Title Image

Eris Tag

Incantation—New Moon in Scorpio—November 4th.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another—Anatole France.

Leaves of copper and gold blanket the black earth, and kelp-scented sea mists bejewel the fragile webs of spiders at this time when the veil between the worlds shimmers, gossamer thin.

This is a liminal time, halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. A time when we may notice an unsettling shift in the seasons. A time when melancholy wraps itself around the wan light of the dying year and ghoulish costumes create a safe diversion from our squeamishness about death. This is the month when the dead come callingDía de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. Hallowe’en, loud and gaudy, prickling with single-use plastic, once Allhallowtide, a time in the liturgical year that was dedicated to the departed. Soft-bred pumpkins grimace with menacing faces; bonfires consume summer’s fruitfulness, light-hearted tricks and sugary treats sweeten the older tradition of guising (disguising ourselves from sinister wandering spirits) while ruby-red toffee apples symbolise the potent symbol of the pentagram that lives in secret within every store-bought apple; incantations against the supernatural, rituals for protection against the descent into the dark of the year.

The truth is that the triple faced Cailleach drapes herself in her misty mantle at Samhain. She emerges from rocks of ancient granite and the smooth folds of glistening basalt to run her fingernails across the iron-grey belly of the sky, scraping loose bitter weather. Samhain is the Celtic celebration of summer’s end. A time when the Aos sí emerge from grassy fairy forts to traverse the “thin veil” into the world of humans. At Samhain, we seek to honour the dead who have walked before us. We engage in communal warding off those things that remind us of the fragility of life, the proximity of death.

For those of us who have witnessed the dying process of a cherished pet or a loved one, for those of us who have pared down to the bone after the dismemberment of a divorce, or the devastation of illness that has altered our lives forever know the pain of those irrevocable endings, those radical severances that bring us to our knees, rip off our layers of protection, leave us naked and defenseless. As we stand at the edge of winter, perhaps there is a deep sadness that still lies wetly over our hearts, a remnant of eternal timelines interlaced with others who have lived before us.

For so many of us it is the dying of the earth as we know it that haunts our dreams, intrudes on our walk through the woodlands or on the beach where the corpses of tiny turtles blacken in the sun. As we keep company with the collective grief, we may be brought to tears by an act of kindness, a soft word of sympathy from a strangerreminders that people are kind, caring. That we are not alone in our sadness. As the invisible threat of the pandemic, the existential crisis of climate crisis continues to strain our limbic system, tire our brains, keep us on high alert, psychologist Emma Kavanagh writes, “this phase we are in now, where everyone feels kind of on the edge, but no one can really articulate why—is what happens when you survive a disaster. When you live through what we have lived through, the net result means being broken by tiny catastrophes.”

As Nature withdraws, the fading Sun slips into the shade of Scorpio and couples in darkness with the Moon on November 4th, sombre Saturn squares the luminaries, a melancholic reminder of all that has been lost since those first reports of a strange new pathogen emerged from Wuhan. Minimalism, restraint, austerity, checks and balances, will be imperative as hollow men gather in Glasgow to talk, yet again, about the climate crisis. Missing in action will be collaboration and altruism, the solvents that ensure the survival of our species.

It was sixty years ago that Rachel Carson, ill with cancer and in great pain, wrote Silent Spring, a book that was denounced and vilified by the major chemical companies. She said then, “I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves”.

Re-reading her words, now, two full Saturn cycles later, as we continue to beat nature into submission like little dictators, it is hard to imagine that we will have the maturity to change our behaviours; to comprehend that we are only a small thread in the web of life.

Yet, innovative, radical Uranus makes an opposition to this New Moon and Venus moves into serious Capricorn as Mercury enters Scorpio on November 6th, adding a colourwash of practicality and depth to our human interactions this month.

