Ibiza’s Star Gazers: Tamara & Dale

Their union was written in the stars. And the stars led them to Ibiza. So what do stargazing duo Dale Andre and Tamara Sophia see in the stars for summer 2011?

DALE Andre and Tamara Sophia are a high-energy pair. In between jokes, jostles and spontaneous guffaws on the edge of a pond at Atzaro, Sophia loses balance and teeters over the swamp soup below. Andre clutches her waist and they laugh the kind of hearty, uninhibited chortles unique to North Americans.

Completely in their element in these Edenic surrounds, Canadians Andre (a tarot reader) and Sophia (an astrologer)
beam for the photographer, guessing his star sign straight away. It was little more than a year ago that they made the random decision to up sticks and relocate to Ibiza, and the planets were their first port of call.

“We started thinking about what we were doing in Canada, you know,” Andre says. “What was our purpose? Why were we there? Toronto is a very expensive city to live in.”

“And spiritually unfulfilling,” Sophia adds.

Andre was working for a psychic hotline after two decades running restaurants and clubs. Sophia was juggling
a day job with teaching astrology. Disillusioned by the corporate treadmill and gagging for a change of scene, they sought solace in the stars.

“I was working easily 60 hours a week,” says Sophia. “And there was a lot of burnout and a lot of questions like ‘what am I doing this for, to pay down my mortgage faster?’.” So they resolved to jump ship, not knowing exactly where they would land.

“We scoped out the entire world and Europe looked good. So through astrology we found out that both of our [natal] charts looked good on the eastern coast of Spain. We were originally going to go to the Valencia, Barcelona area, and then Dale was doing some research on the net, and he said, ‘hey Tamara they’ve got these islands off the coast of Spain. They’re called Ibiza and Mallorca. Look at them, they look great’.”

Andre set foot in Ibiza solo in August 2009 (“I was the scout”) to give the island a two-month trial. “I wasn’t here to party. I just came to see if I could do tarot.” In his first week an auspicious meeting at Marina Botafoch landed him a job reading tarot at a popular beach club. His stars were aligned.

“I came home and I said to Tamara that we had to go.” A few months later, Tamara in tow, he relocated. Astrology had foretold their fate, and so astrology chose the relocation date: February 15, 2010.

It’s a brave (or bonkers) ethos, living by the stars; forgoing your future to the celestial spheres. Most conventional
scientists scoff at astrology and its somewhat controversial claims, and the idea that the placement of planets can determine one’s fortunes has been met with much scorn. Horoscopes and heavenly bodies – to the hardened cynic it’s a tough pitch to sell. But whether you believe astrology’s hypothesis or not, you can’t deny its allure.

Sophia thinks that most people see astrology and tarot as “playful nonsense for entertainment purposes only” but
while she can “certainly be playful” she can also provide “serious reports that are very analytical”.

Her astrology workshop at the recent Energy Week Ibiza was an impressive, informative spectacle: the laptops, the
diagrams, the PowerPoint presentations. A graduate of the Canadian Association of Astrological Education (CAAE), she has been practising astrology for more than 20 years (“little by little, every day of my life”). When she gives you a quickie (“a superficial run through of your strengths and weaknesses”) with absolute conviction and jaw-dropping accuracy, it can leave you feeling exposed.

“It’s so much fun for us when they walk away from the table and say ‘oh that was so much more than I expected’ and they look at the whole concept differently,” she says.

“If people have things to work on,” says Andre, “it’s best that they’re told. I don’t want to gain clients because they
like me. I want to gain clients because they realise that I have integrity and that I work professionally.”

There might be some method to their madness. It was the stars that brought them together three years ago when they met at a party, almost to the minute of Tamara’s divination. Could she put her talent to the test then, and forecast the summer for Ibiza?

“Last summer was atrocious for everyone, financially. This summer will be better because I think the tourism will be
much stronger. I think that tourists are really going to increase because Jupiter and Uranus have just entered Aries
recently and that ups the ante on things. It creates excitement, it creates a buzz.”

Andre sees May being a challenging time for the island “obviously because of the elections. The PP party, which used
to be in power before, I think they’re going to win because they want money for the island.” Dale selects a card from his tarot deck, flips it over and points to the King of Pentacles.

“That’s the PP. That’s the party in a nutshell. It’s all about money, status, creating wealth. Everything that has to do
with growth and opportunity.”

For summer 2011, optimism abounds. Andre and Sophia have regular gigs at Atzaro, Nassau Beach Club and the private villa party circuit. There’s also a tarot book and celebrity talk show in the making. It looks like they’ve found their calling. Any regrets about fleeing the rat race? “No!”

“We’ve travelled a lot,” adds Andre. “And Ibiza’s really a very unique place in the world, unlike almost anywhere.
That’s one of the reasons why we love it so much. People don’t just come here to party; they come here to get a deeper experience. They come to us and they get some clarity, some vision and some direction and they can go back to their lives and think that they’ve got a better plan.”

First published in Pacha Magazine, Ibiza, May 2011.
© Abbey Stirling