Thursday, May 16, 2013

Madalyn Aslan talks about astrology, fame and so much more










Anyone who knows me knows that I have tarot cards and I go to psychics and astrologers. I met Madalyn Aslan online and we quickly became friends. I was thrilled when she gave me a reading--which turned out to be so accurate, that it was a little unnerving.  I'm thrilled to have her here. Thank you, Madalyn!



1. What started your interest in astrology? When and how did you discover you were intuitive?

I think everyone is born intuitive. Babies in the pre-verbal stage pick up their mother / father / caretaker’s emotions and intentions intuitively. As do animals, constantly. I only developed it more because I had to, as a kind of survival skill. No one chooses to be a psychic - I certainly didn’t. I grew up in a very bizarre environment, and developed my psychic skills as a way to navigate through that. 

As for astrology, it was purely a matter of fascination for me. It was a metaphor I liked, and I loved history – the Greek and Roman mythology (I studied Latin and ancient Greek growing up in London) – and, like any writer, I think in terms of pictures and imagery. Astrology was my first introduction to that world, after C.S. Lewis and Nancy Drew. I LOVED Nancy Drew. I always wanted to be a girl detective!

Being a kid astrologer was the closest – and most interesting – form of being a girl detective I could find. I was curious about everyone and about what made them tick. 

Later, when I was reading people for a living – I put myself through Cornell this way (I was an emancipated minor at the age of 16, coming from London) – I realized that it was much more than “sussing” people out, as they wanted to know about their future and what was the best thing for them to do. And that’s when - I believe - I really started to do the work properly.  

My first filmed reading was for Rock Hudson in Malta when I was 14, and that changed a few things. 

Nevertheless, I wanted to be a writer, and I pursued that through graduate school, and even through a PhD – leaving NYC after some success there – to go and live in an obscure part of the country for ten years. Many times I have tried to give up being a psychic, and it has never worked out. The psychic never knows for herself…irony of all ironies!

 2. You also study palms and you mentioned that the palm changes every three
weeks, which I found fascinating. Can you talk about this please?

Each psychic has their own discipline – astrology, tarot, hands – and this is mine. I LOVE the hands, and this is where I get all my psychic info (names and dates and such). You can tell an extraordinary amount from the hands – everyone can – I have taught palmistry to children in grade school (they are naturals) and at NYU in my English classes, and at Knightsbridge’s College of Psychic Studies (in London). 

The lines on your hands do change every three weeks…I’m constantly looking at my own hands to see what’s going on. It’s the result of the shifting circumstances in our own lives – I see this daily with NYC clients when they email me hand photos from their phones. Why this is most exciting is because we have access to free will and choice. It really is possible to change our fate and destiny, at any time. 

Carl Jung said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” This is my favorite part of the job. I have a slight advantage over a therapist in that I can see the future. 

3. What struck me, in looking at your book, was how creatively someone can use astrology to their benefit. Can you comment on this?

Absolutely. My favorite part of our “creative interaction” with our fate or destiny (or astrology) is the ability to utilize our Jupiter sign – our fortune, our profit, our good luck. Our Jupiter sign is often completely different from our Sun sign – the sign you have always believed yourself to be. It gets quite detailed – you have to read my book (Madalyn Aslan’s Jupiter Signs) for more! 

4. Were you startled to find yourself famous?

Yes. I actually spent a great deal of my life trying to get away from that, having spent a part of my  childhood in Hollywood. To this day I have never hired a publicist, nor advertised, or anything like that. Even when the expose came out in The New York Times no one could find me because I had no website, no online activity, no published phone number, no agent, etc. 

I remember the morning after it came out, going to work (to read palms) at Felissimo on East 56th St. and there was a line of people around the block – all the way up Fifth Avenue past Harry Winston’s – waiting for me to read them. I was shocked. I particularly remember a couple who brought their newborn baby from the Upper West Side…somehow that was very emotionally moving. 
  
5. You also do healings--how does that work, and why does it work?

I think that’s what it’s all about (Alfie!) Without healing, and a positive outlook, and hope, why on earth would we carry on? Isaac Mizrahi famously – perhaps disparagingly – referred to me as “the Pollyanna psychic”, but what else could I be? I became a psychic to help. Information alone is not enough – I don’t care how right on that information is, alone it’s pretty cold. Unhelpful. 

6. What's obsessing you now?

How to heal our country of the violence-seeking, anti-education, anti-science, right-wing extremism popping up. It truly makes me despair. It really is a serious concern. Particularly if you have lived outside NYC or any of the major American cities, Deep South, as I did for some time. 

7. What question didn't I ask that I should have?

How did my reading for YOU go? What was it like? 

xo

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