How Astrology Just Might Help You Succeed with AstroTwin Ophira Edut

Erin: Welcome to Hotter Than Ever, where we uncover the unconscious rules we've been following. We break those rules, and we find a new path to being freer, happier, sexier, and more satisfied in the second half of our lives. I'm your host, Erin Keating.

As longtime listeners to the Hotter Than Ever podcast know, I am a somewhat skeptical believer in all things woo. I would not call myself woo per se, I am more woo adjacent. So when I met my guest today for the first time, I was delightfully surprised by the fact that although she has built a very successful astrology business--yep, Astrology business--over the last 25 years, I was surprised by the fact that she is super bright and intellectual and not at all who I thought of when I considered what an astrologer would be like.

My guest today is Ophira Edut. Along with her identical twin sister, Tali Edut, they make up the astrologers known as the Astro Twins. They are the longtime resident astrologers for Elle magazine. So if you've ever read the horoscopes in Elle magazine, that's their work. And they are the authors of over 20 books. These ladies have been very busy, and they just released a book with Simon and Schuster called "The Astrology: Use Your Horoscope For Personal and Professional Success", which is a whole new paradigm for interpreting the stars by simplifying your birth chart into three archetypes. It's really straightforward.

I bet you're dying to know how any or all of this applies to you. Some of you might be going like, oh, my God Erin, Astrology. No. You will be surprised by this conversation. Ophi and Tali have been on Bravo, MTV, Good morning America, the Today show, and they created the astrologically informed dating show "Cosmic Love" for Amazon Prime. Their work has been featured in Fast Company. Yes, Fast Company, a business publication.

And they're the advisors to a roster of CEOs, celebrities, global leaders, and successful entrepreneurs, including Beyonce. Yeah, Heard of her. Dua Lipa, Emma Roberts. You know, it just goes to show you that the world is far more complex and interesting and people are far more complex and interesting than we are sometimes willing or even able to contemplate. To get a little cosmic on you, I really believe that our black and white brains benefit from a little contemplation of the mysterious. And Ophi is here for it, too. I ask her all the questions I have about astrology, where it came from and why. We kind of believe in it, even if we swear we really don't. All right, let's get hot.

Ophira Edut, welcome to Hotter than Ever.

Ophira: Woohoo. I love it.

Erin: I am so excited to have you here because people have such a strong reaction to astrology, including myself, and it is a treat to talk to someone who has made a life and a successful career out of this esoteric thing that people love. But it is so woo woo. And I just want to get into like what it is, how it works, what, why do we care about it? Like, it is a weird outlier part of our culture that doesn't quite fit into this dominant narrative that we live in as a society, which is very rational and practical. Not so woo. So we'll get to all of that stuff, but I want to start with your personal story because I'm curious how someone, a nice Jewish girl from Detroit, grows up to become an astrologer.

Ophira: Yeah, I'm curious about that too because it wasn't what I meant to do with my life, that's for sure. And I can't wait to deconstruct the whole woo thing because we are talking after the book has been out a month and three months of doing like a huge podcast tour, speaking at the Finish Fast Company Innovation Festival, and really like taking this woo perceived idea on the road into spaces that were not woo. It has been a fascinating experiment, but that is really has been my life. I was a nerdy, gifted kid, straight A student. I was very uncoordinated and in a class called Special Gym. It was like Special ed gym.

Erin: I want that class.

Ophira: It was like me and the most uncoordinated kids in class.

Erin: Oh my God. They're like, no volleyball for you.

Ophira: No, no, I mean it was, it was the, it was a little bratty dodgeball boy's fault because I was very active, but I would have to stand like a foot apart and throw a ball back and forth and try not to drop it when we, when we had to catch it. I didn't even always catch it. It was, it was bad. But that's to say that I grew up very academic and intellectual, but always fascinated by, you know, things like the pyramids and kind of mysterious coincidences and luck. I was always winning contests as a kid. Had like a straight, like I, if I willed myself to win something, I would win it and no way. Yeah, like I had a paper route. That's actually how I discovered horoscopes.

So I was, I was a scrappy entrepreneur already from before I was 10 and when I was 11, I had a paper route and we'd have to go to the paper station and open the paper to the middle and put the little coupon inserts in. And that's where the horoscope was, I would see the horoscopes every time I put them in. There was a contest where you could win $100 fake stocks.

Erin: So you won.

Ophira: That was one that I won, yeah.

Erin: Oh my God.

Ophira: Anyway, I had a bottle cap collection collected over 13, 000 bottle caps. So I have a weird pattern brain. I call myself a Spectra Aquarian and a photographic memory and a twin and--

Erin: Right, you're an identical twin.

