Latest / Astrology Hub Podcast / What is Traditional Astrology: A Fresh Take on Fatalistic Astrology w/ Mychal A. Bryan

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What is Traditional Astrology: A Fresh Take on Fatalistic Astrology w/ Mychal A. Bryan · Astrology Hub Podcast

1:01
Welcome to the astrology hub podcast.
1:04
I'm Amanda Poole Walsh, founder of astrology hub and your host for our flagship show.
1:09
We explore the many ways astrology can support you and your relationships, career, health, and personal growth.
1:16
Thanks for tuning in.
1:20
Amanda: Hello everybody and welcome to the Astrology Hub Podcast Today we have a very special guest with us astrologer.
1:28
Amanda: Hi.
1:29
Amanda: Author, teacher, michael Bryan, he is an all around incredible human.
1:35
Amanda: I have had the joy of meeting him in person.
1:37
Amanda: He's just as warm and amazing in person as he comes across through the different podcast episodes that we've done together.
1:44
Amanda: Michael, we are so happy to have you back and really excited to be talking about.
1:50
Amanda: Your new book, which is Mastering Traditional Astrology, and so we're gonna dive into what inspired you to write this book?
1:58
Amanda: What is traditional astrology?
2:00
Amanda: I've said this several times on the podcast, but one of the first things that I realized when I started diving into astrology was, Oh my God, there's so many different types of astrology.
2:10
Amanda: I had no idea.
2:11
Amanda: So thank you for joining
2:12
Mychal: us.
2:13
Mychal: Thank you so much for having me here, Amanda.
2:15
Mychal: I have, I don't know if I ever told you this, but Astrology Hub has been, The, OR was the first place outside of my own school, RAOs, to give me a platform to do any sort of teaching or any sort of presenting and.
2:32
Mychal: One of the things that I regret was that last year when we were together in Denver, Colorado at the Es a conference, uhhuh, when I received that award on stage, I, first of all, I was like, so gong like shocked that I received it but in retrospect, I wanted to let it be known that Astrology Hub was the first platform outside of the school that I created for myself.
2:55
Mychal: To give me a space to speak and to give me a space to teach to your community.
3:01
Mychal: And I will never forget that.
3:03
Mychal: So you can ask me for anything.
3:05
Mychal: Amanda Pua Walsh, and it is yours.
3:07
Mychal: So
3:08
Amanda: Oh my God.
3:09
Amanda: I just took my breath away.
3:10
Amanda: Like literally wow.
3:12
Amanda: I, that's crazy to me.
3:13
Amanda: talk about finding a what is it, needle in haystack that in the rough whatever.
3:18
Amanda: It's, you're, that to me is just incredible and I'm so grateful and we can thank the team too, because I know that so many on the Astrology Hub team were like, Michael Bryan, we need him.
3:29
Amanda: He's amazing.
3:30
Amanda: So thank you for saying yes, and just thank you for sharing that.
3:32
Amanda: That's beautiful and amazing.
3:34
Amanda: What was the inspiration to write this particular book?
3:36
Amanda: Why'd you feel it was so important?
3:38
Mychal: That's a great question, Amanda.
3:40
Mychal: I think for me, I I am a thousand percent committed to quality teaching and I was speaking to someone earlier today and telling them that I grew up in a house where my mother, as a part of her, job growing up, she had to create curriculums for teachers.
3:56
Mychal: And my aunt was a teacher and my grandmother was a teacher.
3:59
Mychal: So I grew up in a very heavily education based environment.
4:03
Mychal: And so I've always known how to teach through osmosis, but also later on in life, I went and pursued training in how to teach and how to facilitate spaces.
4:14
Mychal: And so I realized that within astrology, we have many books.
4:18
Mychal: There are like thousands of books on the Amazon marketplace and just on the web, And all of them do something and serve a purpose, and I'm sure that a lot of them are great books, but I've never really come across an astrology book, especially not in the 21st century, that was committed to laying out from level zero what it means to become a professional astrologer of any persuasion, whether that's traditional or modern or whatever.
4:46
Mychal: And as we look 300 years ago, 400 years ago, 700 years ago, that's how astrology was taught.
4:52
Mychal: Astrology was first taught by giving its students a level zero training.
4:58
Mychal: And then from that Level Zero training, teaching them a specific branch of astrology, whether that's horror, astrology, natal, astrology, electional, astrology, whatever.
5:07
Mychal: And so I wanted to create.
5:09
Mychal: A Level Zero textbook.
5:11
Mychal: That was basic enough for somebody picking up a astrology book for the first time to feel as if they could find their path in it.
5:18
Mychal: But I also wanted it to be deep enough, which is why the subtitle, the book is called Mastering Traditional Astrology, adapt of Beginning in the Celestial Art.
5:28
Mychal: Because sure, it is a beginner's book, but it's also a depth of beginning, and it's laying a foundation of profundity for people so that they can realize that this, even though this is level zero, this lays the foundation for them to do even more extraordinary work within the context of their astrological practice.
5:45
Mychal: Amazing.
