UNEDITED TRANSCRIPT: The following transcript may contain typographical errors or other mistakes due to inconsistencies in audio quality, background noise, or other factors. We cannot guarantee its precision or completeness. We encourage you to use this as a supplement to your own notes and recollection of the session.
Tami Simon: Hello friends. My name is Tami Simon and I’m the founder of Sounds True. And I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original premium transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an after-show community question-and-answer session with featured guests. I hope you’ll come join us, explore, come have fun with us and connect with others. You can learn more at join.soundstrue.com.
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In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Stefanie Iris Weiss. Stefanie is a New York City based freelance writer, a professional astrologer, a certified clinical sexologist and pleasure activist, and the author of nine books. The subjects that Stefanie is most obsessed with, sexuality, sustainability, and the stars, coalesce at the heart of the natural world and our nature as humans. The long arc of her work explores the ways that the environment, our bodies, and the cosmos commingle. With Sounds True, Stefanie Iris Weiss is the author of a new book. It’s called Sex And Your Stars, A Sexologist’s Guide to the Erotic Energy of the Zodiac. Stefanie, welcome.
Stefanie Iris Weiss: Hello, I’m so happy to be here with you.
TS: Now, my understanding in learning about you and your work is that writing is what brought you both to astrology and to clinical sexology. O let’s start there. How did your writing bring you to these two topics?
SIW: Yeah, I mean, anything that I know how to do in this life, I learned to do through writing about it. So starting with astrology many decades ago, I started writing horoscopes even before I knew that much about the heart of astrology and really how it worked. I was just beginning my studies of of astrology at that time and I, you know, kept writing about it and learning about it as I was reading about it and writing about it at the same time.
And it was really the same thing with sexology as I was becoming an expert, a sexpert, as we sometimes say, and starting to write sex columns and and became a sex writer in the 20 tens. I guess that was about when it started after my previous book, Eco Sex. Go green between the sheets and make your love life sustainable.
I, you know, found myself learning and learning and learning and writing and writing and writing and doing advice columns and, and then eventually I got certified as a clinical sexologist, certified clinical sexologist. So that’s the way that it went.
TS: Tracking back for a moment as you became an astrologer, one of the questions I have is if you think there’s a type of minimum viable knowledge someone needs to know about astrology in order to appreciate it and make sense out of it. And, you know, I’ll just tell you like where this question is coming from. I was talking to various different people and they’re like, you’re going to be interviewing an astrologer. Like, you don’t believe that nonsense, do you, Tami?
And I’m like, yeah, I have a deep appreciation, but it also depends on how educated someone is and what they’re talking about. I mean, obviously the sun, the moon have an influence on us. We all feel that and can sense that and know that, so why wouldn’t all the planets? But the challenge, and this gets to my question, is if you asked 10 different people to read a chart, you could get 10 different interpretations at varying levels of sophistication. And it’s like there’s a wide range of expertise here. O I’m curious your view on this And minimum viable knowledge to even speak about astrology well.
SIW: This is such a wonderful question with a complicated answer, which is to I’ll start with this. You know, astrology is just starting what we call, you know, which is sometimes referred modern astrology is sometimes referred to pejoratively by people who practice traditional astrology.
But just just to say, like astrologers of our time are just beginning to create schools and, you know, and certifications for, you know, astrological training. This is really just happening in like the last, you know, 1020 years, right? So we’re just really figuring this out and, and, you know, this is something that is obviously an ancient, ancient practice, right? So what we have is data going back, you know, millennia from various cultures, right? We do have that and we have books and we’re translating the books, right? So where I’m coming from as as an astrologer, in terms of like what the minimum is that you need to know in order to practice or or, you know, share knowledge publicly about astrology. Obviously, anyone can say whatever they want on the Internet, right?
For me, it wasn’t until after I finished my Saturn return, which is the first sort of like life milestone that we have with Saturn, when Saturn returns to the place where it was when you were born at 29 1/2 years old. And for me, this is the metric. There are younger astrologers who are wonderful, but I didn’t feel comfortable and safe to practice out in the world until I had past that rite of passage myself. And that’s when I published my first book on astrology. I was writing about it. I was writing horoscopes before that a little bit while I was still learning, but at that point I was like, I feel like I know enough to share my knowledge and work with clients. I hope that answers the question well.
TS: It’s an interesting, it’s an interesting answer because you’re talking about the age of the person practicing, whereas I think part of where I’m going here is, you know, it’s very simple to say. I believe, I don’t believe like that in a way is a surface reaction to an ancient science like astrology.
