Your Intuitive Gifts & How to Strengthen Them According to Your Personal Astrology
How Your Birth Chart Reveals Your Intuition
“Your unique astrological road map to life (the natal chart) doesn’t just show what your intuition focuses on and how you tune in: it also shows what blocks and aids your intuition, as well as how you can develop your gifts further.”
Alexandra Volland is a Teaching Assistant for Virginia Rosenberg’s astrology school, Sky Scholar, and the voice behind Astrology from the Soul. Alexandra has been certified in both Mystic Astrology with RisingWoman.com and Intuitive Astrology with Sky Scholar Level I-III (highest current level). She writes, tutors, and teaches astrology, and offers one-on-one readings.
How to Strengthen Your Intuitive Gifts
Have you ever wondered about your intuition? Maybe you know that you’re intuitive – maybe some people around you call you psychic – or maybe you feel as intuitive as a block of concrete and want to change that. Regardless of where you are on the journey of relating to your intuition, this article is for you.
Here, we discuss:
The various ways your intuition can function
How you can develop your intuition further
Why intuition doesn’t tell us everything
What astrology can tell us about intuition
My name is Alexandra Volland. I am an intuitive astrologer, and I pursued a research project to discover how people tap into their intuition, what people’s intuitive strengths are, and how intuitive blocks can show up and be resolved – according to an individual’s natal chart (which is the specific personal astrology you’re born with).
I analyzed a total of 42 birth charts of individuals to tease out the many different ways intuition can show up in people and understand how to best work with the unique type of intuition we’re given.
What is Intuition?
For the sake of this project, I define intuition as the access to accurate information you haven’t learned through logically explicable means like perception, study, experience, logical thinking, or related avenues. The most important thing here is that it’s the truth. We’re not talking about times when someone “felt” that something was a certain way and happened to be dead wrong.
Intuition Exists on a Spectrum
There are the types of intuition that are more common and every day:
The mom who suddenly races to the back of the house and grabs the baby, not knowing why. Five minutes later, furniture collapses over where the baby used to be.
The old man at the office suddenly feels that something’s wrong. He gets a phone call: his wife died in a car crash… and at the exact time that he started to feel off.
We all know those types of stories, whether we were involved in them or not: this is intuition at work, something we’re all to some extent gifted with. There are also less common types of intuition:
The high school student who enters a house and immediately knows things of the past that happened there, even though they hadn’t been told about them – even secrets.
The librarian who always knows when someone’s pregnant, and how the pregnancy will turn out.
The grocery store clerk who sees ghosts.
And of course, there are people who (accurately) predict the future, whether they work as psychics or not.
So, intuition exists on a spectrum. This leads us to the next, critical point:
Intuition Doesn’t Make You All-Knowing
I’ve been blessed to meet some extremely psychic, out-of-this-world-gifted intuitives for this research project, and even they have had moments when they didn’t know something in advance. Here are some reasons why:
Reason #1: just as you physically can’t watch all TV channels at the same time, you can’t attune to every piece of information psychically at the same time either. So how could you know everything? No human being is fully omniscient: our brains just don’t have the capacity to know it all.
Reason #2: to some extent, not knowing specific things is psychic self-protection. There is information about your future that would break you if you knew it before it happened… and the same part of an intuitive person that’s capable of knowing things knows what to stay away from.
Reason #3: your intuition plays the long game. The part of you that’s capable of tuning into intuition is to some extent unconscious – and it’s a lot smarter than your conscious self. This part of you may know that going into Situation X is incredibly painful short-term, but that the long-term consequences lead to something beautiful for you. This part of you may also know that you’d never get into Situation X, regardless of the positive future consequence, if you knew the painful parts you were signing up for. So, information about Situation X is omitted to preserve the long game.
Reason #4: we’re all individuals – and our intuition reflects that. While there are some few people gifted with the type of intuition that comes close to “knowing it all,” most people have an intuitive focus – and that focus differs from individual to individual, which your natal chart reflects.
The Intuitive Focus
Most people with high intuition have specific topics, situations, or people their intuition picks up on more than others – in some cases even exclusively.
Examples of that are a person who solely knows things that directly involve or affect themselves. Others can’t see or know things that affect them, personally. (And another group of people can see themselves and also others.)
Another person may predominantly know things about people they’re close with, another might exclusively know things about their own children. Then again, there are people capable of intuitively tuning into everyone in the same ways – stranger, loved one, or self – and those who feel that getting “too close” to someone muddles their intuitive gift.
