Sacred Truths

Master Astrologer Mary Kate Jordan

April 14, 2020 Emmy Graham/Mary Kate Jordan/music by Manpreet Kaur Season 1 Episode 2
Sacred Truths
Master Astrologer Mary Kate Jordan
Show Notes Transcript

Master astrologer Mary Kate Jordan, once a student of renowned astrologer Alice O. Howell, has been in practice for over 40 years. She offers her work to the world from the Jordan Center for Creative Insight in western Massachusetts. 

The core of her intention, Mary Kate says, is to help her clients wage inner peace and open the doors on which the fiercely compassionate Spirit of Joy is knocking. In addition to translating the symbolic soul-language of clients’ birth charts into useful English, she has developed Astro-Alchemy and Ancestral Patterns Astrology. 

Astro-Alchemy combines her years of training and experience in astrology, hypnotism, shamanic counseling, and Buddhist studies into a modality of practical support for women and men on their own spiritual journeys. Mary Kate’s work with Ancestral Patterns Astrology helps people to embrace the strengths of the lineage lines which brought them to life, and to release the bonds of inherited burdens which they may have interpreted as their own. 

Clients report that one of the benefits of working with Mary Kate is that they feel an ability to live more fully, productively, and mindfully than ever before. Find out more and contact information at thejordancenter.com.

Music by Manpreet Kaur, @Manpreetkaurmusic

www.sacred-truths.com

Mary Kate Jordan Transcript

Mary Kate: We live in a culture which values the world that we share; the physical and social world that we share at a higher level than this macro culture values internal landscape. And so, folks aren’t given any clues to the fact that A) they even have one or B) it’s the most rich environment, the most fertile environment, the most amazingly dynamic place of creativity that we could possibly, possibly have.

Sacred Truths with Emmy Graham 

Master astrologer Mary Kate Jordan, once a student of renowned astrologer Alice O. Howell, has been in practice for over 40 years. She offers her work to the world from the Jordan Center for Creative Insight in western Massachusetts. 

The core of her intention, is to help her clients wage inner peace and open the doors on which the fiercely compassionate Spirit of Joy is knocking. In addition to translating the symbolic soul-language of clients’ birth charts into useful English, she has developed Astro-Alchemy and Ancestral Patterns Astrology. 

Astro-Alchemy combines her years of training and experience in astrology, hypnotism, shamanic counseling, and Buddhist studies into a modality of practical support for women and men on their own spiritual journeys. Mary Kate’s work with Ancestral Patterns Astrology helps people to embrace the strengths of the lineage lines which brought them to life, and to release the bonds of inherited burdens which they may have interpreted as their own. 

Clients report that one of the benefits of working with Mary Kate is that they feel an ability to live more fully, productively, and mindfully than ever before. Find out more and contact information at thejordancenter.com.
 
I spoke to Mary Kate at her home in Western Massachusetts in 2019. 

Emmy: Good morning, Mary Kate, thank you for being with me today.

MK: Good morning, Emmy, it’s wonderful to be here, thank you.
 
 Emmy: In your words, astrology is a translation of the symbolic soul language of your birth chart. Can you elaborate on that? 

MK: Sure. A birth chart is a visual image of the moment of time and space where and when each person took his or her first breath. My experience or understanding or metaphor for this is it was the moment when you or I or anybody else, with that first breath said, “Yep, I’m signing on for this, I’m here, I’m breathing, I’m part of this particular continuum.”

And the chart is an image of where the Sun and the Moon and the stars and a few abstract points and asteroids, and other things were in the astrologically related zodiac at that moment.

And so, there are patterns that mathematically correspond to expectations as to whether they show oh, patterns of support, patterns of challenge, that kind of thing. And so, I believe that soul, that is the essential part of each of us, is what ignited that first breath. And so, it’s the soul saying, “Yes!” And so, translating what I perceive as language into useful English for clients, is something that I’m really am grateful to have this skill and the heart and wisdom to be able to do.

Emmy: How old is astrology, do you know?

MK: In the West, I know it goes back to Mesopotamia, and there has been suspicions in some quarters that part of what those ziggurats were for to be able to get a really clear view of the night sky from a height, and there are also theories about worshipping, worshipping, the sky father or the sky entity. But there are also other theories that said while we’re up here let’s take a look at what patterns we see.

Emmy: And how did you get interested in astrology?

MK: I had graduated from college and still lived nearby and I went to the college bookstore one night. And I came across this little yellow paperback book called WRTE YOUR OWN HOROSCOPE and I literally thought, well, I don’t have anything else to do tonight, (chuckles) so I picked it up, and on the inside, I will never forget this, because it said essentially look, we’re a paperback book for the masses. If what we have to say about your chart doesn’t ring true, get over it, we’re a paperback book for the masses. So, I went through and read what they had to say for my own. Big yawn. No big deal.

Read the one for my brother and nearly dropped the book, because it had two factual things, they were either going to be true or not true and both of which were true. “Oh my god, how do they do this? this is really scary, how do I find out more, no, this is really scary but wait a minute.” And so, I put the book away, just had it in my library and didn’t open it again. Moved about a year later, it was one of the things I packed and took with me. 

