Hello Stargazer,

If you caught Andrei's email earlier this week...

...then you're probably more than a little pissed off at us right now.

I get it. We're probably on thin ice with you enough as it is. Chances are, you're probably thinking...

• Do they really have the audacity to ask for a tip when their content calendar is this far behind?
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• Who is this Andrei character—and where is my natal chart reading?!
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• Really? They expect a tip after they haven't even delivered ONE astrology forecast ALL year?

...and if you are, then I completely understand your position—and I want you to know that your anger is totally justified.

If it felt good for your anger to be validated, then before you continue reading, I want you to ask yourself:

• Why does it feel so good to be angry?

When was the last time you took your bad day out on a barista who did nothing more than misspell your name and screw up your order?

• How good does it feel when you lose control?

How often do you blow up at a loved one because of something YOU have decided to bottle up?

• What does your heart truly desire?

...To save the world so no one ever has to suffer the way you did?

...Or burn it all down because of the raw deal you got in life?

...Do you want to save the poor and helpless?

...Or destroy the wealthy and powerful?

...Is it justice you seek?

...Or revenge?

These are all questions I wish I had asked myself when I started Aeolian Heart Astrology 10 years ago.

One of the most painful truths I've had to face about my business this year is that it wasn't founded in love and light—but bile and rage.

When I started publishing astrology online in 2015, I had already received two masters degrees to teach English literature...

...but everywhere I sought a opportunity I found instead a door slammed in my face instead.

At the same time, the Common Core curriculum had rolled out in the United States and virtually gutted English lit curriculum from public schools.

Cultivating minds with classic literature was out, and deadening souls with information texts was in.

Awakening students to the preponderance of their eternal soul through the works of old dead white men was a bad look for the new regime.

It was much more expedient to crush students' spirits with Kafkaesque learning outcomes to prepare them for a life of bureaucratic drudgery.

It didn't just feel like the world was against me because I was denied opportunity...

...but was actively trying to destroy everything that I loved.

I started an English lit blog in hopes of preserving this love...

...but no one read it

Or I should say, no one read until I started posting about astrology.

Once I published my first astrology post, it was like I became everyone's favorite astrologer overnight...

...and before I knew it, I was getting paid to do what I love: write, research, and—MOST importantly—teach.

But the problem wasn't so much that I was afraid to face my anger—it was that I didn't want to let go of how good it felt.

Every success I made in business, every milestone I hit...

...every like, share, subscriber, client booking, product launch, flash sale...

...it all validated my rage against the world that destroyed my dreams.

Whenever a client emailed glowing unsolicited praise saying I changed their life...

...I wanted to forward it to all the professors who brushed me off as the weird woo-woo one whenever I injected astrology into class discussion.

And when I closed the cart on my first $10,000 launch...

...I wanted to shove the receipts in the faces of all the school bullies, toxic family members and dickhead school principles who told me I wasn't going to amount to anything in life because I had a problem with authority.

I kept this slow-drip power trip going for nearly a decade.

Every day I sought to validate my payback against the cruel world who I thought wasn't up.

Far more from being the cosmic sage or divine feminine wisdom goddess you might have pictured me as...

...in my mind I felt more like Tony Soprano out making his collections, busting kneecaps and putting heads through windows.

And when the world wouldn't pay up, I'd just burn it down to collect the insurance money.

But I never ended up burning the world down—I just broke down and burned out instead.

Which is why Wrath is one of the most dangerous of the 7 Dead Sins of Doing What You Love for a Living.

Because of all the cardinal vices, Wrath is the one that could easily be mistaken for virtue.

What starts off as righteous anger motivating your desire for divine justice can swiftly blind the spirit and turn into blind rage lusting for cruel vengeance.

The sin doesn't lie in the anger itself, but when it blinds your reason and cruelty contaminates your heart.

Your mission to save the poor and needy so they never have to suffer like you did...

...becomes instead a conquest to overthrow the system that made you suffer in the first place.

What you fail to see is that this conquest for power is an illusion in the mind's eye—and it makes you vulnerable to sinister forces.

If it's true that evil is defined not by what is but what is not...​

...that blindness in a rock is not evil because it was never in the rock's nature to see—but blindness in the eye is evil, for it deprives the eye of its basic nature...

