In this Astrology Hub Podcast, Best Selling Author Thomas Moore and Amanda ‘Pua’ Walsh discuss Your Soul Purpose 

You’ll learn…

Grab Your Personalized Astrology Reports

• Life has never been more full of surprises, challenges, and opportunities.

  Now you can purchase a personalized astrology report and receive guidance for your life’s journey straight to your inbox.

  💫 Get yours here: astrologyhub.com/astrology-reports

  

  Transcript

  This transcript is automatically generated. Some miswording might be present.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 0:00
  The Life of magic begins with astrology. This is just one of the brilliant quotes from the episode that you’re going to hear or watch today from bestselling author, psychotherapist and former monk, Thomas Moore. I wanted to record an introduction for today’s episode. So you have a little backstory of why this episode is so very special, how this all came to be and what you can expect to learn. The original interview was recorded in 2018. And since then, the recording has only been available to students in our your sole purpose class. It was then, and it’s still now one of my favorite interviews that I ever recorded. So in celebration of astrology hub, seventh birthday, and our seven days of giving, we’ve decided to release it for the world to benefit. I believe this discussion of soul, astrology, magic, Alchemy, and more. Plus Thomas’s insightful and beautiful presence, have the capability to provide a warm light. In these trying times, not only is Thomas Moore, a best selling author of over 30 titles, including care of the soul, dark nights of the soul, the reenactment of everyday life, and the planets within. But he is also an advocate and true believer in astrology has the ability to help us make important timing decisions. And even more importantly, how Astrology can help us reclaim what he says the rational world has disregarded. Before I did this interview, I took questions from our students in the your sole, sole purpose class. And most of the questions that came through were focused on soul because that’s what Thomas is an expert on. But when I asked him question after question about soul at one point during the interview, he stopped me and asked if we could talk more about astrology. I remember him saying I talk about soul all day every day. And I’m so excited to be here with you and your community. And that I get to actually talk about astrology something that I equally love. And so we did talk more about astrology. And truly this episode spans a lot of territory. In it, you’re going to learn the behind the scenes story of his more astrologically focused book, the planet within many of you have read this, and how he believes publishing this book on astrology is what got him denied tenure during his academic career. And why he says this is the best thing that ever happened to him. Why he believes it’s so important to quote unquote, arrange your life to be in accord with the sky. The three things that differentiates spirit and soul. How to know if you’re in ego, purposing or soul purposing where astrology and soul come together, what magic and alchemy are and how they relate to astrology, and why he believes Venus is the planet or the energy or the archetype that can get us out of the messes that were in today. I smiled the entire time I rewatched. This episode, the lighting in his calm demeanor, the gentle way he redirected some of my questions, and the depth of exploration that ensued. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. And if you’re interested in learning more about soul and astrology, and how you can use astrology to connect more deeply with your purpose, and the everyday magic of your life. You’re welcome to check out the popular course we did with astrologers, Donna wood Well, stormy grace, Tammy Brown, divine harmony and Nadia Shaw, you’ll learn how to uncover the clues of your soul’s path by using your astrological birth chart. You can go to astrology hub.com/soul purpose to learn more and join this very special self study course today. Again, that’s astrology hub.com/soul purpose. Sit back and enjoy this very, very special episode with Thomas Moore. Thomas. It is so wonderful to be here with you today. Thank you so much for joining us.

  Thomas Moore 4:26
  Well, thank you for asking me. I love to talk about astrology.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 4:31
  That’s so great. It’s so amazing to meet teachers and people in other fields that incorporate astrology and acknowledge the power of astrology.

  Thomas Moore 4:44
  Take it seriously.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 4:45
  Yes, exactly. Exactly. So Thomas, let’s start with kind of big picture around the work that you’ve done around Seoul, because you obviously have dedicated so much of your life and your work to understanding Seoul and helping us Understand soul. So what inspired you to go in that direction?

  Thomas Moore 5:05
  You know, I really don’t know. So I don’t know it’s quite mysterious to me because I never ever sat down anytime my life and said, I think I’ll make my life work study of the soul that would be weird to me, I never would have thought of it. So it’s something that crept up on me I think I was a monk for a while a Catholic monk when I was very young. And, of course, the word soul was very common. And I studied Latin I learned Latin study, I think seven years of Latin and was taught in Latin for years. So aneema and soul had been very familiar to me for many years and psyche to say, okay, the Greek word for soul. So, but then I think I really got seriously interested when I began reading Carl Jung, and Jung is, is really very explicit about soul and tries to sort out all those different aspects of the self and the world in relation to souls. So that was very, very rich for me. And I’ve read his collected works 18 volumes, I don’t know how many times have gone through most of them. And then I met James Hillman, who is a was it was a yogi and analyst and study then Zurich was Head of Studies, and it’s, you’ll get to reserve for a long time. And he wrote books about the soul. One of his early books was called suicide of the soul. So I loved what he did. I think he was just a great figure to me, very good friend and a very important mentor to me. So I think that’s where it came from really came from heavier background where it wasn’t very specific and focused. And then Jung helped me focus and Hilma did even more. So.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 6:59
  Were you still a monk, when you were introduced to Carl Jung’s work?

  Thomas Moore 7:05
  I think I read a little I think I read what I think I did read one of those popular books that Jung put out modern man in search of a soul or one of those books when I was still in the monastery, but I don’t think I don’t think I know that I didn’t really seriously began reading him until i i did my PhD work at Syracuse University in religious studies. And I focused my idea was to bring psychology and religion together. So that’s where I read young very seriously, and really, really tore into it.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 7:44
  Why did you leave the monastery?

  Thomas Moore 7:47
  That’s another question. I don’t know the answer. Really? No, I think I think either of there’s a lot of possibilities. I woke up one time, one day, I remember one day in particular waking up and realizing that whatever had kept me in that all those years, I was in it for 13 years. Whatever kept me in, it was gone. It just wasn’t there anymore. Now why it left? I’m not too sure. Sometimes I feel I was educated out of it, because I got a very good education. And it was also the spirit of the times it was in the early 1970s, when the culture was going through radical changes, and the spirit of reformation was in the air. And so I picked that up and I wanted, I wanted to be part of it. And I also felt it was time to, to, to make a big change in my own life.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 8:42
  I wonder what transits you were going through? Speaking of the 70s, you wrote this book, the planets within in the 70s. What inspired you to write a book that explored the archetypes of the planets?