So, I began to explore; there used to be and may still be a bookstore in Manhattan called Weiser’s Bookstore and back in the day it was the source for any esoteric material and so I would go down to Weiser’s and developed at that time a massive astrological library and I found a teacher, and after a while I began to take that out into the world and that’s where things started after having had some training and a whole lot of research and written material. 

And then later I had tremendous, tremendous support from my mentor who was a woman named Alice O. Howell who started being a Jungian based astrologer about the year I was born, so obviously Alice is no longer with us but I took a what she called a Master’s class for working astrologers here in the Berkshires, and she was quite an amazing mentor.

Emmy: What was the moment like when you knew you might be good at this. 

MK: Well, there were two moments: When I had been studying and had that initial teacher in New York, I had that, that thing that happens then you really know something that’s absolutely fabulously exciting to you and has changed your life, but you haven’t actually gotten any wisdom in it yet when I went out and went “Wow, I can do this!” and was hot-shotting around NY doing readings and I remember a day when I sitting with a client in his apartment and I had this sudden awesome and awful awareness of the amount of authority he was giving me and nearly got up and ran out of the apartment. “I don’t have any right to this!” But, finished what I was doing, went home, turned away from it and went on about my life. Then went through a lot of personal process and had assistance with that. 

And when I went back to the work, I went back in a much more grounded place and began to move forward to a place anchored by prayer and surrendering to the wisdom that is there in the work, not, “Oh, yay! Look what I’ve found!”

But, oh, here is this language that your soul is speaking to you and I’ve been given this gift in being able to translate this for you in some way. Let’s see together what this resonates with for you as the person whose chart this is. Whole different perspective. And then I began to know I was doing it well by the feedback from the people whose charts I was reading. 

Emmy: And it wasn’t about you, anymore.

 MK: Right, except as in gratitude for being able to be a bridge and to bring this wisdom through. I’ve referred to astrology also as the art and science of compassion and that is where I think the soul wisdom is. It develops the capacity to go, “Oh! Self-compassion” and “Oh! Compassion for the other.” It changes everything.  

Emmy: Yes. Rather than a form of judgement. 

MK: Yeah. Judgement has no place there. Discernment has a lot of place. Only take what you hear in this reading that resonates with you. I can misinterpret things. But if it resonates with you as a client, take it into your wisdom, and see what unfolds. 

Emmy: And presumably, the more life experience you have, the, I don’t want to say, the better you get, but-

MK: How about ‘the deeper’. 

Emmy: The deeper you get, yes. 

MK: Yeah. I’ve been doing this for 50 years. More than 50 years and I’m still learning. It’s a living system and it’s very alive in me and the capacity to be able to help someone else awaken to it whether it’s for the purpose of an hour and 15 minutes with me and they go and change a couple of things in their lives or feel a little more at peace. Or whether they want to then start to learn to speak the language matters less than oh, there’s been a connection made with the soul.

Emmy: I’ve had readings from you. Well, when I was younger you definitely gave me insight that I didn’t know. But I think also it verifies things that I already know.  How much of your work do you think is verifying and clarifying things that a person already knows, in his or her internal wisdom, but just maybe hasn’t found a way to access this wisdom.

MK: That’s what I meant by being a bridge because it’s the pattern of the soul of the chart of the person I’m reading, so it’s all already there. We live in a culture which values the world that we share; the physical and social world that we share at a higher level than this macro culture values internal landscape. And so, folks aren’t given any clues to the fact that A) they even have one or B) it’s the most rich environment, the most fertile environment, the most amazingly dynamic place of creativity that we could possibly, possibly have.

And so, yes, this chart reading that you have had, and that others have had awakens an awareness of what is already known and also has aha moments about whatever dynamics are going on in this shared world, that have brought up the need for this wisdom, or the capacity to bring this wisdom into a useful place.

Emmy: I love the term ‘internal landscape’. 

MK: It’s a real one for me. I’m a very visual person, obviously I’m reading a very visual   When you take the elements of astrology: fire, earth, air, water and space, to me they make landscape, so it’s like looking at, “Oh, this part looks like it’s desert, and this part is waterfalls and the water is moving away from the part of the landscape that could use some. I wonder how you might want to build an aqueduct, (chuckles) let’s take a look at that.” 

Emmy: It sounds familiar to Chinese medicine! 
 
 MK: In many ways. I believe that Oriental astrology and Oriental medicine are still in their most traditional way, twin sisters. Western Astrology is a somewhat different system, but hey, we’re all people. 

Actually, my integration of the element ‘space’, so there are 5 elements aligns my work more in that way with the fact that there are 5 elements so differently described in the Eastern World rather than just with the four that are considered in the traditional western astrology. 

Fire, earth, air, water are the creative building blocks, acknowledged in the west in Medieval times and it was spoken of as the fire within, the earth, the air and the water within and the humors of the air and so on and so forth.

Well, since that time we’ve developed more language that we share that has to do with expanding our understanding of ourselves and the world. 