5:45
Amanda: And I'm sure you painstakingly chose the words as well And traditional astrology.
5:51
Amanda: So tell us why that's.
5:55
Mychal: Okay, so initially the book was gonna be called Foundations of Classical Astrology, but then I decided that nobody would ever buy a book as boring as that, what the name was.
6:05
Mychal: Boring as that.
6:05
Mychal: And like the cover of the book is it's stunning and it's stunning to see it like through a camera, but it's even more stunning to see in person.
6:12
Mychal: It's such a beautiful book, and I didn't want to.
6:14
Mychal: Labor it with such a boring name.
6:17
Mychal: So I was speaking to my Hebrew calligraphy teacher, Izzy Lewinski, who is this world famous Hebrew calligrapher based in Jerusalem, and he wrote the book called Mastering Hebrew Calligraphy.
6:31
Mychal: So I decided to take a page out of Izzy's book and I chose to name the book Mastering Traditional Astrology and Set, and I'm so happy with that name because.
6:40
Mychal: The whole concept of mastery is very germane to me.
6:43
Mychal: I am a stickler for doing things well and doing things extraordinarily, and I believe in mastery.
6:51
Mychal: I have a.
6:52
Mychal: Dance background.
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Mychal: I went to school in Cuba.
6:55
Mychal: I have a rigorous training in art, so I don't have any qualms around the notion of what it means to be a master of something because my teachers, in Cuba, we call them maestro, we call them, we don't just call them teacher, we call them maestro, which means master.
7:11
Mychal: So from an arts perspective, this notion that if you study something long enough, you'll become a master of it.
7:18
Mychal: Makes complete sense from a calligraphy perspective.
7:21
Mychal: This notion that if you do enough calligraphy, you eventually become a master of it.
7:25
Mychal: And I think that people tend to be less willing to really stand in a place of excellence in mastery when it comes to something like astrology.
7:34
Mychal: And then you hear this narrative of, oh, you could study for a million years and you'll never be a master of it.
7:39
Mychal: Which is true at a particular point in the same way as you could dance for a thousand years and never be a master of everything.
7:46
Mychal: Or you could do calligraphy for a thousand years and never be a master in an everlasting sense.
7:52
Mychal: But I do think that as far as astrology is a technical skill, technical skills can be mastered, and people who claim to be able to do those technical skills should be masters of those technical skills before they try to apply those skills for others.
8:07
Mychal: And that's why I named the book Mastering Traditional Astrology.
8:11
Amanda: Okay.
8:11
Amanda: And you've changed from classical astrology, traditional astrology, and you mentioned earlier modern astrology.
8:18
Amanda: You said, I've never yeah.
8:19
Amanda: I haven't read very many modern astrology books.
8:21
Amanda: So what are the differences between those?
8:24
Mychal: Great.
8:24
Mychal: I think that in general, the term traditional astrology as applied to the west in particular, and by west the astrology that comes to us through Europe, basically through the 17th century.
8:38
Mychal: I think that we tend to view everything from the 17th century and prior to the 17th century.
8:45
Mychal: As traditional astrology from a Western perspective, because there's also traditional Indian astrology.
8:51
Mychal: There's traditional Chinese astrology, there's traditional Mayan astrology.
8:55
Mychal: So traditional astrology probably isn't the best term in the world, but I think that today we are unanimously agreed on the fact that when we refer to traditional astrology, specifically within a western astrological space, such as astrology hub, we're referring to astrology, from the 17th century and prior to the 17th century.
9:16
Mychal: And so for me, that is traditional astrology and.
9:21
Mychal: And I think another part of that is that astrology, even though it's different, so everybody who contributed to that period is different.
9:28
Mychal: The Babylonians contributed something, the ancient Greece contributed something.
9:32
Mychal: The Romans contributed something.
9:34
Mychal: The Arabs contributed something.
9:36
Mychal: When it came back to Europe the Europeans contributed something.
9:39
Mychal: So it's very specific, based on the.
9:43
Mychal: Eras or the epoch of time we're analyzing.
9:46
Mychal: But the underlying current of traditional astrology, I think stays the same from ancient Hellenistic times all the way up to, I dare say, the end of the 18th century.
9:58
Mychal: There's this underlying understanding.
10:00
Mychal: Of using seven planets that we call the Calen Order, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, sun, Venus, mercury, and the Moon.
10:07
Mychal: Using those as the rulers of the signs of the Zodiac, knowing that the signs of the Zodiac have their own life.
10:14
Mychal: That's independent from the life of the planets, knowing that the planets of their own life that's independent from the life of the houses within the chart, but still knowing that all of these things, Are interwoven and interlinked.
10:26
Mychal: There's this fundamental thread that runs throughout all of those schools of astrology.
10:32
Mychal: And I think the other thing is that all of the astrology, up until the 17th century was concrete event-based astrology.
10:40
Mychal: Whereas as we turn into the 20th century, we start going into very psychological versions of astrology where.