Ophira: Identical twin. So I was always born kind of mirroring and in relationship we had our--so I think it was like the perfect storm for an accidental, bizarre career. But I did almost go to engineering school, ended up in art school. And my Virgo college boyfriend was also a little intrigued by horoscopes. Got my full birth chart done when I was 21. It explained my entire life and being and all the weird contradictions to such detail that I just was like, I gotta figure out why this thing knows so much about me. And that's what sent me down the rabbit hole. That was a very long but short version of it all happened.

Erin: And in your home growing up, your mother was a rabbi

Ophira: Rabbi, yeah.

Erin: Okay. Your mother was a rabbi and people spoke different languages.

Ophira: Exactly. I think that also was what drew me to this unifying language. My dad is from Israel. He was an immigrant. Came over three months before I was born. Learned English from watching Sesame street with us. My mom became a rabbi when I was an adult, but it was always her dream. She was just told that women couldn't be rabbis and should just marry a rabbi for their best.

Erin: Right. Not the same.

Ophira: Yeah, that's what she was told when she was 12 and told her rabbi she wanted to be one. So I was also, you know, primed by someone who was kind of like doing a paradigm shifting, unexpected career path too. So it's not like they could tell me what to be. Landscaper. Grew up on a kibbutz. My mom a rabbi. So I was like, we got Torah and up in the heavens, we got topsoil down on earth. Somewhere in the middle is probably the astrology. Right.

Erin: I love it. And you're a Gen Xer. I mean, you went to Michigan and your story sort of runs through the Riot girl era, through the first.com era in New York in media. And you did you, you had a zine?

Ophira: Yeah, yeah. My, my twin won the sassy magazine Reader produced issue contest in 1991. She met a boy at Michigan who lived in New Jersey. And instead of just saving up for a plane ticket, she decided to enter a contest and one to be flown out to New York for three weeks and replace the art director and learn everything about magazine publishing. And she did and came back and we started our own magazine for all the women who are not represented in mags. All sizes, all cultures. And this was in the early 90s, so we're very ambitious. We made it full color, we got it nationally distributed and recognized by Gloria Steinem. So I don't know, it's just always kind of unstoppable, I guess.

Erin: Yeah. And wildly entrepreneurial and also like the luck part of it is fascinating to me. Do you think you had luck because you believed that you would have lucky?

Ophira: Yeah, I do. I think I could just, I have a very vivid imagination. And it was raised especially by women, mostly women who just encouraged it and just there was nothing that wasn't like, like if you imagined it, then it was yours for the getting if you could get it. And you know, my grandmother survived the Nazis by posing as a nun in a convent. My grandfather got out of Europe and actually joined the US army and was the chief interpreter for the Nuremberg trials prosecuting Nazis. So like, I guess my, the people in my family did. And he was, he was an engineer and an artist also and a photographer, so there was, it was a home full of multi hyphenates before we even.

Erin: Knew what a multi hyphenate was.

Ophira: Yeah, nobody ever said, you can't do that when I came up with an idea. So I guess maybe we all have those beliefs, but they get taken away from us by protective, well meaning people, but nobody ever protected me from my imagination.

Erin: Yeah, yeah. I think I had wild ambitions and my mother was always like, be cautious.

Ophira: Right.

Erin: Careful. Oh, you might get your feelings hurt. Oh, that might be hard, you know, and that was her way of trying to protect me. I think it, it served to sort of stop me in a lot of ways. I internalized a lot of that fear. It's taken me until, you know, age 50 to be like it and doing what I want.

Ophira: I'm so glad you are, but yeah, that's most people's story is that like, even as a mother now I have to stop myself from instinctively doing that. Are you sure you want to wear that, do that? I'm don't see it.

Erin: Don't say, keep your mouth shut. That is my only job with my kids. Encourage and keep your mouth shut.

Ophira: Yeah, it's true.

Erin: Yeah, I want to understand how you frame astrology and like, what is it? Because why do you think so many people relate to it even though they are skeptical? I want to get back to that idea that your horoscope is in the newspaper. There is nothing like a horoscope in the newspaper. It is a weird, esoteric, spiritualish.

Ophira: Yeah.

Erin: Prognostication that is published in the, the places where we go for facts. And that is fascinating to me because it feels like, is it a relic from another era? Is it a, like, why is it accepted when so many other things are not that are in the sort of spiritual ish realm?

