Astrologer, philosopher and traveler Mike Halliday sits down for a conversation about the realities of magic, his 2,000 km journey across India by foot, and the stars that bind us all (even mafia bosses and Brad Pitt).
I met Mike Halliday in a little cafe, tucked away in the winding narrow alleyways of India’s holiest city.
After a month of sattvic food at a yoga teacher training in Rishikesh, I was thrilled to start my mornings in Jyoti Cafe with eggs and coffee. Apparently, so was Mike.
“Long time no see,” the store owner said to him. It was clear that Mike wasn’t your average tourist, or two-week spiritual seeker. I turned around in my chair and struck up a conversation, with what would turn out to be one of those very interesting individuals who we are sometimes fortunate enough to meet on our travels.
I learned that Mike has been living in Varanasi for the better part of fifteen years, and that he’s a practitioner of Vedic astrology, among other Indian traditions. I had made some new friends while studying in the city, and our group spent lazy afternoons chatting with Mike beside the Ganges River, sipping on chai made with buffalo milk.
He’s a truly unique character, and one with lots to share. For those interested in Vedic astrology, Mike has some fascinating books on the way. Even so, in my impatience, I was eager to publish a brief chat, so others could enjoy Mike’s perspectives on everything from tourists and zodiac signs, to the fundamental nature of reality.
MBG: Mike! Thanks so much for sitting down to chat.
Mike: Absolutely.
First of all, can you introduce yourself for our readers?
I’m Mike Halliday. I’ve been living mostly in Varanasi for the past 15 years. I initially came to study philosophy but quickly started studying astrology and yoga. I’ve been teaching for about 10 years and am currently writing a book on Vedic astrology, specifically a 27-volume text on the nakshatra.
How would you describe life in Varanasi?
Well, Varanasi is a very mythological city, and the people here are quite unique. There’s a sense you get of being pulled into the myths of India when you’re here. Every place is named after a sage, and there are so many temples that are special to individual gods. So, you have all these divine energies all over Varanasi, and you’re living right in the middle of that. I don’t notice it so much until I go out of Varanasi — it’s like I was in a dream.
Has the city changed much since you first arrived?
Of course! These days I’m very much at home here. Everyone along this street knows who I am, so there’s a kind of local flavor to things. Staying here during the COVID situation really solidified my place here in a way. In some ways, things haven’t changed much over the years. Varanasi is still flooded with throngs of pilgrims coming in, and many of the shops and shopkeepers where I stay have been here the entire time. So in terms of these smaller things, not much has changed.
On the other hand, there are now more tourists than there were when I first came. I don’t remember seeing any when I first arrived. But now you see backpackers and travelers who are exploring India and end up in Varanasi. There are many more people here now, some of whom are only traveling for a couple of days or a few weeks. It’s interesting because sometimes I’ll run into these people back in Canada, and they’ll say, “Oh my God, Varanasi. That place had such an impact on me.” And it’s amazing because they were only here for a few days, but it made such an impression on them. It’s great, really wonderful.
Amazing. You yourself went on a 2,000 km journey across India by foot. What was that like?
Sure! After a friend told me she was going on a break to do a pilgrimage, I decided to join her. I didn’t expect to be gone for so long, but I ended up walking across India for three months, covering 2,000 kilometers. I would stop at an ashram every afternoon, have lunch and dinner, and sometimes stay the night. During this journey, I also learned how to do the arti practice, which was really interesting. When I returned from the journey, I started working on a book about astrology, specifically focusing on the nakshatras, which are the 27 moon signs in Indian astrology. It’s a deep research project, and I hope to include the charts of many famous people in the book, although that could potentially get me into trouble.
It sounds really cool. Could you give us a teaser of something we’ll find in the book?
What I’m trying to accomplish is to look at a culmination of stars and see what names are associated with it, so that readers can really understand how that specific culmination works. There are a few celebrities, like Elvis Presley, Brad Pitt, and a few other musicians and people like this, that share a certain Venus culmination. And whenever they have that period of Venus, they’re all touring and recording like crazy, just pumping things out. This makes it very clear how their charts work.
