Defiant Wisdom

Tag: astrology

Explorations of the natal chart, planetary placements, and cosmic patterns that echo through lineage and lived experience. Where sky meets psyche, and the stars hold a mirror to ancestral memory and personal transformation.

  • How AI and my Natal Chart Revealed Me as the Secretary of Ancestral Trauma

    How AI and my Natal Chart Revealed Me as the Secretary of Ancestral Trauma

    When I uploaded my natal chart to an AI, I just wanted to know if my side quests had a point, or if I was just avoiding actual study. Herbal medicine was supposed to be my new path—but instead of snoring through anatomy videos, I was decoding dreams that kept dragging me deeper into my family’s “definitely don’t open this box” history.

    Apparently, I’m the fixer. No, not the chosen one—just the gobby, nosy one who won’t shut up until a queue of dead ancestors gets their closure. I’m the one who doesn’t clutch her pearls (or even blink) when she learns why Great-Uncle Jimmy may have been committed. And so, my ability to keep my eyeballs open while they’re on fire got me the job.

    My chart didn’t just offer clarity. It handed me a hand grenade and a shovel. Suddenly, my dreams, intuition, and late-night archive diving all started to make uncanny sense.

    I never knew much about astrology. I liked it in the casual, “Taurus is stubborn” kind of way. But now? Now I was hooked. It felt like someone had blown the lid off a chest—and its contents had my name all over it.

    My Uncle Bought Me Scabs in a Box

    Looking at the output, I started picking through the threads AI threw at me. Scorpio rising? Ruled by the eighth house—the house of death, rebirth, sex, and secrets.

    Why, of course I’d been obsessed with the macabre since childhood. My uncle sealed that when he got my cousin a Fame make-up kit and me a latex scab set. Though all I really wanted was her red eyeshadow.

    Wednesday’s Child Is Full of Woe… and Fire

    It had been there since birth—the internal fire. I was a sleepless baby who bawled like I was demanding a refund for being born.

    Apparently, Wednesday’s child is full of woe. No one told my parents they’d been handed a miniature Witchiepoo with fight-or-flight as the only settings.

    As I got older, the urgency kicked in. The need to do everything now. The boredom that makes you bite your fingernails to the bone.

    That was my Moon in Aries—a box of fireworks and touch paper for a fuse.

    Pluto, Queen of the Chart

    At the cusp of the tenth house—career, public life, legacy—sat Pluto. There she was, filing her nails on my Midheaven like she owned it. And tbh, she did.

    Pluto: planet of transformation, death, rebirth, power, control—in my mind’s eye, a chain-smoking trans femme: fabulous gown, looking down with a steely stare and perfect makeup.

    The more I studied, the more I realised she wasn’t suggesting transformation—she demanded it. And if I ran away? She’d haul my ass back into line.

    Pluto made sure I had the hots for secrets, and life events that change your soul forever.

    My chart didn’t whisper a calling—it kicked the door in shouting, “Who wants a revolution?” Hence, I’m a girl you can kick to the floor, and I’ll come back sharper. Go Pluto.

    My Soul’s Purpose Made Me Poop a Bit

    The North Node is your soul’s purpose. Mine sat in that same tenth house, demanding I be public, fair, and collaborative in my work. Cue deep breath.

    Ha! Like, have you met me? Because:
    A) balancing anything is a real challenge for me, and
    B) being all out in public? Yeah, that’ll start a hot sweat.

    My life’s work? It tracked perfectly with what I find most challenging.

    House Party in the House No One Wants to Hang Out In

    A stellium is three or more planets in one house—a celestial hot pot. I had Mars, Jupiter, and Lilith all crammed into the eighth house. The house of death, rebirth, sex, and secrets.

    As if Mars the activator and Lilith the dark side weren’t intense enough, Jupiter made them both bigger, bolder, and impossible to ignore.

    My stellium was like trying to ignore someone talking loudly about their sex life in a sauna. 

    Madman Sends Texts From the Attic

    The fun didn’t stop there. Next up was Uranus—the cosmic weirdo. Wherever it shows up in a chart, it brings disruption.

    Mine was in the twelfth house, the celestial haunted attic.

    This basically meant I had Dr. Frankenstein upstairs, sending me intuitive Morse code via electric surges, sudden flashes of insight, and trauma dumping on me in my dreams. Those same dreams and gut punches that had suddenly become impossible to ignore.

    Death Doula. Wanted

    Basically, my chart was like:

    Hya luv, just letting you know you’re a shadow worker.

    But not just for you—for others too. Oh, and all that dirt digging you’ve been doing? It’s not a side quest; it’s the main event. Just one last thing… you need to do it all out loud, in public or it doesn’t count. OK, ta-ra!

    Reading the information was validating, to say the least—and whilst it was exactly what I was looking for, I was stunned at how eerily it made sense.

    The list went on.

    Hallucinating with Neptune

    Neptune represents dreams, spirituality, and intuition. Here it was, busting moves with Scorpio in my rising.

    This meant I’m dreamy, spiritual, drawn to the unseen, sensitive to my environment—but also susceptible to others projecting onto me.