And I still go with those medieval language but I also include the understanding that “Hey, you know, space and time are actually something called ‘spacetime’; it’s a one thing!” And it’s the particular spacetime when an individual is born that the chart is constructed around. So they are all integrated in that way. 

Emmy: Right, which is why time and place is so important. 

MK: Why time and place is so important. I can do something like rectifying a chart which means that if you don’t know your birth time, there can be work done to refine it. When I first started working, I did not have my own birthtime, it was not on my birth certificate. As an adopted person, who knew? So, I went with what I assumed, and it was ok, it was not bad. But when I got my birth time, oh, yeah, that fit. Very rich in that way like changing a fabric from, oh, cotton to silk. Nothing wrong with cotton, but I like the feel of silk on my skin. 

Emmy: I remember sitting in this room with you, and it was 20 years ago shortly after my mother died and I was coming to you for a reading in the middle of it you were looking at various aspects of my chart, and I believe you were asking me questions about my career, and such and I remember just being like a….. feeling completely numb inside and saying, “I have no idea how I feel about that, I have no idea what’s going on.”

And what struck me was you looked at me and just said, “You’re grieving, you’re in the middle of grieving.” And you switched gears completely in terms of where you took the session. And it became a session that evolved around the fact that I had recently lost my mother and how was that impacting me and where do I go from here. 

And at the time I just felt rather embarrassed, and uncomfortable but greatly relieved that you could structure the session around that immediate need that I didn’t even recognize, I was so numb I didn’t know I was in grief.

And I just marvel at that that you were able to do that and just switch gears like that and direct it to what I needed in that moment. 

MK: (a little choked up) Well, I hardly know what to say about that, so give me a minute here. Thank you. That’s part of being present to read the chart because the chart and the session belong to the client. 

You know, when I’m working with a client in my office or on zoom or on a conference call, we show up together to do this work. In addition to having the chart, we’re both present. 

And even if it’s a grandmother having a chart done for a baby, we’re present together energetically because we’re a lot bigger than our bodies. We connect through a web of energy which is intimate even at a distance.

In the culture that we live in we tend to keep our distance here in the west. If we had been raised in a tribal culture here in the West or in a tribal culture in India or in the Middle East, we would be much more comfortable with being physically close to each other because there is the shared tribal aura, the shared tribal energy, so you get closer because you are part of that matrix.

Here we are very much at a distance from each other energetically. But that web and that connection are still present even through the differences.

So, part of what I do, as any attentive listener or meditator would learn to do over the years or anyone who has had skill with being present for another in a serving capacity learns to do, is something feels like it needs a change and to risk asking the question or making the statement. 

“You’re grieving…. Okay we’re going THERE!” Because I deliberately listen for that as well. What is up, sometimes it’s “I’m talking about your career, for example, and it’s not going anywhere.” 

So, one of the things I might ask a question, or I might look at the chart and see if something else lights up for me. I’m looking at the 10th house and career but something else calls and I’ll put that aside for a minute, what about this. And often that will open the doors because it is a dynamic, it is a dynamic between ….it’s being read soul to soul. And so, my soul taps my personality on the shoulder and goes, (sarcastically) “She’s not interested in her career at the moment!” 

(Emmy and MK both laugh) 

Emmy: Oh! 

MK: Thank you! (to her soul) I’m glad you’re here. I do invoke spiritual guidance before I work. That’s the difference between what I was doing in my initial, “Aha, look what I can do, isn’t it exciting, don’t you want some?”  and the way I’ve worked over the last decades is that it is anchored in prayer, it is anchored in Spirit, it’s anchored in guidance and calling forth mine and the guidance of the client whether present or not.

 Emmy: It seems like in your early years you needed to learn it intellectually.  And “isn’t it fascinating, isn’t it fun how this works,” and that was part of your training, too, it seems.

MK: It was part of my training, too, and actually, I’m grateful it was only a year. Because I then moved up to Massachusetts from Manhattan and I was involved in a healing center, and I was asked to teach some astrology and I sort of went, “No way, Jose, not going there.”

 And they said “think about it”, and I softened and said, “If I can teach one sun sign a month, for a year,” (because we were doing a two-year training for people), “If I can teach one sun sign a month, for a year, I’ll do it.” And so, we made that arrangement and I went deeply to my own inner landscape to my own guides and said, “If I’m to do this, I need to know what I’m talking about, so show me.”

And about 8 months into it, I had this “aha!” moment that every single month I had been given experience in my life that completely mirrored the dilemmas of whatever that sun sign were and the resolution of those dilemmas. Month by month by month. And I could not be more grateful of that. So, after a couple of years of that and hearing people tell me what had happened for them in a reading, as a result of a reading on or after that, I began to say, “Oh, good, thank you, we’re a team, we have the green light, we have ignition.” 

Emmy: And our struggles become our greatest teachers.

MK: That is so true: our struggles become our greatest teachers.

Emmy: You’ve also said astrology readings are like rainbows. You know what they are and what you think you expect but their natural beauty is always a surprise. This sounds much like the unfolding of a soul’s journey in a given life. Would you elaborate on this?
 
