I’m excited to introduce the first of my new interview series, Uncommon Ground, where I chat with people living on the more unconventional side of life — the ones with perspectives that I find unique, unexpected and worth exploring.
Today’s conversation is with The Rational Psychic, Jennifer Vesta. Her work weaves together astrology, human design, tarot, astrocartography, and intuition in a way that’s both mystical and grounded. Working with Vesta over the past few years has played a major role in my growth, helping me move toward self-knowledge, acceptance, and personal transformation in ways I didn’t expect. You’ll hear more about that below.
So let’s dive in.
LILY: I love your interdisciplinary approach to your work. You weave in lots of modalities, of course your psychic abilities being one of them, but so much of the work we’ve done together has been in astrology. And since astrology is having her moment right now, let’s start there. What is astrology to you?
VESTA: So for me, astrology feels like your roadmap. Your blueprint. It’s who you are when you’re aligned with your true self, which is when everything happens for us. There’s something so grounding about it and it does feel spiritual, but I wouldn’t call astrology a belief system. Some people may treat it that way but I just approach it as another framework or tool.
LILY: Right, I love that.
VESTA: Astrology is beautiful because it can name things without pathologizing them. The whole point is to help the person be who they really are. Because the minute we’re born, the whole system is rigged against us being ourselves. The second we’re exposed to our family we start getting conditioned. And then school, friends, culture. I distinctly remember how it feels to have a fully open heart as a kid. It’s the most powerful state. But over time, as we get older, we start closing down. I personally needed something more than therapy because therapy hits me in the mental space – it doesn’t touch my heart. I need something that opens my heart again because that’s where our true power is. Even though it sounds kind of cheesy.
LILY: The most valuable thing I’ve gotten from working with you is — you’ll say something, and it’s instant recognition of a thing that I already know so deeply to be true, for better or worse. You’re bringing information that I already know, that I needed someone else to tell me as a third party.
VESTA: That’s how I feel about it, too, totally.
LILY: I was talking to someone who teaches philosophy the other day, and he was like, “we study philosophy for recognition.” For me it’s similar with a lot of these superstitious, higher power things. It’s recognition.
VESTA: Affirmation of things you already know in your gut. I’m mixed on the word “superstitious” though. I think when people are superstitious, they’re giving their power away to something outside themselves. I personally do not give my power away to anything – religion, government, astrology, whatever. So I think people who are skeptical about astrology, which used to be me, it’s because they’ve seen a bunch of superstitious people be like, “It’s Mercury retrograde! I can’t do anything,” or “I’m a Scorpio. That’s why.” It’s obviously kind of distasteful to hear that, because it just sounds like a person blaming everything on nonsense and not taking accountability for themselves. Which is also not how astrology works.
LILY: Right. It’s turned into a scapegoat to avoid responsibility. Skeptics also love to be like, “I’m not going to make decisions based on what an astrologer says!”
VESTA: Yeah, but if a person’s going to give their power away to an astrologer, they’re probably giving their power away in other areas as well. There is not 0.1% of me that’s going to blindly accept something another person says if it doesn’t land for me. If it doesn’t strike a chord, I just forget it. So we do have to trust ourselves as a prerequisite, before we can responsibly explore these modalities. That’s where religion gets dangerous too.
LILY: That’s a great call out. You were telling me about Carl Jung the other day and his relationship to astrology. I found that really interesting.
VESTA: Yeah, I love Carl Jung. He’s most known for his archetypes, which is also how I approach astrology – this mythic, psychological approach. Jung was really into astrology and did charts for all his patients. In his time, psychology and astrology went hand in hand, and both were viewed with skepticism because they were new. Then psychology got validated by the mainstream over time and astrology didn’t.
Although, if you go back, like, way, way further, astrology was the most validated. Every royal court had an astrologer. Kings and queens would make major political decisions guided by astrology. They were also the only ones who could afford it because all the calculations were done by hand and extremely time-consuming. And it was a male-dominated field, which it still is in India, where Vedic astrologers are more like priests in their communities. It’s become this female thing in the West, and anything feminine gets devalued – in our current cycle of history. So it’s just about the trend of the time we’re in, what gets validated and what doesn’t.
LILY: I had a very spiritual upbringing in California. I’ve always been pulled toward the spiritual side, but there’s something about this season of my life, though, where I take it seriously. There’s almost an academic seriousness to it. I think that spawned out of the first time I worked with you a few years ago, which was like, rock bottom. I was at rock bottom that day we had our first call.
VESTA: I recognized it, by the way. I went through something similar.
LILY: Yeah I was sobbing that entire day. Bottom of the barrel. I don’t even remember how I decided to work with you on that exact day. I think astrology became a big part in my making sense of how to get out of that place. It was so validating.
VESTA: I don’t think I ever told you this, but you were also a significant client for me. I had just started my business, I think a month and a half ago. And until that point, it was all friends, friends of friends, their significant others, basically one degree of separation. And you were like, two friends removed, and nobody gave me a heads up you were coming. So you felt like the first person that dropped in from the universe. Obviously, for anyone starting a business, when you get your first unknown, sent from the world, you’re like, yes, this is real now!
LILY: Wait, I love that. I never knew that! The day that I talked to you was the beginning of my turning point.