  Thomas Moore 9:00
  Well, it’s a long story. I said, I was at Syracuse University. It was a wonderful program and religion. So open ended and open minded just, it was just wonderful. I was studying literature and poetry and depth, psychology, all in relation to the spiritual traditions of the world, having some connection to them. And I had to write a dissertation. And I wasn’t sure I was in. I studied music most of my life. So music was very important to me. And I’ve always had kind of a quirky imagination for things. I like odd things. And so one day I was in a library and I just pulled the book off the shelf way up above me and I didn’t know what it was and I opened it up. And here was an article about my city oficina was they described him as an astrologer and a musician and a magician, magician Marcus. And a theologian and a Platanus. And he was a priest. Wow, I couldn’t really identify with all those things. So I had my topic and he hadn’t been translated, then his major work especially had not been translated. So and I had Latin I mean, I knew the Latin, although his Latin was very difficult. I feel I used to feel that he just must have cut up words and sprinkled them around the floor, and then put him put it together because they had no order whatsoever. It was difficult to do it, but I did translate his book and wrote a commentary on it. And then and then that was very successful for me in my education. And then I thought it would be over with I wouldn’t even think about that topic again. But actually, a day doesn’t go by that I don’t go back what I learned and that that first book I opened up. So it was largely about astrology. It was based on the work of Al kindI, who was one of the Arab astrologers that Pacino relied upon. So it had those interesting roots and the Sophie’s and, and the Arabs and the great, you know, the great intellectual culture and they were very interested in astrology. And for Chino was was part of a very important figure in what is called the Hermetic tradition, which is a long historical tradition of magic and, and most of the magic, which, which is usually ascribed to a mythical figure, Hermes Trismegistus. Most of that magic, the life of magic, instead of a rational life, a life where you live through magic. Most of that magic begins with astrology. So, like alchemy to alchemy is done with an astrological awareness for the timing of what you do, and magic as well. So whenever you do any form of magic you, you include an astrological awareness as part of your practice. So I read for chinos approached him to astrology, and found it very fascinating and deep. And so what I tried to do was take his work, and make it sort of updated and make it relevant or intelligible to a modern audience.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 12:30
  Well, and as I was mentioning, before we started recording. So many of our students at astrology hub, have now read your book, because Donna Wardwell, he fell in love with your book. And so now she recommends it to all of her students, especially the students in our shamanic astrology course. Because it’s like you said, the roots of, of magic, are in astrology. And so there’s a foundation that the students get so that they can then go on to study astrological magic, which is, yes.

  Thomas Moore 13:05
  That’s very perfect.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 13:06
  How was that received? So you’re, you know, a psychotherapist, and you’re writing this book about astrology? Was that like a risky thing for you to do? Or is another thing you didn’t really think about? And you just did?

  Thomas Moore 13:18
  Well, I don’t worry too much about those kinds of risks. I don’t care if people are worried about that kind of thing. It shows that, you know, their mind is not good enough. So I don’t worry about it, I just go ahead and deal with the consequences whenever they are, I think I was, I was denied tenure at the University where I was teaching. Because of my interest. There’s no question about that, I don’t think was specifically this book. But that was the only book I had published at the time. And I had to publish and that was one of the reasons I think I was not given tenure. A tremendously was a great thing from my life that I didn’t get tenure, but but I was disappointing at the time, because I really wanted to be a college professor. But I went on Yeah, that’s the way I live my life. I’ve gone through several big changes and I feel that they are the kind of changes that are you know, that’s a matter of time astrology so much about time. It’s time as an imagine as an image, or you treat time with your imagination rather than treated as counting you don’t count time you as much as some counting but you don’t. You don’t count so much as you see time itself as something else. It’s an experience that doesn’t have to do so much with quantification.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 14:42
  Have you witnessed more of an opening from people to incorporate? You said not a day goes by that you don’t think about Marsilio Pacino and learned so first, what does that look like? Like? How does it come through? And how does it inform different things that you’re doing. And second, have you seen a shift or witnessed a shift in terms of people’s openness around this topic?

  Thomas Moore 15:09
  I don’t know if I expect to start at your left with your last question. I don’t know if I’ve, if I’ve witnessed a change of more openness, what I’ve noticed is that like our conversation today, I’m amazed that people are interested in this. I wrote that book so many years ago. I don’t want to say how many years ago it was. And imagine if you did something, if you go back and look at something you’ve written, you wrote 10 years ago. Now, this is 40, some years ago that I wrote that. So I went a little bit when I hear that people are using it, because I think I’ve probably advanced a bit since then, and my thinking, but still, I think of probably holds pretty well. I think there’s some equivocation about a strategy that I wouldn’t have today. I was an academic, you know? Oh, yes.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 16:00
  Yes. Yes. Like the beginning part where you’re kind of making a case for it? Almost.

  Thomas Moore 16:05
  I would cut that up.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 16:09
  Do you know what’s so funny about you saying that is actually and she might get really mad at me for saying this. But Donna actually said to me, you know, in the beginning, he’s kind of like doing the academic thing and make it a case. But so just skip that part and go right to the planets, because that’s where it gets really juicy. So it’s so funny that you say you would cut that out anyways.

  Thomas Moore 16:31
  Just saying, you know, it’s that’s a long time ago, your bounded means, and I was in the thick of the academic world, and I just finished a PhD, I was teaching at a university. So that had an effect on me, I was thinking all these people around me, I have to hedge a little bit because I think I’m a total weirdo. But I love that material. So much. I really do. And I think the reason that I keep going back to vicino Well, I’ll tell you that, when I open that book up from the shelf in the library, what I read was a passage from the opening of his book, De Vita chailey discomfort, and I’ve never seen that translated, well, it means something like, arranging your life, to be in accord with, with the stars with a sky, Charlie just means it’s an ever been Skylee we don’t say that Skylee you know, like, like the sky. So how to arrange your life in a Sky Way or in relation to the sky, is what it means. So I, I open this book up and thought a passage that said that there are three things in the world, mind, the body, and the soul. If the mind is alone, if it’s just working with your mind, it has no connection to your body. If you just work with your body has no connection to your mind, you need a soul in the middle, the soul in the middle to keep your whole self together, and that the soul is as a mediating factor in the middle between maybe even spirit and body. It’s a mediator between the two. And ever since that I’ve been giving lecture after lecture and talk after talk about soulful spirituality. So what I’m trying to say is keep the soul connected to your spirituality, otherwise, it’s gonna go off in a crazy fashion. So I keep talking about that. That paragraph I read those many years ago.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 18:36
  Wow. Thomas, how do you differentiate between soul and spirituality.