 MK: Sure. Soul’s journey in a given life, well, that’s who shows up as my client. And I have decades of experience, I have decades of learning, I’ve been gifted with some
wisdom and it’s different for every single reading because that’s the soul who shows up. That’s whose reading this is, and so the colors of the rainbow may be slightly different or a lot different; the amount of the arc that is visible may be different.

When I went out to Hawaii years ago, the time and place while I was on the Big Island, all of the rainbows I saw, and there were plenty of them, they were gorgeous, looked more pastel than rainbows I see here. Go figure! But rainbows can be different, it’s the same kind of thing, I guess it depends on time and place just like the readings. 

Emmy: How do you know, I’m going to use the words ‘translating a chart’, how do you know when you’re translating a chart so that it lines up with a client so they can actually hear it. 
 
 MK: I’m not always sure, so I’m simply say what I see as truth knowing that I’m speaking truth to power, the power being the person whose chart it is. And when I do know it’s because of the responses of the individual because I know I’m doing the best reading I know how to do. 

I’m responsible for what I offer, but I’m not responsible for how it is received. Hopefully, I create a climate for the individual where any resistances are softened. 

One of the things about giving a gift certificate to someone because people sometimes get so excited, they want to give people gift certificates which is great and often it’s a wonderful gift that people receive well. Sometimes people call or show up going, essentially (shyly), “Hi, I’m here, I have a gift certificate from my Uncle Fred.” 

Emmy: (Skeptical) “I don’t believe in this stuff.” 

MK: Yeah, and my response, great, you’re here, you’re skeptical, or even if they don’t say I’ve got a gift certificate, it’s like, “You’re here because you have that gift certificate, right…!” You actually want to be here. (laughs)

And often I sometimes hear, not often, but often enough, that I now ask, is like, “No, he kept saying I really should do this, so I’m doing it.” 

“Great, so let’s take a look at that! It’s important to know that this doesn’t mean anything to you. Actually, if you would like to go home and tell your Uncle Fred that he can give this gift certificate to somebody else, ya know, go ahead. Otherwise, let’s explore this.” 

Emmy: And gracefully let them exit if they wish. 

MK: Absolutely. Often, it’s…when it’s a dilemma, it’s only a desire to do something the other person wants them to do and of course I want to do this even though I don’t. That’s a great act of love to be willing to do it even if you don’t want to do it. 

Emmy: Yes. 
 
 MK: Also, a great act of truth to be able to say, “I don’t want to be here.” The resistance I think is also is walking into this office particularly on a gift certificate, you may be walking into more unknown that you may want to walk into. And in those old Medieval times, the maps at the edge of the known world said, “Here be dragons!”.

I want to honor, you may feel like you’re going into a dragon’s lair and you may be expecting me to breath fire when I’m talking about the fire elements, so let’s talk about this.

Often as we are having a conversation and I turn into just a person in another chair who happens to do this very strange to the client thing, that we’re able to communicate.

Emmy: And you’re very approachable. (laughs)

MK: Good. Good. Outside of sitting in this office, I’m this regular person 
 with a regular life who has laundry and has to go food --

Emmy/MK (Together) shopping!

Emmy: Exactly. It kind of reminds me of my brother insisting I go to a Kundalini Yoga class and I had absolutely no interest. And he begged me and begged me and I finally went and was hooked after my first class and became a teacher. 

MK: Yes, exactly that same kind of thing. Sometimes even the people who nag you know what they’re talking about. 

Emmy: (laughs) I only went so he’d stop bothering me about it.

MK: That’s what I’m talking about: the people who show up because somebody bought them a gift certificate and won’t leave them alone. So, if you buy them a gift certificate, don’t leave them alone, sometimes they know. 
 
 Emmy: I’m also struck by what you spoke of when you hit on someone’s truth and it’s not your responsibility how it’s received and that has played out in my life when I teach yoga, it’s very much the same thing. You’re just a tool and you immerse yourself in prayer and when you speak the truth you know it, because you can feel it, you can feel people responding because they’re hearing it and whatever way they need to hear it. 

And the same thing when I’ve done body work. It comes through you; it is not from you. and you know you’ve hit on something that need to be hit on, if I’m using the right word here.

MK: Oh, you sure are. Sure are. I’ve had phone calls or emails, saying, “You haven’t seen me in about ten years, but ten years ago you said something that had impact on me. Well, good. Good! Glad you were able to still reach me. 

Emmy: I’ve had those moments with you. Yes.

MK: Yes, we have! Good.

Emmy: Let’s talk about your latest area of interest: Ancestral pattern astrology readings where the emphasis is finding threads of ancestral patterns, stories and experience. Can you explain this?

MK: Oh, you’ve touched on something dear to my heart. Part of the reasons I couldn’t say, “When was I born, Mom?” is because I was adopted as an infant. My mom didn’t know. All she had was the information she and Dad were given when they adopted me.

And I’m one of those adoptees that always wanted to know. It wasn’t I wanted to march out of my nurture family, it was I wanted to know, “Where did these blue eyes come from?” I wanted to know story. So, I started looking when I was very young. 