Pluto and Mars are invoked when we talk about the Scorpion. Mars moves fearlessly into the blackness of Scorpio on October 30th followed by fleet-footed Mercury, and though we talk glibly of transformation, Pluto, still moving through Capricorn and square to Eris, coils around that over-used cliché. When we enter the realm of Scorpio, the mystery of life and death are at work. Snakes shed their skins and feathered phoenixes emerge from scorching flames in a world that is no longer pristine and pure, but is still breathtakingly beautiful even as microplastics and chemicals seep through the earth’s capillaries, and the wild flowers and butterflies we knew when we were young have gone.

Scorpio, in its true essence, asks us to dive deep into waters diffuse and dark; to dredge up what lies beneath: a collective fear that concretises into protocols and incantations that we hope will keep us safe; a collective scarcity that clutches and clings; the fragile vulnerability of the top predator with imposter syndrome who has forgotten the interconnection and interdependence of all living things.

Writes Rachel Carson, “the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

As the light slips softly off the hillsides, we stand now in the potent darkness of this New Moon. New Moons are generative times. Seeding moments when we plant wishes in the darkness and wait patiently, expectantly, for them to grow. Rachel Carson invites us to consider this: “one way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

 

For astrology readings and more information about forthcoming virtual workshops please email me directly: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

1

Bolt from the Blue—Full Moon in Aquarius—August 22nd

We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world—Gabor Maté.

Dew-spangled spiderwebs glisten from the hedgerows. The rosehips and blackberries have ripened, and burnished bracken flecked with shocks of gold covers the hillsides. As the Sun melts across the dome of the horizon, Jupiter, a dazzling bright star, and a primrose yellow Saturn, accompany the graceful presence of a pregnant Moon.

This August Full Moon in the humanitarian sign of Aquarius falls at the powerful 29th degree, which carries a charge of energy and seems to define the intensity and changeability of our feelings and circumstances. Aquarius like all astrological signs, draws deeply from the minds that created the world millennia ago.

For thousands of years, The Water Bearer has been identified with the invigorating waters that bring renewal and hope from Heaven. Now the waters have become airwaves and modern minds have assigned two rulers to Aquarius: Saturn, the autocratic authority figure, and Uranus, a planet that could have been more aptly named as Prometheus, the Trickster Titan who dared to steal fire from the gods—and paid the price.

This lunation is charged with the unexpected as she gathers in Jupiter’s overblown, expansive energy. Jupiter in Aquarius is moving Retrograde (between June 20th and October 17th) amplifying the shadowy side of Aquarius—misuse of science and technology, fanaticism; the callous crushing of individual freedom and human rights under the boot heel of ideology or in the “interests of public safety”. This Full Moon symbolises our collective trauma, our private heart ache; the loss of autonomy as the impending heat death of our earth home overshadows humanity.

In Kabul, fear and grief hang heavy over the city as lives are obliterated, women raped and beaten into silent submission.

We are still in the eye of the storm, a dark night of the soul as Pluto moves through Capricorn and the dark stain of hardline patriarchal power continues to infuse our lives. Pluto, god of the Underworld who abducted and raped Persephone in Greek myth, squares Eris, chthonic Goddess who holds the stories of countless women silenced and forgotten. The so-called witches and whores. The unacknowledged healers and midwives. Those who made bold bids for freedom and justice. Those who paid the price with their lives.

As the wheel of his-story turns, the disorientating Uranus/Saturn square may be making its presence felt in discord in those personal relationships that ache to stretch and grow beyond the silences and painful stasis. The energy of this capricious square has unsettled financial markets, destabilised economic structures, jarred us from a sense of complacency as the climate crisis blazes into our awareness with increasing urgency.

Uranus arrives like a bolt from the blue, shattering our innocent illusions, upturning those structures that are ripe for change. Saturn at best brings stability and structure, and at worst contracts, concretises, mires us in fear.

Richard Tarnas, author of Cosmos and Psyche, writes, “Our time is pervaded by a great paradox. On the one hand, we see signs of an unprecedented level of engaged global awareness, moral sensitivity to the human and non-human community, psychological self-awareness, and spiritually informed philosophical pluralism. On the other hand, we confront the most critical, and in some respects catastrophic, state of the Earth in human history. Both these conditions have emerged directly from the modern age, whose light and shadow consequences now affect every part of the planet.”

