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Astrology is more than symbols on a chart – it's a living community. In this inspiring conversation, Amanda sits down with legendary conference organizer and evolutionary astrologer Laura Nalbandian to explore the rich history of modern astrology, why gathering in person matters more than ever, and the powerful role community plays in our collective evolution.
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🎬 IN THIS EPISODE, YOU’LL HEAR:
00:00 — Inside the World's Biggest Astrology Conference
06:37 — Laura's Astrology Legacy: NORWAC, UAC & Keeping It in the Family
13:10 — Evolutionary Astrology Explained: The Soul's Journey Through the Birth Chart
19:13 — What Makes a Great Astrology Conference Organizer? Laura Reads Her Own Chart
21:58 — Electional Astrology: Can You Choose the Perfect Time for an Event?
27:03 — The Biggest Mistake Astrology Students Make (And How to Avoid It)
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LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
Going to UAC? Sign up for our mailing list: https://astrologyhub.com/insider
Connect with Laura directly: https://lauranalbandian.com/
Sign up for NORWAC: https://norwac.net
Read more about UAC history: https://uacastrology.com/history-of-uac/
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
A 2nd-generation astrologer based in Seattle; Laura Nalbandian has been actively in service to the astro-community since 1990. She is the owner/coordinator of NORWAC, established in 1984. She is a founding board member of Kepler College,1992; has served on the board of WSAA for more than 15 years. She has been teaching since 1986 and co-founded SoulWise School of Evolutionary Astrology in 2019. She coordinated UAC02, UAC18, ISAR2022, and is the coordinator for UAC2026.
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“Astrology is the base language – we all just speak different dialects.” – Laura Nalbandian
Transcript
Amanda: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to The Astrology Hub Podcast. I am so happy to be here today with an absolute legend in astrology—someone who has been paving the way for all of us to enjoy and experience the astrological community together in person for decades.
Laura Nalbandian has been the coordinator of UAC, the United Astrology Conference, for… gosh, since 2002. She's also the coordinator for the upcoming United Astrology Conference in Chicago the first week in September. I am so excited to see any of you there who are planning on going.
But she also is a second-generation astrologer. So she's been teaching since 1986. She co-founded Soul Wise School of Astrology in 2019, and she's the owner and coordinator of NORWAC, another amazing astrology conference. This one happens every single year. And really just a spearhead. She's a spearhead in bringing community together, and this is a huge task.
Anybody who has ever planned events knows it's a massive undertaking, especially when we're talking about events the size of the events that she coordinates. So Laura, I'm so happy that you're here at The Astrology Hub Podcast, and I can't wait to hear more about the backstory, the history, what motivates you to continue bringing us all together, and, um, just to get to know you and your astrology a little bit better.
So thank you so much for being here.
Laura: Thank you, Amanda, for having me. Uh, this is a delight to talk with you today and to talk about something that is so close to my heart, which is bringing community together. That is the core of who I am, so uh, I really am very much appreciative of that.
Amanda: You know, we know that community is going to be a growing thing over the next few decades. You know, people actually, instead of continuing in the direction of isolation, really making efforts to be together in person. And, and now with the rise of AI and all the things that make you kind of question the reality online, it's even more important that we have these opportunities to connect eye to eye, heart to heart, and really, you know, in a much more human way.
So what motivates you, though, to…? And, and then I wanna go to your backstory because it's fascinating, too. I know you're a second-generation astrologer. Your mom was an astrologer. She started NORWAC.
What Motivates Laura
Amanda: So I wanna hear all about that, but what does motivate you to continue doing something that is really challenging?
Laura: Well, um, tongue-in-cheek insanity. Um, so I'm kind of convinced on the humor level that it takes a level of insanity to want to take on such a large project as UAC. NORWAC's a piece of cake compared to UAC. And the motivation, certainly as established and impressed upon me by my mother, and which spoke to me as well, was bringing people together.
Uh, that when we are in community, when we are in connection, that actually promotes the learning process when we are connected to one another. And it's not as much so much the classes that you're taking. Yes, you're ingesting information, but it's the communication that happens with other people that are there.
