I had the opportunity to talk to spiritual teacher Gahl Sasson. Gahl is an internationally acclaimed Spiritual teacher who specializes in Astrology, Mythology and Kabbalah. He teaches ongoing workshops in the US, Europe, Israel, Turkey and Mexico. He has appeared on CNN, ABC News, KTLA-TV Los Angeles, WPIX-TV New York, WGN-TV Chicago and more. His new book “Cosmic Navigator” combines the ageless personality insights of Astrology with the deeper archetypal wisdom of Kabbalah, provides answers to these and many other questions.
1 Why did you choose your line of work and how long have you been doing it?
Ok…this is a long answer…hope you like stories: I was twenty-three when I returned from a journey to India and the Far East. It was time, I thought, to settle down and choose a career path. Reared in an ultra-academic family in Haifa, Israel, I felt pressure to further my education. But what should I study? I could not avoid answering the question, “Who am I?”
I remember the day I finally made my decision. I took a swim in the Mediterranean Sea and stopped by my parent’s house on my way home. I looked at the sign on the building where I had lived most of my life. It read “Freud Street 26.” I said to myself, “Could it be so obvious?” The next day, I enrolled in the psychology department at HaifaUniversity. Years later, as I deepened my studies in Kabbalah and numerology, I discovered that twenty-six represents the numerological value of the unpronounceable name of God, associated with the archetypal energy called Wisdom. I realized then that the sign on my parent’s house had not only directed me to learn about Freud, but it had also launched me on a path to explore the wisdom of Kabbalah. I completed my B.A. and planned to pursue my master’s and Ph.D. in clinical psychology. However, in Israel, there are more individuals who yearn to heal than people who require healing. Most years, the university accepts only one in every four hundred or so applicants. The crucial requirement is a recommendation from a senior professor. I thought I had that sewn up. I had excelled in my studies. My grades were first rate. And I believed that the head of my program believed in me as well. I had been one of eight students specially selected by that professor to participate in an exclusive psychoanalysis workshop. I was certain that my stellar performance in his class had insured his endorsement and a spot in graduate school. I was wrong. When I asked for the letter, the professor refused. He told me that my outlook
on life and healing deviated markedly from those of main stream psychologists. Since I had shared my interest in symbolism, synchronicity, and mysticism during the course of his workshop, he argued that my overactive imagination, in conjunction with my bizarre theories about life, death, and spirituality, would constitute “a threat to the system.” I was devastated. I was shocked and humiliated. Most of all, I was furious. Being an Aries, the warrior sign, blood rushed to my head. I saw him suddenly as my archenemy. My sudden feelings of anger signaled nothing less than a mental declaration of war. But then something else happened, as it always does. The universe is more creative then we are. My best friend called and asked me to join him on a surfing trip to Mexico. at first I said “no thanks.” but then I thought about it for a second. Gahl, my name in Hebrew, means “wave.” I figured that the only way to truly understand waves, and therefore myself, was to learn how to surf. I traveled west to follow the message of my name. And I found myself in Mexico, chasing Gahl, chasing waves, and learning the art of flowing with life. The mantra I picked up from my surfer friends was, “No fear.” It has served me just as well outside the waters as it did in the swelling sea. After a month, my friend had to return to Israelvia Guadalajara’s international airport. Since I had a few more months to burn before I could reapply to the university, I decided to accompany him to Guadalajarafor a couple of days and from there make plans to visit South America. I wandered the streets looking for something to do on my last day in the city. He offered to show me the “real Mexico.” My first instinct told me to politely refuse. I had all my money, my passport, and my expensive camera with me. Surely he was out to take it all, and perhaps he planned to take my organs for black-market transport while he is at it as well.
