may 1 2024

DEBBY FRIDAY TALKING TO RANDON ROSENBOHM

OK, so to start off, how would you like to introduce yourself? My name’s Randon Rosenbohm. I'm an astrologer, writer, artist. I live in Berlin. But I'm from the United States. Where in the States? I was born in New Orleans, but I moved to New York when I was 14, like Long Island. And then I was in New York City for 15 years. So I have a couple of places that I would call home.

The people want to know, what's your sign? And do you believe in the superstition that astrologers should keep their birth chart a secret? I really like this superstition. I've heard a couple of astrologers say it. Susan Miller likes to keep hers a secret. I know a couple of people who aren't astrologers that keep it a secret because it is deeply personal. It's like showing someone your diary, especially if they can interpret a birth chart then they can see a lot of things, right? Totally. Like, sometimes someone will tell me their big three. And I'm like, oh, I wish you didn't tell me that. Because now I know you have a big dick.

Haha! It's true. You can see everything. I've seen a lot of people's mommy and daddy issues when they tell me their big three, I can tell immediately. It's very intimate information. But I'm not shy about it. I definitely will tell people if they ask. But also I've heard other astrologers, like Jessica Lanyadoo, say maybe wait until the third date to read their chart. Which is why I kind of try to wait to get to know someone before I ask just because I know that I will have some sort of judgment. And then you never know what other placements people have that influence their chart. Exactly. I remember in an astrology class I took with Annabel Gat a while back, it was just a bunch of astrologers and students getting together and learning about different topics, and this girl, Liana Mack, asked me, what's your sign? And I said, all of them, I have a really well rounded chart. I have pretty much everything on my chart and everything is important. But…I'm a Libra. And she said, that's the most Libra answer you could have given. Ha, that is a very Libra answer. It’s all about everything else but me.

I knew you were a Libra but I saw you tweet about also being a Capricorn Rising, which I am as well. Really? Yeah, I'm Sag Sun, Gemini Moon, Cap Rising. And I don't mind saying my big three because it's already out there. Yeah, I had my birth chart on my website and I've posted it 100 times. I'm also a Capricorn Rising and a Gemini Moon. I have a Libra Sun.

I was introduced to you via astrology Twitter. And then I found out that you wrote an astrology column for Vice, which we'll get into in a little bit. But first things first, I'm curious how did you become an astrologer? This is something that I just wrote about on my first Substack post in a year - it’s at goodhoroscope.de for now. I'm at this really interesting point right now in my astrology career, where I'm trying to find a new way to be an astrologer outside of digital media but digital media is such an important part of our culture. I'm trying to fight against it with in person meetings and such. I get that. But I've always liked astrology, even as a child. I’d read the horoscopes because they were right next to the cartoons, I'd see them and be curious about them. And I've always been very spiritual. [As a young teenager] I found astrology books at Barnes and Noble or at the library. I never thought I could be an astrologer - it was all so mysterious to me how it worked and I didn't know anything about it. I kind of fell into it and it just happened in a fated way. And because I was interested in it, those were the people that I was around and what I was exposed to. And then, Annabel Gat, my colleague who started the astrology columns at Vice, offered me a column. And I just started writing every week and things took off. This was at the beginning of the astrology boom in 2016. People associate this with Neptune in Pisces, which is an outer planetary transit. Before that, when Neptune was in Aquarius, this was a very atheist time. Neptune is the planet of spirituality and beliefs. Neptune in Aquarius is very much, “I believe in science and I believe in nothing.” Like Richard Dawkins era.

I vaguely remember this. I couldn't even be atheist. I'm going to be real. I couldn't possibly deny God so I was like, I'm agnostic. Same. I always believed in something. You move through life and there's just things that happen and there’s no logical or scientific explanation for it. It’s God, it’s something else outside of us. Yeah, Sagittarius is a pretty spiritual sign. I’m also Nigerian and Nigerians are very spiritual people, no matter the religion. I guess I couldn’t escape it even if I tried. Well again, the birth chart isn't just you, it's the world you were born into and the context of everything that came before you, you know, like Kamala Harris said. That was very Libra of her. I thought she was a Gemini! She's so chatty, chatty. She's so funny.