What I’m wondering is, do you need to have a working knowledge of the houses of your sun, rising sign and moon, even as a reader, to actually appreciate how to apply this knowledge? How much information do you need?
SIW: I think that where I stand on all of this is you can get something out of it, right? Without you can get, you can get a nugget of wisdom about how to proceed through your day or how to feel about, you know, about a struggle, right, without really knowing anything but your sun sign. That is possible, right? Like that’s how horoscopes work, right? Which are broad and you know, and, and don’t speak to the, you know, myriad intricacies in a, in any individual’s Natal chart, right.
But in order to really get something from it that is useful to you beyond like how I feel today, in order to have psychological insight or you know, insight into a relationship or a job problem or a self esteem issue or an issue with, you know that, that like a pattern that developed when you were a child, you really do need in order to deliver that as an astrologer, right? And you need to know, yes, absolutely.
You need to know the houses, you need to know, you need to know the, the, the planetary conditions. You need to know what the planets are doing in each sign. You need to know a lot more than just, you know, this is my sign, right? You know more than what just what the signs will tell you.
TS: And your book, Sex and Your Stars goes into quite some detail, not just about the sun sign, but also about the placement of different planets. And I’m starting our conversation here because I want to kind of make send a flare out, if you will, to Insights at the Edge listeners to say how important it is, I think, to have open minds and get more educated about these topics before coming to any conclusions.
And interestingly, you write about how at this time we’re going through a Tye of astrological renaissance in our culture. An I thought, huh, I didn’t even know that. Tell me, what are the indicators from your view that that’s happening?
SIW: Yes, Oh my, I mean, I never thought this would happen when I was starting out where I was just sort of, you know, working with my with my best friend and Co writer Shereen. We were kind of like on an island, like we had other astrology colleagues, but it was not when you would tell someone that you were an astrologer at that time. You know, in the early 2000s, people would be like, I’ve never met an astrologer. You know, it was like it was. And we would be, I talk in the book like we would be sitting at brunch and we would be talking about, you know, Mars is, you know, opposing his Saturn, blah, blah, blah in our language, which astrology is, you know, a language.
And, you know, nobody and nobody around us would understand what we were talking about. But then we realized at some, maybe like around 2015 sixteen, we would hear other people at other tables using astrological language in a way that was somewhat sophisticated. And they were, you know, they were not astrologers. They were lay people, but they were learning about the big three, their sun, moon and rising. And people were beginning to to know more about astrology.
And this is, you know, there were, this is when the astrological renaissance really began. It has has something to do with the Internet. It has something to do with the openness, I think of young millennials and Gen. Z to these ideas.
It has something to do with, I think our conditions on planet Earth and the, the strife and the difficulties and the, the pain and the trauma that we have been in climate change and fascism and all of the things that we have been coping with over these many years that people have been looking for another way of getting insight and answers to, you know, why so much pain And astrology in many ways can give you really, really deep insights, not into just the collective pain that we’re experiencing.
We can look at what we call mundane astrology to look at world events, but you know that you can look, you know, very sort of like through a micro lens at what’s been going on in your life since the beginning. You can just pull up any date and you can say, OK, well, this is what was going on with your astrology On this date. And I think that is in part why it has gotten so popular.
TS: We’re going to get to the sexology part of our conversation in just a moment, but I’m curious, from your perspective, what do the astrological charts of this time have to tell us about the chaos we’re in and going through?
SIW: Yes. Well, the the conclusion to the book is about the upcoming. That we’re entering of Pluto and Aquarius for the next 20 years. But I reflect on what we’ve just been through, what we’re really finishing up, honestly at the coming election, which I think is one of the most pivotal moments we’ve been in our history in a long time as we sort of teeter on the edge of democracy going away. But we have been in a period where Pluto, which is a very very slow moving planet, I still call it a planet even though it got demoted.
TS: It got demoted to What and why it got?
SIW: Demoted to a planetoid or like a body in the in the you know, it’s it I think it was like maybe 2010 or 11 astronomers were like, no, Pluto’s not really a planet anymore. So there was a whole controversy about it, but you know, but anyway, Pluto very, very slowly moves through each Zodiac sign. And in 2008, very, very near the two two events happened.
Obama was elected and we also had the massive economic crash which defined the next generation. Prior to that, Pluto had not been in the sign of Capricorn since the American Revolution. So by the time Pluto got to the end, or you know, where it is right now, it’s it, without getting too technical, right at this very moment, it’s at the beginning of Aquarius. It will be going back into the very end of Capricorn this fall, right before the election.