Ophira: Yep. And that is where history untold and lesser known history comes in. So astrology and horoscopes are actually two very different things because astrology, which is tracking the movement of the stars and planets, dates back to the ancient Babylonians, Sumerians and Egyptians. They used it to track planting and flooding of the Nile and hunting. I mean, we're here because people followed the stars. For the religious people out there, those three stars that the magi were following, that was Orion's belt. You know, Sirius is the, is the star that quote, unquote, it's the spiritual sun that rises in the summer and that told the Egyptians that the Nile was going to flood and, and help them with their crop cycles. And then in the Middle Ages, I mean the, the, the Greeks developed the modern, the basis of the modern astrology system that we use, the wheel, it was actually taught. Galileo, Pythagoras, Copernicus, they were all astrologers.

Erin: Looking at the movement of the stars.

Ophira: Yeah.

Erin: Trying to understand the mysterious place of Earth in the solar system.

Ophira: Absolutely. In the 1415 and 1600s, the great universities actually taught astrology to the math and medical students. So they didn't make as much of a distinction between astrology and astronomy. What happened then was the church came in and like they do, you know. Galileo actually had to renounce that his practice of astrology to save his own life. A lot of people don't know that, but it's factually accurate. And so then in rebellion to the Church's superstition came the age of reason and enlightenment, which gives us our modern view of facts and skepticism.

So they're all happening in reaction to each other. Then came the 20th century, the printing press, the catalogs, the marketing to women, the mail order. And that's when the horoscopes that we see today, the fluffy kind of maligned, which I write myself, but it's where the reputation of fluff befell astrology and also the sexism associated with that because, you know, it's the Taylor Swift effect, it's the, it's successful even though women like it versus men are painting their faces for football, March Madness and we, we don't look down, we--

Erin: Don't question that at all. In fact, the NFL rights are the most valuable thing in media.

Ophira: Right. So there's inherent sexism in the judgment of astrology, but there's also, there's also a whole history where it was kind of made into this fun, kind of intriguing thing.

Erin: But it's parlor game, type of parlor game.

Ophira: And, and why it's in newspapers. Like it's never gone away, though. It's like everybody wants to know. It's like a weather report and we need a little mystery to want to get out of bed and have hope and keep going too.

Erin: So I still don't understand the distinction between what Galileo was studying and a horoscope.

Ophira: So a horoscope is based on you being a Virgo and all Virgos, you know. It's still tracking the stars, but it's a set of character traits match to maybe where the moon is, which moves into a new piece of the sky every two and a half days, which would be defined by certain zodiac signs. So you draw, you know, I'm not saying horoscopes aren't correct, because they are, I mean, people do say, oh my God, it's like you're spying on me.

Erin: Yeah.

Ophira: I mean, even the daily horoscopes we write. But astrology is really a full map of where all the planets were from where you were on Earth at your moment that you were born. It's like if you took a screenshot of the sky at that moment and tracked the position of the planets overhead in relation to where you were, it creates a map, it creates patterns. There's mathematical angles. And you can do that for events, you can do that for a lot of things. Some people will still think it's woo, but there's--

Erin: But we're ascribing meaning. I mean, there's the fact of the stars in the sky, the planets in the sky at a certain place and certain angles and certain times. But then I think what we like about it is that we're ascribing meaning to the movement of those stars and planets in relation to our own lives and our own timeline. But I don't get where that meaning comes from. Who put that on there?

Ophira: Well, that's a good question. I mean it's, it's the constellations were originally, you know, it was originally mapped to exactly where the constellations were. But what we use, that's called tropical astrology is not. So for those who heard that their zodiac sign has changed, I get asked that a lot. It's based on math and myth. Some people call it the poetry of the sky. One an astrologer that I love, Stephen Forrest. But some of it is just eons and eons of passed down tradition and mystery and lore and that's held up, it's held up thing.

Erin: It's held up because people do see truth in it. I will tell you my own personal story with astrology is the times that I lean on astrology is when I feel like my life is out of control. And I will go to anything that's going to give me insight, wisdom, some kind of spark or kernel of something to hold on to when I'm planning something or hoping for something or needing change. And I went to an astrologer when I was first married and I was thinking about starting to get pregnant. And the astrologer, woman named Jenny lynch in New York, she's a wonderful person and I don't know who recommended her to me, but I went to her and she said, I don't know what this is, but like 18 months from now or so I see two babies in February of 2011. I don't know what that is. When did I have twins? February of 2011. Like went through a whole fertility cycle.

Went through all of it, but it was already fucking there. And I don't understand that at all. I just know that that was what she said and that was right. And statistically it seems really unlikely that that's totally random.