So, I’ve seen you post a lot about nuns and cathedrals. I think you were studying at the time and you recently graduated so first, congratulations. Thank you! I'm really curious as to what you've been in school for and just about that part of your life. A while back, right before this happened, I was on the I Need God podcast with my friend Kyle, who runs the meme page, and we were talking about being Catholic or Christian and interested in/practicing astrology. But there were still a lot of questions that I had, going into my studies. I was trying to smooth it out. And so these two seemingly incompatible things have actually been been a big part of my research in the past year and specifically the past year has been about the theological side. I think I DMed Chris Brennan way back in the day to ask about this topic because he had podcast episodes about Christianity and astrology and the histories and how they are developing side by side in Europe. Oh cool. On a personal level, I went back to Christianity strong in 2017 because I had some things going on in my life where I needed a more grounded spirituality that wasn’t just about manifestation and candles. I knew I needed the big guns. I was going through it. So I went back and the whole process has just been figuring out my own worldview. The day that I moved into this convent I had an exact Jupiter opposition - Jupiter in Aries opposite my Jupiter in Libra. And I had a reading with Annabel, because it was my Saturn return as well, and the way that she read it, she told me Jupiter in Aries just wants to be itself - wild and free. Whereas Jupiter in Libra is asking: What's the proper etiquette? What's the right way to do it? There are rules and there are reasons for these rules. The opposition created a real tension in my life between me knowing what's right, knowing the rules, and following my instincts. When I was in the convent, I was studying Sacred Art at a small school in Italy. It was a one year master's degree. I thought I needed to get a master's degree before I turned 30. I don't know, maybe it's a Capricorn Rising thing. No, I get it. But then I turned 30 and I was like, why did I rush this? Why? I ended up pushing myself really hard and so now I'm kind of a little burnt out.

This coincided with the end of your Vice column, is that right? I was still keeping up the Vice column while I was studying, I think because horoscopes are a little bit easier for me to justify. They’re so much more entertaining than a one-on-one consultation, which puts me in the position of a spiritual advisor or in a position of deciding someone's fate. I had to figure out what I was comfortable with, how to position myself, how to interact with people who want my services in a way that would actually be beneficial for their lives and not close them off to the future that is their fate or the future that they would have chosen otherwise. You can see general shapes of things but who am I to say? I think people need to live their lives and I don't want to get in the way of that.

That's real. I remember I ran an astrology Patreon for about a year or so. It was called Good Friday Astrology. And I had similar feelings, which was part of the reason why I shut it down. People that are drawn to spirituality are usually either one of two things - truth seeking and doing their own spiritual explorations or they are looking for someone to help them. And it's a lot to be doing that kind of work for other people. It’s a lot of responsibility and I just I wasn't in the place to be able to do that. Yeah, I wasn't studying when I was doing consultations. But I was able to support myself with my work of writing horoscopes. I think a lot of astrologers rely on consultations to support them because not everyone can write horoscopes for a media outlet. Consultations are a big part of being a professional astrologer. When I did it, I would get scared. Before doing the reading, I'd feel kind of anxious. And then after I did it, I'd feel so energized and happy and useful and like I was fulfilling my purpose. I love helping people. I love giving people advice. But it is a responsibility. And I would like to point people towards a higher power rather than me. I would rather point people in that direction and for them to seek that sort of guidance, rather than looking for it in me. I do think astrology is great and I think it's really interesting but I also think it can be a distraction. Like you said, people go to this when they're looking for help and I think if you really need help, there are a lot of other places that you can go that don't foresee the future, but rather, talk about right now. Everything is in the present moment. And so I'm trying to reframe my astrology practice into talking about the present…and maybe also the past. Rather than, “let’s make predictions because we’re anxious.”

There's always all this conversation about whether astrology is fortune telling or not. What do you think? I think it is fortune telling. Fate and fortune are these key words in the astrology lexicon but at the same time, it is its own thing. It is a type of divination but it has such a history and structure and method that definitely sets itself apart from other types of fortune telling. It is like tarot in a way but it is more grounded in the natural world, which I think is compatible with divinity. It's compatible with this system of the great design, a greater design. Intelligent design, the connection between heaven and earth, is represented in astrology in a way.

Do you consider yourself to be part of an online astrology community? Yeah, I mean the account that we're mutuals on was my professional astrology account. Going in, I was like, this is going to be clean, pristine and I'm only tweeting about astrology. I'm not tweeting about my life. It was very tight. And then I had another account where I would just say ridiculous things and totally let my Gemini moon be free. Free her. And then during my Saturn return, I had this moment of total frustration because…so my natal Saturn is retrograde. Okay. Retrograde planets can be about rescinding things, as in you get something and it gets taken back. I had a book deal offer and I thought finally! I'll get some easy money, I'll write this book in my dreams. It's so easy for me to write an astrology book, I could do it in two seconds. But because I wasn't grinding hard enough with the influencer thing and the numbers weren't high enough, they pitched the book to the company and they said, sorry, the market's already too saturated. And then I said, F this, I give up! I am not gonna keep trying to compete with people who are really focused on social media. There are more important things to me than being popular. There are more important things to me than getting attention. I didn't want to fall for this illusion, especially because I was lucky enough to have my Vice income. I was surviving and I didn't have to try any harder than I already was. Then around the time of my Saturn return, I said I'm gonna just have fun and stop caring and stop trying to be a business online.

