Hey! I'm Gabriela, aka, 'Fortunate Bruja' -- but you don't have to call me that. It's a name I chose for my practice because of an affinity I feel with the card in the Tarot known as The Wheel of Fortune. When I first started reading Tarot years ago, something about the symbolism of this particular card especially piqued my interest. Though every card has so much to unpack, I felt like this one had so much to say -- I mean, what was the strange figure, seemingly carrying the wheel on its back, and what was the significance of the sphinx sitting atop it? Not to mention, the almost hieroglyphic looking symbols on the wheel itself. And what could the four characters in each corner, which I later discovered symbolized the Judeo-Christian Tetramorph, of the card possibly mean? And why did they appear again on The World card?

What eventually came of these questions was a deep reverance for Lady Fortune herself, initiated by my encounter with the Tarot, affirmed through my daily practice of astrology, and cemented when I read The Consolation of Philosophy by the medieval Christian philosopher, Boethius, in my second year as a philosophy undergradate.

Before Descartes, and the dawn of the scientific age that we still find ourselves in, our modern technologies and the luxuries afforded by them birthed a global collective less concerned with seemingly primitive forces that those of a time gone by were unambiguously aware of. Having less control over the direction of their immediate lives, the natural world, as well as being subject to the rise and fall of empires ruled by all variation of colourful monarchs, people had a greater sense of the role both Fortune and Fate played in their lives. In fact, Plato himself writes one of the most well-known stories about the very Fates themselves, known as The Myth of Er. In it, he speaks of the three sister goddesses whom apportion each soul their lot in life, and thus, their destiny. Fortune, though not the source of one's destiny, is certainly a driving force behind it, for one condition of living within this material plane is that we must unwittingly ride her ever-turning wheel seems to forcibly barrels us across, or lovingly whisks us along the path we are to be on. Or, as Boethius writes, "...Happy Fortune by her sweet-talking drags people off the path, away from the true good; time and again, Adverse Fortune drags them back again with her hook, and they return to the true goods." And this is why I chose the name 'Fortunate Bruja', for as humans, so much of our lives are riddled with uncertainty both wondrous and terrifying, settling for one moment into Fortune's good graces, and in the next, are dethroned into the abyss. It is all too easy to become transfixed, even possessed by winning Fortune's love that we become her vassal, to the extent that we are dragged further away from ourselves and those we love because of the idea of a sunk-cost fallacy, and from those soul-enriching and ecstatic moments that are only experienced when we peer into each and every nook and cranny of our lives, no matter what we may find staring back at us.

So, while 'Bruja', meaning 'witch' in spanish, honours the part of me that is material, who is at times, beholden to the easily-seduced sensible body, and is tied down to a certain, time, place, and heritage, 'Fortunate' is the reminder that I am also a soul having a human experience, an eternal substance which allows me, now, to have a momentous though momentary brush with existence, and the gift of encountering the boringly mundane and the confoudingly ineffable. Most of all, it's a reminder to preserve a ceaseless faith in life, no matter the turning of Fortune's great wheel, because I have a purpose, a destiny, and a place in this world -- after all, don't forget that the four symbols of the Tetramorph on The Wheel card also appear on The World. And it is my greatest wish to help you understand yours, too.

The nitty-gritty:

Year One Certification, Nightlight Astrology (Adam Elenbaas): completed in Summer 2024

Bachelor of Philosophy with a minor in Psychology, University of Alberta: prospective completion in Spring 2026

I plan to complete the Masters of Psychotherapy and Spirituality at St. Stephen's College (University of Alberta) following my undergraduate degree, and eventually, complete the necessary training to become a Jungian analyst as part of my therapeutic practice. I also plan to complete the Year Two and Three programs at Nightlight Astrology, and weave my astrology practice with my therapeutic practice.