You know, the sharing of your chart, the sharing of the lecture that you listened to, the dissecting of what it is you just learned, and all the levels of conversation that go on. And when I'm walking through a conference space, whether it's NORWAC or UAC, and I hear all that talk, you know, M- M- Mercury, Pluto, signs, you know, aspects… It's like we've created this kind of bubble where our language is saturated in the space. And when we're out in the other world walking around doing whatever we're doing, we don't hear that sort of thing.
So for folks who've never been to a conference…
Amanda: Mm-hmm.
Laura: …it's kind of like an awe-inspiring experience to know that wherever you turn, to whomever you turn to, the language is the same.
Amanda: Oh, God, Laura, I love that so much. And it is so true. Any of the… So, I've been to UAC in 2018. We were a baby company then. We were just three years old, and it was like, whoa. I mean, I didn't even know there were so many people that were into astrology, and to have them all in one place. At that event, I got to go to lunch with Rick Levine, and that one connection, that one relationship has become such a rich and fulfilling relationship that has given back to so many people.
You know, just to think that that happened because we were in Chicago at UAC in 2018. And that—
Laura: Yeah.
Amanda: That's magic.
Laura: Yes. It's the magic that happens where you meet someone—lifelong relationships—
Amanda: Yes.
Laura: …built at NORWAC. Lifelong relationships are reestablished and built at these other conferences. Uh, it is a real synergistic experience. The energy that fills the space. So it's—
Amanda: It's so true. Yeah, I mean, we can get to know each other virtually and online quite a bit, but it literally is irreplaceable, that opportunity to be together. So you're really driven by that, and that really gets you excited.
Speaker: Hi, friends. If you're one of those people who would love, love, love to be at this conference, but you can't make it for whatever reason—maybe you didn't get tickets or it's too far for you to travel—I just wanted to let you know that we are going to be extending the conference experience to our online community.
We're gonna be sharing some of the behind-the-scenes, we're gonna be sharing some of the mini podcast episodes we do, we're gonna be doing some raffles, some really fun things. So if you would like to be included in that, go to astrologyhub.com/insider, sign up, and we will make sure that you get to experience the in-person event that we're having wherever you are in the world. I hope to see you in Chicago if you're gonna make it, and I hope to be in connection with you throughout the entire experience if you're not.
Laura's Lineage
Amanda: Tell us a little bit about your mom. I love stories of second, third generation astrologers. I think it's so fascinating. So tell us about your mom and what she did and what legacy she passed on to you.
Laura: Well, when I was six years old, uh, Mom's very dear friend became interested in astrology. So this would've been 1965. And Mom was a very, at that point, linear, logical thinking person. And so she was sort of aghast at what her friend was getting into. And given who my mom is and was, she knew that the only way to talk her friend out of such silliness was to study it and disprove it.
Amanda: Oh, my God. That's so great.
Laura: And so she began studying it, and the more she studied, the more she became obsessed and the more she realized that she could not disprove and dissuade her friend from it.
Then she became really involved in the local astrological community in Seattle—what was at the time the Seattle Astrological Association, which later became the Washington State Astrological Association. She was the treasurer, she was the recording secretary, she was the vice president, she was the president, and then she started organizing events for them to have these small conclaves and small conferences back in the '80s—and this would have been late '70s, early '80s.
Um, and so she realized that she was really pretty much doing on her own in a volunteer scenario, and she decided she wanted to create her own. So NORWAC came about in 1984. And her very dear friend, who also is no longer alive, by the name of Roxana Muse, had a conference in California called the Southwest Astrological Conference, called SWAC.
And so, on talking with Roxana, she decided she would create the Northwest Astrological Conference, NORWAC. And so that happened in 1984. I think it was March of 1984. Rob Hand, Noel Tyl… um, there was a whole host of really powerful, well-known astrologers even at that time. And she didn't make a whole lot of money, but she did well and kept producing the conference.
And then I was really involved in the bookstore she started, Astrology et al. Bookstore, which now is owned by my brother. And so I was running the bookstore side of things. And in the mid-'90s, I became her full partner for NORWAC, and I restructured a bunch of things, and then NORWAC really started doing better.
And then in 2018, after UAC, astrology really took off. I mean, just meteoric took off, and that was the first time in 2019 that NORWAC sold out. And we always had somewhere around 300-ish people, but after that it was sold out continuously at 500.
