Pip: Astrology, somatics, chakras, and the soul’s descent into embodiment — and somehow Kirby Moore has turned all of that into a class with a registration form.
Mara: That’s the territory we’re covering today — a new astrology course built at the intersection of esoteric Western astrology and somatic healing, and the lineage of teachers and traditions behind it.
Pip: Let’s start with the course itself and what it’s actually asking of people.
Astrology Course and the Path of Initiation
Mara: The course is called Through the Gate: An Astrology of Initiation, and the central claim is that the Western astrology chart contains hidden wisdom that requires an informed guide to unlock.
Pip: The post Preparing for Upcoming Astrology Class puts it plainly. The setup is a friend’s question about what esoteric means — and the answer is: “a level of wisdom which must be revealed by someone who knows. Yes, it is hidden, possibly occult.”
Mara: So the prerequisite isn’t just knowing your sun sign. It’s having done real personal growth work — enough to stay present when the material gets uncomfortable. Discomfort, as the online course post puts it, is not a detour from the work; it’s part of it.
Pip: That’s a genuinely unusual bar for an astrology class. Most courses ask you to know what a rising sign is. This one schedules a ten-minute intake call.
Mara: The structure reflects that seriousness. The post What Does My Through the Gate Course Look Like breaks down a four-layer examination of each zodiac sign: shadow material, personality traits, higher-frequency manifestations, and — where most of the time goes — the esoteric rulers of each sign.
Pip: Eighteen hours for all twelve signs, with a somatic settling exercise built into every session. The math is tight.
Mara: Which is why the online version, detailed in Online Astrology Course, covers only Aries through Virgo across six ninety-minute Zoom sessions, with a Part Two planned to complete the zodiac. Cost is four hundred fifty dollars online, nine hundred for the in-person version in Charlottesville starting August twenty-eighth.
Mara: The goal running through all three posts is the same: the more we learn about each sign’s layers, the more compassion we can develop — for ourselves and for others.
Pip: That lands the course somewhere between astrology education and contemplative practice. Which makes more sense once you know whose shoulders it stands on.
The Lineages Behind the Teaching
Mara: The post titled Wisdom Teachings from the West from July twenty-first traces the web of teachers and traditions informing this work — Craniosacral Therapy, Isabel Hickey’s Spiritual Astrology, Alice Bailey’s Esoteric Astrology, and somatic experiencing lineages among them.
Pip: The personal chart reading in that post is striking: “an exact Hades Moon in Libra, Sun in the 8th house, along with my south node and Mars, Chiron conjunct my Midheaven.”
Mara: What that means in practice is a chart oriented toward depth — toward uncovering what’s hidden. It’s offered not as credential-dropping but as context for why this particular teacher keeps going deeper.
Pip: The soul’s journey into embodiment, mapped through the zodiac — that’s where we’ll pick this up next time.
Mara: The thread across all of this is embodiment — the idea that understanding a chart and understanding yourself are the same motion.
Pip: More of that next episode. Stay present with what arises.
Meditation Informs Healing Facilitation 