  Thomas Moore 18:42
  So we’ll have to tell you a bit about soul to do that. So is is deep, the word deep is connected with soul goes back 500 years 500 Watt sixth century BC is when they first started. I know it first started talking about the soul is deep. So it’s a very long tradition, about depth and soul. So it means going down deep spirit tends to go high up and high. And we always want like higher education is kind of a spirit activity, higher education. So naturally, for me, I’ve been advocating lower education for a long time going down instead of going up. And so that’s one thing that is really important to going into depth, in depth into whatever it is you’re dealing with whatever it is, so I would get the call what I would want to do deep astrology going deep instead of high going soaring high and going up. If that metaphor works, you know for for what you’re doing a lot. I think a lot of astrologers go up they don’t go down. So another thing that the soul is very interested in the past rather than the future, very apt In the past, very connected to the past. So we’d love from a soulful place we like antiques and heirlooms, old buildings, living in an old house old ideas, or that, that past memories, keeping memories, photograph albums. And in psychotherapy, what we spent a lot of time talking about childhood. So there’s a big emphasis on the past and psychotherapy. So that’s quite interesting, I think that soul is, is, is there in deep and in the past. It’s also the soul is also more multiple, the spirit tends to like Unity, you don’t read much in my books about unity. You know, it’s, it’s all about multiplicity and, and maintaining multiplicity and different points of view. And communities that have a lot of diversity and diverse ideas and things not being put together, even my books, I feel, I think I drive my editors crazy, because I don’t like to make them too unified. I never use the word integration, things like that. And I’m always trying to, to keep things multiple and diversified, always always, that that’s a big job to try to keep yourself as diverse as possible rather than together. I don’t want to get my life together, I want to get it apart in pieces and have all this richness, and not have to resolve that into one place, but have it all split apart. Now the thing about soul is that it exists expressed best in imagery, rather than in definitions and qualifications and numbers and things like that today, almost every aspect of our culture, works by numbers, qualifications, quantify quantified studies, all that kind of thing. To me, that would be a very soulless approach to whatever it is you’re dealing with. So in a spirit way, in the spirit, we might also kind of kind of move in that direction, wanting to define our terms. And be really clear, soul is not so clear, it’s happy to be fuzzy and complicated, and very complex, that sort of thing. So I think that once, that’s only saying a few things, but I had to think about this question you asked for several years before I felt comfortable with it, that the try to really grasp the notion that soul is something different, it’s, it’s, it’s equally valuable. spirit and soul are equally valuable. But and they need to connect, always they need to be connected, but they’re very distinct. And since we don’t, we haven’t distinguished the we haven’t made this distinction, we tend to neglect the soul, and go for the spirit. So an awful lot of people are interested in spiritual things. But not a whole lot of people see that the soul is also a board.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 23:21
  Wow, interesting. And Thomas, when you are speaking about the soul, being connected to the past, and loving, old buildings, and all, you know, artifacts and things I was I can feel that so deeply. And one of the things that’s made me sad living here on Maui is to see all the new kind of generic buildings going up, you know, and it’s just like, an I keep feeling this. It’s losing the soul. It’s losing the soul. And you just really put words around that. Why do you? Why is it that the soul is so connected to the past? And these old things? Why is that?

  Thomas Moore 24:01
  Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know the answer to that. Really. I just know that. That’s that there is this part of ourselves that likes the past that we can reflect on the past and there’s a bit of maybe it’s also because there’s a bit of melancholy connected to the past and the soul tends to like melancholy, instead of being very spirited, cheery, not that sad or depressed or anything but in itself, but that there’s an inclination toward the toward the reflective and the and withdrawing, and that sort of thing. So I think that’s one of the reasons the past takes us to, you can’t think about the past without having some melancholy missing people they didn’t think about maybe, like for me being an older person missing some of the capacity and abilities I had when I was younger. Certainly missing people in places wishing I could be in all these places. I’m there’s a lot of Milan causally connected to the past. And I think the soul thrives on a kind of melancholy, not depression, that’s kind of a clinical problem, psychological problem. Melancholy is not a problem. It’s just, it’s a mood, or it’s, it’s an emotional set that you feel when you experience and think of certain things.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 25:22
  We did I lead a meditation for week one of the course, the sole purpose course. And in it, I had people sort of journey back to visit themselves at age like five to seven, and then at age 16, and then in their 20s. And, and really just like, see if there’s a thread or a theme that they could pull together. And some people reported that they felt really sad, you know, they felt sad in the process of visiting these parts of themselves. And they wondered why, but you’ve just really answered that very well.

  Thomas Moore 25:53
  You’ll see what I do when I do that kind of thing. And I’m sure it sounds like what you were doing to is I don’t look for any answers. And then going back, I don’t, I’m not doing it for a purpose, to extract anything from it. I’m trying to go back there for the sake of going back. And having the experience of going back in time and reflecting and thinking and telling stories, that kind of thing in itself. So as a therapist, when I talked to people about their childhood, and not trying to find out, what was the cause of what’s some problem they have in the present, right, but move back to see what their soul is like, who are they as children, because they’re still that exactly, I don’t think we grow out of that childhood, we pile it up, we pile up all of our experiences on top of each other, we’re very thick, by the time we get old. Experiences, they’re not we’re not in a straight line where that’s we’ve left that behind. It’s we’re we’re like a totem pole. We have it all with us.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 27:01
  All right, Thomas, I have been asking our students in the your sole purpose course, to submit some questions for you around soul. Many of them are reading care of the soul right now. Some of them have read some of your other books. So if we can go into that realm right now, that would be fantastic, says I’m good.

  Thomas Moore 27:23
  Tell me a little bit more. What is it that they’re particularly interested in?

  Amanda Pua Walsh 27:27
  Lots of different things? It’s, it’s been so delightful to have the questions come back, because they’re questions I wouldn’t have thought of, and they’re kind of in lots of different realms of life. So

  Thomas Moore 27:36
  if you’re gonna ask the question, it’s great.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 27:39
  Yes. All right. So Marty is asking, I would love to hear a bit more about how to identify when we are in ego purposing versus sole purpose, I think I’m doing and feeling things from my soul, but find it more ego related after the fact when I look back on it.

