as·trol·o·gy
A range of divinatory practices, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Or in other words — the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial bodies interpreted as having an influence on human affairs and the natural world.
Since as far back as the 18th century, different cultures have studied and used astrology. While today’s Western world tends to associate contemporary astrology with horoscopes and personality traits, the history of astrology is rooted in scholarly traditions and academia in close relation to astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine.
These days, although no longer associated with the sciences, astrology is still widely practiced and used as much more than a tool to understand your horoscope. As you’ll learn from today’s guest, Chani Nicholas, New York Times best-selling author and world-renowned astrologer, astrology can be a valuable tool for self-discovery, understanding one’s strengths and challenges, and making informed decisions in various aspects of life.
The power of astrology
Tori and Chani kick off the episode by discussing the transformative potential of astrology in understanding oneself. Chani emphasizes how astrological charts provide a unique lens to explore different aspects of personality, behavior, and life events. She emphasizes the multifaceted nature of astrology, delving beyond mere zodiac signs. “My agenda is to help people connect to their agency and their own specific skill set so that they can be part of the social change that they most want to see in the world.”
She asserts that astrology provides a language to comprehend and embrace various aspects of oneself, urging listeners to look for a deeper meaning beyond the surface. As she explains, “I think that when you listen to astrology and you listen to your own birth chart, and you dissect it and really study it, it does create a sense of awe and wonder because there is this thing that says, you were made like this on purpose and you have a purpose here.”
Saturn returns and personal growth
The conversation takes a deep dive into the concept of Saturn returns, a pivotal astrological period associated with personal growth and maturity. Demystifying the often-feared Saturn return, Chani reframes it as a transformative period, an opportunity for personal growth and self-empowerment. Chani sheds light on the reflective nature of the Saturn return, guiding listeners to introspect on their dependencies and redefine their boundaries.
By providing a fresh perspective, Chani encourages a more positive approach, urging individuals to view this astrological event as a stepping stone toward maturity and self-understanding. “You have to learn how to fly. You have to learn a different way of moving through space. The things that keep you small, hopefully, if you’re lucky, will not work for you anymore.”
Astrology and career development
Tori and Chani explore the role of astrology in career development, particularly focusing on Saturn’s influence in the astrological chart. Chani sheds light on how specific planetary placements, such as Saturn in prominent positions, can shape one’s professional identity and public persona. She encourages individuals to leverage their astrological insights for personal and professional growth.
Using Tori’s chart as an example, she humorously shares, “Your Saturn is what people feel from you when you go out into the world. You have an angular Saturn, so people read you as a Capricorn because they’re feeling that daddy energy of Saturn from you.”
Through this analysis, she emphasizes how astrological elements influence one’s professional persona and how others perceive them in the public realm. In pinpointing the influence of Saturn on Tori’s public image, Chani showcases the practical applications of astrology in understanding and navigating professional dynamics.
Astrology and social impact
Chani reflects on the broader impact of astrology, extending beyond personal benefits. She highlights the CHANI app — the #1 astrology app for manifestation, self-discovery, mindfulness, and healing. The app was designed to make astrology accessible and useful, with a mission to help people live their life’s purpose, through understanding their birth chart.
Tori and Chani discuss the distinctive features of the app, including chart information, weekly readings, and guided meditations. The app not only serves astrology enthusiasts, but it also contributes to social impact initiatives and was made by survivors of gender-based violence.
Chani underscores the company’s commitment to interrupting gender-based violence through financial empowerment, stating “We believe deeply in our company ethos centered in an economic solidarity with folks that are systematically harmed.” That company commitment extends even further to the members of the CHANI team. They have one of the most generous benefits packages out there, including a base starting income of $80k for EVERY employee, unlimited menstrual leave for anyone with a uterus, unlimited PTO with a vacation stipend, and fully covered health, dental, and vision insurance…just to name a few.
So, can astrology make you better with money?
If so, how?
According to Chani, there are a few different ways to use your chart to learn more about your personal money stories. One tip she gives is to start with your second house. “One of the first things I would start with is your second house, which is the house of money and assets and livelihood. If you read the description of each of your planets in the CHANI app, you’ll hear me, you’ll hear us talk about money and how you make it with the planets that are connected to that.” She goes into a deeper dive of the different planets, houses, and what they could mean for you in terms of money, sharing that understanding her chart helped her understand the why behind certain decisions and thought processes.
“Once I kind of unlocked that for myself, I was like, oh, that’s why I function like this. That’s why no matter what I think I should do, other parts of me are like, well, what if I just did this? It’s like, I always orient towards this one thing. And then it’s so obvious in my chart. Once I saw that and really understood it, I could just accept it about myself and just move on.”
Chani and Tori continue unraveling the layers of astrology and discussing the intersection of astrology, personal finance, and social responsibility in this week’s episode of Financial Feminist.
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Meet Chani
Chani Nicholas is a Los Angeles-based, New York Times best-selling astrologer and author of “You Were Born For This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance” (HarperOne, January 2020). She has been a counseling astrologer for more than 20 years, guiding her community of over 1 million monthly readers to discover and live out their life’s purpose through understanding their birth chart. Chani is the President of Chani Nicholas Incorporated. She writes all the content that readers experience across her website and newsletter, writes or edits all of the content on the CHANI app, oversees the creative direction and visual identity of the company, still personally manages her social media presence and community engagement, and co-directs the company with her wife and business partner, Sonya Passi. She has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, on the CBS Morning News, and has a web series called “Star Power” on Netflix.
Transcript:
Chani Nicholas:
What I want to do is, if you’re interested in the blueprint of potential that I know is in your astrological chart, then I want to help you access that quickly, efficiently, and with eloquence and nuance. Then, I think that if you have that kind of information, you can then more readily move into the world and be of service to it, which is ultimately my agenda. My agenda is to help people connect to their agency and their own specific skillset, so that they can be part of the social change that they most want to see in the world.
