on spiritual discernment

this month's episode of "ask jeanna"

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Earlier this summer, we had active conversations in the astrology for writers Discord about the role and practice of discernment in astrology. One Discord member asked,

Per our convo in ⁠[the] general-astro [channel] - and this is intentionally vague/open ended — what does “discernment” in astrology spaces mean and look like to you Jeanna? How do we move through magical practices and astrological spaces with an open mind to the more-than-human while still keeping ourselves grounded? Are there red flags? Does the concept of “red flags” even apply in astrology/magic spaces?

In an era of widespread disinformation, “fake news,” and plummeting media literacy, cultivating the skill of discernment is more important than ever. I like how the Cambridge Dictionary defines discernment: “the ability to judge people and things well.” How do we judge the quality of a person’s expertise, of an idea, of a concept? Whether it is “true,” if there is a capital-T truth available in our epistemology, or whether it is sound or useful? This is discernment, and it is vital to cultivating a healthy, hearty, and resilient spiritual life.

So, what does discernment look like in astrology spaces? Perhaps I can better orient us by telling you what I don’t think it is:

• Trusting teachers or teachings just because they’re popular

• Reacting (to notifications, to horoscopes) from a place of fear or anxiety

• Not doing your own due diligence and research

• Believing what someone else tells you about yourself, or your spiritual life, rather than trusting your own experience

• A reliance on outside sources and inability (or unwillingness) to confirm the validity of your own experience

Discernment is built on a foundation of self-trust. On the ability to trust your own mind and experience as well as an awareness of your own perhaps-not-always-great tendencies. Self-trust means not unilaterally ceding authority over your life to a teacher or a practice. It means being able to say no. Can you disagree with teachers, writers, or artists you admire and respect? Can we hold nuance for people to be both wise and profoundly human, to not feel parasocially betrayed when our fave singer does something we personally wouldn’t do? So our first step in cultivating discernment is in trusting ourselves, and, from there, sifting and sorting the information we take in and apply to our lives. This can look like developing mindfulness practices (meditation, journaling), going to therapy, or reading books that speak to your own tender trust spots (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents was revelatory for me).

So much of astrology these days is written for clicks. I would know; I’m not just an astrologer but also someone who has worked in marketing and content for multiple major astrology apps. I’ve written about how Co-Star, for example, explicitly uses manipulative marketing tactics to put its readers in a reactive place of fear or anxiety. Which is both big business marketing 101 but also, particularly in a spiritual field, deeply unethical. In a way, when I’m talking about spiritual discernment, I’m really asking you, also, to think about your media literacy and relationship to your phone. Do you trust everything that crosses your feed? Or are you applying a critical eye?

I want to clarify that, to me, spiritual discernment is not the ability to automatically “know” whether a particular fact is “true.” For example, I in no way expect astrology beginners to know anything about more technically advanced practices in the field like planetary condition or triplicities or whether an astrologer is describing those things accurately. What I do expect is that, if you are presented with a newsletter or podcast or book, you can discern whether or not what someone is saying is for you, or is coming from a place that inspires trust. For example:

• Is something written from a position meant to amplify anxiety or negative emotions? (Think Co-Star and popular meme accounts; the former I loathe, the latter is humorous but should be taken at face value for what it is, which is entertainment.)

• Is an astrologer using words like “always” or “never,” or otherwise speaking in declarative extremes that don’t allow for the nuance of individual experience (or of communities that are not their own)? Are they insisting that a particular astro event will look a certain way in your life, no matter what?

• Does this astrologer cite their sources, their teachers, their lineage? Are they sharing where they learned, or is that information obscured?

• Does the writer or teacher invite dissent? Or do they have a “my way or the highway” attitude about their spiritual practice? Do they encourage you to seek out other teachers, or are they trying to get you addicted to their hot takes?

Normalize asking your teachers, where did you learn? How did you learn? Who did you study with? What astrologers are you in community with? What is your personal code of ethics? Where is the source for this interpretation? In addition to personal gnosis, there are sources to be found in astrology as a field, some of which date back thousands of years. (Btw, all of my answers to those questions are here.) Unlike other spiritual fields like tarot where personal gnosis and being self-taught is the norm, astrologers do have a deep bench of teachers, mentors, and professionalizing classes and programs with which to develop their skills. And beyond that, look at who they are in community with. Or if they seem to be in community with other astrologers at all.

It is easy (and helpful!) to use astrology to reach for a more holistic understanding, of yourself or others or the world around you. It is a slippery slope, though, in then using astrology to try to reach for a false sense of control. My fellow astrologers tend to avoid directly addressing criticisms of the field, like how it is prone to confirmation bias. However, purposeful or not, confirmation bias is a primary way that people use astrology to give themselves a false sense of control — even if that sense of control is to affirm that the world is ending. Pluto is in Aquarius! We failed our Pluto Return! Of course the US will devolve into war. And so on. Questioning whether an interpretation (of our own, or of a teacher’s) challenges or supports our worldview and why is important. Astrology is at its best when it puts us in conversation with the world around us, when attention helps us more deeply attune to our own natural rhythms, which ultimately helps us decouple ourselves from the dominant culture’s capitalist commitments.

It should be clear by now that, to answer the querent, yes, I do emphatically think there are red flags in astrology and magical spaces. But there was also another question related to discernment that I wanted to be sure to speak on.

How do we move through magical practices and astrological spaces with an open mind to the more-than-human while still keeping ourselves grounded?

This question feels a bit tangled for me, as understanding the world as enspirited and moving between the other-than-human and the mundane feels very normal for me. I grew up in the evangelical Christian world with a mother who had… extra-spiritual teachings for me, let’s say, funneled through the lens of Christianity. She told me not to talk to spirits I didn’t know when I was very young, taught me how to check whether something was or was not “of god,” showed me how to feel the energy in a room, advised me to never turn a stranger away lest they reveal themselves to be an angel. I have heard Spirit since I could walk; I’ve just interpreted the source differently over time. To me, slipping between the spiritual and the mundane feels very normal, because I trust that all of those experiences are “real.”

But being open to the other-than-human doesn’t require checking reality at the door. And in this, a deeper conversation around discernment is dependent on not only self-trust, but also on worldview. Is your worldview one where the magical and the mundane co-exist and mutually support each other? Is your worldview one which sees the land, the creatures, the flora and fauna as inherently enspirited and wise? And do you participate and collaborate with the land and other-than-human around you accordingly? In this more animistic understanding, I light candles at my ancestor altar and then do the dishes, talk to my dead and then to my partner, and it is part and parcel of the same moment. There is little risk of slippage (unless I’m doing an explicitly consciousness-altering thing like journeying, in which case yes, there are absolutely physical tethers to make sure I don’t get lost in the Otherworld).

It bears noting that sometimes the other-than-human forgets that we humans are corporeal. My ancestors are real and a very lived part of my life, but I do have to remind them that I live in a human body, that I get sick, that I have financial limitations, that I have a house that needs to be cleaned. (And so if they would like specific things done in a specific time frame, can they please help facilitate that?) I am so grateful to one of my primary teachers,

Briana Saussy

, who routinely talks about how the altar needs to be tended, and the cat needs to be fed, and this is all spiritual work.

Really, discernment is just another part of mindful living, of paying attention. Discernment gives more weight to our yes, more heft to our beliefs. When we are willing to say no to things, when we are willing to question, and also when we take intentional action from a place of trust rather than fear, we become more deeply attuned to that which deserves our devotion.

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