  Thomas Moore 27:58
  Yeah, that’s really important. To distinguish even the self, eyes from the soul, they’re different. I do think there’s an identity that we have an identity that’s very deep, a sense of self that is, that is very deep and largely hidden. We don’t know all about it. And it’s not so much that active agent at the ego as that gets us through the day. But it’s a deep sense of self. You may discover at different times of the day you realize who you are, how you react to people and different things. And maybe you have forgotten that you are that person too. It’s very, very deep. So the soul get offers a sense of identity. And I think in order to have to find your purpose, you at the soul level, you have to do it very differently from an ego level. So you don’t you don’t you don’t do it rationally. Do you find your purpose through reading the science, for example, in life and in the world? So I’ll give you an example. I was mentioning before that I was denied tenure at the university. When when the chair of the department told me that I remember it so well. He was a good friend of mine. And he told me that and he said, I was shocked because I didn’t think there was any problem at all. I thought I just sell right. And at the end of it, he said, If you want to appeal this decision, you can do that. And it sounded like such a weird statement to me because he had already spoken. And what I heard was like the angel Gabriel had spoken in Angel that appeared using his body and voice to tell me you’ve got to shift now in your life. You moved from this second You’re a different person, now you’re moving in a different direction. You’ve been in this one, okay? You’ve been working at it now probably for seven or eight years. Now you have to shift in this second you shift to another. All I know is I was absolutely, totally certain I didn’t have any doubt, this idea of appeal or discussion meant nothing to me, I just have to go now in a new direction. And this is what I mean by the, the sole purpose, you don’t find it by figuring it out in your head. And you know, that sort of thing. You read the science, you hear the world speak to you, and give you direction, you listen to the world, you listen to other people speaking not as themselves, but some voice speaking through them. And, and that’s how at least I’ve guided my life by listening. And, and moving in that kind of direction. That’s to me that’s finding your purpose. at a soul level, you listen for it, you don’t figure it out.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 31:04
  Do you have any tips for differentiating when when someone feels like they’re listening? But it’s really driven by something else? How do we differentiate between those things?

  Thomas Moore 31:19
  Well, that’s a tough, it’s not the kind of question it’s almost impossible. You’re asking all these questions that I can’t answer. It’s, it’s difficult to answer that kind of question. Because all you can do is live your life in such a way that you, you you know, what it’s like to, to obey that you are not in control of, of your life at all ever. Like you’re not really in control of it, you’re always watching and seeing what happens and willing to shift and move all the time. So I think it’s the preparation for it that really helps you make to distinguish, you can’t say, okay, these are the criteria. If you follow these five things, you’ll know which is that is trustworthy. I can’t do it that way. Tell yourself by being the person who is very intuitive. It takes a lot of intuition to do that. Who is able to listen to the world and is free enough to be able to make a move in a shift when you have to make a component?

  Amanda Pua Walsh 32:31
  Perfect. It’s such a soulful answer, right? The mind is like, give me the prescription and the soul is like there is not there is no prescription. Okay, good.

  Thomas Moore 32:41
  All right. Lucas says you have to live your questions. Yeah. To the live your questions. Very good.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 32:48
  I love that. Okay. Laurie is asking how do we make death an ally? So we may live a more awakened life?

  Thomas Moore 32:58
  Is that where death?

  Amanda Pua Walsh 32:59
  Death? Yeah, Jeff,

  Thomas Moore 33:01
  and ally? Well, a couple of ways you can do that two or three ways that come to mind. One, the probably the most effective way is to discover how to deal with this little deaths that happen throughout life all the time, that sicknesses and failures, like my failure at the university, that kind of thing. You have to, you have to really figure out how to put them in, in the whole context and the fabric of your life where you are not undone by them. You know, it doesn’t, it doesn’t tear you apart, that doesn’t destroy you. But you can be with them. I don’t mean to bounce back and be heroic and cheerful with all these things. I mean, that you actually incorporate this ending, whatever the ending is, into yourself into your life into who you are. And you don’t feel that you don’t give it so much power, that it destroys you. But you, you allow it to affect you. So you change maybe change as part of it to learning how to change that’s a good way to prepare to have death as an ally rather than an enemy. And I think another way to do it is to do what Plato said, Plato has said this question he was asked this question, very question. And he said that you should be like a philosopher who reflects on issues all the time and the more you reflect on life, what you are doing is you are entering the realm of death as you reflect, as you really go deep into the questions that you have and that are being asked. That is the kind of dying, dying to life you’re stepping outside of life. You know, you may just go off on a retreat and suddenly that retreat has psychological death, you’re no longer in the thick of your life and you’re not so active, you’ve shut down most of your, you know, your body activity and shut it down. You’ve shut out your social life and all of that being on retreat, but you are reflecting, you’re going inward, and that going inward as a way of preparing for death. So that’s a good way to do it, I suppose meditation would be similar to that, maybe somewhere. And I think this, there’s another way to, which is to, I feel it’s really important to, to reflect a lot on birth, then it should be easy for astrologers to reflect on birth. And you realize as deeply as you can, that you were brought into this world, without your choice without your decision. You’ve been given this life, that’s birth. And death is like you are invited out. It’s very similar. And I think if you can reflect on Garth and feel, feel it really feel that and understand that you that you are here, not by choice, and none of your will is involved, there is no will. You’re here. And it’s a gift, it’s a pure gift. And the the invitation to leave is also in the same vein, same thing.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 36:32
  Do you so you don’t think the soul decides to incarnate you think that it’s it’s an opportunity that’s given but not really, by any volun? Terry response?

  Thomas Moore 36:44
  No, I don’t say that. I don’t say. No, I think that. I mean, I don’t know, it’s a question. I don’t know, if someone else says something different. I really want to have a conversation with him about it. But when you asked me that question, I have to say that my attitude primarily is to be an observer and a receiver of life and not one who’s in charge, and one who makes any decisions. I don’t need to those decisions are all made. That’s what purpose means. From the sole point of view, I think, your purposes, purpose is given to you, you don’t, your main job is to receive. And that takes a lot of effort here. And going back to real code again, real quick, the poet who says that we need what he says is we need flour, like a muscle has he calls it the muscle of infinite receptivity, like a flower opening to the sun. That’s the image he uses. So, flower opens to receive the sunshine. But imagine a muscle opening that flower. He says that’s the muscle we need. In order to be receptive. I take that as to me, that is the most important thing well, and making decisions if they don’t seem to be a good place.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 38:03
  How do you help people become more receptive? And that’s something that people struggle with. I think so much of our modern society is about like, Will and pushing and making things happen. So how do you help people take that different stance in their life?

  Thomas Moore 38:24
  Well, in terms of my writing, I write about it that way. I write a lot about receptivity. I May I quote that rocket passage over and over again in my books. So I write that way. I try to write with that attitude and get that through. When it comes to being a therapist. I, I model it I don’t talk about it much, but I model it and if someone tells me that they’re having trouble making some big decision I I’ve talked to it is though I am the the receiver and not the door. I think that modeling helps.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 39:05
  Okay, wonderful. So Thomas, tell us how you see astrology and soul coming together?