I also have some gangsters lined up with another culmination, which includes four generations of mafia bosses. It’s a great way to prove astrology because you can clearly see how these traits affect people’s lives.
Let’s get into Vedic astrology here. A lot of people in the West don’t know it exists — what are some of the differences between Western astrology and Vedic astrology?
It gets a little bit complex. I don’t want to say that Western astrology doesn’t work, because it does work on its own terms. With day-to-day life, little things, Western astrology can be great for that — figuring out when to plant a garden, that farmer’s element kind of thing.
That’s a big part of it. But ultimately what happened was a couple thousand years ago, the Western side didn’t take into account the elliptical movement of celestial bodies. And so it’s been going slightly out of alignment, year after year. And now it’s off by about 23 or 24 degrees. Each sign takes up 30 degrees of the sky, so it’s off by almost a full sign. And so I think there was a chance that, in the beginning, they might have used a lot of the same techniques to read the chart.
Western astrology has really perfected the angles between planets, and they really, really studied that way more than Vedic astrology. And that’s because that will keep working. With Vedic astrology, we’re dealing with the whole system.
I’m looking at your laptop screen, and I’m seeing all these crazy charts, graphs, diagrams…what exactly is going on here?
It’s showing a chart of the 12 signs and the houses. The first thing I’m looking for is to see what sign is in the first house, which sets up the whole chart for them – someone’s rising sign, their ascendant sign. That kind of sets everything up. The first thing I really look at is the first house, which tells me who this person is.
If the planets are strong and there are positive planets aspecting, then this person is going to be very strong, in body and mind. Then I want to look at their fifth house, where I can see their intelligence and their luck. And the ninth house shows me their faith. If these three houses are strong, they are the foundation of who we are: personality, intelligence, and faith. If those areas in our lives are all strong, I can see a very strong person in front of me.
On the other hand, if they’re weak and facing bad luck in life and the timing is not always working out for them, they might have health problems, or problems with the first house, for example.
It seems like astrologers have held a pretty unique position in Indian tradition. What’s the perception of astrology in India, versus in the west?
So, it’s really funny how people in the West view astrology. It’s not the same in India, where astrology is quite accepted. Most astrologers in India are actually engineers because it’s a very technical field. I feel lucky because now I have access to software that does all the complicated mathematics for me. But there was a time when I had to do the calculations for a chart by hand, and it was not easy at all. It would take weeks, even months, to do all the divisional charts that I can generate now with just the push of a button. It’s really amazing what technology can do for us.
Astrologers are considered seers because they have insights into people’s lives. In a small community like a village, everyone knows the astrologer and everyone thinks that the astrologer knows all their secrets. It becomes the astrologer’s job to keep an eye on the community and serve as a deterrent, similar to how a child might think twice about doing something bad if they know they will be caught. Although it doesn’t always work out this way, it is possible because everything is visible in the astrology chart. Every aspect of a person is laid out in the chart, but it takes a thorough examination to uncover the details. So yes, everything is there.
And what does that mean for your own practice?
When I practice Vedic astrology, it takes on a very shamanistic approach. Most of the remedies offered in Vedic astrology involve things like chanting mantras or wearing special stones, which are considered tantric remedies. While orthodox scientists have finally started to accept that these remedies can work, taking a shamanic perspective allows me to find remedies in anything that suits a person’s energy and personality.
It’s all about understanding the energies and getting to know the person in question. It’s important to find a remedy that a person can actually practice. Even the best remedy won’t work if it’s not practiced and followed consistently. So sometimes, it takes a bit of creativity to find a remedy that a person is willing to practice regularly. After all, not everyone is comfortable wearing big stones or chanting mantras.
This ties in with what you mentioned earlier about karma and action. If you want to influence your karma, you have to take action. It doesn’t necessarily mean getting involved in everything, but it does require effort and commitment to follow through with remedies and actions that align with your intentions.
We were speaking about the tattvas before, and about systems that go beyond observable reality. Could you break that idea down a little?
So in the Indian system, there are two different ways of looking at existence. The first system consists of 25 elements and this is essentially astrology. It covers everything from the individual soul to the Earth, essentially everything that exists in our observable reality. This is similar to what science is looking at.
