I woke up this morning and decided I was going to write a fresh post as my introduction to Substack and not go with one of the two I have already prepared for Cancer season. Don’t worry, they will go up too, but this is going to be a meta post where I will be reflecting on the past 14 years, as on 18 June 2010, Aquarian Insight was conceived, and five days later, it was born to the world. I didn’t plan my first post to coincide with this anniversary, but as you will see, not planning has been a feature of this journey and has always seemed to work well for me.
I wish I had a cool story about what lead me to come up with the name ‘Aquarian Insight’, but I literally decided it as I sat there ready to buy a domain. Before I started Aquarian Insight in 2010, I first picked up a tarot deck in 1995. Before that, tarot had never interested me, but astrology had, after I read Linda Goodman’s Sun Signs when I was 12 years old. Believe it or not, I hadn’t ever planned on becoming a tarot reader. My original intention for exploring tarot was to disprove it, after all what could a bunch of laminated cards tell me? I was a fresh-faced atheist with a curious streak, always diving into religions, fortune-telling, and everything in between. I explored astrology, runes, numerology, the I-Ching, Feng Shui and palmistry, but tarot seemed illogical to me until I decided to challenge it. While I was at uni, I did readings for my housemates, pulling messages straight from a book. It didn’t take long to see that the tarot was surprisingly helpful to the people I was reading for.
In 1996, I did my first client reading at a dinner party. I was young, 20 years old, and that was my first taste of reading for strangers. Tarot became a side gig while I pursued a corporate career. Then, in 2001, my life took a turn when I became severely ill. I spent seven years in bed with a severe chronic illness. As I started to get better in 2010, I began to think about what I could do. Tarot came back into my life as a tool to practice my writing and connect with others. My boyfriend at the time suggested writing tarot blogs, and though I saw myself as a fiction writer, I gave it a try.
Aquarian Insight has changed so much from when I first started. At first, I was just messing around, answering any questions I was asked, like "is my boyfriend cheating on me?" or "will I get the job?" I didn’t know any better. But very quickly, I began to question the ethics of what I was doing. Even if we could predict the future with 100% accuracy, should we? What does that say about the purpose of being human? Is it even living to live through a reading? Is a birth chart a life sentence? The freedom-loving parts of me weren’t having any of that.
I began to really engage with the readings, being present but noting where I ended and the cards began. I realised how much of myself I inserted into the message. If someone asked about a new job, I might see cards indicating they’d make money, but because I saw money-making as a good thing, I’d say how good the new job was. The cards didn’t make that distinction, I did. The cards never tell us what to do. We have free will, desires, values, and beliefs. I realised the point of a reading was to understand our relationships to our desires and that understanding and awareness often helped the most in making decisions. The point isn’t what we do, but why we do it.
One of the boldest steps I took, at least for at that time, was in 2016. In 2015, my whole life fell apart. My relationship of six years ended, and I moved back to my home town, living with family. I had no income, no relationship, and no home. Astrologically, this was Venus retrograde in Leo, Saturn having crossed my north node and preparing to cross my ascendant, my progressed new moon in Pisces and Uranus crossing my IC. For a year, I explored building a YouTube channel aimed at people with chronic illness. It wasn’t about fixing the illness or providing medical information, but about living and growing through the experience. After a year of pouring my heart into it, I had about 200 subscribers. It felt like a lot, but I stopped enjoying the interactions. People would tell me I was either too ill or not ill enough. I didn’t have the heart to fight or explain myself. I understood their pain and suffering and knew my viewpoint was hard for them to accept, because it had been hard for me to accept when I had been severely ill.
In autumn 2016, I had no idea what to do. The chronic illness channel was not going to make sense as a full-time endeavour, so I decided, rather than sit around feeling down, I’d get creative and challenge myself to try collective readings while figuring out my next move. I didn’t have a camera, just a mic and a laptop and my tarot decks. I’d pull cards, take a picture, and record a voice-over. Within an hour of posting my first collective readings to YouTube, I had more subscribers than I’d had in a year of doing the chronic illness channel. I cried at that realisation. It didn’t seem fair. Tarot, at that time, seemed so frivolous when compared with the meaning I had attached to living with a chronic illness. But I soon realised everything I’d learned and been through could be shared in these collective tarot readings. The insights were the same; the language changed and became applicable to all of life, not just health.