  Thomas Moore 39:13
  Well, one of the things I mentioned is that soul is more more inclined toward multiplicity and diversity rather than coming everything coming together into one. I think one of the great benefits of astrology is the multiplicity when you put all the different possible combinations together. I mean, it’s so it’s best what you can do with astrology, with the with the 12, signs, the houses, the transits, I mean, the planets, you put all that together, you’ve got a vast, vast, infinite possibilities. So I think that’s one of its great strengths is that see what we have to do whenever we think about life, we reduce it somehow. Freud reduced it to ego id and superego that’s two, three is not enough. Or, as I’m concerned, that’s a little too narrow. Another psychologists have reduced. Like, we have to reduce it in order to try and get some perspective. I don’t know what to do with it. But astrology does reduce experience to these 12 science and in houses, and all that. But that reduction is not too much. I think it’s very rich, and it can take us a long way. So that’s one thing. That’s the one aspect of the soul quality of astrology. Another is I think it depends on how you do it. But the planets are named after the gods. And union Hillman, for example, just the name two people have developed, wonderful, vast deeps psychology is based on the gods, the Greek gods and the Roman gods. And astrology has this. But I think you would have to really understand the gods and all their richness in order to make your astrology more soulful, that will be a way to do it. One thing, one thing a soul doesn’t thrive on is symbolizing symbols, in the sense of one thing stands for another, that doesn’t work that way. It’s like in dreams, I use dreams in my work all the time, I would never use a set of symbols for dreams, a lion represents strength and something on all this wisdom. That’s that’s facetious, you know, I was an owl, lioness ally, and there’s just so much there. And that animal, you could, you could talk about it forever. So I wouldn’t want to reduce things that I wouldn’t want to reduce the gods to symbols of something. Venus is not just sensuality, or sexuality or something like that. There are fast mythologies of Venus. So I would think that one way to bring some soul to astrology would be to bring more of the stories of the gods and goddesses into it. I know people are doing that. I know they’re doing it, and they haven’t done it for decades, at least not centuries. But I think we could do it more. I think that a lot of times people, a lot of people have the sense that astrology is kind of a symbol system, it has, you know, connecting one thought. And it’s not imagistic thinking, the soul is really really only thinks images, thickly, poetically, narratively story, that kind of thing. So the more that element is emphasized, the more your astrology will have soul, I would say that’s what,

  Amanda Pua Walsh 42:47
  Thomas, it’s so interesting, we were just recently having this conversation, because what happens is, when you’re a student, you naturally people want it to be broken down and clear, like this, plus, this equals this. And the whole conversation has been around how you can’t really do that, and you can start there. But the truth is, it is so much richer than that. And it’s so much more nuanced. And we were talking about the house systems, because there are like 30, plus different house systems. So there’s 30 different ways to break up the sky. And in one house system, you might, it might mean this, and another house in this system, you might think this about yourself. So the trick is being open to the idea that you could be all of it, have you use any of you get too married to one definition of yourself. When you were talking about the mini depths, it’s like there’s actually a mini death there when you think that you’re, you know, Venus is in the seventh house at this degree, and then it changes and all of a sudden, it’s in the sixth house. And now you have to see yourself differently. That is a little bit of a mini death, because what you thought you were is a little bit different now. So I see that process happening. How do you like, how would you help people? I love what you’re saying about the narrative. And that’s what we’ve been talking about in this class is like we’re putting together a story. It’s not it’s not a definition.

  Thomas Moore 44:12
  Yeah. There’s another thing related to what you just said is, is the idea to that going to the systems of the past and to other cultures would enrich and help diversify your approach to the to it too to find out but you know, what, a an India what the astrological procedure, what all the images would be there, or somewhere else China or wherever, wherever in the world that’s done, or in the past, going back to the past and our own culture. And I think there’s a great deal to learn from the astrologers of the past. That’s what I’ve done a lot. I did my work I refer to them. You I’ve considered these people I’ve written in the past to be full of wisdom and understanding. I don’t have the sense that a lot of modern people do that. The that what we do today is so much better than what people have done in the past. I don’t think that’s true, especially in certain areas, and I think astrology would be one. So I would really study some of the greatest neurologists of the past maybe I’d look at John D, and Robert flood, some of the Chino himself, and some of the earlier astrologists Apera. Charles is a great one to study. He is so wonderful with medicine and astrology, to be able to study all those things to get insight into how you can do this in a way that’s so much more delicate and refined than you would have if you only stayed with their own culture. And in your own time.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 45:53
  You know, there’s a resurgence of people doing that. There’s a there’s a big a rising trend in popularity of traditional astrology, there’s a bunch of astrologers really committing their their work to translating old texts. So

  Thomas Moore 46:09
  I know Yeah.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 46:12
  Yeah, so it’s definitely happening. I think there’s, there’s so much richness that’s being brought to the astrological conversation because of that, yes, sure. Why why astrology? For you? Why do you believe that? There’s validity and how do you see it helping people navigate their souls and their lives?

  Thomas Moore 46:31
  Somewhere somewhat indirectly. My field is religion. And I define that very broadly. So any, any I see religion as a way of, of establishing a relationship and effective relationship to the mysterious, I think that’s probably my definition of religion. I know religion is not a word that’s an phone today, but it’s my field. I can I say. So. I, but that’s how I understand it, I have understood it from the beginning of my studies in this field is that it is it’s an effective and majestic way of dealing with the mysterious and the infinite, you might say. So, I think that’s what astrology does. It’s one of those ways that is majestic. And ritualistic to the rituals of astrology are important. And it’s a way of relating them to the mysterious that is effective, I think the wrong way to relate to the mystery is to try to explain it. That’s the contradiction in terms. So its point is not to keep trying to explain which is the modern way to explain the mysterious but rather to find a way to live with it effectively, and that the mysterious whatever however you encounter, whether that’s an illness, or it’s the universe or whatever it is, life itself, death, all these love, these mysterious things we have to deal with all the time. These mysteries are are so rich, and they make life worth living. And but we need a way of relating to them. And it’s not as I said before, to reductionistic we don’t we don’t want to reduce at all to some rational system that loses this is the whole thing, then you don’t have the mystery. But there are ways to do it and astrology is one alchemy is another I think alchemy and astrology are somewhat similar to each other. And alchemy. Jung is shown how how how effective alchemy is and trying to sort out the human life human experience. And so Alchemist the alchemist uses materials, earth materials like rock and stone and wood and chemicals and all kinds of things, little boys here and all kinds of stuff in the in the pot putting into the pot, and then seeing what happens when you heat it. Seeing the visions that come out of all of that. Well astrology uses the planets and the sky. And so it’s using the physical world but looking at it and seeing ourselves reflected this Robert Floyd and Robert flood wrote this book on the cosmos and the micro cosmos, you know how these two are, are mirroring each other. And if you want to understand yourself, look at the cosmos. So there’s a there’s a way in which alchemy and astrology really helped us deal with the mysterious in ways that individuals can handle it’s not religion, like an established religion. This is a practice with a long tradition. And you can learn it and study it and it will do it will give you a very rich experience of yourself.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 49:42
  My first astrology reading is I had 13 years of Catholic school. My first astrology reading was my first experience of God. It was really just sitting there going, Whoa, there is something so vastly intelligent. That is beyond my comprehension. The only word I can think of is God. But it’s just that that mysterious perfection that is being mirrored in this chart Psych. It’s completely mind blowing. How do you incorporate astrology into the work that

