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Gabor Maté. Tag

Possibilities—New Moon Aquarius—January 21st.

I felt like some watcher in the skies when a new planet swims into his ken—John Keats.

It wasn’t a new planet that swam into the skies over sodden California this week. A rapturous tweet from the NWS announced, “it’s the Sun!” A sign of hope, after nine deadly “whiplash” storms upended homes and trees, ripped power lines, pitched viscous rivers of mud down hillsides.

This first new moon of the year falls in the very first degree of Aquarius and conceals within her darkness the husk of endings. This may manifest quite literally as an ending of a relationship, a job, moving home, or perhaps in a shift of perception that helps us to embrace those unexpected things that upend our carefully laid plans. Pluto, mythic god of the Underworld, infuses this lunation with a sense of endings, in some cases quite literal. For most of us, endings creep up incrementally, a twist in the evolutionary spiral of time.

The Sabian Symbol for this new moon is An Unexpected Thunderstorm, reminding us of “the need to develop the inner security which will enable us to meet unexpected crises,” according to one interpretation by astrologer Dane Rudhyar. And although the moon’s silvery light is swathed in darkness, she makes a hopeful sextile to optimistic Jupiter and a trine to Mars, as we prepare to begin again.

Water or lack thereof will be prominent themes with the zeitgeist awash with watery symbolism in this year of the Chinese Water Rabbit, infusing it with potential for deep healing, fertile new beginnings. Pluto’s entry into the sign of the Water Bearer in late March, and Saturn’s ingress into watery Pisces on March 7th are preceded by a brief period of easy flow.

In the ever-changing skies, Mercury and Mars moved direct this week and Uranus offers a glimpse of possibilities as it stations direct on January 22nd. Mars will begin to move with more steel-tipped precision in March, picking up speed, energising our intentions and our actions.

Pluto’s promissory note, as he sweeps into the fixed air sign of Aquarius on March 23rd may not be glaringly obvious in mid-January, but a change of signs stirs up what came beforethe blunt trauma of toxic patriarchy, the rapacious plunder of the earth, and the wild silence of the death of millions of living things. Pluto dips in and out of Capricorn until November 2024 and then begins a 20-year residence in Aquarius, deepening our understanding of what it is be to human amidst the inexorable spread of human civilization amidst societal collapse and epic climate breakdown. The bloody American and French Revolutions erupted when Pluto moved through Aquarius in the 1700s, and this ingress in March may provide a glimpse of what is yet to come.

Lynne Tripp, author of Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfilment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself writes, “The greatest threat to creating the future we want is fear, discouragement, and cynicism. It’s easy to be cynical, it’s easy and cheap because it asks nothing of us. Cynicism is like a disease, an infection, and it’s cowardly. What takes courage is to hold a vision and live into it.”

She presents Paul Hawken’s optimistic view that global warming and the breakdown of democracy is happening for us, rather than to us. That within the disastrous endings are the seeds of the transformation of the human condition.

But, we will need more than magical thinking, vision-board manifestation, or the disturbing TikTok’s Lucky Girl syndrome which seductively suggests that we can shape reality and get anything we want, and of course create exactly what we deserve.

These next 20 years will see hierarchical structures of wealth and power fracture. Breakdowns and break-throughs so vast that they may bring a commitment to systemic change that destroys human supremacy and restores the Natural Order to our home planet.

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,” writes Gabor Maté.

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. As we shrug off the cynicism and negativity that disempower us, as we refuse to swim in the negative conversations that pervade the media, a flood of kindness and collaboration may begin to swell.

Aquarius speaks to our instinctual need to bond, to belong. Tonight, we might reflect on the vital nourishment offered by friendship and the precious bonds of belonging that sustain us during difficult times. We may sense something stirring in our soul, a sensitivity to the fault lines of division that thread across the collective, a deep knowing that for as long as this world has existed, we have been inexorably moving to this moment in time. For some of us this might be shifting our focus from thoughts or conversations that keep us stuck in our victim narrative, for others this might be looking for what is working in our lives and shifting the light of our focus on that with appreciation and gratitude.

May our vision for a brave new world flutter with the hopes and dreams of all humankind. May we draw hope, renewal, and spiritual guidance tonight as we gaze up at the heavens, and may we be reminded that we are all connected to each other, and to the stars.

To book your personal astrology session, please connect by email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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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.

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