In the years, you know, basically the pandemic years starting around 2020-2021, we began the deep throes of what we call the American Pluto return, which has felt very much like, you know, are we at the end of this American experiment? What is actually happening here? So that’s one way in which astrology can tell us a lot about what is going on in our collective.
TS: Tell our listeners a little bit about Pluto in Aquarius in the next 20 years and the way you understand that.
SIW: Yeah. So this is and then you can track, I mean, this is what’s amazing about astrology. You can track like all the conversations we’ve been having over the last year and a half or so about AI to like the moment that Pluto moved into Aquarius, it’s it’s uncanny. Like when Pluto first went at to 0° of Aquarius, there was that piece in the New York Times where I can’t remember the writer’s name, but he had that conversation with an AI bot and they would told him to leave his wife. Do you remember this?
So, you know, it’s, it’s all about AI. It’s all about science and technology and the ways that, you know, leaps in, you know, fantastic leaps in sort of, you know, science that will stun us, but also things that are a little bit scary, like, you know, the ways that technology can be used for weapons of war. That’s one of the things that scares me very much about the next 20 years.
And, and as a clinical psychologist and someone who was focused on the body and pleasure and somatics for me, you know, the ways that we sort of like move out of our bodies and into our technology, which we’ve already been doing, right? Like our phones are like extensions of our arms and almost feel like, you know, pets or something. And that’s been going on for a long time. But, you know, I mean, Elon Musk is, you know, he’s putting brain chips in people now, right? Like this is, this is sort of like the, there are things about Pluto is a, a planet of transformation, but it’s also a planet of, of, you know, the darkest depths that we sometimes dive to in order to change. And they can be quite frightening. So one of the things that I talk about in the book is like how important it is for us to stay in our bodies as this technology develops over the next couple of decades.
TS: You you write that I made my living as a writer and editor for years before realizing that I wanted to make sex the centerpiece of my work. And in the past decade, I’ve wholeheartedly embraced it. And really, we could say sex the centerpiece, or we might say embodiment or connecting to the natural world. And tell me more how that has become the centerpiece and why for you.
SIW: I mean, I think that I was sort of always, you know, kind of not. I don’t want to say secretly, but like, I always wanted to write about sex because I’ve always found it to be a force for liberation. I have always found that, you know, when people are, you know, unable to whether it’s because of culture or or family or whatever it is, unable to connect to that part of themselves.
They feel unwell, they’re not happy. They’re afraid. They’re, you know, all of all of this, you know, was something that I’ve been thinking about, you know, since I was quite young. And and so I always wanted to, I always wanted to make it more of my work, right. So when I wrote Eco sex, I was like, yeah, finally I can write. I can write about sex. I found a way to write about sex and write a book about sex and, and then, you know, in the, in, in those years, as I began to, you know, you know, write like deeply reported pieces of in the, in the sort of like sex world and, you know, writing about, like, you know, Polly weddings and, and all different kinds of, I mean, there’s so many different ways to write about sex. You can write service pieces, you can write about vibrators, you can write about relationships, you can write about sexual health.
And there were so many ways in and all of them I found to be just incredibly edifying and, and taught me so much about myself and the world in which we live. And, and it’s just sort of like in the same way that with astrology, I will be studying for the rest of my life because it ’cause it is that vast. I feel the same way about sexuality and sexology and this whole realm. Like we’re just always learning more.
TS: You offer erotic energy mapping sessions for I do what? What happens in an erotic energy mapping session? What are you mapping?
SIW: Yes. So what I do in those sessions, so like if I were doing just a normal astrology session, a Natal astrology session with someone, a session with someone, I would be, you know, talking about all the different houses of their chart and all their planetary placements. But in an erotic energy mapping session I am focusing on. Ways in which these planets and I’ll, I’ll look at particular planets a little more carefully and spend a little bit more time on them. But the way in which these planets speak to a persons, you know, desires or sexual blocks for curiosities and sexual relationships.
So I will look at, you know, the sun moon rising, of course, the typical things. But I’ll also look more closely at Venus and Mars and, and aspects that are made to those planets. And I’ll look at Black Moon Lilith, which I have a really fun chapter about in the book. And I’ll look at, you know, the asteroid arrows. And I’ll look at a lot of arrows. And I’ll look at the 8th house and the 7th house and the 5th house just more carefully to give a client a closer look at how sexuality is showing up in their chart.
TS: OK, there’s a lot of questions here because I think you’ve introduced some ideas and planetary influences that people may not be familiar with. To start though, when you’re talking about mapping erotic energy, I’m curious to know more, especially thinking about it as influenced by the natural world, what erotic energy means to you. Is that just creativity? Does it include our creativity? Is it different than our creativity? Is it just pure life force? Like what is it?
