Nadine Jane - Magic Days: Your Journey Through the Astrology, Numerology, and Tarot of Every Day of the Year

Books are never created by one person, so I would first like to acknowledge the two most important Megs in my life: Meg Leder, my editor and the editorial director at Penguin Life, who invited me to dream big and never compromise while helping me to perfect every word of this book, and Meg Thompson, my agent and the founder of Thompson Literary Agency, who put the crazy idea in my head that I could write a book in the first place.

I would also like to acknowledge the rest of the team at Penguin, without whose skills and expertise this book would not exist: Brian Tart (publisher of Penguin Life), Amy Sun (editor), Annika Karody (editorial assistant), Matt Giarratano (executive managing editor), Norina Frabotta (senior director, Production Editorial), Megan Gerrity (assistant director, Production Editorial), Marlene De Jesus (director, Production), Sabrina Bowers (associate director, Art/Design), Elizabeth Yaffe (senior designer), Molly Fessenden (assistant director, Marketing), Kristina Fazzalaro (manager, Publicity), and everyone from the Penguin sales team.

And last but certainly not least, I would like to acknowledge my close friends, my family, my parents, my dear sister, and my beloved partner, Nick, for offering me support in times of fear, encouragement in times of insecurity, and the laughs I needed to enjoy the wild journey of writing this book.

Dear Reader,

If you dont know me already, hi! Im Nadine. Im an astrologer, an Aquarius-sun-and-moon-Virgo-rising, a graphic designer, the daughter of academics, and a yet-to-be-fully-functioning person. I cannot tell you how excited I am to share Magic Days with you. But to tell you about everything that this book is, I must first and foremost tell you about my relationship with my dear friend Magic....

My earliest memory of Magic was in first grade, when I would wake up each morning with a tingling feeling in my belly. It felt so special, like a present that was gifted just for me, and despite growing up without religion, I couldnt help but wonder if it was the thing the other kids at school called God. I would swing wildly from great heights on the playground, scaring my parents half to death, but I knew for certain that Magic had my back. When my friend Holly and I dug into the ground during recess in third grade and found rainbow claylike mud, like a treasure we had resurrected from a lost dimension, I knew Magic had left it there especially for us to find.

As I grew, I began to build a deeper relationship with Magic through art. I started doodling faces from my imagination, faces I had never seen before that I believed were spirits who just wanted to come say hi and have their portrait drawn. When I was thirteen, I began obsessively drawing planets and stars all over my notebooks and binders and even my white pair of Vans, perfecting the ring of Saturn more times than I can count. I didnt know much about astrology or astronomy, but I knew that the shapes felt familiar, like a town I had never visited and yet desperately wanted to go back to.

But then puberty set in. Insecurities. Fears. Gender and sexual binaries. Gossip. Trauma. Grades. Social pressure. Applying to college. Teachers, my parents, and even peers began asking me big questions I had no easy answers to. Do you like boys or girls? What do you want to study in college? Why do you dress like that? Have you lost your virginity yet? Do you think art will land you a financially stable job?

Gradually, my relationship with Magic became a luxuryor even worse, a liability. I no longer felt applauded for asking the big questions but instead felt like a complete failure for not coming up with any answers. So I turned my back on Magic and went searching. I felt certain that there was some otherworldly thing that would one day reveal itself to me and give me the answers to all of lifes most troublesome questions. I just needed to find it. And there my journey began.

First, I thought that beauty and fashion had all the answers. The models, celebrities, stylists, and editors in their black sunglasses looked as if they had it all figured out. If I only could dress and present myself the right way, if I only could get my weight down to a number that my body never intended to be, I would figure it out, too. Next, I thought that thing could be men. Then I thought that thing was New York City. Then I thought that thing could be success.

But at twenty-one years old, I was shown my astrological birth chart for the first time. My Venus in Pisces told me of my love of music and animals, while calling me out on my romanticizing of the hero-savior complex that often plagued my love life. My Plutonian Moon told me of my mothers great influence in my life and the ancestral rage we both carried. My Mercury-ruled ascendant and midheaven told me I was a writer before I had any notion that this one day would come true. I couldnt understand how this spiritual practice knew such precise details about me, but I knew at that moment that I had made contact with this thing I had been searching for, the thing with all the answers, and it was speaking directly to me as an adult for the first time.

Fast-forward to 2015. I was a digital designer and the in-house astrologer at a very popular beauty startup in Soho. I was completely obsessed with reading birth charts, so I took it upon myself to take every new and willing employee out to lunch and read their chart. As the company grew from thirty to one hundred people during my three years there, I learned a fair bit about the personal and outer planets, aspects, and houses.

And just like any millennial who thinks they know something, on September 1, 2017, I started an Instagram account called @nadinejane_astrology. I took my amateur mental encyclopedia of astrology, my well-trained design eye, and my love for one-liners, and poured it all into twelve posts, one for each sign. It felt as if all the searching I had done over the years finally came together in harmony, like a symphony from a song that I knew by heart but had not written myself. The account became a special portal that I could visit, a place where I knew I again could make conscious contact with that thing with all the answers, whenever I wanted. Or so I thought.