I Was Skeptical Too… Until Astrology Transformed My Life! | My World of Astrology #2

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Hi, I'm Joni Petrie and welcome to my YouTube channel. Well, I'm going to start a very interesting series I think you're going to like. And what this series is truly about is my life as an astrologer and what astrology is to me and how I got into it, what it's all about. You know, I have had to take a lot of flack throughout my life telling people, what do you do? I'm an astrologer. Well, what do you think the reaction is? Throughout my 45 years, sometimes it wasn't the coolest thing to say. Let me just say that. And many times of my life. And you know what's so sad is this is a divine science. And oh my God, yes, I'm going to get a lot of people that say, no, astrology doesn't work. It's pseudoscience, it's nonsense, it's all that. Let me just say this for those people that say all of that. They have never studied it. And I don't mean just briefly studying it, I mean studying it and working it. I guarantee you they haven't because if they had done the work I've done, nobody could say it doesn't work. Now, I'm going to go over many things in this series. I decided I'm going to break this up because you can't take the whole story all at once. It is 45 years of my life. So I always start at the very, very beginning of my life. Let me start there because, you know, I want to say this for those of you that are obsessed and compelled to read more and more and more astrology, where it takes over your life and it does, it is a calling. And it's like you didn't choose it, astrology chose you. There is something about it that actually, and you'll know if this is you, it takes over, you can't stop thinking about.

Is, I call it the divine science because it has come down from the divine. And we're going to talk about this in great detail about how it works, what it's about, where it came from. And yes, I don't have the answers to all of that. But I'm going to give you what I do know and let me say this. Nobody has the answers. And I get so tired of all these know it alls that come around with, you know, their system's the best and it works, you know, just whatever. We need to look at this from the vantage point of our own experiences. And one more thing, I want to Add that I feel passionate and strongly about when it comes to astrology, there's no.

Rules or there's no stipulations that people have to get certified to call themselves an astrologer. And I think that that is a disfavor. I know a lot of you, it's wonderful. You can go read a few books and call yourself an astrologer, but would you go to a doctor that's read a few books and calls himself a doctor? We really need to take this science seriously. It is been no wonder it gets all of these connotations of being a pseudoscience and nonsense because you so many people out there that really don't know what they're talking about and boy are they adamant that they know. As a matter of fact, how many people have come on my YouTube and correct me, you're wrong. You have the wrong placements of where the planets are. Yes, I'm a Vedic sidereal astrologer. They don't listen. They don't look at my YouTube or my website. Vedic astrologer. People don't pay attention. They don't listen. They judge things. They judge my youtubes from looking at the thumbnail and not even listening to it. I know because of what they say. Anyway, my point is, come to this with open ears and an open heart. And you know what they say, this is so true. People that believe don't need any proof. People that don't believe, there's no proof that will suffice for them. People already have it made up in their mind what they believe about astrology. They always have. And that is where it's so frustrating to try to come out to the world and say I'm an astrologer and then I get laughed at. Are you kidding me? You never studied it. You don't know what it is. And they don't listen. They immediately tune out. Think you're a crackpot, think you're a flake. Astrology is a science. That's why, you know, I went and I got certified with the American Council of Vedic Astrology. Took all the courses, the classes. Then I became a teacher for them. Then I started my own school and I started my own school basically because I wanted this to be.

Respected. And yes, when you take a course that is respected and proves that you know your stuff, it's going to cost more than the $30 classes or the, you know, $10 classes. Just that some, I don't want to say psychic mediums but just gypsies put out there. And unfortunately astrology's been put into the category of gypsies, fortune tellers, it's cycles. And yes, here's what I want to say. The premise of this is.

That if you knew your future, that is the most powerful thing in the world, more powerful than anything. Well, I'm not going to say it's more powerful than love and family, but to know your future.

