You see, something's going to happen.
What's going to happen? What I Welcome back to the occult Rejects. Today we're joined by a returning guest whose work lives at the fascinating crossroads with symbolism, intuition, ritual and interpretation. All meet. Christina Ferrella is an astrologer, divination educator, founder of Eighth House Astrology, author of Divination for Dummies, and co host of Sora Mystica with Marianna Lewis, a podcast exploring modern spirituality through symbol, myth and mystic inquiry.
What makes Christina especially compelling is that her approach doesn't reduce divination to novelty or shallow fortune telling. She treats it as something much richer, a symbolic art, a spiritual discipline, and a serious practice of learning how meaning speaks through images, patterns, ritual and intuition. The same spirit is all over Divination for Dummies, which she describes as a grounded, well researched introduction for people who want to actually learn how to
divine rather than just skim the surface. And this book really does open the door wide. It walks readers through a broad range of divinatory systems, including taro, numerology, astrology, palmistry, scrying, and even bone throwing. It walks readers through a broad range of divinatory systems including taro, numerology, astrology, palmistry, and scrying, all while also giving attention to ritual tools, origins, daily practice, and the building of confidence as a reader. So it's
not just a book about what divination is. It's also about how to begin, how to practice, and how to develop a real relationship with these traditions and in a thoughtful and usable way. So today we're going to talk about Christina's path, her work, her podcast in this new book, what divenetion really is, why it hasn't dared across cultures for so long, and what these systems can still offer to beginners, practitioners and the merely curious. I like not
before I introduce the co host and the guest. I do have an announcement to make. We do have the website a Cult Research Institute dot org. There's a lot of stuff on there if you like to read, so check it out. And if you're interested, there are two styles of shirts on there. And now let me introduce the co host Headlet's Giant. My man, what is going on?
How you doing? I've got the you know, normal road rage going on outside of my window. But it's great to be here. You can check out my show on the Headless Giant YouTube channel and on x and on Instagram as well. So thank you very much for having me.
Oh, thank you for coming on man. I was looking forward to this one. And Christina, please, if there's anything I left out or anything like the plug a mension, please let everybody know.
Oh well, I'm really happy to be back. It's really nice to be sharing space with you both. I'm excited for a conversation. And I think that the one thing that I'll plug besides sore Mystica, which is my podcast with my friend Marianna who I was on recently with, is my class. It's the School of Astrological Arcana. It's my kind of I call it my big class. It's my ten week immersion course in the art of chart interpretation.
So this is for budding astrologers out there, people who want to either become professional astrologers in their own right, or people who are just really really passionate about astrology and want a supportive, kind of rich, immersive learning environment to actually understand how to read your chart from top
to bottom. So that's beginning on April twenty ninth, and I have founding cohort pricing going on right now through April tenth, so if anybody wants to enroll, they can jump in and save a well cash before that happens. And yeah, feels so silly being salesy, but anyway, it's not a sales the environment.
Yeah, shirts feel stupid.
Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yes, So I'd love to have anybody who's listening and is a fan of the show in our spring coport, so you can learn more about that in links that I'm sure will be available. But my website, Christinafarrella dot com has a big banner for the school up at the top and you can check it out there.
Oh yeah, thank you very much. And I do highly suggest I know I've said it before, I think when you were on for our listeners, if you you know, if you're into this show, I really do think you will find a lot of value in their podcast. I think they're kind of very much on the same page in a sense, So definitely go check it out. Please. It's great stuff and definitely check out their books and their work. I think it's, you know, a value, which
is why I have them on. So Christina, you know, I might have like some questions here that might almost you like a little bit kind of how it was in the last show, only because it's just kind of the way I start off. But for people meeting you for the first time, maybe they didn't catch you the last time that you were on. Who is Christina and what first drew you into astrology and divination?
I have no idea who Christina is, but what I think me.
Into yo first place. Second I looked at your name, I was like, Yo, did I just suck up a name?
No?
Sorry? I was like, fun, that's good, No, just doing just doing existential comedy. No, So yeah, I'm Christina. Yes, it's true. And I think that, you know, what first drew me into all of this. Honestly, I think that I was raised in like a very strict Irish Italian Roman Catholic household, and church was really really important in that environment. And I'm, you know, just we were just always in and very involved with the church growing up.
And you know, when I was a teenager, I was like, oh my gosh, this is fake, the church sucks, blah blah blah. So I had like my break with all of that ideology. But what I think stayed with me was this truth that God is in nature and we are part of that. And so I always have been that sort of like woo woo, I don't know, just like a sensitive soul who like loves nature and animals
and the ocean and the stars and stuff. And the older I got, the more I probably struggled to figure out who I am, why I am the way I am, And just by chance, I think I bumped into a book on astrology in like borders a million years ago and started learning about what that might be.
Right.
Of course, I knew my horoscope from reading like fashion magazines as a young girl, but I didn't know anything more about it from the horoscope, so kind of like tiptoeing towards it, tiptoeing around it. I really got into it when I first got to college and you know, started to really want to know myself and know how
to understand other people. And I found that astrology gave us such a fascinating language and an accurate one for describing the people in my life and myself so I think that I always approached astrology as yes, this mystical system, but also you know, before I knew about the deep mysticism of it, it seemed like a really great way to just have extra language to describe your experience, which I think we can always use more of as humans in this world. So, you know, that was kind of
like the opening of the door. And then regarding you know, occult stuff that's harder to pinpoint. I think there's a lot of subtle occultism in Italian culture and Italian Catholic culture specifically. That was like kind of the like, both both sides of my family are very rich in traditions, but you know, there's something about the Italian stuff that was just kind of like witchy and present, and so
I was super curious about that. And you know, I don't know, one thing led to another and before you know it, you're practicing which in your bedroom in Brooklyn and doing spells. So I think that being led though by ancestral tradition is something like that was my doorway into practice, not really reaching for things like too outside of my culture, but really using it as a way to get connected with my family and ancestral stories and things like that that I think we're lost. So that's
an answer that I can give there. Yeah, thank you.
I got to hop In so I got to know you said Italian. Have you looked into the lost Italian art of augury being able to divide symbols from the birds?
