Julie Ferwerda, author of Raising Hell, shares how one honest question about hell brought down her evangelical faith and opened the door to non-duality, reincarnation, and astrology, including a live reading of Jeromy's birth chart. It's a funny, tender conversation about deconstruction, taboo spiritual tools, and a God who can't lose you.
Why does one small crack, one honest question, bring down an entire belief system?
In this episode of Untamed Grace, Jeromy sits down with Julie Ferwerda, the author of Raising Hell: Christianity's Most Controversial Doctrine Put Under Fire, for a candid conversation about evangelical deconstruction, spiritual abuse, and what happens when you stop believing in hell. Julie grew up in a Nazarene church steeped in hell-and-damnation theology, in a home that was anything but safe. She spent years as a committed evangelical leader in youth ministry, women's ministry, and worship team, feeling like "a salesman who didn't believe in my own products." Then came a walk in the rain, a friend, a new way of reading the Bible, and one honest question: "What if I'm wrong?"
Hell went first. Julie shares how studying the Bible from Jewish perspectives, a single verse about Adam and Christ, and a year of research led her to Christian universalism and universal reconciliation, and to the conviction that there's no such thing as "lost." Then the Trinity came down too, replaced by an image she received on a silent monastery retreat: you were on the inside looking out, not the outside looking in. Her house of faith turned out to be a house of cards, and yet, in her words, "nothing bad happened." Along the way we get into Richard Rohr, non-duality, the Kabbalistic shattered mirror, a parent's picture of oneness with God, and why she put Jesus on the shelf for years until A Course in Miracles brought him back.
Then it gets adventurous. Julie makes the case for reclaiming the "taboo" tools religion taught us to fear (astrology, reincarnation, New Thought, and the Law of Attraction), arguing the tool isn't the problem, the consciousness you bring to it is. She also shares her take on life as a playful simulation, and the one test she asked God for in the early days of her deconstruction: does this lead to the love and liberation of all people? For the finale, she reads Jeromy's birth chart live, touching on identity, old wounds, and the question of building a sense of home within yourself. Whether you see astrology as a soul blueprint, a mirror, or just a good conversation starter, it makes for a surprisingly tender ending.
Whether you're deconstructing, already on the other side, questioning hell, curious about non-duality and Christian universalism, or wondering if it's okay to explore what you were told to fear, this conversation is for you. You can't get lost. Bring your curiosity, and clutch your steering wheel.
JULIE SUBSTACK: https://julieferwerda.substack.com/
RAISING HELL BOOK https://raisinghellbook.com/
00:00:00 Jeromy Johnson: My guest today is Julie Ferwerda, author of Raising Hell. And after years as a committed evangelical leader and teacher, Julie began asking questions that eventually challenged far more than her view of hell. Her journey has taken her into conversations about nonduality, consciousness, astrology, and that God may be far bigger and closer than many of us were ever taught. At the end, Julie's actually going to be doing a live astrology reading for me as well, so stay tuned. Stick around to the end for that. Uh, it should be fun. I have no idea what it's going to say. Julie, welcome.
00:00:40 Julie Ferwarda: Thank you. It's so great to be here.
00:00:42 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, I'm looking forward to our reading. You've hinted at a few things. And what did you say? You said this is, uh, not a strange one, but a.
00:00:49 Julie Ferwarda: Very interesting, very unique, very unique.
00:00:54 Jeromy Johnson: Well, I felt that way my entire life. Oh, good.
00:00:57 Julie Ferwarda: You might feel heard.
00:00:59 Jeromy Johnson: Well, I'm looking forward to it. You and I first got connected, man. Like a decade and a half ago, I saved you had written a book called Raising Hell, which raised a lot of hell in some circles.
00:01:10 Julie Ferwarda: Oh, yes, raising hell. Christianity's most controversial doctrine put under fire. I wrote that sixteen years ago. Can you believe it? Sometimes it feels like forever ago, and other times it seems like this journey has been unfolding pretty quickly.
00:01:23 Jeromy Johnson: So how did that change things for you when once you wrote that book, everything changed.
00:01:28 Julie Ferwarda: My entire life.
00:01:29 Jeromy Johnson: Really.
00:01:29 Julie Ferwarda: Was. I guess you could say a Ground Zero event, but not a bad one. Like it was an absolute rebuilding of everything that I ever knew. But I didn't know in those days how it was going to look, because all I knew was I was questioning hell.
00:01:44 Jeromy Johnson: Okay, well, let's go back. Can we just hear a little bit more of your story?
00:01:48 Julie Ferwarda: A little bit about my story is I grew up in the Nazarene church, and it was a very heavy with hell and damnation. Confess all your sins every day. Or if God comes back and you forgot to confess something, you, you know, you could be the one left behind by the thief in the night, which they showed that that video.
00:02:07 Jeromy Johnson: Oh, the thief of the night. Such a classic. Gosh.
00:02:10 Julie Ferwarda: Oh, I know. The problem is, I mean, aside from all the terror that I had spiritually, I also had an abusive father at home. So as a child, I just felt like I didn't have a safe place and I didn't have any sense growing up of a love relationship with God. I had a fear of God that was just a very insecure way to grow up. And I feel like it was spiritual abuse, you know?
00:02:36 Jeromy Johnson: And your mom and dad were were part of the Nazarene church as well.
00:02:39 Julie Ferwarda: Not my dad. My mom brought us up in the Nazarene church, and I think that was a decision she later came to regret. But at the time, she was just doing the best she could as a mom, raising her kids in church by herself. You know, it was like the most active church. And she just kind of picked it based on that.
00:02:55 Jeromy Johnson: Do you think your experience with your dad kind of fed into your view of God?
00:03:00 Julie Ferwarda: Oh, absolutely. It was a very consistent image of God. You know, the violent God at home and the violent God in church and in the Bible that I read growing up. I will just say that over time, the true God started slowly emerging in my consciousness. From the time I was a teenager, and just very patiently and slowly unraveling all of the distortions and misinformation that I had about his character. And a lot of that was through loss and failure. You know, when I got into my twenties, I felt like a salesman who didn't believe in my own products. And that's kind of how I described myself. Because even by then, like, I was starting to have a little inkling that there was this loving God image. And I didn't I didn't continue down the Nazarene church path. In fact, my mom and I stopped going there when I was a teenager and I started getting into more favorable, you know, just kind of nondenominational Bible churches that taught a more loving view of God. I started trying to deconstruct some of these tenacious ideas of God in my head. And I did notice in my twenties that no matter how devout I felt in my faith, I read all the books. I was in the Bible all the time. I went to church every Sunday, and I just felt like love wasn't really in my heart and it wasn't really working for me, you know? And I looked around at people I saw in church, including leadership pastors, deacons, and I just noticed such a dichotomy between the way they live their lives and what they professed from up front.