SIW: Yeah. Oh my God, this is like the best question that I’ve gotten so far. I love this question. I mean, it is all of those things, right? And all of those things in an overlapping way.
The 5th house, which is, you know, one of the main houses of that, you know, where our erotic energy comes through, is also the House of creativity, right? So, so this can be libido. It can just be like, you know what it is that you’re desiring sexually, but it can also also definitely be, you know, how creativity is bubbling up. It can be like the way that you want to make art, the way that you want to dance, the way that you want to move, the way that you want to show up in the world. It can be what you desire and how you desire to be touched. It can be all of these things at once and separately.
TS: It’s interesting because you work as a sexologist and I’m curious how you parse that out for people. Meaning somebody comes and they’re they’re having a challenge with this part of their life, but maybe their life force is really alive in some other part. I’m just wondering how you look at that when you’re working with someone.
SIW: Yes, yes, yes. So, right, If a person is coming in with some kind of sexual block or an issue in a relationship, and I should just say like, you know, as a clinical sexologist or sex coach, that’s where my training is. I’m trained to help people, you know, whether it’s, you know, they could a person could come in with like an orgasmia, the inability to have an orgasm, or, you know, some kind of dating deficit where they feel shy about going out. And you know, like after a divorce or a breakup or maybe you know, for the first time, you know, all, all, all myriad different issues that people can come in with.
And what can happen is a person can come in and say, I’m so blocked in my relationship. I don’t want to sleep with my partner anymore. Like I’m not attracted to my partner anymore, or my partner doesn’t seem attracted to me or sex life is just not happening anymore. However, you know, like I’m going into the studio and I’m like making these beautiful paintings or, or I’m going to the studio and I also can’t make my paintings. I can’t make my paintings and I’m not having sex. Both things are happening. Help right. So what I would do in a situation like that. I mean it’s not funny, but I’m I’m just saying it’s like it’s the whole, you know, the whole human experience can come into to these to these sessions and we would look at potentially what was going on.
If I’m, if I’m doing an erotic energy mapping session, if they’re coming in for astrology as well, I’m saying we would look at like, you know, is, is, is Saturn sitting on this person’s Venus, right? Like what is going on in their 5th house? We would look at what I call transits, which is, you know, the moment that we’re born, we have a Natal chart that’s just a frozen in time, sort of like map of our psyche, but then the planets continue to move and interact with our Natal planets. That’s how we get transits. So if a person comes in with something like that, I would look both at their Natal chart. So if there’s any like really old, you know, parental patterning that we need to explore, and then I would look at what’s going on with the transits and that’s how we would sort of dig into what might be going on and causing those issues to come up at that time.
TS: Now you, you mentioned how you have a special chapter in Sex and Your Stars on Black Moon Lilith, and I’ve never heard someone who doesn’t read very much about astrology. I’d never heard of Black Moon Lilith. So for our listeners who are hearing this for the first time, can you give us the 411?
SIW: Yeah, Black Moon Lilith is my favorite. I was so excited to be able to get this chapter in the book because Blackman Lilith is not often talked about. And for me, I should say this like, you know, as you mentioned at the beginning, like different astrologers have, like you could put, you know, 10 astrologers in a room and we would all have different opinions of, you know, a particular points into someone in someone’s chart.
But for me, Blackman Lilith, which is not a planet, it is basically like a point in our chart, without getting too technical, like the apogee of the moon. So it’s like a dark place in our chart where there is nothing, where there’s sort of like a vast nothingness. That point for me is where we look patriarchy in the eye and we say no when when we when we get to the point where we we can experience a tremendous amount of shame with the location of our black moon, Lilith by sign and house. But then when we break through that shame, we’re able to, you know, become a champion. It’s like a, it’s like a superpower for us and a sexual superpower as well.
Specifically for me as an astrologer with regard to patriarchy, based on the story of Lilith from the Bible and, you know, the Talmud.
TS: OK, I’m going to, I’m going to need more information here. So when you say it’s a point in our chart that is a void point related to the moon I I notice I’m not familiar enough to understand. What do you mean a point in the chart? And how is that a void point?
SIW: Yeah, so we have. So when we look at a Natal chart, we have all of the planets and we know where they are. You know, I mean, astrologers working now we use, we use astronomical ephemerides to know where all the planets are.