10:47
Mychal: You could have a reading for an entire hour, and the person just talks to you about your personality, but you don't learn anything about your destiny in relationship to money or your destiny in relationship to family or children or marriage or career because a lot of modern astrology tends to be primarily focused.
11:04
Mychal: On speaking to people about their psychology, but traditional astrology has always been a bit more pragmatic, a lot more pragmatic, because yes, while we acknowledge that your psychology is important and who you are and your personality in the world is also important, we also acknowledge that there are concrete events that have occurred to you within the context of your life.
11:25
Mychal: That have molded your psychology so that you show up in the world in the way that you do.
11:30
Mychal: So within my practice, I tend to focus more on, yes, first identifying who the person is, who has the chart, but beyond that, talking about what are the financial.
11:40
Mychal: Familial, relational, vocational.
11:44
Mychal: What are all of the other things that have happened to you within this lifetime and that are continuing to happen to you within this lifetime that specifically make you who you are?
11:53
Mychal: And that, for me is more interesting than just talking about someone's personality for 90 minutes.
11:59
Amanda: Wow, that's, you just said so much right there.
12:02
Amanda: Go to that.
12:02
Amanda: Let's go a little bit deeper on that.
12:04
Amanda: So I would say also the perception can be that traditional astrology is a little like harder, meaning like it's a little, and it can be more deterministic, it can be more like, this is what's gonna happen versus the modern astrology where it can feel softer, and it can feel little bit more like we're in a co-creative experience.
12:31
Amanda: Yeah.
12:31
Amanda: With the universe.
12:32
Amanda: So where's your opinion on that idea of co-creation versus deterministic sort of perspective?
12:42
Mychal: This is a really great question, Amanda, and in my next book, which we're not gonna talk about in my next book, I deal with this topic to a very great deal because the person in the 20th century who's responsible largely for the shape of modern astrology, is Alan Leo.
13:01
Mychal: And so Alan Leo is was an English astrologer who was for whatever his reasons, Barry, Anti this notion of the fatalism of classical astrology.
13:16
Mychal: So he's the one who came up with the whole San Moon and rising model, and that's a model of astrology that everybody still talks about today and I have a lot of things to say about him, but I think that for me, within my personal orientation to life Destiny makes sense.
13:33
Mychal: I read The Alchemist once when I was a child, and I cried because it was this the story, the Alchemist.
13:39
Mychal: It is just this story about destiny and how we can move through life and think that we're doing our own thing, but we are often inextricably pulled towards a particular outcome based on a larger overriding destiny that exists within our lives.
13:55
Mychal: And this is something that people from indigenous cultures are deeply okay with the notion that we've come into this world and there's a specific destiny that I live that you can't live, and there's a specific destiny that you live that your daughter can't live, and that we all have this individual pearl seed of the unfolding of a life within us that is specific to us, and it sets the parameters of the possibilities that we can expect within our lifetime.
14:23
Mychal: And within indigenous cultures, people are far more okay with that.
14:26
Mychal: But in the West we have a big problem with it because in the West we have largely cut ourselves off from the universe.
14:35
Mychal: And the science that we practice has also largely cut itself off from the universe.
14:40
Mychal: So we have this sense of ourselves being somehow extracted from the universe and therefore not impacted by the universe in the same way as.
14:50
Mychal: The trees and the birds and the flowers are impacted by the universe.
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Mychal: In the winter, I can light a fire downstairs and I can warm my house, which gives me some sense of being separated from the larger blizzard going on around me, because as human beings, we've created this narrative of being in the world but not being influenced by the world.
15:12
Mychal: And it's a very egotistical narrative to think that.
15:15
Mychal: Everything else in the cosmos is affected by the cosmos directly, and everything else in the cosmos has its destiny laid out by the cosmos except for us.
15:25
Mychal: It's a bit of a stretch when we think about what astrology is meant to do.
15:30
Mychal: And astrology simply is meant to describe the impact or the intersection between time, destiny, and the cosmos.
15:40
Mychal: And it does that by describing how time imprints itself on all of us.
15:45
Mychal: And for the astrologer time isn't just like the time on your watch time is this thing that carries stories and it carries meanings and it carries outcomes and the roots of outcomes.
15:55
Mychal: And our birth chart is essentially, a means of speaking about how time is going to manifest within our lives and how we are going to manifest our story through time.
16:06
Mychal: And I feel myself like rambling on a really philosophical tangent, but I think the fundamental thing that I wanna say is that all astrology, as far as I'm concerned, is destiny based.
16:17
Mychal: And even though the mechanism.
16:20
Mychal: That governs how a modern astrologist says that versus how a traditional astrologer says that might be different.
16:26
Mychal: If you look at the chart of anyone and say that, oh, I think this person likes tofu, for example, you are assuming that there is something that already exists.
16:39
Mychal: Within that person's natal chart, that at some level is going to determine the outcome of that person's life, and that will give that person a particular liking towards tofu, even if you don't think that prediction is real, even if you don't believe in fatalistic astrology, the fact that you can pick up a chart and say, just by picking up a chart that this person is shy versus this person is outgoing without having had a conversation with that person yet.
