Take a deep breath.
Reach down into your heart.
Listen.

Today, Venus conjuncts Mercury. The deity with the fluidity to flow between the worlds has journeyed into the underworld to retrieve messages from Venus as she begins to fall from the night sky. Invite silence, drink it deep, and lean into the links between your feelings and your thinkings. Take note, for a glimpse of previously hidden messages from this Venus Retrograde might love to emerge for you today.

(There’s still time to sign up for Tier 1 of Deconstructing the Myth of Soulmate if you’d like some extra guidance…)

On Monday, October 8 at 8:47pm we have a New Moon right smack dab in the middle of Libra. Libra is the sign that is normally about balance, harmony and beauty. Perhaps this New Moon will offer a chance for some respite, or a coming back to center. The astrological, political and social context, however, speaks to the emergence of something deeper.

This lunation is ruled by Venus, now in the initial stages of her retrograde through Scorpio. Any retrograde invites us to go inside to reexamine our truths, but this one is quite forceful, demanding an honest look at our motivations, manipulations, needs and desires at a soul-level. The New Moon is also squared by Pluto — the planet with a natural affinity for Scorpio, underscoring and echoing the transformative qualities of the lunation and the moment we are in.

Transformation is a pretty major buzzword these days, but let’s not glamourize. Although it can be helpful to keep the concept of balance in mind through the coming lunar cycle, taking the edge off with the remembrance of and striving for peace and harmony, a bit of distance and seeing-all-sides, we should also remember that Scorpionic transformation is quite literally about shit. Dredging up shit, emotional sewage, compost and anything that the more civilized mechanisms of Libra often strive to avoid.

The shit we hide. The shit we repress. Whether it’s positive or negative, there’s a lot we sweep under the rug as individuals and as a society. Venus in Scorpio commands us to take a look at our own shit.

Libra, then, represents here how we bring that shit into balance (while all the while lamenting the constant use of such an uncivilized word in an article). The Sun and Moon coming together in the sign of Libra is asking us to take stock of the ways we balance our inner and outer selves. It is also about the ways we balance our relationship with other — but that balance only comes when we are reclaiming our projections.

The Libran function has to do with psychological projection in that Libra is where we learn about ourselves through mirroring and compare/contrast. I am like this, I am not like that. Taking it a step further, it is about the ways we project our own unconscious aspects onto another. Given its inherent association with polarization, we can often idealize or demonize the other based on what we’re avoiding within ourselves.

When something is unconscious, it means that we are not aware of it. We still have to learn about those parts of ourselves, however. The psychological theory of projection speaks to that innate mechanism that allows us to learn through having our own shit mirrored right back to us as if it was something outside of ourselves.

There’s quite a bit of narcissism in the idea of projection. In its more simplistic notions it sounds like a theory in which everyone around us is an extension of us. Of our own shit. That’s an over-simplified understanding, however, because although we do tend to relate to others through the function of projection — through interpreting them and everything they do through the lense of our own bias and context — that does not mean that others exist as we see them. They are not actually who we think they are.

This is why doing the work of reclaiming our projections — through diving deep into our own unconscious contents and accepting the herculean task of figuring out what is mine and what is yours — is an absolutely necessary and vital part of allowing each person to be who they really are. Cuz that projective shit gets heavy, yo. It’s difficult to dance through life under the weight of projection.

Under the weight of an unconscious assumption that those with a feminine identity are less than or too much or weak or irrational or meant to be seen and not heart — just as one example of many.

Because assumptions such as this are unconscious, that means we don’t see the ways they’re built into the very infrastructure that makes up our society.

This projection stuff works on the collective level as well. Any time a public figure comes forward, they become a magnet for individual projections of unconscious material. All the stuff we don’t like about ourselves, and have therefore repressed, gets flung right onto this new scapegoat. There’s a lot going on in the world right now that incentivizes and sometimes even requires unconscious behavior. The Capricornian function of repression, which belongs to the cardinal cross along with Libra, is vital in helping a child repress overwhelming emotions. In adult life, however, the maturation process requires we take steps to deal with what was once repressed. The Libran function of therapy — finding trained professionals who can hold space for all sides — is a helpful guide there.

With so much going on in the world, it’s easy to feel powerless. In these times of powerlessness, when we feel like there’s nothing we can do… well, deep diving psychological work is one tool that is available. It allows us to discover what we’re repressing and make it conscious so that we don’t fling it out onto others.

The Capricornian function of repression also places the notion of civility on a pedestal in order to maintain power and keep the empowering function of anger in the shadows.

The repression of anger — or shall I say it’s healthy re-empowerment — is being supported by this New Moon. This lunation takes place during a time when  its ruler — that’s Venus — is also squaring Mars, Black Moon Lilith and the South Node of the Moon. We’re in a karmic emptying moment. And that emptying is specifically related to the ways the anger of Mars, anger that rises up in the face of injustice, combines with the wrathful, vengeful and shrieking anger of Lilith.

Lilithian anger also stems from injustice. She was, after all, the figure that was cast out of the garden for refusing to be placed in a permanently subservient position (detailed further in the piece I wrote for the 2017 Libra New Moon: Rebelling Against Subservience). Lilith was kinda like “hey, yo. We can totally do this missionary-style thing sometimes, but it can’t be the go-to. I want equality in this relationship, and that means we’ve gotta switch.” The quest for equality didn’t fly with the way Adam and his delusion of the God-force imagined power, and so… Lilith, the part of the life force tapped into the natural, swirling and switching nature of power in its true form, was demonized.

Come on, folks. Being cast out of like, all that IS, just because you made a request for equality? That doesn’t just make a being angry, that makes them pretty insanely full of rage, which just kinda builds and boils over time. Repression can only keep that kind of anger in for so long.

Have you felt that lately? Hm? I have. Pushed to the max, really. And made blatantly aware that it will eat my insides if I don’t figure out how to deal with it.

Black Moon Lilith in Aquarius is about rebellion against social norms around sex and power. With the South Node and Mars in the mix, it’s giving us the drive to clear out old, worn out patterns related to these themes.

This New Moon, then, gives us the opportunity to rebalance — but for the sake of seeking justice. As always, with Libra, we have to remember that balance is not a static state, but one that is constantly shifting and changing and requiring that we pay attention to our surroundings and adapt – but not lose ourselves.

There are many difficulties in this clearing and balancing that require a level of discernment that can be difficult in the midst of rage and anger. We have to use the capacity of the mind (Libra and Aquarius are air signs) to take a step back, take a deep breath and see the bigger picture.

We also have to be aware of Libra’s shadow, which is that of placation and adaptation for the sake of keeping the balance — a loss of self for the sake of avoiding conflict. Or just avoidance and denial. Libra loves lala land.

This lunation, with its involvement of the empowering energy of Mars, also begs another question: at what point do we just stop trying to see the other point of view and draw a line in the sand?

Harmony arises through personal responsibility. Equilibrium arrives when justice is enabled and taken out of entrenched, distorted power structures. Checks and balances cannot occur in systems rooted in power structures such as the ones we have, where The Other has been demonized simply for seeking equality.

So, for this New Moon, take stock. Take a moment for peace, and then move forward through this Venus Retrograde phase to get real…about your own shit, the shit you’re not facing about the world and your place in it, and whatever other kinds of shit emerge.

