Ann Kreilkamp didn’t believe in astrology for much of her life. However, after she was fired from her teaching position at the New College of California, Kreilkamp was convinced by two friends to do an astrological chart.
Astrology investigates the energetic system that was present at the moment of one’s birth, Kreilkamp said.
Before computers, Kreilkamp said astrologists did the math and drew the charts by hand, so making one took a few hours.
Though Kreilkamp was not yet a believer, she said something inside her said she needed that chart.
If she saw some of the outer planets, which align every few hundred years, were together at the time she was fired, it had to mean something.
“They did,” Kreilkamp said. “I knew I had to study this language and it would be the thing I’d use to help other people.”
Kreilkamp has practiced astrology since her revelation, and now she has clients all over the world. Kreilkamp can make a chart within minutes on her laptop through an app that enters information about the time, date and place of one’s birth.
Kreilkamp grew up the first of eight children in a strict Catholic home in Idaho.
She had her first mental and emotional breakthrough at age 26 shortly after she was diagnosed with life-threatening peritonitis.
“I asked the doctor, ‘Am I going to die?’” Kreilkamp said. “You didn’t ask that back then — that was a taboo subject.”
The doctor wouldn’t tell her, Kreilkamp said. However, instead she was answered by a invisible, booming male voice.
“It said, ‘Live or die. It’s your choice,” Kreilkamp said.
She didn’t know who or what this voice was, Kreikamp said. But she knew she was free.
The next day, Kreilkamp’s body was cleared of the peritonitis. That was when Kreilkamp said she realized she was responsible for her own life and had to make decisions.
“This is when I knew the body followed the spirit,” Kreilkamp said. “When you have a bodily problem, it’s because the spirit is asking you something.”
Kreilkamp explains her peritonitis as her spirit’s expression of treating herself as a victim.
The world is more mysterious than people realize, Kreilkamp said. The synchronicity in astrology exposes this.
This is not God, Kreilkamp said she has no idea what it is.
Kreilkamp exemplifies the synchronicity through a near car accident and an experience at the Griffy Lake when three pit bulls came after her and her sister’s dogs and Kreilkamp stopped it.
She picked up the dogs and yelled at the pit bulls. Kreilkamp felt fearless, she said.
“I became a banshee,” Kreilkamp said. “It was ten minutes before it was over, but I noticed I had stepped out of my shoes so I would be completely grounded.”
Something larger than the little person she is came through, Kreilkamp said. However, it only comes through when it’s needed.
Grounding yourself and being open to the universe is the key, she said.
“We need to come back to the earth and come home,” Kreilkamp said. “Our connection is with all of the species.”
Kreilkamp still practices astrology; however, she now primarily writes for her blog, exopermaculture.com, which has about 2,000 unique visitors a day.
Kreilkamp also does community outreach for the Green Acres Permaculture Village, where she lives with property manager Rebecca Ellsworth and SPEA graduate student Leah Thill.
The village is made up of two houses and has one acre of land for animals, including cats, dogs and chickens, and the organic garden.
The most special thing about the community is it’s intergenerational, Ellsworth said.
Kreilkamp and Ellsworth are both older than 60 while the other residents are younger than 30, Ellsworth said.
A permaculture village is all about letting things go naturally as they are, Ellsworth said.
“We all depend on each other and the environment,” Ellsworth said. “You’re going with how things are naturally rather than how you think it ought to be.”
