First, about the bear.

Magus Bear began in the early days of the internet, in small communities held together by long conversations and arguments. There were fewer algorithms then, and considerably fewer videos of strangers reorganizing their refrigerators.

“Bear” was already a nickname: a reference to size, beard, and perhaps a certain magnanimous manner. I am not a small or inconspicuous person. Even when I try to blend into the wallpaper, the wallpaper generally loses.

“Magus” came from another current in my life: a fascination with symbolic systems, ancient cosmologies, and the stubborn intuition that meaning runs deeper through reality than our busy lives usually allow us to notice.

It is also the singular of Magi, those mysterious wise men in Matthew’s Gospel who watched the heavens, recognized a star, and were willing to leave home. Their journey led them to Christ.

I would not presume to claim their mantle. I am rather more likely to misplace my glasses than arrive bearing gold. But I cherish that joining of study and wonder: the willingness to follow a question beyond familiar ground.

The name stayed. A playful beginning grew into a reasonably accurate description of the fellow answering to it.

A life is larger than its chart.

Over the years, I have worked with people from many walks of life and spoken internationally about astrology. What continues to hold my attention is the person sitting across from me: the life actually being lived, with its gifts, contradictions, loyalties, losses, and unfinished business.

A horoscope offers a symbolic portrait of temperament and timing, relationship and vocation, the patterns we recognize and the ones we keep meeting with an expression of complete surprise.

At its best, astrology gives us perspective. We may see a familiar difficulty more clearly, recognize a neglected possibility, or find language for something we have felt for years without quite being able to name.

That understanding matters because we still have choices to make. A chart cannot make us wise, kind, courageous, or impossible at dinner. We remain responsible for what we bring to the table.

Wonder, with roots.

I became Catholic in 2008 and have remained active in parish life, including music ministry and pastoral work with LGBTQ Catholics.

For some people, Catholicism and astrology seem destined to enter a room, spot one another, and immediately reach for furniture. My own experience has been a more searching conversation.

Within the Catholic tradition, I found a sacramental vision of reality that deepened my sense of creation as meaningful. It also asked more of my discernment: to distinguish Creator from creation, sign from cause, and attentive wonder from the desire to know and control everything in advance.

These distinctions shape the astrology I practise. I understand the chart as a symbolic language of human experience, read with humility and respect for freedom. My faith calls me to examine that understanding carefully, and to remain answerable for how I use it.

The questions are substantial. I continue to live with them, study them, and write about them in The Catholic Astrologer.

You can also begin with Can You Be a Christian and Study Astrology?, a reflection on faith, freedom, and reading the sky.

For the life you are actually living.

Much of my work is accompaniment: helping people find their bearings through transitions, relationships, grief, creativity, spiritual searching, and the demanding work of becoming more fully themselves.

Lives rarely proceed in tidy order. We double back, miss obvious signs, begin again, and sometimes discover that the road we dismissed as a detour was the road itself.

Astrology can help us recognize where we are. It can remind us that a difficult season is still a season, and bring possibilities into view that have been waiting quietly for our attention.

It can also tell us, with considerable elegance, what everyone close to us has already been trying to say.

I bring years of study and practice to that conversation. I also bring curiosity, humour, and the knowledge that I am still learning how to listen.