So we’re not just like, you know, looking up and being like, oh, that seems like it’s over there and mapping it with the, you know, the way that ancient astrologers did. So we have so much more access to exactly the degree of everything in a chart. So a computer will show us, you know, good astrology software will show us where, you know, all these different sort of like points are in our chart. We have in our Natal chart, we have, we have, you know, we have the ascendant and the descendant and the IC and the NC, which are points in our chart, the angles of our chart.
So they’re not actually planets or, or, you know, or, or anything, anything that we could we could see if we looked up at a, a map, right. And Black Moon Lilith is similar in that it’s a it’s like basically a calculation on the position of the moon at birth, where it is like the the apogee of the moon, which is to say like the the furthest away from the moon. The point that is the for the degree that is the furthest away from the moon. That’s the simplest way that I.
TS: Can explain and and how is that connected to shame?
SIW: So our studies of Black moon Lilith over the past, you know, however many, I mean, I’ve read lots of different accounts of Lilith going back like, you know, maybe like 50 years from different astrologers. And for me, because of the story of Lilith.
TS: Can you share that story for people who aren’t familiar?
SIW: Enough happy to share that story. Yeah, so, and I should also say this, this is just so so people are, if they pick up their charter, they go on astro.com and like, oh, where’s my Lilith? To be clear, there are three different things in the sky that astrologers call Lilith. So you’re looking for Black moon Lilith. There’s also an asteroid Lilith and there is also another, another thing called Lilith. So make sure you’re looking for Black Moon Lilith because that is what I am referring to.
So when we look at Lilith, as you know, the myth of Lilith, the story of Lilith, Lilith was Adam’s first wife that you know, this is all like a her story kind of got buried, right? Like we know about Eve, right? Eve, the compliant wife, who you know, came from the rib and did what she was told. But before, before Eve, there was Lilith. She was the first wife. She was made by God in the same way that Adam was. She did not come from his. And she and Adam got into a little bit of a tiff because Lilith wanted autonomy. She wanted bodily autonomy. She wanted, I say in the book, to be on top. She wanted sexual power. She wanted to be an equal.
And so, you know, there are stories that say, you know, she was kicked out of, you know, Eden and, you know, made to go live on the desert with, with demons. But in my understanding of the story, she she laughed. She was like, no, oh, not for me. I’m getting out of here. I’m splitting town. I’m you know, I, I don’t want this. And and went to go do her own thing. And therefore it became, you know, in patriarchy, in patriarchy, which is everything that has come since this story became this sort of like demoness, this, this, this evil figure.
And you know, and for me, you know, when we embrace our Black Moon, Lilith, we are taking that back for ourselves.
TS: And if we are able to find our chart, our Natal chart and we now know the sign that Black Moon Lilith is in, how does knowing that sign help us understand the the type of process we might have to work through to get to our empowerment? And maybe you could give a couple examples.
SIW: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, So what you might do when you discover where your Lilith is. So Lilith spends about nine months in each sign. So everyone you’re sort of like in an age cohort with over the nine months around your birth, you know, you know, before or after you’d have to look it up would have it in the same sign. So that tells you information, but also doing the house tells you even more information. So, so one of the ways that we can, you know, we can sort of reflect first on like, you know, for instance, if you have black Moon Lilith, currently Black Moon Lilith is in Libra.
So let’s talk about Libra. Black Moon, Black Moon Lilith moved into Libra on June 29th. I’ll use an example from our culture right now. I It is no surprise to me that we are having conversations culturally right now about abortion and women’s empowerment and that we have a woman running for president because we are looking. So, so we look, if we look at the sign of Libra, which is ruled by Venus, which is the planet that is associated with women and the feminine, we can look at the ways that women are told to behave, right?
So if you have a black moon, Lilith in Libra, you may have had experiences of being told to behave a certain way and having to comply and having to be pretty and having to shut up and to not cause problems, right? To be a nice girl, right? If, if you are, if you are, if you identify as a woman and you know, and you’re, you have that experience in patriarchy. And when you discover that you have Black Moon Lilith in Libra, you might be able to say, hey, you know, I really bristled at that. But I didn’t do anything about that when I was younger. And now I feel like I can. And not only that I can, but I must. And these are the ways that I don’t want to show up as a nice girl or a nice guy or whatever. I want to stand up for myself. I want to stand up for what I want. I don’t want to just, you know, sit and look pretty, shut up and look pretty. But I want to speak out and, you know, and, and declare what my desires are not just not just, you know, show up for someone else’s desires. That’s one example.