00:04:29 Jeromy Johnson: You mentioned like you were a salesperson selling something you didn't believe. So you were starting to feel this, this cracking taking place between what you were proposing with your mouth, what you were living versus what was going on inside of you. When, when did you realize that something wasn't quite adding up? You were mentioning like maybe in your twenties? And were you in leadership at that time?
00:04:48 Julie Ferwarda: Yes, right out of high school, I got into a Baptist program in college called Campus Ventures and Disciples for Christ or something like that. And it was a very intensive program where it was very much brainwashing into discipleship and leadership. And so that's how I thought, you know, in my life that I was here to make disciples and to win the world for Christ. And so immediately, of course, yeah. Immediately after college, I moved to Florida with my first husband and we got into youth ministry. But I was also in women's ministry and I was in worship team ministry. Like I did a lot of different things. Um, but again, I felt like I was the picture perfect Christian, you know, I did everything right. And I still felt like this extreme lack in my heart of love for people and for myself. I had a lot of self-hatred probably coming out of my childhood and a lot of suffering, internal suffering around the awareness that love wasn't changing me. And then, like I said, I would look at people outside of myself and I would see that love wasn't really changing them either. And I just felt like something was terribly wrong with religion. And, you know, my version of Christianity, I just felt like something was missing. There was a point in my life were in my early thirties. I was on a walk in the rain, and I was just crying my eyes out over this realization of how I didn't know how to love, and that I couldn't put love into my own heart for people. And I didn't know why it wasn't there.
00:06:18 Jeromy Johnson: Did you grow up with that theology that maybe I did, that thought that you were you were evil. You were a worm. You were absolutely. You were despicable and despised in God's eyes. It sounds like like that affected everything. Like your view of others, your view of self. If I can't love myself, then I'm projecting what I feel about myself to everyone. Like you're a worm, you're despised, you're wicked, you're vile. Right. How do you love people like that?
00:06:44 Julie Ferwarda: Absolutely. And I think that also with children, when you're abused, children don't have any ability to reason why they're being abused and they tend to think it's their fault. So that was the perfect narrative with being this filthy, despised sinner saved by grace. What a résumé. You know, singing it. Like, how often did we sing that song? I think I just have so much self-hatred because I thought my dad was abusive, but my mom, um, had abandonment, emotional abandonment tendencies as a child because, of course, she was trying to escape my dad and she buried herself in her career. But that means she buried herself from us, too.
00:07:21 Jeromy Johnson: MM.
00:07:22 Julie Ferwarda: I think I just felt growing up, never seen. And I felt like I didn't deserve to be seen or loved, you know, because I was such a terrible sinner.
00:07:32 Jeromy Johnson: Did you feel like the church or the church leaders? That was a safe place to bring up those issues of abuse and abandonment?
00:07:38 Julie Ferwarda: Oh, no, I didn't even actually, I wasn't even aware of abandonment until like five years ago. I think when you're a child again, you just you don't know what's normal. And I knew abuse didn't feel normal. But in those days especially, it wasn't talked about. And I didn't feel like I had the ability to have a voice or tell anyone what I was going through. And if anything, there was a time in grade school where maybe I was acting out. My mom had me put through psych evaluations, and I was very angry at her about this because I felt like what she was doing was scapegoating. You know, she was turning me into the problem instead of looking, why does this child have behavioral problems?
00:08:17 Jeromy Johnson: We just need to fix the behavior.
00:08:18 Julie Ferwarda: Right.
00:08:19 Jeromy Johnson: And then she'll be fine.
00:08:20 Julie Ferwarda: Exactly.
00:08:20 Jeromy Johnson: So you're you're in your thirties. You've been doing youth ministry. Women's ministry, of course, because you're a woman, you can't teach adults or men. Right.
00:08:27 Julie Ferwarda: Which I was turned down. You know, I tried to teach like a couples Bible study in a Baptist church and they said, no, I it's so ridiculous.
00:08:36 Jeromy Johnson: How dare you, Julie, how.
00:08:38 Julie Ferwarda: Dare you teach men?
00:08:40 Jeromy Johnson: So you're in your thirties and you break down crying. Was that the pivot point?
00:08:44 Julie Ferwarda: It was just little milestones along the way. Like, you know, the salesman who didn't believe in my own products and I couldn't share my faith. It was in my twenties and then the thirties. I don't know how to love. And I started questioning the church model at that time. Then I got into studying the Bible from Jewish perspectives with a friend. For the first time, I was able to start critiquing this idea of inerrant, authoritative Bible view through Western lenses, because I realized that most of the people teaching the Bible from Western lenses had no idea what they were talking about, and it made me just start being open to what if I'm wrong? And that was really the big crack right there. What if I'm wrong? I realized as I started down that path, how much I had been brainwashed to only see the Bible a certain way, and that includes dismissing contradictions for the first time. I just started allowing in a little bit of light of critiquing my own belief system. And I always did have this belief that if God is big enough to make me, you know, someone with questions that he's big enough to handle my questions. I wasn't really scared to ask per se. Despite the fact that I'd always been taught I need a man to interpret the Bible for me. And, you know, if I start having any questions, especially if there are too persistent or too contrary, like I should run that by my pastor. But I'm kind of an independent thinker, and I wasn't really dissuaded by any of that once the crack opened in my mind.
00:10:18 Jeromy Johnson: And for you, the crack was the theology of hell or eternal damnation and separation. And you said that this message of raising hell, you encountered it about a year later. What did what led to like, really started questioning that theology of hell? And how did that crack just break open?
00:10:36 Julie Ferwarda: Right. The girl I was studying with, she started showing me these verses because she happened upon a universal reconciliation website. Initially, it came through some verses, I think as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive was probably that first verse. And I was like, wait a second, that's putting the same, you know, the all who died in Adam next to the all who died in Christ. How come I've never noticed this verse before? Like I'd read through the Bible many times. I used to take people through the Bible in a one year Bible discussion groups, and I was. And I just started seeing all these verses that I'd never seen before, and I was. And that also showed me the power of brainwashing, the fact that you can read your Bible, but your whole life and read right over plain, simple English things that don't even sink into your head because you aren't thinking of them that way. You know what I'm saying?
00:11:27 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. And that verse is amazing because once you discover it, once you see what it's saying, our old theology actually made Adam way more powerful than Jesus. Because if Adam's sin applies to everyone without them choosing it, without them knowing about it, like they're just born into it, and yet being a made in life in Christ is a very conscious belief choice that only a small percentage of people are going to actually make. But yet here it is, like all are made alive.
00:11:56 Julie Ferwarda: Even that one verse. But then I started noticing verses everywhere, and I ended up compiling a document that was like twenty pages of verses throughout the Bible that indicate that, you know, no one is ever lost. And I was like, how did I never see these before?
00:12:12 Jeromy Johnson: And this is why like, they don't want women to teach because they might actually start thinking, you're so dangerous. It's so jezebels. I know it all started when we let you guys, like, started to read books. You know, that was so true. That was the first mistake.