Ophira: Exactly. And I think that's how I stumbled into it too. I had the same like, what wtf? You know, I prided myself on like learning traditional education, you know, going to art school, but also doing all the liberal arts. I'm in philosophy and other classes. Like, sure, this was not what you do menu or on my radar. But it was like, how could this be so accurate? So I set out to understand how it worked. And it, it is like a weather dial. It's like your chart is just frozen. It's like exact minute of your birth, but the moving planets around it kind of move like a dial and they make contact. So for example, if you're a Pisces or your kids.

Erin: My ex husband and my kids are.

Ophira: Right, right.

Erin: And all the men I'm interested in.

Ophira: Okay. So we know that Saturn, as an astrologer, we know that Saturn is moving through the Pisces part of the sky right now. So anyone who's a Pisces, you can measure because each planet moves around the, around the sun. It looks like the way we look to astrology. It looks like it's moving around the Earth. But I'm not going to get into the geekiness of it. But there you can learn it.

You can actually learn to watch how the planets move around you track them, see when they're going to meet up with a planet in your chart. So if for the Pisces were born when the sun was in Pisces, at some point Saturn is going to cross over their son and they're gonna get their ass handed to them or a harsh lesson or a moment of maturity.

Erin: So see me in all of the movement of the planets and stars. I'm like, well, it turns into peanuts parents. But, then when you go and get their ass handed to them, I go, I'm tuned back in because I can connect with that.

Ophira: Yeah.

Erin: And yeah. So it, it's just so interesting because you have this sort of engineering piece of your brain that, that stuff isn't for you, you know.

Ophira: Well, because it is like engineering because it's like, where is it? Where is this planet? Where is it? Look at the angles, angle and the degree. It's. It's perfect for an engineering brain and a designer brain actually, because I like to quantify and measure and see the whole picture. But that, it, I mean, we'll get, we'll talk about our new book eventually, but it's called the Astrology Advantage. Because, because I wanted it to be a tool for someone like you. Many, many people are like you.

Erin: Yeah.

Ophira: Here are the Peanuts parents. Yet they long to like, well, if this thing works so well, I why would I not.

Erin: I want to use it.

Ophira: Try it.

Erin: Absolutely.

Ophira: Do I really have to learn hieroglyphics in a new language? The barrier of entry is a little too high. I don't have time and right hard drive space in my brain to learn this. So we made a system to make it easy. So my 30 years of obsessively, like studying it could be accessible to anyone at any time.

Erin: Yeah, we, I want to get into that. I mean, this is a podcast for women over 40 where we talk about how to live our best, most authentic and satisfying lives in the second half, right? So I want to know what astrology offers to women over 40, especially the professional women who listen to this podcast. Women who are going through some sort of reinvention in their careers or their relationships, how they're living their lives.

This inevitable moment that you and I have talked about where we're sort of done everything that we're supposed to do and live this sort of life where we're following all the rules and we get to the top of the escalator and go, what the fuck are we supposed to do now? And, you know, we're taking stock. Like, am I happy? Do things need to change? Do I need to blow some things up? Like, how am I going to continue to grow? How am I going to find my joy? When the culture says you're no longer important or visible once your kids are out of the house, it's like we're all in this pivotal moment. And that is a moment for me where I'm like, well, maybe astrology.

Ophira: Well, you just answered the question. It is the perfect moment when you're at a crossroads. We quote a statistic in the book that the average adult makes 35,000 decisions a day. And I think for women over 40, there's probably 20,000 more, because you're likely to be a parent, and if you're not, maybe a pet parent, you're at a peak time in your career where you have to pay attention to everything because you could move up the ladder, but you could also lose to a younger person coming in. You have to stay sharp. You have to take care of your cognitive and. And physical health.

You may be getting the effects of perimenopause or menopause. Relationships could be shifting. Your hormone levels are shifting. You might have brain fog to. You may need to balance out your hormones. And so there's, you know, one of the things that we really like to use astrology for, very practically, is to help people plan, make confident decisions, and design lives that they love. Those are our three main things we're actually planning, making confident decisions, and designing lives they love. Very unwoo. Even though.

Erin: Very un-woo. Very coachy.

Ophira: Yeah, it is coachy. I mean, for me, it's funny because I had a client the other day, and for the first 15 minutes, she had been going to, like, a male astrologer and a tarot reader, and all these people that just kind of fed her like manifestation he kind of things while she was just very passive and she, she was confused because she, I was asking her to participate in the design of her future because she thought.

Erin: Oh, I'm just telling you, just tell me what?

