Who the f*ck are you?

My name is Chris Setty and I am The Heretic Astrologer.

I was born in Los Angeles, CA, July 20, 1970 at 8:03am.

My Sun is in Cancer. I have an Aquarian Moon. And my Ascendant is in Leo.

I was born under the sign of the Moon, on a Monday, on the first anniversary of the Moon landing. Weird. If you believe that kind of thing ;) I’ll tell you this though, I cry a lot easier than I prefer.

I became a husband and father as a teenager and have had the privilege of spending my entire life with a true Goddess. She’s the only thing I truly believe in.

You’re a heretic?

Well, honestly, it is the attitude that my personality always seems to gravitate towards. No matter where I have found myself, I eventually wound up questioning the established doctrine and choosing a different way of embodying belief and philosophy.

The next question is usually, “What do you mean by heretic'?”

Our English word “heretic” is derived from the Greek word hairetikos, an adjective meaning “able to choose”. Through Ecclesiastical Latin and Old English, we eventually ended up with the word we have today. It essentially means “one who chooses,” and that wasn’t usually seen as a good thing.

The opposite of heresy is orthodoxy, and let’s face it, they have always been at war. Today, there isn’t a sector of life that isn’t fraught with conflicts between purists and heretics who dare choose something different, even if only slightly. I always seem to be in the latter camp, so I decided to embrace it fully and surrender to the heresy. Thus, Heretic Astrologer.

How the f*ck did you get into astrology?

I actually became interested in Astrology because of my daughter.

We had recently experienced a huge, life changing transition. I spent the 2000s - the decade of my thirties - as a Pastor at an evangelical megachurch. My wife and I were good at it. We loved it. We loved the people we served. We believed and were committed to being the best version of that faith in the world. We taught our kids to do the same. However my heretical soul took us on a journey of discovery and exploration outside of the orthodoxy that would eventually result in us being “asked” to leave. Did they burn me at the stake? Well, we suffered the modern version. We lost my income, health insurance for our family, our purpose, my career, all of our friends, our direction, community support and, well, pretty much everything. Eventually my heretical ways would lead us out of believing altogether and into a huge, unknown world.

Post-belief, we felt adrift, lost and confused, but also curious and, for the first time, completely free to open up to all kinds of different ideas and philosophies. We crawled through the full gambit of esoteric topics, deep spirituality, yoga stuff, and self-help guru ramblings.

I dove into all kinds of subjects and conversations that I had never really been a part of before, and through this process I learned a great deal about human dynamics, motivations and behavior. I leveraged what I learned to great effect as a corporate stooge manipulating people emotionally for The Man. Then he moved my job overseas. So, f*ck you The Man.

Also during this time, my daughter began talking about astrology. Every conversation would somehow turn to the topic, and I was intrigued. I didn’t know what to think of it - I still kind of don’t - but I decided to investigate it further. I certainly wasn’t afraid of it. What I found was a fascinating system that represented a very interesting way of compartmentalizing aspects of the human experience and personality in a comprehensive and holistic way. I dove in head first and haven’t looked back since.

That was a decade ago. Since then, I have continued to learn and grow, performing hundreds of chart readings and obsessively looking for Astrology everywhere - and finding it. This is not some magical footprint, though. Rather, its impact is reflected all around us in the world we have built. It seems we created Astrology based on thousands of years of observation, and along the way, built and ordered our societies and cultures around the archetypal and symbolic ideas we were developing.

As a true heretic, I have chosen my own way to understand and apply Astrology, a perspective that I believe is incredibly useful for self-analysis and development. The magick is in how our subconscious relates and processes symbols and archetypes. Stories speak to us, and I can show you how your chart is the story of you.

It is a good story, trust me.

Wait, you believe this sh*t?

So, and this may surprise you - or maybe not since I keep leaning in to the heretic thing - but, no, I actually don’t believe in Astrology.

“What?!!”

Hear me out. If you are asking if I think that the planets and stars are controlling your life through some energetic reality, then the answer is no. I don’t. And I think if you are willing to go out there and choose to peek into areas that challenge your beliefs, you can see that is a highly, highly unlikely scenario.

“Does that mean Astrology is meaningless and useless?”

Totally. That’s why I made this website 😈 - Read more on this discussion about whether Astrology is real here.

Kidding. I actually think astrology is an incredibly helpful tool to look at yourself in a way that is hard to do without some kind of delineation to help us relate to and understand the various aspects of our personalities and personas. When we are wrapped up in the chaos of everything happening at once, it can be very difficult to focus on any one aspect of your personality or life. Astrology is essentially humans fracturing their experience into smaller pieces and projecting it onto the sky through a powerful set of symbols and concepts. Ideas that have been with us for tens of thousands of years it seems. Concepts and linkages that seem to be infused into our very perception of the world around us (read more about that here).

“So you don’t think anything is going on at all?”

I didn't say that. Honestly, when I began looking into Astrology, I absolutely believed it was a bunch of super general statements that would just apply to whoever was reading it. A con for the gullible. And trust me, you can find all kinds of that noise out there. I was totally taken in by the system and learning it, but made fun of myself for even being drawn in by it. For a long time, every one of my readings would end with a devilish smirk and me saying, “if you believe any of that bullshit”. I honestly didn’t, but I also saw how getting more and more specific in my readings didn’t yield a lower rate of accuracy as I was expecting. Quite the opposite. People would get way more excited and into it the more the details freaked them out.

Do I know why it works? Not in the least. I have theories (you can read about some of them here). But I don’t know shit.

I do know that it does work. I’ve seen it countless times now. I promise it will be a positive and enlightening experience. And it is all about you. I’ll show you how amazing you are and how you can leverage and grow that amazingness.

I won’t tell you who to marry, where to invest your money, or what your future is because all of that is up to you, not your horoscope.

We should definitely talk. You will be glad you did.

Heretical Yours,

Chris