00:12:27 Julie Ferwarda: Women are just way too inclusive and they tend to use both sides of their brain. So that is very dangerous.
00:12:32 Jeromy Johnson: It is. It's. And so you just started compiling all these verses and then you you wrote this book, Raising Hell Christianity's most Controversial doctrine put under fire. I love the the play of words.
00:12:45 Julie Ferwarda: Yeah. I studied this for a whole year. And interestingly, at the time that I first started having questions, My husband said to me, wait a second. A year ago, I brought a verse to you and I showed it to you and I said, hey, I'm starting to question hell, what do you think? And you laughed at me and dismissed me and said, get out of town. Like, don't be ridiculous. Of course hell is true. Yeah. And so like the year before, you know, he was already questioning. So, um, he did kind of put it on the back burner, you know, when I shot him down. Poor guy. But then as soon as it was my idea, of course we had to, you know, start looking into it. But anyway, he and I are both intelligent, educated, rational people. And we said, hey, you know, if there's any merit to this whole thing not being true, it should be obvious to both of us without going down the same path. So he and I actually made a determination that we would go our own separate ways of study and inquiry and see where we landed. And we both landed at the same place. So, um, I spent an entire year researching and in that day, it wasn't just handed to you in dozens and dozens of books that are written on the topic. Now, you had to go pick a little bit from this website and a little bit from that book and put it all together. At the end of the year, it just kind of flowed out of me like water onto paper. Like I had written three other books before that one, and they were so much work, but this one, it felt like channeled or something. It just came out of me so easily and so simply, you know, I was able to just knit so many different things together to with the Jewish perspectives and the history and the scripture and the philosophical, philosophical perspectives. I just realized throughout that year, I would have these deep doubts that would overwhelm me at times. Like, how could so many people be so wrong and so misled? I'm standing so, you know, single handedly against fifteen hundred years of tradition, church tradition here where pastors and scholars and political leaders and church leaders, they all say the same thing. And who am I to come in? And suddenly I'm turning billions of people's belief system on its head. How am I so brash to think that I'm. I've got something figured out that they don't. You know, like these deep, deep doubts. That's why I wrote Raising Hell. Like I take every objection that I had along that path of doubt. And I unraveled it and showed why hell just can't be true. It was a letter to myself, but it was also just a proof, you know, for me to keep coming back to during that season of doubt. And eventually I grew out of the doubt. It has so much gravity on you when you've been raised to think this way and when you think the whole world is wrong. But then I was like, when is the world ever been right? When have the masses and the predominant culture ever been right? So that kind of helped.
00:15:31 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. You question hell and people go, how can you be a Christian? Like it's crazy. Like it's no longer about Jesus. It's about this place. Because I got that. Like when I started saying, I don't, there is not a hell. There's not this eternal place of torment. And people are like, how can you call yourself a Christian? Did you get that too?
00:15:54 Julie Ferwarda: Oh yeah, for sure. Because you're going against what how they perceive the Bible was written. So it's just interesting to me though, the territorialism that people have over their belief system. I found it ironic that, you know, Christians say God so loved the world and, you know, he wants everyone to be saved. But as soon as you say everyone is saved, it's like the claws and fangs come out and they become protective, as if it's a special club. And only the people who've done it the way that they say you can do it should be allowed in. One of the objections that people say is, um, what did Jesus die for if hell isn't true? You know, I've often used the analogy that if a hotel is burning and Jesus runs in and rescues three people, is that more a powerful and effective than if he rescues everyone in the hotel? You know? But what Christianity is saying is Jesus only got two or three out and everyone else died, but he was victorious. But the fact is, if you say he got everyone out, suddenly they're they're offended by that.
00:16:55 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.
00:16:56 Julie Ferwarda: And what did Jesus die for then? If everyone is saved.
00:16:59 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Where he just put out the fire for everyone. And everyone lived.
00:17:04 Julie Ferwarda: Yeah, but but no, he didn't die for anything. If if it wasn't just a special few, is what they're saying.
00:17:10 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. I think a lot of people enter this phase of, of awakening I'd like to use, but it's also deconstruction because there is a deconstruction of your old beliefs as well. A lot of people enter through that question of hell, but people's bricks are are different. People fear. Like with one brick comes out of that wall, the whole house collapses. And in part that's true. In your experience, what actually happened when when your house of faith collapsed?
00:17:36 Julie Ferwarda: So first of all, I found that it wasn't a house of bricks. It was a house of cards. If anyone here has ever tried to put cards into a house like, you know, just the slightest little wind or anything, it blows the whole thing down for me. Nothing happened. But also everything happened. Nothing bad happened. You know, I think that's the boogeyman in the closet that we all fear. It's like, well, as soon as you start questioning or doubting your beliefs, the whole thing's gonna collapse. And you don't want that. Like, you're going to be an existential crisis and end up in a mental institution or something. But nothing bad happened. Yeah, I waited, I was patient, but also everything changed because as soon as the house of cards fell and literally just about everything fell, because what I realized was almost all, if not all, of the Christian doctrines that I had come to believe throughout my lifetime were not objectively true. If I was patient enough, a lot of the things that I had learned were true a different way. And I can give you an example.
00:18:40 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Please do.
00:18:41 Julie Ferwarda: Um. The Trinity. So after hell, Trinity was probably the next thing, and I read several books. There was one called When Jesus Became God, and I started learning about how the Trinity idea came together as through bloodshed and force, I found that historically there wasn't any basis for the modern Christian view of the Trinity. And actually the older tradition that came out of Jesus and the apostles was that the Trinity is the whole God family. God the Father. The son is all people for all time in the spirit is that force that moves in and through us. So one of my existential life wounds is separation. You know, just feeling alone and feeling separate, not feeling like I have a home or any deep connection to others. You know how I told you there were these milestones along the way? Yeah, there was one of them, I think in my early forties, that happened where I was at a retreat at a Benedictine monastery in California. And I just had, like a powerful revelation of God. It was a no talking monastery. So we were there for several days, and I was able to quiet myself enough to hear. But God clearly spoke to me. You were on the inside looking out, not on the outside looking in. And that was a really powerful thing because even in my mind, I saw a triangle like the like you would think the Trinity and it looked like a window, but I was from the inside looking out. And so this matched what I was learning later about the Trinity being we are included. And it's not like we're just these outside lowly sinners. Again, looking at God the Son and the spirit in hopes that they'll throw us some crumbs. It's actually, I am part of this God. I am part of the God and the son. You know I am the son, but I'm in this holy family together. And I believe Jesus was trying to teach us this in his writings. So all of those doctrines and beliefs that I felt like had been distorted, I could find a different, higher view on them later that made them true from a higher perspective, if that makes sense.
00:20:45 Jeromy Johnson: It does. He almost had to put them on the shelf for a while. So you're saying with the Trinity, it's almost like there's God, the children, and the spirit?