What is more powerful? And that's what astrology can give you. So with this series, I am going to cover my life as an astrologer, my experiences and exactly what. When you, if you listen to all of this and you've lived my life with me, you'll understand astrology from a whole different vantage point. So with that, let me first of all tell you, go to my website, Galactic Center.org, sign up for my free newsletter and get all of my predictions delivered weekly to your email address, free. While you're at my galactic center.

Remember to look at my Patreon page. This is a spiritual community I have brought together and there are so many offerings with it. My free magazine, live classes.

Everything to do with astrology and spirituality. And you also get some uncensored videos that I do just for my Patreon members, as well as don't forget about my Galactic planner. If you want to have all of your transits about your personal chart, this is the answer. Go to GalacticPlanner.com it will put all of these predictions into your calendar every day so you can be prepared for every day. So that's GalacticPlanner.com last but not least, if this series has inspired you to learn Vedic astrology, I have a university and semester one is beginning again February 6th. So go to universityofvedicastrology.com and become my student. So let me get on with my vast 45 years. Yes, I've been doing this for 45 years. It's unbelievable. I think it's what keeps me young because get to do what I love every day. Imagine when you get up in the morning, there's nothing more empowering than to want to jump out of bed because you love what you do. That is amazing. And I do love what I do. I can't wait to get on with the day and do what I do. So here's where it all started. You probably heard my story of the early days, but I'm going to continue on throughout all of my years as an astrologer. And that is.

It was 1963 and you know, I've always been a child that was interested in spirit Mysticism, what's beyond this world? Why are we here? Even as a child, I went to Catholic school, and let me tell you, the nuns did not like my question. As a matter of fact, this was the answer I got. You're not supposed to know that.

That's just their way of saying, I don't know. But moving on. It was 1963, and President Kennedy was scheduled to come to Dallas. The night before he came, it was November 21, 1963. On our black and white TV, a psychic came on. I don't even know why she was on, but I'm telling you, I saw it with my own eyes. It changed my life. I saw it on our black and white tv. She begged Kennedy to not go to Dallas. I can't remember exactly how she put it, but essentially she said, if you do, you'll be assassinated. I couldn't believe what I was hearing and seeing, even though I was, what, like in about first or second grade? And the very next morning, my mother took my step two sisters who were older, out of school to go greet Kennedy at the airport Love Field. And when I went back and saw the old clips of him walking down the stairs from the airplane, the first people he walked up to in that crowd, I'm not exaggerating, was my mother and sisters. You can see it in the whole old History Channel black and white videos. And my sister started jumping up and down because they shook his hand. My mother, with one of those cameras, cameras where the picture comes out in the front, took all these pictures close up of him. I have all those photos. And it's funny, because my oldest son made a collage of all those photos with me with the letter that Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis sent me. Because after he was assassinated, this is a true story, I opened up a Kool Aid stand, and the money I made from the Kool Aid stand I sent to the Kennedy Memorial. And so that was my start. But going back to Jean Dixon, the psychic astrologer that was on TV that begged him not to go to Dallas, I always wondered, how did she know that? And when I found astrology was one of the tools, was hell bent on learning it even from back then, I wanted to know how to predict the future. Because I felt this is true, that if we can predict the future, what is it we can avoid and prevent?

This is the burning question. And of course we're going to go over this question repeatedly in this series. Free Will versus Destiny. What is destined and has to happen? What is free will? We're Going to cover that. We do have free will. How much I don't think anybody knows for sure. But I do know we have free will. And through awareness and consciousness, we can shift the things, even our karma. And we'll go over that, too, with some of the great gurus and saints that talk about shifting their karma.

But it's not easy. Don't get me wrong with that. That's not something that's easily done because we are so programmed. I'm going to talk about the law of attraction versus astrology and how to use them together. This is what it's all about. So, Jean Dixon, that woke me up. And here's another thing. Growing up as a kid, my mother was born the same month as well. She was born October 31st, and I was born November 8th. So we had the same Western sun sign. She had all the astrology books all around the house laying about every month. So I started reading them.

