FACILITATORS
Aerin FogelAerin Fogel is a Toronto/Tkaronto-based astrologer, core pattern, and tarot reader, practicing since 2011. She strives to work from an integrated, trauma-informed perspective, honouring the unique lived experience of all individuals, and approaching astrology and spiritual practice as a relational ecosystem. Her astrological perspective bridges traditional, Hellenistic, modern, mythic, and psychological frameworks, and she specializes in mythic and family astrology through an intergenerational lens. Aerin has spoken for Kepler College, San Francisco Astrological Society, Canadian Astrology Conference, ConVocation, and Astrology Toronto, with several appearances on The Astrology Podcast and blogs for The Mountain Astrologer. She has upcoming talks with OPA, ISAR, and a piece in the CAELi Review. Aerin was also the occult consultant on The Craft: Legacy, and plays in her band Queen Of Swords.
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Mythic Houses is an exploration of diurnal (or primary) motion through a mythic lens. Together we will journey through the houses in the same progression that the luminaries and planets do each day as they rise, culminate, set, and fall. We will use story as a template to deepen our understanding of each house and how the planets move through the houses, particularly as we feel where we're coming from, where we're going, and how we relate to the heart of the story. Participants will discover meaning from each house through this diurnal journey using discussion, meditation, ritual, movement, and music, and build their own unique understandings through insights from the journey. We will develop a felt sense of diurnal motion, as well as a deeper understanding of each individual house, the sects, angularity, and planetary joys.
Amanda MorenoAmanda Moreno is an astrologer, soul worker and educator who has focused on helping folks connect more fully to their place in the universe since 2010. Amanda’s astro-roots are in the evolutionary, archetypal and queer branches of the craft with specializations in soul-spelunking, planets squaring the nodes and experiential astrology. Although she’s been a resident of Seattle for 25 years, Amanda feels grateful to have grown up in the Sonoran desert of Arizona, one of her ancestral homelands.
Amanda’s master’s degree in depth psychology focused on ways astrology can help us navigate the imagery that arises during personal and collective rites of passage. Her approach centers relationships not just between inner and outer worlds of practitioner and client, but between humans and the lands, waters, spirits and ancestors. She is a Deep Memory Process practitioner and has a background in psychosynthesis, integrative somatic parts work, social sciences and in teaching astrology in many different formats.
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When planets relate through squares and oppositions they are said to be working at cross purposes with each other or to be rife with paradox and dynamic tension. But what are the inner images and sensations that arise as a result of that paradox and tension? What might we learn about our wants and needs as a result of allowing this imagery to unfurl? In this workshop we will explore the ways imagination, body and emotions can be particularly articulate communicators, helping us to expand understanding and integrate dissonance. Amanda will introduce methods for illuminating the poetics of squares, t-squares and oppositions in our natal charts through active imagination and somatic exploration. Participants will have opportunities to work with their natal chart configurations independently, in pairs and as a group.
Amanda SimonAmanda grew up on a farm to a Jewish father and a Fijian mother, her lineage of water people have always been strongly alive in her. Childhood was living with doors open to animals, smells, elementals, dirt, labouring, making, fixing, machines, weathers of all kinds and more.
This living flux of sentience instilled in her marrow that bodily being was vast, coursing with powers we pretend to understand, wrapped and woven in skin to facilitate a human journey. She tracks, listens with and cultivates participation through lived life, art, practice and play, of which astrological listening is paramount.
Amanda is a consulting astrologer, acutonics practitioner and artist, currently studying an MA in Art and Ecology at Goldsmiths University where she creates sculptural fields for encounters, that seek to constellate our sensorium to become ever more receptive to subtlety, to the myriad of relations we are ongoingly made with and by.
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How do we settle, become open, and available energetic arrangements able to receive; come into trusting presence with the sky as intelligent and alive, poetic through pulse and pattern? And how does our body—in all its activated, sensuous, and visceral comportment—support and stabilize this ongoing possibility?
We will explore these questions while swimming with the Virgo-Pisces nodal current, wondering if their serpentine flow can help to enable, steady and stabilize current of conscious communing. If their dynamic interplay, between immense and minute, can help craft intimacy with all that we experience.
Our focus will be tending to our physical presence with intentional movement, breathwork, and imaginal journeying—syncopating between enacting processes and reflection—to help grow confidence in somatic subtlety, cultivating two-way tending that is the participatory play of the astrological art.
Throughout our time, we will be inviting an experience of the body as temple technology, architecting this capacity along the way—reawakening the felt sense of our body as techne, akin to a temple that can engage and commune with skies mysteries as an ongoing, sensuous, reciprocal relationship.
Cameron AllenCameron started his relationship with mind-body awareness while being a scholar athlete, receiving degrees in health and sports science and psychology before deepening through direct experience with Nature, Astrology, Herbalism, Yoga, Ayurveda, and other Indigenous technologies. Cameron is a student of Norma De Jesus, a multi-faceted healer from Puerto Rico, Sajah Popham of the school of Evolutionary Herbalism, Judith Hill of The academy for Astrological Medicine, Evolutionary Astrology, through Mark Jones, Kundalini Yoga through The Delta Groove Yoga School, Men’s Embodiment & sexuality work with Taylor Johnson, Traditional Astrology through a variety of teachers, & currently is in school to become an Ayurveda Practitioner with Yoga Veda as well as finishing a Budokon Yoga mixed movement art program taught by Cameron & Melayne Shayne. Cameron has also gone through the 1st initiatory of rites of passage within a Southern Bantu lineage under the guidance of his teacher Makhosi Starmother Gogo Thule.