Amanda: Wow. So—
Laura: Mom was always about community organization. She was always about helping other people. So if somebody called her and wanted to… you know, “I'm thinking about having this event,” or, “I've been thinking about starting an event or a conference,” or, “I'd like to open a bookstore,” she was always there to provide information to help them get started.
Uh, so that is a legacy I've carried forward when anyone wants information about how to do things. I have coached them. I've coached Jason Holly in the startup of his conference in Santa Fe, and I just believe the more the merrier. I'm not a person who believes in scarcity. I believe in abundance, and that means there's enough for everyone, and many voices and many places make more.
Amanda: Oh, yeah. I mean, when you think about the growth in astrology, it's only gonna continue. And really, when you compare it to how many humans there are, it's still tiny, right? There's still so many… there's so much growth available within this field. And yes, the more people sharing it, the more people teaching it, the more people hosting events like what you're doing, the better for everybody.
So I love that so much. Tell us a little bit about… first of all, it's amazing that your entire family now… it seems like your children are now involved as well. So everybody's doing astrology pretty much. Is that true?
Laura: My daughter studied astrology. Um, she has no intention of being an astrologer. She'll follow in my footsteps of being more the coordinator. She's a Capricorn as well. Uh, Sydney Devereaux, who's my daughter from another mother, is an astrologer and a practicing astrologer. And so she's on the team. Uh, Nicholas Palominacos, an astrologer, is on the team. Uh, my son Aaron Nalbandian was on the team, but he is off doing his own thing now as a real estate agent and doing successfully well. So more blessings to him. That's fine. So—
Amanda: He's not running the store anymore, the bookstore?
Laura: Gregory is my brother. Aaron is my son.
Amanda: Oh, oh, that's right. That's right. Okay. Yes.
Laura: Gregory runs the bookstore, and Astrology Et Al has been doing the bookstore for UAC since 1995. So '95 in Monterey, '98 in Atlanta, 2002 in Orlando, 2008 in Denver… no, 2008 in Denver, 2012 in Louisiana, New Orleans, 2018 in Chicago, and now 2026. And he's done ISARs and NCGRs, and so he knows the drill. He knows how to do it.
And so yes, we as a family work together. You know, it has its dynamics, but I wouldn't have it any other way. There's a bond and there's a love, and we support each other and cheer each other on, and that's a beautiful thing.
Laura and Evolutionary Astrology
Amanda: Hm. I know you also studied with Jeffrey Wolf Green way back in the beginning, and you have continued to practice and teach evolutionary astrology. For people that are not as familiar with evolutionary astrology, what is it and what makes it a little bit unique compared to other branches?
Laura: Well, if we look at the big umbrella that's called evolutionary astrology… uh, and it is an umbrella. It's a big tent, a whatever you wanna call it. And so the intention of evolutionary astrology is understanding the evolution of the soul. Why did the soul choose a particular lifetime? What are the karmic dynamics?
It's not just about pointing out where you've come from, it's pointing out where you've come from and what it means to you in this lifetime, and what your challenge is and tasks, and what the soul has tasked us with.
And so all that information is about how do we help our clients evolve in this lifetime? So we're breaking through the things of where we get stuck, the complexes, the patterns that are repeated time and time again. So that is the point. I don't do past life narratives in the sense that somebody was this or that, or this or that. I talk about the patterns the soul is bringing in from a past life, and what it means for them here and now.
And I think of evolutionary astrology as interior astrology versus exterior astrology. Nothing wrong with either one. Looking to the outer world and predicting or looking to our lives that way, it's very useful and helpful. Interior astrology is the viewpoint that everything starts internally. Whatever it is that I'm experiencing in the outer world, that I'm running up against, starts in here, and the power to affect change in those experiences has to do with me—or us, as who we are and what we need to work on.
And so the outer world serves as the trigger point or trigger points for us to do our growth. And so with transits and progressions, we look at the cycles that the soul is in and the individual in this lifetime, and how that promotes their growth.
Amanda: So in terms of identifying where this energetic imprint of the soul came from and what it's wanting to experience in this lifetime, you're looking beyond the nodes is kind of what I heard. Like, you're not just interpreting the south node and the north node for that story. What other elements are you bringing in? How does that come together?