Tori Dunlap:
Hi, team. Welcome back. Hello. Welcome back to Financial Feminist. I am so excited to see you. Thanks as always for being here. Before we get into the episode, a couple of housekeeping things, like subscribe, review the show, send it to your friends. It truly helps us continue to do this amazing content. And if you have a question about personal finance, you can drop it in the voicemail box below, and maybe we’ll use it in an upcoming episode. All right. Today’s guest, this was a fun one. Chani Nicholas is a Los Angeles based New York Times bestselling astrologer and author of You Were Born for This: Astrology for Radical Self-Acceptance. She has been a counseling astrologer for more than 20 years, guiding her community of over a million monthly readers to discover and live out their life’s purpose through understanding their birth chart.
Chani is the president of Chani Nicholas Incorporated. She writes all the content that her readers experience across her website and newsletter, writes or edits all of the content on the Chani app, oversees the creative direction and visual identity of the company, still personally manages her social media presence and community engagement, and co-directs the company with her wife and business partner, Sonya Passi. She’s been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, on the CBS morning news, and has a web series called Star Power on Netflix. Y’all have been asking for this one for a while. Astrology and finances, astrology and self-development. We get into why astrology has been a powerful tool for better understanding ourselves and the world around us, how to look at our charts in an analytical way to understand our relationship to our finances.
Chani demystifies some of the biggest misconceptions and misunderstandings around astrology, including things like Mercury and gatorade and Saturn returns, and yes, it’s Mercury and retrograde, but I like making the Gatorade joke. We also get into her incredible business, which has some of the most progressive structures when it comes to benefits and pay, and we’re just really excited to have her on the show. She also reads me for filth. She reads my chart, and really tells me everything about my life and how it’s going to change. Whether you’re a casual dabbler or totally obsessed with astrology, or maybe you’re a total skeptic, you’re going to love this episode. Let’s go ahead and get into it, but first a word from our sponsors.
Chani Nicholas:
Not forever, but for a good amount of time, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Do you like LA or New York more? I feel like this tells me a lot about a person.
Chani Nicholas:
My mother’s side of the family are diehard Jewish, New Yorkers.
Tori Dunlap:
Got it.
Chani Nicholas:
So it’s in my blood.
Tori Dunlap:
So you’re like, “I can’t pick”?
Chani Nicholas:
No, it’s not. You can’t compare them. I don’t know.
Tori Dunlap:
They’re very, very, very different cities.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, yeah. I am a diehard New Yorker in my bones, but I haven’t lived there for longer than a year at a time, but I’ve gone there my whole life every year.
Tori Dunlap:
I live up in Seattle, and so I’m in LA a lot, but I love New York. It’s like the goal is to be bi-coastal at some point in my life and true bi-coastal.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
We’re just so excited to have you.
Chani Nicholas:
So excited to be here.
Tori Dunlap:
Do you remember that moment when astrology really resonated with you, when you thought, “Oh. This is what this is and how it can help me” and then when did that transition into helping other people?
Chani Nicholas:
Well, I think astrology, just by nature, is something that, if it speaks to you and you pick it up, it just naturally starts to help other people. Anybody who’s around you, that’s interested in it, will all of a sudden be so curious about what you can tell them about themselves. So that’s an automatic kind of, I don’t know if transaction’s a good word to use, but it’s an automatic interaction that happens. The first time I really understood what an astrology reading was, I was 12 years old, and I received one with my father and his new third wife and her two kids.
It was a gift from her mother, who was a Reiki master and had tons of psychics and astrologer friends, and so she got us a family reading as a gift, and I think as a way for us to find one another as a new family. The astrologer gave us readings, and I was like, “Wow. How does she know how we’re all so different?” It was so clarifying for me, and it was so helpful, because we were five different people and we were trying to come together as a unit. I was obsessed, and also, I felt like I really understood what she was talking about. She had written a book. My dad bought it for me, and that was my introduction to astrology.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s so interesting to think of how you can use astrology, not just to understand yourself, but to understand not only others, but everybody’s dynamic together.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was really helpful. That family, in particular, had two very prominent, fixed, they had a lot of fixed signs. That was a family of a lot of fixed signs, so they’re very confident, prominent kind of types, and I don’t have a lot like that, and so that was good language for me to understand and to understand why I wasn’t like that. I didn’t lead with tons of confidence in the same way as they did. And so it’s a language, I think, especially as when you’re a teenager or preteen, where it can be like, “Oh, I’m not wrong or bad. I’m just different,” or “They’re not wrong or bad. They’re just different,” and we all function in really different ways.”
Tori Dunlap:
When you say fixed signs, and then you said confidence, what does that mean to my non-astrology background?
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. Fixed.
Tori Dunlap:
What does that mean?
Chani Nicholas:
So fixed signs are Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius, and they’re the signs that come right after cardinal signs, and cardinal signs are the equinoxes and the solstices, so they spur change and they create something new. They initiate something new. So cardinal sign people are really active, and they start a lot of things, and there’s always something going on. Then, the fix signs come in, and they’re like, “Cute, cute, but I got to stabilize this and secure it,” and spring has to become actual spring. You can’t just start something and then start the next thing. So there’s a lot of confidence and stability in a sense with fixed signs, and they pull focus to them, because they are steady. They’re at the hub.
Then, mutable signs come after them, and mutable signs let go of the fixedness, and they make space for the new change that’s going to come, the next cardinal sign to come, but they’re in between. So they’re incredibly flexible, literally mutable, and they’re called double bodied, so they’re both/and. They stand in the in between. So those are Gemini, Virgo, Sag, and Pisces. And so, if you look at their glyphs, they’re two of something. Gemini is the twins, Virgo is the virgin and the dove usually, and Sag is, of course, the centaur, the half human, half animal, and Pisces is the two fish. Everything’s going in two different ways, because they’re not one thing or the other. They’re both/and, in between, and everything, everywhere, all at once.
