Tag: astrology

Mars Retrograde 2020

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Journal Date: November 14, 2020

Mars finally stationed direct yesterday, after spending over two months retrograde.

“Mars is abrasive, courageous, alarming, bold, inciting, aggravating, confident, heated, and action-oriented. When retrograde, Mars makes us review our leadership style, our relationship to our agency, and our ability to carve our way into the world.

The weeks of Mars retrograde offered us lessons on how to turn towards our anger. Fuel for our engines when worked with consciously, rage is a righteous reaction to injustice–it’s just not a place where we can build a home. Tempers teach us what upsets us and why, when our boundaries have been crossed and how, what to demand and when.” –Chani Nicholas

All of this is true. I feel like I have learned more about these various Mars-related themes in the past two months than maybe ever before in my life up until now.

I spent almost all of the Mars retrograde period FURIOUS (and I’m actually not mad about that).

It was time for me to feel it. I was late to the game here. I had a lifetime’s worth of rage I was suppressing, and it was destroying me.

There were a million things that I should have been mad about, but couldn’t even see. I couldn’t allow myself to do so. I wasn’t “allowed” to be mad, ever.

I’m still not “allowed,” but fuck it, I’m going to go ahead and be mad, anyway.

My anger was the missing key. My rightful rage granted me access to everything else. It opened the doors to clear knowing in a way that nothing ever has before.

It’s been uncomfortable as hell, but still, I am grateful for it. I have seen more and grown more in the past two months that I would have imagined was possible for me.

In Search of Lost Time

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I forget exactly what prompted my first inquiry into my past lives, but I think I was reading something about energy healing and how some of the traumas of a past life may carry over into the next one.

I was skeptical, but curious, and I remember thinking, “Hm… If I’d had a past life like this, I wonder what it would have been like?”

And immediately, an image flashed into my awareness.

I saw “past me,” at the moment when I knew I would not be able to escape and where I knew I was going to die.

The woman I saw looked kind of similar to the way I do now, but there were some subtle differences.

She had black hair, blue eyes, an attractive face. She was shorter than I am, had a fuller body type, and was wearing an expensive looking dress, which seemed to be in a late medieval/early renaissance style. I had the feeling that I was deeply involved in spiritual or religious life or was somehow involved with the church.

In the brief image that I had access to then, I saw myself underground, in a dimly lit stone tunnel or passageway.

I was running from people who wanted to trap me and hurt me. I tried to see more into the reasons why. All I got was the feeling that it was motivated by hatred, by envy or jealousy. There seemed to be people who were upset at how well-liked I was, or how “good” I may have appeared in the eyes of others, or even my success or esteem in a certain area.

There was also a man involved who seemed to be older than me, but I couldn’t really determine what his role was or the nature of his relationship to me. I just knew he had something to do with the situation I found myself in at the moment I saw myself in that brief vision.

I wasn’t able to see any more then, but very soon after, I had an intuition that this was related to a couple of things corresponding to my natal chart.

The first was the three planets I have in the twelfth house: Mercury, Venus and Jupiter. This may be why I have felt compelled to hide so much of what I feel are the good things about myself. 

This could very well be where my shyness and insecurity around my intelligence (Mercury), issues surrounding my perceived beauty and value and shame about being a woman (Venus), and my lack of belief in a right to expand, grow, take up space and achieve success (Jupiter) come from. 

The last thing that appeared related to this scene was my placement of Saturn on the Descendent/7th house cusp.

This can mean restrictions in how you relate to or access the outside world, as well as how you interact with and have relationships with others.

I’m not sure exactly how this past life influenced these placements in my chart, but I very much had the feeling that the two were connected.

Neptune Square Mercury Dream

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I used an AI app called Wombo Dream to create this image of the sinking phones

Back in May of this year, I had a dream where I saw hundreds of old cell phones and pagers with open text messages displayed on their screens, all sinking slowly into the ocean.

I was out in the ocean in a row boat, paddling around and trying to read the messages on the screens. But every time I approached one of these devices, it just sunk further and further into the ocean.

I rowed around like this for what must have been hours, trying to catch a glimpse of the messages which I thought may have been meant for me.

But no matter how hard I tried everything just sunk deeper and deeper into the depths before I was able to grasp it.

