Convergence Conference 2025

Cosmic Patterns Conference is a must attend for those who are interested in learning mroe about astrology. Check out the details at cosmicpatternsconference.com

 

2025's Must-Do Astrology Event!

24 global-impact astrologers are coming together in Orlando, Florida, March 7-9th 2025. Learn from them and meet your peers at this first-of-its-kind event. Whether you're traditional, vedic, vibrational or mundane-minded, you'll be privy to an accomplished lineup of leading-edge practitioners committed to achieving harmony and enlightened learning among approaches. We guarantee plenty of "a-ha" moments! Get updated, uplifted and up your game

The Most Haunted Places in America By State

A blog post listing every state would be way too long so here is the link to this fascinating article that lists the most haunted sites in America. To entice you to view the full list, here is the one in Pennsylvania:

Pennsylvania

Eastern State Penitentiary
Philadelphia
Known locally as ESP (already creepy), this 1829 prison originally intended to value reform over punishment. As you can imagine, with an isolated location on 11 acres of land and 30-foot fortress walls, that didn’t exactly work out. Instead, the Eastern State Penitentiary became a real house of horrors and the testing location for a number of "reform" techniques that included paranoia-inducing “panopticon” oversight, now synonymous with a constant threat of surveillance. Reports of shadowy figures, cackling voices, and ghostly guards on patrol have given this joint a reputation as one of the most haunted places in Pennsylvania. And with the mix of wicked pseudoscience, gigantic brutal architecture, and infamous inmates like Al Capone and bank robber Willie Sutton, it also serves as a perfect staging ground for nighttime haunted tours. —BW

Icelandic Witchcraft

Atlas Obscura reports on Icelandic witchcraft - a form that I have never heard of before. Very fascinating....

Iceland in the 17th century wasn’t the greatest time or place to be alive. Faced with natural disasters, constant coastal pirate raids, and a crushing class system that left all but the richest citizens living in stone huts, the Icelandic peasants of the time led a hard life. As is often the case in such situations where hope was scarce and education even more so, many of the people turned to witchcraft as a last resort to improve their wretched lives.

Of course, the practice was no more accepted in 17th-century Iceland than it was in colonial Salem, Massachusetts, and a number of accused parties were burnt at the stake. Interestingly the majority of the victims of the Icelandic witch hunt were male, as opposed to the overwhelmingly female victims in other parts of the world. The naturalistic magics of the time generally promised pragmatic outcomes—such as controlling unruly weather—although others had more esoteric, though still useful, effects—such as invisibility.

However, the defining characteristic of much of Icelandic sorcery is the oddly specific and elaborate rituals themselves, which often call for some bodily tithe or gruesome sacrifice. For instance, summoning a vengeful zombie required lots of spit and snot-licking. While many of the more insane workings were likely no more than folklore even in their day, and never actually attempted, they still make for some fascinatingly grim windows into the culture of the era. One of the crazier examples is the spell for summoning a creature called a “tilberi,” a two-headed snake-thing that would help people steal goat milk.

The tilberi was said to be summoned by first stealing a rib from a corpse only recently interred, then wrapping the bone with gray wool (also stolen, preferably from the sheep of a widow). This macabre totem was then to be kept between a woman’s breasts, during which time she must spit out her communion bread or wafer for three Sundays, and feed it to the fetish, which would slowly grow and become alive, until it was suckling the inside of her thigh, where it left a mark like a wart.

Once this gross creature reached maturity it would slink off to a neighbor’s land and suckle their goats’ milk until it was so full, it would roll back to its creator’s home to expel it’s stolen milk. Ugh.

But possibly even more stomach-churning than the tilberi is the legend of the “nábrók,” or “necropants.” These vile leggings were the main component in a ritual that was said to bring the caster unlimited wealth, although the requirements of the spell were so outlandish that simple back-breaking labor seems like a more attractive alternative.

According to the ritual, to create a pair of necropants, the sorcerer must first make a pact with a friend, stating that once the friend has died of natural causes, the sorcerer has permission to skin them from the waist down. Once the friend is dead, the greedy magician must then wait until the friend has been buried, dig up the body, and then skin the lower half of the corpse without creating any holes or tears, thus creating a pair of gruesome skin pants.

Once the “necropants” have been created, the caster must don the purloined pantaloons against his bare skin. Now the ritual requires that the sorcerer steal a coin from a destitute widow, and place it in the empty scrotum of the pants along with the magical Icelandic stave (symbol), Nábrókarstafur, written on a scrap of parchment. And that’s it!

The pants soon become indistinguishable from the wearer’s body, and so long as the original coin was not removed, the scrotum should continue to miraculously fill with coins for the rest of time.

The only known pair of necropants in the world (in actuality, a frighteningly realistic reproduction, hair and all), are now located in the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavík, Iceland, alongside models of the tilberi life cycle. The sickly translucent pair of empty legs is standing on a bed of dull coins, which assumedly sprang forth from the desiccated scrotum hanging above.

Harry Potter eat your heart out (unless that is a component of some horrible Icelandic spell).

Read more here.

Broken Mirrors Were Not Bad Luck to the Mayans

I don't know about you but I am extremely careful handling mirrors lest I crack or break one. Superstitions about cracked or broken mirrors predict 7 years of bad luck. However, for ancient Mayans, cracked mirrors were a portal to the world beyond. Nobles of the powerful Mesoamerican civilization conjured gods and ancestors in rituals centered around the objects as explained in this fascinating article on Atlas Obscura.

Highlights from the article are here as expressed by James L. Fitzsimmons, a professor of anthropology at Middlebury.