Tori Dunlap:
How does that work? I mean, we all have certain sun signs and then moon signs, and always I’m like, “What does this mean for me?” but how does that look if you have these various different types of signs in your chart?
Chani Nicholas:
Then, you’re more balanced, and then there’s different ways of organizing importance of things. So for me, because I’m a traditional astrologer, I’ll look at, if you were born in a day or the night, and look to see if your sun or your moon is more prominent. I’ll also take a lot of pointers from your rising sign and from where the planet is that rules your rising sign, and what sign that’s in. So all of these, and a lot of people have a lot of different stuff, and that’s not weird, normal, or anything. It just is what it is. The sky changes all the time, but if you have two cardinal in your sun moon rising, or too fixed or too mutable, then that probably will lead you more towards that kind of functionality.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s really, really fascinating.
Chani Nicholas:
That’s just one kind of basic level.
Tori Dunlap:
No, truly. It’s like breaking my brain a little bit, in a good way. I think in our everyday lives as women, one of the things that has kept cropping up, now that astrology seems to be even more in the pop culture or mainstream lexicon, is that there’s jokes then of, “Oh. Runaway, if she asks your birth sign on a date.” There seems to be this undervaluation of astrology, because it’s seen as a feminine interest. What do you think this stems from, or how do you think this came about?
Chani Nicholas:
Well, I am queer, so I think you’re talking about straight, CIS men?
Tori Dunlap:
Yes, 100 percent.
Chani Nicholas:
Okay. I don’t know a lot about them, but if that’s what they’re up to, then I think that that’s just a function of patriarchy, it sounds like.
Tori Dunlap:
100 percent, yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
So anything that’s valued by women and femmes is devalued by patriarchy, just as an essential 101 rule.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s all we do on this show, Chani, is talk about the patriarchy and how fucked up it is.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, yeah. Patriarchy, I’m down for. You’d have to fill me in on what men do on dates, I guess. I don’t know. That sounds awful, but-
Tori Dunlap:
Story for another time. Yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, I say this all the time. I don’t care if people like astrology. I don’t think everyone should. I think it’s a phenomenal tool, and if you think that it doesn’t have any value, then move along, but the value that I get from it and that I know a lot of people get from it, is immense. So if it works for you, great. If it doesn’t, keep it moving. Find the thing that works, and always, the patriarchy is going to be like, “Oh. You silly little child, what do you know of things?”
And you’ll be like, “Oh, yes. Right, because capitalism is so cohesively well-thought out and make so much sense. Sure, sure.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Chani Nicholas:
What systems do you value, and how do they function? This is a system I value, and I know how it functions, and I know how it works, but some of the things you all talk about don’t actually make any literal sense, but cool, cool.
Tori Dunlap:
What are the myths around astrology that you find most infuriating?
Chani Nicholas:
I don’t know. I really don’t pay attention.
Tori Dunlap:
I love that answer.
Chani Nicholas:
I think probably that, I mean, it’s like, who caress?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
I don’t know. I don’t know what the myths are, that we’re all cheats and liars, and we are just making stuff up and it’s all confirmation bias, which a lot of it can’t be. I mean, a lot of people use astrology in a lot of different ways that I wouldn’t necessarily agree with, so I’m not saying that people don’t engage with astrology in ways that have little to do with what I know of astrology, so it’s been taken over by capitalism, so God knows what’s out there and how people view it because of how it’s presented, because corporations can adopt it and try to benefit off of it or what have you, so it’s not really that big of a deal to me.
Tori Dunlap:
You’re un-bothered, bless and block attitude is something I strive for, and I think all of our listeners should also strive for. I’m just like, “I love that answer.”
You’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t fucking care, so move along.”
Chani Nicholas:
Well, it’s also not causing harm in a way that-
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Chani Nicholas:
… Makes me want to engage with it directly. It’s like, “Okay, fine. There’s other things for us to fight. I will die on certain hills.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Chani Nicholas:
And this one is just do what you want.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. If it’s not hurting you, and it’s not hurting somebody else, and it helps you show up as a better person and helps you show up in your relationships better, that’s not harmful. That can only help if you choose.
Chani Nicholas:
Well, I don’t feel like someone else judging astrology is harmful either, I guess, is what I’m saying, so I don’t really care. So go ahead, do your judging. It’s not like impeding my human rights for you to do that, so it’s fine.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, my ability to continue doing your work.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. I am good.
Tori Dunlap:
You’ve said that your mission with your work is to tie an understanding of astrology today with the social consciousness. How are we interrelated in what we owe each other, right? Can you share more about that?
Chani Nicholas:
I don’t know if I’ve said those exact words, but what I think, I don’t if this is what you’re talking about, but what I want to do is, if you’re interested in the blueprint of potential that I know is in your astrological chart, then I want to help you access that quickly, efficiently, and with eloquence and nuance. Then, I think that if you have that kind of information, you can then, more readily, move into the world and be of service to it, which is ultimately my agenda. My agenda is to help people connect to their agency and their own specific skillset so that they can be part of the social change that they most want to see in the world.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s very similar to, I think, a lot of the work that we do, is how can you show up as an individual in a way that’s going to better the world around you as well? And I appreciate that view of thinking, because speaking of patriarchy, I feel like that’s the exact opposite of everything the patriarchy wants us to do, which is very individualistic and focused on, how do I make as much money, and then how do I hoard all of that money so that it’s just for me, as possible?
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, and astrology, if it resonates with you, is literal proof of the fact that you’re connected to something. There’s a sky that’s speaking to you. There’s a universe that’s in conversation with you that wants to help you out. I don’t know. I hope we live in a benevolent universe. I feel like we do, but I think that when you listen to astrology and you listen to your own birth chart, and you dissect it and really study it, it does create a sense of awe and wonder, because there is this thing that says, “You were made like this on purpose, and you have a purpose here,” and these are some really good ways to engage with it and to think about when you’re moving out into the world and doing your work.