Emmy: You knew you were adopted. 

MK: My parents did an amazing job. This was the (excuse me) late 1940’s, early 1950’s back before dinosaurs, ya know, vanished and they raised me with “We chose you, your mother couldn’t keep you, we wanted the best life for you, so here you are isn’t this wonderful.” And that was all true. And, I’m a writer, I wanted story. I just kept wondering, well, what’s the other story? There’s this story and I was very involved in it, but what’s the other story? 

I was raised Catholic, so there was also this concept of the communion of saints, and those who are not present are nevertheless still connected. So, because of my family background and being an adopted person and being intimately connected to my nurture family who is my first love and right there, and my blood family who is my other love. 

In navigating this kind of discovery, about two months, no it was the month after I met my genetic relatives face to face for the first time. That’s its own story. But there were I think, fourteen of us around this table having lunch one day. And I was the most ecstatic deer in headlights you’ve ever seen.

And navigating that for myself, I found a book by a man named Dr. Daniel Foor called Ancestral Medicine. I bought the book and looked at the book, and lo and behold! He was also doing a series of online classes on ancestral healing.

So, I signed up for the classes and finished the first cycle of classes, and I’ll still go back and finish the second cycle just because my life with my family took off and I needed actually to live instead of studying more of it. But the most profound things of the many things I received from Daniel Foor’s work, was the awareness of radiant ancestors.

That no matter how messed up the family has gotten in the meantime, somewhere back down every family line, there are ancestors who are healed enough and whole enough that they are operating from that clear light place; they’re not operating from agenda, not operating from their own wounding, not operating from there need to have something done, not operating from a need to have something do what they didn’t have the time or space or resources to do but operating from clear light. 

Now I realize this can look pretty almost incomprehensible given some of the dilemmas that we are in personally at this time and the dilemmas we are in culturally at this time. 

But I began to for my own sake and the sake of my families, invoke the radiant ancestor, and I know it helped me and what I have seen as a result of doing this, things that I didn’t have anything to do with except invoking the ancestors, and things that had been stuck for years, unsticking, just amazing things happening by virtue of calling on these ancestors. 

As I said, I grew up Catholic and there was this concept of the communion of saints, it’s like having the communion of saints in your own family and it’s true. There are these radiant ancestors. They know what the lineage needs. They know how to help provide what the lineage needs and they want to! 

Emmy: And it is again, spirit is flowing through them. 
 
 MK: Spirit is flowing through them unencumbered by the stuff.
 
 Emmy: I have heard this; they talk about this in in Yogic philosophy; that we can carry seven generations worth of stuff in us. It’s in our DNA, I think science is starting to prove this fact. So, for example, if your grandparents lived through a terrible war, you may take on that trauma yourself and you don’t even know where it came from. Does this also effect that kind of heritage whereas if you do the work now, you’re also effecting the people who came before you who are not even here anymore 

MK: Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Emmy: And it effects the generations not yet born. 

MK: Absolutely. There’s this web; it’s not simple vertical or horizontal. It’s a web and all of the parts are connected that we can’t or can’t see at all. 

I’m also really sure that we are affected by much more than the experiences of seven generations back as immense as that is, and when you get much further back, we’re all connected anyway by DNA. 

One of the things that I find fascinating about epigenetic research is that what seems to be specific to the near past generations, is that what effected our grandmothers at the time of their conception birth, so let’s say during that year, seems to be what’s passed down. The traumas, and the joys, so on, of that period of time. 

What comes down from the grandfathers, seems to be what affected them and what was going on around them at the time of their sexual maturity. (Smiles) And so when the seed is ready, that is when, that is when, the impact happens.

For whatever reason, for the grandmother around the time of her birth, and the grandfather around the time of his sexual maturity, are what seems to be passed down more clearly.

Emmy: That’s fascinating. And it also sort of mirrors, not that I know much about family constellation therapy, but it seems to mirror that work if you’re familiar-

MK: It sure does mirror that work. I had a client the other day who was aware of carrying things down, that had come down her mother’s line.
 Where did the family come from? And great grandmother lived in Kiev at the time of the Pogrom. It was perfectly for her explained what had been going on most of her life in terms of her responses to her life. Not to circumstances as much as to her responses.  She responded as if …(ahhh!)

Emmy: Yes, exactly, it makes no sense to us unless we know this information. 

MK: And it doesn’t go away. It something that seems to repeat. Where did this come from? Why in the world would I be…I know better than this. 

Emmy: It doesn’t go away, right.

MK: It doesn’t go away because it hasn’t gone away.

Emmy: Right. And interesting there are some meditations in Kundalini Yoga that I’ve been told when you do them, it will start to break that up and it has to do with the back of the brain. The lower stem when you hold certain positions and postures, you’re putting a pressure there, and it can release this. At least I’ve been directed to that way in certain meditations.

Let’s talk a little bit more about how Ancestral Pattern Astrology, how you work that into your sessions, or if you do. 

MK: I do. 
 
