Dr. Alicia Blando’s debut, Open for Interpretation, has literally proven to be a lifetime in the making. Born in Manila, Philippines, she and her family immigrated to the United States when she was 7 years old. Although she followed her family’s long tradition of working in the medical field—becoming a doctor specializing in musculoskeletal medicine and rehabilitation—Dr. Blando always felt there was something more that could be learned about how to diagnose and treat patients that simply could not be found in Western medicine. This led her to seek the ancient wisdom of indigenous healers, who had always turned to astrology for their needs.
Now living in Las Vegas and working as an independent medical contractor, Dr. Blando charts the long and winding path that led her to embrace astrology as both a guide to life and a diagnostic tool that can (and should) be used in conjunction with modern Western medicine. Much of her progress in astrological study can be attributed to her mentor, Iris. While Open for Interpretation was originally meant to be a biographical tome centered on this influential figure, Iris herself urged Dr. Blando to bring the focus closer to home.
“I see Iris as a kind of spider woman,” Dr. Blando explains. “In Native American mythology, there was always a spider woman who represented wisdom and education. Iris is that for me. She was the one who taught me to spin threads within astrology and gain insight into the web of my life.” By learning more about her life via the alignment of the planets and stars, Dr. Blando opened herself up to more opportunities and adventures than she would have otherwise given herself permission to enjoy, including traveling the world in search of holistic and astrological-based treatment plans for her patients.
Feeling pressure from her parents and society to settle down, marry, and have children, Dr. Blando eventually realized by studying her astrological chart that she was naturally inclined to travel and less inclined toward domestic stability. This, along with Iris’s constant encouragement, helped her embrace the idea that no one should feel guilty if they don’t follow societal expectations, because “not everyone is supposed to”:
My reading with Iris brought to the forefront for me that the goals I had as a young girl were inconsistent with the path I was pursuing as an adult. A part of me longed for my parents’ view of happiness: settling down with a husband, children, and a home, with a successful job as a doctor. The childhood goals I had outgrown still had a hold on me. Iris brought my internal conflict into consciousness and let me address the reality that I couldn’t have it all and do it all well: the career, the research, and travel with a family. I had to let go of the unconscious guilt of my perceived inadequacies that served no purpose. My strengths were education and curiosity. I needed to channel that energy into tangible pursuits consistent with the trajectory of the path I was forging.
Dr. Blando’s experience with astrology is a far cry from pop culture’s “daily horoscopes” or visions of ladies in long skirts and turbans looking through crystal balls. Instead, readers will learn that astrology is simply a sort of lifelong road map that can, however hazily, point toward certain directions and away from others, depending on the obstacles it foretells. Despite these predispositions, however, the choice is ultimately up to the individual. Free will reigns supreme, setting itself up as the constant subtext throughout the memoir’s reminiscences and detailed explanations of astrology: “My horoscope was the circle of my life with default settings,” shares Dr. Blando. “I couldn't change the initial setup of how I was programmed, but I could monitor the ongoing movements of the planets in contrast to their position at the time of my birth and modify the settings with what I learned from astrological interpretation.” So while a person’s unique strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities can be shown with a fair amount of certainty, Dr. Blando always reminds readers that “the stars impel, they don’t compel.”
More than a memoir and more than an astrology guidebook, the beauty of Open for Interpretation is that it can represent many different things to many different people, as Kirkus Reviews notes: “At the heart of the book is the way the author braids the three pillars of her worldview—Catholicism, Western medicine, and astrology—together over time. Each system appears to have informed her life in healthy and productive ways, as her faith gave her moral lessons and rituals, science gave her the means to investigate questions, and astrology helped her to honor her internal self and desires.” It is also a call to action for those in the Western medical community who are interested in finding more affordable and less invasive answers to assist in their patients’ well-being.
Just as acupuncture used to be viewed as a bit “out there” but is now included on many health plans, so Dr. Blando hopes astrology can be incorporated into the mainstream. She believes that, based on basic information like birth date and birth year, many predispositions and ailments can be flagged for a fraction of the cost compared with typical diagnostic tests. Even Hippocrates, the “father of modern medicine,” insisted his students study astrology by saying, “He who does not understand astrology is not a doctor but a fool.”
After introducing this idea in her memoir, Dr. Blando is taking the topic one step further by currently putting together a handbook for medical professionals that will focus on medical astrology. This subject includes how different astrological signs, the sun, the moon, and the planets all correspond to different parts of the body. Essentially, while the brain acts as the body’s internal control, this type of theory posits that the planets have a certain amount of external control.
Further complicating this attempt to integrate astrology into Western medicine is that there are so many different points of view within the field of astrology itself. While Dr. Blando currently leans toward the Zedic astrological method, there are countless others, like Himalayan or Chinese. Because each culture viewed the night sky from a different location, they saw different constellations and, thus, interpreted what they saw in different ways that were based on their own cultural beliefs. Ultimately, it is the same sky but from different points of view, just as doctors see the same body but from different specialties.
Dr. Blando realizes that convincing doctors and the community to incorporate astrology into mainstream medicine is an ambitious project, but she believes that it is one worth the undertaking. Through her memoir, she hopes to spark an interest in her readers so that they will feel compelled to learn more about astrology in order to better understand themselves. Whether through independent research or working with a professional (the way that Dr. Blando herself worked with Iris), readers will, the author hopes, be inspired to search for answers the same way our ancestors all over the world used to. But don’t be fooled: “Astrology is not a panacea or a cure-all,” warns Dr. Blando. “It’s a theory about how the nature of the sky affects us….It can help a person make sense of his or her life, but you have to work at it.”
Andrea Moran lives outside of Nashville with her husband and two kids. She’s a professional copywriter and editor who loves all things books.