New Moon Exact on:
October 8, 2018; 8:47pm PDT
15 degrees Libra

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Here we are, friends. Another significant retrograde — this time with our friend Venus.

Venus retrograde periods tend to be quite personal in their effects. This article, however, is intended to help us understand what this retrograde period has to say at the collective level, because it is incredibly poignant and powerful.

From an evolutionary perspective, this Venus Retrograde ushers us through another gateway. It gives us an opportunity to work through patterns of surrender and sacrifice — particularly those that stem from violence and repression of all things feminine — female bodies, the body of the earth, feminine essence and feminine expression. Within it, we can learn something about the antidote to self sacrifice: groundedness in personal power and awareness of our worth, needs and desires.

This Venus Retrograde is also very much about the deep, churning powers of soul-level transformation. Chaotic and turbulent, yes. But also necessary and ultimately purifying. Nothing remains the same forever.

At the collective level — and I’m focusing here on recent events in America in particular — we’re seeing emotional responses and reactions that ripple back through collective events. Memories of witch hunts, trials and burnings all being stirred awake at a cellular level. Thousands of years of sexual violence and rape and the ways they’ve been used to perpetuate dominance and control, systematically breaking down the human spirit and our inherent ability to maintain personal autonomy  — not just in genocides and holocausts, but in doctors offices, walking down the streets, in the family home, in classrooms.

Thousands of years.

Thousands of years of rage.  All compressed and therefore compounded through mechanisms of polite society, civilized behavior and conditioning.  

We are shakin’ up the big stuff these days, and the emphasis represented by the Taurus-Scorpio polarity for this upcoming cycle underscores a tendency towards extremes. Finding balance in the storminess of extremity is part of ensuring we have the stamina to make it through to the other side.

The difficulty is that oftentimes that shift towards regaining balance provokes that same conditioning. We fall into the old notions that balance means placation or requires surrendering our feelings and needs for the sake of decency or the harmony of the group. We fear hurting other people’s feelings, prioritizing their health while suppressing how much pain we ourselves are in.

Femme folk in particular have been conditioned to think we are too much…or not enough…and so base our worth on whether or not someone loves us.

In a year I’ve dubbed the year of “getting shit done,”  we’ve reached a 40 day gateway for making tangible strides in healing the shadows of thousands of years of atrocity, especially those perpetrated on bodies that have been seen as different.

This cannot happen without the conscious claiming of our rage and grief, or without  processing, learning and refusing to become perpetrators of violence ourselves be it physical, emotional or political.

It cannot happen without addressing some of the most crucial skills we have: relationship skills. Particularly relationships that involve deep intimacy, bonding and sex. Scorpio energy demands that we face death and sex — with maturity, responsibility and honesty.

Furthermore, it demands that we reclaim the power that rests within our bodies. We have to become the eye of the storm. For many, reclaiming this power will involve learning about the ways our emotions affect our physical selves, and adjusting accordingly. It might involve plunges into emotions that are uncomfortable or scary.

Now, I’m speaking of incredibly nuanced topics as if they were straightforward truths — a fantastic device for writing, but one that always makes me cringe.  So I trust that you, the reader, are tuned into your own intuition and logic in recognition of the limitations of 1000 or so words.

Part of the beauty and the difficulty of the energy we’re in right now is that sense of  right and wrong, straightforward truths and established beliefs. The fixed cross (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius) is all about demonstrating and holding tight to material-world displays of value, creative self-expression, power and community. The fixed cross is where stubbornness and black and white thinking appear. Sometimes that is necessary:

It is not OK to rape. It is not OK to murder.

Sometimes black and white thinking becomes harmful, problematic and destructive:

All rapists deserve to die.  Once a thief always a thief. An eye for an eye. I have more money and am therefore more worthy of…everything.

With Venus in Retrograde (squaring the nodes, opposing Uranus) we have the opportunity for liberation into power. The power of our souls harassed through and into the power of our bodies. This requires examinations into what true power is, however. Oh, what a process that can be.

The key? Feeling, blessing and connecting back into the power of the heart.

While making a deep dive into our own shadow material, that is.  

With this Venus Retrograde, we have an opportunity to delve into and face at least a few of our fears — especially around survival, death, sex and chaos . We have an opportunity to practice loving ourselves right through whatever arises from within. The child-like parts of us that just want to feel safe. The isolated parts of us that are afraid that if we are left alone we’ll be overwhelmed. The parts of us that have perpetrated hate and violence, even just in thought. Maybe in reality.

The parts of us that have disowned the power of our true nature out of a desire to belong or a need to keep the peace — or to go into hiding in order to live.

Through going into our own fears and our own suffering, and holding compassion for ourselves, we’re more able to truly have compassion for other beings.

There’s a lot of traditions and practices out there that essentially encourage bypassing the dark. Avoiding. Detaching.  Part of me wants to say: to each their own. But…

Ascending in bubbles of light without getting our hands dirty in the human experience sounds pretty convenient to me. Detachment has its place, as it can be a great facilitator of boundaries and discernment. When it becomes conflated with avoidance, however,we sometimes see markers of privilege.

It isn’t necessarily helpful to encouraging someone to just look for the positive when they are struggling to pay for medicines that ensure their ability to stay alive. Recommending yoga and meditation to someone whose anxiety stems from their difficulty figuring out how to pay for food can be insensitive, and yes, also harmful.

Detachment from the realities of demographic and social groups that are not like our own lessens our ability to see the bigger picture.

Similarly speaking, not everyone is equipped to “go into the dark,” especially when it’s by choice. Folks who are managing mental illness and mood disorders don’t necessarily need to do shadow integration work. In fact, sometimes that’s just a full on bad idea.

So there we are.  Right back at nuance again.

The cosmic weather is supporting those who endeavor to transform their relationship with the power of death, sex and intimacy. The more conscious awareness we bring to our situation, the better.

The wisdom of Scorpio lies in its understanding that radical transformation is vital, and within it is the fortitude to push through limitation and face the unknown. It’s the part of us that understands that change will happen, no matter what, and no matter how tightly our egos hold on to their notions of who they are, because the desires of the ego must eventually come into coherence with the desires of our Souls.

So in the next six weeks, take some time to review your values, needs, passions, desires and the ways you communicate them along with the ways you listen, empathize and respond. Pay attention to what has heart and meaning. Pay attention to sparks of insight, sparks of joy, sparks of inspiration. Be curious about what you uncover, and try to let the ripples flow.

Venus is retrograde from October 5 – November 16 and will travel from 10 degrees Scorpio to 25 degrees Libra. Folks with personal planets or angles in their charts near these degrees might feel the affects more.

For a personalized tour through Venus Retrograde, complete with ritual guidance, writing prompts and more, please consider signing up for my 7-week online course: Deconstructing the Myth of Soulmate.

*****For a sneak peak into the series by way of accessing the first lesson, click here: Myth of Soulmate Week One*****

To support and/or participate in my work, please consider becoming a Patron.