Ophira: Yeah, she's like, well, what do I need to do? I'm like, yeah, that's not the question to ask. Let me show you where the opportunities are, where the doors are open and where they may be more closed, but you at the end of the day are in charge of that. And that's what most people. Why people distrust a lot of astrologers. I mean, I don't, I don't go to a lot of astrology community things because while I love to talk astrology, it's like, you know, chatting in a foreign language, but I don't approach it in a superstitious way. Quite the opposite.

So why, when you get to the top of that escalator, as you said, and you're looking at this wide open expanse of choices you could make, or you've just blown up and what do I do now? The shock is wearing off, then this can actually be a really helpful guidance system if you know how to, if you're empowered to tune into it, tap into it, use it to your advantage.

Erin: Yeah. Okay, so the astrology advantage is a different idiom, right, for looking at astrology. So when you think about the astrological chart, it looks very Wiccan, right? It has these little squiggles and it has the circle and all of these different things, things in different quadrants. And it's almost like it has a mystical feeling to it, something that you need to have unpacked and interpreted. But what you have done is basically change that visual design into an Excel spreadsheet, so like, which is Virgo.

Ophira: And you should like that.

Erin: The Virgo in me likes it very much order, you know, clean, clear information. And, I think like, because you've made a quiz on your website that you can take, it turns it into almost like for the corporate girlies out there, like, like a disc assessment or Myers Briggs personality test where you know, your HR department will be like, your team isn't getting along so great. So we're going to do a team building exercise and everybody's going to learn about everybody's different strengths and weaknesses. There's, you know, there's all this corporate stuff that I feel like that's the idiom that you're playing into with this book. So it feels much more like modern life than.

Ophira: I mean, would you like to do my PR.

Erin: Throwing some runes or something? You know what I mean?

Ophira: I sure do. You just nailed it. Yeah, because I was, I never wanted it to be.,I don't like to mystify and complexify things for people. Life is complex enough now. There's a time and a place for the mystical. And for some people who are maybe a little bit bored and in need of entertainment or want to complexify and mystify, like, there's all you've got the rest of your life to have fun with astrology.

But for me, I'm like, I'm trying to help someone get out of pain or stress or uncertainty or frustration. So the last thing I want to do is talk over their heads, like, I geek out on problem solving the problems of modern life for people. So I don't want to be like, so your Jupiter is in Sagittarius and that means. And I'm like, I'm so sick of thi, but then I also don't want to be like, so you're gonna have a really lucky career cycle coming up. And then the person's like, well, why? How, when?

Erin: And that's what I want, though.

Ophira: Yeah.

Erin: When am I going to fall in love? When's the money coming?

Ophira: Right.

Erin: Like, those are my questions today, right?

Ophira: And I finessed a point of explaining it with just enough astrology so that you can understand that there's a period in a cycle and that kind of thing. But when you don't have time for that, astrology has a little shortcut, a little hack. It's called the chart dominance. So there's 13 main, it's almost like an algorithm, 13 main points in your chart. Your sun, moon, all the planets, your rising sign, which is where the sun was coming up over the eastern horizon. You can forget I said that. Blah, blah, blah, peanut parents.

Erin: I won't remember.

Ophira: Yeah. And then no, and that's okay. The north and south nodes, which are the destiny points. So you can average out how many of those are in fire, earth, air and water signs. And then there's three classifications called the modalities. And those are like your astrological Myers Briggs, they're the qualities there.

Are you kind of a leader? Are you a builder or are you a marketer? Are you a starter, a sustainer, a finisher? It's like all the things that one would find in a Myers Briggs or a strength finder. You can reduce it to that. So their Astro names are Cardinal, Fixed, and Mutable. The cardinal signs start the seasons. The fixed are in the middle of the season, and the mutable end the season, and that's what gives them their flavor. But we rename them Innovator, Authority, and Maven I am. Because people would remember it. I love personality tests.

I love Meyer Briggs. Myers Briggs was created by a mother and daughter in Michigan. People don't know this. There's a book about it, the Mother. Actually, they were inspired by the Jungian archetypes. She started by writing erotic fiction about Carl Jung and mailing it to him because she was so hot for Crow. Fell in love with his brain.

Erin: My mother was in HR when I was growing up. She was a corporate trainer, and I was constantly taking the Myers Briggs test in high school. Oh, my gosh. So that I could, you know, because I was, like, giving me insight about myself. Like, that's, you know, I mean, I've been in therapy my whole life. Like, I want insight about myself because I want to be the best version of myself, and I want to understand what makes me tick. And so I was lucky enough to have you do my chart after, you know, I gave you the information on the I am quiz, and you have determined whether I'm an Innovator, Authority, or Maven based on the system. And I would love to hear your takeaways from that.