17:05
Mychal: You are practicing fatalistic astrology.
17:07
Mychal: You're practicing deterministic astrology because that entire narrative assumes that chart says something about you before even your words can say something about you.
17:17
Mychal: So the line between these two approaches to astrology and fate and free will is a very fuzzy one.
17:25
Mychal: And for me, no line actually exists.
17:28
Mychal: And I have other thoughts about that, but I don't want to dive too deeply into that.
17:31
Mychal: But it's a, it.
17:33
Mychal: For me, it feels like a moot point because all astrology assumes that we can know something about a person just by picking up their chart, which essentially is what traditional astrology is also saying.
17:45
Amanda: Wow.
17:46
Amanda: A lot there and there's so many like rabbit holes that we could go down.
17:50
Amanda: I would like to go down one that is a little bit of a tangent off of what you just said.
17:55
Amanda: Yes.
17:55
Amanda: So I think that it comes from, The fear and then the question of is it just better not to know?
18:04
Amanda: So if everybody has a destiny and it's pretty much scripted, what is the benefit of knowing and what would you say to a client who says maybe it's better if, I don't know, like maybe it's better if I just discover on my own.
18:18
Amanda: What's the, why would I need to know in advance what is happening in my life?
18:25
Mychal: I think that there is an experience that people have when they come to an astrologer, and that experience is one of being seen, and the reason why I think people have that experience is because, It isn't that they're coming to an astrologer for the astrologer to tell them things they don't know.
18:53
Mychal: I've read, I've done astrology for thousands of people at this point in my life, and it's not that people come to me with the intention of me telling them something they don't know.
19:04
Mychal: Very often people come for confirmation of things that they already do know.
19:09
Mychal: And the type of astrology I practice.
19:12
Mychal: On the one hand, when I started to become known within the world, or within the online astrological community, I wanted to stake my claim by doing lined chart readings.
19:27
Mychal: And what a blind chart reading is that someone submits a chart.
19:30
Mychal: And I've done this at Astrology Hub before, actually I think it was Jessica who was moderating the call and someone submitted their chart in one of the inner circles, and then that lady wasn't present.
19:42
Mychal: But then later on she sent me an email to tell me how accurate it was, even though she wasn't there and she didn't say anything.
19:47
Mychal: And so what a blind chart reading is that someone submits their chart.
19:51
Mychal: And I read the chart without having any background information on the person at all, because when I was growing up with astrology and tarot, I just thought that's how it was done.
20:00
Mychal: And then I came to America and then realized that people have a long questionnaire that you have to fill out before you get a reading.
20:07
Mychal: To the point where I asked myself hell, what work are you doing as the astrologer if someone is already coming and disclosing all the details of their life?
20:16
Mychal: So anyway, the blind chart reading model has always been something that I've enjoyed, and I think what people get from that, on the one hand it's performative because you're demonstrating what is possible through astrology.
20:30
Mychal: But on the other hand, for people it, it gives them a deep sense of not being a mistake.
20:36
Mychal: Just moving around in the universe and it gives context to their life experiences because it becomes a matter of if you could know this about me without me even saying anything about myself to you, then it stands to reason that I'm not just some random mistake floating around in the universe, but I was an intentional decision that was made in the mind of God.
20:57
Mychal: And I think that component of destiny based astrology is a wonderful thing because it reassures people that every single thing that's occurred within their lives, in their joys and in their sorrows, they have been held.
21:11
Mychal: And those experiences have been orchestrated by hands larger than their own.
21:15
Mychal: And when you could really sink into that, You start to realize that everything that you've experienced, no matter how awful you might think those experiences have been, they've all contributed to you being this wise being that you are today.
21:31
Mychal: And it's a beautiful thing to know that everything that I've gone through has a place and has a purpose and has a role within my life.
21:39
Mychal: And at some level, my job in life is just to plug into that role as opposed to thinking that.
21:46
Mychal: I have to make it up as I go.
21:48
Mychal: It's a beautiful thing to be able to understand what my natal promise is so that I could know where to better exert my efforts so that I don't try to bark up a tree that isn't mine to bark up in the first place.
22:00
Mychal: And I think that in the West we tend to want to feel as if every tree is ours to bark up.
22:06
Mychal: We tend to want to feel as if.
22:09
Mychal: Every child can grow up and become a doctor and a lawyer, and an actor and an astronaut, and a world famous musician and a world fam.
22:17
Mychal: We tend to feel as if every possibility is available to us.
22:22
Mychal: And once again, I think that's a very egotistical feeling because not everybody is going to be Beethoven.
22:27
Mychal: Not everybody is going to be a world class chef.
22:30
Mychal: Not everybody is even gonna make a pancake.
22:31
Mychal: And I think that it's important for us to understand the.
22:36
Mychal: Rich parameters within which we are meant to live, so that we can spend more of our time focusing on expanding our territory within our specific sacred space that we call our life as opposed to doing things that will ultimately be a waste of time.
22:54
Mychal: And I think
22:54
Amanda: If we dug deeper into the people that actually do experience the most success and brilliance and mastery.