But a deeper voice inside me told me to surrender. No fear. Surf the waves. So I thrust my hand inside my pocket to protect my wallet and climbed on a bus with him. We traveled for more than an hour to a rather impoverished—some would say sketchy—part of the city. We ended up working out at his gym and then meeting up with his tequila-drinking buddies, who sang boisterously about the Mexican revolution. On the way back, we heard live music blasting from a little house. We wandered inside and found two guys playing their instruments. I saw a wired-up microphone standing unused beside the musicians. I had always dreamed of being a rock singer. On an impulse, I grabbed the mike, and I sang and screamed until my throat ached from the strain. After hours of rocking improvisation, I went back to my hotel. It had been one of the most fantastic days of my life. And I still had my wallet. The next morning, as I was packing to leave Mexicofor good, the two musicians, accompanied by a team of three translators—each of them apparently understood a different third of the English language—showed up at my hotel and asked me to join their band. The previous day, they had set up the mic to hold auditions for a lead singer. And I had been the only one who’d showed up. I told them, thanks, but I was leaving that afternoon for Guatemala. They asked me, why? “To learn Spanish,” I said. The five men looked bemusedly at each other. “Well, we can teach you Spanish,” one of them said. Within three weeks, the band and I were performing in clubs all over Guadalajara. I also found myself adopted by a family that provided me with free lodging, meals, transportation, and love. I was humbled by the generosity and open heartedness of the people. It seemed everywhere I went, I bumped into another lucky synchronicity. One day as I was taking a run in the park, I saw a group of people dressed all in white. They sat on the ground and chanted some words in a strange language. I inched closer, and I witnessed for the first time in this incarnation yogis practicing yoga. Without waiting for an invitation, I joined them. And from that day forward, I eagerly went to yoga class nearly every day. After about a month, the yoga teacher asked me to join him on a visit to one of his students who had been laid up ill at home. While we sat with the ailing man, I offered to try out on him some Tibetan energetic healing that I had learned a few years back. It seemed to invigorate the man, and his grateful wife insisted on giving me a gift.
She ushered me into another room, and she asked me three questions that since that day I have never stopped asking anyone who comes to me for help. I call it the Trinity: What is your date of birth? Where were you born? And at what time? I gave her the information, and for the first time in my life I witnessed the casting of an astrological chart. She was new to interpreting charts. She constantly turned to her books and read from them. But her comments were stunningly accurate. By that point in my life I had gone to see five different psychologists, who, after innumerous sessions, could not understand me as well as this novice astrologer. I closed my eyes and whispered to my higher self: “If I am supposed to study this art that feels so familiar, please show me the way.” Less then two weeks later, the guitar player in my band dragged me to some mysterious meeting. I was suspicious. “What do they do? Why do they meet?” He dismissed my queries and said, “just come.” I walked into the meeting and sat in the back, close to the door to insure an easy escape. The teacher talked in Spanish, which, at that time, I did not understand, but every once in a while he slipped in a Hebrew word. And then to my amazement, thousands of miles away from Israel, surrounded by Mexicans, the teacher began to write Hebrew letters—my native alphabet—on the blackboard. I had stumbled upon a group that studied Kabbalah and astrology. The guitarist somehow figured I would like it. He was another messenger. I joined the esoteric school Circulo Dorado and studied with them for two years. I suppose that program in Guadalajaraserved as a substitute for my master’s in psychology back in Haifa. Did I plan to dive into Kabbalah, astrology, and yoga? No. Did I think it was my destiny? No. I just followed the direction of my name as well as the other signs and synchronicities I encountered along the way. Now, looking back, I consider my old professor who refused me access to the academy to be the most influential person in my life. He is perhaps the most important Kabbalistor mystic that I have ever met, even if he would reject both of these titles. He was not the enemy I thought he was that day years before, when I left his office without a letter of recommendation, without my hopes for any sort of worthwhile future. He was my savior, my guide, and my healer.