Of course, as I usually do, when I woke up I asked myself what this dream could mean for me.

The first thing that occurred to me is that is that it showed me I was starting to feel the effects of Neptune in Pisces squaring my natal Mercury in Gemini. This is a transit which had started to come into effect earlier this year at the start of March (and which is going to last for the better part of the next 3 years).

This image generated by the app probably comes the closest to representing what I saw in my dream

Neptune in astrology represents dreams, fantasies, illusions, spirituality, confusion and sacrifice, while Mercury symbolizes the conscious mind, words, communication and logic.

The square aspect is usually thought to be a challenging one, where a crisis is often brought to a head, sparking an opportunity for creative resolution of the original conflicting dynamic.

So on one level, I took this dream to represent a sense of confusion I’m feeling around how I have conceptualized my spiritual principles and ideals, and what this all means for me in my day-to-day lived experience.

On another level, I think this also means that I’m being forced to confront some of the illusions I’ve had about the ways I’ve communicated with others in the past.

I think that some of these habits, thought patterns and ways of interacting with others are not really serving me anymore. This transit could be an opportunity to re-evaluate, let go of what isn’t working and find new ways to express myself and my vision.

Q&A: What is the difference between Aries and Leo?

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orange flame

As the fire (and other signs) progress through the wheel of the zodiac, they take the original energy of that element and go on to develop increasing complexity in how it is expressed.

It is thought to be an expression over time (as expressed spatially across the wheel of the zodiac). It is also the result of combining the signs element (fire) with its modality (cardinal, fixed, mutable).

So for the fire signs this would mean that Aries (a cardinal sign) could be considered the most “pure” expression of fire. It is outward reaching (as fire rises), it considered passionate, willful, quick to anger (as fire is hot), etc. Also, Aries is known for being concerned with the self and having a very strong ego.

The same strong ego drives and outward expression are present in Leo (a fixed sign), only at this point in the zodiac they have become a bit more tempered or sophisticated. Rather than being concerned with will, aggression, and dominance, Leo tends to show its fiery side with more of a focus on self-expression, creativity, and play.

Ego elements are still there, of course: Leo’s are known for being very proud. But the focus is more on creativity and self-expression rather than ego dominance.

By the time we get to Sagittarius (a mutable sign), that fiery energy has been tempered even more. This sign still possesses the fire element qualities of outward directed expansion, which is why it is so heavily associated with ideas like travel, adventure, and exploration. This also includes the themes associated with exploring new horizons in ways that are mental or spiritual (for example, through religion, philosophy, etc.).

The Archetypal in Astrology

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According to Richard Tarnas, the archetypal is the spiritual and energetic. It was originally experienced by human people as “Gods” and “Goddesses,” and described in terms of mythologies.

The archetypal is about the essences and qualities that transcend the human.

These ideas were later expounded upon in Ancient Greece, with the philosophies of Plato and Plotinus, among others. They were forgotten for many years until their recovery by the likes of Nietzsche, Freud, and Carl Jung.

Jung’s depth psychology explored the idea of the archetypal pleroma, the pantheon of archetypal energy, both within and without. It was Jung who recognized that we are in psyche. It informs not only us but all of nature. This is what is meant by the Anima Mundi, or world soul.

It was through myths that man tried to understand and convey its experience of this world soul. Myth, as well as dreams, are the narrative form of archetypal energy. According to Tarnas, this is how the cosmos pours its consciousness through us humans. The archetypes are thus the mediators of the cosmos, the way the Anima Mundi often speaks to us directly of its secrets.

Plotinus says that astrology is like a script that the soul of the sky is writing. Meaning is something that extends and permeates through all levels of reality and existence. We are living in a pan-psychic universe, and if we wish to, we can be active participants with this consciousness or sentience.

The cosmos gives us guidance on how we can participate constructively. The archetypes don’t “cause” human affairs or outer events to occur in some mechanistic way. Instead, it is open to our human participation.

It is as if the universe or nature is providing us with symbols or guideposts regarding the qualitative meaning of our unfolding. We can choose to participate actively in our own evolution by noticing and following the signs provided for us by the macrocosm.

Richard Tarnas on the Planets in 2021

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Last week I had the privilege of attending an online talk led by Richard Tarnas, author of Cosmos and Psyche, on the astrology of 2021. It truly an honor to be in the presence of a man who is widely recognized as one of the great minds of our time.

