Published
Astrology is cringe. Crystals don’t work. Tarot cards are stupid. I’ll tell you why.
As a kid, I always hated the dark. I hated sleep and I hated the silence that came with it. I always felt like I was being watched, or like I was experiencing a nightmare before I was asleep. I never really said any of this out loud. What do you even say? “There's something in my room, but it's not a ghost.”? “I saw a woman at the edge of my bed, but she's not real.”? I just figured I was “too sensitive.” That's what adults always say. I constantly felt like I was being briefed by an invisible narrator. I would wake up from a dead sleep because someone I love was crying in a different country. I’d have a dream about your breakup, but I’d sit on it until…it actually happened. And still, I was just too sensitive.
Looking back, I know I wasn’t imagining things. No one ever told me how to handle that. They just told me to go to bed. I was too young to know how to protect myself, and set boundaries with the unseen. No one teaches you how to spiritually lock a door.
The word “psychic” still makes me flinch, but something shifted when my grandmother died in 2021. Three weeks before she passed, I found out she had been a practicing medium up until my grandfather died in 2002. She denounced it after that. Said she couldn’t bear to speak to the love of her life “from the other side.” She turned her whole life over to Islam instead.
After she passed, I started having visions. One vision in particular stood out: a ring that belonged to her. I’d never seen it before, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I asked my aunt if my grandmother left me a ring. She said no. Then, a few weeks later, she found a locked safe in my grandmother’s bedroom. Inside was a single item. It was the exact ring I’d seen, a Palestinian amber ring.
The heirloom was passed from my great-grandmother (another respected medium in the community) to my grandmother Suad on her wedding day in 1959.
“How did you know about this?” my aunt asked.
“I didn’t,” I said. “I swear. I just saw it.”
That was when I started listening.
I don't ask my intuition to explain itself anymore. I let her speak to me like one of my girlfriends (always with love). I don't always understand the message in real time, but I don't need to. I've made peace with it. Some things are only obvious in hindsight, and I’ve learned to let that be enough.
Somewhere in the midst of all this, I picked up astrology. I’ve always been thirsty for knowledge, and I wanted to pick up a new skill. I took classes twice a week online and kept it mostly to myself because again: astrology? Cringe. But I got good at it. Scary good. I’ve always been bad at math, but for some reason, astrology came easily to me. Probably because I wasn’t treating it like fortune-telling. I was treating it like what it actually is—pattern recognition.
I wasn’t using it to predict soulmates or a vibe. I was now tracking global affairs.
Over the last two years, I started using astrology to forecast and compare the independence charts of colonized nations. I noticed eerily consistent patterns. I created a series where I tried to astrologically trace libration. Jupiter-Pluto aspects (freedom and transformation). Venus-Saturn aspects (peace and borders). Moon-Venus conjunctions (ceasefires, justice, emotional culmination). I used those patterns to map possible outcomes. And that’s why I say astrology is cringe, because what we think astrology is today, online, is a flattened, sparkly caricature.
This is astrology you don’t see anywhere else. This isn’t Mercury retrograde memes or “your ex is coming back” messages. This is actual political divination that should be seen as deep, historical, and predictive work the same way we view the stock market.
True psychic power isn’t in the cards or the crystals. And true mastery of self is realizing that you don’t need anything except trust in yourself.
A few more examples: I had a vision in 2020 of Kamala Harris wearing a Christopher John Rogers suit at the 2021 inauguration, and then she did. Yes, the visions get that frivolous. Then there was Coach’s inevitable comeback. I saw that too.
Last winter, I was drinking wine and eating pizza with a close friend who’d just lost her dog Charlie. I pulled out my tarot cards to see if we could channel him (women aren’t talking about boys during our free time. We’re channeling our pets). I had a vision then of Charlie on a purple blanket, next to Alex’s sister (who had also moved out of the family home and also owns the blanket). Then, I saw Charlie breaking his back. I didn’t know that had happened. But it had.
I don’t call myself a psychic. Or an animal whisperer. I just say that I know how to read energy really, really well. I learned to embrace my gifts, and to strengthen them, by honoring my ancestors and sharing what I’ve been given with my community. I stopped feeling shame around something so rare, so instinctive, and so mine.
There are many ways to know things, and sometimes, a Google search just won’t cut it. We’re always told to “go deeper,” but depth cannot be found in data. It lives in your body. All of our bodies.
Humans have been tapping into psychic abilities and using astrology as a tool for thousands of years. It’s one of the oldest technologies we have. So ask yourself: Why do organized religion, governments, and people in power ridicule it or forbid it altogether? Because they know it works. It was J.P. Morgan who said, “Millionaires don’t use astrology. Billionaires do.”
Honestly, my favorite moments are on dates with skeptical, logic-brained men. The bros. Men who don’t believe in anything until I pull out their chart and ask them questions I shouldn’t know the answers to. I never ask for a man’s birth time. He always gives it to me.
That alone should tell you everything you need to know about my skills.