Yeah? Yes. The most recent thinking I've done about augury is I recently reread the Odyssey and there's so much bird omen stuff in that book and I was really I was fascinated about that. I wrote a piece about it. I thought it was really interesting. But yeah, that's one of the oldest forms of divination, at least in the Greco Roman tradition, specifically Roman. Actually right, it's totally fascinating. So yeah, what's your augury relationship?
Well, I just see how it was integral to the processing and creating of the Greek Roban religion, especially in Rome.
They had the College of Augurs, and that was sixteen of these augurs who were skilled and you know, all the forms of divination that you've mentioned with astrology and all these other things, but specifically they would you know, divine the auspices before battles and things like this, and they would do that by putting out a grid pattern and watching the birds and how they moved across these things.
And to me, it brings up the images of murmuration, right, So as these birds are murmurating through the sky, you get different images and different associations through it, and they would be looking at it on a grid pattern and seeing, you know, the easterlye westerly movements of these different birds and how these you know, associate with these other things. And this is how they would then draw from the
College of Augers into the ponte Vex Maximus. So this College of Augers was basically the lower level to the higher level traditions.
Yeah, it's so cool. It's so interesting and like I think, you know, now, even if you're driving on the highway and it's a drive where you're like thinking about something heavy or thinking about something deep, and then all of a sudden, like a giant redtail hawk flies in front of you, it always feels like a sign or a symbol. And I take that stuff seriously, so, you know, I think it's just like innate thing that we do as people. But I love that the Romans codified it. It's so it's so interesting.
Right, and each one of these different birds have their associations with the gods, so you know, the red tailed hawk being associated with Apollo or Horus and these other symbols that it's almost like Pan Mediterranean how they they sort of syncretize these things. So not only were you seeing a bird, but you were seeing the representation of the god on earth.
You know, absolutely, Yeah, I love that.
Yes, that sounds really interesting. I don't look into that one. Yeah, I've only I've heard of it here and there. I think I've heard Headla's mention it before.
Yeah, we've got a guy in the chat who's talking about the lamb livers of the sheep livers too, because that was also another thing.
Yeah, heriustracy and they would divine using the actual intrails of these animals.
Yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, there's even like all you could find old maps kind of like a divination map of the liver carved into stone or pressed onto metal plates from you know, thousands and thousands of years ago that are really fascinating to look at because, yeah, depending on the condition of the liver and spots on it or colors or the shape of it or the texture omens would be good or would be bad. So yeah, yeah, I'm glad we don't have to do animal sacrifice to divine anymore.
Though it makes me say, right, but it brings up sort of like we have symbols like that, and are you know common divination now with little caterpillars? How how long that band is, whether or not you're going to have a good summer or good winter and things like that. I mean, there's some of this stuff that has actually survived in sort of the folk tradition today.
Absolutely, yeah, yeah, right, there's so many, yeah, yeah, so many traditions because it's something that humans automatically do.
We're always automatically looking for signs. And it's not because we're nutty or irrational, but because it's just part of the human condition to want to connect I think, with nature in that way. So yeah, I think that that's something that's really important to preserve, and that's what I try to do in my work.
Nice. One thing I did want to ask you too, You have a strong academic and mythic side to your work. How did your background in Western intellectual traditions shape the way you approached divination if it did.
Yeah, grad school was a really good way to I'm not going to say by time, but it was a good way to fill up my intellectual reserves. And I think that, you know, I've always loved school. I really loved college in like a genuine way. It was really sad that it was over from an academic perspective, which was like, really, I was sad that I was going to lose library access after I graduated undergrad. That's sad.
And so I think that when I was doing my master's at the Cunigrad Center here in New York, that program was a very open ended one, and so I wound up naturally just kind of cobbling together a curriculum for myself that kind of like what Marianne was talking about last time. She really focused on like archetypal exploration YOUNGI and ideas medieval texts, and I was able to do so much good reading of like classical Greek drama, and it really really inspired me because it was an
immersion into that world. And in Greek drama there's so much replication of ritual and so much replication of like these archetypal things like grief and mourning or you know, the kind of psychic entanglements of mother daughter relationships, Like every aspect of learning about classical literature gave me something to think about and to integrate into my occult practice. Is weirdly enough, and so that was so super enriching
and it really did help me. It kind of what I really wound up focusing on in that program was I was really it became very obsessed with ancient Greek funerary traditions and specifically like the female led lament, because I was experiencing some grief and loss in my family at that time and was really struck by how there was like no place for it in normal workaday world. A lot of sad shit was happening, and I was just like going to work and going to school and
it felt really awful. And so I became obsessed with like what the power of ritualizing death could do. And I think that that led me into a whole world of ritual around the soul and ghosts for lack of you know whatever a more academic term. So yeah, that was a very I'm very grateful that I had that time that was very special.
Well, jug the Goat posted just at the perfect time. He was talking about his connection with cardinals and deer, and when he sees cardinals and deer, they're always together, and that sort of shows him that his loved ones are looking in on him from the after language.
It's beautiful.
It's a very beautiful thing. And I think a lot of people don't understand the connection between, you know, the soul and these different animals. You know, it seemed to be a lot more stated, you know, if you think about the what are they called the Esop's fables, right, they would ascribe certain personality types to these animals to teach you a lesson, but also you could see those type of personality types in the people, so they almost had a certain type of animals soul to them.
Yeah, I see this comment that cardinals comes up for a lost love one. I hear that all the time. And my own mom attributes her mom's spirit to the cardinal that lives in her backyard. And it's interesting that we make these associations without like discussing it with other people, and you know, just like across time. It's it's really fascinating, and I think that, you know, animals are like soul creatures.
You know. I have two cats and I feel like they're extensions of soul in my house all of the time. And if I'm not mistaken, I think that Yung said that when we dream about animals, it's like we're dreaming about that sort of wild, untamed version of soul that we carry with us, and so it's important to have a relationship with them. And yeah, yes, totally agree that we need, you know, more more awareness of that.