Uranus begins to switch back and will move Retrograde on August 20th (14° Taurus) and will move direct on January 18th 2022 at 10° of the same sign as we respond to the external events in our lives. Mercury, god of communication, and Mars, god of war, make a harmonious trine to this unpredictable planet, offering at best new possibilities, new information, and the impetus to take the initiative. If used unconsciously, carelessly, this energy takes on a speedy trajectory prompting reactivity, sudden decisions, painful words that twist in mid-air and harpoon our hearts.

Mercury meets Mars again on October 9th in Libra and November 10th in Scorpio. The current meeting is in the discerning sign of Virgo, which can have a waspish quality if not moderated by compassionate listening and some thought about how our words will land. “I always say that if people’s physical appearance matched their emotional age, human behaviour would be a lot easier to understand,” writes Gabor Maté.

Virgo also presides over our health—what we ingest into our bodies and our minds. As we remain rooted in the essentials of what matters, may we be rooted, in “the life of significant soil” as T.S Eliot reminds us in Four Quartets.

Poet and novelist, Ben Okri writes, “bad things will happen, and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So, taste your grief to the fullest. Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is Life too. It is truth. But it will pass, and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.”

This Full Moon will reflect the state of our relationships. The bonds of love and loyalty that nourish us. The untethered ambiguity of those casual encounters that so easily tilt and topple. Tsoknyi Rinpoche writes so beautifully, “Every time you connect, a little bit more clarity stays around the love, a little bit more space opens up around it. Your mind becomes clearer. You experience expanded possibilities.”

We can discover the Miracle in the suffering, we can taste the strange honey in the bitterness of our grief as we feel what needs to be felt—in the light and the beauty of this Full Moon.

 

 

Love Apples—Celebrating the Sacred Feminine in Astrology and in Fairy Tale—Saturday 25th September 2021—14.30 BST.

Feast of Fairy Tale and Sky Stories—Take 90 minutes just for you.

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning”―Gloria Steinem.

This is a time of seasonal change and perhaps a time of profound change or challenge in our own lives.  As Hope unfurls her bright wings to settle upon new green shoots in the south, or a shimmering spiral of golden leaves here in the North, let’s get together to discover the practical wisdom of fairy tales, and the ancient messages encoded in the language of astrology.

Together let’s dream, imagine, plan―as we encounter feisty heroines, narcissistic stepmothers, poisoned red apples, and apples of pure gold.

Together we can celebrate the sisterhood of kindness and radical strength of empathy as we meet at this time of trial or celebration in our own personal journey.

Payment is £40 via PayPal. Discounts are available, if your income has been affected by the pandemic so do please get in touch. Everyone is very welcome. I will send you payment details if you e-mail me at ingrid@trueheartwork.com to book your place on the day. If you can’t  join us, I’ll send you a recording to savour later.

 

With Love,

Ingrid.

1

Sacred Cow—Sun in Taurus—April 20th—May 20th

Today, the Sun moves into the fertile sign of Taurus. The air smells sweet and wildlife is beginning to return to silent cities.

Venus-ruled Taurus brings us back to the earth, to the potency of the virile bull and the gentle passive cow. During this time of enforced curfew and cocooning, we may have glimpsed some of the virtues of Taurus—patience, acceptance of those things we can no longer control, those things we can no longer change.

This week’s Taurus New Moon (April 23rd) is a harbinger of slow and painful progress and economic recession. She unites with unpredictable Uranus and makes a frustrating square to responsible Saturn in Aquarius, symbolising the tension that further restrictions and limitations will bring as a second wave of this crowned virus exposes the hubris of our leaders, honours the courage of front line workers, reshapes our lives.

Outside our windows, Venus glitters against marmalade sunset while Jupiter, Saturn and Mars rise over the horizon at dawn.