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We all know that the light of the Moon dances between light & dark & influences the amount of tenderness & nourishment we need & desire at any given time. In this exploration we will look to the light of the Moon in order to play with ways we can all apply "Medical Astrology" in a way that is rooted in embodiment! In this workshop we will converse, engage with, & experience a new way of being with what the Moon has to offer us in a way that opens the pathways to receive the "Soma," or what I like to call the yummy Moon dew juice on an ongoing basis. We will explore movement practices and experiences to work with the Moon and its relationship to the other planetary bodies. Come ready to be nourished with your aliveness, a notebook, and an open heart.
Chris SkidmoreI'm from Perth in Western Australia but for the last nine years have lived in Ubud, Bali. My work weaves together Process-Oriented Psychotherapy, Astrology and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy. That's a lot of words, I know, but at the bottom of them all is the desire to enter the dreamlike soulscapes of our uniquely experienced inner worlds. Myth and fairytales (or as they are called in German, 'Conjuring tales') have become the key entry points into this inner realm in my work. The last four years I've worked closely with Brian Clark and largely follow in his Hermetic footsteps of allowing the imagination to drive, however haphazardly, towards the oceanic depth of this ensouled universe.
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Cinderella is a story thought to be over 4,000 years old and has been imagined in many guises from countless cultural contexts. Following the version from the Grimm collection, we will conjure up its images and spend time exploring it from the inside. Cinderella spends most of the story in the ashes by the hearth, covered in soot, but is able to move back and forth to the 'golden ball' via a hazel bush planted on mother's grave that acts as a portal between worlds. How does this relate to the lived experience of the north and south node? And how might the magical helpers who aspect our nodes play pivotal roles in that dance between them?
This workshop will focus on participatory storytelling and psychodrama to bring elements of our charts to life.
Diana Rose HarperI am an animist and Love proselytizer: I’m deeply devoted to a Love-rooted (re-) orientation of human relations with each other and the innumerable other-than-humans who live alongside us. The Moon & roses, as my namesakes, have been primary teachers since birth.
I was born on the prairies of the American midwest as the descendent of enslaved people and war refugees from West Africa and northern Europe. After a decade living alongside Lake Michigan and five years in the homeland of the Kizh & Tongva, I currently live near the Columbia River on the land of the Multnomah, Clackamas, and several other Tribes.
Tarot forms the foundation of my divinatory practices. Traditional, psychological, and archetypal astrologies built the bridge to celestial input, and my time as a structurally-focused massage therapist & aerial circus student renders my entire practice a form of bodywork.
I’ve presented several times at NORWAC, have been a repeat guest on The Astrology Podcast, and wrote the guidebook for The Rosebud Tarot. Online, my handle is @ddamascenaa, after one of the most glorious flowers in the world.
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The planets reside in, express from, move within our bodies. Our tissues are planetary in nature, stellar songs slowed down just enough to be touched, sliding through linear time with varying degrees of grace and clumsy navigation.
We are always already subsumed within planetary currents; what happens when we deliberately open to being moved by those currents, intentionally, with curiosity, with an aim to be danced by the dance of the cosmos? This work isn’t about thinking and then enacting Ideas about planets. This is the work of relinquishing control and constrained conceptions in order to feel the planets anew, beginner’s mind and beginner’s body playing with weavings of gravity and meaning.
In this session, participants will be facilitated through a process of independent & collaborative movement research and embodied play. Music & guided meditation will offer inspirational lubrication; notebook-scrawling will provide additional reflective structures. As this is a movement-prioritizing session, arrive ready to wiggle, frolic, plod, leap, and lay down in ways that are harmonious for your body.
Genie RaftopoulosGenie Raftopoulos is a talismanic jeweler, multidisciplinary artist, and founder of Tides of Tethys. Her work bridges ancient metalsmithing traditions with astrological and magical practices, creating handcrafted talismans guided by celestial timing and inspired by esoteric wisdom. Drawing on a decade of experience, Genie specializes in the ancient techniques of wax carving, sand casting, and lost wax casting, creating limited collections from the finest earth-grown gemstones and metals. Her practice is deeply influenced by astrological texts such as the Picatrix, Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy and Ficino’s Three Books on Life. Genie holds a BFA from Queensland College of Arts and an MFA with Distinction from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and she continues to explore the intersections of art, astrology, and spirit relationship through her arts practise and writings.
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Astrology is an art of divination. Although knowledge of technique is necessary for astrologers to deliver guidance in consideration of stars and symbolism, divination can mysteriously lead us to insights that go beyond technique. Genie and Gray’s workshop will delve into the divinatory nature of astrology and how the act of divination necessitates opening to the liminal. Since this realm is teeming with spirits of all sorts of motivations, we want to enter the imaginal balanced and protected.
Gray and Genie will begin with a discussion on how divination has involved communion with daimons and intermediary spirits across time in a wide variety of cultures. Inspired by transiting Venus and the South Node of the Moon being near the degree of stars located in the Great Bear constellation during the time of the workshop, Genie and Gray will also discuss the rich history of circumpolar stars functioning as guardian protectors.
Genie and Gray will then guide participants in creating a collage image of a guardian daimon who will be your protector in divination. This guardian daimon could be an ancestor, a spirit you already work with, or the daimon of a planet or star. Each participant will receive a skeleton key and we will journey together with our daimon and key to unlock the doorway to the imaginal realm in an oracular exploration.