Absolutely. I think that's That's one of the things about divina that people don't realize is that it's more connecting than it is a separation, you know. I think a lot of people feel like you're separating from the body or separating from nature when you're doing divinatory practices, but it's actually the opposite. You're you're bringing more in than you are, you know, expelling out and going on spirit
journeys and these other things. But you know, it brings up scrying, right, So I think some of the most ancient forms of scrying have to do with water. And what are your thoughts about water scrying.
I love water scrying. I think that scrying is so is so interesting because it seems so intimidating, but it's actually, again one of these these tools where your mind like naturally seeks connection and seeks symbols. So for anyone who's listening and they're like, what are they talking about, scrying is the art of looking into a surface. So it can be a bowl of water. It can also be
a black mirror. It can be a crystal ball. That's like the typical you know, you see like a fortune teller in a movie and they're like looking at their crystal while they're scrying. You can also scry in fire, and I actually sometimes prefer to do that with a candle.
But you know, thinking about the kind of universal access or the universal presence i should say, of water all through human experience, it's really interesting that we took like this very very essential resource and said this has the secret, this has an image. For me, this is hiding information, but I'm going to divine it and make it, you know,
come out and reveal itself. And so, yeah, scrying is fascinating because, and this is true for a lot of divination, you're doing it with tools that are totally ordinary, like this glass of water here, it's holding information probably, you know. And so I think that a lot of divination early forms, especially we're done with water, fire, bones, shells, sticks, herbs. Right, And that's again saying like this is a nature based practice.
I think at bottom, right, there's something to this sort of universal elementalism that comes along with scrying. You know, bones having to do with Saturn, and you know, the water having to do with all of these different water nymphs and spirits. And it's using your eyes and your senses to sort of see past just what's in front of you. It's something something is there without being you know fully in the moment, something eternal.
Totally.
I wanted to ask, you're getting into the divination stuff now, basically talking about the book, what made you want to write Divination for Dummies specifically and wine? Now?
So it was it was offered to me by someone's agent, like they needed they I think that, And I say that not to say I didn't want to write it, but it just kind of appeared to me, which was cool. So that was very lucky and I'm grateful for that opportunity. The reason why I thought I could do it though, was that I am just a collector of divinatory tools, you know, I've always been super curious about knowing all of these different methods. So I'm not an expert in
everything that I wrote about in the book. I would consider myself most expert in astrology in Taro, but you know, there are I've spent a lot of time experimenting on my own with these tools. So when someone you know, propositioned me about it, I was like, oh, yeah, I could do that. That sounds fun, you know, so a little daunting. Once I got into it, I was like,
oh shit, there's a lot. There's a lot here because I felt strongly about giving an historical perspective for a lot of these tools in addition to the like the practical how to aspect of it, because I think that that's important, so that we're creating connection the lineages of these tools rather than just being like, oh, I'm going to throw runes now. I have no idea what any
of this comes from. Like, I'm very against that, but yeah, I thought that I could do it because I'm a little crazy and I have a lot of mercury, strong mercury energy in my chart. That's what I'll say.
Thank you, hell Is, did you have anything?
Yeah. I think a lot of people are intimidated by the crystal ball and they're not sure what they're looking for, and they're kind of unsure what kind of signs and symbols they're supposed to be looking for in the scrying process. Is there a way you could help them out on that journey and sort of connect with what they're seeing.
Yeah, for sure. So I would recommend number one, making sure that you are in a very chill, receptive state before you start any divination practice. Right, some of the worst divination experiences come when we're anxious or when we're really looking for answers and we are trying to control outcomes, right, So number one, we have to kind of get grounded and however you like to do that, that's the best way to do it. And I talk about this in the book a lot of just like the importance of
setting the tone for your space. So number one, calm down. Number two, I would say that the symbols and signs that are shown to us in something like a crystal ball or a black mirror or a cup of water are almost always going to be the language of the unconscious. So it's not going to it's it's oftentimes super kind of essential symbolic information that we're seeing. You see the
shape of a letter. You see something that looks like a sword, you see something looks like a rabbit, and I want you to not overthink what you see there, but take it seriously because when we start saying that what I don't understand what does the sword have to do with this question? That's the symbol that's been presented to you, and it's meant for you to take into
your heart and into consideration. I think the other thing about scrying and all forms of divination is that you're not going to get like the lights turned on right away. I mean, sometimes that happens, but very much more often you're going to be in a place of needing to commune with that symbol and integrate it into your experience before it really kind of feels empowering, right, So, I think there can be just a lot of anxiety around
doing it the right way. Trust what you see. I think that that's important to do.
Absolutely. Yeah. I think recording first and then interpreting later, because that's absolutely you're always getting caught up on the what you're seeing and trying to figure it out. But even at the Oracle of Delphi, like it was the oracle's job to just put all the information out there and then it would be interpreted later, and a lot of people get hung up on the simultaneous process of recording and interpreting, which is you know, distracting.
Very Yeah, that's why the oracle had the profides the priests there to take down the you know, the prophecies for her. Yeah, it is a kind of dual like, it's a dual nature thing. We're doing something highly irrational and then trying to make it sensible to ourselves so that we can actually like answer the question that we post to whatever our tool is, you know. So, yeah, it's an exercise like anything else. We have to kind of build the muscle for sure.
You know when you think of people like I guess, taking down, noting what the other person's experiencing whatever, you do get a lot of that with I mean technically that was even Alista Crowley's experience. You know, he dictated to Rose. You see a lot of things that are actually done that way. That's just very interesting to look at. I don't know, dynamic, h yeah, you see, uh see
some interesting stuff come to be from the uh. One thing I did want to ask you do have a lot of methods in this book, you have like taaro astrology, numerology, palmistry, rooms, pendulum work, tea leaves, bone throwing, scrying, dream interpretation. How did you decide actually, like which ones were going to be included?
Again like, yeah, I thought to myself, what are like the classics? What are the classic ones that people jump into first? You know, so you'll notice, like I don't have geomancy in there. I have like at I have like a couple of pages on guomancy, but I'm not teaching people geomancy. But what do people want to know?
