Greetings Beloved World,
I’m Frank Salzano.
I am a cultural astronomer, storyteller, astrologer, psychopomp, poet, mystic, & teacher.
Medicine of the Starry Heavens is the big tent umbrella cast for my inter-disciplinary body of work, teachings & offerings. It’s here as a sanctuary to help others remember their way back to the medicine and mysteries of the night sky. What you will discover here is so much more than astrology. It’s a homecoming of light & body, a marriage of Earth & Sky.
As modernity comes to a close and the dominant institutions of our world continue to spin out into chaos, the work we do here is to remember the embodied, relational cosmos of our stargazing ancestors. To level-up the astrology craft. And to fashion an authentic mystical wisdom that transforms our lives & ritually dances with the great unfurling mystery.
The container for my contributions in this work takes place through 3 interwoven mediums:
1. The mystery school & classes
The great threads of the Celestial Weaver reach up to the planets & stars, but they also weave into our bodies, hearts, landscapes & relational webs. Astrology is great stuff, but it’s just the first step into the doorway of fostering a meaningful intimacy with an animate, living cosmos.
Each one of us is here to heal complex personal, cultural & ancestral wounds. To cultivate soul, tenderness & belonging. To increase our capacity for grief-tending & discomfort, while celebrating & adorning the world. To recall & re-imagine our soul’s true desires & purpose. We are here to rekindle our inner light, what I call our ‘starlight-longing.’ We came here to show up and learn how to be our best selves over and over and over again.
This is real life stuff. We live on a real planet that is part of a real, enchanted cosmos. We have real bodies & lives & ancestry. Our struggles are real. We have real cultural responsibilities and destinies. The industrial trauma complex, the dominant machine, the modern struggle is part of living a real life. What we are doing at Medicine of the Starry Heavens is not the latest digital astrology fad, online self-help course gimmick or internet-spectacle nonsense. We are not peddling digital bullshit to make money. We are here to cultivate communion with the stars, to cultivate astrology as a healing art, to deepen the alchemical journey, to shift the field. We are here to help fashion some devotional heart & mythopoetic imagination into our evolving lineages, crafts & homeplaces.
Simply put: to do our part to rescue the light.
School of Celestial Illumination
The School of Celestial Illumination is an ongoing educational journey towards liberation & emergent consciousness that breaks through the distractions & amnesia of modernity & industrial life. It’s a mystery school that is part education in myth, cosmology, & alchemy, part deep-dive into starlore, anthropology, ecology & ritual, and a rich container for integrating a mosaic of ancient & modern astrology traditions.
The teachings here begin with a mystical & mythopoetic foundation in astrology, cosmology & star-lore. And they unfold into a deep remembering of an embodied ritual life that courts the heavens & myth-beings. Along the way we’ll remember a bit of the hard-earned wisdom of our stargazing ancestors, and integrate it with some of the newest developments in trauma healing, somatics & depth psychology.
My students & clients are an eclectic bunch. Seekers. Stewards. Lovers. Healers. Artists. Ritualists. Activists. Practical craftspeople. Newbies to the divinatory arts. People in-transition to more conscious ways of being. Some live in eco-villages, others work for the State Department. Some have gone to mystery schools, while others have gone to military schools. What we all have in common is a curious skyward eye, a desire for deep cultural learning, an authentic passion for soulful living & an expanding consciousness that honors mystery, divination & ancestral healing.
To learn more about my ongoing teachings please see the school’s page.
Stories from Stardust
My storytelling events, Stories from Stardust, are a one of a kind cultural immersion that braids together myth, cosmos & poetics with intellectual history, cultural remembering, practical astronomy & heart-centered teachings. These evenings are a form of ritual storied attunement that weave together imagination, landscape, cross-cultural starlore, wonder, animism, ancient perceptions & an alchemical courting of the night sky. Part performance art, part astronomy lessons, part journey work, there is nothing else quite like these unique evenings.
I tell stories the way our ancestors did: under the stars, around a fire, along shorelines, on mountaintops, under big canopies, in the forest, always communing with the treasure trove of constellational images and folklore that is our starry heavens. Doing it this way is an inheritance that reaches deep into an embodied culture of belonging and plucks the long-forgotten heartstrings of the human psyche.
These evenings are paradigm shifting, magical, and loyal to the old understanding of cosmos: the very patterns & adornments that knit together the happenings of our visible world with that of Spirit & Mystery. It’s a tip-of-the-hat towards our deeper story and a resurrection of some of the old wisdom & aesthetics that helped culturally fashion us into human beings. These nights pay homage to the gnosis of our stargazing ancestors.
Keep posted on my events page and social media (FB and IG) for my monthly local events around Asheville, NC. And for upcoming tour dates and performances at gatherings & festivals, private venues and more.
Divination & Counseling
My Astrology & Counseling Practice is steeped in the astrologies of the ancient world, particularly those from Indo-european and Semitic lineages. I have studied many sorts of astrology: Vedic, Persian, Arabic, Hellenistic. I am well versed in modern astrology as well and have a deep appreciation for the contemporary Depth Psychology, Evolutionary & Archetypal schools of thought. I love astrology that is steeped in naked-eye astronomy and the old knowings. I often incorporate asteroids, fixed stars, astrocartography and many tools of contemporary astrology into my practice as well. I have been a counseling astrologer for over a decade, and have seen thousands of charts.
My astrology sessions bring a treasure trove of insights and understandings to my clients. Part mystical illumination, part practical insight, my readings contextualize your curiosities and questions with deepening nuance, texture, meaning, imagination, wisdom & beauty. They are integration-oriented, candid, information-rich, empowering, and fun & entertaining.
I do not do bullshit astrology. What I do is skills & technique proficient, time-tested, and meets you where you are at. You can ask me anything — I’ll have something substantial and enriching to share.
A Little More About Me
Me — I am a real-life mystical creature. A divinatory artist & guide. A well-studied & educated teacher. I am a naturalist, animist & lifelong drop-out from the mainstream grid-culture. I am an ongoing student of the great alchemical sojourn that is this life in this world. And like you, I am a complex person with an indigenous soul, ongoing cultural baggage, and navigating the modern world with as much dignity, humility & depth as I can muster.
I grew up in southern West Virginia on the Allegheny Plateau among the oaks & hickories & sycamores. This land was traditionally home to the Shawnee/Shaawanwaki, Tutelo and Moneton peoples. I now live in a hobbit village in the hinterlands of Asheville in Western North Carolina (lands of the ᏣᎳᎩ (Tsalagi)/ ᏗᎧᎳᎮᎵᏍᏗ (Anigiduwagi)/ Cherokee) surrounded by a great community full of herbalists, artists, midwives, natural builders, permaculturists, community organizers, musicians, healers and culture-makers of all sorts.
I spend most of my time in the forest, researching starlore, storytelling, writing & teaching, parenting, and designing/building my ever-evolving art project of a house/sanctuary. When I am not at home I am either on the road telling stories or retreating into the dark to meditate deep inside a cave in Tennessee. I was born just after a total solar eclipse with Mercury rising in Taurus & have a stellium in Gemini. My moon is in Leo conjunct the star Regulus, the heart of the lion.
I try my best to spend more time under the stars than looking at computer screens. Staying attuned to the real light.
-Starry River Blessings