Tori Dunlap:
Can you talk to me about the getting started pack, for what are your big three or your houses? If somebody is looking where to start, can we establish some chart basics?
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. You can start by downloading the Chani app and reading your description for your sun, your moon, and your rising, and then the planet that rules your rising sign. That is a really important thing, so that your sun is about where and how you shine, your moon is about how you live out your life’s purpose, because the moon is the body and our emotional life and wellbeing, and the rising sign is the most personal part of your chart, because it depends on your specific location and specific time of birth, that at that time, at that location, over the eastern horizon was a literal zodiac sign that was rising up, because the sky looks like it’s moving all the time.
And so that is a very, very, very sensitive point, because it changes so quickly. That is the most personal part of your chart, and it is the marker of your life. This is the moment you were born, and it sets up the whole sky. From that part, we get to see, “Okay. Well, this is what else was happening in the sky at that time, and this is what the sky looked like. This is what the planets look like. This was their quality. This is what it means for that person’s life,” so those are the places to start. You could spend years going in deep with just those three/four things, and get so much out of them, because most of the time the rest of your chart will speak. I want to know how the chart speaks through those kinds of four portals, right? Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
The sun, correct me if I’m wrong, is the one we all think of as the sign we are.
Chani Nicholas:
Yes.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
And that’s new. That’s within, since the printing press, because what astrologers did where they were like, “Okay. Well, nobody knows they’re ascendant. That’s harder to understand, because you have to do a bunch of math.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Chani Nicholas:
But everyone knows roughly the day that they were born, and we can gauge roughly what, unless you’re born at the beginning or the end of a sign change, then we know what sun sign you are, so it was a way to get everyone literally on the same page and into the same horoscope, and that was the gateway drug to the rest of your astrological chart once we had newspapers and things in syndication.
Tori Dunlap:
Right. I think that was one of the things that started to unlock the power of astrology for me, is for many, many years I just thought, “I’m a cancer, okay,” and there was sometimes where I would do the classic read my horoscope in the paper, and I would be like, “Okay. Maybe this is relevant to me. Maybe it isn’t,” and it felt a bit like, “Okay. I don’t think this is for me.” Then, I started to understand that it’s way more than just that, and there were other parts of me that would show up, or other parts of either my personality, the way I grew up, or just how I felt about things, that I was like, “Oh. This makes a lot more sense now,” rather than just, “You’re a cancer. That’s your default state,” and so that was one of the things that was really helpful for me, was understanding that astrology and your horoscope is far beyond just your sun sign.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. I mean the horoscope you read in the paper isn’t your chart.
Tori Dunlap:
Right, right.
Chani Nicholas:
At all. It’s not your chart. It’s how the planets are moving through space in relationship to the sign that your sun was in. It’s a very general way of looking at things, but it’s literally not your astrological chart. It’s taking one tiny little thing from it, and then talking about what’s happening in the current moment, but having your chart read is a totally different experience and thing. Well, it was much more enlightening to me about how I actually felt like I showed up in the world, because I definitely have some cancer traits, but there’s other things in there too, that are so involved.
Yeah. I mean cancer is really focused on security, and security is a financial issue, because we live in capitalism, so there’s that direct correlation that I could make, knowing very little about you, but-
Tori Dunlap:
Well, and you segued perfectly into one of our questions, which is, when we are looking at our chart, what can we look for to learn more about our money stories, or places where there’s some friction with how we manage money or how we look at our finances?
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, it’s a great question. There are a couple of different ways in. One of the first things I would start with is your second house, which is the house of money, assets, and livelihood, and you may or may not have planets there. If you have planets there, great. Again, you can pull up the Chani app and just skim down the list of your planets and see, “Do I have any planets in my second house,” and then read about them, but the other thing is most of us will or won’t have planets in a certain house.
There’s 12 houses, and there’s only 10 plus planetary bodies, so it’s impossible for us to have a planet somewhere in every single part of our chart. But what you can also do, if you don’t have anything in your second house, you can look to see the sign of the second house, see the planet that rules that sign, and then see where that is. The way we wrote the Chani app is uber specific so that, say, if you’re a cancer rising, it automatically means that, through the way I look at charts, that the sun, Leo, is in your second house, but the sun rules that, so it doesn’t matter where your sun is. You would just go read about the description of your sun, and it would tell you about your money, along with other things.
If you’re Aries rising, you’d look at your Venus. If your Taurus rising, you’d look at your mercury. If your Gemini rising, you’d look at your moon. If you’re cancer rising, you’d look at your sun. If you’re Leo rising, you’d look at your mercury. If your Virgo rising, you’d look at your Venus. If you’re Libra rising, you would look at your Mars. If you’re Scorpio rising, you would look at your Jupiter. If your Sag rising, you would look at your Saturn. If you’re Capricorn rising, you would also look at your Saturn, and if you were Aquarius rising, you would look at your Jupiter. If you were Pisces Rising, you would look at your Mars. Read that description in the Chani app, and it’ll tell you something about your money.
Tori Dunlap:
I just felt like you ran a marathon there.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, I did. There’s also the sixth house that I would look at, because that is about work and the kind of toil and chores of our life, but it also can talk about what we have to work with and how we work with it. Then, there’s your 10th house of career, public life, what you’re known for, and your vocation, so it may or may not have to do with money for everybody, but it also can be an important piece to understand. Then, some astrologers would say, “Look at your Venus.” I am not always so sure about that, about connecting Venus with money, but some astrologers would, I don’t know, there’s a lot of different ways to look at it.
You could also look at your Saturn placement, because Saturn had a lot to do with agriculture, so it had a lot to do with what we were reaping in a way. Then, it depends on how you make money and the domain of life that might connect to. A lot of therapists will have really important placements in the seventh house of relationships, because it’s one-on-one work. Real estate agents would have really important things, either in the fourth house or in regards to the ruler of the fourth house, but if you read the description of each of your planet in the Chani app, you’ll hear us talk about money and how you make it with the planets that are connected to that.
