Maja D'Aoust

"Human beings are like plants or flowers, and we're meant to go through growth stages. It's very uncomfortable for a lot of people because it means nothing's going to stay the same."

How do you describe your offering?
I don’t know if I coined the term Psycho-Divinological Readings, but I have a master's degree in psychology, so I'm a mind person and I like to think about thinking. I use divination systems, specifically Astrology, I Ching, and Tarot to shift your mind, and maybe clear out what you thought before. When I use the term psycho-divinological, I mean using divination to change your psychology specifically.

How does this work?
The first layer of my work is that I do spiritual labor for myself and spirit. As a result of that labor, I am available with what I know, and then I see what spirit sends me. I have an appointment with the person where we get information. The primary portion of that service is just giving data to assist a person in navigating their life or situation. The way that my teacher described it, is that most of my job is to get out of the way. 

Who are your teachers?
My specific form of spiritual labor is based on a combination of a lot of different techniques that I learned from my spiritual teacher, Dr. Kelvin deWolfe. The best way that I can compare it in terms of consciousness concentration is Raja Yoga.

Who is this work for?
I do it for spirit, so I don't really care who likes it, which is good. I'm the worst marketer ever because I don't have a target market and I don't advertise! If somebody needs it, spirit is going to push them in my direction.

Why do you call yourself Witch of the Dawn?
My main inspiration for that was just to show that I am working with healing modalities as opposed to curses or vengeance. I do not do hexes or curses or use magic for that purpose. I don't judge people that do, I just don't do that practice. 

What led you to this work?
I was always sick when I was little and was in bed more than at school. Because my body was so sick, I spent a lot of time in books and with my imagination. I had a lot of weird experiences during sickness that didn’t make sense and sent me on a seeking path. I would look to see where the craziest explanations of what we are experiencing were and all those answers came from religion and spirituality, places where people had pushed past the physical boundaries into other realms. I got here by traversing other realms through my own and other people's descriptions of those found in stories and mythologies. I came to understand that reality is actually not what most people accept. 

Why do you use multiple divination systems?
I use a variety of them because they all have a different feeling. The I Ching is very masculine and mental, the Tarot is very feminine and emotional, and Astrology is very data-driven and mathematical. Another way to put it is that Astrology is the clock, I Ching is the voice and Tarot is the emotion. They're all just different ways to perform the same thing, which is to come into contact with spirit.

Why do you think this work is so important?
I think that maybe our only job as human beings is to make a bridge between heaven and earth. Heaven wants earth and earth wants heaven, and people are the thing that's in the middle of that. We have to keep heaven and earth talking to each other.

Are we all responsible for that connection?
It takes a village, right? Every person has a different gift to offer, every single purpose of every human is contributing to that end in one way or another.

Do we have to do personal work?
Human beings are like plants or flowers, and we're meant to go through growth stages. It's very uncomfortable for a lot of people because it means nothing's going to stay the same. But growth is natural, and we're here to go through these spiritual initiations and labors. You have to. It's not just important, it's the thing that happens as a human being. 

What is collective change for you?
Obviously each of us has a responsibility to go through our personal growth and then we also have to do it with everybody else. We have to somehow assist the community in getting a little stronger. We aren't vacuums, we're part of a larger organism that is human beings and then we are on an even larger organism that is the earth.

What three books do you recommend?
The Little Prince still really stands up in terms of spiritual truths in children's books because it is total imagination town and it's very expanding of your awareness. I tell people to read mythological texts but instead of naming one, I'm going to say pick a culture and read its creation myth. Read an anatomy book and get to know your physical body and the system that you're cruising around in. Educate yourself on your territory. 

What's the best advice you've ever gotten?
That would be from my teacher Dr. deWolfe. His whole system is based on this single line where he says, “Be strong, so you can make other people stronger.”

What words of wisdom do you often share?
My grandfather would say this so often, “you can't help someone out of a ditch if you jump in there with them.”

Photos from Maja D'Aoust