 Emmy: And we had a session where you worked with this and what was fascinating to me after that is, I also had a Family Constellation Therapy session so there’s both of those happening almost simultaneously, well not simultaneously, but at similar times. And what happened to me, I connected to my aunt who was estranged from my mother for 46 years. My mother, of course, has since died and I felt it wasn’t coming from my head, it wasn’t an intellectual decision, it was some motivation to connect with this woman, and I did and she received me and during this trip to NY I was able to visit her in Ithaca.

And so, the matrilineal line was strong, and, you know, I really liked this woman and there was so much sadness about what could have been between us if we had known each other, she is now 88 years old. But what an amazingly terrifically strong episode in the story of my life to connect with her and to feel like I had the support of my mother and my grandmother. 

MK: (silence). I’m almost speechless on two fronts. And your daughter’s along on this trip?

Emmy: She was with me.  
 
 MK: I just want to say to anybody who may be considering Ancestral Pattern Astrology, don’t do it unless you’re willing to have change in your life, don’t do it because they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re doing.

Emmy: Well, can someone come to you for an Ancestral Pattern Astrology reading or do you weave it quite naturally without even explaining what you’re doing?
MK: Both ways work. But I have started to focuse on my websites specifically Ancestral Pattern Astrology because I find it so rewarding both for the client and me as the practitioner. It goes where I would hope to go with my other readings and do, but this is more focused. This is more, I want to say, deliberate from the point of view of the soul. People who show up for Ancestral Pattern Astrology, seem to be drawn by their own ancestral guides that say, “Show up here, there are some things here we want you to know, there are some things that we want you to be aware of.”

Sometimes it’s about limitations that have been burdens that the individual has taken on. Maybe knowing that it’s family heritage or maybe thinking it’s all them.

Mostly, it didn’t start with us, we carry it along, we pass it along, but mostly, it doesn’t start with us, and that by itself understanding some of the deeper roots of our dilemmas can be so liberating. 

Emmy: Very liberating.

MK: And on the other hand, there are gifts and talents that are maybe inexplicitly have not been nurtured or understood. So sometimes it’s about liberating gifts that have not been fully liberated and also about releasing burdens.

Emmy: When I met my aunt, I was so struck at our similarities and how different she was from my mother. And my aunt studied science and loved animals, outdoors and nature, things that didn’t interest my mother at all. My aunt lived in Ithaca and I’ve been drawn to Ithaca, and almost moved there. And wanted to go to school at Cornell where my aunt went for some time. I was really taken by the similarities. It’s fascinating. 

So, someone could come for an Ancestral Pattern Astrology reading to heal the lineage and/or heal something within themselves that they don’t understand. 

MK:  Yes, on behalf of that lineage as it continues and don’t forget there are aunts and uncles and cousins; it’s not just this a vertical line, it’s this web. 

Emmy: Right, so people are being affected--

MK: People are being affected unconsciously because this web is a spiritual web, this is spiritual work, this is not psychological work. This is the spiritual matrix in which, when push really comes to shove, there is only one of us here embodied in all of our individuality

Emmy: And is it because you’re calling on these, light beings, I think you described them, ancestral light beings?

MK: That’s a good phrase but I’ve been saying radiant ones, but light beings works really for me too. Ancestral Light Beings. The ALB have come in. 

Because this matrix is what is at play here. Because the Creator of the universe however you configure that, has it as such, that through evolution, through intentional design, through whatever, you know, there was this pattern when any of us was born, that’s not random in the world that I live in, and particularly not in my inner landscape. It’s not random. It is meaningful, it is story.

We live in a culture where what seems to be acknowledged and supported as real is what is physical and tangible as the primary. Even to the point where the arts are considered superfluous and not funded. And from my own point of view, if you’re teaching the arts, you’re giving the people, the children the opportunity to discover they have soul, and without the arts and the access to the inner landscape that the arts give, but the arts are soul making.  

Emmy: Well, and the arts are a way for us to express our souls. 

MK: Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you get to higher mathematics of things, you are in the realm of art anyway. When you get to the high sciences, it is as much art as it is science. Because it is so whole. Everything is so… the search is for integration, the search is for, ahhh, what comes together here, what is true and beautiful.

Emmy: Yes, there is beauty in a well-balanced mathematical equation. 

MK: Absolutely. 

Emmy: In kundalini yoga, the soul is connected to what they call the subtle body. The subtle body is very close to the soul so whenever you are subtle are refined, especially in the arts, that little bit of ‘we need a little bit of oboe there”, “we need a little red in that painting” “turn your hand like this when you dance.” It’s those subtleties that really connects you to the soul. 

MK: And you just described what had me saying, “Oh, you’re grieving,” or has me go to another part of the chart if it feels like this is, this is bouncing back at me. There’s sonar in your subtlety. (laughs)

Emmy: Right. Among the things you do you also work to help others restore a sense of the sacredness within themselves, within their homes and within their everyday lives. You actually serve as a guide for sacredness, or perhaps one might say you provide a sort of a road map to one’s divinity. Would you agree? 