Alright, y’all. Venus retrograde is almost upon us. In fact, we’ve been in the shadow period for this retrograde since September 3. Have you been noticing issues cropping up around relationship, wants/needs, values, possessiveness, shame, anger and other intense feelings? You might just be getting a preview…

Every fall for the past several years I’ve been tempted to run a course called Deconstructing the Myth of Soulmate. Not necessarily because I think the idea of soulmate is bad, per say, but because it’s an idea that’s very much lodged inside many of us in ways that aren’t necessarily healthy or helpful. Our cultural mythology romanticizes and emphasizes the idea that there is something outside us that completes us, and that if we do not have that thing we are not complete. Part of my life’s path has been focused on examining the unquestioned, underlying assumptions and at times compulsive externalization of power that mythology supports.

I believe that understanding why we relate in the ways we do and how we’ve been conditioned into certain  desires and needs — and then making changes accordingly — can be some of the most revolutionary work we do for ourselves and the world. Sometimes we learn that we do like, need and support those narratives, and sometimes we want to change them. The key here is conscious awareness and choice.

Looking into the astrology of 2018, I recognized that a Venus retrograde through Scorpio and Libra, which are the two most relational signs of the zodiac, would be a perfect opportunity to actually follow through with creating this course.

Plus, Venus will be spending a portion of her time squaring the nodes of the Moon, indicating an opportunity to let go of some intensely deep-rooted patterns.

I’m really excited about it! Not necessarily because I want people to change the way they engage intimate relationships in a specific way, but because bringing conscious awareness to our own patterns and needs is a really worthy adventure. It allows us to choose what we want, rather than just feeding into scripts that might or might not be healthy for us.

And so I present to you: Deconstructing the Myth of Soulmate: Navigating Venus Retrograde.

It’s a 7-week series that will use myths, stories, astrological exploration, personal narrative writing and energy healing exercises to give you an opportunity to delve into your unconscious ideas about soulmate/relationship/bonding, as well as fears and unexamined assumptions about sex and intimacy. It will then help you to get in touch with values and needs in a way that facilitates a reconstruction of your core identity from a place of power. You’ll explore ways you can let go of old stories that are no longer helpful while recreating a new mythology-as-guide for what you want your relational life to look and feel like.

The series will kick off with a webinar on October 2 where we’ll cover the basics: The timeline for Venus Retrograde and the class, the astronomy of Venus Retrograde and what the archetype of Venus represents.

Then, you’ll receive an email every Friday from October 5 – November 16with written and/or recorded lessons, prompts and inquiries that will help you to make the most of the cosmic weather.

What you’ll get out of it:

• Support, guidance and inspiration for the duration of the retrograde

• Insight into your relationship patterns, conditioning around relationship, fears, as well as ways to work with what is uncovered

• An astrological tour through Venus Retrograde

• In depth information about the archetypes of Venus, Libra and Scorpio

• Energy clearing

• Ritual guidance

• Writing prompts geared towards helping you identify old narratives and create new ones

• Techniques for listening to your intuition

• Ideas about relationships and relationship styles

There are to tiers: the first is for folks who just want the lessons. The second is for folks who want a more personalized tour. More information about the course and the options can be found here: aquarianspirals.ticketspice.com/venus-retrograde

Please note that registration for Tier 2 is limited.

So check it out. Let me know if you have any questions. And sign up if you’re ready to go deeper into a course that will remain relevant for years to come.

Virgo New Moon 2018

17 degrees 00 minutes

Exact September 9, 2018 at 11:01am
On Sunday, September 9 we have a New Moon in Virgo. This is the first lunar cycle that doesn’t carry the charge of eclipse energy with it since mid-July, and the first one without the frustration of Mars Retrograde. With Saturn recently turned direct as well, it seems like a reprieve.

Virgo is where we recognize a need for wholeness. We’ve been so mired in our own subjective, personal shit, otherwise known as the progression from Aries to Leo, and suddenly we recognize there is more. We hear the call of the other and a need to relate and change and grow. But it’s more than that, too: we hear the call of the divine from across the circle in Pisces, and we experience an increased drive to live up to the call of our souls as we recognize we will eventually return to the abyss. The longing to be in service to love emerges.

The Virgo archetype speaks to that of the Virgin: She who is whole unto herself. If we take that gender binary crap out of it: They who are whole unto themselves. Virgo is a very solitary archetype, represented by The Hermit in the tarot. Virgo also speaks to a lineage of healers and humans who have been devoted to service of something outside of themselves.

For thousands of years, it was priestesses who guarded the mysteries of the flame and the mysteries of life. Many of these mysteries were sexual in nature, and as information and consciousness began to evolve, these priestesses were the ones who served by initiating others into sexual mysteries, into paths to wholeness, and into transformation.

The asteroid Vesta is commonly understood as representing a blend of Virgo and Scorpio. The Virgoan path towards making practical use of our individual gifts in service of Scorpio transformation — the death and rebirth processes that are vital to the health of our species and our earth.

Over time, these sacred servants became confined and repressed. Through the evolution of time, as the power of sex and sexuality were recognized by encroaching patriarchal forces, the light was snuffed out. What was once a sacred position tending the flames became distorted. Vows of chastity became punishable by death when broken. When that became too uncivilized, those found to be breaking their vows were locked in underground cells to die. Sacred servants, often called sacred whores or prostitutes, became outcasts. Shunned as diseased, shameful, unchaste.

This lunation speaks to the story of these sacred servants in several ways. We’ve been through shake-ups this summer. This New Moon in Virgo is an opportunity for regrounding and regrouping back into service — of ourselves and our health first, and then of the whole.

This New Moon is also receiving a sextile from Jupiter in Scorpio, a supportive aspect that synergizes the seeds we are planting and providing an opportunity to heal our beliefs around sex, death and transformation.

Finally, this New Moon takes place with the asteroid Vesta conjunct the galactic center.

You might remember last October when I wrote a piece about Lilith. At the time, Black Moon Lilith was conjunct the Galactic Center, shrieking her rage over the injustices done to her body, soul and spirit through the reprehensible violence of patriarchal rule, and the ways we’ve gone down a rabbit hole of enslaving, denigrating and controling certain bodies in order to codify the power of others. She was shrieking into the black hole of the galaxy just as the Me Too movement came to the main stage.

Now it is Vesta’s turn. The being who knows inherently what wholeness feels like and is able to tap into that truth and use it to face her path of service. Without martyrdom, without self-sacrifice. With practical, methodical action and troubleshooting. From a place of wholeness. She has ‘gone inside’ to learn what gifts she has to offer and has developed them.

It can feel solitary in this moment, as we re-set and regroup after a summer of change. The weeks since that Pisces Full Moon have likely felt a push towards solitude for many of us. That solitude is a blessing and salve at this time, however The ground of being, represented by a dynamic yet fleeting earth trine between Mercury, Saturn and Uranus, is encouraging us to hold the tension of all that is changing with all that ever has been and ever will be, and to synthesize it into a more cohesive vision.

What’s being called for now is simplification. What is draining your energy? Get rid of it. Even if just for this first week of the cycle so that you can focus and have space for what will be seeking refinement and nurturing in the coming months. Purification is a mandate of the Virgo-Pisces axis, so salt water baths, salt around entrances to your home, water, cleanses and cleaning up your space (physical, mental and emotional) will likely feel good if not necessary.

*~*~ Want more guidance for this New Moon? Folks who have subscribed to my Patreon campaign at the $5+ levels get specific ritual guidance and further insight every single month. You can join now to get the PDF for this month.~*~*

In the early hours of Sunday, August 27, we have a Full Moon in Pisces. This means that the Moon will be in Pisces while the Sun holds ground in Virgo.