  Thomas Moore 50:19
  you do? Well, that’s a tough question. I just say that it’s like a confession to you that it’s like in our family, my wife is a wonderful visual artist, just incredible what she can tell she showed me a painting yesterday that it just floored me. And when she can’t do music at all, and I can do music, and I play the piano, or most of the time, and I can I write music, and I just love music like that. So I have this talent for it. I really, totally captivated by astrology, but I don’t have the musical talent to be an astrologer. I know that, just as I don’t have it, I don’t try to be a visual artist, I can’t do it as much as I would like to. So I don’t have the talent in me, or whatever required it. I don’t know if that’s the right word. But what I saw, what I do is that I’m I kind of, I keep an astrological mind and when I do use, see, there’s no there if I say something else here, to me looking at the clouds as astrology. So anything in the sky, anything is going on in the sky as astrology as far as I can see. So I I’m interested in Finn Fujino thought that way, he talked about the sun rising, you know, pay attention to the sunrises. And not just not Not, not in the, the form of astrology so much, but just your relationship to what’s happening in the sky. So I do that. And I do some things like I’m just about to plan a an ecourse I want to do and yesterday we were looking over to find the best day to begin, you already want to avoid avoid of course mode. And we might you know, maybe a New Moon would be a nice beginning. We built our house beginning on the spring equinox, you know, things like that. So we are aware that my wife, probably more than nine certainly weren’t. But But I feel that it’s it’s my way of being all the time. It’s my relation to nature. And I’m aware of that. And as much as I can be of the specific astrological life I try to be aware of. And I have astrologer somebody my expert astrologers helped me me. There’s a fellow maybe you know him, Brian Clark is, is an astrologer in Tasmania, who is my guys many ways he helps me I have other astrologers have guided me who I really, really good at. And so I rely on them big decisions. But the everyday is a relationship to this world that’s moving around me. And so the alchemy and the astrology kind of blend together for me.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 53:18
  I can very much relate with what you’re saying. What kind of things would you go to an astrologer for I know, you’ve talked about your house and when to launch your course you say, big decisions and go to your guides,

  Thomas Moore 53:30
  reading the big things like that. Those are the main things, but I might just check in with him about health issues or a project of a new book, I want to write something like that. Mainly, it’s something something to do like that trend to see. Yeah, the other thing I do, just show you so you know, it’s all a piece for me, I use the Obsidian Stone, you know, I had this is my little tiny version that I have on my desk. So I use this stone also to help me this I use more often than anything else, I have it with me available daily, to be able to look at. So it’s all in the vein, it’s in the vein of natural magic machi unnaturalness being in the world living magically, which I think is the sole way to operate. Solo operation is magic. It’s not. It’s not figuring things out and planning and, you know, mechanical kind of activity. It’s magical. So this is this is my main.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 54:40
  Okay, two questions, what is magic and why the Obsidian Stone?

  Thomas Moore 54:48
  Well, let me start with the second question. So the astrology the astrologers that I that I met some of them that I really liked Okay, John Dewey, who was heavily influenced by Marsilio, Fujino, Chandi, was living at the time of Queen Elizabeth in England. And he was helping navigators go around the world when they didn’t have maps. And he was using this stuff, and astrology together. And they tended to use the magic and astrology as parts of a hole. And so he used a stone to do that. And when I first came across that was at the British Museum, and I saw his actual stone place, they pretty sure it’s this stone. And it’s from Mexico, just like this is a volcanic stone. And so I, I got one done so and I thought, Well, John D was doing all this, I could do a little bit with it. And so it took me a while to get used to it to figure out how to do it. I learned just by practice working with it. And now I know how to do it, I think. And I’ve been doing it for many years. And so what it does is it gives me a way, a very concrete way of getting out of the rationalism that’s all around me. The stone helps, it’s the thing, you know, it’s something they’re like it that’s actually give is really, really sparks the intuition. It’s a wonderful thing to do, I think. So I combine those things. Natural magic means it’s natural, it’s not supernatural. nothing supernatural is happening. It’s natural. So one of the great magicians was a man named Trophimus, who was an abbot of a religious community. And all he does, for his main magic was coding and, and ciphers and like, like alphabetical codes like they used to, and Morris you know, where they have been, they used to be in the Second World War, they used to send these messages, and just have letters out of place, and that kind of thing. That was a form of natural magic. It’s very, nothing supernatural about it, you just figure it out. But it had some magical quality to it. Because you get this message. And it’s totally unintelligible. And with this little key, you can figure it out. So that’s natural magic. And I think people in business like to find the magic word that will make people buy their product. That’s magic. That’s where we see magic today. Using calligraphy and, and words very much like a theme. Yes. His magic was his natural magic was about words and letters. So that’s one way to do it. There are other ways besides that color could be very important part of the magic of your life. What colors to wear, with what the dress, you know, that was that’s very fun. Shinya you know, for Chino was very interested in what you what colors you wear, and it gives, He gives specific instructions, what colors you should wear for different purposes. And he also says, aromas, he would use different aromas and maybe perfumes and colognes. Not just to say, Oh, that feels nice. But this, this is where I am now in my life. This is what I need, sorted out by saying, This is what I need today, but now at this point in my life. So it’s a very interesting, rich, detailed way of living. It’s natural, but it’s magical at the same time. I don’t think the average person today would understand why it’s so important that you wear a certain color on a day not just because you like your it goes with your hair or your skin or something, but because it’s going to affect your soul. That’s where the magic comes out. Wow. Which

  Amanda Pua Walsh 58:43
  planet do you resonate the most with? Or do you do you? Do you work with calling in the different kinds of planetary energies? Which planets? Are you or do you feel your soul most reflected in?