MK: Well, that’s what I’m referring to by the soul’s message in the chart. Here is the spiritual place you stand in. Here is the part of the body of the divinity you are resonating with. Again, going back to my childhood, there was reference to the Body of Christ. And as with any body, there are cells that are part of the hands that help reach out or give. Cells that are part of the eyes which see and receive and can give and receive through light. 

There are feet to stand on to be stable. We each have different roles to play in this body and I believe that as we are akin to and aligned with our soul’s message in the chart, we fulfill our purpose in the body of the creator of the universe who is still active, alive, and well and very present in this present moment. 

Emmy: How do you find sacredness in the day to day? 
 
 MK: As we can tell from looking out the windows in this room, I am blessed with living in a very sacred place which at this time of year in August is green and lush. And I get to look out through the space time, object, earth, air, and water, that’s one huge thing. 

Meditation. Time alone. Doing what comes to hand you have to do as a meditation. I live with someone who loves to do dishes, so I don’t get to do the dish meditation which brings me great joy. (giggles) However, I cook, (laughs) and that becomes the meditation. 
 This is on a good day you understand, this is when I’m not going, “Oh, man, I think I’m going to grab a hard-boiled egg and throw it on,,.” Because I’m in the throw in on the salad mode.

 So, it’s, ideally, it’s being in the present moment. I am part of a Sangha following the Plum Village tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh. I believe this is bringing me more and more in alignment with my own chart, and my own soul, my own aspect of Divinity, because as I become more and more authentic and let more and more fall away by being present in the present moment, there’s more reality as there’s less grasping. And in terms of the chart, looking at the chart, as you know from your own, there are all those lines of force and connection across that center circle. 

Emmy: Yes. 
 
 MK: Well, that’s the activity we encounter as our work in the world. If you make that center circle, if you go behind all that activity and let that be behind you and you’re looking at that empty radiant light, that’s who you are. 

That’s the Buddha nature, the Christ Light, the Atman, of whom we are each a hologram. So, I look at and work with the client with all of the activity which is the work of the clear light, which allows the clear light to manifest more fully.  

Emmy: And is the work of the physical life, yes?

 MK: Chop wood. Carry water. Yes. Absolutely. Doing what comes to hand. If what you are here to do is to teach school or be a waitress, and I had a mother who did each of those jobs, that’s what you do. You do it fully. If your job is to interview, you do it fully. If your job is to be an astrologer, or an interview subject, you do it fully. As they say, that is the point after all. 

Emmy: Has there ever been a time when you doubted and your work saved you or gave you a reason to keep living?

MK: There have been times I have not had a clue what was up. And I deliberately do not look at my chart often because I don’t want to go, “Should I breathe this morning, what does the chart say?” Inhale already!

Emmy: (Laughs) 

MK: But when I’ve hit a wall not knowing what’s going on,  I will go to the Ephemeris, ‘where is everything now,’ and I know my chart well enough to say, “Ohhh, of course, that is squared this!” And the aspects conform with what I’ve been looking at, oh, that. Ah ok, yes.

In terms of saving my life, I think, I know it’s the radiant ancestors who’ve done that, we don’t need to go into the nitty-gritty details, but yeah, they have. Once I know it was mother and grandmothers praying for me. And I also am aware it must have been the ones who are radiant way back who got me out of a couple of really gnarly places. 

Emmy: It harkens to the Catholic notion of saints. 
 
 MK: Doesn’t it? 

Emmy: Yes, and how earnestly we pray to those saints and still do in some ways. 

MK: We still do it in some ways. That if I can’t find something, it’s still “St. Anthony I’m looking at it, going, something is lost must be found, look around, because I don’t see it!”

(Emmy laughs.)

Emmy: It’s really quite lovely to know we are not alone. 
 
 MK: Isn’t it? Individualized. Yes, responsible for how we respond in this life. Nothing is somebody else’s fault in that way. But when we cast blame that way, we immediately exonerate ourselves. Yes, people can be at fault. We are at fault, all of us at times and sometimes it’s just devastating. 

Thich Nhat Hanh has some poetry in which he has expressed his belief, and it is also mine, that no matter what someone is doing, if I had been born at that same time in that same place under those circumstances, I might, I might not have, but I might respond exactly the same way. Which doesn’t make those things that get done that are devasting okay, it means what can we do now to rebuild. 

Emmy: And it opens our compassion. 

MK: Which is, after all, the point. I think compassion is this fuel that motivates creation.

Emmy: And we can have our compassion for ourselves especially when we’ve mess up. 

MK: Isn’t it interesting how when we’ve messed up, we tend to criticize and blame which actually is just another way of hanging on to the capacity to mess up. 

“Oh, I’m so stupid, I just messed up, again!” It’s a free ticket to do it again and again, and that’s called guilt. Guilt is so useless. What’s really useful is remorse. 

Remorse is ‘oh my god, what I did hurt you,’ or “oh my god, what I did hurt me.’ 

Emmy: How can I change this?

MK: How can I… what can I do to change this. Maybe I can’t make amends to this. But I will do everything I can to not do it again. 

