Aliza Kelly - This Is Your Destiny: Using Astrology to Manifest Your Best Life

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Dedicated to my clients and community, teachers and guides.

Echoing from the highest mountain,

rippling through the deepest waves,

and gripping the horizon like the stubborn summer Sun:

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Astrology is more than a practiceits a portal.

@alizakelly

This Is Your Destiny is an invitation for everyone, everywhere, to take an active role in consciousness. To make empowered choices that reflect your deepest truths. To show up, be present, and relish the sublime fortuity of simply being alive.

Youre here, right now, and thats exactly where you need to be.

Welcome.

xx Aliza

At the very beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, there was a collective scrambling. As the virus spread, cities across the United States began entering unprecedented lockdowns and quarantinesconcepts that, before 2020, seemed almost exclusively literary. Against the backdrop of a rapidly escalating pandemic haphazardly managed by broken leadership, guidance was reduced to a simple, two-word directive: STAY HOME.

Usually, New York Citys value isnt measured in square footageits measured in experience. But for the first few months of 2020, COVID-19 swarmed the city like locust: everything was covered with disease. The city, itself, was contaminated. So as essential workers slapped on makeshift protective equipment constructed from old fleece jackets and vacuum filters to assemble hospital beds in Central Park, we the people retreated to our apartments. For me, that meantalmost overnightNew York City shrunk to seven hundred square feet. And it was from that space, in my apartment, where I heard the heartbreaking wails.

Of course, New Yorkers are no strangers to noise. All day long, we move to the rhythm of an urban orchestra: teenagers yelling, cars honking, subwoofers pounding, construction sites clambering, andin the warmer monthsice cream trucks blasting a seemingly demonic rendition of Pop Goes the Weasel. Its cinematic, a sort of living soundtrack complete with bass and percussion and melody.

But a sick city doesnt grooveit cries. So as the virus spread and movement paused, noises began disappearing. Gone were the screaming teenagers, the honking cars, the pounding subwoofers, the cacophonous construction sites. As a New Yorker, born and raised, Ive heard the city play many different tracksbut the one echoing across the streets in March 2020 was different. By the end of the month, the only sound remaining was the sirens solitary song.

In my apartment, my phone was vibrating hourly to remind me that COVID-19 cases were rising at exponential rates: New Yorkers were infected. They were dying. And, as if to verify the dystopian notifications, ambulances multiplied. Flooding in and out of hospitals, white boxy trucks rushed down the empty streets, sending long, piercing howls into the absence of motion, permeating the void with their looping lament. The sirens endless wails became a sort of modern-day moirologia: the collective cry of a city in pain.

And, in a seemingly separate universe, there was the Internet. Relegated indoors, we became dependent on social media as our lifeline. In the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak, when the virtual hive mind scrambled to adjust to this new normal, social media was flooded with banana bread recipes and exercise routines and inspirational quotes about productivity. One, in particular, was especially taunting: When Shakespeare was quarantined, he wrote King Lear. What are you doing with your time?

Of course, this type of messaging didnt last long. The collective consciousness quickly agreed that plague shaming was not the right vibe. We were, after all, experiencing a shared traumawho could possibly be expected to produce meaningful art in a global crisis? Social media quickly adopted a softer tone: Rest. Relax. Restore.

But that wasnt my reality. As I attempted to tune out the sonic suffering and mitigate an unforeseen family crisis (my grandmotherone of my closest relativeswas suddenly trapped in her nursing home, which was experiencing hundreds of COVID-19 cases), I had an astrology book to write. I was, of course, extraordinarily grateful. As the virus surged, unemployment followed: layoffs and furloughs and job uncertainty were painful layers of this unfathomable tragedy. And this, too, added to my own existential dread. Why me?

You see, This Is Your Destiny was born into a totally different worldin fact, my original outline for this book predates COVID-19. Once upon a time, I bounced around the city with a book proposal, shaking hands (sans hand sanitizer) with editors, and spewing ominous facts about 2020 Astrology from an unmasked mouth.

(What made the astrology of 2020 so unique is that there were not just one but several exceptionally rare cosmic occurrences back-to-back across the Cancer-Capricorn axiszodiac signs associated with security, tradition, and government. In fact, many of 2020s planetary happenings hadnt been experienced since the fall of 1517, just a few weeks after Martin Luther hammered his theses to the church dooran act that kicked off the Protestant Reformation.)

That was only ten months ago, but in the midst of a pandemic, it might as well be eight centuries ago. At the time of this writing, outerwear without a mask feels old-fashioned, like powdered wigs and decorative corsetscostumes from a period piece. Likewise, I feared that This Is Your Destiny was also an anachronism: Was this book already outdated, a relic from another time? Was it no longer relevant? Had my book become obsolete?

I was panicking. My book deadline was approaching, I had nothing to write, and what the fuck, I couldnt stop thinking about Shakespeare and King LearI was haunted by that stupid Internet meme. As I stared at a blank document, my mind began to wander. I wanted to know more about Shakespeares quarantine experience: What was the square footage of his London flat? Did he feel claustrophobic? Were there sirens? Did he think about the Greek wailers, too? But mostly, I wanted to know if he, also, questioned the relevancy of his work: Was the iconic William Shakespeare wallowing in existential dread? Was he worried about King Lears potential insignificance?

So this is what I found out: though its true that Shakespeare penned King Lear during the bubonic plague, Professor Mary Bly of Fordham University noted that its highly unlikely he wrote the famed tragedy in London proper. According to Professor Bly, during a plague outbreak (which were quite common in those days), anyone with class or privilege would flee to the country. Likewise, Shakespearewho was not a starving artistalmost certainly wrote King Lear whilst gazing out upon a gorgeous, bucolic vista, complete with acreage and sunshine and virtually no proto-ambulances whatsoever.