23:04
Amanda: In their chosen expression, they did just that.
23:09
Amanda: They found their thing that they do uniquely well, and they dedicated their lives to mastering that.
23:17
Amanda: So it actually feels way less overwhelming to me, thank God.
23:22
Amanda: I wanna have to try and do everything.
23:24
Amanda: I'm horrible at making pancakes.
23:25
Amanda: Like I don't wanna, it's actually really reassuring.
23:28
Amanda: And as a mother, I look at my children and I'm constantly like, okay, what is it that, that, that's theirs to do?
23:34
Amanda: What are they uniquely designed?
23:36
Amanda: What are they drawn to?
23:37
Amanda: What are they really good at?
23:39
Amanda: And so I think it.
23:40
Amanda: It really helps to focus and in a world of bazillion possibilities to really focus our efforts somewhere that we're gonna have the most quote unquote bang for buck anyways.
23:51
Amanda: Exactly.
23:52
Amanda: Yeah.
23:53
Amanda: Michael let's switch gears a little bit to go into some of the content of the book and what students will learn.
23:58
Amanda: First of all I'd love for you to speak to who is it for and who is it not for?
24:03
Amanda: Who is it?
24:04
Amanda: The person who's just not gonna, it don't even bother.
24:07
Amanda: It's not for you and the person who it's like this is gonna be real.
24:11
Amanda: This is gonna be your jam.
24:12
Amanda: You're gonna love this.
24:13
Mychal: Awesome.
24:13
Mychal: So I'll just read from the back of the book.
24:16
Mychal: It says, mastering traditional astrology takes you beyond the typical astrological cookbooks into the magical heart of astrology itself, created in the classroom for the classroom.
24:27
Mychal: This book is a powerful aid for new students and teachers of astrology alike.
24:33
Mychal: Within these pages, you'll find the distilled wisdom of six years worth of lectures given to hundreds of students making this a pragmatic and useful textbook for the astrological novice.
24:43
Mychal: Fundamentally, this book is written for beginners, and by beginners raw beginners who can tell the difference between the equator and the flying Meatball Beginners.
24:52
Mychal: Beginners is who this book is for, and one of the things that I enjoy in life, and I got this from.
24:58
Mychal: From my yoga teacher, I'm a certified Ingar yoga teacher, which a lot of people know about me, but a lot of people don't as well.
25:05
Mychal: And my teacher Dr.
25:06
Mychal: Lois Steinberg is one of the top two teachers in America, and I had the ability to study closely with her and to be her apprentice and her assistant for a very long time.
25:16
Mychal: And Lois always teaches the beginner's class.
25:24
Mychal: And it's called Iyengar Ignite, and she always teaches the Level Zero class and it's amazing because here is Lois Steinberg, one of the two top teachers of this system in this country, and here she is teaching a bunch of first year university students who were like 16 and 18.
25:47
Mychal: Beginner's yoga, and she's one of the best in the entire world.
25:52
Mychal: And that, for me was always a very humbling thing to witness.
25:56
Mychal: And I asked her about it once and I said, Lois, why?
25:59
Mychal: Why?
26:00
Mychal: Why?
26:00
Mychal: You are you.
26:01
Mychal: You are the lowest Steinberg.
26:03
Mychal: Everybody knows you.
26:04
Mychal: Why?
26:05
Mychal: And she said, because I always want to keep my finger on the pulse of what it means to train someone from zero.
26:16
Mychal: And I think that's such a profound thing because what tends to happen, especially in any technical field, is that we start to hear, oh, go to this person.
26:28
Mychal: Be if you want to study advanced whatever, or go to this person for your beginner's training.
26:34
Mychal: But the most advanced training oftentimes takes place in a beginner's class.
26:39
Mychal: The most critical training anybody will ever receive from Pedagogical perspective of how you create an outline of how somebody should learn.
26:49
Mychal: The most critical training will always be in the Level Zero textbook and in the Level Zero class.
26:54
Mychal: And people study with me who have been practicing astrology for 30 years and 40 years, and they have said to me, within my 40 years of astrological study, I've never felt.
27:03
Mychal: Confident to perform a confident act of astrology because I've read every astrology book that exists, but I've never read a book and I've never studied with someone who has been able to teach me and hold my hand and say, this is what to do.
27:17
Mychal: This is when to do it.
27:18
Mychal: This is what to do after that, and this is how to end.
27:22
Mychal: And as a result of people not having that, they haven't felt.
27:26
Mychal: Empowered essentially to practice astrology.
27:29
Mychal: So many people know so much about everything, but don't know how to practice astrology at all, and I wanted to be a part of creating a textbook that would change that.
27:41
Mychal: And I wanted to be a part of creating a textbook that allowed people to know that somebody cared about their Level Zero experience.
27:49
Mychal: Because Level Zero is where all the true training happens.
27:52
Mychal: Whatever you learn at Level One is based on what you learn in Level Zero.
27:56
Mychal: And if you level Zero is off, then everything else is gonna fall through the cracks.