TS: That’s a good, it’s a good example. And what it brings up for me is just to want to highlight the liberatory nature of your work with Sex and Your Stars and how understanding the energy of each one of the various astrological signs could help us know what’s holding us back and breakthrough. And I wonder if you could just share some some more examples of that, because I think that liberatory power is really underneath the work you’re doing in the medicine that you’re offering through the book.
SIW: Thank you, thank you. That’s exactly how I want people to read it. I’m so grateful that you see it that way. Yes, I mean, so the way that I kind of organized the book, so it begins with the 12 signs and you know, and each chapter is a journey through the shadow side of the sign in addition to the liberatory power our, you know, we, we’re looking at each sign as an archetype, right?
So, so to take an example, let’s use areas as an example, which is the opposite sign of Libra. And, and that is what I have. I didn’t ask you what sign you are. Do you mind sharing?
TS: I am a Leo.
SIW: You’re a Leo. Oh, happy birthday.
TS: Thank you.
SIW: So. So we’re both fire signs. So yes, so you know, so if you take Aries as an example, right? So like this whole nice girl complex shows up sometimes for Aries humans as well, right. And so one of the stories that I tell in the book, I’ll just very briefly tell the story is that when just to show you like what the shadow side of Aries might be and what the breakthrough might be.
When I was 12, I was at a a bat mitzvah and I was obsessed with Madonna. I was specifically obsessed with Madonna, who was a Leo. I was obsessed with the song Burning Up because of course I was because I was an Irish child, but I didn’t know this at the time. That was my favorite song and it was a very sexual song. And I had no idea really that it was. I just knew I loved the song and I loved dancing to the song and I would dance at home to the song wildly. I had a 45 and and at the bat mitzvah, I immediately like Beeline to the DJ and I was like, can you do you have burning up by Madonna? Can you play it? Can you play it? And I was badgering. I was badgering the DJ every two minutes to play the song and then he wasn’t playing the song and then finally we were eating dessert and he he put it on and I heard like the 1st 2 bars of it and I, my friends, couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. I dove over the banquette, ran to the dance floor, started dancing wildly to the song with my eyes closed, not paying attention, just really happy and embodied in my body, doing what I needed to do right, like I had no shame. And then I opened my eyes, and I saw all of the parents looking at me aghast. Like, what? What? You know, it’s like, what is this demon child doing, right? And I felt deep shame and incredible shame.
And, you know, and I wouldn’t have framed it as sexual shame at the time, but in retrospect, that’s really what it was because I was showing this part of myself. This was, you know, some erotic spirit coming up through me, right? And it took some time, it took like through my teens and into my early 20s to become more comfortable with that part of myself.
But then as an Aries, I was like, oh, my goodness, my firepower, right? My power as a human is in movement, is in expressing my body in these ways. And that that that thing that I had I carried as shame for some time during those years became a superpower for me. And that is also sort of the journey of how I became, you know, eventually became a clinical sexologist, right? Like that is when I first started to realize that like talking about sex and being really frank about sex all the time and engaging people in conversations about it and how normal it is and how important it is and how healthy it is. It was after I had that breakthrough for myself.
TS: And do you think it’s a good sufficient entry for people, if you know your sun sign, to understand the planet that’s underneath your sun sign and where the blocks and breakthroughs might be with that planet? Is that like, oh you could get a lot just out of working with your sun sign?
SIW: I do think so, yes. And I’ll say this like, you know, in, in creating this book and sort of doing a deeper investigation and study of the sun. I mean, the sun is the basic thing that we study when we begin to study astrology, right? But then, you know, I went back, you know, and, and like really deepened my own relationship with my own son Aries and, and, and looked at the ways in which the sun reflects our vitality, which is to say an aspect of our erotic self.
So this is a way that we can really just separate out the sun and use the book that way, right? Like, you know, sunshine, astrology is kind of like denigrated. Oh, that’s, you know, like that’s not important. You know, it’s, it’s more important to know your rising sign. It’s more important to know to know your mood. And yes, those things are important, but the sun is also important. So I think one of the things has gotten lost in the conversation as astrology has had this amazing evolution, revolution over the last couple of years is like, go back and look at your son, spend time with your son. Your son is the thing that lights up the rest of your chart, right? And you? You can learn a lot not just from the archetypal nature of your own sun sign, but find out like, you know, maybe if you feel if you’re a Leo and you feel less like a Leo, right?
Like you’re like, I don’t like feel like everybody says all the stuff about Leo’s being all these things and I don’t feel like that. Well, then investigate what might be going on with your sun. Maybe your sun is close to another planet. That’s kind of like blocking its energy or, or something along those lines, right? Our sun can offer us a lot.