Some people fear that breaking a mirror can lead to seven years of misfortune. The history of this superstition may go back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, who ascribed mysterious powers to reflected images. As a scholar of the Indigenous religions of the Americas, I know that the ancient Maya had a different take on cracked mirrors. During the first millennium, the Maya used such mirrors—in cities from southern Mexico to western Honduras—as channels for supernatural communication rather than as cosmetic accessories.

Using hallucinogens, these nobles stared at their reflections, seeking mystical experiences. The cracks between the pieces resulted in fractured, distorted reflections, through which it was believed that people could talk to divine beings. The nobles hoped to find wisdom in the lands beyond mirrors, which they associated with gods, ancestors, and other spirits.

What is Astrocartography?

Thrillist offers a great introduction to Astrocartography as it pertains to travel.

Astrocartography is a growing travel trend, so we asked astrologer Lauren Ash to break it down for us.

It was only a matter of time before the worlds of astrology and travel made like two different planets and perfectly aligned, one engaging the energy of the other. The time has officially come—or if you ask Lauren Ash, professional astrologer at digital astrology platform Sanctuary, the trend has been simmering (in the US, anyway) since at least 2022.

Right after the pandemic, when revenge travel was in full bloom, many millennials and Gen Zers found themselves putting two and two together. "I think a lot of people [were] trying to get out and reclaim what they missed out on [in travel]," explains Ash. "And I also think that a lot of people had time indoors with themselves, and there was a big astrology boom during the pandemic, and so I just feel like it's kind of this natural mix."

That mix has a name, and it's called astrocartography. The trend is defined by Ash—who has been dabbling in it since 2017—as "the practice of using astrology to figure out where someone's energy is best aligned with the city they live or travel to."

Astrocartography goes hand in hand with a pre-existing travel trend, namely that of astrology-themed hotels. While those have been around for longer—The Ultimo in Sydney, Australia earned the title of the world's first zodiac-themed hotel since its opening in 2017—they seem to be living their renaissance right now. The Memphian hotel in Memphis, Tennessee offers an "Astrology Overnight" package, while Moxy Hotels—a.k.a. Marriott Bonvoy's hippest hotel child—launched its own partnership with digital astrology platform Sanctuary to give guest stays a starry twist.

To learn more about astrocartography and how it is playing into how we travel today, we spoke with Ash at Austin's Moxy, which recently hosted Thrillist for the 2024 solar eclipse. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Thrillist: You defined astrocartography as "the practice of using astrology to figure out where someone's energy is best aligned with the city they live or travel to." Can you elaborate on this?

Lauren Ash: When you are born, you have a birth chart that's created and that's an event chart. Similarly, every city has an event chart, has an energy, has an aura about it. Depending on your planetary placements and the energy of the city, sometimes you go somewhere and you're like, "Wow, I could move here." Other times you go, "I'm never going back here." A lot of astrologers believe that astrocartography, which is overlaying the birth chart over a map of the world, helps pinpoint those cities.

Is astrocartography used only to decide where to travel to or also where to move to?
It can be used for both. If you're going to do short-term travel, you would use astrocartography to find a city that you would have the best time in. If you're looking to take a romantic vacation with a lover, you might look to your Venus line because Venus rules romance, attraction, sexuality. Whereas some people go to a city, they get a lot of work done, they're like, "I've got ideas. I'm hustling here." That's probably more your Mercury, which is much more aligned to how you think communicate.

You've been into astrocartography for a few years now. What kind of travelers come to you for a reading?
You've got people who are moving and are trying to transition to a new part of their career, or a lot of times it's college graduates who want to know where they should go to start their life. And then I get a lot of "I’m starting my life over. I just want to try something totally new. I want an adventure." And you also get your vacation people.

Once you start their readings, what do they typically ask?
People always want to know "When am I going to meet the love of my life?" and "Am I in the right job?" So I find a lot of the astrocartography stuff, if it's not vacation, it's a lot of soul searching. I really do believe a city can speak to you the same way a person can. I really think that you can come alive in the right city.

Is a city going to be right for a person forever—whether it's for long-term or short-term travel—or does that change?
It depends on your solar return chart. Every year on your birthday, you cast a chart for the city you are currently in, and it creates a temporary chart for the year. So your static birth chart is like you, and then the solar return chart is like you for the year. If you cast your solar return chart in the same city for a while, you might love it. But the planets move, people change, and transits change. So there is a chance that at some point a city starts being stale to you.

Can you also find places and times not to travel somewhere?
Yes. If your Jupiter is having a bad time (that's long-term travel) or Mercury (which is short-term travel and communication), or even just if you're just in a chaotic space, there are times where I've told people, "Maybe push it three months."

I'm assuming you've been busy in 2024 given the record travel numbers?
Yeah. And then Jupiter is going to enter Gemini in May of 2025, and [starting in May of this year] we're going to have a year of that. I'm calling that the year of solo travel—Jupiter is expansion, knowledge, consumption of ideas and philosophy. And Gemini is very chatty, mercurial, very curious. They like to meet people, they like to socialize. If you've had that trip on your Pinterest board, if you want to do that solo trip back, if you've ever been like, "I could do a solo trip, I'm confident, I'm brave." Jupiter in Gemini is the time. Take a leap of faith.

Why do you think astrocartography is such a valuable travel tool?
I think that people are looking for something that feels more personalized than the hot travel guide. I think people are looking for the hidden gems before they hit the front page, and astrocartography can put cities on the map for you that you wouldn't have thought of.