28:00
Mychal: And so I'll say one more thing to this, because another part about this book is that.
28:05
Mychal: I wrote this book to be a, to be the textbook for my two year professional astrologer diploma program that I offer at my school, Occulous.
28:16
Mychal: And so this book covers the first two months of that two year program.
28:21
Mychal: So everything that I think an astrologer should know within the first two months of their astrological training.
28:28
Mychal: Is in this book, and the next book that I'm working on that's going to be published by November or end of October is going to cover the second two months.
28:37
Mychal: So between this book and the next book, we would've covered the entire first semester, and every book that I published from here on out is going to represent a semester's worth of information because I'm writing these books to be textbooks, to take someone all the way up to having a diploma in astrology.
28:56
Amanda: And would, could it replace the actual class that you're teaching, or is it like in conjunction with the classes?
29:04
Mychal: That's a very good question.
29:05
Mychal: So within Iyengar Yoga, our guru is b k Sengar, and he wrote a book called Light on Yoga.
29:13
Mychal: And Light on Yoga is largely considered to be the classical text, the Golden Standard.
29:19
Mychal: As far as books that outline.
29:22
Mychal: Yoga philosophy, but also yoga practice.
29:24
Mychal: The actual physical asana practice is concerned.
29:28
Mychal: It's a treasure of a book.
29:29
Mychal: And I wrote this book for this book to be the Light on Yoga for astrology.
29:34
Mychal: And one of the things Mr.
29:36
Mychal: Iyengar said is that a good book is better than a bad teacher.
29:41
Mychal: And I sincerely believe that to be true.
29:43
Mychal: And so I wrote this book for this to be an extraordinarily good book, and the reviews that I've been getting from it is, wow.
29:50
Mychal: Michael, you've anticipated our questions and when we read your words and we have a question, you answer the question in the next paragraph.
29:58
Mychal: And the reason for that is because this book was built in the classroom, so I know the source of questions raw, beginner students ask.
30:05
Mychal: I know the source of confusions beginner students have, and so I've crafted this book for people to be able to give themselves a self-education in a astrology by buying this book and by buying the series essentially.
30:17
Mychal: I would love if people felt inspired to study with me.
30:21
Mychal: I would.
30:21
Mychal: I would love to teach people, but I've also created this book knowing that.
30:26
Mychal: In the absence of someone being able to either afford a class with me or show up to the class with me, I've had students in Australia who haven't been able to come to live classes because of the massive time difference.
30:37
Mychal: In the absence of that, I've made this book to be me between 600 pages
30:43
Amanda: lucky us.
30:44
Amanda: Thank you so much for doing this.
30:47
Amanda: This is amazing.
30:48
Amanda: It sounds so brilliant, I know so many our, in our community already love you, Michael, but for new people to get to experience the brilliance of your mind and your approach and your perspective, and then to have that in a book, it really is, it's priceless.
31:03
Amanda: So I'd say that any of you who do still feel that God, I could use a little more foundation and or I, this man's brilliant and I would just love to be in his head for those 600 pages and to really just get his perspective on astrology because.
31:18
Amanda: Most people in our audience would agree at this point, that there is something that can be gleaned from the different approaches, from the different perspectives, you might have your one core teacher where you got most of what you know from, but you continue to learn.
31:34
Amanda: So no matter where you're on your journey, to me it seems like this book would still be.
31:40
Amanda: A treasure yes.
31:42
Mychal: Thank you so much for that, Amanda, one of the things that I did well, two of the things that I did that I'll share with you is that Hermeticism and Kabbala, as.
31:51
Mychal: Systems are very important for me, and also some of the ancient Greek mysticism that underpins astrology is very important for me.
32:00
Mychal: And I have a chapter in this book called the Herma Roots of the Pre Cosmos and it's meant to outline.
32:08
Mychal: Where astrology came from and then another thing that someone recently spoke to me about was about my treatment of the houses.
32:16
Mychal: Now we all know about the houses from a traditional perspective or a modern perspective, which really isn't that different.
32:22
Mychal: The second house is money, the 10 house is my career and all of that.
32:25
Mychal: But one of the things that I've revived within this book and I go through within all of the houses, Is the reason why the houses have their certain correspondences based on the planets that correspond with them.
32:38
Mychal: So for example, I said earlier that the Calen order of the planets is Saturn, Juta, Mars, sun, Venus, mercury, and the moon.
32:46
Mychal: But the ancients apply that to everything and they apply that to the 12 houses.
32:50
Mychal: So for example, The first house in traditional astrology represents the body because it corresponds with Saturn.
32:56
Mychal: And Saturn represents the physical gravity of being in the physical 3D reality of being in a physical body made of flesh that corresponds with Saturn in the Cal order.
33:07
Mychal: The first planet, the second planet in the Cal order.
33:10
Mychal: Jupiter, Saturn, Jupiter.
33:12
Mychal: That's why our second house.
33:14
Mychal: Corresponds with money.
33:15
Mychal: The reason why we think about the second house as a money house has nothing to do with Taurus.