Laura: So we look at Pluto first.
Amanda: Pluto first.
Laura: Pluto represents the soul itself and its deepest emotional attachments, right? It's the deep psychology of the soul. And then the south node, its sign, its house, the ruler of the south node, all along with Pluto are the base. It's not only it, but it's the base of where the soul is coming from.
Aspects to the nodes, particularly squares… others would know that as the bendings. The planets that… if you have planets that square the nodes, those are important. Planets conjunct the south node also play part of the past, planets conjunct the north node.
And then when we're looking to what the soul is intending toward its growth in this lifetime—we call that the intention for the soul—we're looking at the opposite placement of Pluto, then the north node, its sign, its house, its ruler, and aspects as well. And that gives us the base foundation of the intention for the soul.
And then we look at other aspects in the chart that help fulfill or fill out the rest of the story for this lifetime. But the base of the past is that Pluto, south node, sign, house, rulers, placement by house and sign, and the aspects to the ruler and if there are aspects to the south node. So there's a whole methodology that we teach at Soul Wise School and that I've been teaching for 40 years. So…
Amanda: Wow.
Laura: …a solid methodology.
Amanda: It seems more complex than what I've… I mean, complex in a good way. Like, more nuanced than what I've heard before in terms of just kind of taking the south node and the ruler of the south node and making that the story of the past. And then so, and then how about the north node? What does that represent?
Laura: Yeah, that's part of the intention of where the soul is going to.
Amanda: Mm-hmm.
Laura: Not that it will, but that's the intention of what the soul wants to achieve. So that's the north node, along with Pluto, what we call the polarity point of Pluto. So if you have Pluto in the first house, your polarity point is the seventh, and those are the lessons that the soul is trying to bring in, along with the north node by sign, house, and its ruler, and yada, yada, yada.
There are caveats to the rules, and they get into the weeds of things, particularly when planets are conjunct the nodes and square the nodes. That changes some of the methodology, but there's methodology for that as well.
Amanda: So I have Pluto conjunct my north node.
Laura: So—yes, that is a very specific methodology piece in evolutionary astrology. It breaks the rule when you have Pluto conjunct the north node, particularly in the same house. If they're in the same house, then you aren't going to… it's not so much Pluto to the polarity point. It now stays right where it is. The soul says, “Hey, I've been doing this work. I wanna continue doing this work. I'm gonna stay here where Pluto and the north node are.”
Amanda: Wow.
Laura: We can still get past patterns out of Pluto's place, out of the south node, but the Pluto north node really tells us this has been an ongoing lesson and the soul has chosen to continue on the path.
Laura's Chart
Amanda: Mm-hmm. What in your chart kind of shows your proclivity towards bringing community together, towards coordinating huge groups of people? Is there a story of that in your soul's intention?
Laura: I think that, first of all, I call myself an accidental astrologer. That was not my path. Uh, I'm an accidental coordinator 'cause that was not my path. Uh, and I walked into these things and found that I had a talent for them. The talents grew over the events that I did.
Amanda: Mm.
Laura: And I found them fascinating enough to learn more. And I have a Mercury in Capricorn. It is conjunct Saturn. It's out of bounds. So I see that as a description of my ability to think outside the Mercury in Capricorn framework, and to think bigger.
Uh, I think that having a Venus in Aquarius, Aquarius on the 7th house, describes my proclivity for bringing a vast variety of people together, and I find the variety the interesting part. I don't want everybody thinking the same way, being the same way. I love the diversity of perspectives and the diversity of people.
Diversity is a super important element for me, and I've spent the last 15 years working with Sam Reynolds to create diversity in our community for marginalized groups that have been left out.
Amanda: Mm.
Laura: And so that has been a path for me, something that I'm very passionate about. And so I think that Sam and I have created a wave effect that really has rippled out into the community to help provide diversity for those marginalized communities. And so, just that flavor of that.
And, and I'm a get ‘er done, do it now girl, you know? I wanna… whatever it is, I wanna do it now, get it done. Uh, I don't tend to put things off. There's too many things I have going on in my life to put anything off for any length of time. However, I will say that if I don't have a clear decision, I can sit in the nothingness and wait for the decision to happen.