And I think it was like. And all of y' all that that read this book will relate. It was Linda Goodman's Sun Signs, right, that we all read back in the 70s. And that book, you know, their descriptions of the sun signs truly was amazing. And it actually brought about in a big way, sun sign astrology, which, in my opinion, actually does a disfavor to the true science of astrology, because people think that's all there is. Oh, my gosh. That. You know why it's called sun signs? Not just your sign, because it's where your sun is. Only the sun. Your whole horoscope has all of the planets there at your daytime and place of birth, not just the sun. So it's like, if you're looking at your sun sign, that's like talking about your arm and not the rest of your whole body. You got to get out of the sun sign. Junk. It's junk. But anyway, it got me started, and I realized that it was a horoscope that had to be constructed to be able to predict the future. So as I went on, I was always into mysticism, as I said, spirituality. Even in high school, I used to bring study hall books on meditation. And actually, that's when I read the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. I remember bringing it to study hall to read. Study hall doesn't even exist anymore. But way back when I was in high school, they gave you an hour to go where you're supposed to be quiet and just study. Nobody did. Everybody was, like, throwing spitballs and trying to talk. And, you know, Way before cell phone. So I would always bring a book to read because I love to learn and I love to read, but it was always only metaphysical stuff. I didn't do that well in all the other classes because I was so uninterested. All I was interested in is, why are we here? So I read the. So people would ask me because I don't know anybody that knows that book. I should have a picture of it. I'll bring it in later, later interviews here, but.

Autobiography of a Yogi. It's this orange colored book and it had a picture of Yogananda on the COVID and everyone would go, who is that woman? What is that book? I was just like, I didn't even want to bother saying, oh, well, it's a man and he's a yogi already. People thought I was weird enough. I didn't. I knew better than to do that. So. And another book that I read, all the books I loved back then was, was Edgar Cayce, was.

Oh. By Jess Stern. There was this fabulous book called Yoga Youth and Reincarnation. Loved that book. And it actually had all these yoga postures that you do in the book and it explained how to do them and pictures of a woman doing them. And I used to do yoga back then when I was like in seventh grade in the 70s. And never forget people going, you do what? Yoga is that devil worship? Are you kidding? Yoga, that is so weird. You're so weird, Joni. You know, always I was weird or I was a witch. Wait till I get to my college years where my roommates called me a witch when I wasn't around. Right. So anyway, this was so amazing that I would do yoga and people would say I was weird and crazy. Now yoga is mainstream and on every corner of shopping centers.

That's my mission with Vedic astrology, to make it mainstream. Just like yoga was so weird and now it's mainstream. I think this is doable because it happened with the yoga. And going back to reading the Autobiography of a Yogi, for those of you that have read that book, you realize the miraculous is possible.

Miracles were performed in this book. And you know, it's possible because this reality is. Is so limited. It is so limited and so ignorant. Maybe that's why there's so many people that all of a sudden have a judgment with astrology and they've never ever studied it.

Well, going towards that, people that have never ever studied astrology, well, we are told that it's not based on anything scientific.

Whereas, oh, we've conducted all These studies, and it's not scientific. It doesn't work. Well, they're doing studies with people that really have probably. They study sun signs, right? They're not dealing with advanced astrologers that have truly studied and know the system. And here's another thing I want to say. We're still on the tip of the iceberg with what we know with astrology. And another thing is they're measuring astrology with measurements that are physical. Astrology is not physical. How can you measure love? How can you measure.

Falling in love and emotion? You can't with physical mechanisms today. And a lot of people say, well, astrology's like.

It's like gravity, you know, the tides, the moon changes. Well, not really. It's way beyond what we can understand. It is something where. How can that planet so far away are those stars have an effect on us? We're all connected and we're all one. It is not about distance. It's not about gravity or atmosphere. It's something way beyond that. And as you study astrology, you really learn to get it. But this is so vast, and people do not understand. And I don't think we have the capabilities with our brains and the matter to truly understand astrology. But it deals more with frequency, vibration and energy. And that is what the universe is composed of. Nicola Tesla said exactly that.

So, looking at this, let's talk a little bit about.