When it comes to time, there are people who see future events. In some cases, there appears to be a limit of happenings within 2 weeks, in others the short-term future is inaccessible, but events decades away are crystal clear.
However, intuition isn’t always about the future: feeling someone die, even if you’re states apart and have no logical way of knowing they’ll pass, is a sign of intuition, too. And then, there are people who can visit places or touch objects and know things about their past that are accurate – and that they really shouldn’t be able to know. A person might experience one or multiple timeframes in the past-present-future continuum.
But there’s more: there are people who just know someone’s sick (without any visible sign whatsoever), or that a house hides secrets, and intuitives who are incredibly gifted in other areas but wouldn’t know those things if they bit them in the butt. There are people who can accurately tell if a freshly painted wall hides mold or invisible structural damage – and others who can’t do that, but know other things.
Some people’s intuitive focus is also less attuned to the physical, and more to the energy realm. These are people who may be able to feel or see ghosts, converse with angels, or have other experiences along those lines.
You don’t have to experience it all to be intuitive: your intuitive focus may make you more attuned to some topics than others.
The Different Ways Intuition Shows Up
Just as the intuitive focus differs from individual to individual based on their natal chart, the way you notice your intuition also differs for people. Examples are:
Psychic dreams
Hearing a voice
An amorphous knowing that’s inexplicable and hard to put into words
Feeling something
Seeing symbols in the real world and accurately interpreting them
Intuition through warning bells
Intuition through a sense of peace
And so much more.
Some people tune into their intuition better when they get in practice, others don’t need any.
Some are aided by tools (such as tarot, runes, astrology, etc.), others don’t need or want them.
Some people’s intuition comes in as a religious experience and/or through clearing their minds – for others, it feels like a normal thinking process.
The range with which intuition expresses for individuals is vast and extremely specific thanks to every person’s unique astrological blueprint. Each planet in your birth chart adds its own strengths and weaknesses, qualities, and modalities to how your intuition expresses itself. The zodiac signs involved really impact the lens your intuition focuses through, and houses give additional information. We’ll be covering this more later on.
But what’s also interesting is this: astrology can also show you and help you find ways to release blocks around your intuition. Your birth chart can show you what potential/existing blocks you deal with, where they come from, and how to unblock them.
Blocks to Intuition – And How to Dissolve Them
Your unique astrological road map to life (the natal chart) doesn’t just show what your intuition focuses on and how you tune in: it also shows what blocks and aids your intuition, as well as how you can develop your gifts further.
After working with more than 40 charts, I found patterns that illustrate specific intuitive gifts, blocks, and how to work with them.
Intuitive blocks can show up as:
a complete disconnect from your intuition
a partial disconnect from your intuition (where you know you “should” be able to pick up on more, but you can’t)
consistent lack of clarity (even on the mental level) and self-doubt when making decisions
a constant intersection between intuition and fear
nightmares, chronic anxiety, etc. in absence of/worsening other mental health issues
in extreme cases, the sense of losing oneself
The ways intuitive blocks can be triggered and dissolved are so unique to each person that it’s impossible to generalize without writing an entire volume on the subject. Hopefully, covering a few examples will give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
For instance, intuitive placements (Neptune, Uranus, 8th house, Psyche) connected to Sagittarius, the ninth house, or Jupiter are highly affected by your relationship to spirituality and religion. On the positive side, this means that a healthy and ongoing relationship to the divine (with or without organized religion) is going to heighten your intuition and resolve blocks. On the other hand, a toxic religion, an unstructured and unprotected spirituality, and/or a complete lack of spirituality or religion in your life is going to become a very strong block to your intuition.
For someone with Venus, the 7th house, or other relationship significators (like asteroid Juno) involved here, the quality of your primary relationships - especially so romantic ones - highly affects your intuition. Toxic partners, or the right partner for someone else but the wrong one for you, can block your access to your intuition. Similarly, being with someone who’s a better fit (which includes them being not harmful to you) unblocks your intuition and helps you thrive.
However, none of the above may apply to someone without these or related placements. A.k.a., someone who doesn’t have your chart experiences blocks and solves them in a different way than you do. So, let’s go deeper into the astrological technique.
The Astrological Results: Intuition in Your Birth Chart
Now that we’ve covered some of the basics of what I’ve researched, let’s get into the astrology. To do so, I’ll introduce my findings for two zodiac signs (Pisces and Sagittarius), and one house (the 6th house). Of course, we’d include much more than just signs and houses for a full analysis of someone’s intuition, but that’s beyond the scope of this article.