...then when your rage blinds you so that you cannot discern reality from fantasy, you are not just thinking in error...

...you commit grave sin by denying the nature of your own mind.

For the mind's very nature is in its power to cut through illusion, slice down delusion, and separate fact from fiction.

And when you fail to master your innate mental power like a samurai does his sword...

...then you degrade yourself so much that you're no longer a free mind but a slave to sinister forces—hired muscle in someone else's master plan.

Nowhere can you see the trajectory of Wrath with better discernment than in the fate of O-Ren Ishii, the Kill Bill saga's most tragic and relatable villain.

In one of Vol. 1's many standout scenes, our heroine The Bride (Uma Thurman) narrates the tale of O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Lui) over an action-packed anime sequence with a Spaghetti Western score:

O-Ren avenges her parents' death at the of age 11 by seducing and murdering Boss Matsumoto—and by the age of 20, "she was one of the top female assassins in the world."

But O-Ren's fate is decided when she's faced with a deadly choice in her mid-20s, as The Bride foreshadows:

Following the events in El Paso, O-Ren's crusade for vengeance rages on.

Her master Bill—the same man who ordered the massacre in El Paso—bankrolls O-Ren's bloody coup of the Tokyo underworld, installing her as the new boss of the Yakuza by the age of 30.

Now THAT is a Saturn Return for the history books.

What O-Ren failed to see was that her Wrath had blinded her desire for justice.

When she killed the man who murdered her mother and father in cold blood, O-Ren Ishii didn't just avenge the death of her parents...

...she prevented countless young girls becomes victims at Boss Matsumoto's lecherous hands.

It was an undeniable act of heroism—but also the pivotal moment in O-Ren's story that makes her arc the most tragic of Kill Bill's rogue galley.

Because it was at this point that her Wrath blinded her reason.

Now that the target of her rage had been annihilated, her anger had no where to go.

There was a void left inside of her.

And it was this exact empty hole that Bill was able to fill by feeding a delusion that O-Ren ought to seek vengeance against the Yakuza as a hole.

He just had one last job, out in El Paso, for her to do—then he'd bankroll the entire operation...

When The Bride gets her bloody revenge against O-Ren in Vol. 1's climax, it's not so much an act of vengeance as it is a mercy kill.

At first, O-Ren is incredulous that The Bride persuaded the legendary and reclusive swordmaker Hattori Hanzo out of retirement:

But when The Bride scalps O-Ren with a clean slice of her Hanzo sword at, her foe realizes the error of her judgment with her last breath:

When The Bride cut off the top of O-Ren's head, she saved her foe from the sin of Wrath.

That's because it wasn't just a Hattori Hanzo sword that The Bride wielded, but the hand of Hattori Hanzo himself.

When The Bride meets the reclusive and enigmatic Hattori Hanzo in the film's second act, she finds him living an anonymous simple life running a sushi bar in Osaka.

But after being persuaded to make one final sword, he tells her:

O-Ren Ishii and Hattori Hanzo are two sides of the same blade wielded by Mars.

When unintegrated, Mars is a battlefield berserker. His fiery anger clouds your reason, causing you to go full force through life guided only by your blind rage.

But when brought to its highest expression, Mars is a war-weary general. He's retreated from battle, separated himself from the world at war, and sought a higher vantage point view to the rules of combat.

And just like Hattori Hanzo, an integrated Mars cultivates the discernment you need to know when it's time to advance, when its time to retreat...

...and when it's time to come out of retirement for a just cause.

Because when Mars brings down his sword on you...

...will you be the one who says, "That really was a Hattori Hanzo sword"...

...or will you be the pupil who gets to hear Mars say...

"Very Good!"

Did this email resonate with you?

Are you fighting an uphill battle against the world that's corrupted the soul of your creative work?

Has rage blinded your reason so much that you can no longer listen to the wisdom of the heart?

Then hit reply and let me know.

And if you were moved by the message in this email, then please consider making a small donation before you leave.

Much Love,
Rachel

P.S. Stay tuned for Andrei's next email...

...because he's gonna get medieval on yo' ass with a deep dive into the theology of the Middle Ages, the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and the origin of the 7 deadly sins as we know them today.