  Thomas Moore 59:01
  Oh boy, it’s hard to say because the all of them have a place to come to mind though our Venus because what my studies of psychotherapy, which is really my main interest, practice therapy is that Venus or Aphrodite? Is the is the main goddess associated with the development of the soul with healing the soul. And it makes a lot of sense to me. And it’s I think the goddess could heal our society. I think Venus is the one we’ll find most Greeks thought and Hellman taught this over and over again that the problems we have and the illnesses we have the difficulties are all due to the neglect of a god or goddess. Planet you might say. It’s by neglecting by now giving them their due all. And, and so I think the one that we have most offended in our world is Aphrodite, beauty. We don’t understand the importance of the beautiful. So, as a result, we have all kinds of trouble, just all kinds of trouble until we go back to offering her some, some regard are going to be in trouble. For myself as a writer, I really honor mercury, or Hermes. And as a therapist, Hermes is really the, probably the main spirit in my work. It has to do with language, he has to deal with language with the surprise revelations, with humor, with not being so dignified and noble. With with theft, a certain kind of deep way of stealing the right things we have to steal from each other all the time. I’m stealing from you today, you’re stealing from me what we’re doing. So there’s, there’s a kind of there’s Mercury Hermes is that by the way, if you really want to know the planet Mercury, you really should read and study about the god Hermes. So that’s, those are the ones that are most important to me at the moment.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:01:21
  Why do you think beauty?

  Thomas Moore 1:01:23
  I remain polytheistic instead of yes,

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:01:26
  it’s great. Why do you think beauty is so important to the soul?

  Thomas Moore 1:01:35
  I don’t think that I guess I’ve learned that I read Plotinus is one of the earliest writers second in the second century, but trine has developed a philosophy called Neo Platonism. And most of these magicians were Neo Platanus. At the same time, they follow this teaching of Plotinus. But Titus has this reading that we have from his time called the Indians. And the Indians are a wonderful collection of essays on the soul going back to the second century. And they are 80%, maybe 75%, about beauty, the importance of beauty to the soul. He says along the way, and I’ve quoted this in my books that he says that when you work on your soul, when you care for your soul, it’s like a sculptor, cutting away at a stone. And you realize that you need to get rid of this and get rid of that and keep shaping and polishing up until it’s beautiful. Not so that it works, but so that it’s beautiful. And I’m reminded all the time that some of the most soulful and beautiful people I know are very sick, or emotionally in great distress, or psychotic. And yet, they’re the most beautiful and soulful people I know. So I don’t want to have being able to function as the criteria as a criterion for soul work. Beauty is really the place beauty is what we need. We need a beautiful world, if we had a beautiful world, we’d be much more be much better off than trying to make it all function properly.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:03:16
  Thomas, there’s healing for me and hearing you say this, I have my sun and Venus conjunct in the 12th house. I don’t know if that means anything to you. But I’ve always been very beauty is very important to me, in my surroundings, and it just and I had one person say to me one time, what is this obsession with beauty? Like, it’s so superficial? Why are you so obsessed? And I was like, I don’t know, I just I just like it to be beautiful. And, and so there’s a little bit of shame that I felt for, for having that desire for beauty around me.

  Thomas Moore 1:03:55
  Well, we’ll see. That’s what astrology could do for us it could it could help us reclaim these things that the rational world has disregarded. But the astrological world doesn’t tell me it’s right there. You can’t ignore the fact that Venus is right there. Prominent and also in a place. A place where you are really, you know, it’s not what I’m saying, I guess is that it’s in the 1212 house you said so really, really out there, you know and really doing what you do. I think it’s probably exactly where it needs to be. Yeah, we greatly Oh, we’d have to have a whole hour session on.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:04:40
  Okay, I’m gonna ask this one from Leah. This is would be an interesting one to end on. But it’s a really great question from your soulmates book. Thomas Moore writes, from a Hermes point of view, sex offers guidance towards soulfulness especially toward the deep places of the soul, where strong emotions arise We might look closely at shifts in our sexual fantasies for signals of what is going on deep in the soul. Our usual tendency is to judge these fantasies to move quickly into either repressing them or acting them out. We don’t think to take them as indications of movement of the soul. The soul has its own sexual poetics, which have far reaching resonance and many levels of meaning. Okay, so then she asks Leah as an examining Virgo in my eighth house, I have a question. How can we best honor the archetypal movements of soul and arrows in our lives while still maintaining an inner sense of morality and respect for our significant relationships?

  Thomas Moore 1:05:41
  Okay, the general answer to that question, especially, the last part of it is that human beings can do more than one thing at a time, that just so you have to know you start with that. Or another way to put it more in a fancier way is that what Hillman used to say is that the soul is polytheistic, meaning that there are many, many different claims made on as many gods many, many, many planets, and they each can have a place that one doesn’t rule out the other. The question is, for the human being is to live astrologically has to live polytheistic li to be able to say yes to all of those, all of those possibilities and all those claims. So, Virgo and Venus, you know, I mean, like, what do you do with that? Well, you and Hermes, so you, what you do is you can, you have to spend your life, probably a part of your life trying to work it out. It doesn’t happen overnight, and there’s no logical answer to it. So you have to work it out for yourself in a way that nobody else does. So work out for yourself, how to make your sexuality very much a part of your life and your identity. But you know, this talk about Hermes, material I wrote about Hermes, and looking at the fantasies and images. When you do that, if you don’t take sex only as behavior, but as the images around sex, and then you have a better chance of seeing it be able to be coexistent with bear go or with with that vehicle feeling requirement. They go together well, because you wouldn’t want to have just totally unbridled sexuality. I don’t think so anyway, maybe some people feel they would, but I think that they’re gonna play the miracle idea, plays a good role with that, with that it goes hand in hand very well with with Hermes, in that regard. Hermes fell in love with, with nymphs, you know, and they stories about that you would fall fall in love with these virginal, tight nymphs. I think that’s very interesting, because he, he needs the needs, the whole pulling back, and the holding back the fantasy that I am pure that I am not, my whole life isn’t devoted to sex, or I’m not, I’m not compulsive about my sexuality, I can fit it into my life in a way that it fits with my other values. So, I think that that helps. If you follow me, I think, moving kind of quickly there. But if you don’t make Hermes too narrow, or sexuality too narrow, but see that, that sex is really about images, when you have any sexual fantasies, you don’t have to take them literally, what do I do? Do I do this? Or do I do that? What do they suggest in a bigger way? I find as a therapist, that with people that dreams of sex, that they’re making love and their dreams, that it’s not so much usually about their sexual relationships, in life as it is about the joy in life or their feeling of vital and alive. In fact, in general, I find that when people begin to begin having sexual dreams, their vitality picks up a lot of thoughts vitality, and vn Hermes can certainly get that so can Aphrodite can get but all the gods are sexual and even Farrakhan sexual a certain way. There’s a virtual kind of sexuality. So I would be wide open, open your mind to all those things. And consider the question I asked before or what I said before us, human beings can do more than one thing at once. And try to do that I try to be reserved and pure in a way and very sexual.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:09:39
  Wow. Talk about life journey, navigating that reality that you just laid out. That’s beautiful. Okay. Laurie is asking, what’s the most important thing to teach your model for our children and grant and grandchildren?