Yeah, but generally that does… generally, I know what I need to do right away, but if I don't, then I'm just gonna hold space for the clarity for that to come, and it just does.
Electional Astrology and Event Planning
Amanda: Laura, in terms of timing, I know the events that you do are on a set time. Like, it's always the same weekend for NORWAC, or the same timeframe for NORWAC every year. It's always the same timeframe. You know, I know that sometimes it's every four years, sometimes every five years or six years for UAC. But it's around the same time of year.
We all have those things in our life, right, where we don't get to choose the time based on what's great astrologically. How do you work with the astrological transits of a given event, especially when you look at those transits and go, “Oh, God, this one's gonna be interesting”?
Laura: Well, um, first of all, there are two things you have to keep in mind, and one has nothing to do with astrology. Okay. And that is working with an event center or a hotel. They don't give two farts, sorry, about the dates, right?
So what we're looking for is the best possible price, room rate, food, and such that makes it affordable for attendees to travel to come. And the only way that generally happens is for it to be on a holiday or an off-season.
NORWAC is on Memorial Day, and in 2018, UAC was on Memorial Day, so we pushed our conference back and the hotel gave us the option, even though it wasn't a holiday, to move back six to eight weeks. And so I've been working with the DoubleTree Suites here for, oh gosh, 30 years. So they're very… We're their biggest client, and so they're very happy to accommodate whenever we need.
And so for 2026 UAC, um, we found that by the time everything got together and there was a planning process, there wasn't time to put UAC in May, and NORWAC already had contracts signed. So it's now on Labor Day, which is a holiday, and creates that environment for the room rates to be less, food to be less, and so on.
So that's the goal. That's the primary goal because then you have a contract that's signed for guarantees on those amounts, and should it fail, then you are locked in to pay a percentage of that. So those numbers have to be right, and that's probably the most stressful, to be honest, the most stressful part of coordinating events is actually contract negotiation and making sure… You know, I'll use astrology to sign a contract, right?
Amanda: No, yeah.
Laura: Can't use it to pick the event. Uh, and then we just work with what we've got. I've done NORWACs under Mercury retrograde throughout the 40 some odd years. And yes, there are things you have to deal with, but you know they're coming. You don't know exactly what's coming, but you know something's coming, and you just roll with it.
Amanda: Mm.
Laura: Life is life, you know? And I can't even tell you what sign the moon is in today 'cause I have too much to do to know what that is. You know, when I need to look, I'll look. But I have things to do that are task-oriented that if I have to slow down because there's a void-of-course moon or Mercury's retrograde, I won't get anything done. So we plan opening registrations, rate changes… We try to move those around to make them work with the astrology, but we do the best we can.
Amanda: Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, that's all we can do anyways, right? We can't control reality that way. It just doesn't work.
You've… I mean, obviously you've been around… I first of all just wanted to reflect that when you were talking about how much you love the different perspectives and everything, I was like, oh, wow. You've been doing what Astrology Hub… like, such the heart of Astrology Hub in terms of being a place where many different voices can come together and many different paths can be explored so people can find what resonates for them, right? And just giving a platform for lots of different ideas and ways of doing astrology, right? So I love that we share that, for sure.
Laura: Look, astrology is the base language, and we all have different dialects.
Amanda: Yes. There you go. Right?
Laura: Coming from different places, it doesn't mean that my dialect is wrong or your dialect is wrong. I always make another analogy that, you know, if I have to hammer a nail into a board, the hammer I use will be different than the hammer you use because it's particular to me—the weight, the feel of it, whatever. But you know, in the end, you're nailing a nail into a piece of wood, and if it gets the job done, pardon me, then that's all you gotta know.
Amanda: Yes.
Laura: Right? Fiddling around with “you've got the wrong hammer” is kind of silly.
How Astrology Students Get Trapped
Amanda: Agreed. Yes. Laura, you've seen a lot in the years that you've been practicing, teaching, running these events. Where do you think people, from your perspective… and I don't wanna say get it wrong because I know there's no real wrong. But do you ever see that there's a place where people, students of astrology, can kind of get trapped a little bit or misuse astrology? What have you seen in your years?
