I’m Nick, the queer, trans bear behind Queer of Cups.  I’m an Aries with Sagittarius rising and a Pisces moon.  I have been studying astrology informally for about 3 years now.  I’ve learned a great deal about the planets, signs, houses, and their relationships, but I haven’t yet crossed the threshold of astro-knowledge that would allow me to read birth charts in their entirety.  I started this astrology project to get more experience looking at a broad variety of birth charts while offering you some inexpensive insight into how the current movement of planets may affect you.

Astrology was my gateway to “woo” and spirituality.  During my first chart reading with Empowering Astrology, she told me I was into astrology because I was woo-curious but a little afraid of fully embracing it; astrology allows for both analytical thinking and a less rational, more spiritual approach.  But I got over my fear of the woo and am now more fully out about my New Agey interests.  Astrology is now a central piece of my spiritual practice–especially as it offers interesting provocations for reflection and guidance about how to work with, rather than against, prevailing energies–alongside daily tarot draws, crystal work, meditation, and some Buddhist influences, especially through the work of Pema Chödrön.

In my day job, I’m a teacher of gender and sexuality at the college level.  Even when I’m not explicitly discussing the links between astrology and activism, I’m attuned to a queer, sex-positive, feminist, and anti-racist read on the stars.

Why “Queer of Cups”?

Though astrology is my first “woo” love, I also love tarot.  Each suit (wands, swords, cups, pentacles) has both a “king” and a “queen,” representing a “masculine” and “feminine” style of mastery for that suit.  Cups represent emotion, and the Queen of Cups is one of my favorite cards in the deck.  She’s intuitive, compassionate, and creative.  “Queer of Cups” is inspired in part by Cristy C. Road‘s delightfully genderqueer, Radical Faerie-esque Queen of Cups from The Next World tarot.  It’s also a way to indicate that I bring this Queen of Cups energy to my readings through a mostly-masculine identity and a boy body.