    That reminded me of the times I’ve often been profiled, one of which resulted in my child not being diagnosed with ADHD until adulthood.

    Communicating or Excavating? Meh. Same Thing

    I found that Mercury, the planet of communication, sat opposite Pluto.

    The synopsis: I don’t do light chat. My brain doesn’t think; it interrogates. It’s either “let’s trauma bond” or “let’s nope.”

    I’m there, naming the thing no one wants to talk about.

    Great when your school drops its accreditation and you send twenty questions wanting to know the ins and outs of why.

    Not so great when your nephew doesn’t want to discuss his circumcision in detail.

    The Weirdo Upstairs Tangos with Fire

    Mars squared with Uranus meant these two aspects were in a challenging alignment, giving me a disruptive, electric signature.

    This may have been what my auntie meant when she nicknamed me “Miss Electric” aged nine—and why, when I had one of my dream downloads, I immediately started to dig into it like it paid my rent.

    Emotional Radio. No Volume Control

    Another tense alignment: Moon squared with Jupiter.

    What it meant? Big passion, enthusiasm, drive. Everything, just… big.

    Cue, my emotions having no volume—so I cry my balls out watching commercials and explode at traffic wardens when they’re trying to give me a ticket whilst I’m paying at the meter.

    Closing the Ancestral Loops

    The balsamic Moon. I was here to close out all the unfinished business of previous lives… the queue of ancestors who’d dragged me here, plus anyone up for rooting about in their drawer of secrets, apparently.

    My chart? A loop of death, rebirth, transformation, and shadow work. You’d think I was about to take off. But no, I got a Sun in Taurus in my 6th house. How kind!

    Thankfully I had a hearty dose of earthy stubbornness to keep me anchored in the house of work, daily habits, and service.

    Here, my herbal work rose, like a dandelion through the concrete. I wasn’t meant to drift off into la la land—thank the Lord—I was here to root it all into earth.

    I came looking for clarity; I got handed a job description. My herbal work, my volunteering, my dream journals, the ancestral baggage—they weren’t side quests.
    They were the whole flipping point.

    Apparently, this is my work. WTF.

  • What My Natal Chart—and AI—Taught Me About Ancestral Healing

    What My Natal Chart—and AI—Taught Me About Ancestral Healing

    A story about panic, purpose, and the ancestors who whispered through the code.

    Dreams, Distractions, and Downloads

    I wasn’t exactly sure what made me do it, but recently my hunches had been striking gold—so I uploaded my natal chart into AI. A month earlier, I’d dreamed of four ebony heads on a shelf in The House That Contains Everything, which I knew instinctively represented four ancestors. In hope for some validation that I wasn’t losing it, I hit send.

    I never expected to uncover the names behind the heads.

    I was meant to be studying herbalism, but since my last school hadn’t worked out (I talk more about that journey in Dandelion Tears), I found myself in limbo, waiting to start my new course. The break would give me time to regroup and reflect on the last year, but instead of studying, I’d started following a trail of vivid dreams.

    At this point, I was wondering if I was just derailing my studies with unrelated side quests. And yet, I was compelled to journal what was happening: my dreams, the stories that were unfolding, the coincidences. Were these all unrelated experiences, or did they somehow tie into each other?

    Words, poems, stories, and dreams poured out of me—not in a “hey, I’m a literary genius” way, but in a “this feels like a fucking raw transmission from God knows where” kind of way.

    Explaining any of this to my partner felt weird. In fact, only one of my friends and my therapist could fully get on board. I felt baffled—perhaps low-key insane—but I was excited, too.

    How would these experiences affect my future as a practising herbalist if I started to share them publicly? Would friends start sidestepping away from me, or perhaps blink and change the subject? How would LinkedIn react? Would it ghost me even harder? Probably.

    Consulting the Machine

    I’d been using AI as a tool to help clean up my stories (let’s say I can waffle!) and had started to use it to brainstorm how all of this—whatever this was—might integrate into my herbal practice.

    When I first started herbalism, I felt it needed to have a spiritual aspect for me, but I didn’t want to alienate people with anything too woo.

    Now, I was exploring rabbit holes, thinking: How the hell do I get this to work without coming across as bat shit? AI is a sycophant, and whilst I didn’t want to bore—or scare the tits off—those close to me, I felt like I needed a second opinion.

    The idea came from nowhere. Perhaps I could upload the natal chart I’d done a while back? Maybe there might be something in there that might guide me? Make me feel clearer about this bread crumb trail I was following.

    I can’t recall exactly what I asked AI at first, but the reveals were exposing. Apparently, my chart is a lot. Like, all fire and no extinguisher kind of a lot.

    If you know me, you’ll know what that means. Let’s just say, I felt seen.

    I asked it if the work I was doing had any alignment with my karmic life path.

    Unequivocally yes.

    I nearly shit myself when it said that part of my journey is to undo all of the past ancestral trauma dumped onto my chart.

    Like… what? I felt intrigued. I had a big box in front of me, and I wanted to know more about what was inside.

    So I pumped AI for more.

