluto does rule death. Things that feel like a death sentence almost that actually need to be examined. So, what is the actual issue? Well, negotiating for yourself in relationships, understanding boundaries, understanding that you have agency that people pleasing and all of that whole hot mess of things that you have to master when you put Pluto in a sign. But anyways, people can look to that.

And your Pluto is in the fifth house, so probably that’s sort of this Leo energy too, like being too much for other people and then just unconsciously worrying about that all the time like a cloud you didn’t realize was there, being the – always having to modulate until you, like you said, gain that consciousness to be, like, “Fuck it. I just belong.”

And sometimes, Jeff Green who is an evolutionary astrologer has a great book on Pluto, talked about how you can look to the opposite sign and house for clues on how to wake up your consciousness. So, for you, it would be Pluto, Aries and the 11^th house…

Ophira: A group.

Tali: Yeah, 11^th house is groups but intentional communities, and Aries itself authorizes expression, so here you find yourself.

Victoria: I love that. I had never learned that tip. That’s really cool. Yeah. One of the things I hear in my group so much is, “Codependent thinking is what was modeled for me in childhood, this is just where I come from, I don’t know how to start thinking about life differently, like I don’t know how to change the lenses in my glasses to see the world differently.” And I love looking at the opposite side at their strengths to say, “Oh, I can try to embody that.” That’s so cool. I love that.

Ophira: Yeah, I hope that seeps into your group, for those open to astrology then.

Victoria: Why not? I love it.

Tali: Ophi, do you see anything else in her chart that’s jumping out?

Ophira: I think we covered a lot. I guess the only thing else I see is Chiron the healer in your 12^th house, which is all about also the Piscean themes that Tali mentioned of healing and trauma and empathy and everything. So, it’s clear that you’re healing yourself by healing others, and that spirituality, which is the 12^th house, is in Torus, which is the material world that you are here to bridge the spiritual and the material to heal yourself and others. So, this is your love of the woo as an extreme power tool for you and it’s essential to your soul’s survival and your mortal happiness. So, it’s not to be looked upon lightly. And it’s great that you are still allowing yourself to use that even if some of your peers don’t understand why. They don’t have to.

Victoria: They don’t have to. Yeah. I love that.

Ophira: Maybe it’s not the tool for them.

Victoria: Exactly. This has been so special. I can’t think you both enough for coming on, for walking through my chart, for really helping folks to see just how beautiful and useful and feminist astrology really can be. Final question. For folks who are like, “I don’t know anything about this and I really… where do I start?” What would you say?

Ophira: Well, our own website astrostyle.com has a huge learning section. We’re actually redesigning it to make it even more accessible for people now that there’s this gigantic interest in the world of curiosity and learning astrology. We have, if you go to galaxy.astrostyle.com, that’s where all of our courses are. We have a free course called Birth Chart Basics where you can learn to read your chart, the planet signs and houses in less than an hour, to get the basics of it, and all kinds of courses planet by planet. So I would start there.

Tali: There’s a masterclass that we created with MindBodyGreen and you can access it all from galaxy.astrostyle.com, yes.

Victoria: Where else can folks find you?

Ophira: Social media as AstroTwins, Instagram is our preference. We’re on Twitter, we’re on Facebook. Feel free to follow us there but you’ll mostly see us active on Instagram, where people are nicer.

Victoria: Yeah, people are nicer, for sure. Yeah, and I’m so excited. I’m excited to go check out your courses. There’s definitely some of the houses, sort of that next frontier for me for learning and I’m excited to dive in.

Tali: Excited to check out your courses too.

Victoria: Oh, look at us checking each other out. Look at us course swapping. I love it. Any final words? Anything you want to leave our listeners with?

Tali: You know, have fun with this. Honestly, look at astrology as an illuminating candle being lit for you. Let it be one of the first stars in the sky. It’s like, you can’t touch it, you can’t reach it, you can’t see everything on it, you’ll never learn everything about it. But it’s there as a light for you, so play with it, you know, like music.

Victoria: I love that. That is so lovely. Thank you both so much for your time. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it. Thank you.

Ophira: Thanks for having us on.

Tali: Thank you.

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Thank you for listening, my love. I hope you enjoyed that conversation as much as I did. And if you are curious about learning more about your own chart, about astrology in general, head over to the twins’ page. It is so fabulous. I am absolutely going to check out their houses content. I really want to learn more about that specifically.

So, the nerdiness continues, right my darlings? If you are enjoying this show and the variety of topics we talk about and things we explore, I’d be so grateful if you headed on over to Apple Podcasts and left a star review – hopefully it’s five stars – and a written review. It doesn’t have to be anything long. Just a couple lines will do, to tell the good people how you feel about the show and let them know how you feel about Feminist Wellness.

Alright, my beauties, let’s do what we do. Gentle hand on your heart, if you feel so moved, and remember, you are safe, you are held, you are loved. And when one of us heals, we help heal the world. Be well, my beauty. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve been enjoying the show and learning a ton, it’s time to apply it with my expert guidance so you can live life with intention, without the anxiety, overwhelm, and resentment, so you can get unstuck. You’re not going to want to miss the opportunity to join my exclusive intimate group coaching program, so head on over to victoriaalbina.com/masterclass to grab your seat now. See you there. It’s going to be a good one.