00:20:53 Julie Ferwarda: Yeah, exactly. Like we are a part of this family. It's not like we're outside of them. What you just said about patience is the key word here, because Christianity is so intent on certainty and making sure you've got it all your I's and cross all your t's, and you align with their statement of faith, all thirty five thousand of them. Um, when you unravel and deconstruct all of this, the most important thing you can do is create a sense of mental and spiritual safety around yourself, knowing that the one certainty we should have is we are safe in God. God loves us. We can't go too far. There's no such thing as lost. There's only just. You're at a point on your journey, and you need to be patient and not just latch on to the next thing that's going to make you feel mentally safe, because it's probably not true anyway. And just live in the question and in the wonder. And don't be scared of that.
00:21:48 Jeromy Johnson: It's funny you mentioned that separation was a big part of your story. I can see that from your experience with your dad, also your experience with your mom, but then also the theology of separation, which is central to the evangelical message. You are separated from God.
00:22:05 Julie Ferwarda: Absolutely.
00:22:06 Jeromy Johnson: And so then you're also feeling separated from yourself because you're not taught to trust yourself, to trust your intuition. So you're separated from yourself. You're separate from God. You view people who aren't Christians as others. You view them as separated. And so you're spending your almost your entire existence in this place of separation. I'm assuming you have stopped seeing yourself as separated. And so if so, if that's true, what has changed with that simple shift of understanding that you are not separated.
00:22:36 Julie Ferwarda: Interestingly, looking at your birth chart, I think you know about this. This feeling of separation as well, which we'll talk about that more, but spoiler alert. I'm just trying to pique your curiosity a little more. But anyway, I think early on in my deconstruction process, I came across the writings of Richard Rohr. He's a Franciscan Catholic priest. I resonated so deeply with his works, and also many things he said were affirming many of the inner feelings I was having about my relationship with God. And so I was really feeling validated and affirmed in the path of Nondualism Nondualism. It's like a worldview. It's where you realize that everything is in God and there's no more to, you know, it's now one two, meaning we come into this story here of dualistic opposites of everything, you know, black and white, hot and cold up and down, like everything in this realm, is here to kind of deceive us into thinking that we have an opposite or that we are separate. But the actual truth is that everything is in God. That is the radical path of non-dualism. And it is a path that takes years to contemplate and assimilate. You know, at first it's just like a cognitive idea. The layers of deception and illusion inside of us and distortion are so tenacious. It takes years of daily practice, of contemplating what does it mean to be one with God? What does it mean that I'm safe in God? What does it mean that there is no separation? And it's a very slow, careful, methodical journey, I guess, of being open to God, teaching you what that means to the point where you actually can bring it into your very bones and, and live it live from that place and believe it. Mhm. What about you? Have you felt like you've been on that non-dual path as well.
00:24:35 Jeromy Johnson: I have, and I think it started out with this idea of more universal reconciliation or more like we just were never separated from God. And so if that's true, what else is true? This idea of being separated from myself, of, of learning to trust myself more, learning to trust that inner voice more. When I realized that I was not separated from God, nor was I ever separated from God, it also viewed all other people as not being separated from God. So then therefore I can view them much more as equals, like I'm human. First was a big part because growing up evangelical, you were Christian first. Uh, you might have been a dad second. You might have been like a son. Third. But human was like, you didn't want to admit that you were human because the human was flawed. Human was was evil. Human was wicked. Separate, separate. And so now human is first because that is a space of connection that we all have. So yeah, I think I'm going more and more down that road of we aren't separated. And so after death, I don't think there is this idea of separation that's taking place. Julie. I can see some people having a slight knee jerk reaction to that phrase, one with God. What does that phrase mean to you now?
00:25:57 Julie Ferwarda: What does that mean for me? Um, for me, it has been a very slow assimilation process in my psyche, just because of the deep sense of separation that I've had. But for me, it's just realizing, like I said, ultimately there is nothing that can separate me from the love of God. You know, I am safe, I am held, I'm part of him. And I think for me, the parent child journey has been the most useful in understanding this because my own children are out of me, but they're also themselves. And like, there's nothing about them that didn't come from me, right? They grew inside of me, out of me. But I also gave them birth to go on carrying on on their own journey. And I feel like that's what the divine has done with us. But I, as a healthy, loving parent, I would never not see my children as my children and I would never stop loving them. There's nothing my children could do that would lessen my love for them or make me want to punish them, especially endlessly, you know? Yeah, I just see them as full me, but also full themselves, fully themselves. And to me, that's been the closest I can come to explaining it.
00:27:08 Jeromy Johnson: I like that birth analogy because they have part of you in them, but they're not you like they're not Julie, but they do have Julie in them. That's kind of my view of God. Like, I'm not God, but I do have God in me. I do have that spirit, that energy, that that part of God.
00:27:26 Julie Ferwarda: Even the fear, though, that I. I think you might still have. And some people have of saying I am God. That's a valid thing because we aren't, you know, in the Jewish understanding of God, there's two aspects of God. There's the transcendent aspect and the immanent aspect. And the way that I could best accept that I am God is I am the imminent God having an experience of time and space as a separate being. However, the same consciousness that is imminently in creation is the same consciousness that is also transcendently over creation. It's just one expression of it. And like in the Jewish Kabbalah, they talk about the shattered mirror. You know, if you took a giant mirror and you shattered it into billions and billions of pieces, the image that's in the mirror is the God. Each of those pieces is carrying an image of that god, but yet it's its own thing to the idea, through the Jewish Kabbalah, of restoring us to that consciousness as God is healing and repairing the world, it's teaching all those billions of shattered pieces that they are part of the one, and they're still reflecting that one.
00:28:35 Jeromy Johnson: So it's almost like what we're experiencing now is a physical manifestation of God, of that spirit, of that energy.
00:28:42 Julie Ferwarda: Exactly. And, you know, you could call that the collective consciousness having individual experiences, but we all still come from that collective consciousness. And that is kind of like the transcendent God choosing to experience his creation through unlimited perspectives.
00:28:59 Jeromy Johnson: In our conversation before you were talking about, you gave yourself permission to explore all taboos. There's nothing taboo anymore. And so once you stopped asking, am I allowed to explore this and started asking, hey, is there truth here if I explore this?