Do you feel this way? Do you have these troubles as Debby Friday as well? Yes, definitely, because the music industry is so explicit about it. I've literally been told, unless you hit a certain number of streams, you just don't have access to certain things. It doesn't matter how good the work is, it doesn't matter how hard you've worked on it. It really is just all quantitative metrics that they use to measure things. On one hand, I understand why they do that, because the music industry hemorrhages money. People aren’t really paying for this art anymore. I was reading something the other day about Lady Gaga, how when she dropped her first album she sold 1 million copies in the first week. That's unheard of now. That's just doesn't happen anymore. Things are different. But as far as social media, I think I take naturally to the internet. I like the internet. I enjoy posting. I enjoy meeting people, talking to people, interacting. I can do that part. But I hate being told what to do. It’s the Sag in me. I don't want to hear it. You have creative freedom. That's why they trust you. That's why they like you. You're an artist. Absolutely. I feel like when people start trying to meddle with that is when things just start feeling really stilted. You can sense inauthenticity through the screen. I felt like I was being inauthentic when I had this astrology account because it took so much self-control for me to not post jokes or be silly or to just be weird and have fun. I love posting. I love the internet. It's a very natural thing for me too but I felt like I had to keep it tight for my audience and be professional. Also, just to be professional for the sake of astrology being taken seriously. I think in the astrology community there is this obligation to present astrology as a serious topic. To act like this is a practice and it should be respected and taken seriously. I do take myself seriously and I take my work seriously but I also feel very rebellious and I don't want to be told what to do.

Do you fortune tell for yourself by looking at your chart? It's been a while since I've done that. I'm trying to give myself a little break from reading transits and reading into my astrology. I can't help it because my brain has been trained to do this for so long so whenever I hear something I'll think about it but I don't seek it.

Any thoughts on some of the things that you've seen happen in online astrology communities? In particular, in the last couple of years I honestly think people are losing their minds, especially post-Covid and everything. There was the MeToo-adjacent era of cancellations and reputation assassinations that happened in the general public but I can feel the tides shifting in the larger culture. I feel like that wave is still a pretty big deal in the astrology community, though. Some examples I can think of are what happened with Maren or iJaadee. Yeah, you're right there is a reaction against this in the greater cultural space. But a lot of this astrology community is on Twitter, which is funny because it doesn't necessarily represent astrologers in other cities or the old school people who have been doing this since before Neptune in Pisces. My teacher's teachers and these older people in bookstores, they don't know who Maren Altman is. That’s so true. My ex used to always say it's not real life - Twitter is not real life. And then I logged off for nine months and it's true. All these people in your phone, they stop existing.

I always think of it as like an alternate dimension in some ways. It really is this vortex and the second that you put down your phone you're snapped back to “reality” and now everything's brighter, people are nicer, everyone behaves normally. You have time to read books. Yeah. Steven Forrest is an older evolutionary astrologer and he has a podcast where he speaks in a very charming, husky voice and he mentioned the importance of professional astrologers having their base in the town or the city where they are, finding your community locally and in-person. This has been a desire of mine since I started. And Annabel Gatt mentioned that before Covid, you could set up and do readings at bookstores and that’s how you become open to all the people in in your vicinity and in your third house. Your third house is your town, your city, your neighbourhood. This whole time I'm asking how can I connect with people on the ground? Because Covid did isolate us. But there's still this legacy left where I'm having moments on the dance floor where I’m thinking, oh my god I've been waiting to hear this song in person surrounded by people for four years! I think we're still getting back into reconnecting with people and I would love to make an astrology workshop in person that actually pays.

Okay, rapid fire. Traditional astrology vs. modern astrology? It's so funny that people are saying they're traditional astrologers and they're living in 2024. I guess there are different waves of astrology history. There’s Chris Brennan, Project Hindsight, Demetra George and all these people who were doing translation projects and research projects to revive traditional astrology and bring it back into the field and I do love it. When I first started studying astrology I was given an episode of The Astrology Podcast on whole sign houses and I got into it. But I really love modern astrology - the New Age, sort of hippie stuff from the 60s and 70s where they get kind of Buddhist. It's so much fun.

With that, any thoughts on human design? I've never tried it but why not? I started getting into it recently. I bought a book. It's derived off of a combination of astrology, the I-Ching and some other stuff. It’s kind of kooky but it's fun. It’s still very new, though. When did it come out? 1992. Are you a generator? A manifesting-generator, haha. I guess it's just another way that people like to learn about themselves. The desire to know more about yourself and turn inward. But I also think that if you're sad and lonely, it could also help to stop focusing on yourself so much and to turn outwards. And that’s something that I want to do with astrology. I’m figuring out how to make it more of an exploration of other people, of communities and of groups rather than a thing of “this is who I am and who I am is this chart.”