What Are We Looking At?
Part of what we’re looking for in your chart in terms of how your intuition plays out is Neptune and Uranus in your birth chart. We’re also looking for a specific asteroid called Psyche, and your 8th house. (Note: we’re not looking at your Sun, Moon, or Rising yet, though they’ll crop up in a full chart analysis. For now, please ignore Sun, Moon, and Rising (ASC).)
But why are we looking at those four astrological things, and not the Sun, Moon, or Rising? In a nutshell, we’re looking for specific placements that inherently deal with intuition - for every single person, regardless of their natal chart.
To explain this in a little more detail: As some of you may know, having the Sun, Moon, or Rising in (f.e.) Scorpio leads to astrologers far and wide calling you “intuitive” - and they’re right to do so! But a person with the Sun, Moon, and Ascendant/Rising unconnected to those intuition-bringing placements can still be intuitive: because the planets Neptune and Uranus, the asteroid Psyche, and the 8th house all inherently show a person’s intuitive capacity… and not only might they be very strongly placed (giving someone strong intuition), the nature of their placement also shows the how of their intuition.
So, in summary, it is much easier to see a person’s specific intuition through a thorough analysis of Neptune, Uranus, Psyche, and 8th House placements, followed by a whole-chart analysis.
How to Look Up Your Placement
In order to look up where Neptune, Uranus, Psyche, and the 8th house lie in your chart, you’ll need a (free) astrology software that’s easy to use and displays Asteroid Psyche (Asteroid #16). My recommendation is astro.com - here’s a guide if you want to use it.
First Steps:
Visit Astro.com and pull up “Charts and Calculations.” Then, click on “Extended Chart Selection” - the website will now ask you to create a profile for free/log in. Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to enter your birth data as the website asks you to do/select the profile with your birth data.
Finally, you’ll be able to pull up your chart: if the website hasn’t automatically sent you back into “Extended Chart Selection” after making your own profile, click that one again.
Settings:
Now, you’ll see a big collapsible menu underneath your name: open up the section “Zodiac and Houses” and select “Whole sign” under “House System.” This shows you where your 8th house lies.
Then, open the collapsible menu called “Additional Objects” and put the number 16 in the little field on the right side labeled “Manual Entry.” This adds Asteroid Psyche. (You can also add Chiron by selecting it in the list on the left).
Reading the Chart:
When you’re done, click the green button “Show Chart”: you’ll now see a list of all your astrological placements on your left, and your chart graphic to the right. If you don’t know how to read an astrology chart (which is perfectly understandable, this takes practice), go to the list and mark the symbols next to Uranus, Neptune, and Psyche (see the picture below to translate the symbols).
Next, go to the graphic and look at which of the numbered sections that Neptune, Uranus, and Psyche sit in (the numbers will be close to the circle’s center). These are Neptune’s, Uranus’s, and Psyche’s houses.
To find your 8th house, you also look at the chart graphic and find the section labeled number “8.” Note all symbols in the 8th section of the pie chart: you can look up their meaning in the graphic above.
Now that you know how to pull up your own birth chart, let’s move to some exemplary interpretations.
The Sign of Pisces
Having Neptune, Uranus, asteroid Psyche, and/or the 8th house in the sign of Pisces leads to an intuition that feels often amorphous and hard to grasp. This may lead to high energy sensitivity, in some cases empath-like gifts (a.k.a. accurately feeling what others are feeling without conscious choice or even logical understanding of what’s happening). Intuition also often comes in as an inexplicable knowing and/or feeling and is not something you have to consciously attune to as it’s to some extent automatic and unconscious.
What may block your intuition:
The use of substances
Stuck feelings or numbed emotions
A strong inner desire for self-deception
Depleting relationships that may directly (negatively) affect your intuition
(There are more, depending on your specific birth chart. The signs are just the starting point!)
What aids your intuition and helps you to tune in:
Time for creativity
Regular time for sensory detox
Prayer
Meditation
Self-trust and self-compassion
Releasing stuck emotions
A positive and healthy spiritual life
The Sign of Sagittarius
Having Neptune, Uranus, the 8th house, or asteroid Psyche in Sagittarius though feels and plays out very differently than in Pisces. Sagittarius brings in an intuition that feels more concrete to the individual, they clearly know when they’re tapping into their intuition vs. their logic. There’s a strong emphasis here on receiving information from higher spiritual, or religious, beings and dimensions. People with their intuitive placements in Sagittarius often describe having out-of-body experiences where they enter a different realm and are shown or told things about their lives by what they describe as different beings. Those could be angels, light beings, fairies, and pure energy itself. The focus of the intuition is also more on the why behind events and what the larger context is and means. They can see things in advance: but it’s more along the lines of important events than “we’ll have an unexpected guest at dinner today.” (The latter is pretty common for Virgo though).
