Astara Raven

Astara Raven

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After years designing sustainable spaces, I now help people consciously design their lives. Architect, author, teacher, healer, and mentor. It’s time to shine!

Over a decade ago, my name was given to me by the stars. Like the black blue shimmer of raven, I am a shapeshifter and pragmatic mystic. Like raven, I like shiny things. Nature medicine taught me that the universe romances you every day and the darkest night allows you to see the stars. Are you ready to unlearn lifetimes of agreements that no longer serve you? Together, let’s dig into the shadows

Photos from Astara Raven's post 06/30/2026

For those new here, I’d love to introduce myself.

I am Astara Raven. 🐦‍⬛

That wasn’t always my name. In fact, I wrote a whole book about it called How the Stars Tell Time — a cosmic love story about identity, destiny, and time travel.

On my birthday this year, relaxing quietly at a little cabin in the Ozarks, I found myself reflecting on the unexpected path that brought me here.

You may not know that I’m an architect licensed in the state of California who now designs very differently in the heartland of Omaha, Nebraska.

For years, I designed sustainable spaces and places intended to support human well-being and the natural world. 🌿

Alongside that work in eco-psychology, biomimicry, and sustainability leadership, I spent decades studying dreams, consciousness, healing, creativity, relationships, the human psyche, astronomy, quantum mechanics, and what helps people thrive.

Eventually, I realized I was asking the same question in both worlds:

What shapes the shape-maker?

(We’re all shaping our reality.)

Today, my work looks less like designing buildings and more like helping people design their lives.

I write books. I run a consciousness school. I teach. I speak. I mentor. I facilitate sound and healing experiences. I help people navigate transitions, uncover hidden patterns, remember who they are, and reconnect with their own power.

Lately, I’ve been simplifying how I talk about what I do.

Not because the work has become simpler, but because I’ve realized that accessibility and connection create the real magnetism. It’s where everything begins.

So perhaps the simplest introduction is this:

I’m just a woman who designed buildings, studies people, sees patterns, writes books, heals hearts, and helps others navigate life.

I’m glad you’re here and that our paths crossed. ✨🫀

Photos from Astara Raven's post 06/20/2026

Officially 56 and still causing a little cosmic trouble.
Happy summer solstice y’all. ☀️

Photos from Astara Raven's post 06/10/2026

A little light summer reading.
Thank you to and Underwood books for these two treasures 📚

…waiting for me at the back of where Underwood Books winks and waits for you.
(Hours are Wednesday through Sunday 11am-5pm for Omahans who are wanting a summer read)

These books have been calling me for days.
The last time I read them was in college.
I am not that woman anymore.
I’m more me.

As winter turned to spring this year, and I entered our own strange, yet beautiful odyssey.

Two road trips west in the span of 3 months later, we’ve left parts of ourselves by the road.

Old ancient personal traditions are composting even now somewhere in the Cascade mountains of Washington. ⛰️

Months later, we retired more stories as redwood nourishment in the high Sierra’s of California. 🌲

Others were spread like dust in the low desert expanse east of LA, or melted like the marine layer at the Pacific Ocean. 🌊

Miles upon miles, meetups and rendezvous later — all to face mortality of family members, the powerful weave of the storytelling mind, and the tractor beam of time travel in a family system.

Two weeks back, I sat with my cousins in Ojai at dinner and one of their friend’s dropped by with the Iliad under his arm.

My cousin shared this quote like a thespian with smiling flair at the table, “Now go, don’t tempt my wrath - and you may depart alive.”

We all laughed heartily at her booming voice rippling potency.

Here’s the thing.
Parts of us must go.
Like old skin sloughed off by friction and water, parts of us will drop off on the roadside.

The only way we can wake up is through disruption.
Because, as you may have discovered, friction is our ally.
For all our demons are here to greet us as friend.

What’s your summer read?
I’d love to know.

06/10/2026

🍊 TUNING IN TO TASTE 🍊

You're holding an orange gently in your hand.

You feel its weight, its roundness, the roughness of its skin.

You watch the color brighten before your very eyes.

Now you hold it close to your nose as you crease the surface with your thumbnail, releasing scent.

You peel the orange one careful movement at a time, thoroughly concentrating your senses of smell, touch, sight, sound, and taste on this one activity.

You take your first bite of the orange and notice the flavors on your tongue.

You have discovered the orangeness of the orange. 🍊

How often do you eat like this? ��When was the last time you ate a meal without multitasking, rushing, scrolling, planning, or solving problems?

When was the last time you truly tasted your food?

You too can be that mindful with your food again — and all of life. This is where real nourishment lies. 🍊

A Sommelier is a steward of wine. A Sound Sommelier, is a steward of sound.

At Illuminating Hearts, we have begun a sweet partnership with MCC as sound sommeliers — intentional sonic stewards of mindful eating.

Our Sound Alchemy helps us slow down to meet our world in the now. We tune up our hearing. Deeper colors are revealed. Things smell better and taste better. 🍊🎶

We cordially invite you to join us for our second annual Pairing Studio: Tuning in to Taste, an immersive alcohol-free dining experience created in partnership with Metropolitan Community College’s Institute for the Culinary Arts.

We will play live intentional music that weaves sound and mindfulness with the enjoyment of food.

We transform an ordinary meal into something extraordinary.

❣️SOLD OUT: Saturday, June 27 • 6–9 PM

The response was so enthusiastic that MCC opened a second evening.

✨TICKETS AVAILABLE: Friday, June 26 • 6–9 PM

A few seats remain.
$125 per person

Come experience what happens when a meal becomes more than dinner.

Tune up your taste with us. 🍊��🎟️ Reserve your spot: https://coned.mccneb.edu/wconnect/CourseStatus.awp?course=26UCOOK062B

06/04/2026

🌀 KEEP ROLLING

On May 2nd, just before Orion and I left for what unfolded as a family odyssey in California, I had the honor of reading this ekphrastic poem at Harvester Gallery in Council Bluffs.

Ekphrastic poetry is a conversation between art forms — a poem inspired by visual artwork. This piece was written in response to Julie Jenowe’s breathtaking Cascading Moon Lotus Tumbleweed sculpture, a work that immediately spoke to me about nature’s mentorship of surrender, movement, resilience, and trust.

As I spent time with her sculpture, while listening to a beloved Kate Bush song called “Snowflake,” I found myself imagining the voice of the tumbleweed itself:

🌾 Born of soil.
🌬 Uprooted by wind.
✨ Discovering that what looked like an ending was a new beginning.

This is our life: rolling again and again through transitions of every kind.

And that family odyssey? It was yet another hero journey.

Family illness.
Unexpected turns.
Long highways.
Letting go of plans.
High strangeness amid differences.
Trusting the next gust of wind.

Another hero journey inside this sacred soul adventure of mine in the quantum wilderness — calling me ever deeper home.

Art is a mirror, an invitation, and a reminder.
Art prepares us for more participation with life.

One of my favorite lines:
“...my death is my second life.”

And another:
“The world is so vast.
Keep rolling.
I’ll find you.”

Thank you, Julie Jenowe , for creating such evocative work, and to Traci Shacht and the other poets at Harvester Gallery for hosting Ekphrastic: an art show where visual art dances with poetry.

What line, image, or feeling stays with you after listening?🌀
I’d love to know.

Read the full poem on my blog • link in bio
🔗 https://astararaven.love/illuminate-blog/keep-rolling/

Photos from Illuminating Hearts's post 05/18/2026
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