Open for Interpretation: A Doctor’s Journey into Astrology Book Review

Full disclosure: I was given a free advance reader copy of this book by Books Forward in exchange for an honest review.

A good chunk of nonfiction is littered with spiritual memoirs. For those are not familiar, these are titles in which the author expresses unfulfillment in life. Then, something happens, and they are off on a journey to find themselves. The most well known example of this is Eat, Pray, and Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. However, I found a unique title in this subgenre that I want to share with you today: Open for Interpretation: A Doctor’s Journey into Astrology by Alicia Blando, MD. It’s a wonderful book which explores astrology through many capacities with great respect and asks questions about the choices made in life.

Open for Interpretation: A Doctor’s Journey into Astrology is the memoir of a doctor who finds herself and solidifies her choices in life through astrology. As a young medical practitioner during the middle of the HIV epidemic, Alicia felt unsure about the effectiveness of profession. To ensure that she made the right choices, she sought advice through unconventional places and eventually landed on astrology as her way forward. Her curiosity and search for new teachers and past knowledge took her from Manhattan to Peru, Belize, and Bolivia. At those places, she discovered ancient ways of healing among people who consider the sky as a continuation of nature on earth. She realized that astrology is the language that describes one’s connection to the sky environment. Not only can the horoscopic map give information that can assist in making better decisions in life, but it also, as Alicia finds out, can analyze a person’s strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities. Her adventure off the beaten path allowed her to truly discover herself, the connections all around her, and the need to share her knowledge. 

I wasn’t sure what to truly expect while reading Open for Interpretation. I knew it was going to be about a doctor who explores astrology, but I didn’t know a whole lot about medicine nor astrology (by the way, I’m a Libra in case anybody is wondering). In other words, I didn’t know if I was going to understand it or not. Luckily, Alicia (a Gemini) made sure that even audiences who aren’t familiar with the topic would get what she is saying. It may seem that she’s overexplaining, but I would rather have that than putting in a bunch of terminology that I was going to look up afterwards. Alicia also lists resources for in-person and online education and research on astrology at the very end of the book.

Speaking of astrology, one strength this book has is the sheer and genuine curiosity that Alicia possesses towards that subject. She explains that she first became interested in the subject through the newspaper horoscopes. Then, during her journey, she realized that those astrological blurbs only revealed so much about the person in question. Many other types of astrology like Vedic and more indigenous-based practices use date, time, and place to determine how a person would turn out as well as how the signs affect each part of the body. Her first teacher Iris came up with a diagram that represented the latter aspect called “The Astro-Man” (p. 47-53). Iris used this for those who wanted to make sound medical decisions like when to schedule surgeries. Alicia makes it clear that she didn’t nor would never use that to determine medical diagnosis or treatment. Granted not all of her experiences were perfect. For example, when she tried to build a mesa (an altar ground) like the one her indigenous teacher Oscar Miro-Quesada demonstrated and called for her ancestors and the spirits of the plants and animals, her window shade rolled up to the ceiling and “the glass on the candle cracked on the image of Jesus Christ” (p.136-137).

She was eventually told that she needed to burn sage to clean out the bad spirits before saying her prayers. 

Another aspect I found intriguing was how much Alicia doubted working in a medical profession. She had wanted to become a doctor since she was hit by a moving car and suffered internal organ damage as a child. However, her experiences in the medical field lessened her enthusiasm like finding out a colleague who didn’t have the credentials to be a doctor, yet he fooled everyone by having the confidence of one (p. 13). This, politics, and not being taken seriously as a female doctor whose family came from the Philippines led her to drop out of the resident training program in New York City. Later on, when she worked at the Miami Veterans Administration Medical Center, she tried to improve the work environment by holding a meeting among rehabilitation therapists to promote communication regarding patient care. The department administrator got upset not because Alicia didn’t inform her of the meeting, but because according to Alicia, she wasn’t the center of attention. This led to Alicia crying and later lashing out at that superior (p.163-164). She wanted to use her Mars energy to improve patient care and work harmony not battling egos. Before she left for good, Iris told her this following a reading, “Follow your gut. If you don’t change, change will still happen. Now, you have a choice.”

It’s this struggle that made me emotionally invested in Alicia’s journey and made the book worth reading.

All in all, Open for Interpretation: A Doctor’s Journey into Astrology by Alicia Blando, MD is a spiritual memoir that passionately explores astrology from a medical perspective. Alicia dives deep into the subject whether it’s from a western or indigenous practice and uses it to affirm the decision to be in the medical field despite the many hurdles she had to go through. It’s the self-doubt that makes her all the more human while she goes on her journey. I would recommend this to those who want to read books on astrology as well as stories about the medical field. And of course, I would suggest this title the most to people who want to read spiritual memoirs because there are plenty of ways that they can find themselves, and this book proves that astrology is one such outlet.

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