2 Tell me about how you fuse Astrology with Kaballah?
Astrology and Kabbalah has been fused from the beginning. What I do is remind people that this is the case. The oldest book in Kabbalah, Sefer Yetzira (the Book of Creation) which is attributed to the Patriarch Abraham, talks bluntly about the connection between the Hebrew letters and the astrological signs. In Cosmic Navigator, I provide readers with a way to use the Hebrew letters to design their life and create the change they want. Astrology infused with the mystical depth of Kabbalah can create a lot of transformation in people’s lives. Kabbalah reminds us that Astrology is not about what will happen but about what is happening. It brings the wisdom of the stars to the Now! and it afford us the decision and choices of what will happen in the future. While Kabbalah speaks in cosmic or universal terminology, Astrology is more local and focuses on the energies of our Solar System. Since we are part of the Solar System (Astrology) as well as the Universe (Kabbalah), it is vital to learn about these two doctrines simultaneously. It’s like having a camera with a zoom in and a zoom out lens. Like all navigators, the Cosmic Navigator starts the journey at the point of origin. That home base derives from Astrology—i.e. your natal astrological chart of planets, houses and signs that is cast according to the moment of your birth. Kabbalah and its mystical techniques: including myths, metaphors and meditations with Hebrew letters paves the path that all cosmic navigators use to attain their goals. For thousands of years, mostly in secret sects and lodges, Jews, Christians and Moslems have all taken advantage of Kabbalah’s system of spiritual empowerment to shape their destinies. Today, partly thanks to publicity from celebrities like Madonna, the clandestine mysteries of Kabbalah have been thrust into the mainstream. Kabbalah’s mystical rituals and lore are available now to everyone, helping all of us to cope with challenges and create better lives. Astrology is personal. Each of us is a Leo or a Pisces with a Libra moon and a Taurus Rising. It provides every person an easy entrance into the numinous realm of Kabbalah, which offers more gravity, more spirituality, and greater possibility. Kabbalah’s mystical heritage and ritual meditations sketched out in this book light the way for anyone to rewrite his destiny, to surmount the confines of the astrological fate he was born with. For example, one woman who worked with the techniques described in Cosmic Navigator, found that her chart featured Saturn in the fifth house. She longed desperately to have a child, but Saturn in the fifth house traditionally binds that person to “no children.” A routine astrological interpretation would have counseled this woman to forget that dream and instead to relish her happy marriage or good fortune in the stock market. Disappointed and crushed at first, this woman nonetheless worked with the Kabbalistic meditations and exercises prescribed in this book and she soon received a stunning insight. She would expand her idea of having children. She would transcend the dictates of her chart and adopt a child that she’d love as her own. That affirmative act transformed her life with the many blessings this child brought to her home, her marriage and her disposition. And it also seemed to transform her astrological lot. Five years later—to the amazement of her doctor, if not her astrologer—she got pregnant and had a child. A few years after that, she gave birth to her third child. Wedded to a magical tradition of hands-on spiritual virility like Kabbalah, Astrology becomes far richer. It moves from just a psychological game that tells Scorpio’s that they are obsessed with sex to a comprehensive spiritual system that resonates with the powerful idea that Scorpio is an archetype, an energy vessel that contains subjects such as life after death, sexuality, intimacy and transformation. Mercury transforms from a devilish nuisance for travel and computer snafus when it turns retrograde to a beloved messenger to the divine that brings us—when we pay attention—marvelous synchronicities and inspirations that literally can change our lives. After years of teaching both Kabbalah and Astrology and interpreting dozens of astrological charts each week in private consultations, Gahl Sasson has discovered indisputably that Kabbalah fused with Astrology can empower our lives in a way that traditional astrology cannot. Cosmic Navigator is the first book that brings the limitless potentiality of this hybrid to the general public.
3 Please give me the details about your new book:
My second book, Cosmic Navigator, is like a GPS for the soul. It combines Astrology, the map of where and who we are, with Kabbalah the navigation system that tells us how to get to our goal and avoid those traffic patterns and areas of gridlock in our lives. This three part text is the first book of its kind. Not only is it the first book to use Astrology as a resource for self help, it also weds the wisdom of ancient Kabbalisitic truths with the powerful archetypes of the zodiac to help you improve and change your life. The first part of the book introduces the basic concepts of Kabbalah and Astrology and how they work together. The second part teaches you how to interpret your own astrological chart as the road map of your life. The third and final part of the book, which is based on Gahl’s twelve week workshop, walks the reader through the twelve signs and teaches them how to use each one to bring balance and success into their lives. Is your love life in need of more passion? Turn to the chapter on Scorpio and learn how to invoke that sexual mysterious energy. Do you need to be more assertive at work? Turn to the chapter on Aries and discover your inner warrior. Unlike other astrology books that simply offer stereotypical profiles, Cosmic Navigator teaches us how to take control of our astrological destinies.