Ophira: Absolutely.

Erin: Because I like to talk about myself as people who listen to this podcast know.

Ophira: And that's perfect, because I really like to talk about other people more than I like to talk about myself, which I'm supposed to be better at talking about myself according to my chart. But that's another episode. Let's talk about you. So we each have a number, a score of the 13, a division of Innovator, authority, and Maven. So you can also balance for high and low. So you are a two, six, five. You're an authority, no surprise. You're low on Innovator two. Innovator.

Erin: Six me off. By the way. I would like to be an Innovator, but I'm into Innovator. I'm into Authority and Maven as being kind of the two. That resonates with me.

Ophira: Yeah. And we can all play in each of these. You know, I'm low on Maven.

Erin: Just rules. There's rules, and it's rigid.

Ophira: Okay, right. You are an authority, Virgo authority. And you're also, you're a combo. You're three fire, but your combo of earth and air is your highest elements. And then you're lowest on water, so I'll explain what that means.

Erin: Is that why I like Pisces?

Ophira: Yeah, it might be right, because it's the opposite. You will be drawn to a water sign, potentially to balance you out. Yeah, but knowing that so low on Innovator doesn't mean you're not innovative, but innovator, the signs are Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn. So you have the lowest amount of those. And you can see in the spreadsheet from the quiz you have Mercury, which is communication, and Neptune with which is imagination in innovator sign. So that's, that's, those are two good. That's good. You know, that's why you are super creative and imaginative even though you're low on Innovator.

The innovators, which I'm a six innovator. Innovators like to start things. They like to be ahead of the curve. Sometimes they have an idea, they put it out there, it's 10, 20 years too soon.

Erin: I relate to that too.

Ophira: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you might. But maybe for you as an authority, you just didn't put it out there, you held it back. Whereas an innovator like me is like, sure, I'll start all these things. You know, I think my innovator ness is why I just did all those things. By the way, everyone in my family is an innovator too. My mom, my dad, my sisters, my daughter, my niece were all innovators. So I grew up in an entire household of innovators, which is probably why nobody ever stopped me from innovating things.

Erin: Because they were like, yeah, that's how you do it, right?

Ophira: Yeah, it was like, that's the water you swim in. But you, when you were at Snapchat, you were constantly bringing innovators in and helping them.

Erin: Oh, for sure. I mean, that's been my whole career is sort of seeing people who have vision and going, I'll help you make a thing.

Ophira: Right. So sometimes when you're low on something, you end up working with people who are that and using your authority, which is the mid season authority. So if you think of the innovator starts the season and the authorities in the middle. So they've got to sustain us through that time through, you know, they're the, they're the backbone, the providers, the producers, the leaders. That means they've predominantly Taurus Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius in their chart. One of the things that I find so interesting with this system is that you as a Virgo, Virgo is a maven sign, but your chart is mostly authority. So the essential quality of you is more authority than, than what the Virgo is.

So I'm a Sagittarius, I'm a Maven, but I'm the lowest on maven in my chart. I'm more innovators. So it really has helped. It helps you when you're like, which way should I go with this three way intersection? Okay, maybe I should go that way. Or maybe I'm going too much in the authority direction because I'm, I am such an authority. Maybe I need to be like towards that.

Erin: Right?

Ophira: Yeah. So you can actually consciously decide to do less of that and go out and launch a brand and a podcast instead of getting another job for example. But as an author, as a high authority will always be most comfortable for you to step into something where there are clear roles, everything's defined, there's a goal, there's some security.

Erin: So you, I really commend you for.

Ophira: Not doing that right now.

Erin: It's super uncomfortable. You know, I'm definitely feel out on a limb. You know, certainly in my jobs I helped to define what the mandate was that we were going out and trying to do. But then I was in charge of building the thing and making the thing and filling the pipeline and, and executing on. On the vision and so, yeah, just sort of be the keeper of all of it. Is a. Is a new and uncomfortable and exciting, you know, place to sit.

Ophira: Yeah, I think it's really important for us to stretch ourselves. I love when, when people I know who are authorities actually bet on themselves instead of like always supporting an innovator or maven with their ideas. But we need to give back to you and support you now too because, you know, it's really hard. Authorities are often so well established as the ones with all the answers that nobody ever knows how to help them or even guesses that they need help or support because they seem to have it all figured out and all together.