Gray CrawfordGray is a professional natal, horary, and electional astrologer. Gray brings a relational approach to astrology using techniques drawn from ancient and modern sources, synthesizing influences from Hellenistic, magical, mythic-archetypal, and psychological astrology. Gray has taught at UAC, NORWAC, and ISAR astrology conferences, various astrology associations around the USA, and is a member of the faculty at Kepler College. Gray’s astrological writing has been published on Astrology.com, in WellBeing Astrology, and by Ignota Press. Gray can be contacted on his site graycrawford.net where he also writes astrology articles and offers astrological education.
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Astrology is an art of divination. Although knowledge of technique is necessary for astrologers to deliver guidance in consideration of stars and symbolism, divination can mysteriously lead us to insights that go beyond technique. Genie and Gray’s workshop will delve into the divinatory nature of astrology and how the act of divination necessitates opening to the liminal. Since this realm is teeming with spirits of all sorts of motivations, we want to enter the imaginal balanced and protected.
Gray and Genie will begin with a discussion on how divination has involved communion with daimons and intermediary spirits across time in a wide variety of cultures. Inspired by transiting Venus and the South Node of the Moon being near the degree of stars located in the Great Bear constellation during the time of the workshop, Genie and Gray will also discuss the rich history of circumpolar stars functioning as guardian protectors.
Genie and Gray will then guide participants in creating a collage image of a guardian daimon who will be your protector in divination. This guardian daimon could be an ancestor, a spirit you already work with, or the daimon of a planet or star. Each participant will receive a skeleton key and we will journey together with our daimon and key to unlock the doorway to the imaginal realm in an oracular exploration.
Jason holley-
Mars lies poised within us like the reflexes in our bodies: ever ready for action. In this workshop, we will seek to connect with Mars in a way that is both embedded in layers of myth, astronomy, and horoscopy; and embodied in layers of instinct, emotion, and sensation.
We will begin with an exploration of Mars stories told in Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome. The stories of Nergal, Ares, and Mars speak to crucial questions of Soul in our time, such as experiences of separation, trials, re-incorporation, sickness, violence. They offer ways of working creatively with impulse and instinct, anger and rage, protection and defense, power and will.
Once embedded in the stories, we will explore Mars in ways very natural to this creature: using movement, instinct, sensation, and emotion. In this approach we dream the dreams of the ancients onward.
Come with an openness to the possibilities of Mars, and a willingness to move and be moved. Depart with a richer, more multidimensional, and more instinctual understanding of this remarkable symbol of the Guardian of Night in your own life and in the lives of others.
I’ve been an astrologer for 35 years and a psychotherapist (LPCC) for 18 years. I grew up in astrology and divination, stretching back to my great-great-grandmother in the West Virginia hills where we lived. I’ve also benefited greatly from the love and wisdom of several mentors in psychotherapy, astrology, education, and being human: Susan Green, Brian Clark, Gary Grimm and Jim Fickey, Katherine Ninos, Rosvita Botkin. Since 2005, I’ve lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico in ongoing apprenticeship to this land, the piñon and the cottonwood, and especially the deep silence.
The other land where I live is the dreamscape of ancient Greek myth. For me these stories offer endless metaphor and images of the life of soul, and like astrology they seem always to arrive and give dimension at just the right time and place.
I also love group work and experiential education. I lead online and in-person courses on astrology and myth, workshops, retreats, and sacred site pilgrimages. In 2014 I founded the Hermes-Hestia Center for Living Astrologies, now home to a Practitioner Program in experiential astrology and myth and a happy host organization for our conference.
John ReiserHello, I'm John Reiser, and I'm an astrologer, psychotherapist, and performing artist originally from Washington, D.C. I began my astrological studies 35 years ago, studying with teachers such as Daniel Fry (Dallas, TX), Janet Kane, and Robert Hand (Washington, D.C.) and continued my education through the Wiccan/Pagan and ritual magick communities. I have lived in New Mexico since 2012 and have had the benefit and pleasure of learning from my colleagues in the Santa Fe area since arriving here.
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In this workshop, we will learn and explore the meaning and experience of what the Third House is all about in astrology. Placing this particular house in the larger context of the birth chat (especially the other "social houses"), we'll work and play together to understand how this house sets the tone for our experience of "you and me" - finding yourself through the Other. How does experiencing relationship bring us close to who we really are? How does this house set us up to play with the felt sense of same/different, familiar/unfamiliar not just with other people, but within ourselves? How does the third house act as the playing field for finding real aspects of who we are outside of ourselves, as well as leading us to the strangeness and "otherness" within?
Kate Latimer
Kate Latimer, MA, LPCC, is a faculty member and director of the New Earth Institute at Southwestern College in Santa Fe, NM. She is a Nia Blackbelt, Nia Freedance instructor and founding member of Studio Nia Santa Fe. Building on her background as a fitness instructor, educator, and mental health counselor, Kate is known for her dance activism leading Flashmobs to raise awareness about gender violence and equal rights for women and the LGBTQ+ community for One Billion arising and the Women’s March. She delivers a depth of somatic awareness and emotional attunement in her teaching with the intention to cultivate self-healing and enhance the sensation of universal joy on the dance floor of life.
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Kate Latimer will lead us into movement in the style of Ecstatic Dance and Nia, with planetary prompts from the sky of the moment, gentle movement with self and others. Then DJ AspirinCity (Shuai Wang) will take us on a dance journey synched and syncopated with the stars and the moment.
Everyone is invited (but not required) to dress as a place in your own horoscope! There will also be some playful adornments provided by us, and relaxed rest spaces and pleasure pods provided as well.