00:29:16 Julie Ferwarda: All right. So the thing is, it's again, this non-dualism has to really work itself into your consciousness where you start feeling that you have the safety to look under every rock or behind every bush for truth. And the fact is, we do live in a magical universe, and people are so afraid of powers they don't understand. But the reason why they're afraid of those powers is because those powers have been concealed from us. The powers that be in this world want to take away our ability to truly commune with God in some of the most meaningful and powerful ways. Let's just take astrology as one example. There's so much power in astrology because it really is a soul's blueprint of what your soul in this incarnation. And yes, I do believe in reincarnation because to me, it's the only thing that makes sense of a soul learning what it needs to learn across more than one experience. There's no way we can learn what we need to learn. And as all you have to do is look at people who haven't awakened to their connection to the divine, they still need time to work this out. The astrology chart. Your natal chart that you're born with is a really beautiful kind of set of soul, soul instructions of what you came here to do. It doesn't say how it's going to work out in your life, but it's the energies you came in with to learn across lifetimes and kind of where you're at on a trajectory. So it's a very potent tool. But, you know, Christianity came in at some point, not in the beginning, because in the beginning it was part of orthodoxy. But they said, oh, this is too powerful. Like, we can't have these slaves figuring out that they have a soul blueprint and that they actually have these interactions with energies of the planetary bodies. They had to conceal that from us. So pretty much what I found was every taboo had a lot of power in restoring my divine spark within myself and my connection to the divine. The problem is, the powers that be emphasize the darkness that can come out of these tools. And I will just say darkness and light can come out of any tool. The tool isn't the problem, it's the consciousness you bring to that tool. There's light and dark in everything, you know.
00:31:25 Jeromy Johnson: Yep.
00:31:25 Julie Ferwarda: Everything you do in your daily life, you're choosing to bring a consciousness of lightness or darkness to it. It's no different with the tools. That's what I found in my journey. I have positive intentions of the love and liberation of all beings. Is my intention of that I bring to any tool.
00:31:42 Jeromy Johnson: That's a really cool way of putting it, because we've really been taught to fear the tools like meditation, being quiet, being still, like, no, it's going to open yourself up to demons, and demons are going to come in and but it's just a tool. It's almost like the internet. The internet can be used for good. It can be used for evil.
00:31:58 Julie Ferwarda: Absolutely.
00:32:00 Jeromy Johnson: Did Jesus survive? Um, your deconstruction and if so, like when Jesus reappeared on the other side. Uh, who was he?
00:32:08 Julie Ferwarda: Wow, that's a loaded question.
00:32:09 Jeromy Johnson: So is it.
00:32:12 Speaker 5: I have no, uh.
00:32:13 Jeromy Johnson: No end game with that question.
00:32:16 Julie Ferwarda: Jesus and I, we took a nice, long hiatus from each other that was initiated by me. Um, yeah.
00:32:23 Jeromy Johnson: Like elf on the shelf for a while there, right?
00:32:25 Julie Ferwarda: Exactly. Partly because I didn't know what to do with Jesus for a long time. And that's because I saw the distortions that Christianity brought to Jesus. And the thing is, Christianity is Jesus. But in my opinion, Christianity is a false Jesus. This is not a victorious Jesus. He's not speaking of Nondualism. You know, the real Jesus is a victorious Jesus that is pointing the way for salvation for all. And he is teaching Nondualism he's teaching that we are all part of God and that we can't be lost. And so I had to put Jesus on the shelf for a while and I said, listen, bro, if you're.
00:33:03 Jeromy Johnson: If.
00:33:04 Julie Ferwarda: You're real and you know, if there is a real Jesus and this Jesus is teaching a true gospel, you'll have to reveal yourself to me. And honestly, slowly, over time, Jesus wasn't in a hurry because he knew there was nothing to lose. There was not a risk, you know.
00:33:20 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.
00:33:21 Julie Ferwarda: He just took his sweet time showing up.
00:33:23 Jeromy Johnson: He wasn't offended that he was put on a shelf. He's like, no, I'll sit here. I'll wait for you.
00:33:29 Julie Ferwarda: Yeah. He he was a big boy about it all. And he ended up kind of revealing himself largely to me through A Course in Miracles, which has been a fun read. You know, like I said, I've. I haven't been afraid of anything. But of course, in miracles, I was a little resistant to just because I was like, I don't want another Bible feeling text. And also it just sounded a little ridiculous. But once I started reading it, I was like, this is profound and this sounds like Jesus. And since then, I feel like he has been revealing himself and kind of healing that little breakup that we had.
00:34:02 Jeromy Johnson: How long ago was this?
00:34:04 Julie Ferwarda: I only started reading A Course in Miracles over the last year, so it's been about a year.
00:34:08 Jeromy Johnson: Wow. Jesus was on the shelf for a long time there all.
00:34:11 Julie Ferwarda: It was a long time, but part of that is because I went into a nursing career, you know, at a later time in life, that took all my attention for like at least ten years. So Jesus was kind of not a priority for me to figure out for a while. It probably would have come sooner if I had just been sitting around eating bonbons. It's been a good journey, and looking back, I think Jesus has walked with me all along and was never offended. And I figured honestly, while Jesus was on my mental shelf, I knew that if Jesus was real, he wasn't going to be offended that he would understand exactly why I was going through what I was going through and what I needed. And so it all worked itself out.
00:34:49 Jeromy Johnson: No, that's what I found is a nothing from the heavens came down and lightning bolted my soul. Now, there were social and cultural impacts, right? Like I imagine you lost friends, you lost churches and stuff like that. So when you said like nothing bad happened, there were some things that happened, but it wasn't like this cataclysmic collapse of your world and your soul.
00:35:11 Julie Ferwarda: You know, that's a good point you make. I'll just say for me, I was orchestrated into a life where I didn't have as much to lose as some people. And so I don't credit myself for that. Like being so bold and risky with a lot of things I've done because I didn't really have the family connections and also just the life that I've had with so much separation and isolation from people, I haven't had a deep need to hold on to people's approval. And that just makes me unique in this path. And that's why I've been able to do what I do. But I understand the path of other people who are very entrenched in meaningful relationships and why it's so hard. So I don't dismiss that or diminish that at all. That's a very hard path.
00:35:54 Jeromy Johnson: And what's cool is I imagine that wall that you had between you and people has come down a lot more, I'm assuming, now.
00:36:01 Julie Ferwarda: Yeah. And I feel like now that I understand more of like new Thought and Law of Attraction. Speaking of taboo, I see now that you truly do attract what you're putting into the universe. And so for me, I've attracted a lot of souls on a similar path. And it's really beautiful. And even I run two Airbnbs in the mountains of Puerto Rico. Right now, ninety percent of our guests have either deconstructed their faith or are in the process of it. And they're very open, amazing humans. And we just have the best conversations. So it feels like I attract those people here too, you know?
00:36:35 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. I just had a conversation over coffee of someone who is in a very similar space as you and me. Do you feel like that there is this bigger awakening that's taking place right now?
00:36:45 Julie Ferwarda: Definitely. I think even over when I first wrote Raising Hell, that was just such a very small amount of people that were interested. And I feel like especially after Covid and all the injustice and deception and everything around that, which, you know, I don't want to open that can of worms and also politics. I feel like people are finally starting to question that. They are just being played by people in places of authority, and that's carrying over into them, questioning even their their faith and the leaders in their faith. I sense a real opening where people are starting to think for themselves more and not just trust whatever they're being told. It just feels like maybe we're in a really important time right now in history.
