luke dani blue astrology

Dear readers and lovely clients,

hello!! It’s been a minute and I’ve been getting lots of questions by email, so an update seemed due. Apologies for bullet-point form, but my brain is too dang tired for complete paragraphs. I bet a few of you can relate!

A LOT has been happening in my life during covid times:

• Got cancer–not the astrological kind–and did a bunch of surgery and chemo in 2019-2020. Knock on wood it is all gone and won’t be back. I have about a year left of follow-ups before my prognosis goes from “very good” chance that I’m cured to “excellent.” The lingering “symptom” I’m dealing with now is long-term chemo-brain, which is similar to the symptoms of a mild concussion: my memory sucks and it takes me too long to write blog posts.
• The seagoat blog is kaput (see above). Sorry peeps! Good news is…
• I am doing lots of client readings, and feel more inspired and connected in my counseling/consulting than ever, as I figure out how to use astrology to aid my own and clients’ connections to their embodied, present-tense experience.
• Just got back home from a summer roadtrip through the U.S. and have added a number of new appointment times to my September and October calendars, including new reduced-fee and Covid readings (which are now called “Global Crisis Readings”, cuz lez be honest, the world is on complete fire and you’re probably as likely to be screwed by covid rn as by floods and war).
• Free covid readings are done for now (sorry, folks), but Global Crisis Readings include a $25/45-minute option for those whose incomes have taken a bad hit. $75 low-fee depth readings for new and return clients can now be self-booked. Seriously, though, if you need one of these options, use it. It’s there for you, without need for justification or apology or whatever. Historically the demand on these discounts is low enough that everyone who requests one gets one, and without causing yours truly any financial pain.

In Luke’s-other-hat news….

• I sold my first book!! It’s a collection of literary-fantasy (?) short stories, Pretend It’s My Body, that comes out from Feminist Press in 2022. This Capricorn is very excited and proud! You can keep up with the book and my writerly self on twitter @lukedaniblue and my artist website, lukedaniblue.com
• I’ll be doing final edits through the end of ’21, so if I’m quiet on the internet, that’s why.
• Relatedly, no more seagoat blog. Seriously dudes, I can only maintain, like, 3 activities max. I love working with clients, and I love writing fiction, and it turns out my spouse also wants me to do some of the housework?!??!? WTAF. If you’ve got a beef about the blog, take it up with Mr. “80-20-Is-Not-An-Equal-Division-Of-Labor.” (So unreasonable! But that’s a triple Cancer for you.) Suffice it to say, you can definitely book an appointment with me for the forseeable future, but i am never going to tell the world the ten reasons it shouldn’t date a Leo.

ThE FUTUrE oF sEAgoAt AStROLoGY

• First: there is one! A future, that is.
• I have so many ideas I want to explore starting next year. I don’t know much but this is what I think so far:
  • keep doing 1:1 readings
  • incorporate creative writing (?!?) teaching with astrology
  • a central focus on healing trauma/childhood trauma (sometimes called complex PTSD) via astrology, as a tool for clients to use in conjunction with or to support more formal/traditional therapy etc.
  • some kind of mindfulness thing
  • virtual classes – writing + astrology???
  • some free offerings?

Stuff I’ve read recently that I am integrating into my client work:

• Matthew Salesses – Craft in the Real World –> Technically, this book is about teaching creative writing but contains smart insight into how our value systems and cultural experience show up in how we tell and interpret stories. Since astrology is really all about how we turn our experiences into stories (for better and worse) and find meaning in them, this feels particularly relevant. 
• Besser van der Kolk – The Body Keeps the Score –> A wonderful, clear primer on how and why trauma, especially trauma in childhood, affects us so deeply; lots of nitty gritty on trauma as a physiological experience, as well as what helps us live with that muscle memory. Love the author’s emphasis on living with our difficult feelings rather than healing them. This is so much how I think of the difficult parts of our charts, esp. Chiron and Saturn whose seeming permanence can feel very scary. Yet as van der Kolk explains, living with pain (of trauma, but perhaps of any sort) without being overwhelmed by it alters our experience of it in profound ways, ways many of us assume we can only access with “healing”. His book is reminding me that living inside our bodies is a learnable skill, as simple (and hard) as breathing.
• Elyn R. Saks – The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness –> A memoir of an accomplished teacher and psychoanalyst who disguised her psychotic episodes for years in order to maintain agency over her choices and mental health care. This visceral reflection on where the suffering of mental illness comes from challenged ideas I had not known I held about the “duty” of a community to intervene in someone’s apparent self-harm. Yet it also underscores the impact that self-neglect and denial have on our loved ones. A complex and impassioned book that rejects easy answers even as it illuminates an invisibilized experience.
• Eden Robinson – the Trickster trilogy –> a hilarious, heartbreaking literary-fantasy series by an ardent Capricorn (represent!) whose playful view of problems older than colonization and enemies more fearsome (think: ogresses with vengeful were-stepchildren and pissed off, ecoconscious otters) fills me with a perverse hopefulness that this dark age in which we live shall pass too, that life, in its myriad moods, shall continue, as it has for so long.
• Merve Emre – The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing –> A good reminder for anyone in the quote-unquote healing arts to be skeptical of your most strongly held beliefs. And do your very best to not start a cult. Or an MLM scheme. It’s a slippery slope!
• Megan Giddings – Lakewood –-> Along similar lines as the above, this surreal, upsetting, hilarious, awful, brilliant novel, in its dark AF satire of racialized medical exploitation is a good reminder about hype and slogans and how easily wellness can be a cover on a, well, racial genocide program? Also I do get to talk to a lot of people about their career dilemmas and this book really hits the nail on the head re: jobs we tell ourselves are fine when they are literally making our eyeballs fall out. Maybe not literally, literally. But maybe! Anyhoo, denial will fuck you up. That’s my takeaway.

Welp, that’s all I got rn! So much love to you, dear astro-friends. I hope you book a reading so we can see each other’s faces (or not!) soon, cuz human connection is WHERE IT’S AT.

Love,

Luke