Kauakea Winston
I have been studying and practicing living astrology since 1999 when my beloved Fodiaba Winston entered my life. His approach was deeply immersed in following moon cycles, including void of course stillness as a way of connecting with the Divine Feminine. Together we taught astrology at Sacred Path Healing School in Honolulu until his transition in 2008, where I continue to teach. Grief then became a deep practice as I began connecting through the ethers with him. Vesta Mystery School came through this connection and I eventually developed a set of learning cards with a workbook to help students interpret their own charts. As a trained energy healer I have been combining emotional clearing work including essential oils and sound with awareness of the clients astrological cycles. The teachings of Demetra George and the wildly creative Jason Holley have furthered my understanding of chart embodiment and the divine feminine. Francis Weller has been my mentor for the past three years along with his team at "Soulful Life" including Holly Truhlar, Carl Rabke, Erin Geesaman Rabke and Alexandre Jodun. Francisʻs book " The Wild Edge of Sorrow" and rituals of grief tending have been at the core of my work for the past few years. I am in love with the mystery and help others to find comfort in following cycles through living astrology and working with grief and gratitude.
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In this circle we create a container for expressed Grief and Gratitude with council practice, writing prompts and a stone ritual. We greet Saturn in Pisces conjoined with Neptune and Ceres in Aries and invoke their energies as we explore the human journey of grief and gratitude. We will create an ancestor altar with photos and sacred objects of those guiding us from beyond the veil. Poetry, some movement, and triad sharing will also be included as we dive deep and hold sacred space for one another.
Kim Murriera
Creative Arts Therapist, Biographical Counselor and Waldorf Teacher.
California native calling Hawaii home since 1998.
Aloha! a little about my background.
My interest in creativity, human development, astrology and the inner life has been a lifelong exploration. Weaving these together creates a body of work that I am passionate about and grateful to be able to share with you.
From my beautiful Kauai Island Creative Arts studio I have been leading classes for over 15 years. These immersive courses connect us to our innate creativity, enliven an understanding of our unique astrological signatures and explore the cyclic nature of our biographies.
As a Creative Arts Therapist, everything I offer is enveloped in various artistic modalities that feeds the head, heart and hands of the human being. I love deepening the elementary nature of things so that we stand strong on a foundation that allows for an embodied full bloom into the material at hand.
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Join me for an experiential immersion into the elemental nature of your astrology. Our focus will be on your Sun, Moon and Rising signs through the lens of the four elements; fire, earth air and water. How do these 4 elements and the three pillars of your chart converse and relate to one another? We will explore this through the use of image, music, story and the creative arts to anchor a lasting and tangible understanding within. You will create a hand-made art project that gives visual voice to your experience.
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” ~Aristotle
Meghna Bhagat
Meghna Bhagat’s work is about self-acceptance and reclaiming what’s already yours: your inner authority. Certified in Evolutionary and Horary Astrology, Meghna’s astrological lineage includes Steven Forrest, the School for Traditional Astrology, Jason Holley and many others. She weaves astrology’s ancient insights with guided self-inquiry and experiential practices, helping individuals reconnect with their inner compass and access greater clarity and deeper self-trust.
Through her ongoing journey of self-discovery, Meghna continues to integrate ancient wisdom and contemporary insights, sharing the best of her evolving path with her clients and audiences. An award-winning speaker, she has shared this vision at OPA, ISAR, the Astrological Association, and beyond, showing how astrology can help us reclaim our agency and our lives.
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As there is a longing for the light, so too is there a longing for the dark. When Persephone was abducted into the underworld, she did more than survive—she transformed. Her journey from maiden to queen reveals the hidden power within life’s darkest initiations. We will explore Persephone’s story alongside a profound truth seen in many spiritual traditions: the divine is incomplete without its counterpart. In Indian cosmology, this is reflected through the pairing of every god with an ideal partner, symbolizing the interdependence of all cosmic forces. This mirrors Persephone’s relationship with Pluto—a dynamic that teaches us about Pluto's initiations: power, surrender, and the transformative potential of partnership.
Through story, guided self-reflection, and astro-dramatic action methods, we will invoke the archetype of Persephone to access our own partnership with the gods. Bring your stories and open hearts. Together, we’ll co-create a sanctuary of connection, uncovering creative responses to Pluto’s powerful initiations.
Milena Kądziela
Born on a cold winter midnight in Poland, under a visionary Sagittarian sun with Virgo rising, I have always felt deeply connected to the night sky and the grounding presence of the earth. The sky has lived in my bones and tissues, reflecting in my dreams and visions for as long as I can remember. My journey has been about bridging the connection I feel with the cosmos and embodying my earthly self.
Visions and curations in my work emerge from 15 years of professional practice and study in psychology, Gestalt psychotherapy, various somatic modalities, and astrology, but more importantly, from my living inquiry and deep connection with the sensing body, living sky, and fierce feminine wisdom.
In my London practice, I guide clients through the mysteries of body, mind, heart, and soul using psychotherapy, shadow work, astrology, and somatic exploration. I cultivate the capacity to sense, feel, touch, and move with life — allowing it to move through us, recognizing deep meaning in its mysteries, and honoring the interplay of sky and earth, visible and invisible, and the sacred rhythms that ebb and flow through us all.
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How do we settle, become open, and available energetic arrangements able to receive; come into trusting presence with the sky as intelligent and alive, poetic through pulse and pattern? And how does our body—in all its activated, sensuous, and visceral comportment—support and stabilize this ongoing possibility?