Okay, favourite writers? Astrologers or otherwise? I'm reading this fiction book by Huysmans. He’s a French author and art historian and I really like how descriptive he is of things. It's this type of writing called naturalism, which just describes stuff. He describes the symbolic meaning of different crystals and flowers. I'm really into this one book by him called The Cathedral. I'm reading it right now and it's about the symbols inside of this cathedral in Chartres…haha, it's called Chartres. Sorry, I've never said it out loud before. Ha, very french, honestly. As far as astrology is concerned, I did take a little sabbatical from astrology to study Christian theology and to figure out what is the church's view on astrology. And what is its view on astrology? What are some of the things you’ve read? In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, there's a section that lumps astrology in with all sorts of fortune telling and discourages it. Really? Yeah, and I've been wondering why that is and I understand why it is but this has been my job for so long. How do I integrate this thing that I have a lot of knowledge on with this other thing that I have a lot of knowledge on? How do I create something new, a new way of being an astrologer? Again, with the whole market saturation thing, I think there's just one way of being an astrologer online right now and everyone's trying to do it. It’s like here’s your daily horoscope and there’s a hundred. Definitely, and because they're all reading the same transits, they're generally gonna say similar things. They are. So I want to find a way that is not already being done.

I think there's definitely a market for giving astrology more of a religious or rigorous structure. Because when I think about a lot of the astrologers that I tend to gravitate towards, it’s people that I feel add another layer to it. People who you can tell have an actual deep spiritual practice and it’s not a free-for-all. There are rules. I like that. Astrology is an unregulated practice, it's not like it exists in academia or something. There's no standard necessarily. There have been attempts to try to regulate astrology but there is no way to possibly regulate it so it is kind of this open, free-for-all of different systems and practices, which I think is its strength and also its weakness at the same time. Again, astrologers have this duty to make it respectable and to contribute to astrology in a way that gives it dignity and respect.

Okay, last two questions. First, best transit you’ve ever had? Okay, best transit I've ever had in my life was my Saturn return. I loved it. Oooh! I feel like there were some tough moments of failure where I was like, oh no! I didn't get the book deal to write the book that I would only do for money. But…I'm a very creative person, I studied art, I consider myself an artist and this book that they were trying to get me to write was not necessarily my idea so maybe it's good that I didn't write this sellout book. I don’t have a Wikipedia page or anything but in the future, 30 years from now, if you see that this is the first book she ever published and it’s like “Astrology for Dogs”, that's just not me. Haha. So I dodged a bullet with that but it was still really hard. But see, I had my Saturn return and my Mars return at the same time and they are square but in domicile so I ended up getting this really insane job from Facebook. They approached me to read the birth charts for Kehlani and Anitta and Adriana Lima for a new feature they were rolling out. They offered me a ton of money and it was the kind of money I’ve been praying for. And I was so excited to do the reading but I wasn’t able to get on the platform so I ended up just getting paid a ton of money to do nothing. Oh, wow! I love that for you. It was miraculous, I was stunned.

And now, worst transit you’ve ever had? Pluto going over my ascendant. Oh, fuck. I hated that. It was so life-changing. I feel like a totally different person. There were so many deaths. And I had bedbugs. Nooooo! This was when I went back to Christianity and I thought I had to call a priest because so much of my life was so wrong that I thought I was possessed by demons and I needed to just get back to God. [This transit] turned out to be the rock bottom that got me in touch with my spirituality in a way that's been very beneficial to me. I can totally see how bedbugs can send you back to the church. I felt like I was in hell. I'm so glad I’m out of the woods. Pluto is one of those planets that get me scared because it's crisis mode.

Are you thinking about it now moving through your 2nd house? Again, I'm trying not to predict the future but then sometimes I get down and out and I think this is when someone else is gonna die and this is when I'm gonna die. And then I have to be like, “that’s enough Randon, don't predict death.” But I have my midheaven in Scorpio and I’ve anticipated all this Pluto in Aquarius squaring Scorpio stuff. I’ve looked at celebrities to see what happened when they had this transit and usually it is a crisis that ends up catapulting their careers. Like Jeffree Star and Rosalia. I think this is a sign of career change that’s going on in my life right now and I really hope I can surrender to it and not push too hard. Just let it happen and let go and not give up. What’s going to rise from the ashes? I don’t know. I’m at this transformative moment right now.

You can find Randon on twitter and substack.

Want to read more TALKING TO? Click here.