By Renato: In astrology, Neptune is often associated with dreams, imagination, spirituality, compassion, and the desire to experience something beyond ordinary reality. However, when Neptune forms challenging aspects in a birth chart, its influence is traditionally associated with confusion, unrealistic expectations, and emotional disillusionment. I have previously discussed Neptune transits here on the LifeReader website read more…
By Chelsea: Few historical figures are as instantly recognisable—or as wonderfully unsettling—as the plague doctor. With a birdlike mask, hollow black eye lenses, and a long coat that seems tailor-made for a midnight funeral, this peculiar figure looks less like a physician and more like an omen that has learned to walk upright. It is read more…
By Chelsea: Some people inherit their grandmother’s eyes. Others inherit her silver jewellery, her collection of strange little bottles, and an inexplicable urge to investigate every creak in an old house. And then there are those who look at a birthmark or an unusual mole and wonder whether their skin might hold a story older read more…
By Chelsea: In the spirit of Halloween… Some plants have a reputation for their medicinal properties. Others are celebrated for their beauty, fragrance, or usefulness in the garden. And then there is belladonna, a plant that seems to have stepped straight out of a medieval grimoire, looked around, and decided that being charming was entirely read more…
By Renato: The 6th house in the natal chart is often greatly neglected because it is a cadent house — that is, a house associated with the end of a cycle and preparation for a new one. It is also associated with simple, everyday matters such as our daily routine, the workplace, employees and subordinates, read more…
By Chelsea: New Orleans has always been the kind of city where the dead seem to have opinions. They linger in cemeteries, appear in stories, turn up in family legends, and occasionally become more famous after death than they ever were while alive. Few people embody that peculiar New Orleans relationship with mystery quite like read more…
By Chelsea:Witches have never been particularly impressed by the idea that an ingredient needs to come in a velvet pouch with a Latin name to be magical. Give a witch a kitchen drawer, a handful of herbs, some string, an old key, and a slightly suspicious-looking jar, and she’ll probably have a spell going before read more…
By Chelsea: There are moments in life that make you stop and think, “Okay… that was weird.” You think about an old friend you haven’t spoken to in years, and suddenly they appear in your social media feed. You ask yourself whether you’re making the right decision, and then overhear a stranger say something that read more…
By Ann: There is something deeply powerful about beginning again. Every month, the Moon disappears from our view, becoming almost completely invisible in the night sky. This is the New Moon—a quiet point in the lunar cycle that has long been associated with beginnings, intention, renewal, and planting the seeds of what we wish to read more…
By Ann: I believed money was something that belonged to other people. I watched friends buy homes, travel the world, and live comfortably while I worried about every dollar that entered my bank account. The harder I worried, the more money seemed to slip away. I often lay awake at night doing mental calculations. If read more…