We will explore these questions while swimming with the Virgo-Pisces nodal current, wondering if their serpentine flow can help to enable, steady and stabilize current of conscious communing. If their dynamic interplay, between immense and minute, can help craft intimacy with all that we experience.
Our focus will be tending to our physical presence with intentional movement, breathwork, and imaginal journeying—syncopating between enacting processes and reflection—to help grow confidence in somatic subtlety, cultivating two-way tending that is the participatory play of the astrological art.
Throughout our time, we will be inviting an experience of the body as temple technology, architecting this capacity along the way—reawakening the felt sense of our body as techne, akin to a temple that can engage and commune with skies mysteries as an ongoing, sensuous, reciprocal relationship.
Mindy Mendelsohn
A practicing professional for 35 years, Mindy’s trained in various healing modalities, yet the fields of astrology and theatre speak to her most deeply. Her training is diverse, spanning from the traditional (STA, Christopher Warnock Astrological Magic) to Evolutionary/Psychological (MISPA, among others). In the theatre/creative community, her training includes working at Second City with Martin De Maat and she is an early student of Julia Cameron. She has facilitated internationally for over 30 years.
She works relationally, viewing astrology/the natal chart as an ensouled mirror of our greater consciousness, reflecting the interconnectedness of all life. Her workshops and retreats work with astrologers and non-astrologers alike, combining her background in the arts and creativity using participants’ natal charts to guide them consciously through a process of self-discovery that enables them to shift patterns within their lives, a process she refers to as astrological midwifery. A member of the AFA, ISAR, and OPA, you can find out more about her work at www.alchemicalcompass.com. She splits her time between Sedona, AZ, and Chicago.
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In alchemical terms, Mercury and the Moon are bound together, each reflecting the silvery and perhaps unknowable shadow-light of the universe. Light of the night sky, our inner world and our embodiment, the Moon contains our lived experiences both in this life and others. She holds our memories, both those we are aware of and those that lie implicit in our night consciousness, creating imagery that Mercury translates into stories, profoundly shaping our felt sense of belonging and safety as we move through our worlds, both our vast inner space and the apparent outer reality. Their dance together creates a partnership that weaves a spell through which we relate to life. Yet most of this process is habitual and unconscious.
Together, we will move into the right-brained imaginal space of the Moon (night consciousness) and Mercury (twilight consciousness) through the playful relational space of improvisational theatre and collage, bringing part of this implicit field into conscious awareness, opening new thresholds of experience in our relationship with life.
Nicole Feola
Nicole is an astrologer based in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas in Northern California, the ancestral and current lands of the Nisenan, home to the Yuba River, Deer Creek, manzanita, madrone, oak, pine, cedar, mountain lions, bears, red-tailed hawks, river otters and many others. Practicing experiential astrology and contemplative ways of engaging with myth has been a way for her to honor, feed and deepen into relationship with this place, with her Filipino ancestors as well as her own personal history as a biologist, muralist, math and art teacher and caregiver. Nicole has been working as a consulting astrologer since 2017, and is trained in Internal Family Systems and Conscious Parenting. She is currently participating in the Living Astrologies Practitioner Training Program with the Hermes-Hestia Center.
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Ιn this time of Neptune (and soon Saturn) in Aries, how can we honor the innate intelligence of the sign, its radical immediacy and innocence? Especially when we might find ourselves in a place of existential anxiety around knowing what we like, what we want, what we’re ‘going after’ and how to possibly ‘get there’?
In this workshop, we’ll engage in a playful and prayerful conversation with richly dyed wool, an ideal medium of bright bold color for Aries energy to communicate, allowing our experience of this material to ease ourselves out from the grip of the conceptual mind and be romanced into more sensuous ways of knowing. There will be prompts to facilitate solo and collaborative play, needle-felting and movements inspired by the emergent imagery. In this way, we’ll resource the Aries place in our natal charts/lives with a synesthetic library that’s co-created by the felt-sense, the rainbow and our celestial kin guiding the wool (and our consciousness) to shift through different shapes.
We’ll explore how color can go beyond the visual senses, and how textures can go beyond the tactile senses, evoking a holographic “listening” within us that gives way to a fresh and wonder-full journey into the Night Sky and one’s birth chart. And you’ll leave the workshop with at least one piece of art that carries enough dimensionality to serve as a focal point of astrological contemplation for months and years to come.
No prior experience with wool is needed; in the Aries spirit, every time is the first time.
Pallas K. Augustine
Pallas K. Augustine, MA is a writer and astrologer born under the big skies of the Canadian prairies, now living on Mohican land in Western Massachusetts. Initiated as a child into the mysteries of Earth and Sky, Pallas began consulting in 2016 with a relational approach to the astromagical arts bridging their psychological and traditional lineages. With their spouse Rain Mason Olbert, PhD, Pallas co-founded Idola Stellarum, an avenue for astrological magic focused on cultivating relationship with the more-than-human worlds. Pallas is a practitioner-in-training with Ancestral Medicine, has spoken for NORWAC, Portland School of Astrology, and ISAR, and is author of The IC: An Astrology of Coming Home.
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The Imum Coeli as the deepest part of the chart is the darkest part of the forest. But not all forests are equally lit. Some are dappled brightest in the icy depths of winter. Some are so dense, even on a sunny day, the dark-loving fungi thrive. Your IC's ecology might not be a forest at all. It might be scorched sand dunes with burrowed snakes, arctic tundra with foxes hunting the quiestest prey, a cozy suburb with stray dandelions and territorial squirrels, the unknown reaches of an ocean trench, mystery abounding.