33:19
Mychal: It has nothing to do with Venus.
33:21
Mychal: It has to do with Jupiter corresponding with the second house in the Aldean order, and therefore Jupiter representing money and wealth and abundance and expansion.
33:31
Mychal: It is a natural thing to come with the second house.
33:33
Mychal: The third house corresponds with Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars.
33:37
Mychal: Mars is a universal planet that represents our brothers, our sisters, our blood relationships, and that's why Mars is corresponding with the third house.
33:47
Mychal: Mars also corresponds with going on pilgrimages, which is why we consider the third house to be the house of short journeys.
33:55
Mychal: The fourth house corresponds with the father, and I'll only do the fourth house, but the fourth house corresponds with the father.
34:00
Mychal: In traditional astrology and in modern astrology, there's this notion of no, it corresponds with the mother because if you take cancer, and cancer is the fourth sign, therefore it has to be cancer.
34:10
Mychal: But that's not how our understanding of the house developed from a traditional perspective.
34:16
Mychal: Traditionally, signs were signs, houses were houses, planets were planets, and they all had their own life.
34:22
Mychal: So in the Aldan order, we have Saturn, Jupiter, Mar's son.
34:25
Mychal: The son is the fourth planet in the Aldan order, and the son corresponds with the fourth house.
34:30
Mychal: And that's why we consider the fourth house to be the house of the father because the son is the universal signator of the father Within our birth chart.
34:39
Mychal: And just in general, we consider the son to be the father of the universe and the moon to be the mother of the universe.
34:45
Mychal: And that's why the fourth house.
34:47
Mychal: Still within traditional astrology and still within my practice of just concrete event-based astrology corresponds with the father because that understanding of where the houses get their meanings from, it isn't just because I want to make astrology more simple.
35:05
Mychal: So I put the houses and the signs and the planets all on the same 12 letter astrological alphabet.
35:12
Mychal: And it works.
35:13
Mychal: I give readings.
35:14
Mychal: I'm still in client practice and it consistently works.
35:17
Mychal: And so my intention in sharing that in this book as well as sharing everything else within this book is to share things, not just that.
35:25
Mychal: Make me happy so I wrote this book specifically to help my students to, for them to gain skills that I know they will need when they move into professional practice.
35:36
Amanda: Thank you for creating, helping to create more amazing astrologers.
35:39
Amanda: It's, yeah, we feel that way so strongly at Astrology Hub, that, that a world with highly trained and skilled and compassionate and beautiful and wise human beings is a really good world.
35:53
Amanda: Yeah.
35:53
Amanda: And there, there's, there couldn't be too many of them, right?
35:57
Amanda: Yeah.
35:57
Amanda: And where do we buy this book?
36:01
Mychal: Amazon is, I know that many people have Amazon opinions, but Amazon has been the greatest.
36:10
Mychal: Help for me within my entire book publishing journey.
36:14
Mychal: I self-published the book through Amazon.
36:17
Mychal: I self-published the book in April.
36:21
Mychal: Actually, I think it went live in May or something.
36:23
Mychal: But anyway, I self-published the book and I'm so happy I did that and I did it through Amazon.
36:29
Mychal: So at the moment you can only buy it on Amazon.
36:32
Mychal: And I would highly encourage people to purchase the book on Amazon now if you can or if you like.
36:37
Mychal: And if you love the book, then please.
36:39
Mychal: Give it a five star review because when you self publish, there are some loopholes that you don't know about.
36:47
Mychal: And one of the loopholes is that the more positive reviews you have, the more Amazon boosts the book in its own algorithm.
36:54
Mychal: So I am definitely not a mom and pops.
36:58
Mychal: Shop, but I'm definitely a small business and I don't really have the means of marketing myself on Amazon in that sort of way.
37:06
Mychal: So as many good reviews as we can get definitely allows Amazon to boost it for us amongst their customers.
37:13
Amanda: Let's do it you guys.
37:15
Amanda: This is an opportunity to really support some of our brilliant astrologers in their lifelong dedication so I am, I'm highly encouraging you all to check out the book.
37:27
Amanda: And if you can take that extra step to give Michael a review, But yes.
37:33
Amanda: Amazing.
37:34
Amanda: Michael, you are such a.
37:36
Amanda: A bright light.
37:37
Amanda: I literally could talk to you forever, by the way.
37:39
Amanda: I, I've been writing questions down.
37:41
Amanda: I'm like, Can I ask you one question in closing?
37:44
Amanda: Just one question.
37:45
Amanda: I'm just dying to know your perspective on this.
37:47
Mychal: Ask me a question and then I have something to show you.
37:49
Mychal: Okay.
37:50
Amanda: My question is, do you believe that we choose to incarnate and that we choose our charts
37:59
Mychal: a thousand percent.
38:01
Mychal: Definitely I do.
38:03
Mychal: Life is so peculiar and when I look back on my own life, I see moments when.
38:11
Mychal: I really wish I could have done something different and I realize that every step I've made eving, when I look back at it, the wisdom that I've gained from those things, it really humbles me deeply because it makes me realize that.