What blocks someone’s intuition with Neptune, Uranus, the 8th house, and/or Psyche in Sagittarius:
A lack of intentionality: most of the time, people with this placement need to choose to tune in
Religious or spiritual obstacles (f.e.: religious trauma, fear of spirituality/religiously-led beliefs “intuition is harmful,” completely shutting yourself off from a relationship with a higher power - which is as damaging to intuitive capacity for people of this placement as actual religious trauma)
Self-deprecating beliefs (f.e.: “I’m just crazy,” “I can’t trust my gut”...)
(There’s much more depending on your personal astrological blueprint – this is just the starting point of the analysis!)
What aids an intuition:
Having a spiritual and/or religious framework for life and feeding yourself spiritually
Frequenting spiritual/religious places: many people with this placement have strong intuitive experiences in spiritual/religious places, regardless of the place’s specific spiritual/religious ties (though for some reason, Catholic churches are by far the most impactful, even for non-Christian intuitives – more research on the reason why is needed)
Meditation and prayer as well as intentional time to tune in
Studying intuition and its varying forms
Getting out of your daily life/your social “bubble” and chasing foreign experiences: your comfort zone is great, if you use it as a platform to launch into adventures - not if you live their your entire life. Lack of doing so negatively affects your intuition.
The Sixth House
Last but not least, I’ll give an example for one house. When Neptune, Uranus, and/or Psyche fall in the 6th house (or the 8th house is connected to the 6th), intuition comes as a result of more than just intentionality – it comes in through hard work. People with this placement need to constantly and consistently practice attuning to their intuition and often benefit most from using tools (such as astrology) to tune in. They also need to gain mastery with those tools, rather than just dabble with them. When the tools aren’t used as consistently as before, the skills with them (temporarily) atrophy. Other than this, intuition tends to come through the body. Tension in a body part, feeling sick or off, or even disease can be a way of your intuition making itself known (though diseases are usually multifactorial, with repressed intuition as one part of the reason).
What blocks your intuition:
Not letting it have a part in your daily life
Refusing to learn about or develop your intuition (like any skill - the more you engage, the better it gets)
Shutting down the awareness of your body
Neglecting your health (-> not to be confused with “having health issues” - those don’t affect your intuition negatively, but mistreating yourself does)
What aids your intuition:
Gaining mastery of an intuitive tool (such as astrology, tarot cards/oracle cards)
Apprenticeship or mentorship
Purification of the body, mind, and heart, daily intuitive habits, and consistent ritual
A job or environment in which you can practice intuition, specifically to be of service to others
Rebuilding your mind-body connection and getting out of your head
Taking care of your health (you don’t need to be perfect)
Want to learn more – because there’s so much more to say about intuition and the 6th house? Let’s connect.
Why This Topic Matters
Being intuitive in this day and age can feel like a burden, as intuition isn’t always embraced or encouraged in mainstream society. It is my hope that this information helps you realize that when it comes to using, unblocking, and developing your intuition, you are not as alone as you think you are.
I hope that the knowledge shared here helps you to begin to understand yourself and your intuition better than before.
I hope that you can learn to love the nuances and specificity of your unique intuition, rather than ask yourself why “it’s not like in the movies” or “it’s not like Person X’s.”
And if you’re a loved one of someone who is or whom you suspect is intuitive, I hope this shines a light on how this person ticks, and how to support them.
It is my hope that all of this happens for you because it has happened to everyone I’ve interviewed for this research project.
Identifying specifics about intuition inside the consults I performed for this project resulted in tears of joy and relief, massive personal and intuitive breakthroughs, needed realignments, and psychological and emotional healing for clients.
Intuition is so often rejected, denied, or suppressed. When intuition is affirmed, encouraged, and celebrated, it can takes its rightful place as a natural gift and superpower.
The readings conducted with my live participants helped them find a roadmap to life and heal with a part of themselves they thought was fundamentally wrong or unlovable. In some cases, it even caused family healing as parents understood their children better, and adult children healed with their parents and grandparents.