During his presentation, Tarnas chose to focus on three of the most significant transits of the past and current decade:

  • Uranus square Pluto, lasting from 2007 to 2020
  • Saturn conjunct Pluto, from 2018 to 2022
  • Saturn square Uranus, from 2019 to 2024

The Uranus-Pluto square brought to the surface many of the things which lay in the collective shadows. According to Tarnas, Trump was a potent symbol of the shadow side of this Plutonian energy—he gave permission to other to express many of the things which lay beneath the surface in our society (racism, misogyny, etc.), bringing them into open expression.

The Saturn-Pluto conjunction, which also aligned with Jupiter last year, was one of the most significant of our time. This triple conjunction saw discovery and proliferation of COVID-19, as well as a host of other dire effects. Whenever Saturn enters the picture, it brings with it a great heaviness and seriousness, during which judgements are made and there are consequences.

According to Tarnas, the triple conjunction of Jupiter-Saturn-Pluto in Capricorn was in many ways an initiatory crisis for us. In many ways, it provoked a moral crisis, an awakening which asked us to die to our old identity and be born into a life of meaning. Tarnas spoke of this on a collective level, but I also have felt this to be true on a personal level during the past year. By confronting death, I was able to see life more clearly, and was forced to find a way to live it more courageously and with much more integrity.

The two transits mentioned above are all coming to an end, and we are now left with the major, definitive transit of 2021, the Saturn-Uranus square. The transit will be exact on three dates this year: February 17, June 15, and December 24.

This is not an easy transit. However, Tarnas believes there is still more room to maneuver here than under the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of last year. The energies are now fully engaged, we feel less trapped and are more inspired to face the challenges directly. It’s as if we have gone through a near-death experience, and the life that remains has been imbued with greater preciousness and significance. We are willing to fight for the changes that we need to make in our lives.

Uranus, the unconventional, rebellious planet of change, will meet Saturn, the wise but severe taskmaster of the sky several times through this year, leading to an energy which is great for making creative structural changes in order to permit wiser living and greater freedom. It would be well-advised to make prudent changes slowly and gradually; if we choose to ignore the lessons imparted by Saturn and Uranus, we may find that a sudden break or collapse may occur when we least expect it.

As challenging and disruptive as this may be, the Saturn-Uranus squares of 2021 have the potential to be a sacred marriage of the past and future. If we use this time wisely, we may be able to carry forward what is most valuable from the past, discern what is most promising of the future, and together bring both into structural embodiment.

These crises can be opportunities for us to reconfigure our moral values and make creative, structural changes that will serve us well for years to come. Like with any difficult transits, the more consciousness, creativity, imagination, and courage that we can bring to bear on this situation, the better.

Total Solar Eclipse in Sagittarius

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Today there was a Total Solar Eclipse earlier around 8am this morning.

Eclipses usually signal a powerful and even disruptive beginning or end. It’s effects can often be felt for the next 6 months, until the beginning of the next cycle.

This eclipse is conjunct the South Node in Sagittarius. The South Node signifies what we need to move away from, what has been mastered and must be transcended. To continue to engage in a way typified by the South Node is ultimately draining for us, and disempowering.

It is much better for us to move toward the North Node, also called the Node of Destiny.

Sagittarius typically represents the themes of philosophy, religion, and foreign languages or travel. Ruled by Jupiter, it can also mean idealism and expansion.

Gemini, on the other hand, is more about communication, logic, the mind, and our thought processes. It can also be the spoken and written word, as well as our local community, siblings and neighborhood.

🌞

This eclipse perfectly encapsulates the themes that have been on my mind in recent weeks.

With the South Node in Sagittarius, I am looking to move away from my decade-long focus on higher learning, philosophy and spiritual ideals.

However, I won’t be abandoning it or leaving it behind completely.

Instead, I will turn my attention toward the North Node in Gemini, and my focus will shift to how I can communicate what I have learned to my community.

I view this eclipse as my opportunity to shift into greater connection with those around me through my writing.

What would you like to shift during this eclipse season and beyond?

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Retrograde periods are typically a time to review, reflect & reassess on your life and how a particular planet impacts this sector of your chart.