My beginnings in astrology. So after the Jean Dixon thing, I was always looking on how to construct a chart. So I got all these books. This was in my teen years.

It was called the basics of Astrology. It was a 3.3 part book, and it told you how to calculate a chart. Back then, you had to get logarithms and femoris and you had to, you know, do the math. There was no computers. You had to chart a chart by hand. And I tried and tried and tried. I couldn't understand what they were telling me to do with everything. So it was like about my second year in college, around 1974, 75. And I'll never forget I went to UT in Austin, Texas. Loved that city back in the 70s. Talk about a place of hippies and mysticism and spirituality. It was mystical. Anybody remember Austin in those days? It's so different now. Anyway, going back to those days, I'll never forget where I was. I was driving right in front of. Right in front of the school on Guadalupe street, and on the radio said, astrology classes starting this week. And I was like, what? I took note of it. And I was there, found my first teacher. Of course, it was Western astrology. I didn't even know Vedic astrology existed. Even though I read the autobiography of a yogi, I still didn't understand that Paramahansa Yogananda, in the book of the autobiography, his guru, Swami Sayutteswar, was a Vedic astrologer. And what is a Vedic astrologer? Simply the astrology from India. And I'll get into, in the series the big difference between Western and Vedic as I tell my story.

But going back to those early days in the 70s, I'm telling you, it was a trip. I went to the astrologer's house, and they were all.

Kind of like hippies from the 70s, right? And really, it's like the whole hippie thing was in the late 60s, but this was still the early 70s, and they were down and dirty hippies, let me tell you. You. And I say that because they wore the same jeans. They never. They taking baths was kind of like not part of the hippie culture. It was like, you know, live on communes and drink carrot juice and beet juice and, you know, healthy, don't eat sugar. You know, I was all part of it. Vegetarianism. I was in it hook, line and sinker in those days. But.

I was always very fashion conscious. I've never let up with the makeup, the hair, the clothes, the jewelry. I loved it. It's who I was. I came from Dallas. I used to be a model at the Apparel Mart during Fashion Week. It was just part of my childhood. I mean, I used to model for Bobby Brooks. Do y' all remember those clothes? That line of clothes? No, you don't. But anyway, I wasn't going to let go of who I was, even though I stuck out like a sore thumb in these classes because nobody had makeup on. And of course I was made up and, you know. But I'll tell you, my teacher, Bob, he never. He never said anything about that. He really didn't. I could tell a lot of the girls were kind of put out, but I didn't care. I was there to learn astrology. And he gave us tests. He taught us how to calculate charts. And he was good. So I learned how to calculate the charts. And that's how we did chart readings. It took me about an hour to calculate the chart before I did a reading. This was in the 70s. And I remember, you know, they were all drinking carrot juice. But, oh, my God, those hippies, they loved smoking pot. And it was like, I don't know how they could Concentrate with all that nonsense going on. But I'll tell you this. After it was all said and done, Bob said I was the best student he ever had. So I.

I'll take that as one of the greatest compliments of my life. So, because it's like this, really and truly, astrology chose me.

It was meant to be. It's not only a passion in my mission. It's like this is who I am and what I came here to do. And the one thing I'll say I'm very lucky about, my sister always told me this. She said, you are so lucky that you found what you love and your path early in life. You don't have to wonder who you are or what you're going to be in life. Because even though back in the 70s and the 80s, people laughed at me.

I didn't care. I had to do astrology. Weird, huh? That this was just this obsession and knowingness that I followed through with. Because who in the world makes money as being an astrologer? I'll never forget one of the astrologers that I had come to my center later on told me, he says, the most you can make as an astrologer, Joni, is $12,000 a year. Did that deter me? No. I was still going to be an astrologer. It didn't matter. That's poverty. That's living in poverty. So I studied astrology. I started doing readings even back in Austin, back in those days. And then once I graduated, well, let me say I was a studio art major. I could. I'll just be honest with you. I could draw and I could paint like a real artist. I had the talent of being creative and being an artist. But astrology was more important than even being an artist. Besides, I thought, if I become an artist, the only thing I can do is either teach it or be a commercial artist. And when I was in art school, we had all these deadlines with all these projects, and I thought, I'm going to have deadlines every week as a commercial artist. And it's a good thing I didn't go into that, because computers actually took over the job of a commercial artist, all the drawing of things.