TS: All right, let’s take a couple other sun sign examples of the challenges with erotic energy and the breakthroughs that are possible. Whatever. Whatever signs you want to throw up for us.
SIW: All right, Yeah. So let’s look at Taurus. Taurus is a good example. That’s the sign that comes after Aries. It is an earth sign. It’s a fixed earth sign. And Taurus is, you know, I love writing the Taurus chapter because it’s all about sensuality, right? And the entire book is about in a lot of ways, coming back to, you know, finding our sensuality again, like, you know, within the context of our, of our, of our sexual desire, right.
And like, how can we slow down and be in our bodies and taste and smell and touch and hear all, like use all the senses all the time. And Taurus humans really know how to do this. Sort of just like they cut out of the gate. They’re like, yeah, I get it. Like, I get like, I get I can just sit here for a long time and like, you know, eat this apple. There’s an apple eating exercise in the chapter. And, you know, and that is what is that? That is what is so beautiful about Taurus energy for other signs that may be like moving too quickly through life.
Hello, Fire signs or, you know, sometimes air signs that are all stuck up in their head, like spending some time with Taurus energy can teach them how to be back in their body. But one of the issues, one of the blocks, one of the problems with tourists, humans sometimes, is that they get too stuck or too fixated on one thing that feels good to the detriment of everything else that might feel good, that might provide pleasure. So a tourist can, you know, discover one food that tastes really good to them and just be like, I’m just going to eat this food for the rest of my life. I’m not, I’m not going to, I’m not going to mess around with like other, you know, other food. Like I really love the way this like Mashed potato tastes. So I’m just going to, you know, I’m using an example of food. But like, you know, this, this, this is like this could be the we could get stuck in a sexual groove with tourist energy around like a particular kind of arousal pattern or a particular kind of, you know, way of experience orgasmic release to the point where you know, it becomes stultified or boring and can no longer provide that pleasure because you’ve just been doing it for so long.
So what Taurus, you know, shadow work can sexual shadow work can reveal for them is the ways in which they are stuck and might be able to, you know, bring some of their other sensory kinds of experiences into something that has become sort of frozen in time and they feel kind of paralyzed with, you know.
TS: That is, that’s good. I think the examples make it real. You know, one of the things I’m reflecting on, Stefanie, as we’re talking, because I asked you towards the beginning of our conversation about how astrology sees this time that we’re in. And you talked about Pluto’s influence and Aquarius and our increasing technological focus and how for many of us, the iPhone is almost an extension of our body.
And the work you’re doing, which is in a way an antidote in that you’re trying to help people connect with embodied pleasure, not in the technosphere, but in the physical, natural landscape. And I wonder how you see that sort of embodied pleasure as an antidote is what we need at this time.
SIW: I mean, that is precisely it, right? I mean, you know, like, I don’t want people to get confused and think that I’m against sex tech, which I think is a great, a great thing that many of us need in our, in our, you know.
TS: What is that sex?
SIW: Tech Oh sex tech is just a way of describing like sex toys, vibrators.
TS: And I got you OK.
SIW: Yeah, but when I. But that can be a part of an embodied sexual experience, right? It is absolutely central to our to nervous system regulation to just feeling good and safe in our bodies and secure in our bodies, you know, to, to being able to move through the world, you know, in a way where we experience joy and bring joy to other people.
I think if we can focus on this embodiment in our own lives and make it, you know, not just something that’s like a side gig for us, right? Like not just something that’s like less important. This is the way we tend to think of sex, right? Like we tend to think of sex and sexual pleasures as like extra thing, right? Like that’s not really maybe that important to the way that we live our lives. And, and I’m not saying that it is the central thing for everyone, but if we give it more space, this, this, you know, experiencing sensuality every day, right, we can experience more joy in, in, in our lives overall.
And I think that attending to this kind of daily embodiment experience can help us so much get through the next couple of decades as we, you know, become more enmeshed with technology in ways that can sort of consume us and make us forget that we have bodies.
TS: I want to talk more about this, Stefanie, because I think right now a lot of people are experiencing a type of high alert. You mentioned the nervous system, so a high sense of sort of vigilance. And I don’t know if I’m OK. I don’t feel safe. And I also think there’s a lot of heartbreak and grief and deep, deep sorrow and the idea of sexual pleasure in the midst of all of that. It’s almost like maybe we need to explore the on ramp of simply just connecting physically and and sort of light pleasures leading up to that type of ecstatic pleasure because as I said, we’re in some type of nervous system overload or deep despair. I’m wondering what what your view about that is as we make the journey.