Tori Dunlap:
I feel like there’s also, again, understanding that your horoscope, your chart is not just your sun. The amount of people who comment on my social media posts, “You must be a Capricorn, because you’re good at money, you give business financial energy,” right? And I am not a Capricorn, at least not in my three, and my three rising, I almost said setting, rising, setting. But I think it’s just really interesting of we do have these stereotypes about who is good with money and who isn’t. Can you speak more to that?
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. It’s just our entry point, again. That’s the entry point language in which we talk about it, but to me, I’m like, “Okay. It’s one level, but I want to know if you’re really good with money, if money is your thing, then I want to know what’s in your second house? What’s the ruler of your second house? Where is it? Where’s your moon?” The moon also talks about tangible physical things, safety, security, and all of that. I want to know where that is. If people are reading you as Capricorn, I want to know where your Saturn is. Do you have Saturn in Capricorn?
Maybe you have a really powerful Saturn, or maybe you have it in Libra or Aquarius, and then you come off as this [inaudible 00:24:14] and type of figure, or maybe you have Saturn near one of the pivotal points in the chart, which is the ascendant descendant mid-heaven IC, and so there’s so many factors to see what jumps out about somebody, what’s prominent in their persona, and what are they known for in the world? And again, I would look at the 10th house and the mid-heaven to see how people read you, how people understand you. What people receive from you is going to be facilitated through that part of your chart.
Tori Dunlap:
Right, and I’ve also realized, for me, personally, the public version of me is still me, but it’s definitely a different side of me. I am definitely the person who feels very deeply, has a lot of emotions, can swing back and forth, but you get more of my Leo energy when I’m a public person. You get more of that energy, as I’m showing up online, and so I think that that’s just really interesting. Speaking to my own experience, the people who assume like, “Oh. You’re good with money, so you must be a Capricorn,” or, “Oh. You’re a good public speaker. You must be a Leo.” It’s just interesting, the stereotypes of that.
Chani Nicholas:
I also have a course called Your Money.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah, tell me more.
Chani Nicholas:
I have an online course called Your Money, which talks all about everything that I just mentioned, that if you wanted to go in deeper with it and look at your chart, because it’s a really important thing. For me, once I kind of unlocked that for myself, I was like, “Oh. That’s why I function like this.” That’s why, no matter what I think I should do, other parts of me are like, “Well, what if I just did this?” It’s like I always orient towards this one thing, and then it’s so obvious in my chart, and once I saw that and really understood it, I could just accept it about myself and just move on, because one part of us will want to hide, and the other part will want to show up, and one part of us will want to be really analytical, and the other part of us is a dreamer.
It’s good to know what parts function in what areas of our life, and how to, again, I called my book The Astrology of Radical Self-Acceptance, because you may or may not like things about yourself. You may or may not know how to love certain parts of yourself, but I think we can all be like, “Okay. That’s just who I am. I can know how to accept myself.” Then, if I can do that and be like, “Okay. If this is true, then what do I do from here?” Again, I think what it’s done for me, and a lot of the people I’ve worked with, is move us into our agency so that we feel like, “I can move.” I want to help people get people unstuck. I was stuck for so long, and astrology really helped me to move.
Tori Dunlap:
Is it because you just had more information about yourself or you had the tools now to be able to make the decisions that felt right for you?
Chani Nicholas:
I think it was a combination of I needed to get older, technology needed to intersect with my talent in a way, that there wasn’t that technology when I was 20, so there was no online, as I’m really old. So it was like, as technology came, as social media came, as I started to do more of what I was passionate about, it intersected and started to move.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. One of the things that I am thinking about in my own life, and that I have literally on my calendar, is my Saturn return. Can you talk to me about Saturn returns? Because I am terrified.
Chani Nicholas:
I don’t know why people are terrified of their Saturn return.
Tori Dunlap:
I’ve just heard bad things. I’ve heard that it’s going to be uncomfortable, and I will embrace the discomfort, but I’m a little intimidated.
Chani Nicholas:
Is your Saturn in Pisces?
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, gosh. I could look.
Chani Nicholas:
Look it up.
Tori Dunlap:
I know it’s coming up. I think it’s early 2024.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. Then, your Saturn’s in Pisces, so I would say you’re already in it.
Tori Dunlap:
Great.
Chani Nicholas:
Well, this is the thing. Everybody goes through their Saturn return at the end of their 20s and the very beginning of their thirties. It’s like right around when you turn 30. Saturn has a orbit of 28.5 years, so around the age of that, we have our Saturn return, and you can think of it lasting for two different periods of time. One is that you can think of the time period when Saturn is in the sign that it was in when you were born, so that’s a two-and-a-half year period, and it will be particularly specific and poignant around the time where Saturn is exactly where it was when you were born, and that might happen once, or it could happen three times, because Saturn, like all the planets, retrogrades. So it might go over, and then go back over, and then go forward one more time.
Tori Dunlap:
My Saturn is in Pisces, to just clarify.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, no,. I know it is, because if you’re having it in 2024, it has to be.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
So honestly, you’re in it. This is it.
Tori Dunlap:
Great.
Chani Nicholas:
Are you afraid right now?
Tori Dunlap:
I don’t know. I feel like there is a period of transition in my life, because that’s what I’ve heard it is, is a period of significant transition. Is that correct?
Chani Nicholas:
Saturn is a planet of growing the fuck up, and understanding boundaries, responsibility, and how to mature, and that you are not going to be a cute, little, 20-something for more than the next five minutes, and once you get into your 30s, it’s a different deal. You don’t have the excuse of super youth anymore. You’re still really young at 30, but you’re not super, super young. So there’s a different orientation that starts to happen within you, because you know that time has passed. When you’re in your 20s, you’re still close to your teenage years. You’re still close to college, you’re still close to whatever you were doing at the turn of 1920, and then you get to the end of the 20s, and you’re like, “Oh. That went by really fast.”