For this lunation, what I’m wondering is this: how does the unseen, the mysterious, weave its way into our material world? Pisces helps us to understand that everything is energy and imagination, and that it’s all connected. Virgo then takes this knowledge of oneness and helps us to focus on the concrete and practical intricacies of whatever it is each individual can do to contribute to that oneness.

The Pisces flow of divine love and trust can be a magical and soothing place to be. It is in fact associated with bliss and ecstasy. In it’s more shadowy currents, however, Pisces is deep despair, grief and intense feelings of loss, loneliness and longing. It is where belief goes to die — so that it can be reborn, but the loss of belief often opens a chasm of existential dread and crisis within us, and it can be difficult to sense how near is the fire of rebirth.

What does rebirth require? A little bit of inspiration, imagination and fantasy. Pisces excels at all of these things.

Here’s a digression for you…

Time increasingly feels like some weird wormhole. I was recently reflecting on the current Mars retrograde, because it ends on Monday the 27th. It began at the end of June, which feels anciently far away and yet…was only two months ago.

I’ve been through quite a bit personally in those two months, characterized mainly by a sense of being detached, dissociated and outside of my body. This isn’t totally shocking, as Mars in Aquarius can in fact be quite detached. In the past week, however, everything has started moving. The feelings and emotions are on the move again.

When I zoom out of my personal stuff, I’m also taken aback to revisit what has happened on the world stage in those two months. Children separated from parents. Scandals. Constant shock and awe that seems entirely concocted to continuously shake us out of our bodies and out of our ability to do anything about it (this is Mars retrograde alongside the South Node, squaring Uranus).

But it’s not just stories from the political power landscape. There are earth stories in there, too. I think about Talequah and her calf; photos of red tide in Florida, particularly those of my favorite beach in the world which is currently a no-human’s-or-sealife’s land; images I’ve seen of increasing amounts of dead whales washing ashore in Alaska and points North…

And I remember that for the past two weeks, my home has been deluged by smoke from wildfires, making the air unbreathable even for healthy folks. We’ve had to stay inside. Buy masks to wear. It was somewhat like this this time last year as well, but this year has been worse. It is depressing at best. Totally exhausting, life threatening and terrifying at worst.

Living in the world we do, many of us have become psychically and emotionally numb in order to cope with our collective situation. But when environmental disaster is outside your front door, we can’t get away from apocalyptic imagery. It surrounds us and impacts our lives directly every single day. Those of us (and it is most of us, really) who constantly suppress our emotional responses to what’s happening to our world feel those emotions surging to the surface. We wonder, consciously or not, whether this is “the new normal.” Whether investment in masks that allow filters to be replaced is wise. Whether just breathing the air will cause permanent damage.

We mourn the loss of summertime — which in the Pacific Northwest is everything. We lose connection as we cancel plans with friends because we have to stay indoors. And again, it rises: is this what it’s going to be like now? We can’t ignore it.

At the beginning of Mars retrograde, when it finally hit my emotional body that my country is justifying child abuse under cover of morality, and in complete denial of how insidious our cultural racism is, I found myself in bed, incapacitated for a day. I was texting with a friend who was in a similar state. They said:

I keep thinking we’ve hit rock bottom, but then we find a new low. I think we’re going to have to get used to this.

In the past week, another rock bottom has been discovered.

I’ve always been able to hang onto hope, but in the time since the 2016 election, that hope has felt dim. The threads I’ve been able to follow to possible futures seem to have increased, and yet at the end of all of them have reflected…nothing good. I see folks continuing to fight and work for a better world giving up left and right. I see folks continuing to fight and work for a better world continuing on, and dealing with increasing doubts, fatigue and listlessness.

And yet…it’s so strange. Because this week, I saw it again. The thread that’s been absent for the past two years, that left me during the eclipses of August and September in 2016 — Pisces/Virgo eclipses. That thread that leads to a world cleansed of all this destruction and death — beautiful and bright. I could fully sense it: clean air, calm earth, fresh water. Serenity. Peace. Groups of beings remembering what they came through, connecting in deep gratitude and light heartedness to be through the dark and out into the light again.

I can feel it again.

What a relief.

It’s not hope, though: that’s the Sagittarian way. It’s not an emotionless, detached vision: that’s the Aquarian way. It’s Piscean. I can feel the world of the vision. I have no doubts about the difficulties it will take to get there, but I’m connecting back in to the mystery, and to timelessness. The parts of me that know that the future exists now.

I recognize that some of the best medicine right now is Piscean surrender — acceptance of where we are and what we are. Surrender to more grief for the world that is dying when that’s what is called for. Surrender of old wounds and patterns that are re-emerging for me personally and the world at large and do the best I can not to re-attach, but to instead hold space for the emotions and let them rise and then fall back again. Released. Purified.

Pisces is known for fantasy, ideals and delusion. We can hold onto fantasies in ways that are problematic and allow us to escape from reality. Fantasy and imagination are different functions, although they can feed each other.

For this Full Moon, I’d say fantasize. Because it seems like there is some strong visionary energy around, and fantasies are a fantastic way to ground positive, drenched-in-light-and-love feeeeelings here on the planet. Let those fantasies feed your vision — not just of what you want for your own personal life, but for what your ideal world would look and feel like in its complete complexity.

Here’s the thing, though, friends. These can’t be fantasies that take out the reality of the world we live in. We are going through ecosystem collapse. That will change the way the future looks for ourselves and our children. We do have to find ways for dealing with the emotions that arise there, and we have to help each other through it. We cannot ignore the absolutely difficult predicament we’ve placed ourselves in and head straight to fantasy — that’s the Piscean shadow of escapism.

But we can imagine what we want the world to look like so that we can work towards it. We can start small, by imagining ourselves and our loved ones in a simple setting. Clean air. Calm earth. Fresh water. Cool breeze. Abundant, fresh food. Love. Strength. Health. Joy.

And then build from there. Spend some time in the fantasy now and then, nurture it. Allow it to become vision to become reality. And then use the Virgo side to figure out how you can work in service of that dream.

For the next two weeks, allow yourself to release that might be arising from old hurts and wounds, and allow yourself to surrender to flow as much as you can.

Then, for the next New Moon – which takes place in Virgo on September 9, plant the seed, set the intention to plot your way to the future you imagine. The one you fantasize about. Hold the thread loosely but with intent. I’ll see you at the other end.

Moon/Sun at 3 degrees 12 minutes Pisces/Virgo
August 26, 2018 @ 4:56am PDT
Sun in Virgo trine Uranus in Taurus and Saturn in Capricorn
Jupiter in Scorpio trine Neptune in Pisces
Asteroid Lilith at 2 degrees Virgo
Mars stations direct on August 27

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Release & Recognition
Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Aquarius

What do you love, my loves?

If you close your eyes and think of those things and people that you love…if you allow images or the sense of them to kinda cluster together in your mind’s eye, what arises?

White Tara

Ok, now let those images and senses drop. Down into your heart. Just intend it to be so. How does it feel to have all those things you love as heart imagery rather than head imagery? What are you aware of?

Now, let them switch back again. Up into the head. Play with it. What’s different? What’s the same?