They want to know how to read their palm, they want to know how to read their tea leaves, like these kinds of you know, these they felt very accessible to me, the methods that I incorporated here, and I want to people to feel like they had a good basis and understanding what I think are the most accepted sort of standardized methods of divination out there. And you can go off and learn geomancy on your own from
someone else. But I wanted people to feel like, Okay, when you think about divination, you think about you know, telling someone's someone's fortune if you don't know anything about it, that's how it seems to a person, what does that look like? What does that look like to you? So that's how I put it together. And there are someone there that are way more technical, like I have a chapter on the eaching, and that's a world into itself
that was impossible to capture. But I thought that that's it is such a like, it is such an elegant and powerful divination tool that I absolutely think that anyone who's interested in divination should have a relationship with it. So I included that one that's a little bit you know, trickier, you know, So, yeah, it kind of I wanted to give a good breath of tools. The other thing is I wanted a lot of different tools because some tools speak to us and some don't. Some people have no
patience for astrology, and that's completely fine. Some people think numerology is bogus. That's completely fine, you know. So I wanted people to feel like they could pick this book up and get some.
Use out of it, like I would be interested in numerology and not Tea Leaves, So I get it.
Yeah, exactly.
I think it really comes down to how you connect with the tools that you're using to do the divination that's that seems to be one of the things if you if you don't feel a connection to it, forcing it's not going to help. So I think having the ability to go back and reassess is that the most important part of any divination is because if you're not connecting with it, it's it's a good, you know, opportunity to
move on. There's a lot out there. I think geomancy, for instance, that's almost like the Western form of each right, so you can do it flipping a coin, her looking at holes in the dirt, but you know, it's in that same sort of style of eaching binary whatever. So it's you know, divination can be as easy as flipping a coin. And a lot of people are, you know,
superstitious about a lot of these things. But our whole world is sort of translated into binary and if you can connect with that, you're good.
You know.
That was one thing that I thought. I think it was the way you said it last time when you were on the show, when you kind of plug the book. You had mentioned a couple of how many you just rambled off a few of them, and I was like, oh, wow, that's pretty interesting that she included all those and then I asked you to come on and I looked up the book Born I was like, damn, she's got a
lot in here, and I do think. I mean, that's another reason why I really wanted to get you owned, just because my opinion, just from somebody who's been in this myself for for a few years, you do kind of cover the basics in the classics. So I was very impressed that you actually did that much.
So good, thank you, Thank you. Yeah. I think we have to have integrity in our work, and if someone asks me to write a book on divination, I'm definitely going to try my best to make it so that it's a thorough exploration of the art and let people have as many ways of accessing it as possible so that they don't turn away from it. Like I think that these are very useful helpful tools, kind of like what I was saying about astrology. It gives us more
ways to understand ourselves. We have a lot of problems in this world, and I don't think that divinations the cure, but I do think that having a spiritual or magical practice is going to connect you to yourself and it's going to remind you that you have a soul and that's an important thing to remember these days. So yeah, I appreciate you saying that that it does cover the classics, and yeah, I hope other people find us there too.
Of course, no real quick too, and then hell, let's read it anything. Out of all the systems in the book, are there may be one or two that you would think are especially misunderstood that's so like demonized, like.
I think they're all But okay, So I do think that scrying, like the crystal ball thing, is such a stereotype, like of like kind of right, yeah, exactly exactly, So I think that that's one answer. And then I also do think that I do think that astrology is really misunderstood. And maybe that's my answer because that's my main discipline. But you know, when people don't understand astrology, they really
don't understand, they really misunderstand it. They really think that it is or that or they think that if you're into it, you're like crazy or you're you're absurd, because what do you mean, you know? The planets and the day that you were born has anything to do with the rest of your life. It has everything to do with it, obviously, but it's such a large claim that I think that it's hard for non believers to parse.
So I think that, you know, maybe I've had the most conversations with people about astrology and that's why it's the top of mind, But I do think that that is an unfairly judged art form and taro too, you know, because people are like, oh, you're just pulling a card. You can make anything up that you want. Sure, true, you can. But if you're going to a practitioner that you trust, they're informed, they're in touch, and they're reading a symbolic language to you, So no, yeah, thank you.
I find a lot of people don't connect the idea of astrology with the idea of the soul, even though your son sign is what gives you that sort of basic symbol that you're sort of having to deal with for the rest of your life, and that sign is called the soul, right, that's the Latin word for it. So it's like there's an impression that's left that carries through to the other aspects of your life, and that
insouling process is coming to understand yourself. It goes back to the Delphic maximum number one know thyself these are different aspects that you might not be fully aware of that give you the tools that you can deal with some of the things that normally come up associated with these signs. I think a lot of people don't realize that this kind of stuff goes back forty thousand years.
So as they're observing all of these signs and symbols having to do with these different parts of the year and the different elemental qualities of them, what they're doing is they're actually tapping into ancient ancestral knowledge that's been passed down and examined and re examined over and over again throughout time.
Yeah.
Absolutely, and that's something that I teach in my classes. I want people to understand that we're not just doing superficial bubble gum astrology of like oh, passion, I find my next partner, or like what should my job be? Like, Yeah, those are important questions. I get it, and you know, I've wondered that myself a lot in my life. But we have to remember that this is like a tool that does help us find the soul in a really
powerful way. And so that's why I really like to bring myth and mythic story into my chart interpretation practice. I find that very very helpful for people, especially when working with asteroids, which is kind of like another valance of astrological inquiry. But you know, it's it's just there. It's no accident that the planets are named after Olympian gods.
Constellations too, are named after these mythic characters. We need to bring that back into astrological practice in a meaningful way, and that's how people find their own story in their chart a lot of the time. So I feel very strongly about.
That absolutely, And that asteroid bit is so important because it goes back to the Catholic Church. Again, the Catholic Church are the ones who named all of the asteroids. We did a great show with the Astrologer where we were talking about how, hey, they're still doing the magic that they say is banned for everybody else, only they're associating it with these asteroids that they track from their
Lucifer telescope. It's like, what's going on here, guys? I mean, so they're kind of keeping it in house and we're just sort of looking in from the outside. But there's a lot of really it's like another tumbler, right, So you've got the zodiac signs, that would be a tumblr. You've got the planets, that's a tumbler, and then the asteroids are like another tumbler. So you get a full message when you incorporate all of these different aspects.