Tori Dunlap:
So fucking fast.
Chani Nicholas:
Then, you start to clock it. You’re like, “Oh. I knew everybody else got older. I just didn’t think I was going to get older.” Then, it’s just the very beginning of understanding your mortality in a different way.
Tori Dunlap:
Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
Chani Nicholas:
But it’s really, really, really important and really good for you, because you have to grow up. And so Saturn comes along and is like, “All right. Let’s do this,” and it gives you boundaries, limits. It can feel like it backs you into a corner, but the reason why the universe or your life would back you into the corner is because you have to learn how to fly. You have to learn a different way of moving through space, and the things that keep you small and young, hopefully, if you’re lucky, and I really mean that, will not work for you anymore. You do not want to stay the same.
You want to let this thing move you into your power, and the power you have at 30 is that you have come through the absolute chaos of your 20s, and chaos might be fun, exciting, and all the things. It might be disastrous and terrifying, but the 20s are chaotic. They just are, and you’re learning, and you’re just trying to figure out how to adult and do all the things. Then, you get into your 30s, and you’re like, “Okay.” I felt like it was a relief. I have a very specific kind of Saturn setup though, so it’s good for me to age, and it’s good for me to move through those corners, but it’s a relief. It’s also, I think, the beginning of an unlocking from patriarchy in a different way. It’s supposed to be a time where you’re like, “How have I depended on people?”
Maybe they’re depending on parents, other family members, or friends. You start to look at your codependency in a different way. You start to think about, “How am I going to define myself for myself?” and knowing that your decisions bear a much deeper consequence the older you get, because you have less and less time. At 20, 1 year is 1/20th of your life. At 30, 1 year is 1/30th of your life. They fly by, right? It’s different, and that is supposed to deepen you. Age is supposed to deepen you, and so it’s the very beginning of that understanding of aging and how to take yourself seriously. Then, it depends on where it’s happening in your chart, what house it’s happening in, so that depends on your rising sign.
Tori Dunlap:
I could tell you in a second, you just read me for filth, like absolute filth, and I appreciate that. Yeah, only in the past, honestly, couple months. I mean, I’ve always known, obviously, that I’m going to die and that we’re all going to die, but I’m starting to have the, “My body’s getting sore,” and I am aging at the point where I’m like, “Oh, okay. This is really terrifying.” I have never been terrified of aging before and not physically-
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, because it didn’t happen to you yet.
Tori Dunlap:
[inaudible 00:33:10]. That’s fine. Right.
Chani Nicholas:
Once it happens, it’s not so easy to be brave about it.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s more like, “Am I not going to be able to do the things I want to do?” Yeah, my Saturn is in my 10th house.
Chani Nicholas:
Are you a Gemini rising?
Tori Dunlap:
Yes.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, so it’s all about your career.
Tori Dunlap:
I’m a Cancer, Leo, Gemini. Those are my three.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, so it’s all about your career, and who you are in the world and your public roles, and it’s about doing something significantly difficult in that area of your life, and that is how you will gain your own self-respect, and that is ultimately what’s so important. When you have Saturn, that prominence, see, this is what I was saying, I had a feeling. That’s why people read you as a Capricorn, you have Saturn in what we call an angular house, and it is the highest point of your chart. So your Saturn is what people feel from you when you go out into the world. Saturn is discipline, order, structure, understanding systems, how to have boundaries, how to work in the oftentimes material realm. Now, it’s in Pisces, so it has a spiritual bent. It has a kind of compassionate bent. It wants to be really fluid. It’s kind of like a jellyfish, a little bit, but it’s still Saturn. You have an angular Saturn, so people read you as a Capricorn, because they’re feeling that daddy energy of Saturn from you.
Tori Dunlap:
Did you just call me a daddy on my own podcast? In which case, thank you.
Chani Nicholas:
Yes, I did.
Tori Dunlap:
Honestly, iconic. Thank you.
Chani Nicholas:
You’re like a femme daddy, but it’s still daddy.
Tori Dunlap:
No, no. I appreciate that. I will take that as the compliment it is. We joke, we’re getting-
Chani Nicholas:
It’s soft daddy.
Tori Dunlap:
We’re getting merch that says, “Money mommy,” because that’s been the joke, is that I am the HFK Money Mommy.
Chani Nicholas:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, it’s like soft dom energy.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s very interesting and helpful, okay.
Chani Nicholas:
And that’s what people get from you, and that’s what people want from you, and so then you have to navigate that and be like, “I’m not your authority. You are your authority. You have your own power. Don’t come to me for it.”
Tori Dunlap:
Right.
Chani Nicholas:
Don’t come to me to set your own boundaries. Set your own god-damn boundaries.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
But you give people a boundary, and people actually are dying for boundaries.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s really helpful. I feel like I need to be taking notes.
Chani Nicholas:
We are. We love someone who sets a boundary.
Tori Dunlap:
No. All of this is very relevant. I’ve also been doing a lot of, “Am I happy with the current career that I have?” I love the work that we do, and I’m also like, “All right. We’ve been doing this for a while. What needs to change?” and that feels very uncomfortable, even though I’m usually very down for change. So yeah, it’s interesting.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. I would do something that’s going to take some time. It’s going to take a lot of effort. It’s going to require your maturity and your discipline. I would do something that’s incredibly disciplined, and that you’ll end up offering the world, especially by 2025.
Tori Dunlap:
I can do that.
Chani Nicholas:
See, for you, your moon rules your second house, but your sun is also there. So if you have Gemini rising and sun in Cancer, you shine by making money. You shine by highlighting the assets and resources that you have, which is you. You are part of that asset and resource, and you do it in a really caring way, and you do it in a way that people feel mommied by or nurtured by, and your sun is making a trine to Saturn, and so the structure and the discipline of Saturn flows to you. You flow with structure. You like the discipline. It’s works for you. It’s fluid, so it’s not harsh and overly brittle. It’s actually quite movable, and again, it is nurturing and spiritual in some kind of way, but that is what you are supposed to do to shine. Then, not only that, but your moon rules the second house of money and assets, and it’s in your third house of communicating, so what the fuck do you talk about all day?