We’re tapping into the Leo/Aquarius flux here. The head and the heart. The cooling power of insight and the mind. The fiery fierceness of compassion.

Today’s Full Moon Lunar eclipse brings this theme front and center. But it’s so much more than that. Lunar eclipses are Full Moons magnified and amped up. The tides are strong, the pressure intensifies. This is true for any Full Moon eclipse.

But it’s so much more than that. This lunar eclipse brings in Martial energy. The Moon in Aquarius is conjunct a retrograde Mars in the middle of its cycle. Energy that likes to flow outward, be impulsive and direct, achieve and attain turned in. A reconciliation and revision of desires. A review of trauma and fragmentation. A reminder of our place in a society, a collective, a tribe. An increase in edginess, especially in the places we tend to try to vent out, project and escape. An invitation to reclaim our desires, for better or worse. To release what is not serving, for better or worse.

But it’s really even a lot more than that.  Eclipses occur when the Sun and the Moon are in conjunction (that’s a New Moon) or opposition (that’s a Full Moon) near the lunar nodes. For today’s celebration of Aqua-Leo principles, the Moon is next to the south node. It’s a releasing moment. Karmic releasing. The purging of patterns that have been with us for years. Decades. Centuries. Eons.

Are we done revisiting the same cycles of history over and over again yet?

Humans, especially within cultures as centered around ego identity as ours, don’t tend to like letting go of patterns or identities or beliefs. We hate being wrong. We also just flat out hate change. Oftentimes we’d rather suffer or see others suffer rather than admit the need to change. Oftentimes we admit the need for change but still carry on…until it hurts enough.

Ouch.

But…it’s really more than that, too. Uranus is squaring all those bodies. Sun and Moon. Mars. The Nodes. In evolutionary astrology, we think of this aspect as representing the edge of karmic growth, but also something that trips us up or prevents us from moving forward. The story with this particular dynamic is asking us to review the ways that sudden shock and trauma have forced us out of our hearts and into fragmentation and dissociation, and how we’ve come to default to that pattern in anticipation of that shock.

Uranus has been in Taurus since May after seven years in Aries. It’s helping us to understand our fixations when it comes to security and survival needs. The long term aim of this energy is to help us liberate ourselves from places we’re stuck when it comes to money, value, our relationship to our bodies and therefore the earth, our resources.

Sometimes we can see astrology playing out in our day to day lives. But it’s always helpful to zoom out and see how the themes are playing out in the collective. We can see Uranus in Taurus in financial aid being given to farmers to avoid the crisis stemming from our [government’s] choice to place tariffs on the farmers exports. We see it in our refusal to change the multitude of human-made systems that are not working in resonance with natural law and earth systems, destroying the very things beings need in order to exist on this earth.

We see it in the increasing understanding of just how much privilege money buys, and the injustices of having an entire value system that tells us that those who have money deserve food and water, and those who don’t do not.

We can see it in increasing effects of climate change. We see it in lava flows and earthquakes. The unpredictability of the Earth and the ways it pays no heed to the demands and developments of modern life.

What’s being asked of us now is to maintain the Leo-Aquarius polarity by uniting our head and our heart. To zoom out to a more objective place while still embodying compassion.

What’s at stake for us now? What are the long term repercussions of the ways we use the land? Or the ways we ascribe ultimate value to money? What’s at stake when we prioritize convenience over long term sustainability?

What are the long term repercussions of denying the fact that just as thousands of children were imprisoned in the United States, resulting in the potential for generations of trauma carried forward as those children grow and reproduce, there are millions of children all over the earth who have been going through the same and worse for hundreds of years? Trauma without support and healing perpetuates trauma.

Part of the wisdom we have largely lost as we’ve shifted into a consumeristic culture is still alive today in the indigenous traditions that have survived. Cultures that remember their ancestors, and that take future generations — whole groups of beings as well as the entire Earth ecosystem — into consideration when making plans and reviewing systems and traditions.

Eclipse windows (this one closes in two weeks, but echoes for months to come just as it resonates back with the eclipses of August 2017) tend to have lots of wildcards as it is. This window, however, underscores the potential for unpredictability. As such, it asks the question: how do we maintain emotional objectivity in times of upheaval, when the shocks seem to be coming from all sides all the time? How do we zoom out and get perspective while staying in the heart? How do we slow down and tune into and tend the body, of ourselves and of the earth, during times of change?

We have an opportunity in the next two weeks to let go of patterns that have been keeping us out of the heart through insight and compassion, and through owning our own shit. Aquarian energy helps us to get real. Leo energy helps us to bring love and celebration. This is a vital combination when we put it to work in the art of holding space and witnessing. The Aquarian-Moon combination invites us to recognize and truly see what is going on. So that we can change it rather than go into denial and avoidance.

One thing keeps popping into my mind as I write this, and so I’ll put it as a reminder here: shining the light of conscious awareness — the light of the Sun — onto ourselves and the world is a glorious thing. It can, however be scary and produce lots of anxiety. That’s because as the light shines brighter, the shadows get darker. The contrast between light and dark becomes more pronounced. We can easily welcome in the light parts, but the dark…well, it has a gravity to it, and once we start shining those lights, the shadows demand recognition and transformation. They have to be faced.

Let me break that down. There is good news here! The light is getting brighter! We’re uncovering more! We’re seeing more clearly! That’s so great!

But part of that process involves seeing the bad stuff more clearly, too. So that it can be worked with and shifted and healed.

We face our shadows at the personal level in hopes of not having to face them in more overblown ways as pathologies and wars that play out in the collective.

So today, and during this eclipse window, remember those things you love. Remember how they make your heart feel, and let those feelings be a grounding and soothing container for you as you move forward now. See the good in your life right alongside the bad. Take a deep breath and exhale. Let something go that you’ve been hanging onto but that is potentially causing harm.

I’ll leave you with a video from one the most inspirational humans I know of — Ms. Joanna Macy in her retelling of the myth of the Shambhala Warrior (who uses the tools of insight and compassion to undo what has been made by the human mind).

Video: https://vimeo.com/191169785

Written: http://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=236

Full Moon Lunar Eclipse exact at 1:20pm PDT on July 27; 4 degrees 45 minutes Aquarius

Other Resources:

New Moon in Cancer 7/12: https://www.patreon.com/posts/cancer-new-moon-19927757

The current Mercury Retrograde: https://www.patreon.com/posts/merc-ret-luv-20316026

Uranus in Taurus: https://www.patreon.com/posts/uranus-in-taurus-18983168

~*~* If you like what you read here and would like to support it while also learning more about yourself and astrology, please subscribe to my Patreon campaign, with options starting at $3/month. This month, folks subscribed at the $10+ levels received New Moon ritual guidance, a 25 minute recording about Mercury Retrograde in Leo and a guided meditation for today’s Full Moon.*~*~

Thursday, July 12 at 7:28pm Pacific Time

I almost always, despite intentions otherwise, wait until the last minute to write New and Full Moon articles. Part of that is my procrastinatory nature. But another part of it is that I’m a feeler by nature. I often have to feel things in order to process them, and when it comes to writing about lunations, it’s pretty helpful for me to wait until I’m in the energy of a given lunation to write about it. Then it flows. Writing when it flows is, for me at least,  infinitely better than writing when it’s an act of logic.