Absolutely. Yeah. I offer a style of reading where I ask people before they book with me to tell me which stories or fairy tales or meths resonate most of them, or characters would archetypal forms, whatever, and they'll give me a list of things, and then I will go. Because there are thousands and thousands of asteroids, We're not going to put all the asteroids in a person's chart to begin with, but I will pick out asteroids that I believe are either resonant or are like a one to
one correlation. Someone's like, oh, I'm you know, obsessed with like Persephone, like so many people are. I'll put the Persephone asteroids in the chart. It always lands in a significant place for this person, and it is It's like backwards divination. It feels so cool because then I get to come to my sessions and I'm like, you'll never
guess what I found. You have this cosmic, faded connection to this character and then we get to explore how the relationship between the asteroid and that planet, you know, what they mean for one another, and how you can understand that planet in your chart through the lens of
that story. And so you know, Yeah, the astrologer Dimitro George, who is like one of my kind of guiding lights, says that asteroids are the dimon and we can see diamon in these asteroids connected to the planets, and so it's like a version of that guiding spirit for whatever planet it's connected to. And it's such a fascinating idea. It gets it just yeah, goes goes crazy. But yeah, I'll stop rambling about asteroids now.
No. I think it's really important because people don't realize this stuff. Like Edgar Casey, for example, his asteroid that he was born under was a Scluppy as the healer healed people while he was asleep, you know, and the sleeping profit angle is what they call the guy, and you know, it's there's so many different correlations and people are just completely unaware that there's a whole different avenue
of astrology that is being used. The astrologer we had on was a forensic astrologer, so she was actually using this data to try to figure out how people died. You know, because you got all the data right there, why don't you apply that to solving crimes? So really interesting.
Yeah, I'll share like one asteroid story. I you know, months ago, we were trying to figure out what to name our baby. And that's the biggest deal ever, right because names are spells, and I was like, how do I name a person? What do I do? And it took a really long time to figure it out, and we finally landed on a name, and we chose the name Gabriel for many reasons, and just out of curiosity.
I had never looked this up before, but I was like, I bet there's a Gabriel asteroid because he's an archangel. And I was like, there's got to be a Gabriel asteroid. I put it into my chart. It is perfectly conjunct my son. That was that blew me away, same degree, almost the same minute. I was in tears. And then I plugged it into my husband's chart to see where Gabriel is in his chart, and it was also conjunct
his son. But we're born five years apart. He's a scorpio I'm a virgo, like, we don't have that placement in common at all. And so for our kid to have the asteroid for his name conjunct our sons, which is, like you said, soul or essence, it was crazy. It was crazy. So that was really fun and yeah, well that's wild.
There is something about that nominative determinism where what you're named ends up producing something that you do in life, and a lot of people just completely overlook that when it comes to well, what does you know, what does a smith do? What is all this other stuff? And it's something that you're burdened with in some cases and in
other ways that you're you know, empowered by. So I think naming is very important when it comes to astrology, when it comes to divination, the naming process is part of the magical process. And this is what in spelling stuff is you know.
Yeah, yeah, So what are some of your favorite ones that you put in the book.
My favorites are going to be obviously astrology, Taro. I care deeply about eachang is. We were already talking about other favorite ones. I have bibliomancy in there, I have dream work in there. Hang on, I'm gonna look at my table of contents because I wrote this a while ago. Yeah, I love the bibliomancy Dreams and Scrying chapter. I think that bibliomancy is a really overlooked, very very accessible form of divination for people. And I also really love divining
with pendulums. I think that that's another simple but very very revealing tool that people can can make use of. So you know those are are my top handful. Yeah, yeah, thank you.
And Kats love pendulum scruying too, so much though that I can't find my pendulum anymore.
Beans, Beans got you. That's funny. That's a funny character. You can't have you ever had an experience in your own practice that genuinely surprised you or changed your understanding of divination.
I think that I have accidentally channeled. This is going to sound crazy, but I feel like I've I always I invite in the energy that wants to reveal itself, and so sometimes, especially when reading for people astrologically, like a loved one will come in and that always surprises me.
And that doesn't happen super often, but the times that it has, it's been like very very strange and very powerful and very affirming of like this practice is not just real but also like important again for that connective
ancestral piece of the puzzle, you know. I do find that when I read people's charts and or pull cards for them, when you hit on something without knowing this person at all and just having data in front of you in the form of a chart or just asking them a question, it's really really exciting, even if the story that they're sharing with you is a heavy one.
I always get excited that I get to say, like, this is we're affirming this experience because this is shown in the chart or shown in the card that's coming up, you know, So I think that, yeah, on a more grounded level, when we get those hits, which happens often because astrology is so good at pinpointing people's experiences, that's amazing.
And then you know the surprise element of like a message coming through that's not of the chart, but the chart can be kind of an energetic conto it for That's that's the most surprising thing that happens.
Have you ever gotten like somebody's chart and looked at it and be like, oh, wow, this is already good, Like it looked interesting already, Like oh this might be a good one.
Yeah, oh yeah, oh for sure, I mean yes, yeah. But you know it's funny too because you can look at it chart and it can look really really boring, and the person that shows up can be bonkers. Like it can look like, oh, what's this all looks fine?
Uh?
You know I've read for people, for example, who have like, in astrology, we have this this doctrine of like rulership and astrological tradition says that in order for a planet to be functioning at its best, it should be in its sign of domicile or exaltation, meaning like aligned with the sign that it's assigned to basically, and like with that philosophy, the best charts are the ones where people
have planets in their home sign. For me, I find that people who have like every single like of their you know, personal planets in their sign of domicile, they can have them like a big struggle. And I don't really know why. I don't know what that's about, but you know, so I think that looks can be deceiving, But I can always tell when a chart does look like it's a little bit of like a lightning bul for a person to live with for sure, but you
can also be tricked by a really calm looking chart. Yeah, if I see uranus on the ascendant or descendant, I know that I'm going to have a wacky conversation with someone and it's gonna be great.
That's funny. I gotta look at mine now. Oh jeez.
Yeah, Wait, what are your guys signs?
How many areas? Nice?
Nice? Wow? So you guys are polar opposites on the spectrum. Yeah cool, it.
Seems to be the only people I get along with.