Tori Dunlap:
Money.
Chani Nicholas:
And healing, right?
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
There’s got to be healing in that, taking care of yourself, and what is it to nurture and nourish a different way to be engaged with our resources? That’s your whole chart.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you.
Chani Nicholas:
Although I want to know where your mercury is, because your Mercury rules your ascendant, and it’s in Gemini or Cancer or Leo.
Tori Dunlap:
It’s in Gemini.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah, so then you have a Superpowered Gemini, which means you’re an excellent speaker, and so when people read you as Leo, it’s like, “No, no.” That’s not the Leo part. It’s actually your Mercury. Your mercury is in the first house, which makes it really potent, and it’s in its own sign, which makes it extra agile and curious, and it’s a really good reporter. It’s a great gatherer of facts and data, and a spreader of the message. One of your things and your life purpose is to communicate with others, is to exchange information. Mercury is also the merchant, it’s also the accounter. It’s also the literal counter, so it has a lot to do with buying, selling, and making sure that the math is matting, and that’s also going to be an exceptional quality that you have.
Tori Dunlap:
I don’t even know what to say. Thank you. It’s all, boy.
Chani Nicholas:
Welcome.
Tori Dunlap:
Just reading me for filth. I literally have, do something disciplined next year, and I already know what it’s going to be.
Chani Nicholas:
Well, now.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
Oh, good. Of course, you do.
Tori Dunlap:
Oh, God. Yeah.
Chani Nicholas:
Because you’re a planner.
Tori Dunlap:
You don’t do anything without a plan. Definitely not. Thank you for that. I know that, of course, you have resources, but I imagine somebody listening is like, “I also want to be read for filth.” What can we start doing in our own lives to actually use astrology to help us navigate the world?
Chani Nicholas:
I mean, download the Chani app, listen to your reading every week, do your journal prompts, see if the rituals work for you, and read about your chart. We made a whole universe. It’s a whole world that we’ve created in there. Read about the transits that you’re going through. If you’re in your Saturn return, it’ll tell you in the transit section of the app, and then there’s a whole host of guided meditations and affirmations to help you along your healing path that, again, I hope will ground you in a way so that you feel your own power and agency to take action in your life to realize your potential in the world.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Tell me more about transits. Is Saturn return, you said it was a transit. What does that mean?
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. That’s a transit. So when you were born, we took a snapshot of the sky and everything in it, and then that is a static image of you. That is a static map of your life, and then we look at what’s happening in the sky now, and we superimpose one on top of the other. When Saturn gets back to the place that it was when you were born, we call that a Saturn return, but there’s a million things going on. There’s where Pluto is, and there’s where all the planets are, and they may or may not be interacting with your chart. So in the Chani app, we have a section that’s called transits, and that’s specific things for you right now, and it tells you the timeframe. It tells you what to think about. It gives you some ideas to work with.
Tori Dunlap:
Is Mercury in retrograde a transit?
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. Mercury retrograde is a transit, so you think transitional, it’s just for a certain period of time.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s the one I feel like we all hear about at this point of like, “Ugh, mercury is in Gatorade.”
Chani Nicholas:
Yes. It’s a gateway drug into astrology. Yes, yes. Because it goes retrograde three to four times a year, because it’s a really fast moving planet, so it’s always in or out of retrograde, it seems like.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. I wanted to get your thoughts on this saying that you’ve maybe heard, that millionaires don’t have astrologers, but billionaires do, and obviously we’re pretty critical of billionaires on this show, but I’m so interested in the idea of some of these big names or people using astrology in their everyday lives. I would love your take on that. I think part of it is, I think, the well-intentioned version or read of that sentence is to up-level your life in a really transformative way. This can be a tool to do that, but I think it’s also like, I don’t need to be a billionaire. I don’t want to be a billionaire. It almost does astrology, in that way, a disservice too if we’re looking at this through an anti-capitalist lens. I don’t know. I would just love your take on it.
Chani Nicholas:
I mean, I think it speaks to the ways in which astrology can help us be really specific and help us to win at whatever we want to win at. So you could take out millionaire and billionaire and put in any kind of frame of reference. What the saying is doing is it’s saying, “There’s this level, and then there’s that level, and if you want to be living into that level, then you might consider using astrology, because other people that are trying to function at that level or whatever,” but I mean, it’s very hierarchical. But I do think, listen, I’ve talked to a lot of different people in a lot of different industries, and I can tell you that, yes, a lot of very successful people, and I don’t just mean that financially, in a lot of different sectors of society, think about their astrology, think about the timing of things, and do plan things according to what would be good. So I know it personally, and again, it goes way beyond money.
Tori Dunlap:
Yeah. Are there any important astrological dates coming up that we should pay attention to, especially in regards to our money?
Chani Nicholas:
That’s really personal, I think, but-
Tori Dunlap:
Sure.
Chani Nicholas:
… January has some really beautiful astrology, in terms of the, I would say, after January 10th and into the rest of January, there’s some really beautiful astrology to work with that is very focused on success, and again, that can be in any way, shape, or form that you want to think about it. There’s also some really brilliant signs in the early spring, and that, I think, will have a major impact on how we do business. So you can listen to your year ahead reading in the Chani app.
Tori Dunlap:
In the first quarter reading, there’s some beautiful moments of just success astrology that everyone can work with, and I go into great detail about how you can personally work with that. So yeah, there’s this conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus that’s happening in the spring, and the last time it happened, we got the archetype of Rosie the Riveter, the rolling up one sleeves, because that’s when women were entering the workforce in a way that they hadn’t in terms of industrialized capitalism, in a long time, so I do think there will be something quite revolutionary that will happen on an economic kind of workforce level in the early spring.
