The Hot Doctor Essay

Three years ago, desperate to find others who studied astrology with my shared level of depth and commitment, I took it upon myself to Google “astrology conference,” unsure if such a thing even existed. To my delight, it did, a short 2 hour flight away, coming up in just a few months. I went out on a limb and embarked on a solo journey there, knowing nobody, but open to anything—and it quickly became what I’d consider the best weekend of my life. I was plunged into the depths of a world I hadn’t realized could get any deeper. I made real friendships. I felt more alive than I ever had. I spent each day attending complex lectures, then each night attending hotel room parties, chatting into the wee hours of the morning with other astrologers, just to do it all over again the next day.

Immediately upon leaving the conference, I promised myself I would return every single year for the rest of my life, whatever the circumstances. (Extreme, I know. Blame my Scorpio ascendant.) But seriously. It’s hard to put into words how special this place is. It’s a place where hundreds of fellow astrologers, magicians, and heretics gather together and are at last no longer outcasts, but the majority for a single weekend. A place where you can dwell in houses, aspects, and degrees. A place where you don’t have to justify yourself, your sanity, your credibility. A place where, finally, everyone around you speaks your language. On the flight home, I wrote in my journal,

“It was like a family reunion with people who speak my native tongue, the language of symbols. The only place I could ever meet strangers while waiting in line for a drink, exchange basic birth information, and be asked in return, ‘Damn girl, how’s your body?!’ before even sharing my name, let alone anything of my life story or precarious physical health. How wildly refreshing it is to let people see you and know you without the burden of explanation. Sweet relief, to let the symbols do the work for you. All my life, I felt I had to put so much work into translating myself to others. How lovely it was to be surrounded by fellow translators.”

And how, exactly, did a stranger know my physical body was suffering from my birth data alone? Well, I have four planets in the sixth house, a demarcated section of the chart that the ancients considered to be among the most misfortunate, associating it with sickness, slavery, self-sacrifice, and service. The sixth house speaks to conditions of struggle, subordination, endless toil, and its toll on the body. If you’ve read my writing over the years, you might know that I was forced to spend my childhood sacrificing my body to my serial child rapist father as he turned me into his sex slave. You might also know that the ramifications of this early abuse, and its impact on my body, unfolded into chronic illness in adulthood—specifically a connective tissue disorder that leads to frequent physical injuries. Injury to the body is one of the primary significations of the sixth house. You might connect the dots further and note that as a result of these conditions, my life has been devoted to service—writing about these topics, advocating for survivors, and researching the epigenetic links between illness and abuse. The significations of traditional Hellenistic astrology are strikingly literal. So, when I briefly gave my birth information to fellow astrologers in line at the bar, with my loaded sixth house, it was simple for them to intuit my physical body was carrying a heavy weight.