Hoping to see you soon and wishing you well on your journey of improving, accessing, or understanding your intuition,
Alexandra
My name is Alexandra Volland, and I’m a Teaching Assistant for Virginia Rosenberg’s astrology school, Sky Scholar, and the voice behind Astrology from the Soul. I’ve been certified in both Mystic Astrology with RisingWoman.com and Intuitive Astrology with Sky Scholar Level I-III (highest current level). I write, tutor, and teach astrology, and offer one-on-one readings.
Over the course of two months, I analyzed a total of 42 charts of individuals born between 554 A.D. and the early 2000s, people who came from multiple cultures, countries, and walks of life. 18 were historical figures, 24 people I personally talked to about their intuition (in most cases via 90-120min interviews). The intuitive strength of my participants ranged from one or two well-documented intuitive experiences to extreme psychic gifts, and even an intuitive career.
Through this work, I found out how astrology can provide a clear “user’s manual” for a person’s intuition that both shows what’s possible for them - their gifts, their strengths, their weaknesses, and their blindspots - as well as how they can develop or unblock their intuitive gifts.
GET A 60 MINUTE READING WITH ALEXANDRA
It’s become obvious which constellations yield which gifts, which blocks, and how to work with them. If you’d like to learn about those constellations and how they figure in your natal chart, you are invited to book a reading with me where we focus on your intuition – and all you need to know.
You do not have to be psychic for this reading.
You do not have to even be/identify as intuitive at all. You can be a complete beginner – or a pro.
All levels of intuitive giftedness (or lack thereof) are welcome!
Charts of Historical Figures:
Ranging from ones having one significant and well-documented intuitive experiences to actual psychics, and everything in between.
Albert Einstein
Blessed Anna Maria Taigi
Edgar Cayce
Friedrich August Kelkulé
Jaques de Molay
Jacquetta of Luxembourg
John Maynard Keynes
Khadija bint Khuwaylid
Mohammad, Prophet
Nostradamus
St. Anthony Mary Claret
St. Colette
St. Hildegard von Bingen
St. Jehanne Darc
St. John Bosco
St. Vincent Ferrer
Rudolf Steiner
Winston Churchill
Charts of People Interviewed:
A.C.
A.H.
A.L.
A.P.
A.V.
B.H.
B.V.
C.S. (1)
C.S. (2)
C.L.
C.V.
D.B.
E.B.
E.P.
H.N.
J.B.G.
J.S.
M.F.
P.G.
R.S.
S.K.
S.P.
S.W.
T.R.
Bibliography:
Theory of Intuition:
Clues from Beyond by Debbie Malone
Mediumship Made Easy by Gordon Smith
Awaken Your Psychic Abilities by Debbie Malone
Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson
Beyond Soulmates by Cyndi Dale
Everyday Clairvoyant by Cyndi Dale
Energetic Boundaries by Cyndi Dale
Intuitivesoulsblog.com (including guides on clairaudience and clairvoyance)
Theory of Astrology:
Sky Scholar Level I (program for professional astrological education taught by Virginia Rosenberg)
Sky Scholar Level II (program for professional astrological education by Virginia Rosenberg)
Sky Scholar Level III (highest current level of program for professional astrological education by Virginia Rosenberg)
Other courses taught by Virginia Rosenberg (f.e. on the planet Uranus etc.)
Mystic Astrology I (program for professional astrological education by Andrea Depuis and RisingWoman.com)
Mystic Astrology II (program for professional astrological education by Andrea Depuis and RisingWoman.com)
Asteroid Goddesses by Demetra George and Douglas Bloch
Die Astrologische Deutung der Asteroiden by Rainer Bardel
Chiron: Healer and Wholemaker by Zane Stein + essays
Astrology and the Rising of Kundalini: The Transformative Power of Saturn, Chiron, and Uranus by Barbara Hand Clow
Chiron: Rainbow Bridge Between the Inner and Outer Planets by Barbara Hand Clow
The Twelve Houses by Howard Sasportas
The Book of Water by Steven Forrest
The Book of Neptune by Steven Forrest
The Book of Air by Steven Forrest
The Inner Sky by Steven Forrest
Yesterday’s Sky by Steven Forrest
Aspects in Astrology by Sue Tompkins
Astrology for Real Life by Theresa Reed
Aspects by Robin Antepara
and more
A special thanks to all people who trusted me with their charts and aided this project. Also a special thanks to my teacher, Virginia Rosenberg, and to her, Auburn Lily, and Emily King for aiding with this article.