In my first year on YouTube as Aquarian Insight, I hit 20,000 subscribers. To celebrate and say a personal thank you, I did a face reveal. I’d never wanted to be in videos, but the Queen of Wands kept coming up in my readings, pushing me to step out of my comfort zone. I ended my second year on YouTube with 60,000 subscribers and fully booked with client readings. YouTube taught me a lot. I became more authentic, more comfortable sharing myself, and grounded amidst the chaos of the comments section. I grew thicker skin and expanded my personal growth exponentially.
I loved this period of Aquarian Insight so much, it didn’t feel like work. Every day was play, telling stories with amazing people. I moved more on faith in my beliefs, and my intuitive guidance. So I was surprised when I felt stirrings in early 2019 that maybe it was time for a change. I’d tweaked Aquarian Insight over the years. I may have started doing love readings, but stopped after 10 months because they were too restrictive, and had changed to more general energetic messages. I had started to include talks, or rambles as I called them, that expanded on the themes and messages that came up in readings. I sensed YouTube was heading in the wrong direction. I’d talked about many social issues in my live streams, which would become a major part of the chaos of 2020. I've come to realise that I consistently focus on issues and themes that take 3 to 4 years to gain recognition in public discourse. I admit this without any sense of pride or ego, as it has, until recently, been an inconvenient truth that has often brought challenges into my life.
When I announced in December 2019 that I’d be leaving YouTube because of my commitment to freedom of speech, very few understood. I was told it would be career suicide, but I had to walk my talk. I felt my presence on YouTube supported their censorship policies, so I moved to Lbry in January 2020. The move cost me thousands in monthly earnings, but thousands of viewers followed me. I can now say I’ve never had to censor myself, nor think about whether my words would cost me. I’ve grown spiritually and in my insights. My work isn’t affected by audience capture, the need for income, or approval. I share from the purest place, in line with my beliefs, and this would probably not have been possible if my work had been a means of survival. My true value is who I am, not what I can be paid or how many views I get. It has been an important practice for this former people-pleaser.
Where I am now is feeling the most free I’ve ever felt. For most of my life, I felt like I was chasing something, trying to be someone. The solar eclipse in Aries earlier this year brought the realisation that there was no-one I had to be and nothing I had to do. I felt free even from the desire to be free. So where does that leave me? It leaves me ready to embody my beliefs and values even more. I believe in people sharing their stories, sharing themselves with the collective, as this is the best way to dispel collective illusions. People are the most important part of our lives, those wonderful connections, from the brief interactions to lifelong relationships. People are the end, not the means.
I think we all play such an important role in the collective and the way we move through life can be a reminder of this to all we encounter. I aim to live as a whole, self-aware, empowered individual, recognising that everything I do has an impact on others. I hope that my sharing will empower individuals and encourage awareness of their important role in the collective, and I want them to do this without feeling they need to do what I do. I want them to share their own uniqueness with the world and that if I can do it, anyone can. In my life I have been as much of a cautionary tale as I have been an inspiration and I truly believe both serve. Too often within the spiritual community, the focus is on extreme individualism. This starts from a beautiful place, where we begin to acknowledge the self, maybe for the first time ever. But we can easily lose ourselves in the narrow well of self. We need each other, and together, anything is possible. The power of a united collective is needed now. The old guard is done, and what we see globally are the last grasps at power. We shouldn’t be destroying or cancelling each other. Conflict is inevitable, but there must be honour even in the worst actions we are forced to take as last resorts, or we become the evil we are attempting to vanquish. I believe in a collective that safeguards and progresses our species and way of life, not just for now, but for future generations. We are the current incumbents of this reality, the ancestors of the future. It’s time to look to the future, to create it with compassion, unity, and honour. What we do now will reverberate into the future and maybe even out into the cosmos. We must show up authentically and with self-awareness, knowing that the only path that will work is one where the worth of no individual is lost. Either we all get ‘there’ or nobody does.
I am beyond grateful to all the people who have supported me and joined me on this journey so far. Their unwavering support, both financial and emotional, has created the space for tremendous growth, especially over these last four years. As I embark on expanding to share on Substack, I eagerly anticipate meeting new people and sharing experiences together. This feels like the perfect moment to share some Jayisms with those new to Aquarian Insight. These are some core beliefs that guide me forward:
The message isn't the message; the reaction to the message is the message.
Everywhere we look, we find ourselves.
In every moment, we are both the caterpillar and the butterfly - always the butterpillar.
The Road So Far...2024