The world shifts and turns so much in a 24 hour period, and I have this idea that relevance is best served by writing in the moment.

So, leading up to writing this piece, I knew I was going to have to write it about a week in advance, as I won’t have access to the internet from July 8-15.

As I started leaning into the energy of this eclipse — leaning in from without, as it were — I started thinking a lot about time. How its tendrils get discussed by us as if they were linear, straight, solid lines. We’re born, we grow, we die. Or, in American culture, we’re born, we’re supposed to get an education, graduate, get a job, marry, buy a house, have kids, raise them, play golf…and then die.

Many traditions of the world, typically the esoteric kinds, view time very differently. They see time as something more like a sphere, as something happening all at once rippling out into an infinite number of possibilities all occuring at once. Everywhere. Forever.

That concept is one that can be very difficult to comprehend, especially from within a paradigm so solidly structured around time. The calendar we use is a solar one, but we’ve had to manipulate it to adjust to idiosyncrasies of the universe, still holding on the notion that we can control such a thing as time.

Time in this sense gives us boundaries, restrictions, limits. Helps us to structure. To track. We call this chronos time — Saturnian time. Again — how Capricorn.

Cancer is the opposite of Capricorn. It is tuned into the cycles of the Moon. The cycles of emotions. It takes the moon about two and a half days to move through a sign, or an emotional filter. Always changing, always shifting. Like the tides. And as above, so below — so are we constantly shifting.

Cancer has to do with longer-reaching time as well, though. With ancestral time. Through its connection with the womb and genetics, with family mythology and identity, and through its trine to Pisces, it is where we understand the realms of the ghosts that haunt our family lines (perhaps translated today into traumas, fears, strengths and gifts that carry down in our genes), and the ways we’re shaped by forces that are largely unseen.

As I wrote in last year’s Cancer New Moon article:

“Cancer, the sign of home and tribe and unconditional love, is also the sign of being thrown back in on ourselves. For it is through that process of being forced inward that emotional self-reliance and responsibility are born. There we meet Cancer’s polarity — Capricorn. Nurturance is tempered with boundaries. Not to say Capricorn is any less tender than Cancer, but it has mature awareness of timing and cycles — and how to make use of them.

It takes a long time to learn about those cycles. Think of our oceans etching away at rocks turning to sand, slowly over time. Here we can understand Cancer’s association with ancestral lineage. Standing behind us, the ones who came before, sending their teachings down through language, yes, but also through our genes…strengths and weaknesses, health and disease, phobias and favorites…it takes a very long time for patterns to become ingrained. And then to change again.”

This New Moon supports our ability to recognize and shift patterns that have been rippling through our ancestry for eons. It might come in the form of fears or suddenly enforced limitations, but this lunation feels strong to me. It feels like a new beginning for emotional self reliance.

This New Moon is supported by a grand earth trine. Here, we see Uranus, Saturn and Venus all working together to help us ground our values in new, liberating ways. Venus is conjunct earth mother Ceres in Leo, bring the fierce flames of the heart and all its creativity along for the ride, lighting up the degree of last year’s solar eclipse in Leo. What emotional remnants from that time are surfacing now to be loved and re-formed?

Pluto in Capricorn opposing this lunation brings a question of repression and denial to the table. At this point in Pluto’s journey through Capricorn, we’re oh so familiar with the ways our entrenched power structures and systems are still making huge grabs for long-term power in horrifying ways, but they’re out in the open now. No longer hiding. Bigger and badder than many of us dreamed.

In that sense, part of what we’re being asked to confront here is the ways we have been confined by the conditioning and expectations of our family systems, in particular the ways they have imprinted detrimental and destructive social norms into the behaviors of our everyday lives. These come through most clearly as expectations placed upon us by our parents that inform our identities into our adult lives. It can be very difficult to break out of the “We Smiths always…” mythology. But we have to do it when those mythologies aren’t serving us.

Cancer as an archetype also has to do with nationalism and nationalistic tendencies because its an energy that corresponds with where and when we first form our ego identities. We cling on, sometimes blindly, to pride and patriotism. We are so afraid of what comes when the mythology that backs up our personal identity gets destroyed because it uncovers a feeling of insecurity.

Cancer corresponds to the time in our development when we first become aware of our separation from source, be that mother and womb or god or love. In an effort to hide from our dismay at that separation and the deep sense of emotional insecurity it brings, we cling to a family ethos that provides a healing salve for that insecurity. Or, more consciously, we feel good when we belong to and are enclosed in something safe. Family membership provides that emotional security.

We then, through the polarity of Capricorn, attempt to codify that ethos into legal and social systems that form the foundations of society.

Nationalistic societies are no good, y’all. They are full of blind, rigid adherence to ideology that has the fuel and venom of fear and radical insecurity supporting it.

They are full of folks willing to participate the imprisonment of children. And of folks willing to look past it, ignore it, downplay it and distract from it. When the superiority complexes that spawn from nationalism allow people to downplay the traumatizing of children (which happens all over the world all the time and keeps getting worse), we have to reevaluate our social structure.

We cannot move forward in dismantling systems that continually reinforce nationalistic tendencies until we each individually address and question our own adherence to patterns and practices that were instilled in us by our families and early surroundings, especially those that have been with us for a long time.

And all of that starts with our willingness to face and transform the areas where we sustain and avoid feelings of radical emotional insecurity.

It also starts with good, old-fashioned tender loving care. Because, you see, sometimes ethos gets things right, and when it comes to recognizing the need for sanctuary, the need for tenderness and that opening spaces for acceptance paves the way for vulnerability and healing… well, we need so much more of that now. Spaces where folks can step in, express their most complex emotions including shame and guilt, and feel held through the process.

So it’s time to plant seeds for bringing care, nurturing and acceptance back into the patriarchy so that we can heal it from within. We make soup for ourselves, we feed our kindreds… and for now, we do all we can to make sure children in prison are taken care of. I wish that was just a metaphorical statement. In today’s world we are addressing this theme metaphorically but also very, very literally.

On Thursday, July 12 we have a New Moon partial solar eclipse in the sign of Cancer that can support all of these efforts. This New Moon eclipse is the start of a set of three eclipses, and is relatively ‘weak’ as these things go. The two that follow — a total lunar eclipse with the Full Moon in Aquarius on July 27, and then a partial solar eclipse with the New Moon in Leo on August 11 — are perhaps more potent in the eclipse category, and are continuing the story spun last August during the “great American eclipse,” which also highlighted the Leo-Aquarius axis.

Solar eclipses tend to have outer-world impact, and lunar eclipses tend to be more emotional. The Full Moon lunar eclipse on July 27 is a total eclipse, meaning it’s super powerful, and it involves Mars retrograde AND Uranus in Taurus. Of the three eclipses in this set, I anticipate this one speaking the loudest. More on that in a future article.

This New Moon in Cancer on the 12th is perhaps giving us a bit of foreshadowing about what’s to come as the eclipse cycle moves more fully into the Cancer-Capricorn story next winter. I said earlier that it’s fairly weak as far as eclipses go, but it is potentially loaded as far as emotional moments in time go. Here we have yet another potent moment for transformation, as it is exactly opposite Pluto, and within orb of an opposition to Black Moon Lilith. The potential for transforming and healing repressed anger is definitely here.

