Anne Ortelee is a nationally and internationally certified astrologer who began the study of astrology in 1994. Anne believes astrology helps a person understand the seasons, phases and cycles of their lives. In this interview she shares insights to her approach and enlightening points in creating your best life using the planets and their energies as helpful tools.
How did you first become interested in astrology?
I had a 14 and a half year relationship that came to an end, he had met somebody else and as when people leave your life, new people come in, I brought new people in, or they kind of showed up actually. They suggested as I was at this crossroads that I should go for an astrology reading. I wasn’t sure what that was or why I would need it, but they insisted that it was really good when you are at a crossroads and your life kind of blows up. I agreed and as they all went to the same astrologer, I made an appointment with him. About halfway through the reading, I said “You know, there was this guy” and the astrologer opens up the ephemeris, which is a book of planetary positions where the planets are and asked what’s his birthday. I tell him his birthday, he looks him up and goes “No, he’s gone, not coming back. Didn’t he remind you a little of your mother. Didn’t he have mother issues?” He knew all this stuff, he knew we had a break up seven years ago. I was surprised because looking at what he was looking at, how could he know that from a book of numbers. He knew the other good stuff too. As a Virgo I hate to make the same mistake twice. I had the reading with him on Friday and then learnt that he also teaches so I called him up and said I would like to learn how you did that and signed up for his class in the fall. I then learnt astrology with him for about two and a half years. About two months in I felt this is our blueprint, we should be learning this in the first grade, like math and reading.
At that stage I had a computer consulting business that did reasonably well. I started attending astrology events and saw people making a living being an astrologer and thought I want to turn into an astrologer. When I first said that to my dad, he said he wants my college tuition money back, so I said, “Well you didn’t give it to me, you gave it to the college, so take it up with them”. It took a while to build a practice, I started studying in fall of 94. On September 11, 2001 seven years later my office blew up, which astrologers will know that is Saturn and I thought well I might as well do astrology full time which I have been doing since September 2001.
What is it about astrology that resonates with you?
It allows you to see a person’s purpose, soul and reason for being here. It also tells you when the bad times are going to be over. One of my favorite astrologers in New York calls it the trouble business, people come to see us when they’re having trouble. As a Virgo, I’m a little bit of a Girl Scout, I like to help and I love talking to people about their path, their life, their purpose, why they’re here, how they can use their chart, what is the lesson from the experience they are having so I find it very helpful and hopeful because it says to everything, there is a season. We aren’t told that necessarily, we’re told you go and you do and then you run into those tough times and think “When is this going to be over?” or “What is happening?”, everything has blown up and all has changed or you want to change it and how do you give yourself permission to do that. So astrology is that, it shows you the different seasons of your life and it helps you work with those seasons in a productive way.
How can people best utilize astrology in their daily lives?
Well I do a weekly podcast and also send out the aspects every day on Twitter of what’s going on. One time, it was Mercury Neptune and said “They’re lying to you”, she was negotiating for a car, and showed him the tweet and he gave her $1,000 off the car. So I think once you learn it, it’s like learning a language or learning how to cook, whatever level you are at it is an informative tool, like anything that you find helpful. Some people find meditation helpful, some people find tarot cards helpful. It’s a tool we can use, it’s a tool that is in the heavens to guide us. Genesis says, “put the stars in the heavens to guide you”. It’s a guidance system, we are all used to our GPS, what does that do? It navigates by our celestial coordination’s. All you are doing when doing astrology is saying “Where are the planets in the sky relative to me? What’s going on for me?” And when people doubt it, I always go, “Well, do you wear a coat in the summer? No, you wear a coat in the winter?”, there the sun is affecting your behavior. As with ocean tides, if the moon moves the ocean, don’t you think it has an impact on you? 70% of your body is water and all I’m saying is the other planets have an impact too. What’s happening now is the physicists are catching up and are able to understand how astrology works with the wave in the pattern functions, which will actually be helpful because people that practice it know it works, the people that study it know, the people they employ it – it works. Also, anything that’s been around 20,000 years usually works, it’s been around for a really long time.
How do you approach negative aspects?
I try and understand what the aspect is for and reframe it, understanding why it is there. Like a square everybody goes through, it’s a hard aspect, but square is when you’re sitting in a chair, your knees are down, your legs are down on the floor, your knees are on the chair, that’s a square. With a little work, you can lift up off the chair. There are aspects that asked you to work a little harder and if you understand what they want you to do, because that’s the whole point of it, what does that aspect want me to do? There are a lot of ways to get up off the off the chair, you can roll off, you can stand up, you can push, you can just do it. When you have a hard aspect, understanding what it asks of you helps, because you’re going to be able to go okay, that always happens to me and people have that, they’ll go “You know, that always happens to me”. Yes, that’s your chart and yes that’s forever but you can work with it in different ways. You don’t have to work with it in the hard way, but you do have to go through, you got to get off the couch. Hard aspects want us to work with them. They are places where our charts have growth.