00:37:26 Jeromy Johnson: I think so. I get that sense. So your your old version of Julie, your evangelical children teaching woman teaching Julie, what's something about God, reality or consciousness that you believe today that would have sounded completely absurd.
00:37:42 Julie Ferwarda: I mean, what isn't there in my life right now that my old self.
00:37:48 Jeromy Johnson: Okay, okay. Choose one that we can't.
00:37:50 Julie Ferwarda: Lie.
00:37:50 Jeromy Johnson: To. Why?
00:37:50 Julie Ferwarda: I really challenge people because nobody will look at themselves of ten years ago and think you're the same person. So that's why I've always held things that come to me that just seem ludicrous or outlandish. I try not to dismiss them anymore, but just sort of sit with them and open wonder until I get more information, because I've realized how much of things I dismissed in the past that later I was like, oh yeah, that does make sense. So I would say the thing that is just really bonkers that I've come to embrace in the recent years is I think we are living in some kind of a simulation or a game, and our consciousness came into this realm to have an experience of forgetfulness. To me, that's also why it would be ludicrous to be punished for not figuring out the truth, because I think we put ourselves into a realm of dualities for the experience of duality, also human emotion and waking ourselves up, finding our way back out of this game. There's a really good Rick and Morty comic on YouTube about this. You know, where he goes into a virtual reality game and he lives out this whole lifetime, and then he falls and dies in his virtual reality, glasses come off and he's back in like a video arcade. And I think this realm is meant to be more playful and we take it so serious. And that has really helped me, you know, with a lot of my dark times, just to let go of this narrative that it's just so serious and heavy and that I'm just here to play and have fun. And as I awaken to my indelible connection to God as part of God, I'm here to be a co-creator. But I have to be conscious of that fact first.
00:39:29 Jeromy Johnson: That line that you just said, that this is just meant to be more playful. That sounds so freeing. We're just meant to explore and play and enjoy this space and grow. And that's a really cool way of putting it. We'll dive into my reading here in a second, but some people might be feeling like they're losing their faith. They don't know what's left. They might be questioning things, but what's what's one thing that you wish somebody had told you earlier? Or what would you go and tell, um, yourself who was going through that?
00:39:58 Julie Ferwarda: The thing that I write about the most right now, based on feedback from people throughout this whole journey of Reconstruction of my faith is just. Again, the fear that you can go too far or get too out in the weeds or get deceived again. Get lost. Lose your way. First of all, it's a contained story. So you can't get lost. You can't walk out of the story. You know God always knows where you are or God the universe spirit. And I guess that is the most comforting thing is if you have a curiosity about something like, don't be afraid of that. If anything, to whenever you have fear, look that in the face and ask, why am I having this fear? Like, is there something valid behind this? Or is this just my old programming trying to keep me from some kind of liberation? You know, in in the early days of my deconstruction, I asked God to give me a touchstone to make sure that I felt safe and that I wasn't getting misled or out getting in the weeds. Yeah. And the thing he gave me was ask everything that you want to look into. pursue study. Is this thing leading to the love and liberation of all people? And if it is, then it's a good and safe path. And if it's if there's anything about it at any point on the path where it stops leading to love and liberation, then, you know, time to leave that path.
00:41:19 Jeromy Johnson: So you're saying it's all about love? Geez. Go figure. I feel like there was someone a few thousand years ago that mentioned that.
00:41:26 Julie Ferwarda: And the liberation, let's not forget, because everything in our realm is it's trying to control us and contain us and confine us and strap us in, you know, control our thoughts, control our spiritual development, control everything about us. And so God is liberation. And that's one of the things that I think he wants us to know.
00:41:48 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Most systems, whether it's political or religious or whatever, right? They cannot have individuals. They can't have people thinking independently and for themselves because then that system stops being needed.
00:42:02 Julie Ferwarda: But that's the game board. Like they're here to do that. They're here to fool us into thinking that we're slaves. So even then, it's playful, like they're just doing their job to keep us in a game. And as soon as we all wake up, the game's over. So, you know, they don't want that. They want it to stay a game.
00:42:19 Jeromy Johnson: So speaking of not being afraid of curiosity. Let's dive into this. So one thing I've learned from doing this podcast is that growth often begins the moment we're willing to get curious. In that spirit, clutch your steering wheels. Let's take a look at my astrology chart.
00:42:40 Julie Ferwarda: That sounds great. All right, so you have a lot of very interesting things. And we're just going to focus on like about four or five really interesting things in your chart.
00:42:50 Jeromy Johnson: Okay.
00:42:51 Julie Ferwarda: Now the beautiful thing about a natal chart is it's like a thumbprint. Everyone's is unique. It doesn't matter. Even if two twins are born, they're going to be a few minutes apart and it's going to change something in their chart. The little circle in the middle of the chart there is you in the hospital when you were taking your first breath of life and what the sky was doing around you, where all the planets were arranged.
00:43:13 Jeromy Johnson: Okay.
00:43:14 Julie Ferwarda: So the first thing I notice is that there's a little sun up there at the top of the chart, and it's in at twenty nine degrees. Pisces.
00:43:22 Jeromy Johnson: Let's see, little sun, it's got a.
00:43:25 Julie Ferwarda: Like what looks like a four right under it. And it's a little circle with a circle in the.
00:43:30 Jeromy Johnson: It's a little the boob.
00:43:31 Julie Ferwarda: Yeah. The boob. Yep. That's the one.
00:43:33 Jeromy Johnson: Perfect. Okay.
00:43:35 Julie Ferwarda: That's your sun sign. And a sun sign is basically like you think of the sun in the sky. It's sort of the vitality, the bright and shining source of a person. Like the biggest thing about you that people see, they might also compare it to the ego.
00:43:51 Jeromy Johnson: Okay.
00:43:51 Julie Ferwarda: But in general, it's, it's your life force in this life and how you shine yourself into this world. And a twenty nine degree Pisces is a very rare placement because it's the very last little spoke on the wheel of the entire three hundred and sixty degree wheel. It's the very last position which. What that means is Aries is the first. And if you see a right next to Aries, where it looks like little Ram sign there at the top.
00:44:19 Jeromy Johnson: Uh-uh.
00:44:20 Julie Ferwarda: Aries is it's called the House of I am, and it's basically the start of a journey, the initiation of a journey all about developing your sense of self. And you're at the very opposite of that. There you are at the end of a cycle. And what that means is that I'm guessing that you have had throughout your life, like the feeling of being an old soul, maybe feeling density in this realm, immense depth within yourself, a lot of compassion.
00:44:47 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, yeah. I've always been very internal, felt very different from other people, like very deep thinker.
00:44:55 Julie Ferwarda: Well, also Pisces, one of the things about it, it's sort of a dissolution of self because a piscean person is so committed to the whole that they kind of lose themselves in it. And because of that, they can have kind of like lack of boundaries or wear their heart on their sleeve. But just this idea of I'm here for others, not for myself. Have you felt that way?
