This article was published in September 2021 by Roxana Melnicu in ‘Femeia de Azi’ magazine in romanian language.

From her native Austria to Romania, the country she chose to be her home, then to America, where her soul vibrated with the memory of her ancestors, Monika kept learning. From an early adolescence passion for astrology to a mature career in business, the wind of the stars led her to where she is now, her own place for initiation and healing in Bucharest – called the Wind of the Stars: Wayra Astrae

At the beginning of the summer, an event led me, in a hurry, to the beautiful villa on Tehran Street Bucharest, to Wayra Astrae. I didn’t know then what the name meant, but I was amazed and asked the fascinating hostess what kind of place it was. In a perfect Romanian with a minimal Austrian accent, she told me that she practices shamanism here. We talked about a ceremony specific to the Incas that she performs: despacho. Theoretically, I was on the run, but I stayed there for a while, to pick up every word of wisdom about this ancient technique to say goodbye to a broken relationship, to express thankfulness for everything you received from that relationship and for everything you did good in this connection, to forgive and give rest to those who have displeased you in this connection. I promised to come back… and there I was after a few months, after life pushed me to my own despacho. I came back to the house where Monika listens to the wind of the stars.

The Bucharest adventure

Monika was born and raised in a small village in Austria. The eldest of 6 children, she had a happy childhood, near the clean waters that still attract her there. She looks at the sky and studies astrology with passion since she was about 14 years old. Then she started a business internship at a large agricultural equipment company in Linz; in the 1980s, she found out that her company was looking for a representative to live in Romania. Surprisingly, this news shakes her, she feels an unusual attraction, but most people warned her about the shortcomings of the communist world of that time, about the poor lifestyle there, about fact that in South-Eastern Europe business is done in the evening at dinner with a lot of drink… But a beautiful testimony of a colleague who studied in Moscow was enough to make up her mind: Monika asked for the job in Romania.

An unique chance

She was decided not to make any comparisons of any kind between Romania and Austria, she took things as such. “I was not convinced of anything, but I had an intuition about Romania. It was a call. The universe has done some miracles with me – I have a special relationship with God – sometimes I feel fooled, I feel that He doesn’t respect the contract, but so far I have to say that it was right … „ says Monika.

After 4 years in Romania, she told her company that she wanted to move permanently to Bucharest, even if she had to find another job. She is grateful for this decision, which brought her a family full of love and accomplishments of all kinds. “I stayed here in Romania for 30 years and it was super interesting. From the point of view of my career, from the point of view of business, Romania offered me some opportunities that I could not dream of in Austria. We all have such crossroads in life. When I said YES to Romania, no one believed me and did not support me in Austria. But I don’t even want to think about how many opportunities I would have refused – and how much understanding I would have missed, ”she says.

„When I came to Bucharest I initially thought I was to stay for a maximum of 2 years. It was a kind of trap,” she laughs. “After every winter, I would promise me that it was the last one, that’s enough, I’m going back. I was terrified of the darkness and cold of the eighties winters. But my contract asked me to announce this to the company from the springtime… that was the trap. Spring in Bucharest is absolutely beautiful. I couldn’t say I was leaving. I was staying at Hotel Bucharest, walking through the parks and then forgetting to ask to leave. I would stay another year…“

The call of the soul

Since 2018, Monika has retired and intensified her learning in astrology, especially through the senses, following a method she learned from her teacher Judy Hall, author of the Bible of Crystals, since 2005. “I scheduled my outing to pension and I tried to feel, to hear what call I had, what I will do after. I had two lines possibilities: to work with people with disabilities in agriculture or to make a healing center with more approaches. Some time before retirement, this house was vacated and became the house where we live.“ Here Monika founded Wayra Astrae, together with Laura, her good classmate. Wayra is a Quechua word, from a language spoken today in Peru, where much of her teaching comes from. It means wind, connection, communication. Spirit, holy breath. The first class was held here by Judy Hall – and she somehow handed to Monika the baton.

Now Monika practices experiential astrology here: “I lay on the ground a large canvas with a Western-type astrogram. I mark on it the chart of the person – with cards and stones as landmarks. I put that person in the middle and then I sit in the positions of each planet. Then we notice what we feel as energy in the body. Then, based on what we find out, we work shamanically – with stones, crystals – to make the necessary interventions ”.

Wayra Astrae is also working with other therapists and has recently started renting space – for psychotherapy or art therapy for example.

Spiritual roots

Anyone can feel, Monika assured me, with a little training. As for herself, she started off thinking she cannot feel at all. “We just have to let the channels open and trust what we feel,” she says. There are experiences that open you to feeling: the experience of peace, the practice of forgiveness, connecting intentionally, with the earth and everything around you, animated or not. “Go somewhere and instead of talking, feel. It can be a completely different feeling, from one space to another. That’s why we need to clear our house/appartment. A certain place requires a certain energy to clear it. We need to clear the house, especially if something happened, somebody left, flooding, a new place or a new business, for example. The source of healing is the same, whether people call it God, or energy, or the universe. ”

But there are also experiences that cause senses to close, there are stimuli “that beat the senses”: it is the case of much of today’s music, suffocated by artificial rhythms, created on the computer.
Monika says that we humans have several roots: the root of blood, connecting you with our own ancestors, and the root of the soul, the trace that our soul has left through all the places it has passed through, during its journey. “As a soul, we have all been everywhere. And if we weren’t, we will be.” The soul called Monika to Romania and, in its ways, not always obvious, the soul showed her a way of healing coming from another deep root she had: shamanism specific to the American continent.

“I once lived as a medicine man in North America and my great suffering was related to life there – I processed it during the shamanic ceremony in Peru. The memory gradually came from the fascination with the Indians as a child to the painful recollections of my failure as a shaman to prevent the killing of the bison that provided food for my tribe in the prairie. ”