That's cool. Well, that's good to reach for the other that's what you're supposed to do as a libras.
So you know, nice dadlas, Did you have anything you wanted to ask?
Well, there's there's a lot more to that water divination than people even know. Like right now, Uh, there's a woman named Beta Austin on Instagram that does this thing where she, uh you is these plates of water, these like Petri dishes. She asks the question, puts it in the freezer and then a glyph will emerge in the ice as it's freezing, and so she'll pull it out
and like you know, take pictures of it. And sometimes these things are just strikingly similar to the objects or the questions that she's asking, Like she's got pictures all of our instagram of this, so it almost seems like there's a memory to the water. And if we're made of ninety percent water, you know by volume, what's that mean about us? Like we're repositories of this early memory.
And I think in a lot of ways, the scrying and all the rest of these aspects are just sort of connecting with that water memory that is within us. And you know, also the planets are shaping the energies that are hitting that water. So it's it almost is the through line between all of it.
You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, ok ahead.
There was you know when you talk about that, you know, with the whole water thing, there's something that I covered. I forgot exactly which place it was. I covered a few different places on this show that's coming out soon with like places with the neuro architecture and like the somatics all that stuff, And there was one that it was severe enough to where they said that it would
definitely affect your bones and your skull. And then when you think about that, your brains surrounded by water, what's happening then if you getting vibrations smacking your skull had enough to affect that, just wonder what stuff's going on, you know, the side of a person's body might. After someone finishes Divination for Dummies, what do you hope changes in the way they see symbols ritual in their own inner life.
I hope they feel like they have access to it and like they have renewed confidence and the fact that they get to build relationship with it going forward. So I think that one one of the most important parts of the book to me. It's you know, yes, like I have these kind of core chapters on different divination techniques that a person can learn, but I also spend a lot of time in the book talking about how to bring divination into your creative practice. I think that
divination and art are really important to hold together. I talk a lot about personal ritual and how to facilitate good ritual hygiene, good energetic hygiene for yourself, you know.
So I think that this book differs maybe from other handbooks in that you're getting the how to guide, but then I kind of wanted to create like a scaffolding for people around it, so you're not just picking up a book on how to read a poem and walking away from it, but you have like tools and steps and like, you know, suggestions of how to incorporate it into your life. That's always what I like to do with my people that I read for. It's like, how do we get this off the screen or off the
page and make it embodied? And so I hope that that's what the book is going to be able to do for people. That was like a really important piece of the puzzle for me, right, that.
That spiritual hygiene aspect is so important. What are your practices in engaging in spiritual hygiene before and after divination? Because you know, clearing after is often more important than clearing before.
I really like the days that I don't clear after, I put myself up for the rest of the day, I will say, because sometimes we're in a rush and that's what happens. But before before I sit down, I like to call in my own guides, Right, I do a lot of kind of visualization of my space. I like to cast a dome over myself before I start reading for somebody to just create a create an energetic barrier, you know, I think that that is the most important
thing that I do. I also like to read accompanied by some talismanic objects that I think are grounding or guiding, And you know, I work with certain fixed stars and certain other deities and like to have that in the mix just to kind of keep everything aligned and protected. And you know, even for something as conversational maybe and social as an astrology reading can be right because you're making jokes, you're talking about your life, you're sharing about
your past. It can feel kind of normal, but we're actually doing work that's really magical, and we are reaching
into the energetic space between us. So I invite my clients to also like ground in with me, imagine that protective layer around them, and then afterwards for clearing, I do have like a mist that I like to use in my space to attribute it to a fixed star, and I like to really just do like a grounding check in with my body and just like imagine I'm peeling off that conversation because it sticks with you, you know, even if it's not a heavy one, I wind up
thinking about that person's story for the rest of the day probably regardless. But yeah, those so those are my attempts.
Right, that energetic hygiene is is what I think a lot of people miss in their everyday lives anyway. You know, it's it's like, if you're not clearing off that negative energy that people are carrying around with them, you're carrying it too. It's very contagious in a lot of ways. People know that, you know, I mean they could feel that from other people, but they just don't associate it. Well, maybe this is what you got to do to get rid of that energy so it's not stuck to you
all the time. And uh yeah, I think I think that's very important. You know, you don't want to live somebody else's life that they're carrying around with themselves.
Oh man, yeah, you know, I even remember, I mean, regardless of that's what your opinion of it was. Even during I remember going grocery shopping during COVID, it was like calling back home. I was like, I feel like I just came home with everybody's fucking anxiety and feel with them.
Totally.
Yeah, you walked into the place and you just felt it. I was like, oh fuck, I just want to get out of you.
It's it's so real. It's such a real thing. Yeah, So.
Would you mind if maybe I asked you, like, maybe like one or two certain types of divination that maybe we could talk about. Yeah. Yeah, as cheesy as it is, I am interested in you doing the bone to us and talking about that.
Okay, So I want to say something about that this and this is no shape to my publisher, But they had that in the description of the book, and I've told them a few times that that's not in the book because that's a close practice, Hi kitty, Okay, So that is a question mark for me. What I do do in the book is charm casting, Right, So I talk about bone throwing and you know, it's origin and stuff like that. But then I'm like, this is a
close practice we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about how to make your own set of charms and how to cast them. So that's an awkward answer, but that's the honest answer.
Hell's did you have one maybe you wanted to ask about?
Sure? Yeah. So one of the things that I like to do is or a viewing, right, and more viewing, especially when it comes to natural landscapes, can really give you a deeper insight into what's around you. Would you consider or viewing to be a form of divination? Oh?
Yeah, of course, absolutely, Yeah, anything where you're communing with you know, that kind of symbolic insight, especially from something natural and or supernatural, is definitely divination in my book. Right, So you're scanning the landscape and looking for what the quality of that environment is, and it's going to give you information about what you're surrounded by. I think that's a really cool idea and definitely a divinatory form.
Definitely helps with weather prediction, I'll tell you that much. You can cool to see a store store goverment from days off and things like that. So it's yeah, it's it's very physically grounding too when you're actually you know, taking that in. But you know, I think that kind
of goes into clouds as well. You've got the idea that clouds making shapes in the sky have a certain meaning or something like that, and I think a lot of people miss the idea that the clouds are taking in your energy as well as putting out energy of its own. So there's there's an interchange between the two.