4 What do you cover in your workshops at Goldenbridge?
Depends on the workshop but I try to provide people with a new perspective on life, I consider myself a chiropractor for the soul that adjusts the way of thinking. I bring different traditions, religions, belief systems together and show how we are all connected. The next workshop is on Dec 16th at 7pm and will cover the Astrological origin of the Holidays as well as the astrology of 2009. Here are the links to my upcoming Dec events:
http://cosmicnavigator.com/news/book-signing-with-special-talk-about-the-astrology-of-2009
5 I am an Aries with a double Gemini (gemini moon and gemini rising) can you tell me a bit about myself?
Alchemically speaking you have a lot of Yang, Masculine energies. The double Gemini makes you a messenger and the Aries makes you a liberator therefore your messages are suppose to help people liberate themselves. I will be more then happy to meet in person and go over your chart if you wish.
6 I am facinated by your theories on the Arab/Israeli conflict and how it dates back to Isaac and Ishmael. You detail this in one of your lectures. Can you tell me a little more about this?
The fight in Israel is all about the land, the Promised, Holly Land. Promised by God to Abraham to be given to his children. Abraham had two kids each from a different womb. Jews believe themselves to descend from Isaac while Arabs (and therefore Moslems) from Ishmael. The point I make is that Abraham had no land to bequeath to his off springs since he never owned any land. The Bible specific that the only land Abraham bought was for 400 Shekels and it was not a lot it was a cave to burry his wife. So my argument is that fighting over who inherited what is ridiculous since Abraham did not have any land to begin with…Since it is a war of mythology, it can be solved by introducing new mythologies of union and acceptance instead of separation and hate.
7 In your book Cosmic Navigator you detail subjects such as the meaning of life, How people can find their soul mates and the link between astrology and relationships. How do you come to your conclusions in Cosmic Navigator?
By doing the work outlined in the third part of the book where readers are encouraged to balance their life by dedicated one week for each sign. Following the exercises outlined in each chapter of the signs enables readers to become the different signs and balancing each aspect of their life. So in the week of Libra, the sign of relationships, they will encounter synchronicities and coincides that will help them understand their relationship. In the week of Capricorn, the sign of career, they will learn about their career and so forth. Maybe this is a better explanation: The innovation of my approach to astrology allows the reader to use the powerful archetypes of the Zodiac as allies in a program of self-improvement. The cosmic navigator pursues this journey by focusing not just on his or her own sun and rising sign, but by personifying and thus becoming every sign in the zodiac. Each of us—whether we identify ourselves as a Sagittarius, Cancer or Capricorn—have all of the signs somewhere within our astrological chart. This book teaches us to recognize the wondrous complexity of our astrological constitution and provides the methodology for activating all the hidden powers of our potential. The reader does that by dedicating one week to each of the twelve signs. The book devotes one chapter to each of these signs—detailing Sasson’s mystical and deeply psychological analysis of that particular archetype through myths, real world or historical examples and traditional descriptions of both the positive and negative characteristics of each sign. The book asks the readers to incarnate as each sign for one week. Like a method actor who thoroughly immerses himself into the character of a Mafia boss or the Queen of England, the reader will place himself into an Aires-state of mind, for example, a person of action, decisiveness and adventure. The following week, the reader moves forward to Taurus and become an unapologetic sensualist fascinated by food, art, money and their own particular talents. Each chapter includes a list of traits and symbols associated with that particular sign and the reader will use these characteristics to invoke and then magnify the power of that particular archetype everywhere he or she goes. For twelve weeks, each cosmic navigator will embark on a revitalizing spiritual training regimen, tapping the latent potential of each archetype that lies within each one of us. The first week, the Aries week, the reader will become an Aries in order awaken the warrior within and enhance one’s leadership abilities and assertiveness. The chapter on Libra, on the other hand, tones the spiritual muscle that attracts the best romantic partner and other types of personal relationships. Scorpio will stimulate intimacy, sexuality and transformation, while Capricorn will help attain career success. In this way, over the course of 12-weeks, the reader invigorate every single facet of your life, opening doors to success in money, love, health and family. This journey will reveal talents and opportunities the reader never knew existed in them.
For More Info Visit: http://cosmicnavigator.com
“Luminous, brilliant and startlingly accurate, this book gives us an entirely new way to understanding astrology. it has the miraculous power to explain yourself to yourself. It is the essential guide to the self and the universe.”
–Margaret Cho, Comedian, fashion designer and actress
“Gahl has written a travel guide for the soul. He uses astrology and Kabbalah to show us the landscape for our lives. It’s all quite practical and useful. His real magic is revealing the symbols that surround us but we never saw before.”
–Tim Sexton, Oscar nominated screenwriter
