Natal Chart Scrying: Combining Technical Knowledge & Spiritual Practice
Every placement in every chart is described as much by the individual’s unique relationship with the planet or sign as by the technical interpretation of it.
Intuition & The Numinous
My astrological practice is at once technical and spiritual: rooted in the study of Hellenistic and Modern astrology, yet inseparable from cultivated relationships with spirit. While technical calculations form the backbone of my readings, it is through intuitive, inspirited contact that their fullest meaning unfolds. To me, astrology without spirit is a map without terrain—precise but lifeless.
Although my practice honors the technical tradition, its choice fruits are borne of the same materia as all my magical work: cultivated relationships with spirit. When reading a natal chart, I am reading a person’s entry point into this world, a locus connecting them to the earthly, the spiritual, and the celestial across time. Primary information comes from careful study of the chart; secondary information arises through an intuitive process, woven together with the technical to provide counsel for body, mind, and spirit.
Whether one frames “spirits” as unconscious psychic structures (à la Freud or Jung), as culturally-constituted archetypes, or as living presences in an animist cosmos, experiences of the numinous may be seen as a querying or remapping of forces onto our fuzzy-math, line-of-best-fit, vibe-checked evaluation process: human intuition. Or, in Lacanian terms, as a conversation with the discourse of the Other.
Regardless of mechanism, cultivating relationship with spirit adds a holistic richness to interpretation that cannot be replicated by pure technique. While much of astrology is deeply technical—and I hold great respect for this—I find that when I intentionally invite embodied, spiritual, and ancestral knowledge into a reading, more nuanced interpretations emerge, ones that reflect a client’s unique relationships with the stars, planets, ancestors, and spirits who show up with them.
In my own practice, this invitation is also an essential component in decolonizing astrology: moving away from absolutely deterministic fatedness and generic, cookie-cutter psychological astrology. Calling upon my own spirits and inviting those of the client, I look beyond technical calculation alone by scrying both the chart and the person it belongs to. Every placement in every chart is described as much by the individual’s unique relationship with the planet or sign as by the technical interpretation of it.
What is Scrying?
Scrying is an ancient practice of gazing into matter: water, flame, smoke, glass, or even digital screens—to receive information through images, sensations, or sudden knowing. What is seen may foretell future events, elucidate the past, or provide revelation, guidance, or inspiration. It exists across cultures and ages, adapted to the materials and cosmologies at hand.
I view scrying as another form of spiritual relationship: building a shared language with the spirit of what is being scried. Only through repeated trial and error does the information become reliable. As with all spiritual matters, relationships or pacts with governing spirits can ease the process. This blending of technical astrology with visionary oracular methods is hardly new; Ancient astrologers often doubled as diviners, and Renaissance mages like Ficino and Agrippa worked with both the math and the spirit of the heavens.
Scrying a Natal Chart In-Practice
In my astrological and astromagical work, I have cultivated relationships with the spirits of planets, fixed stars, asteroids, nodes, and more. These relationships, like human ones, are nourished through consistency, offerings, praise, and care; they ebb and flow with astro-weather, with world events, and with time. By knowing a planet’s subtle character, I can intuit beyond the limits of technical interpretation. While many astrologers use mythology or archetypes, I emphasize explicit relationship with the planets and asteroids as spirits—what I call spirit-led scrying.
Preparation before a reading often follows this sequence:
- During the planetary day and hour of the chart ruler, I light incense on that planet’s altar.
- I ask for assistance in reading the chart while moving the printed chart through the smoke.
- With basics (rulers, sect, malefics, etc.) already established, I begin to scry the chart—sometimes receiving just a few insights, other times so many I switch to a voice recorder.
- Notes are made in the ink of the chart ruler and then transcribed alongside the chart for the session.
During the reading itself, I scry both the client and their chart. From the client, I may receive impressions about how they embody their chart—where energies show in the body as pain, vitality, or temperament. From the chart, information usually arrives as narrative, literal or metaphorical. Occasionally, spirits are insistent that I convey something specific; in such cases, I wait for three confirmations before sharing.
Charts, in this sense, do not live in abstraction: they breathe, ache, and shine through the bodies that carry them. Reading a chart is also reading how it is embodied in muscle, bone, affect, and gesture.
What Information Can Be Scried from a Natal Chart?
The information varies depending on a client’s relationships with planets, ancestors, land, or other spirits in their court. Sometimes I receive impressions of neglected offerings to an ancestor, sometimes warnings about health, sometimes foresight about changes in work or home. At other times, the scry reveals the presence of supporting spirits whose influence might otherwise remain unspoken.
On Responsibility
While I privilege technical interpretations in my readings, I weave them together with scried insights confirmed in dialogue with the client. As someone offering counsel, I am responsible for the impact of my words. I take a conservative approach: if information is not clearly in the chart, I state so. If I share scried impressions, I present them provisionally, allowing the client to situate their truth.
Ultimately, one should trust themselves and their intuition when choosing to act on or respond to divined or scried information.
Invitation
If you are curious what it feels like to have your chart both calculated and scried—interpreted through numbers and through spirit—book a session with me here.