  Thomas Moore 1:09:57
  Model is really a good word. so important to model this. So the thing to do, there’s, there’s a tendency, I think within parents and teachers and grandparents to, to want to too much to mold to the child or two, well, the first thing you have to say is, don’t try to make the child you don’t, you know, I don’t know if I should say this, it’s so obvious. Don’t don’t make the child yourself and don’t make them be who you are. And what you want to be or what you want them to be. The whole thing is to create an environment where they can be themselves, which means they’re going to be different from you, which means they’re going to be some tension, just the way it is. So that’s the first thing learn to live with that. And, and don’t expect this, the easy way is to have a child be exactly who you want them to be or who you want to be, or you think you are. That’s that’s the easy way, no challenge in that, but it’s dead, there’s nothing there, there’s no life. So the point is then to nurture the child’s own identity and realize that their identity will come out gradually emerged out of their soul, not from some plant, not from not getting a great job, it’s not that it’s about what how their soul emerges. And that changes over time, and emerges slowly and gradually. And what you first see may not be where it’s really headed. So just because they get they get a job in finance doesn’t mean they’re going to stay with that, maybe they’re going to become something else, but that’s going to lead them there. So So you have to be patient, and, and really giving not not narcissistic at all, not having to have your own self fulfilling, but let the child appear. So your job as a parents is to nurture their soul, not to make sure that they they grew up to be what you put, everyone else thinks they should behave in a certain way. And if they’re if they have a certain quirkiness or to get in trouble, sometimes I mean, work it into their whole plan, see it as part of their whole unfolding, and be big have a broad, broad net for that broad capacity to see who they are.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:12:21
  Okay, one final question, I know that we’re at our time, chi is wondering, if you can provide us with five you don’t have to do five, could be two or three, whatever you want to do, daily practices that we could do to begin to open up like you’re saying that flower opening up, to listen, to be able to listen more to be able to receive more, what it is that our soul is trying to express to us.

  Thomas Moore 1:12:51
  I don’t know if I can do three or five. But let me just talk about it for a minute.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:12:55
  Okay, perfect.

  Thomas Moore 1:12:57
  You can I think the same the trick there is to discover what your desire is. Desire and soul go together. If you haven’t read it read the great ancient story of Eros and psyche. That’s the most important story about the soul, Eros and psyche biopolis. It’s available all over the place. And it’s a really, really good story about the development of the soul. But it’s about arrows. So arrows and soul got together arrows can be pleasure can be desire, longing, sexuality can be a lot of things. It’s not just sextile it’s a deep, deep desire. I understand Buddhists have some trouble with that, because they may have been taught that the note that the Noble Truths say that suffering is caused by desire. I think that’s a bad translation. Probably not that I know, Sanskrit. But what I’ve read is that the maybe a better translation could be craving. So we’re not talking here about craving, we’re talking about desire, the desire and the soul are like brother and sister or husband and wife. And so if you could see what your desire is, if you could get a sense of that feel it feel the desire what is and you know, sometimes desire appears as a wish that’s temporary. And you only get like the tip of the iceberg. You get a feel for what what it is you want. And you have to think of majestically so if your desire is for chocolate ice cream, think about a chocolate ice cream type of life. Think about what it would be it might be dark and sweet. You know and think and use your imagination to explore that desire. You may have a desire to travel or you may have a desire for a certain job to do a career to have. And it may not be what you think, if I can talk about myself and I 13 thought I wanted to be a Catholic priest and I studied for 13 years to be a priest. I left it I left it because I thought It was over. And I wandered for a number of years not knowing exactly what to do at one nothing to do with religion or anything like that. I ended up with a degree of religion. And then I wrote a book called care of the soul. And since then I have spoken at more churches and more puppets. And you can imagine, I get up there, and I realized that I’m doing what I wanted to do when I was 13. But it’s different. It looks different. It’s not the same, but it’s better in some ways. So that’s what I mean by the shape of desire, your desire at the beginning may not, by the time, some years of past may look very different, but still be the same desire being fulfilled. So you have to be, you have to look carefully. And, and think about things that don’t take everything, don’t take anything, literally. Everything is an image and a story. So take it that way, and see through what’s going on. That’s what Hillman says, In the beginning of his revision in psychology, see through, see, through everything that’s happening, don’t take it. And it’s, as it appears to you see, it’s deeper story and steeper imagery. It’s metaphorical nature, pay more attention to the metaphor than to the reality.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:16:17
  Thomas, amazing, I could spend days, I would exhaust you asking so many more questions. Thank you so much for being with us. For sharing, I mean, to, to be able to share in your enthusiasm about astrology and how you see it and how you work with it. It’s just so delightful. And I know that it’s, it’s, it’s so much fun for our audience to hear as well. And I’m just curious if people want to join your ecourse, or they want to learn more from you. I know you have so many books that we can read. Where should we go? Is there one place people could go to learn

  Thomas Moore 1:16:55
  more, I have a website called Thomas More soul.com. Thomas Moore sold that calm. And I’ll be advertising. I mean, I show there, I have a calendar where I’m going. And I will certainly be detailing the courses that I’m planning right now and hope to start within weeks, a couple of weeks. And so all of that is there. I do have a couple of pages on Facebook. And I also keep people informed through that. And LinkedIn. I mean, I’ve tried it. I like to write so I find all these different places where I can write

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:17:35
  Perfect, well, lucky for us, I am listening to care of the soul. And it’s it for me. It’s like it’s an 11 hour book on Audible. So it’s like this wonderful backdrop to the days, you know, just like tune in. And as I’m listening like, Gosh, I wish he did some online courses, because it was so nice to work with him online. I don’t know if I can travel. I have two little girls and

  Thomas Moore 1:17:59
  online. She from

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:18:01
  Yeah, exactly. But I’m so happy to hear that you’re bringing some of your work online and letting us study with you that way. It’s brilliant. Thomas, thank you so, so much. It has just been a complete and total pleasure to be here with you today.

  Thomas Moore 1:18:17
  Thank you, Tim. Thank you for inviting me and for those wonderful questions from people. They’re really terrific.

  Amanda Pua Walsh 1:18:22
  There was lots more. Maybe someday we can do a part two, but this is a great start. Thank you, Thomas. I look forward to connecting with you again soon.

  Thomas Moore 1:18:34
  Okay, bye bye.