Laura: You know, I have seen students who've come in and say, “You know, I've got Saturn here,” or, “I've got Saturn retrograde, and that means I'm doomed.” Hmm. Or, “I've been told this and that.” And evolutionary astrologers can be part of that—making statements that can be harmful. There is no one genre that is absent of unfortunate astrologers doing harm by their words, right?
And so breaking through that and healing that for clients by providing another perspective for them… Students who get locked into one way of seeing something, I think that's the thing, you know, is when people get locked in. And is that good? Is that bad? Well, in evolutionary astrology we don't use those words, and I don't feel those words.
There isn't a wrong or a right or a good or a bad. There is just the experience of it, and the soul has an intention to experience a wide range of those experiences, and some of them are difficult.
Amanda: Hmm. Laura, I remember when I was getting ready to go to my first reading, that thought of, “What if she sees something bad? What if it's bad?” It was involuntary and so present. Why do you think we have that? It seems like that's a very natural thing for people to just go, “Oh, is it good or is it bad?” Why? Where do you think that comes from?
Laura: Fear, fear, fear, fear, fear.
Amanda: Hmm.
Laura: I mean, that's just the base of human experience, right? All of our reactions—passive aggressive, defensive, whatever it might be—is coming from fear, right? Fear that we won't be accepted, the fear that we won't survive, the fear that I won't be liked, the fear I won't belong. Whatever it is, right?
The fear that… when you've got a culture, a patriarchal culture, that has saturated our consciousness with evil and good, good and evil, heaven and hell, that is a fear-based concept that then leads into, “Oh, my God, have I done something wrong?” Uh, “What if they come up with something bad?”
That is, I think, fairly natural. I don't tend to think that way, and even thinking back, I don't think I thought that way. My first reading was at 17 with Jeffrey, and I don't remember even thinking that. That's 50 years ago, but I think that I just went in to listen.
I remember crying because what he said hit my heart so hard and my gut so hard. I was like blubbering. Which can be a definite response when you're having an evolutionary astrology reading, because we're speaking at a soul level, and it kind of hits you in the gut. Um, so I just think it's fear and doubt, and that's why we're here. We're here to work on things. We're here to break through our limitations, and break through our fear, and break through the noise. We either will or we won't.
Amanda: Mm-hmm. Laura, my first reading was with Natasha Alter, and she's an evolutionary astrologer. And I was also bawling my eyes out, and definitely just astounded at the ability for her to see so deep into me, you know? And reflect that back in a way that I had never been able to articulate myself, you know?
But also, I would think maybe your mom, having been so engaged in astrology, might have helped to shape some of your perspectives by the time you had that first reading at 17, right?
Laura: Yeah, I would… I mean, she opened the bookstore when I was 16. Jeff came to our bookstore when I was 17 and started working there. Um, so you know, I… Astrology was never front and center for me when I was a kid. Mom was just doing whatever she was doing, and I didn't really think about it.
Amanda: Right.
Laura: But then when I needed a job in the summer of '75, I was 16, and so I worked the bookstore. Um, but I didn't really know anything about it. It wasn't till 1983 that I came back to the bookstore. Uh, I left in '79 and came back in '83.
Amanda: Mm. Mm. Well, thank you for… I'm very excited to have my book in the bookstore at UAC this year. Very excited about that. And for anybody who's thinking about going, it's September… What are the official dates? I mean, we're gonna be there for a while, but—
Laura: Yeah, we're gonna be there for a while, and I gotta tell you, the conference is sold out.
Amanda: Oh. In person. So nobody else can go.
Laura: Virtual? There's no… there's no virtual. It's sold out. You can get on a wait list, and we do have a wait list. And we have… let's see, today is the 29th, right? So we have today, tomorrow, Friday, and Saturday for people to cancel with a refund, and we'll get a run of them, and so there'll be a number of openings. We've been able to move a lot of people off the wait list into the conference, and so that is opening.
So people can reach out to Courtney, our registrar, at [email protected], [email protected] to get on the list. And I think there are some single Tuesday tickets available, and you can register for workshop only. So there's plenty of room in the pre-conference workshops on the 3rd, and the post-conference workshops on the 9th.
Um, but it does… I mean, I'll get into Chicago on the 30th. There are some real pre-events that are happening, but a lot of setup. And then Thursday the 3rd are the pre-conference workshops, the opening ceremony with Chani Nichols doing a… excuse me, Chani Nicholson… Nicholas. Nicholas. God. Come on.
