The past year has been especially hard on Americans. We've seen our housing market collapse into ruins of foreclosures, unemployment rates skyrocket, and business after business shutter their doors. That said, it seems that one market—the metaphysical—continues to do quite well. It seems that while some people who regularly visit psychics and astrologers have cut back on their visits as their budgets become tighter, these metaphysical businesses are seeing a surge in new customers, those that are looking for advice in these uncertain times. Lisa Barretta, author of The Street Smart Psychic's Guide to Getting a Good Reading, recently wrote an article on getting psychic

Magick and astrology have been deeply intertwined for thousands of years. In the past, astronomical and astrological influences were often more involved with magick, and even today, magicians often look at such things as the astrological signs and houses certain planets are in, the planetary hour of the day, whether the moon is waxing or waning, etc., in the design of their rituals and spells. Of course, this all falls apart if one thing is demonstrated: the failure of astrology. The Debunkers Debunked Indeed, so-called skeptics (I'd call them pseudo-skeptics) and debunkers often bring out flimsy logic, misunderstandings and misrepresentations about astrology, as well as bad science or

Please welcome guest blogger Sharon Leah to Guided by the Stars! Sharon works with Llewellyn's Calendars and Almanacs in our Production department. Mercury is in apparent direct motion again after being retrograde nearly all of September. Did anyone breeze through this retrograde period unscathed? The winged trickster tagged me. I purchased a new domain name for a Website on September 28 (one of the worst days to conduct business, because Mercury was almost stationary). The domain remained in limbo for several days before it became active on October 2. While Mercury was retrograde, it slid back into Virgo, where it drew attention to the details of life, and we spent three weeks

I'm 98.7% certain that we are all familiar with the adage "You are what you eat." Domino's Pizza, however, recently teamed up with astrologer Steve Weiss, and determined that, in reality, we eat what we are. Meaning, our tastes are somewhat dictated by our astrological sun sign. While I'm not sure why Domino's would want to fund such research, they have a valid point; after all, even we at Llewellyn have long had books based on the marriage of astrology and food (for some great meal planning, just check out Sydney Omarr's Cooking with Astrology!). According to Domino's, As a Leo I should "expect each meal to be a social event, and not care what I'm eating" (I hate people watching me