Erin: So yeah, I'm trying to be really transparent about the times when I don't have it all together, when I don't have the answers because I feel like people lie about that all the time in the culture. You know, we don't have room for ambiguity. We don't have room for I'm in transition or I'm trying to figure stuff out. Like, we live in a very black and white kind of do or don't universe when life is gray, you know?

Ophira: Yeah, but that's one thing that's great about authorities is that they tend to have a lot of integrity. So you've thrown yourself in a role where, if you were to lie, it would go against your strong authority values. No, there's kind of salt to the earth. You're very high, and you're. You're almost as high on Maven, which is the finishers of the season. Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, and Pisces. So Maven energy is, they're the ones that, like, once the thing is made, gather everyone around the table to enjoy it.

So you just--would you have the archetype of you need someone to help you launch, help you get off the. You know, get off the dock and start rowing, but once you're there, you're like, all right, we've got this. And you get everybody, get the team. You know, you bring the team together. Maven energy is about community and connection and collaboration. So, you know, you have the archetype of a stellar producer and team captain and knowing what I know about you, that really does track perfectly.

Erin: Yeah, yeah, it tracks. I want nothing more than a big team.

Ophira: Yeah.

Erin: You know, where we can all be sort of pushing in the same direction.

Ophira: But the lower innovator is like what I always advise is, like, to differentiate yourself more. Like, you know, you're rock solid at what you're good at. You got the whole team, but there's a little bit of an allergy to ever looking immodest in some ways, you know, even though, like, you know, you're the on the inside, you're just like.

Erin: But I don't want to be able to die ragged or like a show off or you know, I have some friends that are so great at marketing themselves, and they just fucking throw it out there and are shameless in terms of their pursuit of whatever it is that they're trying to get or say or do or evangelize. And I'm always a little like, I'm just over here, you know, building a thing.

Ophira: No, there is no I in team, but there's an A and an M, as I like to say. So, you know, so maybe you need an innovator to be your hype, you know, person.

Erin: Oh, I 100. I need that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ophira: So it's funny because I'm actually teaching some workshops on personal branding with I am telling like if you only invest in one thing for each of the archetypes and if you're low on innovator, you want to probably invest in a publicist or like a reel about yourself and that kind of things.

Erin: Yeah. And that's been really helpful for me in, in growing the podcast and is sort of putting that in other people's hands, you know.

Ophira: Yeah, you do that so well. But that's delegating is not an innovator strength. So we all--the real point is that when we understand these archetypes and we're not trying to fuss over. Is that a Jupiter symbol or do you say it Uranus? Or is there any non awkward way to say this planet?

Erin: Right. Saturn has returned.

Ophira: Right. You know, like I, I love the geeky knowledge, but when we're not thinking about that, we can be like, oh, what should I do as an in. So I've taught I am to thousands of people over the past five plus years. I've been piloting it in group coaching programs, I've done it with executive teams.

Erin: Okay, so what kind of corporation has you come in? Because is it largely female driven organizations?

Ophira: Not always. Now, yes, that is a more likely place. But I have done something for the whole Sax corporate team. You know, obviously, fashion, beauty, those kind of, but a lot of banking and that kind of thing. And, and I did a hedge fund, it's like, no, you'd be surprised.

It's funny because I asked one of my hedge fund clients like, is this weird that we're doing this? And he said no, because we have all these tech people now in our business and they are all going to Burning Man and doing psychedelics and they're kind of suggesting that this stuff can actually help us expand our minds and get an advantage. And I was like, well, that's why I named it this, named it the astrology advantage. So yeah, they're surprisingly open to it.

Erin: That's interesting. I mean, I do think we're in a moment where. Because organized religion is, you know, on the wane, except for event evangelical versions which will always have their appeal since there's so much certainty there that people are looking to areas of mysticism, Eastern traditions, yoga, meditation, chakras, human design, like all of these things, crystals, which I wholly do not understand. I don't get it. People are always saying things like that's so high vibe. That's so low vibe. Like, I don't even know what the fuck they're talking about, but they are. People are interested in adopting this sort of spiritualism.

Ophira: Yep.

Erin: Or they'll call themselves, like, on dating apps, people will say, like, I'm Jewish. So I put that I'm Jewish, but a lot of people will say spiritual.

Ophira: Spiritual. Yeah.

Erin: Right. Which is like, I don't participate in organized religion, but I have my own sort of set of beliefs around the mysteries of the universe. I could say the same thing about myself. I don't know that I ascribe to Jewish religious tenets, but certainly culturally, I feel Jewish, but, you know, I I think it's so and 12 steps requires, you know, people have a spirituality, a faith in a higher power. So I do think we're looking for, we're looking to grasp something about the mysteries of the universe, why we're here and what we're doing and how we're meant to live our lives and what is the best path for us. And so this plays right into it, but the tech bro thing and the Burning Man thing ties it all together for me.