So I went into psychology, and psychology was the closest thing to astrology. So I went into psychology. With that.

I started studying Carl Jung. And those of you that know Carl Jung, he was spectacular. He wrote a book called man and his Symbols. And what I mean, he was a psychotherapist. He studied under Freud, but he talks about man and his dreams and symbols and he studied astrology before he had a client come. He would get their birth date and he would look at their chart and he wouldn't tell them, but he had more information than they were telling them. He would know if they were lying by looking at their chart. I love his saying, to make the unconscious conscious. That is just amazing. Carl Jung studied astrology. So I told my professor at UT in the astrol psychology department before I graduated, I said, you know, I want to be just like Carl Jung and do people's astrology chart before I do, I counsel them. And he said, you stay in this department long enough and you'll lose your crazy ideas. Well, that didn't sit well with me because I still wanted to be a psychologist because I wanted to help people. That was sincerely my quest.

And so many people had so many emotional problems. How can I help people? So I thought.

I thought, I'm going to be an astrologer anyway, because I feel like I can help people more this way. So I thought, let me take a year off.

And be a flight attendant, because I love to travel. And if I'm a flight attendant, I'll be able to fly free and I can travel around the United States and study with some of the greatest astrologers in the world. So there was Noel Teal to study with in Arizona. There was Rob Hand to study with the Northeast. There were all these greats of Western astrology that I got to know very well because I began teaching at all the Western conferences years later. But this was when I was still in school. And so I was going to take a year off and I was going to go back to get my master's and be a psychologist. So I thought, I'll fly for a year because I can travel around and travel free. So I became a flight attendant. And oh, my God, once you start doing that, it gets in your blood. All of you that have ever worked for an airline, such as a pilot or a flight attendant, you know, I started. Well, I'll just say I started with Southwest Airlines back in the day of the boots in hot pants. Imagine that. It was a little.

Discriminating.

And embarrassing. I'll say it, because back when I started with them, the hot pants and boots were way out of style. It was kind of silly, but didn't matter. You know why I went with the Southwest Airlines? I'll tell you right now, it's hilarious, because I didn't have to cut my hair. You don't know this, but back in the day, flight attendants had to cut Their hair short in a bob. Those that went with American Branif, you may not remember Eastern, although they all had, because they serve food. Southwest didn't serve food and we only flew in Texas. Therefore I didn't have to go live in another city in one of the, you know, flight attendants would all live together in like these crash pads they were called. That sounded hideous. I wanted to not move, remain in Dallas and not cut my hair. So I thought, I'll just do this for a year. Oh my God, it was so much fun. All the girls were about the same age and we'd go fly all over Texas and we felt like we were jet setters, right? Because we could go different places like New Orleans. New Orleans was the first out of state city. We went, we flew to and we picked up New Orleans. We thought we were jet setters because we could go fly to New Orleans for lunch and fly back. Anyway, when we went on our overnights, it was like a slumber party. We were all around the same age and we had fun talking, even talking in the back galley of the airplanes and laughing. It was a relief from college in the seriousness. And I'll tell my stories too, that you're going to love about the flight attendants, that I read their charts and what consequently happened over the years of reading the flight attendants. Well, a lot of them love to fly with me because they're going to find out if they're going to meet someone, a boyfriend, all of that silly stuff, or they wanted to save me because it was the born again Christians that were concerned for my soul because I was going to hell by doing astrology. So I consequently didn't tell everyone that I was an astrologer. But word kind of got around because we were a small company at the time. I will go into all those stories, but meanwhile.

I actually would go fly back to Austin every week because I could fly free from Dallas and study with my old teacher. Then I started going to all the conferences. I remember my first big conference was in New Orleans in 1980.