Eclipse windows can be trying because they tend to require us to release and adjust more than we’d like. They also contain somewhat of a wild card element to them, and so because it’s hard to predict what will happen, sometimes the best wisdom is to just accept that big changes might be in order (particularly if you have planets or angles near the degrees of the eclipses), and then when they happen to breathe and…well, let go.

Keeping it simple, this New Moon is a good time to revisit and review ancestral patterns. What patterns flow through you. Do you want them to keep flowing forward in time, rippling to effect not only any blood kin you might have, but those around you in your day to day life in general?

Stepping it up a notch, intentions that surround hearth and home, emotional transformation from a place of grounded self-reliance, and recognizing the ways time ripples out in all directions are all supported here.

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Full Moon in Capricorn/Mars Retrograde

Sometimes, when I think of Full Moons, I like to imagine being outside naked at nighttime, dancing or running freely in the full moonlight. Hair whipping, arms twirling, hips undulating, hands caressing neck and breasts and hips… The freedom of wildness and fruition. And power.

This is not that Full Moon.

This Full Moon feels restricted. Boundaried and bordered. In all honesty, there’s whispers of brutality there. The kind that knocks us out of ourselves, into shock and disbelief. The Moon in Capricorn can be a cold and hardened thing. With walls built around the heart. The vice grip of fear squeezing its tentacles around the very essence of our humanity, repressing, denying.

There’s so much in this world right now that seems brutal. Terrifying. Beyond words.

It is not my intention or place to bring focus to that reality to your detriment or mine, or to the exclusion of everything else. But it is my intention to hold our current moment in reverence, because it is complex. Terrifying. Shocking. Feeling incredibly dark — because it is. So please bear with me. There is a way through, there is hope, and there is medicine for this journey, but to jump straight to that point does a disservice to the stark reality of our situation on this planet.

The presence of Saturn brings cold hard realities to light during this lunation. It has the energies of depletion, of imprisonment, of criticism turned inward to regulate the emotional body, of manipulation and conditioning, and of the incredible tenacity of institutionalized oppression, racism and greed.

Combined with a recently-turned-retrograde Mars, we might be feeling flattened with exhaustion, as if our vital life force has decided to take a little vacation. Combine this further with the onslaught of bad — horrendous — news coming across the wire, and… well, please know you’re not alone if getting out of bed has become a task.

Mars in Aquarius. Electricity turned inward. Rewiring. Perhaps overloading your circuitry. Perhaps insisting that you take a break from your connection to the interwebs. Requiring us to look at our mental defenses, our anger, and the ways it all effects the wiring of our hearts and minds. Inviting us to look at the ways our personal power and drive to exist in the world connect with the larger picture.

Mars in Aquarius. Conjunct the South Node. Squaring Uranus. Triggers of violence. Fears of violence. Collective violence. Memories floating to the surface. Of all of those times we have been and continue to be tortured, executed and exiled in droves because of our skin, our beliefs, our otherness. Realizations that it is still happening all around the world, getting closer all the time. Survival fears. A crisis of values. Morality. Ethics.

This Full Moon ushers in two months of big time releasing. The next New Moon, on July 12, is also a solar eclipse. That means we have once again arrived at an eclipse season, which tends to be a window of release. Change. Shifting. Combined with the fact that this Mars Retrograde (in effect until August 27) will be conjunct the South Node of the Moon and square Uranus the entire time and we have in fact reached an entire season of letting go. This is not entirely Piscean letting go and surrender, however. Some of the work we have laid out for us will require conscious decision making as to who we are, what we stand for, and who and what must be released accordingly.

The Full Moon brings a dose of sobriety. Of grounding the situation in reality in ways that can feel harsh. Perhaps unbearably so. We are dealing with the polarity of Cancer and Capricorn, and so the themes of emotional self-reliance are up for review.

But let me tell you a few secrets.

First? Capricorn is just as sensitive as Cancer. It’s just that all that flowing water has been dammed up behind social codes and conditionings and “I shoulds” and “I should nots.” There’s a great deal of integrity in Capricornian processes, but also a great deal of repression and denial. Repression serves a function in our early lives, for as we begin to experience the world as it is — the cold, hard reality of it — we also begin to experience our emotional bodies. Because our egos have not fully developed, we are very easily overwhelmed sometimes by those experiences. And so in that sense, the Capricorn function of repression keeps us safe. And sane.

Repression gets distorted, though. It can become denial. Of who we are, of our vital life essence, of our own spark of genius.

It gets distorted into false equivalencies based on social norms and morality. For example: is refusing to bake a cake for a queer couple the moral equivalent of refusing service to someone who props up and defends a regime that incarcerates children? Do we want a moral code and system of laws that says that the former is uncivil and the latter is justified to be the law of the land?  

We get to decide.

Second? Yes, there is potential for collective triggers to be extremely activated as Mars conjuncts the South Node of the Moon and Squares Uranus for the next two months. One shadow side of Aquarius is dissociation and fragmentation. Our minds just…go somewhere else. You can bet that those in power are well aware of these processes and are using them as a form of psychological warfare. Be aware of that.

But be aware as well that Aquarius is also about detachment and observation and objectivity. With Mars moving retrograde, its vital function — that of initiative, impulse, and desire — gets rerouted inwards. So we have an opportunity here to not only observe our own desires and the ways we’re wired to participate in Aquarian realms (tribe, community, the collective), but to observe our triggers. To observe our relationship to anger and rage, especially as they connect with injustice. To re-empower our anger, own it and embody it and direct it towards humanitarian pursuits.

We can use this period and this energy to  develop a plan for moving forward again in ways that fuel our courage, that fortify our hearts, that make us fierce defenders of humanity as a whole. Always. So that we can stop looping in and out of cycles of atrocity.

This period gives us the opportunity to see where we have been, where we are now, and where we’re going. And then to course correct. The energy of Mars and Aquarius together is one we’re not entirely unfamiliar with, for we just emerged in May from a 7-year period of Uranus in Aries. Uranus rules Aquarius and Aries is ruled by Mars. We saw this archetypal combination behind the Occupy Movement, the revival of the revolutionary spirit, the beautiful emergence of queerness onto the main stage.

Mars retrograde is giving us a chance to review so that we can act. As it dips back into Capricorn in the final passage (August 12-September 10), we get to review our own desires as they’ve been shaped and conditioned by our society and get real with ourselves about how our personal power has been co-opted by systems that perpetually repress us.

Third? When we’re dealing with the nodes of the Moon, the South Node tells us about what is being released, yes. The patterns that are up for review, which we sometimes have to enter back into in order to course-correct. To get it right this time — or to at least do something different while bringing conscious awareness of our actions.

The North Node gives us insight into the medicine. The dharma. The path forward. With the North Node wrapping up its time in Leo, the medicine is heart. The medicine is creative self-actualization, the process of becoming who we were meant to be (whatever the fuck that means). It’s the process of tapping into whatever inspires us and feeds us and then letting that energy loose in the world in whatever way best flows through us.

Because Leo is ruled by the Sun, the current placement of the Sun guides us in this. So now, during Cancer season, take care. Nurture. Yourself and others. Make soup. Feed folks. Make your home and next cozy. Take refuge. Know that Cancer is where we come into the truth that our emotional landscapes are always shifting — THIS TOO shall fucking pass.

