Alana Sofia Fennie

From a young age, I have been fascinated with the languages, customs, food, philosophies and modes of being from many different cultures. I love hearing different languages, experiencing new perspectives, and learning to be in community with people whose experiences differ from my mine and with ideas that contradict mine.

Sometimes the purpose is to just be with the mystery, not to try to figure it out.

I wish there were more conversations where people tried to build meaning together -- sometimes from wildly contradictory starting points -- without having to judge the other's starting point.

One of the wildest things I have come to "know is true," to use Oprah Winfrey's phrase, is that our world exists out of seemingly incompatible elements and that if life can exist and maybe even depend on contrary impulses, we can thrive on difference. Diversity is delightful, not dangerous, and sometimes we don't need to change or make someone else change. We just need to make sure that we listen without wanting anything in return.

At university I received a B.A. in Religious Studies, but since then my career path has focused more on technology and training. My heart, though, remains with traditional divinatory methods. I have been studying tarot and cartomancy since the late 1990s and I have completed Modules 1 and 2 of the Faculty of Astrological Studies (U.K.) training. My maternal grandmother read playing cards.

William Fennie

I'm the rolling stone that gathers no moss but, maybe, has gotten polished up along the way. (Certainly, the top of my head looks polished !)

Most of my over 60 years here has been given over to unlearning.

I've studied astrology in one form or another since 1975, beginning by working through Margaret Hone's Modern Textbook of Astrology and Carl Payne Tobey's Astrology of Inner Space, with its controversial re-assessment of house associations. Astrology is a great way to discover things to unlearn - and that is, to me, its primary purpose.

I've never studied Tarot, as such. I have seen it used quite effectively to help with intuition, and I was trained in a system that did so.

In the dreadful days of my adolescence a high school pal pushed Ouspensky's In Search of the Miraculous into my hands, and that turned everything around. Happened to coincide with Uranus transiting square its natal position - a classic transition, especially meaningful for someone with Aquarius ascending. Ninth house, too. By the time it reached the opposition to its natal place I had met my teacher, worked with study groups in Los Angeles, Denver, and Hawaii, and been initiated into an ancient sadhana.

For all that I've always had a "day job." I'm not a professional wise-guy. I work in Information Services (not IT), where my Gemini sun is comfortable, and build tools to help people find what they need when they need it.