Come gather with Pallas and a small crew of other seekers to get to know your IC ecosystem through offerings of guided imaginal exploration, quiet writing prompts, and more lively sharing. Grounded in connection with our wisest ancestors and the lands of our home(s), we'll explore ways of being with our IC that are ecological and relational, embodied and storied, understanding anew the tether which roots us no matter where—or who—we are.
Rebecca Gordon
Born and raised in New York City, I’ve been a full-time astrologer and author for over two decades. My journey began in childhood, exploring charts with my neighbor—who later became my stepmother. This early passion led me to study with astrologers like Bernadette Brady and Susan Miller, though nature and Buddhism have remained my deepest teachers.
In 2004, after attending my first astrology conference and completing ethics training, I founded an astrology school in NYC, now online, which has since graduated thousands of students. My practice integrates Psychological, Archetypal, and Experiential Astrology. At this conference, I’ll introduce the Ecosystems Method, an approach that sees the natal chart and transits as a living ecology—reminding us that we, too, are nature.
These days, I host astrology retreats, lead experiential team-building events, and offer keynotes at corporations, schools, and gatherings. I’ve presented at NORWAC, Polaris (in Norway), and ISAR and am passionate about bringing astrology into conversations on sustainability, governance, and the evolution of consciousness.
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Step into a transformative experience where art, animism, and astrology merge through the Ecosystems Method. In this immersive workshop, you’ll decode your natal chart as a living landscape, uncovering the terrains that shape your inner world. Painting your unique ecology reveals your place within the greater biodiversity of a relationship, community or calling.
Next, we’ll explore transits as weather systems, shifting the atmosphere of your inner terrain and illuminating patterns of awakening and disruption. Your natal ecology holds an innate intelligence, mirroring the greater natural world—this is an invitation to become one with it.
Finally, we animate your chart as a vibrant village, where planets become key characters shaping governance, culture, and values. Through this process, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of how astrology reflects the intricate web of life, fostering reverence for nature
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RENEE SILLS
I am a 2nd generation astrologer and somatic educator, lifelong student of contemplative practices and founder/co-steward of Embodied Astrology, a gathering and resourcing place for astrologers and astrology lovers to cultivate and practice intuition and embodiment through multidisciplinary study with the cosmos. I was raised speaking the language of astrology, and practicing attunement through the felt-sense, inner body and energetic fields. I believe and have experienced that astrological awareness combined with mind/body coherence creates profound and lasting change in human consciousness and relationships. I teach and hold space for planetary allyship, intuition, divination and imaginative experiential, experimental astrological play.
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Greet the day and prepare the oracle of your body to receive relational transmissions from land, space and our collective connectivity. We'll work with gentle and adaptive embodiment practices to increase mind/heart/body coherence and energetic awareness, while helping us orient with Earth, elemental energetics and current planetary placements.
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Many consulting astrologers are familiar with the experience of client sessions and natal chart readings opening portals to subtle realms where information flows from spiritual, ancestral and/or unknown sources. We may have our formulas, techniques and ideas about where to start a reading, how to follow threads, schematics of planetary influence and importance etc., but there is often a strange ‘something else’ present in relational space with clients that transcends any mental logic of formulaic calculations we otherwise employ.
This session explores these otherwise ways of knowing and the liminal spaces of energetic interrelationship, channeling and mediumship through engaging practices that consciously connect our mental logic, intuitive/psychic organs and felt sense in connection with others, in this realm and beyond. Through zodiacal body system-mapping, glandular activation, prayer, invocation and conscious communion with astral dimensions, we’ll encounter each other’s charts as vehicles for multisensory information that “speak” through the oracles of our bodyminds.
This session aims explicitly to expand the divinatory toolkits of consulting astrologers, but it is open to anyone with a basic foundation in astrological symbolism and some amount of practice delineating planets, signs, houses and aspects. Please come prepared to share your natal chart, with a printed or digital image.
Sarah-Luella Baker
Sarah-Luella Baker (they/she) is a somatic practitioner, experiential astrologer, and activist mother whose background in movement, the arts, ancestry, ritual, and parenting has supported individuals, families, and communities in layered and influential ways for the past 30 years. Sarah-Lu is a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist, Master of Fine Arts, and graduate student in Mindfulness-Based Transpersonal Counseling.
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This workshop invokes and explores the moon as a collective and interpersonal tensile intelligence. Using movement as a primary focus and drawing and writing as supportive mediums, participants will engage in a process-oriented journey through emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual lunar landscapes. We will engage with our natal chart lunar placements individually and then move into a group practice of witnessing each other in a playground of reflective illumination. Come with a basic knowledge of your lunar placements. Leave with an expressive and embodied devotion to Luna.
SHUAI Wang
DJ Aspirin (aka Shuai Wang) is a dynamic New York–based producer and artist whose sonic alchemy fuses house, electronic dance, and techno into infectious, boundary-pushing energy. Drawing inspiration from the stars, diverse cultures, and the wild beauty of the universe, every beat he creates carries a touch of groove, grit, tenderness, and something celestial.
For Aspirin, music is freedom. He produces to unlock that feeling in others. And when he’s in the studio, he lets his own body decide—if his feet start shuffling on their own, that’s how he knows the track is right.
Shuai is also a practicing astrologer and tarot reader in New York City.
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Kate Latimer will lead us into movement in the style of Ecstatic Dance and Nia, with planetary prompts from the sky of the moment, gentle movement with self and others. Then DJ AspirinCity (Shuai Wang) will take us on a dance journey synched and syncopated with the stars and the moment.