Amanda: No, it's okay.
Laura: Chani Nicholas. Uh, a 30-minute keynote kind of Q&A fireside chat kind of thing, and then we will introduce the speakers. The sponsoring org presidents will have opening remarks. I'll be up there doing opening remarks as well.
And then we have a newbie meet and greet on Thursday night for all those folks who are new to UAC to gather and establish some friendships or establish some connections before the week starts. And then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and half of Tuesday are all lectures with lots of events in between. You know, the lake cruise. We have a trivia pub night by Kepler. We have, oh gosh, an experiential, open experiential event with Jason Holly and Meghna Bhagat. And I mean, there's just a lot of stuff to do, plus Chicago. I mean, Chicago's fantastic.
Amanda: Yes. Oh my gosh, it's gonna be so fun. We have a big booth there, and we will be there also doing… We have a day planned where we'll be doing some mini podcasts. Every day we're featuring different astrologers that we have classes with so that you'll be able to come and meet them and do a Q&A with them. We're having lots of raffles and really cool giveaways.
So any of you who are gonna be there… wow, I did not realize it was sold out. But—
Laura: There'll be more than 1,500 people, probably close to 1,600 people with staff, vendors, and such through in the hotel for that week.
Amanda: Wow. It is basically like the Super Bowl of astrology. It is. So if you can be there, if you are planning on being there, I cannot wait to see you. Please make sure you put aside some time to come see us at the Astrology Hub booth. I believe it's booth number 27.
Laura: I will say for everybody listening, the trade show is an open event, meaning that you do not have to be registered at the conference to partake of the marketplace trade show. That is open. The bookstore and 42 vendors that are there run the gamut. There'll be readers at reader tables. Um, all the organizations, the sponsoring orgs, will have their own individual tables.
So you are welcome to come. You're welcome to be in the hotel if you are in Chicago or you happen to be there, can't register, but you want to engage with people. You're welcome in the open spaces. There's nothing that stops you.
I have to tell you, I've never been registered for a UAC, but I've been to all but one. Um, I always went. Even before I was a speaker, I went with my mom, and I would just hang out and enjoy the social elements of it. So—
Amanda: It's actually the best part. I mean, really, it is the best part, especially now that we have a lot of talks online. So you can get a lot of online astrological education, but you can't run into Rick Levine in the hallway. You can't, you know, have this kind of opportunity to… Christopher Renstrom, he'll be there. You know, this opportunity to really engage with people in person.
So if you are… yes, if you're in the Chicago area, please come and say hello, hang out with everybody. And also, NORWAC is coming up again. So this is a yearly event, and this also sells out. When do you normally sell out? And it's in Seattle, you guys, so any of you who might wanna travel to Seattle for that one.
Laura: Okay. So when we have a UAC year, which we had our May event, it did not sell out, but it did better than expected—better than historically it has done up against a UAC year. So we were very pleased about that. The year before, in 2025, the conference sold out in three weeks.
Amanda: Wow.
Laura: It sold out before the end… let's stretch it out to four weeks. It sold out before the end of November or before Thanksgiving.
Amanda: Wow.
Laura: Yeah. Um, we've got an ad in the program guide. We'll have some flyers… some postcards on the table. There's a free table, actually a whole bunch of tables that'll be out in front of the trade show for people to drop business cards and postcards and that sort of thing. And so we'll have something out there.
norwac.net, we have our front page up. We have our speakers selected. They have until August 15th to submit their lectures, their photos, their bios, and then it'll be a… oh my God, it's a marathon and a sprint race before my daughter and I leave for Chicago to get the website ready. Whatever we don't have ready, we will get ready when we get back and launch registration.
Our target date is September 28th. That's our target. If we don't meet it, then we will open October 1st. But we're running really up against that Venus retrograde and then the Mercury retrograde, so we'd like to get ourselves open. But I have to tell you, people for NORWAC and UAC, they register under retrogrades.
Amanda: Yeah.
Laura: Particularly with NORWAC, it's gonna sell out, so.
Amanda: Yeah. Wow. So if you think you wanna go to these events, the bottom line is act fast and get your tickets and get registered and go.