And the reason why I kind of chose New Orleans is. You may not know this about me, but my mother was from New Orleans and I used to spend all of my summers in New Orleans. And it was a fun place, especially as a kid. All the fishing and the boats and the food. I didn't appreciate the food back then, but it's a fun place, especially as a child. So I went to my first conference in New Orleans and I looked up to all these western astrologers as though they were gods to me. They were the big movie stars, not the movie. You know, I would have famous people in my flights. They were nothing to me but an astrologer. Oh, my God. That was like it. That was who I respected. And they were the rock stars to me. Yes, they were. So I went around the United States and actually studied and went to all the conferences that I could. Isar. Oh, my God. I'll never forget that ISAR conference. Ray Merriman.

It was. I don't even know if it was an Isar conference, but Ray put it on. It was in Ypsilanti, Michigan. Oh, my God. And Alan, Leo and Philip Sedgwick.

Yes. I mean, all of those fun astrologers I got to be friends with. And I was a practicing Western astrologer. And in 1980. This is fun. My father bought me one of the very first computers. It was a Tandy. That was so sweet of him, because that was really expensive back then. Yes. My parents supported me in this quest, which is really rare. I was really, really lucky. My mom having astrology books around the house. And even though they were Catholic, when I was in Catholic school, my mom still had the astrology books. By the way, talking about astrology. Well, I'll get there. But did you know all the popes used astrologers? And all of a sudden there came a time when they said, oh, no, astrology's bad. When all the popes and the Vatican has the biggest archive of astrology books in the world. What is that all about? So I'll get to that later when I go into all of the verses that I memorized. So I would be very intelligent to all the flight attendants.

That thought I was evil. Like, who are the three wise men? I'll get into all of that. But going back to just these days, early days, when I got my first computer, because the way it worked, it was a DOS computer and you couldn't even print things from it. Back. Back when I first got it, I used to have to copy the charts off the screen. And of course, I made my own charts back in the 70s, in the 80s. And what I would do is, on a piece of paper, I would put. I would get a plate and do a circle around it and then a bigger plate and another circle around it. And I would, with a ruler, make all the house.

And where I could put the signs and where I put the aspects. I made the sheet myself for my. What I wanted for my own readings. And I would go to the Xerox company and make Hundreds of these where I would draw in the charts when I would calculate my own charts. But then I had a computer, so I would copy off the computer and everything that was on the screen. And I thought I died and went to heaven. I didn't have to calculate charts anymore. Wow. That saved me an hour, an hour and a half, doing all the progressions and the transits. And I remember it was, I think, Michael Erdogan. I know I'm saying his name wrong. He devised the first cassette tape that we put into the computer that calculated charts. A cassette tape in a computer. That's all we had. But I thought I died and went to heaven. That was heavenly, not to have to calculate the charts, because you don't know when. Somebody would come for a reading. And I would take an hour and a half to calculate their chart, and they would sit there, and I would say, so you're born at 9:15am they go, oh, actually, I'm sorry, it was p.m. i gave you the wrong time. It's like, really? We got to cancel because I've got. And reschedule because I've got to go back in and recalculate all of your chart today. It's like, oh, you gave me the wrong time. Matter of seconds, and it's fixed with the computers. No one knows what we went through in the early days of astrology. I know I was there. But I'll tell you something else. Through the process of being able to calculate a chart by hand, I understand why different placements are the way they are. Such as, if you have the sun in the 10th house, that means you were born around noontime. If you have the sun around the first house, that means you were born at sunrise. If you have the sun around the fourth house, that means you were born around midnight. And if your son is around the seventh house, you were born sometime around sunset. I know how the chart works, and that's really helpful. And I'll tell you something else. When I was calculating charts, it was like a meditation. And as you process, processed, and calculated the chart, you kind of connected to the person.

And understood things about them in that meditative process. So now you just, you know, click in the information, and boom, it's there on the screen, and you can print it. Boy, we've come a long way.