VESTA: Yeah, I could tell. And also for me, on the practitioner side, it’s like you can lead the client to water but you never know if they’re gonna do what it takes. If they’re gonna walk the steps necessary. So I knew you were in that belly of the beast stage, and I was hoping you would, you know, meet the challenges face-on.
LILY: It took a second, but we got there.
VESTA: No, it takes everyone a second. We kind of go in the right direction then we fall back like 15 steps. But you have definitely been meeting the fire at every stage.
LILY: Cute! Anywho, moving on. So, are we our charts? Are we changeable or not really?
VESTA: That’s the core question for all astrologers. Fate versus free will. I do believe we have a set character, but that character is so multifaceted. People think astrology is just their sun sign when obviously it’s your entire chart of planets, aspects, houses, points, but it’s because of this Sun Signs book that got big in the 60s that the entire field just got conflated into just your sun sign.
I do feel like we have a set fate and we can choose to work with or against it. Our life can take a million different directions and permutations based on our choices. If someone is born with a gift, like extreme dexterity with their hands, for instance, they can create any life from that gift. They could become a master craftsman or concert pianist and take it to the highest level. Or they could become an exceptional criminal pickpocket. That’s the free will part.
LILY: Fascinating. It’s interesting for me to work with you in tandem with my therapist. I almost feel like I have my little interdisciplinary team. I bring things you said in your language, and he’ll then validate it in his language. And they always go hand in hand. It’s such different containers to talk about the same thing.
VESTA: I love that you said language, because that’s what I was thinking when I first got into this as well. That I just need to translate the astro-speak into what most people consider rational or logical language.
LILY: What role do you think transits play in someone’s psychological process or breakthroughs? For me, transits have been the most illuminating because I really see what I’m going through being mirrored.
VESTA: Transits are the weather report. It’s what’s happening in the sky right now, for everyone. Or in the future. It’s super helpful because if you know the weather, if you know the energetic forecast, you can choose to go with or against it, bring an umbrella or not. And you can choose specific times to do things that go with that forecast. There are certain times to launch a new thing, start a relationship, or look for a relationship. And if you’re in a cycle that’s not conducive to it, it actually helps you to not beat yourself up about it. Pretty much all of the clients who come to me have this overachiever mentality. It’s actually reaffirming to be like, okay, it’s not the right time to go for this, I don’t need to bash my head swimming against the current.
LILY: Why do you think your clients tend to be overachievers?
VESTA: I think I have that kind of background and speak in a way that is more palatable to people who might normally be turned off by astrology.
LILY: Tell me about your background, in one sentence.
VESTA: Very… conventionally academic and “rational.” Well, so, I went to Duke, kind of crying because I was waitlisted from Harvard. And I was always advanced in math and science because those were the only fields validated to me growing up. But having my intelligence validated by conventional metrics actually freed me to investigate the fringe sooner, if that makes sense. I didn’t need to prove my intelligence as much through the old ways. So I present in a way that’s more logical or plausible, which gives people a more accessible doorway to the esoteric. Because a homeless person could be shouting the cure to cancer but nobody would receive it, unfortunately. It goes back to the language thing.
LILY: That wasn’t one sentence. Can you pull a tarot for me before we end?
VESTA: Yes, I love tarot.
LILY: Wait, first. Can you explain how tarot works? Like what is actually happening?
VESTA: Okay, so this actually brings us back to archetypes. Tarot is basically a framework for things to burst through your subconscious. To me, it’s like a Rorschach test, but deeper. You see it, and there’s this immediate reaction, which doesn’t have to make sense. It’s a very mystical process. Tarot, to me, is the most literal mirror. There’s something about archetypes that gets so primal, almost pre-verbal.
For instance, the eight of cups is an emotional one for me and for a lot of people that I’ve done sessions with. It’s a man walking away from an entire life he’s built. Behind him, there are five cups toppled over and three still standing, and he’s choosing to walk away from his past success, and failure, and go into the unknown. So many of the clients I have are at turning points in their lives, and they’re trying to find the courage to take a leap. That one always brings people to tears. It’s a really affecting image. There is no ego in the man who’s walking away, you see it in his body. The surrender it takes. If you’ve done it, you know it. It makes me emotional to even think about it now. I don’t remember what the original question was.
LILY: Wow, that’s so beautiful. I’ve been trying to learn how to pull my own tarot.
VESTA: I was definitely pulling my own spreads a lot when I was practicing and learning. But as I’ve gotten deeper into it, I question whether we can really do readings for ourselves. I actually think it might need to be done by someone else.
LILY: Because our energy is so mucky around the thing that we’re asking?
VESTA: No, because even when our channel is totally clear, I find that the cards we pull for ourselves become too flat or obvious. Because there’s no chemistry. But when someone else pulls and interprets for us, it brings some illogical, unexpected insight. The presence of the other person changes the energy field. It’s like when two people come together, the “relationship” is actually a third entity that emerges, with its own characteristics and rules, which wouldn’t otherwise exist in either person alone. People bring different things out of us. Anyway, let’s pull a tarot. What’s your question?
Until next time,
Lily
Book a session with Jennifer Vesta here and follow to stay posted on her upcoming course, ASTROCAKE: Fundamentals of Astrology.