SIW: Yes, yes, I think that that’s so important, right? Like that, if a person is in deep, deep grief and despair. And I completely agree with you that we are as a collective. And I think that we’re in deep denial of it, which is making it worse, right? Like a lot of people are like, no, we’re, we survived the pandemic, Everything’s OK. Where, you know, we’ll be dealing with the trauma, I think in our bodies of the pandemic and everything that has happened over the last couple of years for many years in the future.
And I do think that the on ramp to ecstatic sexual pleasure, right, you know, for someone who is locked in nervous system dysregulation should go slow. I agree with you completely, right? You don’t want to over stimulate someone. And so I think that like, you know, slow exercises, moving toward that with kind of the goal of, you know, whatever it is, whatever release means for any particular individual, it may mean orgasm, it may mean something else.
But just remembering that our bodies are meant to give us pleasure, right? Like we taste something sweet. We have, we have, you know, our tongues are able to taste sweetness for a reason, right? We have, we have, you know, nerves, you know, that are that can, you know, make our spine tingle and and bring us to orgasm in our in our, you know, clitoral tissue for a reason. It’s not there by accident, right? Like our bodies are meant to experience pleasure.
But I do agree that if a person is deep in grief, although I do think pleasure is an antidote, I think that moving slowly from just like, you know, maybe like one bite of a cherry or a strawberry or whatever it is to something that feels bigger over time is, is a, is probably a, you know, every individual is going to have a different experience. But I I I like that idea generally that you go slow.
TS: And I mentioned in the introduction that you’re a pleasure activist and I wonder how you see it as a form of activism, especially in the world with the levels of challenges that we face. I mean really, really stay staying at home and self pleasuring. How is this connected to activism?
SIW: Yeah. I mean, I mean, it’s precisely what we’ve been talking about, right? Like, because pleasure can address grief. Pleasure can help to heal our bodies and our nervous systems, you know? And then therefore, the way that we interact in relationship, right? Pleasure can do that. Pleasure can regulate us. So when I say I’m a pleasure activist, it is. It is because I do want to help individuals and the collective heal from all this grief and pain that we have been in.
And I also feel, and I think this is relevant again to the moment that we’re in moving toward the election, you know, saving democracy, healing the world from all the intense, immense grief of war, you know, that we’ve been locked in over these many terrible months.
I think that when activists, when people who are actively pursuing Tikkun Olam, right, healing and repairing the world, when activists give back to themselves some kind of daily pleasure instead of just being in the grind, you know, and the, and the, the, the depth of, of, of sadness and intense stress of trying to fix what’s broken when so much is broken. So when activists give themselves pleasure, daily pleasure, whatever that means for them, that is, you know, that’s another way of describing what pleasure activism is.
TS: You mentioned tikkun olam. This is a notion that’s Hebrew, correct?
SIW: Yeah.
TS: For repairing the world from the Jewish tradition. Tell me what that means to you.
SIW: Yeah, tikkun olam is something. I first discovered this phrase when I was in college. I was reading a book called Not a Book, a magazine called Tukun. That’s where I discovered it. I can’t remember the rabbi’s name. Who was the editor?
TS: Michael Lerner, Yeah.
SIW: Michael Lerner, thank you. Thank you. I met him at a workshop once when I was very young. So that’s where I discovered the phrase and it and you know, and it is the way that I relate to my own culture as a, as a, as a Jewish person. And I feel that it is my purpose to heal and repair the world and all of my work, everything that we’ve talked about it today is my way of doing to Konolam in the world. I think that it is my obligation as a as a Jewish person and as a human to to do that every single day.
TS: I’ve been speaking with Stefanie Iris Weiss. She’s the author with Sounds True of the new book Sex and Your Stars, a Sexologist’s guide to the erotic energy of the Zodiac. Stefanie, any final words what you hope people will get from Sex and Your Stars?
SIW: I hope that people will feel liberated and experience joy by themselves or with partners as they read this book. And the one thing that we didn’t touch on was the whole seasonal aspect of the book, which is another way that you can read it. You can read it not just for your sun sign, but you can pick it up any time of the year and use it. Right now we’re in Leo’s season. So you could, you know, use the Leo season journal questions no matter what sign you are and then again in Virgo season and so forth. So it’s meant for people of all signs to experience throughout the the the wheel of the year, as we say in the astrology world.
TS: Stefanie Iris Weiss, the author of Sex and Your Stars, thank you so much for our time together. Thank you. Great to talk to you.
SIW: It’s great to talk to you. This is so nice.
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