00:45:17 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, to a certain degree, in fact. I mean, a lot of my trajectory has been, well, pastoring, right? Helping people. Um, now a podcast, right? Like putting this out there for, for others.
00:45:28 Julie Ferwarda: By the way, some people say that a twenty nine degree Pisces is ending the reincarnation cycle, which I can't attest to, you know, defend or deny. Like, I have no idea if that's true or not, but it is some kind of an end of a cycle. What's interesting about yours is you see that number four right under it.
00:45:46 Jeromy Johnson: Mhm.
00:45:46 Julie Ferwarda: That four is at zero degrees Aries and that four is Jupiter. Jupiter is the planet of expansion. And this is another really interesting juxtaposition of your chart because whoever the gods are or yourself that designed this, you put your your son, your ego at the very last point of Pisces and your Jupiter, the planet of expansion at the very first point of Aries, right next to each other. And they do impact each other. So what that means.
00:46:13 Jeromy Johnson: Is, yeah, well, what does that mean?
00:46:16 Julie Ferwarda: It's a fight within yourself between that identity dissolution, that you're just part of the whole and you're, you know, just full of compassion and watery, you know, kindness and wanting to help others. But also it's a fight within yourself of the urge to emerge as an individual, especially in the public eye.
00:46:36 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.
00:46:36 Julie Ferwarda: So it's emergence from dissolving identity into more of a strong sense of self. And like I said, Aries is that first impulse of life. It's the I am. It's like, who am I as an individual? Um, boldness, courage, what do I need? It's that kind of idea which is the opposite of Pisces.
00:46:54 Jeromy Johnson: So yeah.
00:46:55 Julie Ferwarda: You've already got this juxtaposition in yourself and it's in your most public place of your chart where you're trying to work out this identity for yourself in the public.
00:47:05 Jeromy Johnson: That's pretty fascinating because I do have a very sense of personal identity. Very, a sense of, yeah, this community orientation, but also very individualistic at the same time. I kind of sense my uniqueness.
00:47:20 Julie Ferwarda: Well, with this placement too, these are like the two biggest energies really in your chart, the sun and Jupiter. And they're in your tenth house, the most public place. So it means that you have immense potential for leadership and teaching and influence. But do you see that little key looking thing, a little K with a circle.
00:47:40 Jeromy Johnson: Right underneath the bird.
00:47:42 Julie Ferwarda: Underneath the Aries horns?
00:47:44 Jeromy Johnson: Mhm.
00:47:45 Julie Ferwarda: That is your Chiron wound. Your Chiron is basically a wound that you came in with, and it's the wound that never quite heals. But once you work on that wound, you can use it to help others. It's interesting that your sun and Jupiter are in this public place of teaching and, you know, leading and all these things. However, I'd like to ask you, what is your wound around being bold or courageous or having your identity in the public eye? Like, did something happen to you to make you have trouble with being seen and, uh, being too bold or too courageous or too visible with your gifts?
00:48:21 Jeromy Johnson: I think for a lot of my life, I definitely had like really low self-esteem, like a sense of failure, like, don't try because you might fail. There was, um, at one point when I was sharing my faith with my dad, he turned around in the car and said, don't you ever preach to me again. And I remember like, I mean, I was probably twelve or thirteen at that point. And like, he was very angry. And like the fact that I still like, remember that very deeply, Um, points to a wound, for sure. Yeah.
00:48:54 Julie Ferwarda: Do you feel like that kind of restricted you in your ability to shine your light in these ways? You know, that you are gifted in.
00:49:03 Jeromy Johnson: Um, I don't know, because, I mean, I did go to Bible college afterwards and I did lead, um, youth groups and preach and things of that nature. I think when during my deconstruction time, there was a lot of rejection from churches. And so I kind of just said, well, like part of my path was not pursuing, um, my voice or my life through a paid ministry to where my, my beliefs and my path and my theology were tied to a paycheck from a group. But I think there was probably a little bit of wounding with that too. Um.
00:49:36 Julie Ferwarda: It's interesting you say that because if you look at that little chyron K with the circle, and there's a red line going down to something at the bottom of the chart, that's your need for freedom to not be tied to this public image that you have, you know, whether it's teaching, preaching, you have a need to break out of any of the paradigms that would keep you like restricted or tied down or.
00:49:59 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.
00:50:00 Julie Ferwarda: Um, indebted.
00:50:01 Jeromy Johnson: Very true. I mean, I've always been kind of a black sheep, even in all my ministries. I just, there was this sense of individualistic, um, not buying into stuff. And then yeah, eventually just saying, I do not want to be tied down to something that would impact my finances too and impact my, my family. That's fascinating.
00:50:22 Julie Ferwarda: Are you still married?
00:50:23 Jeromy Johnson: I'm not.
00:50:23 Julie Ferwarda: Okay, so here's an interesting next thing.
00:50:29 Jeromy Johnson: You're like, ding!
00:50:32 Julie Ferwarda: Well, I just had to ask because there's, um. All right, so you see the little H over by the far left.
00:50:40 Jeromy Johnson: The little yin yang symbol or.
00:50:42 Julie Ferwarda: By the, the yin. It's by the yin yang.
00:50:44 Jeromy Johnson: Yes.
00:50:44 Julie Ferwarda: Okay. And then there's like a, there's like a line there. Yeah.
00:50:48 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.
00:50:48 Julie Ferwarda: Okay. It's like a line there. Yeah.
00:50:50 Jeromy Johnson: There's the number one, and then there's like, this little cross.
00:50:53 Julie Ferwarda: Yeah, that's the thing. The cross that looks kind of like an H. Yeah. That is the planet of Saturn. And Saturn is the planet of discipline restrictions, hard work. Like this is your life lesson, and it is on your what's called your ascendant. And that is kind of like the persona that your soul's rising up into. So with your sun, that's your ego. The first half of your life, everybody who meets you would say, oh, he's, you know, he's like a Pisces, but you're, um, rising sign is kind of like your second half of life, what you're growing into, and that is for you. Cancer. Cancer is a nurturer. It's someone who, you know, loves the idea of home or anything nurturing. It has to do with like ancestry and deep emotional foundations. And you've got a very difficult Saturn sitting right there, Saturn saying Basically that you probably have felt a lot, especially a lot of your adult life. Um, you're carrying the weight of emotional burdens or responsibility or that you had to develop profound maturity through emotional difficulty in your life, maybe struggle with self-trust burdened by life, especially around themes of like home nurturing, emotional safety, belonging. How does that land for you? Have you felt like a lot of weight and responsibility throughout your life, especially for either the emotional well-being of others around you or just the lack of emotional safety in yourself?
00:52:22 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, I'd say probably that that last one, the emotional safety and that has been an area, um, gosh, probably over the last decade for sure of just that emotional safety and security. Mhm. I think I relied on others for a lot of that for a lot of my life.
00:52:41 Julie Ferwarda: Kind of your core question in your life with Saturn in this placement is can I build a home within myself?