Emmy: And that brings it around to Astrology. I think some people might hesitate with Astrology because they feel like you’re sort of dictating one’s life. And in astrology there is always choice. In life, we always have choice, yes? 
 
 MK: Yes, there is always choice. There is the choice to even consider coming for an appointment, there is the choice to show up, and there is the choice to take in what is said as true for you or not. 

And one of the things that is part of my basic premise of working here is, “Listen, if what I’m saying does not make sense to you, ask me why I’m saying it because I could be using familiar language to you in a very different way and mean something different.” 

Or I could be coming from a whole different part of the archetypal gestalt that this planetary glyph shows that isn’t relevant. So, I perceive my sessions as dialogue. Asking questions is not only not stupid, it’s a really good idea. And if anyone wants to comment on, either, ‘that really doesn’t have anything to do with what I recognize as part of my life,’ or ‘Oh, yeah, let me tell you how that played out last week or in my childhood,’ any of that is really welcomed because what that allows us to do is to get deeper into wherever you as the client are on a continuum of your growth and development through navigating this pattern. 

It will also get closer to what the ancestors have been saying…I think what they do is they hand things down to us: the gifts, “Here you go, enjoy this!” and with the dilemmas, “Sweetie, we’re sorry, we’ve all done the best we could do with this. And we hope somebody says, “You know, this stuff stops with me.” And so, we get closer to, as we are in dialogue, the places that are precisely “Oh, I didn’t realize I could actually do this.” Or, “I didn’t realize that it might be safe to use this talent.” Or “Oh, Man, I don’t really have to become a bricklayer when I want to become a lawyer, or I don’t have to be a lawyer, when I want to become a bricklayer.” 

Emmy: Yes. And I have often used the analogy which helps me, in astrology, that it’s kind of like getting a weather report. You can go have the picnic and take the rowboat ride on Saturday but it is going to thunderstorm, so you may want to rethink that.

MK: Or at least you may want to make sure that you have something to bail the boat and that you’re wearing the right gear. Go out in the rain if you want to, but be a little forewarned. 

Emmy: Or you understand, “I’m always bailing the boat! WHY!?” 

MK: Maybe I should go back and find out why I feel like I’m under this raincloud. Maybe it didn’t start with me, maybe it’s not just this picnic!” 

(Both laugh)

Emmy: If you had a motto to tell others what would be it be? 
 
 MK: We talk about waging war and we talk about giving peace a chance. And what I would offer to all of us is that it’s time to wage inner peace. It’s work. It takes preparation. It takes intention. Peace in the world, peace inside doesn’t just happen.

Here and now is where the power is and how we use that power makes a tremendous number of ripples in the force. So, using that power to wage inner peace particularly when the environment isn’t particularly supportive of that peace and taking care of ourselves so that we can. Finding the tools which support it. Taking the time. Taking time alone. Taking time in nature. Go to what is sacred to each of us.

Go to the cathedral, or the mosque or the temple. Go to Yosemite National Park. Go! Bathe in it. Do Forest Bathing. Do it in your inner landscape as well. So yes, I do, at the best of what I do help bring people to the sacred within them and to express that in the environment.

And I invite people to ask more about that by contacting me. I am, currently, this is summer 2019, currently in the autumn I’m doing an experimental online community building called “Sacred Hearth (H-E-A-R-T-H) School” not Sacred Heart but “Sacred Hearth School” of which our own sacred hearts are the center. “Sacred Hearth School” for the purpose of using these tools which are astrological, the elements and so on, and all other sacred mythologies and things like this to help people understand and express soul in the world. Whether their soul is already deeply connected with a religious tradition which can be anchored and amplified and given more ways to express with the addition of this other soul language or whether they feel that they are currently without soul language. 

 I’m planning at this point to begin again in February of 2020 so anyone who is interested in information or in having a reading as a way of using these gifts for themselves in the world, or there is even Astro Alchemy because I take clients who are interested in doing so. 

Then, on an Alchemical journey of opening up with support, with guidance of sessions, that take the material they’ve encountered and open it up with the tools that I’ve received in my other training. I’ve been given access to tools which are not psychological tools but they are tools of support, ways of using language in a supportive way through hypnosis, as well as through the astrological work to go deeper into what is most useful now, what is most available now, what is my soul longing to manifest now, and what are some steps that I can take. 

And as with everybody else in the planet, it’s always good to have somebody else there to bounce things off of, to hold your hand when needed, or to be running behind you with their hands on the back of your sudden two-wheeler without its   training wheels and you don’t know when they let go, but you’re doing it on your own. There is a lot that available. As I said, the form is still in flux, but I’m looking forward to expanding more community building online and as well as having access to community building one on one with clients. 

Emmy: Mary Kate, thank you so much.

MK: Thank you for spending the time here, Emmy. It’s a delight to see you again. 

Emmy: Same here. 

Emmy: This is Sacred Truths with music by Manpreet Kaur @Manpreetkaurmusic. My guest today was Mary Kate Jordan. For more information go to www.thejordancenter.com

Please visit our website at www.sacred-truths.com. Thank you for listening.