Linda Ruth is a Kabbalistic astrologer, with a background in civil engineering and environmental science, who was born in Brooklyn and raised in Panama.
When I was about 5 years old, I moved from Brooklyn, New York to a tiny town called Guarare in the country of Panama. It was a huge shift from the confinement of an apartment on Ocean Parkway to all the freedom a farm can bring, from the bright nights of New York City, to the pitch-black nights of a small town with dirt roads and no street lights.
As a young girl I discovered the beauty of the country night sky; it looked like a black blanket full of silver glitter. I was enchanted and decided I wanted to be an astronomer when I grew up so I could learn the secrets of that beautiful night sky. My parents separated, my mother passed away, and life became a survival game. I became extremely attached to the ocean; somehow its energy would fill the void that the loss of my mother had left in my heart, and I learned to surf.
To study astronomy seemed too big of a dream to accomplish. It was not a career that existed in Panama’s universities, and I had no family support to help me. Studying engineering seemed a much easier path. I received a scholarship for engineering, and the desire to be an astronomer disappeared like a childhood dream – the ones that we have as kids, but then, as we grow up, we become discouraged and let go of them.
As years went by and a lot of water passed under the bridge, I started to feel that as a surfer and lover of the ocean, if I was not doing something to protect it, then I was contributing to its damage. I moved to Brazil where I enrolled in post-graduate studies in Environmental Science, hoping the shift in career would allow me to give back to the ocean and to nature what I felt I was taking away.
One day, out of curiosity, I got my astrology chart done, and the astrologer told me I could well become an Astrologer. I thought he was joking, but he gave me a book to read; I read it and liked it, and started studying Astrology as a hobby. I would practice doing charts for my friends, and they really liked my readings and encouraged me to take it a bit more seriously, and I did, without realizing that little by little the universe itself was pushing me to accomplish my childhood dream, because we know that Astrology and Astronomy were once the same science. In ancient times astrology was concurrent with astronomy (the scientific study of the heavens), but the two grew apart after the Renaissance as a result of rationalism (like the alchemy of chemistry). I also learned that the pollution in our environment is just a reflection of the pollution in our minds and that Astrology is a tool to help us clear that pollution. Through Astrology I would be taking care of the problem from the root. Helping to clear the mind would lead to clearing up the environment, and I would be realizing my childhood dream of studying the stars.
I started traveling all over the American continent, to countries in South, Central, and North America, doing charts and giving seminars on Astrology. One day in 2008 I went to Chicago on an Astrology trip. Who would have thought that the first chart I did on that trip, on a wintry Chicago Sunday morning, was going to be of the man who two years later would become my husband. In short that’s how I met my husband, who is today the father of my beautiful baby girl.
As a paradox, the disintegration of my family as a little girl put me adrift from my dreams, but the pursuit of that same dream as an adult brought me to build a family of my own.