As the Sun moves through Taurus, the energy of four Retrograde planets will be emphasised. Pluto goes Retrograde on April 25th (24º Capricorn), Saturn on May 11th (1º Aquarius), Jupiter on May 14th (27º Capricorn.)  Venus is moving through Gemini now and will turn Retrograde on May 13th at 21º Gemini and go direct on June 24th at 5º Gemini, a notional period of 40 days and 40 nights. Transiting Venus apparently moves backwards in her dance across the skies once every nineteen months. These important Venus Retrograde periods distil the essence of what it is that we hold very dear to our hearts.

The ancients tracked the passage of Venus in a perfect pentagram across the skies, ascribing her disappearance in the skies to her descent into the Underworld.  Innana (Venus) is stripped of all her valued regalia and exquisite clothing and enters the Underworld vulnerable and exposed. In modern times, the Underworld is a symbol of our own unconscious where we may encounter a truth that reverberates viscerally. The trial of these 40 days and 40 nights are a cosmic reminder for us to dissolve, discard out-worn values and beliefs. To re-organise, re-examine, re-prioritise those things we value around a more truthful, authentic place that rests at the hearth of our heart.

As Venus turns Retrograde in Gemini we may be facing unemployment, or the unexpected gift of emerging from our chrysalis, starting over, lighter, more appreciative of the little things that bring texture and quality to our lives. We may have reached a relationship crossroad where we wonder, as author, Elizabeth Gilbert once did, “do we want our belly pressed against this person’s belly forever—or not?”  We may be relishing our solitude, if we’re home alone. We may be dating at a distance, enjoying a slower, more sensual rhythm, a new way of being. We may be falling back into love. Grateful, blessed, to be with the one we’re with.

An invisible virus is still among us, and those leaders who become complacent or who try to hurry back to the way things were, may encounter setbacks or a resurgence in the pandemic as Mars moves into nebulous Pisces on May 13th, moving impatiently into the heat of Aries on June 28th, to rendezvous with Chiron, emphasising our pain, our grief, our woundedness.

You cannot rip away caterpillarness. The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process of which we have no control,” Ram Dass once said.

In myth, Venus was also a goddess of war. The pre-Colombian Mayans believed that when kingdoms were unstable, and regimes might topple, her emergence signified an auspicious time to begin a war. Venus Retrograde in Gemini may bring to a climax a festering conflict in our relationship, or the return of a mangy old grievance. As our politicians use military-style language, and direct their impotence towards another country or each other, we may resolve to act in ways that don’t ignite conflict, or deplete our own immune systems.

As this pandemic becomes endemic, we speculate about what life might be like after COVID-19. The astrology speaks of years, not weeks or months, of metamorphosis, the kind of heat and stress that changes limestone into marble, that transforms golden calves into sacred cows.

The combustible 2020 Pluto/Jupiter/Saturn conjunction square Eris (goddess of discord, strife, and consequence) is the capstone for the end of an epoch. Pluto and Jupiter united on April 4th and will meet again on June 30th (both Retrograde) and finally on November 12th, just after the US presidential election.

Unprecedented change, disruption, and upheaval will be the hallmark of the waning square of the Saturn/Uranus cycle as it builds between 2020 and 2023. There will be three exact, uncomfortable Saturn/Uranus squares from February to December 2021, and a close encounter in October 2022, but this energy can be felt already, as the old order breaks down.

Saturn/Uranus alignments coincide with periods of civil unrest, economic collapse, revolution, radicalisation, and the collapse of systems that no longer serve their purpose. If we look back in history, the Saturn/Uranus square of 1928/1933 heralded the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression, and the establishment of The Third Reich. It is likely that there will be record levels of unemployment that will again precede enormous social change. Like the interwoven spirals and coils of Celtic knot-work, the astrology of our times is threaded with the amalgam of the past.

This is a long-term encounter with destiny that will highlight the jagged edges in our relationships, crack open fault lines in our societies. As we steady ourselves for more sacrifices, as we anticipate more uncertainty, Teresa of Ávila who lived during a Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn at the time of the Spanish Inquisition, reminds us to have courage for whatever comes in life—everything lies in that.

 

I post astrology updates regularly on Facebook, and offer personal astrology consultations, so do please connect with me, I’d love to hear from you ingrid@trueheartwork.com

0