38:26
Mychal: Who I am today would not be possible without everything that I've done and everything that's occurred to me within my life.
38:32
Mychal: And some of it has been very challenging, and some of it I wouldn't wish on anyone.
38:37
Mychal: I've had very challenging moments within my life, as I'm sure everyone has.
38:41
Mychal: But I think that at the end of the day when we are getting ready to give our last bow, when we look back at the breath and the scope of our lives, we realize that everything truly happened for a purpose.
38:56
Mychal: And we may not realize that we are the ones who chose that purpose, but we do realize that there's something that's been guiding all of our events and all of our experiences and that.
39:07
Mychal: It was worth it and that it was okay whether we've been conscious of that intention or whether that's an intention that we made before coming into this experience, and I definitely feel as if that's something that those are decisions we made and that we came into the, this world as explorers and not as outcasts.
39:27
Mychal: I think I might
39:27
Amanda: have made you cry on the first episode we did together.
39:31
Amanda: And now you've paid it back because you just made me cry and it is just so beautiful.
39:35
Amanda: Thank you.
39:36
Amanda: I'm just, I'm touched by your perspective and just, oh, I know that everybody can feel that.
39:44
Amanda: Just feel that breath oh, okay.
39:46
Amanda: No matter where you're at.
39:47
Amanda: It's okay.
39:48
Amanda: It's good.
39:49
Amanda: Yeah.
39:51
Amanda: Oh, Michael, thank you so much.
39:52
Amanda: Thank you for being here.
39:54
Amanda: Thank you for being a part of our community here at Astrology Hub.
39:57
Amanda: You're an amazing inner circle astrologer.
40:00
Amanda: You have continued to contribute to this podcast.
40:02
Amanda: I just, I thank you for your willingness to be a part of this conversation that we're having over here at Astrology Hub.
40:09
Amanda: And if all, if you like this conversation and you're not yet subscribed to our insider, that's our free weekly newsletter that gives you a summary of all the conversations that were had the week before and also gives you insights into the astrology for the week ahead.
40:25
Amanda: So if you wanna use it to help navigate your life, that's totally free.
40:29
Amanda: You can go to Astro you have.com/insider and then you'll be a part of our little cosmic insider.
40:35
Amanda: And Michael, you're welcome back anytime.
40:37
Amanda: Thank you.
40:38
Mychal: Thank you so much.
40:38
Mychal: Can I show you something?
40:40
Mychal: Yes.
40:41
Mychal: Okay.
40:42
Mychal: Alright.
40:42
Mychal: So I have a precarious setup over here.
40:45
Mychal: Oh.
40:45
Mychal: But I'm going to, so this is one of the duds or one of the books that didn't get That isn't getting published because it, it was a little bit too dark and all sorts of stuff.
40:56
Mychal: But on the inside of the book, this isn't the Amazon book, but this is the Ingram Spark book that you can buy in bookstores.
41:02
Mychal: On the inside of the book, I got my calligraphy teacher, Izzy Lewinski, to create two mandalas, one in the front of the book in Hebrew, and one in the back of the book in Hebrew as well, and the one on the front of the book.
41:19
Mychal: Is one of my favorite verses from the Bible, and it says that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord.
41:26
Mychal: And within that context, fair means awe, and fair means inspiration, and fair means deep reverence.
41:33
Mychal: So it says the beginning of wisdom is the A or the deep reverence of the Lord.
41:38
Mychal: And in the back of it, it says, because nature is also rooted in God.
41:44
Mychal: And this is actually from the Corpus Herma Come, which is not a Christian book at all or anything, but I love that whole thing of starting the book with knowing where wisdom originates from, with knowing that we are all here just as vessels of wisdom and ending the book.
41:58
Mychal: By knowing that nature itself is rooted in God, nature itself is rooted in the divine, and I really hope that this book gives people the opportunity to make that connection so that they feel the presence of the divine within everything they do.
42:12
Amanda: You are a brilliant soul.
42:14
Amanda: Thank you so much.
42:15
Amanda: It's just a pleasure.
42:17
Amanda: Thank you, Michael.
42:17
Amanda: Thanks for being here.
42:18
Amanda: Go to Amazon.
42:19
Amanda: Bye.
42:19
Amanda: Michael Astrology hub gets nothing for this.
42:22
Amanda: This is just a pure endorsement because we love him and he's amazing and the world needs more.
42:28
Amanda: Michael Bryan, so thank you for that.
42:30
Amanda: And thank you all for being here.
42:32
Amanda: Thank you for being a part our community, and thank you for making astrology a part of your life.
42:37
Amanda: More people that make astrology a part of their lives, especially this kind of astrology.
42:42
Amanda: Yeah.
42:43
Amanda: There's no question.
42:43
Amanda: We live, we would live in a more beautiful place.
42:46
Amanda: So thanks to all of you for being a part of that, and we will look forward to catching you on the next episode.
42:52
Amanda: Take care everybody.
42:53
Mychal: Bye-bye.