00:52:47 Jeromy Johnson: Mhm.
00:52:48 Julie Ferwarda: Um, can I develop self-trust? Uh, can I develop emotional boundaries and grounded wisdom in relationships?
00:52:56 Jeromy Johnson: MM.
00:52:56 Julie Ferwarda: So these are all kind of life lesson questions. And, uh.
00:53:01 Jeromy Johnson: I like that picture of building a home within myself. That that resonates a lot.
00:53:06 Julie Ferwarda: All right, so the next thing you have is a really complicated square between your sun and moon. I hate to focus on all the.
00:53:15 Jeromy Johnson: No, this.
00:53:16 Julie Ferwarda: Is.
00:53:16 Jeromy Johnson: Fascinating. Okay, so square between my son and my moon. So I see my moon.
00:53:20 Julie Ferwarda: Your sun is at twenty nine degrees Pisces and your moon is at twenty nine degrees Gemini, which that's an exact square.
00:53:27 Jeromy Johnson: Oh, gotcha.
00:53:28 Julie Ferwarda: See the red line between them? Okay, so what that is saying that you've got and I won't go too deep into it for these, you know, for this situation. But it's basically a split between your intellect and your intuition.
00:53:40 Jeromy Johnson: Mhm.
00:53:41 Julie Ferwarda: And so where you have trouble, like deciding, do I go with my intuition or do I go with my intellect? Like, these guys are always at odds with each other and produce probably a lot of emotional conflict within yourself.
00:53:53 Jeromy Johnson: Mhm. Yeah.
00:53:54 Julie Ferwarda: And maybe difficulty trusting yourself a lot of times, maybe your inner emotions are a little harder for you to access, but they're there and they're causing conflict with your son.
00:54:04 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. No, there's always been, I've always leaned more probably towards my, my intuition, but I think from the outside pressure and then also, yeah, some of that inside pressure of like, well then religion just saying, no, beat that shit down. Yeah. That's fascinating.
00:54:23 Julie Ferwarda: All right, so I want to ask you a question. Now, this is sort of the last point.
00:54:27 Jeromy Johnson: Um, okay.
00:54:28 Julie Ferwarda: Did anything impactful happen in your life between twenty thirteen and twenty fifteen? And you, you know, if you can go back in the archives of your mind there around where you were having a lot of emotional disruption probably in your life and being kind of forced to adapt to something, maybe a dissolution of old identity or an emergence into a greater, greater personal agency. Can you think of.
00:54:53 Jeromy Johnson: Let's see. I would have been probably in my early forties, late thirties. I think I was finishing up with grad school at that point. I feel like that was probably when my ex and I really started getting into therapy and counseling. And, um, yeah, just starting to see like things need to change or things aren't working. I know, because that was probably a good, probably a good seven to eight year period that we were kind of in the throes of like really working on, on our relationship. And I think for me, like that relationship was pretty core.
00:55:30 Julie Ferwarda: You have this thing in your chart. Do you see that green triangle that is pointing at Saturn? Yeah, that's called a yod, and it's called the Finger of God. And what it is. If I know. Like I said, you have a lot in here. Um, it's a, it's not a common, um, uh, aspect, but it is called the finger of God and what it is, it's a very difficult aspect in your life that is teaching you certain lessons based on the planets involved. And in this case, you know, it kind of has that idea of your emotional safety and well-being and your sense of home and, but also just your autonomy, your personal agency, kind of becoming more of yourself instead of surviving emotionally. Um, and you had an activation between twenty thirteen and fifteen. And the reason why I can't narrow it down is because it was by Pluto. And Pluto is very slow moving. When Pluto moved across the midpoint of the base of that triangle, that was an activation of that yod. And since it's such a slow moving planet and it has retrogrades and everything, it was kind of circling through there between twenty thirteen and twenty fifteen. So you were getting hit repeatedly by these energies, asking you to transform something within yourself that had to do with the structure of you, your emotional reality and your needs, your agency, and very much around your, especially your emotional needs and that sense of home within yourself.
00:56:59 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, yeah. No, that would make sense to see if that's kind of when, you know, the wheels started coming off of that, that, that deeply personal relationship. I put a lot of my self security in.
00:57:12 Julie Ferwarda: Yeah. So the idea with this is it's not voodoo. Um, the idea is, and this is ancient belief patterns is whoever designed this realm. And again, if we're thinking of it as, as a simulation or a game, they put the planets as energy bodies that emit certain energies upon us. And so at different times in our lives, we're being activated with certain growth Opportunities based on how we set up our blueprint for ourselves of the lessons we wanted to learn. So it's very mathematical, in fact, and very scientific in the way that our charts interact with the planets themselves, and they happen at very specific times. And I've been doing professional astrology readings now for the last couple of years. And I find just especially, you know, people who are living a more authentic path, it's you can't make this stuff up. Like there are people's lives really line up even without them knowing anything about astrology, because it's the planetary energies that are helping us grow. They are doing so on certain timetables. That's why it's repeatable and why you don't even have to be conscious of it.
00:58:21 Jeromy Johnson: MM.
00:58:22 Julie Ferwarda: Any skilled astrologers would look at the same chart and get basically the same meanings out of it, which is why I say repeatable.
00:58:29 Jeromy Johnson: Mhm.
00:58:31 Julie Ferwarda: And, uh, it's been wild, like some of my transits that happened, like when my mom died, were just off the charts. So, so many activation points throughout my life when something specific was happening, the planetary alignments matched that. So it's been really given me so much self-awareness and my kind of my growth trajectory. So it's been very helpful.
00:58:53 Jeromy Johnson: If you can summarize this in just a quick nugget, what would you what would you say?
00:58:59 Julie Ferwarda: You can kind of give a summary of a soul's path, but I would just say the main signature in your life is that you are here to be very intentional about creating a sense of home within yourself. The Saturn, meaning the discipline and the structure, like it, carries a heavy weight of responsibility around that inner landscape of safety, security, and home. So and then to that sun and Jupiter in your tenth house to just massive expansion opportunities there for, you know, being a leader and a teacher. So those are two really big signposts.
00:59:35 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. I was curious to like how you said some would say this is like near the end of a cycle, a cycle, which means like, maybe like there's a certain closure or finality or awareness that comes in this in this life.
00:59:51 Julie Ferwarda: Possibly. And that's something for you to study out and, you know, figure out what does that mean, the end of a cycle there for you because it is a really profound placement.
01:00:01 Jeromy Johnson: Julie, thank you so much for, for being on and sharing your heart and your wisdom. Really great to connect with you in a deeper way this time. It's awesome. Thank you.
01:00:12 Julie Ferwarda: Yes. And thank you so much. Uh, I just, I love when I finally get to meet someone that I've been interacting with for years. So it's been very wonderful. And I love what you're doing with your podcast. I feel like you have a really important focus, I guess, for your audience that is very much needed in this time. So thank you for having me on.