Ophira: That's so funny.

Erin: So much that, like, of course, like, because they're micro-dosing and they're going on ayahuasca trips in Peru, and they're, you know, they're looking to biohack themselves. Like, if astrology is a hack, you know, they're gonna want it.

Ophira: They're gonna want it, and we're all like, religion, crystals, all those things, is trying to tap into another realm or dimension of consciousness and awareness. Like, we as humans know a speck of 1% of all the knowledge and, you know, we think that the borderline of our own blinders is where everything is ends, you know, but as we increase our awareness and open that aperture, which is what happened to me accidentally when I was given my astrology chart and set out to find out what it meant and how it knew all this about me ended up.

There was other stuff in the field of awareness that came up as I started to learn. I mean, it's funny you talk about crystals, I happen to have this one, which, you know, if you're watching the video, it's a crystal called Morganite Night, and It's named for J.P. Morgan who went to an astrologer every year, a woman astrologer named Evangeline Adams, for years in his 60s. He started, and he was so dumb, struck by his first chart reading in the same way that he came back every year, even invited her on an excursion to Egypt. He was a gemologist, so a lot of the crystals in the Natural History Museum in New York were collected by him. So people don't know that he was a crystal freak and an astrology head. So talk about the original tech bro.

Erin: That's amazing, that's amazing. Your knowledge of history really adds so much depth and color to this conversation. I so appreciate it.

Ophira: Good. Thank you.

Erin: As we sort of round out this conversation, I want to ask you one question which is what is it that you want our listeners to know about astrology that can help them make good choices and set themselves up for joy and success in the next phase of their lives?

Ophira: Over 40 if an astrologer or healer or anyone ever tells you something that doesn't resonate with you inside, just you don't have to take it on. What I invite you to do is say to yourself, is this disturbing me because it's scary and feels like this person is overpowering me by acting like they have knowledge about me that they don't or am I just adapting to like my world view is being challenged and maybe there's something that I should try on or consider. But it should never be superstitious, it never should never be like something bad is going to happen if you do this or don't do that. Like it's all even like the, the two babies, the twins.

Erin: She wasn't even willing to say like.

Ophira: She's a good astrologer. She's a responsible astrologer who is not a fortune telling phony. I know Jenny and she's really the real deal. So yeah, it's, you have all the free will in the universe. Astrology is a tool, not a rule. And when you use it as a tool it can expand your power, your consciousness, your awareness. It's a great hack, it should never be used super as a superstition. So that's one of the things I wish people knew. And yeah, come and do your I Am Archetype.

Erin: Go online to astrostyle.com and do the Astrology Advantage I Am Archetype quiz. It is really interesting what comes back by the book. We'll put all the information about where you can do that into the show notes and Ophi, thank you so much for coming on. This is such a fascinating and wonderful conversation.

Ophira: I loved it.

Erin: Thanks for listening to Hotter Than Ever. If you loved this conversation about astrology and how you can use it to gain an advantage in your work life and in relationships and anything you're trying to accomplish in this one and only life of yours. Please write us a review on Apple Podcasts if you haven't done that yet. That is just such a helpful way to tell podcast listeners that you really dig what we are doing over here at Hotter Than Ever. It makes a lot of difference for our show. Please also share this episode with your besties.

You know that one who's a Libra who's always juggling the scales and literally know nothing about Libras? I just know that they have scales and it's like they're always weighing one thing or another thing. I know a lot about your Pisces friends who are like fish swimming in two different directions. Really, I know the most about myself, which is Virgo, obviously the best sign. Get a bad rap for being too uptight. I don't think I'm that uptight these days.

Anyway, it could not be easier to share this episode with your besties, no matter what astrological sign they may have been born under. Just go to your podcast app and text the whole episode to your group chat. And if you haven't ever commented on our posts on Instagram, start that conversation now and I promise to respond directly to you within a week. How does that sound? Comment on our post, drop a note. Let us know if this conversation spoke to you.

Hotter Than Ever is produced by Erica Gerard and Podkit Productions. Our associate producer is Melody Carey. Music is by Chris Keating with vocals by Issa Fernandez.

I hope this coming week sees you weather whatever eclipses or retrogrades or astrological storms the universe sends your way and delivers you a dose of optimism, inspiration, and plain good luck.