With Mars retrograde in Aries from September 9 to November 13, we are being called to assess the ways in which we embody our anger & how we take action in the world.

We are being asked to review the ways in which we have caused harm, or have been impacted by the aggressions of others.

With this in mind, I’m now offering a natal chart consultation that focuses on:

•how Mars shows up in your chart (sign & house placements, as well as aspects to other planets)
•how transiting Mars will activate planets in your chart as it moves through Aries
•guidelines for meditative or ritual practice to work with this energy

💥Use the code “MARSRX25” to sign up for 25% off your consultation before September 6💥

Saturn in Aquarius Ritual

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I’m writing about this ritual now, even though it’s something I did almost two months ago, on March 23.

But I still wanted to share some of what I learned here. In some ways, it feels like a turning point when it comes to how I conceptualize and relate to my ritual practices.

So I’ll start by saying that I was NOT looking forward to this one. I am not a big fan of Saturn. I’ve always felt uncomfortable when thinking about how the Saturnian energies of rules, limits and responsibilities manifest themselves in my life.

I had a very simple set-up for my altar that night. It was all black everything: black altar cloth, black obsidian pyramid, and a tall black taper candle in the center.

I started this ritual the way I usually do, by calling in the four directions, casting a circle, and then finally, evoking Saturn.

I asked that Saturn be here with me now, and in offering thanks for this presence and assistance in my ritual (and beyond), I vowed to honor and respect Saturn and all that this archetype represents.

That’s when it occured to me: I have never, ever done this before.

I’ve never had any respect for limitations or honored the role of boundaries in my life.

I saw that I’ve spent 30+ years fearing, and running from, any and all kinds of rules, limitations, and boundaries.

Maybe I’ve never really understood what these things were truly about. It seems to me I’ve usually understood myself as a victim of these things. Rules were meant to make me obey, to make me submit, to make me suffer. Limitations were all the places I could never go, all the things I could never be, everything I could never have.

What I’d failed to see was that these things did not have to be about my own weakness. In fact, rules, limits, boundaries could all become my friend. If I wanted to, I could learn to make them serve me.

In that moment, I saw how deeply I had done msyelf a disservice in not respecting these elements that Saturn rules. In fearing them, I had let them and others take control of my life. Now, in honoring them, I could take my power back and make my life my own.

At the time, I had attributed this shift in understanding as my own personal growth (and prior misunderstanding of Saturn’s qualities). But looking back, I’m starting to think that it’s like I was actually picking up on this shift in cosmic energies that was occuring as Saturn moved into Aquarius.

Saturn had been in Capricorn (which it rules) for the past 26 years, the majority of my life. Capricorn is an earth sign, known for being stubborn and rigid, resistant to change, and associated with authoritarian leadership and even oppressive circumstances.

Saturn is also the ruler of Aquarius, according to traditional astrology (while modern astrology gives that role to Uranus). These two zodiac signs do share some things in common: they shy away from emotional expression, are concerned with rules & norms, and focus on society and how it’s structured.

But while Capricorn brings a very heavy hand to these matters, Aquarius swings to the opposite side of the spectrum. Aquarius is progressive, original, and independent. This sign expresses its concern for the structures of society with a focus not on what has been (like Capricorn), but about what could be.

Aquarius is humanitarian and egalitarian; an air sign, it uses its intellectual force and vigor to imagine a better world. It is a sign that would reform and re-make everything that Capricorn has put in place, seeking to bring freedom and independence for those within its orbit.

I now think that this ritual was so powerful because I somehow managed to tap in to exactly that shift in energy represented by this zodiacal transition.

It was only natural for me to have experienced Saturn’s energies in the past as oppressive and punishing: in Capricorn, that is what they were.

Moving into Aquarius, I had the opportunity to experience all these rules and limits in a healthier way, one which ultimately benefits me.

I’ve been thinking about boundaries and limits and discipline so often the past months. I’ve been able to set new boundaries with family and friends, as well my self. It’s made me a better daughter, dog mom, friend, and person. It’s helped me focus on what I do want to allow into my life, instead of my discomfort with the parts of my life I don’t.

How are you feeling this transition of Saturn into Aquarius? I’d love to hear from you about what you’ve noticed so far. Tell me about how you viewed Saturn’s rules and limits in the past versus today. I’m looking forward to reading about all of your insights in the comments below.