The second system has 36 elements and goes beyond observable reality and delves into spirituality. This is where freedom lies because everything else is just karma. We only have small areas where we have freedom, but these areas are connected to spiritual freedom. The biggest area to connect with is spiritual freedom. We are free to make choices in the moment and we are free to sacrifice now so that we can have a better future.
If we combine our choices in the moment with practice, we can develop the ability to say no to people when we need to. For example, if we have trouble saying no to people, we can practice saying no firmly. Then when the time comes when we have to say no, we have already practiced and are better prepared to do so. This may seem like a simple example, but it applies to anything we want to do, including yoga. We need to sacrifice time now to practice if we want to achieve our goals in the future.
You mentioned the line between the spiritual and non-spiritual worlds. Where exactly is that line?
So, there’s this pretty thin line between what we can see and what’s actually out there. Many people feel that there’s more to reality than what we can perceive with our senses, and that there’s more to each of us than what meets the eye. When we start to explore this idea, we dive into different levels of our minds, emotions, and thoughts, and sometimes we can even achieve clarity of mind beyond our physical body. We can even reach a point where our minds extend beyond our bodies, like with astral travel.
As we become aware of this side of ourselves that’s not necessarily connected to what we think of as “who am I,” we realize that there’s something more to us than just our individual soul on Earth. In the Indian system, this can be broken down into 25 steps. This is where spirituality comes in – it’s the search for something beyond reality and the physical world. And if we talk about spirituality, we have to talk about God. God is spiritual and represents something more that we’re looking for.
But what is God? When we start to ask this question, we begin to see that we’re connected to everything. We realize that our connection to this world doesn’t stop at our skin. This is when we really start to dive into spirituality and to believe that there’s something beyond the physical world. The idea of duality – that there’s reality and there’s God – gives way to non-duality.
Vedanta and many of the yogis these days are exploring non-duality. Kashmiri Shaivism is not dualistic, either. At this point, we’re fully dealing in the spiritual realm. But we merge into the understanding that the body is God, or that there’s at least some God in every body. The two are not separate. Everything has a spirit and a matter to it. It’s the union of spirit and matter that creates distance and keeps us warm and breathing. Otherwise, we’re just…well, nothing.
It’s really incredible stuff. It seems that anything which examines the nature of reality, will eventually reach points that can be described as “magic.” What does that loaded word “magic” mean to you?
There’s an inner feeling that’s hard to explain. It’s something we’re trying to tap in to, and use to reach a state of God consciousness.
Now, everyone wants freedom, right? But there’s a difference between free will and freedom. Your free will is part of how much control you have over your life, but to truly achieve freedom, you have to go beyond yourself and your astrology chart. That’s where you find spiritual freedom.
And let me tell you, spirituality is something you won’t find anywhere else. So, what does it take to achieve this freedom? Well, you can’t have any debts, karmic or otherwise, holding you back. This is a big part of the early path, just cleaning up your debts and obligations.
Once you achieve this level of freedom, you’re able to do what you want in a much broader way. But then, you have to find something higher to sacrifice your freedom for. For example, I’m sacrificing my freedom to write this book and work with astrology to help people and bring more self-knowledge to the world.
Now, let’s talk about the levels of reality. You’ve got the 25 levels of reality, and just above that is Maya, or illusion. There are five levels of Maya that can be connected to the five senses. It’s all interconnected.
The five senses can connect various things, and in the astrology chart, I focus on Maya. Maya is the space where you and God meet. Your life is situated just behind Maya, with intense experiences that can be considered worshipful. Maya is more than just an illusion; it’s magic, and we need to prepare ourselves for magical experiences. This is similar to theater, where people are drawn into a story and get emotional because they become invested in it.
We want to draw ourselves into reality and higher understanding, which we can do through meditation, asana practices, tantric or shamanic perspectives, and other techniques. For instance, Japanese tea service can create a space where magic can happen. Shamanic healing may have a placebo effect, but there’s nothing wrong with that if it helps. The placebo effect is essentially magic, which works because it involves rituals that make people believe. Rituals are important because they help us open our eyes to who we are.
For more from Mike Halliday, or to schedule lessons/readings, visit Mike’s Sleeping Dog