The Oracle of LA charts Drake's rise from the bottom to the top

When we connect with the Oracle of Los Angeles, she admits she doesn't know a lot about Drake. But that's OK. We're not looking for an expert on Drake. We're eager for the Oracle of LA to share her expertise in all things astrological and esoteric in honour of the Scorpio star's birthday on Oct. 24. 

Amanda Yates Garcia has operated as the Oracle of LA for years, and spent her whole life immersed in all things pagan. She's a well-established working witch with a wide clientele who not only famously participated in a binding e-spell to prevent Donald Trump from doing harm, but has also just published a memoir, Initiated: Memoir of a Witch. 

Yates Garcia knows some of Drake's songs, and what her Strange Magic podcast co-host has told her ("sexy" and "kind of emo for a rapper"), but from this journalist's perspective, limited background is the perfect way to dive deep into a famous person's astrological chart.

There's minimal chance of unconscious influence or bias. When issues of legacy and community, fatherhood and ego, intense vulnerability and vengeance come up, it's purely what the chart tells us. Yates Garcia can help us see how Drake, born Oct. 24, 1986, was destined to become an icon in the making. The acclaimed astrologer takes us through her reading of Drake's chart. 

CBC Music: Scorpio [Drake's sign] has an intense sexual energy, but also an unquenchable thirst for everything, right? 

Amanda Garcia Yates: It's fascinating. Drake has a really powerful stellium in Scorpio, but in the fourth house. A stellium is when you have more than three planets in one sign or in one house. And what that can mean is that you can tend to develop obsessions in that area. It's almost like a lot of gravity in that place, that just kind of attracts a lot of things. That can be helpful; it can give you gifts in a lot of ways because when you have an excess of that energy, you're often quite gifted in that place. It can also mean that it's difficult for you to pull out of it or pull away from it, but it's this major attractor that kind of determines the focus of your life. Scorpio is the energy of sexuality, regeneration and rebirth, and strength and power. It is, itself, a very obsessive energy. It's one of the most powerful signs in the Zodiac. It's also the sign of the healer, because it's willing to go into territories that are dark and difficult and hard, and really see it and meet it with truth. 

What's interesting for Drake is that his Scorpio stellium is in the fourth house, and the fourth house is the house of home, the house of family. It's kind of like your umbilical cord, the thing that connects you to your history, to your own personal history, but also the history of  your people, your family legacy. It's also the house that is native to Cancer, so the sign of Cancer features really prominently in Drake's chart as well.

Cancer, too, is all about home and family and connection and nurturing and love. And you can feel like people are picking on you. You're just so hurt and offended and put off by something when really, it's just sort of ordinary life, but you're taking things really personally. That's part of the Cancerian imprint, that kind of energy, but the gift of it is an extreme sensitivity, a tenderness and a longing for love and connection. His moon is in Cancer and moon is your emotions, your emotional life. He's got a very watery personality with a Scorpio stellium and a Cancer moon, and his emotions are going to be really close to the surface, really easily accessible, and that's probably what makes him so good at what he does. 

It's easy to have high ideals, and then more challenging to live by those ideals.- The Oracle of LA

One of the things that makes him connect with and resonate with people is that Cancerian side, which can often be very vulnerable, but they're also like, man, do not f--k with them, because they will f--k you. They won't hurt you by telling you how badly you've hurt them, they will storm out on you. They will f--k you up in a way that they will make you think that you are the worst person that ever lived. 

But he's also got that Scorpio power, which means that he's going to be able to come off in a way that has real power and backbone. His rising sign is in Leo, and so that's the mask that he presents to the world or sort of the way that the world perceives him as a performer, as an artist. His fifth house, which is ruled, in his case, by Sagittarius, that's kind of where we look to see what kind of art people are making. Sagittarius is all about justice and being a visionary. It's all about philosophy and intellect, and sharing one's vision for how the world could be. Interestingly, too, his Saturn is placed there, which gives me the sense — I mean, I don't know anything about him or his family — but it's likely that there's some kind of drive to address injustices specifically based on his relationship with his father. There might be some kind of pressure or a feeling of wanting to come out from underneath the confines of a father archetype in his life, or to be urged on by the visions of his father and trying to break out and break free and break beyond them.

CBC Music: I think that's really astute, actually. He was mostly raised by his mom. His dad played for Jerry Lee Lewis, and was a musician as well. And his dad is Black, his mom is white and Jewish. There are absolutely these histories of civil rights in his lineage that might manifest in issues of justice and social justice aspect, as well as a complicated relationship with his father as far as I know.

Yates Garcia: Does he talk a lot in his work about his family life? Because with his stellium in Scorpio in the fourth house like that, the stories that unravel back through his family lineage are going to be really important to him, in fact, almost inescapable. They can give him a lot to talk about, but they'll also be so heavy in his life, constantly drawing him back into the investigations of these legacies. That might also be something that he works towards later in his life, even beyond his work as a rock star, as a rapper. It's probably something that he'll be continuing with in a deeper way, probably in a more sombre, investigatory way, as he gets older. Maybe in other forms of writing or creative projects that he ultimately explores because it's going to be something that truly compels him throughout his lifetime. 

Like you said, these aspects of social justice, of history, of what it means to be a father, what it means to be able to walk your walk, and not just live in the vision of what you think the world should be, but to actually do that thing. That's going to be one of his major struggles, because it's often easy to have high ideals, and then more challenging to live by those ideals. And so those are going to be some of the sort of central themes of his life that he'll be wrestling with.

CBC Music: I also think that sort of really works with him right now. He's a bit of a father figure to all these artists that he has mentored and repped through his label, OVO Sound, and that's part of him being the change he wants to see in the world, at least for other artists, particularly those coming out of Toronto.

Yates Garcia: He probably feels deeply compelled to do this [mentor a new generation of rappers via OVO], almost like it's beyond him. It's an urge from deep inside of him. That Saturn in Sagittarius in the fifth house — to be that kind of mentor, to be the father that he didn't have. To somehow reckon with his father's legacy in the way that he lives his life, I can see that would be favoured by his chart, something that he would be compelled to do.

Hang out with me on Twitter: @_AndreaWarner