Yeah, as above so below right, that's how it all.
Works exactly, especially with animals, you know, I mean they're picking up on your energy as well as you know, giving you their their energy as well. So all of these things are sort of part of living the divinatory life, you know. I think that's that's the key too, is like being in touch with your environment means having that divinatory connection.
Yeah, I think that. Yeah, yeah for sure. And that's why I love astrology as like a starter divinatory slash magical practice because it gives you a literal like language for understanding like venus means, you know, embodiment, values, pleasure of beauty, and then we look for the Venusian in
the world around us. I think that writing a book like Divination for Dummies was a funny task because I think that I was just It's like we're giving people lots of different ways to do the same thing, which is to commune with their intuition, their guides and the information that is kind of held in nature or in
the supernatural. And you don't have to have a codified form in order to do that, right, Like you can literally be just in relationship with archetypal forms and know when you see, like I'll see a cloud that looks jubytarian to me, can I describe what that means?
Now?
Maybe it looks very grand it looks very kingly, and I'm like, Okay, there's a jubiterarian energy in this part of my day and I'm going to enjoy that, you know. So like learning how to read your environment and read the world that way can be really I think empowering and just yeah, we're working with ancient primordial forms, as un calls it, the archetypes, right, so we all have
relationship with it, whether or not we realize it. And that's what I think divination reminds us of, regardless if you're doing tea leaves or palmistry or ruins, whatever it is.
Yeah, well, I think it's funny that you named it, you know, divination for dummies, because having a highly associated mind actually expands and creates better memory in the brain. So basically, if you're starting out Divination for Dummies, you're not going to finish the book as it It's gonna be that simple.
That's the hope, and no one's a dummy who picks it up. It's that's the book series title. And I think that it's so misleading because you know, no one wants to feel like they're a dummy, but it's signifying like this is the beginner's introduction invitation into this topic. Yeah, and hopefully you are very enlightened when you're done.
I like that one question I did have, and I just, uh, I think this is an interesting question. Actually, what does a mature differ diviner understand that a beginner usually doesn't mm hmm.
It's a great question, and I'm sure we all have an answer to it too, but I think, right, yeah, it's like a great, a great practitioner question. I think that the mature dive knows very well that even if you divine a message, or you read a symbol, or you see an astrological transit, that is not the end
of the relationship that you have. With that question. When you're a younger diviner and you pull a carot card, you pull the death card, you're asking a question about a relationship, you feel a sense of doom because you don't really yet understand what it means to be in relationship with that archetype or with that idea, and it can feel very limiting. And I think that's what scares
a lot of people off from divination too. It's like the interpretation is one of finality, and so when we are more mature in our practices, we know that the answer we receive is usually about our contemporary relationship or our current relationship with the answer to that question because we're always going to keep changing. And I think that that's really unsatisfying for people to hear, because I'll tell them that when you know, especially with astrological transits too,
and like this moment sucks, it will get better. Look at the sky literally clears in nine months, but nobody wants to wait nine months for things to get better for Saturn takeet off of their son or their ascendant, you know, so it can sting. But yeah, I think that that's what I would say. What would you guys say is the answer to that question?
I think you hit the nail on the head. That limiting factor is where superstition comes in, you know, and you know a lot of times divination gets equated with superstition because people think that it's limiting your life into this series of forums or whatever, but it really doesn't have to be. I think what I suggest everybody do is go listen to as they're getting into astrology, go listen to the orphic hymns, because the orphic hymns have a lot of the ideas in that we're talking about,
and then how to move past it. So all of these myths are not dead ends. They're continual stories, and that's that's something that you know is delimiting when it comes to divination.
I was thinking for myself, Uh, I think the best way to word it, Uh, there may be times in the past where I wanted to kind of like tell myself maybe I was correct, But I think if I'm honest and actually evaluate when I'm wrong, I will actually have a better understanding down the road. I just think a lot of people, just in my my opinion, I myself and others. Sometimes I think we mind fuck ourselves a little bit too much with this stuff at the
beginning and believe everything we're always right. May not always be that way, but I think, like for me, there's been times where I would see a pattern and then realize, oh, this is where I keep getting that one thing wrong. So now I know because I was honestly looking at my shit and not telling myself, oh yeah I was, you know, I fucking nailed that. No I didn't, you know, So I think maybe, uh, being wrong or screwing things up isn't always bad. You can learn from that, you know.
Yeah, I think that's also too why it's good to have other people read for you, because the pressure of reading for yourself can sometimes be a mind fuck, as you say, and like I barely pull cards for myself, and I kind of don't look at my own transits until something crazy is happening, and I'm just like, great here I am, you know, because I do think that we import our own biases a lot into our own
self divination. So having divination friends that you can trust, who can be objective, or just people that you admire and trust, teachers you know that are honest people is really really crucial to.
Great stuff. Was there anything else headless that you wanted to ask, talk about and bring up before we.
So we do a remote viewing show on Thursdays, and I was wondering, what would your advice be on how to get the most accurate remote viewing pictures.
I don't know, that's a cool question. I don't know. I'm not a remote viewer, but that sounds like an amazing, amazing activity.
It's a lot like divination. It's very very similar to so.
I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. I've just never experimented with it, So what tell me what happens.
Well, we just have pictures that we've taken and we put them into envelopes, or we put the information into envelopes. We shuffle them up to where we don't know which one is which, and then you know, we pull them.
We go through the concentration relaxation exercise, and then people write down their impression that they're getting, whether it's sensory or whatever, and then we go back over them at the end of the show and see how accurate those impressions are of the things that we've taken pictures of.
Cool. Wait, so I have done this. That's cool? Yeah you have?
Everybody has. Yeah.
I was like, I'm sure she's probably done something close to that.
Yes, yeah, So, I mean I've only done it once. And Jesus, I don't know how to answer this question, but like, really just feeling into that visual space here was what I was kind of working with. I do think there's a lot of like embodied information, but for me, it was like a very whatever visual experience to experiment with that. So this is not an articulate answer, but I hope that everyone sees the things that they're meant to see in their.