Laura, I have a list of things that I want to do once my children graduate from high school. One of 'em is to start regularly attending NORWAC. It happens to fall on the weekend where if you have kids in school, everything is happening that last part of May. And so every single year I go, “Oh my gosh, I wanna go.” And essentially May for me is like December. It's the exact same amount of ridiculous over-scheduling.
My youngest daughter is now a freshman in high school, so I have four more years, and maybe even before then I can start to sprinkle it in 'cause my other one's gonna be off on her own. So interesting.
I loved having this conversation with you, Laura. Thank you so much. Again, thank you for everything that you do. I know it is such a labor of love, and it requires so much energy and so much time, and I'm sure that you are also fed by it. And I also see how generous it is because it really is this place, this forum for all of us to come and have these magical experiences with each other.
Laura: I do wanna say that if anyone wants to read a bit more about the history of UAC, to go to uacastrology.com on the About page. I will say that my first UAC I coordinated in 2002. I just wanna be clear for the record.
2008 was coordinated by Ray Merriman and someone else, and then 2012 was coordinated by Madeline Hillis Dineen, Gisèle Terry, and Linda Lamon. And then I did 2018, and I'm doing 2026. And the reason… originally it was every three years, then it stretched out to four years, then it stretched out to six, and then it stretched out to eight. And hopefully they can get it back.
And it really has to do with the changeover on boards and people getting in gear, 'cause UAC takes two years to organize. And so you have to be in a mindset… after 2026, if you're going to have a conference in 2030, in four years, you have to start no later than 2028—and probably back in 2027 to start the hunt for a hotel and a location.
So it does take time, but I really wanted to say go look at that About page. Um, there's a great narrative about each of the years and who coordinated, and there's some photos there. And so you'll get a good sense of how UAC came about.
Amanda: Thank you, Laura. You know, we all benefit—Astrology Hub, this community—we all benefit from all the work that your mom, even before her, that you have carried along. People like Ray Merriman. You know, the ones that have really paved the way for us to be able to… I don't wanna say take for granted, but in some ways you can forget all the work that happened to get to this place where these conversations are happening online. They're legal—like, we're not gonna get shut down, at least anytime soon, for having them. There's so many legends, really. There are.
Laura: Marion March was the spearhead at the beginning, with Neil Michelsen. Uh, there was a whole group of them. Uh, Jeff Jawer, Aaron Sullivan… I mean, there was a ton of people involved. Angel Thompson, who was involved in the '86 UAC in San Diego. And, you know, they were not prepared for the numbers that showed up. They had to actually put tents in the parking lot to accommodate the number of people for lectures that came. It ended up being 12, 1,300 people. It was just amazing. It was astonishing. The thirst and hunger for events of that type to come together.
So, there are many women behind the scenes, and many women and their legacy. And there are men, but the women tend to get forgotten a bit more than the men. But women like Marion March, and my mother, Maggie Nalbandian, and Roxana Muse, and Carole Tebbs, and just a whole host of women who were the army behind these events. And the engine behind so much in the astrological community, I really don't want them to be forgotten.
Amanda: Mm. Thank you for that. It's really good for us to know where our roots are and the many people that put their life into this work. Again, so at this point we can benefit from it so generously, so beautifully. So thank you. Thank you to all of those amazing souls that went before us.
And thanks to all of you for your interest, for your curiosity, for being present, for listening and learning about the history so that we can keep these stories going forward, so that we can continue to share with everybody so the younger generations know. You know, and we just continue to pass this along because it is a very rich and beautiful lineage that we're all a part of that goes, obviously, thousands of years back.
Uh, but just even, you know, spending some time understanding it I think is very important so we can keep those roots in the ground as we continue to expand.
And Laura, again, just thank you so much for everything that you've done. Thank you for the labor of love that I know UAC is and NORWAC is. I can't wait to see you at UAC. And just thank you. Just big, huge thank you.
Laura: Absolutely. Thank you so much, Amanda, for all you do as well.
Amanda: All right. And thanks to all of you for making astrology a part of your life, for being a part of our community. I can't wait to catch you on the next episode, and hopefully see you in person in Chicago in early September.
All right. Take care, everybody.