Then? Leo season, where we’ll see eclipses and the continuation of Mars Retrograde, and the start of Mercury Retrograde. Fight fascism with all of your joy and all of your love and your fierce, vibrant heart. Sing at the top of your lungs right up in their faces. Let your grief fuel your resolve to be part of ushering in a new paradigm, one where all life receives nurturing and safety. Find communities of outsiders and nestle yourself there. Plant flowers. Stand up for every single child you’ve ever been and ever known and has ever existed. Let your heart burst open, and seek support as you need it.

Finally, Virgo season. Harvest time. Mars Retrograde will end during Virgo season, and the it will be time to move forward with all we learn. About our desires, how they fit into what needs to happen next with our resistance, with our families, with our cities and with our country. Virgo knows how to get shit done, and how to shift from self-focus to other-focus.

The will of the people will prevail, but we each have some heavy lifting to do. And so in closing, I leave you with a poem that I found yesterday when I was looking for something to open my Mars Retrograde class with. I was looking for something fierce, and this was not what I expected to resonate. But it did. So here we are.

Wage Peace
by Judith Hill

Wage peace with your breath.

Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of redwing blackbirds
breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields

Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers
Make soup. Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages

Learn to knit, and make a hat
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish
Swim for the other side
Wage peace
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious
Have a cup of tea and rejoice. Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don’t wait another minute.

The Deets:
Full Moon exact June 27, 2018 @ 9:53PM Pacific Time @ 6 Degrees Capricorn/Cancer
Mars Retrograde June 26 – August 27 (from 9 degrees Aquarius – 28 degrees Capricorn)
(Affirmations based on house placement will be available to $10+ Patreons shortly)

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New Moon Gemini 2018
Exact June 13 @ 12:43pm PDT

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Hello, New Moon in Gemini. You feel so fun to me. Light. Not drenched in sorrow. Curious. Yes.

It’s true that this New Moon exists largely unaffected by the other planets — if we can ever see anything as unaffected by anything else. OH, but that’s such a philosophical statement! More the realms of Gemini’s polarity, Sagittarius. Where Sagittarius has synthesized and arrived at wisdom and truth, Gemini is learning. Mapping. Skimming the surface with excitement for the diversities of the human experience and the ways those experiences shape the mind and consciousness.

This New Moon might not be linked in to other planetary alignments in any major way, but the lunar cycle itself, from its mostly unaspected start to its very consequential finish with a solar eclipse at the next New Moon (which happens July 12 in Cancer) contains multitudes, including:

• Planets switching signs, including the Sun’s ingress into Cancer, otherwise known as Summer Solstice;
• Neptune stationing retrograde
• the beginning of Mars retrograde happening on June 26, which will challenge us to own our desires and the power we give them in light of what’s going on with the collective — a journey into our path of becoming who we’re meant to be while dealing with the anger and frustration that can come from not feeling seen;
• several key oppositions that give us the opportunity — or perhaps force us — to seek balance and integration…

Summer is looking like it has the potential for some turbulence. So how do we use this New Moon as a staging ground for that potentiality?

Gemini is constantly mapping experience. We’ve come through the courage and impulse to exist, to be born (that’s Aries); we’ve established what our resources are, whether or not we’re safe to exist, and how to be self-reliant (that’s Taurus). And now? Conscious awareness emerges. We start to understand categories. Colors. Sounds. Shapes. We begin to link our perceptions and thoughts together to form speech. In Gemini our eyes are open to those multitudes, and we want to learn all about every single thing.

The thing is that you, too, contain multitudes. This is an important thing to remember. Your inner world is vast and worthy of exploration — and is in fact a microcosm of the macrocosm (well, hello as above, so below!). At the New Moon, you can simply choose to learn a little more about your inner world and how it is reflected in your outer world and vice versa. There’s an option for you there.

But let’s take that up a notch. Gemini is also associated with communication. With the love of speaking about what we discover, labeling our experience. It’s associated with storytelling. Our personal narratives, and the predominant mythologies of our culture help us to orient to our experience. They help us to form a solid ego identity through Cancer and Leo, the preceding signs of the zodiac.

So this lunar cycle can be a fantastic opportunity to let go of the narratives and stories that aren’t servicing you anymore, and to perhaps play around with new ones. Or just play around with storytelling in general, with an eye to the fact that sometimes Gemini is also associated with lies and deceit. The lies we tell others, and the lies we tell ourselves.

With this lunar cycle, we can build on our communication skills in all kinds of ways. Communication is vital to healthy relationships of all kinds, and it can be an incredible foundation for processing your experience in healthy ways. We need that tool now

Here’s another thing, though, that’s come to my attention several times in the days leading up to this New Moon. It has to do with the stories we tell ourselves about relationships, and particularly what we want in them. It has to do with the stories our culture has taught us about ideal relationships.

In the tarot, the Geminian correspondence with the Twins is expressed through the card most often known as The Lovers. The dark and light coming together. Two parts seeking each other.

I’ve come across several articles in the past week referring to the quest for the ‘Twin Flame.’ One’s other half. Rather than dissect what an overblown and potentially harmful overlying mythos we seem to have there, not because it’s inherently untrue but because it endorses an already rampant tendency to externalize our power and happiness,  what I’ll remind you of is this: what would it be like to imagine that perhaps you are your own Twin Flame? You contain multitudes, after all.

That’s not to say embracing that notion or even just examining it means you have to do everything alone. But let’s take a look at some other expressions of the Lovers just to get the full picture — or day I say story.

In one deck I’ve worked with, the Intuitive Tarot, The Lovers is depicted with the usual three figures, but the two cast in the role of “lovers” look pained and agonized. You see, their torsos have begun to fuse together, as the third figure — usually depicted as an angel, but dark and formidable here — looks on.

In Gemini there is danger of fusing with ideas. Of not being discerning (that’s the square to Virgo). Of becoming the stories we tell ourselves, but to our detriment.

Taking it a step further, The Lovers card is often seen as an internal expression of union. Puzzle pieces fitting together in order to form epiphany. Some kind of synthesis before an idea is displayed to the world as ego identity in The Chariot/Cancer.

The outward expression of that union, then doesn’t come until later. Until we get to The Devil.

No joke.

And The Devil in this context represents our fears. Our shadow material. What we are chained to, what binds us. Perhaps where we’ve chosen social norms or stories that we thought were right and then solidified them in ways that are challenging.

Now, The Devil definitely gets a bad reputation. It can also represent the material world we’ve created and get to play in. But still, the attachment component remains: When you put too much emphasis on any one idea or part (even if the emphasis is an incessant demand for more ideas — that’s shadow Gemini for you, and…well, social media addiction is a pretty good example of that), you become chained to it. It gets gravity and takes over.  There’s the Devil’s association with Capricorn for ya!

So!

For this New Moon… what are the stories you tell yourself? What narratives need some revising or dumping? How do you communicate? Is it time to start a journal? Take a nonviolent communication class?

Gemini is about consciousness and curiosity. So put those things together and enjoy! Get some new ideas! Learn! Grow!

…and I’ll see you in a few weeks with some preparation for the upcoming eclipse window. But for now, a little hint with that: It’s OK to work through feelings first and then communicate.

Loves!