If we look at chickens hatching, or butterflies coming out of cocoons, they have to work to get out of their hard aspects. If you do the work of the chart, you can use it. The other part that can happen though, is sometimes you can go “I hate that aspect” and you give it to other people. If you fail to work with it productively yourself, it is going to show up in forms you might not like. The thing that’s helpful a lot of times is the story of your birth. When you were born, your parents were going through something and the chart describes it. If you can go back and interview your parents and find out what was going on in their lives when you came in, how you arrived on Earth, what happened, that is the story of how you begin everything. In my case my mother went into labor at a party with a little drinking going on. My dad was a doctor, an intern so they were all in the delivery room. When I was born, I was born into a party. I lead groups all the time. But I have a Venus Saturn conjunction in Scorpio, during delivery my father stopped halfway through and bet whether I was a boy or girl, I came in a girl and he lost money. Understand the story of your birth, it is so helpful when you know that, or you know what your parents were going through. My brother and I were born when my parents were poor and in medical school and an internship, my sister was born when my dad went into practice. She’s the one with the four bedroom house on TPC golf course in Florida. We have different lives because she was born into a time when the family was in abundance. And we were born in the time when my family was my parents were really counting every nickel and cooking so that also reflects. It doesn’t mean you can’t grow past it but it does give you an opportunity to look at the cycles of your life and see how they show up over and over again.
Where would be the best place to start for someone who is interested in getting started in astrology?
There is a lot of content on the internet and if you can afford it go to an accredited school. There are also organizations that certify astrologers that you can look up. There are three different organizations in the United States that certify, and one that certifies internationally, every country has them. There’s one in Australia, there’s one in Canada, there’s certification bodies, so contact them and enquire who they recommend.
It is like learning a language, a lot of times people have an interest in it. When you get certified, you are asked to show a body of knowledge and there’s a lot of people that take the course and hang up a shingle and say they’re an astrologer, which I have a problem with, but I’m a Virgo, so I want you to know what you’re doing but it is a journey. I do find people really find astrology when they’re supposed to, if you’d said to me, in my 20s, that I’d be an astrologer, I wouldn’t even have known what that was or considered it a job description but I’m an astrologer.
There’s also an element of a calling with astrology, kind of like anything where you know you are supposed to learn it. If you feel called to learn it, I totally encourage people to follow it and I think it is helpful on any level of competency, it’s an evolution over time. What happens a lot of times is once you get into it and are interested you find it calls you in more. It’s always good for mysteries, it’s really good if you’re dating – you can look at their chart and see what their story is, or even applying for jobs, do you want to work for that boss?
It’s competency and skill and talent, that’s the way we look at the term. What are you here for? Why are you here? What are you here to do? What’s your path? Where are you in the growth cycle of your life?
Lastly are there any significant upcoming astrological events that we should be aware of?
We are having the third of the Uranus Saturn squares, that is going to make us put down roots for the next 20 years, which we kind of started last December and we are ending the cycle that we did from May of 2000. In May of 2000, we started growing things and now we are entering a new cycle around communication and community which is planting and seeds between now and the end of the year.
For the folks in the United States we are having a once every 250 year event, having our Pluto return. That’s a big one and it is why we’re such a mess right now. In history it has coincided with the fall of the Roman Empire and the reign of Queen Elizabeth in Great Britain so it’s a big deal. We have never had one before, so the United States is a mess for the next two years.
Next year, we’re having an aspect in April, that we haven’t had since 1965 and that is Jupiter on Neptune in Pisces. Back then it was the California Gold Rush we have Bitcoins, which is kind of the California Gold Rush of this. It was a huge time for music in the world and a time of realigning dreams. Back when Neptune went into Pisces, film was invented so the Civil War was the first war photographed by Mathew Brady and a number of photographers he sent to photograph the battles, that was the first time the images came back home from war. When Neptune went into Pisces a couple years ago was when Kodak went out of business so when you have these returns, it’s a big deal, because it kind of starts a whole new cycle.
We also have Jupiter going into Aries in May, which hopefully won’t but might be another version of COVID coming in, another variant that’s a little aggressive. So hopefully not, but the other ones have all brought a bloom of the variant of COVID. COVID took place on a world point, which is similar to the world point that happened in 1914, which was World War One, Two and of course the pandemic of 1819. So that was a global pandemic, but we didn’t have airplanes then we traveled by sea, so now we’re having that global pandemic again. Really when we have these, which happens every 30 some odd years, when Saturn and Pluto meet up, we get a whole new world. We had one the 40s, which was after World War Two, so we kind of built the world, but the pandemic then was polio. Then we had one in 81/82 and that was kind of changing the structure, at least here in the States, that was the AIDS epidemic.
What I say to people is we are sitting on the precipice of history, history is unfolding before you. These are cycles that haven’t happened in 250 years. You’re here for a reason, you have a job to do, what are you here to do? And so we look at our chart and we try and figure out what we’re here to do and we do that to the best of our ability, because we all chose to incarnate now and work here on Earth. If we know our chart, we can do what we really love to do and if you do that you are helping with the chorus of Earth. Whether it’s to do with global warming or you’re feeding people in your neighborhood, helping the homeless or it’s taking political power and making change, whatever your path is, your chart describes. We are entering a new cycle of working as a community, working as a collective together for the next 20 years, so it’s a big deal.