    Four Ghosts and a Dream

    AI helped me identify four main archetypal ancestral ghosts who had set up shop in my psyche and brought all their baggage with them.

    Four.

    The same number as the ebony heads on a shelf that I’d dreamed about a month earlier.

    The heads I’d sensed were ancestors.

    My emotions were mixed. This was eerie, surprising, and a huge aha moment.

    Who were these ghosts? I pressed again, over various chats with AI. Finally, I identified them:

    The Matriarch
    The alpha woman who should have had control—but didn’t, despite being the smartest person in the room. She carried rage she couldn’t express.
    She’d wanted to lead.
    I inherited the rage she couldn’t express, and a desire to control.

    The Sad One
    The one who equated love with usefulness and cared too much while putting her own needs last. Feared being a burden. Felt unseen and unheard.
    She wanted to be heard.
    I inherited her need to be useful, to work hard, and to do everything perfectly.

    The Silent Male Shadow
    The ghost who is absent and silent. He represents an abuse of power or emotional distance. There’s repression and a distrust of authority.
    He wanted to be seen.
    I inherited panic every time I feel seen—and a distrust in authority.

    The Mystic
    The ancient one who bestowed gifts of intuition, dream-work, and symbolic thinking. She’s a presence in my chart, not a problem.
    She wants me to remember.
    I inherited—so it seems—a capacity to download from the unknown.

    Detective Work from the Beyond

    But who exactly were they?

    I was now desperate to find out.

    I suspected that my Great Uncle Jimmy was the Silent Male Shadow, and that my great grandmother Cleopatra was the Matriarch, but I had no idea who the other two were.

    I decided the best course of action was to seek out an actual astrologer who specialised in ancestry. I found the perfect match and eagerly awaited their reply. But when it came to booking, I was disheartened to find that this sensitive one-to-one service had an appointment service run like a ticket hotline.

    I felt the frustration flex inside me. I started writing an arsey email—and then stopped.

    This was not my lighthouse.

    My lone wolf instinct took over.

    At this point, I turned back to AI. I uploaded natal charts for all my maternal and paternal ancestors and asked it to match them to mine.

    I’d considered how these people might feel about a descendant of theirs digging about in their inner worlds—but I felt at peace with my decision to know them. I believe that everyone wants to be known and seen by one person at least. Even if that scares them. Only true connection can come from being vulnerable and open. And besides, these guys clearly had something to say or they wouldn’t have been so persistent.

    AI helped me identify them through both archetype and synastry, and to avoid hallucinations and errors, I repeated the process again and again until I was confident.

    Over the course of two weeks and many chats later, I finally placed the key ancestors in my chart:

    Emma Beckett, my great-great-great-grandmother (maternal-paternal line): The Matriarch

    Cleopatra Beckett, my great-great-grandmother (maternal-paternal line): The Sad One

    James “Jimmy” Carney, my great uncle (paternal line): The Silent Male Shadow

    Catherine Heffernan, my maternal great-grandmother: The Mystic

    The four ebony heads from my dream had actual names. Life. History.

    I’d picked apart my ancestors’ charts like an astral forensic detective. I got to know their personalities, how their charts interacted with those close to them. I started to understand their fears, their hopes, what they carried—what they never finished and what they’d passed on.

    Having found so much accuracy and truth in AI’s interpretation of both my chart and my living relatives’, I trusted it to breathe life into my dead relatives too.

    And regardless of people’s personal opinions on AI, I found it helpful to bring those I never got to meet into life.

    What This Taught Me

    This whole journey has taught me something simple: things shifted when I started to listen and trust my intuition.

    Whether what’s happening is a self-fulfilling prophecy or I’m just creating meaning from what was already there—it’s irrelevant to me. These people had deep stories they carried in their lives. Stories they never got to resolve. Stories they don’t want to be forgotten. They need to be validated, seen, and healed.

    Since my sister’s DNA test kicked off this whole ancestral journey (I recount this in It Began with a Name), I never expected it to go so deep. What started as a list of blank names to be dropped into a family tree has evolved into identifying actual souls who’ve entrusted me to heal life wounds they were unable to resolve. And that healing request hasn’t just come down the line—it’s come sideways, too.

    It’s made me consider how I want to be remembered, what legacy I’d like to leave behind. Do I want to continue a story of  trauma forward, or do I want to leave a legacy of healing? Even if I started off on the wrong foot, even if I can’t heal all the wounds I was entrusted with, even if I don’t finish the work—just naming it, bringing it to life, holding it up and saying… “Nah.” It’s a start. It’s enough.

    It’s made me look at my herbal practice from a much wider perspective—that physical symptoms aren’t just mechanical failures of the body with the occasional emotional root. Maybe they’re also spiritual residues—unknown to the person, but still quietly shaping their lived experience.

    And for myself?

    I never considered that my panic attacks might have something to do with my great-uncle Jimmy, internal rage be the culmination of so many stifled female voices, or that bouts of depression might not belong to me but the sadness of a life of service born by my great-great-grandmother Cleopatra.

    Now, I’m not so sure.