Practice, right, you know, if people are visual learners or auditory learners. What I try to do in the relaxation is to go through all the senses and see if you're getting any impressions from your different senses as you're concentrating on these different pictures.
Yeah, that's great, that's awesome.
Uh, well, I think did you have anything else that you wanted to ask Christina? Anything else you can say about the book?
Yeah? I think that you know about the book in general, I think that I really want people to feel like they can pick this up at any at any level, but it's especially beginner friendly, and so, you know, I don't know who if I feel like your audience are not necessarily beginner types, I feel like you have tuned in magical audience.
Maybe I'm wrong I think beginners now, but yeah, some of them I think are already like yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So you know, I think that what the book means to me as a practitioner is again kind of like giving us a basis to understand how we can live that divinatory life. Like Heedless was saying, it's like, you know, that is one of the most important things to me to teach people to do it. Doesn't matter what modality you're using, but knowing that this is an ancient tradition, this is something that people have
always done cross culturally. There is we were talking about, you know, Greco Roman stuff, but culture is the world over. It's a human instinct to divine from nature, from you know, the alphabet, from numbers, whatever, and so that is something that was kind of taken from us due to Enlightenment philosophy, which brought us a lot of good stuff, but also totally stripped the collective of access to this sort of ancient information, ancient wisdom. And a big part of my
project is kind of reminding people of that. I feel like I've probably done this for multiple lifetimes by accident, you know. So it's important for me for people to feel like they have as natural a pipeline to it as someone else. They perceive being like a magical practitioner, And it's really about fine tuning the art of noticing. Yes, there's some memorization, some symbolic alphabets to know, you know, but a great place to start would be this book.
And you are like the strongest tool. Your dreams are one of the strongest divinatory tools you know that you've got with you. So I think that that's my main takeaway is that I want people to feel really supported in whatever kind of reclamation they want to do with divination.
Write it all down, too, Write it all down, because when you wake up and you've got to go to the bathroom and you've just had a great dream, it's going to be gone by the time you're done. Yeah, write it all down.
Yeah, totally, Yeah. I have like in my you're good, Well, I.
Just wanted to ask, what's your favorite book to use for bibliomancy?
It depends on my question, and it depends on the mood. Sometimes if I'm feeling chaotic, I'll grab whatever book off my shelf because then I consider that part of the divination, right, And I don't category. I don't organize my books. They're like in a jumble on my shelf, so there's no rhyme or reason to what I'm pulling when I pull.
But I do think that supportive books for divination are always going to be books of poetry because they give us these compressed, crystallized images and lines that are easier to pluck from than like maybe a novel if we're just getting started, or you know, divination I mean sorry, bibliomancy was practiced a lot with the Bible for you know, thousands of years, and so that's like a classic. But that's not going to speak to everyone, and that's going
to carry its own sort of dogma with it. So we can be super intentional, I think, or you can be a little bit of a chaotic magician and pick whatever is lying around. But you know, the idea that whatever your eye lands on first is the answer is also kind of hard for some people because sometimes you land on something that seems totally unrelated to what your question is. But I urge you to keep that phrase with you and see how it emerges. Yeah, someone's commenting,
Red Book is great for bibliomancy. I'm sure. I'm sure that's true. A lot of profound stuff in that book.
Yeah, keep on here.
Yeah, yeah, But what if we don't have to reach for the most profound thing all the time, Like what if it's total what if it's like you're divining with like a Marx Brothers movie, you know, Like, I don't know, I think it can be anything. I'm serious, So.
I like that that's good all right, I think you have less unless you got anything else, I think we can wrap it up there. Thank you very much for coming on, Christina. That was fun, that was enjoyable.
Yeah, it was fun. Yeah good. I'm hoping it was a good listen and great conversation.
Yeah, head Liss. So why don't you let everybody know where they can find all your amazing stuff?
All right? Yeah, you can find me on x and also on Instagram and YouTube, so I check those out. And tomorrow we've got another remote viewing show coming up and I've got the pictures so ready to go. So they definitely checked that out. And if you wouldn't learn how to remote view, that's the place to do it because it's viewer participation as well.
So it's pretty fun. It's definitely fun. You've gotten some people get some real good ones too, So.
That's really tight, tight associations.
I'm telling you, Man, if I didn't fuck up that one and I would have like really literally put down what I had, I would have been spot on with Walmart. I was so pissed, Yeah, freak. I was like, oh man, I was like, yeah, I don't know. For some reason, I felt stupid like, yeah, I put Supermarket. I don't want to tell people to go to Walmart when everybody fucking goes there. Anyway, All right, Christina, anything else that you'd like to mention when you want to plug any
of your sites, remind the people of the book. Yeah, is the book? I'm so sorry to ask this. Is it out already or not? No to I didn't think it was. I didn't think Okay, don't worry.
No, it's all goods. It's up for pre order now, which is actually a really awesome time for people to buy it because it shows the publisher that people are interested in it. So it's always excellent to grab it in the pre order time period. And you can find it on really any major book retailer that you like to buy your books from. If you have an indie bookstore in your neighborhood, you can have it ordered there.
You don't have to order it from a big, mega conglomerate bookstore from the internet if you don't want to. And yeah, so it's coming out April twenty eighth, and I can't wait. I don't have copies of it yet. I can't wait to see it myself. I don't even I don't know, it feels, don't feel really yet. I'm just like, what's going on? So yeah, that comes at April twenty eighth Divination for Dummies. I'll be delighted if anyone snacks a copy. And you can find me on Instagram.
My handle is eighth House Astro. My website is Christinafarrella dot com and I'm also in substack as eighth House Astrology, so you can find me in those three main places.
Awesome, thank you so much. Yeah, as soon as we get off the show, I'll take a forgot to put the notes in from the list one, I'll put your links writing.
That's perfect, ye, perfect, yeah.
Because they are in the other one. Thank you very much for coming on again. I really appreciate it. Hopefully we'll have another conversation with you in the future about something else.
Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Of course, of course, and thank you everybody in the chat. That's what's up. I had a great time. I appreciate all the comments and any questions, and that's why we go live. And until the next one, everybody be well later.