Everyone is invited (but not required) to dress as a place in your own horoscope! There will also be some playful adornments provided by us, and relaxed rest spaces and pleasure pods provided as well.
stePHANIE Phillips
I’ve been fascinated by IFS (Internal Family Systems Therapy) since my first training in 2015. I’m a licensed therapist in Seattle, Washington who specializes in working with couples and people working in technology fields. I’ve studied astrology for 15 years, beginning with Laura Nalbandian and most recently with Demetra George.
With co-facilitators Tara and Walter: We three have been learning and exploring astrology and psychology together for 15 years. We’ve grown in many ways over the years, but especially emotionally. In classrooms, conferences, and weekly group meetings, and at dinners and other social gatherings, we’ve supported each other to be more present, kind, aware, and able to be with our parts and what is. We’ve helped each other slow down, drop in, and embrace our humanity. This communion with each other benefits us and our clients, and it’s led to collaboration at this conference. We all love astrology, but know that real change doesn’t come from the aha moments and insight; it comes from experience. We’re looking forward to being in an experiential space with people committed to growing their consciousness and deepening their humanity.
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There is something inside that is speaking; see if you can hear it.
What do Jungian complex theory, parts work/therapy, and astrology have in common? Multiplicity. If you’ve ever argued with yourself, you know what we mean. In this workshop, we’re exploring and embracing our multiplicity.
Most of us weren’t raised to value, explore, and talk about our inner world nearly as much as our external performance. Ways to connect with and understand these parts inside of us with different needs, wants, fears, expectations, and qualities that can “come out” or “take us over” wasn’t part of primary education.
Tending to the emissaries of the unconscious (parts) is a way of studying the ordering principle of life. The ordering principle of life is always operating, and we catch glimpses of its action in synchronicities (movement of planets and activities on earth), of dreams, sensations, parts, urges, ecstatic dance, fairy tales, myth, the expressions of children…anyplace we are unedited.
In this workshop, you’ll learn experiential ways of interacting with the unconscious that you can use to deepen your personal practice and your client work. The birth chart is a doorway to a more intimate connection with the unconscious, and combined with art, active imagination, ritual, and inquiry, it really comes to life. Whenever we engage ethically with our internal world voices, movements, values, and sensations, we enter into a process that brings us not to perfection but wholeness. It brings us to a fuller experience of what it is to be not just a good human but a full human, THIS human. To be MORE ourselves and more at home in ourselves every day.
steven sprung
I have always enjoyed exploring a diverse range of interests, circulating freely between them. Throughout my career as a film editor, I also identified as a writer, director, actor, singer and photographer. Over time, my passions expanded into the realm of body-mind-spirit. The disciplines of tai chi, meditation, astrology, psychology and mythology captivated my attention and now assist me in my commitment to being a compassionate friend and ally. I frequently ask myself, “What is the space that needs me the most?” and allow this to guide me to places where I can help stimulate change or conversely, slow down to allow for meaningful conversation and sharing. In some ways, I consider myself to be a son of Hermes, and much like the depiction of that twilight God in ancient Greek mythology, I am often on the lookout for ways to keep a story moving. I aim for empathy, resonance and heart coherence in all my encounters, including consultations and teaching.
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This workshop is an opportunity to experience a deeper embodiment of the polarity of Hestia and Hermes (Vesta and Mercury) to allow curiosity, spontaneity, and alchemical magic within our everyday lives. We will explore these gods in body, art, personal story and creative play.
We will feel into the anatomy and physiology of our mineral, plant, and animal “bodies” in order to feel the Hestia - Hermes forces of stillness and motion. We will root ourselves in the Hestian natures of the pelvic bowl and the heart, contrasted against the Hermetic nature of the nervous system and digestion. Through visualization, sensation, and movement, we will strengthen our ability to welcome all strangers to our hearths.
In addition to defining the Hestian container, we will become friends with Mercury, and familiar with the ways he may guide us into new territories and help us integrate those experiences. As with the birth of Dionysus, we will explore how Mercury can help us bring something new and vital into areas of our life that resist transgression.
Through divinatory practices including body movement, shapeshifting, word-play and practices that evoke the nature of Mercury, we will place ourselves in doorways - both literal and metaphoric - and allow ourselves to be surprised by what can emerge when we interrupt our linear way of thinking and create a safe space for the trickster God to express himself.
Tara Aal
Hi (-: I’m an evolutionary astrologer, writer, educator, artist, and tarot reader from Seattle, currently living in Los Angeles. I’m the co-author of “Astrology by Moonlight” and “Natural Astrology.” My most extensive studies in astrology were with Laura Nalbandian and Adam Gainsburg. I also spent years deepening my feeling capacity through Adam’s Open Heart work. I began my practice in 2011 and see clients, teach, and speak (including NORWAC, UAC, Kepler College, and ISAR). As an IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy-informed astrologer, my focus is human-first, embodied, experiential astrology that helps connect us with, understand, and accept our parts and the parts of others. My big passion is a practice I call Living Planets 1st, an active, living astrological ritual to bring out the planets within and without.
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There is something inside that is speaking; see if you can hear it.
What do Jungian complex theory, parts work/therapy, and astrology have in common? Multiplicity. If you’ve ever argued with yourself, you know what we mean. In this workshop, we’re exploring and embracing our multiplicity.
Most of us weren’t raised to value, explore, and talk about our inner world nearly as much as our external performance. Ways to connect with and understand these parts inside of us with different needs, wants, fears, expectations, and qualities that can “come out” or “take us over” wasn’t part of primary education.