Federal paid family leave. That’s what I am-
Chani Nicholas:
Let’s go.
Tori Dunlap:
Let’s hope for that.
Chani Nicholas:
Well, let’s move towards that. What do we do to move the needle towards that?
Tori Dunlap:
Of course.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
So you have mentioned your app. Can you tell us more about it and what distinguishes it from other astrology platforms?
Chani Nicholas:
I don’t know much about other astrology platforms, because I’ve got too much work to do on mine, but what mine does is it gives you detailed chart information, every single planet, exactly what it means, where it is, what other parts of your life. Everything in the app is written by human beings. Nothing has been written by AI. Nothing ever will be. We have astrologers, people that have studied astrology for, if you put us all together, it’s like hundreds of years, not hundreds, but over a hundred years of astrological experience. We’ve dedicated our lives to this craft.
Also, people that are exceptional writers, and so there is this detailed approach to how we articulate what’s happening in the sky, what happened in the sky when you were born. And so you’ll get a detailed version of your birth chart. You’ll get up-to-date transits, like what’s happening in the sky, how it’s impacting you. You get guided meditations, affirmations, weekly journal prompts that’s specific to your chart, weekly guided meditation, weekly ritual to work with the astrology. Then, there’s the weekly readings that you get from me, where I talk about what the astrology is, how it’s landing in your chart, what to do with it. Then, there’s also yearly astrology readings, so you can think of the year in four quarters, four chunks. Then, you get daily horoscopes. You get daily affirmation, you get a daily guided meditation.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s amazing. I will be downloading it right after, because I use a different app, and I don’t love it. So yeah, I’m really excited. And literally, Kristen has been typing in our document with our notes. She’s like, “I’m on the app, looking up my own stuff right now. I’m on the Chani app. I’m looking up everything, what she’s saying, and how it reflects in my life,” so I love it.
Chani Nicholas:
But the other thing to know about our app is that it was made by survivors for gender-based violence. The people that work on our team, there is a floor of ADK, so the entry point is ADK. We have paid protected gender-based violence leave. We have unlimited menstrual leave. So anybody with uterus that needs time off, when it’s uncomfortable, gets it. We have a vacation stipend, so we have unlimited vacation, and we give you money to take a vacation to go enjoy yourself and get rest. We close the office for a total of eight weeks a year. So eight weeks a year, you get off and nobody else is going to be working, so no one’s going to be emailing you either. We have 401k.
We have a lot of different types of benefits that, unfortunately, are what mainstream society considers radical, but we think should just be the essentials. We have a savings matching situations. We want people to save money and to think about their economic wellbeing. We also give away 5% of our revenue, not our profits, but our revenue, in cash grants to survivors of gender-based violence, so that 100 percent of that money goes directly into the hands of folks that need it through my wife’s organization, which is called Free From, which works at the intersection of gender-based violence and financial and economic security, because one of the number one reasons why women and children are homeless is economic abuse, gender-based violence. One in three women will experience gender-based violence. One in two trans folks will experience gender-based violence, and there is a high, high likelihood that if you experience gender-based violence, it’s also economic abuse, which means you-
Tori Dunlap:
99%.
Chani Nicholas:
Yeah. Yeah, so we believe deeply, and our company ethos is centered in an economic solidarity with folks that are systematically harmed, and we also believe that gender-based violence is a community issue and not a private or interpersonal issue, and that it is up to businesses, banks, governments, and everybody to interrupt it. One of the best ways we know how to do that is to make sure people have money to be safe.
Tori Dunlap:
That’s incredible. Thank you for your work. Thank you for all of this information today. Where can people find you and support what you’re doing?
Chani Nicholas:
Chani.com is the easiest way. C-H-A-N-I.com. Chani app, C-H-A-N-I in the app stores, whichever one you frequent, and then I’m Chani Nicholas on all the socials and the Chani app on socials, separate from me. Yeah.
Tori Dunlap:
Amazing. I’m downloading right after we’re done, and I’m going to dive in, and I’m really excited. Thank you for being here. Thank you for your work.
Chani Nicholas:
Thank you for having me.
Tori Dunlap:
Thank you to Chani for joining us. You can check her out in the show notes as well as her Chani app. I downloaded it right after we got off, and it’s been really, really helpful for me, even as somebody who is a little bit skeptical of astrology. Thanks for being here as always, Financial Feminist. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and we’ll talk to you soon.
Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First $100K podcast. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap, produced by Kristen Fields, Associate Producer Tamisha Grant, research by Arielle Johnson, audio and video engineering by Alyssa Medcalf, marketing and administration by Karina Patel, Amanda Leffew, Elizabeth McCumber, Masha Bakhmetyeva, Taylor Chow, Kalen Sprinkle, Sasha Bonar, [inaudible 00:50:55]. Promotional Graphics by Mary Stratton, photography by Sarah Wolf, and theme Music by Jonah Cohen Sound. A huge thanks to the entire Her First $100K team and community for supporting the show. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First $100K, our guests, and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com.
Tori Dunlap
Tori Dunlap is an internationally-recognized money and career expert. After saving $100,000 at age 25, Tori quit her corporate job in marketing and founded Her First $100K to fight financial inequality by giving women actionable resources to better their money. She has helped over one million women negotiate salary, pay off debt, build savings, and invest.
Tori’s work has been featured on Good Morning America, the New York Times, BBC, TIME, PEOPLE, CNN, New York Magazine, Forbes, CNBC, BuzzFeed, and more.
With a dedicated following of almost 250,000 on Instagram and more than 1.6 million on TikTok —and multiple instances of her story going viral—Tori’s unique take on financial advice has made her the go-to voice for ambitious millennial women. CNBC called Tori “the voice of financial confidence for women.”
An honors graduate of the University of Portland, Tori currently lives in Seattle, where she enjoys eating fried chicken, going to barre classes, and attempting to naturally work John Mulaney bits into conversation.