Tending to the emissaries of the unconscious (parts) is a way of studying the ordering principle of life. The ordering principle of life is always operating, and we catch glimpses of its action in synchronicities (movement of planets and activities on earth), of dreams, sensations, parts, urges, ecstatic dance, fairy tales, myth, the expressions of children…anyplace we are unedited.
In this workshop, you’ll learn experiential ways of interacting with the unconscious that you can use to deepen your personal practice and your client work. The birth chart is a doorway to a more intimate connection with the unconscious, and combined with art, active imagination, ritual, and inquiry, it really comes to life. Whenever we engage ethically with our internal world voices, movements, values, and sensations, we enter into a process that brings us not to perfection but wholeness. It brings us to a fuller experience of what it is to be not just a good human but a full human, THIS human. To be MORE ourselves and more at home in ourselves every day.
TRAVIS EllioTT 
I am a naturopathic physician (2003, NUNM in Portland, OR) practicing as an online consultant in Vermont, where I live with my family. In 20 years of clinical practice, I have explored number systems of understanding and healing disease, focusing on chronic disease and mind-body health. My clients and I meet at the intersection of intuition, western medical science, alchemical herbalism, and astrology in an effort to weave together physiology, emotional health, and spiritual practice.
I fell in love with astrology as part of my work with alchemically prepared plants, and have self-studied Hellenistic, medical, mytho-relational, and evolutionary methods of analysis, with a particular love for the exploration of secondary progression cycles, and I recently had an article published in The Evolving Astrologer Magazine. It has been a true gift to have participated in Jason Holley’s mentorship program since 2022 and, as part of his practitioner program, I am currently researching the astrology and myths of Asclepius and the ways his natal wounds have defined the practice of Western medicine.
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This workshop is an opportunity to experience a deeper embodiment of the polarity of Hestia and Hermes (Vesta and Mercury) to allow curiosity, spontaneity, and alchemical magic within our everyday lives. We will explore these gods in body, art, personal story and creative play.
We will feel into the anatomy and physiology of our mineral, plant, and animal “bodies” in order to feel the Hestia - Hermes forces of stillness and motion. We will root ourselves in the Hestian natures of the pelvic bowl and the heart, contrasted against the Hermetic nature of the nervous system and digestion. Through visualization, sensation, and movement, we will strengthen our ability to welcome all strangers to our hearths.
In addition to defining the Hestian container, we will become friends with Mercury, and familiar with the ways he may guide us into new territories and help us integrate those experiences. As with the birth of Dionysus, we will explore how Mercury can help us bring something new and vital into areas of our life that resist transgression.
Through divinatory practices including body movement, shapeshifting, word-play and practices that evoke the nature of Mercury, we will place ourselves in doorways - both literal and metaphoric - and allow ourselves to be surprised by what can emerge when we interrupt our linear way of thinking and create a safe space for the trickster God to express himself.
Walter Jager
I’m grateful to have 30 years' worth of experience working with the public as a designer and 15 of those years as both a student of evolutionary astrology and a practicing IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy-informed astrologer. These services “dovetail” in ways that continue to surprise and delight me, proving to me that healing and a feeling of wholeness can be found anywhere. I’ve also been a student of Patricia Walsh’s deep memory process for astrologers. I’m from and currently live in Seattle, Washington.
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There is something inside that is speaking; see if you can hear it.
What do Jungian complex theory, parts work/therapy, and astrology have in common? Multiplicity. If you’ve ever argued with yourself, you know what we mean. In this workshop, we’re exploring and embracing our multiplicity.
Most of us weren’t raised to value, explore, and talk about our inner world nearly as much as our external performance. Ways to connect with and understand these parts inside of us with different needs, wants, fears, expectations, and qualities that can “come out” or “take us over” wasn’t part of primary education.
Tending to the emissaries of the unconscious (parts) is a way of studying the ordering principle of life. The ordering principle of life is always operating, and we catch glimpses of its action in synchronicities (movement of planets and activities on earth), of dreams, sensations, parts, urges, ecstatic dance, fairy tales, myth, the expressions of children…anyplace we are unedited.
In this workshop, you’ll learn experiential ways of interacting with the unconscious that you can use to deepen your personal practice and your client work. The birth chart is a doorway to a more intimate connection with the unconscious, and combined with art, active imagination, ritual, and inquiry, it really comes to life. Whenever we engage ethically with our internal world voices, movements, values, and sensations, we enter into a process that brings us not to perfection but wholeness. It brings us to a fuller experience of what it is to be not just a good human but a full human, THIS human. To be MORE ourselves and more at home in ourselves every day.
wendy rule
Blurring the line between music, theatre, and ritual, Visionary Songstress Wendy Rule weaves her dark-ambient mystical songs along pathways of Magic and mythology. With her extraordinary voice and heartfelt lyrics, she invites her audience on an immersive journey of depth and passion.
Over the past three decades, Wendy has released thirteen albums and numerous side projects, and has toured the world extensively — both as a musician and as a celebrated educator in Pagan spirituality. A dedicated live performer, she continues to grow her loyal global fanbase. Originally from Melbourne, Australia, Wendy relocated to the USA in 2014 and now lives in the beautiful countryside of Northern New Mexico. This setting offers daily inspiration from wild Nature — the beating heart of her creative and spiritual life.
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Wendy Rule will sing and play songs inspired by mythology, archetype, and astrology. Our Santa Fe astrology playback group, Starforce, will then embody archetypes of the current sky as well as stories in the lives and horoscopes of participants.