Orna Guralnik Tag

April 4, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

The Balance of Heaven—Libra Full Moon—April 6th.

Your pain, your sorrow, your doubts, your longings, your fearful thoughts: they are not mistakes, and they are not asking to be ‘healed.’ They are asking to be held. Here, now, lightly, in the loving, healing arms of present awareness—Jeff Foster.

The Sumerians called the constellation of Libra Zib-ba An-na, “the balance of heaven.”

The Egyptians weighed the souls of the dead against the Feather of Truth in golden scales of balance.

At this time of pause and reflection celebrated with ritual and reverence in so many tradtions, we are called to hold ourselves tenderly at this point of stillness.

Tonight’s full moon makes an exact opposition to the Sun, Jupiter, and Chiron, the wounded healer, all warmed by the fire of Aries highlighting the ways we wound and heal in all our relationships, inviting us to bring harmony, beauty and balance in our own lives. As we cradle our pain and our sorrow, our doubts and our longings, may we also tend to our tired bodies while the full moon silvers the world with her light tonight.

The full moon holds the tension of opposites between two hot-headed Aries new moons (March 21^st and April 19^th). Alluring Venus in sensual Taurus disposits this full moon heightening her charm and her grace, a celestial reminder that we need more beauty, more sensual pleasure, more harmony and ease in our lives. Mercury joined Venus in Taurus on April 3^rd and begins to lose pace as he slides into shadow on April 7^th, the day after the full moon. We enter a Mercury Retrograde cycle in a fixed element of earth from April 21^st-May 14^th, which accents practical concerns like finances, property, working conditions, and importantly the most valuable rescource, our body and its needs. For those who have angles or planets at fixed degrees (5-15°) Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, or Aquarius, this will be an opportune time to attend to the most fundamental details of life. Jupiter will amplify themes of abundance or lack (finances, love and loneliness) when it enters Taurus in May and also accents that 15° point, turning Retrograde at 15° Taurus on September 4^th and moving direct again at 5° Taurus on New Year’s Eve.

As we contemplate the worth and the meaning of the associations that support or challenge us, this lunation illuminates the patterns in our relationships, and the part we play in braiding the ties that bind.

For some, this will be the moment in time when we harvest all the thoughts and emotions that have brought us to a place of ending. This will be a time of departure from a relationship that for far too long has provided scant nourishment. Within every human heart is a longing to be cherished and to be seen. Psychologist Sue Johnson writes, “this drive to emotionally attach—to find someone to whom we can turn and say ‘Hold me tight’—is wired into our genes and our bodies. It is as basic to life, health, and happiness as the drives for food, shelter, or sex. We need emotional attachments with a few irreplaceable others to be physically and mentally healthy—to survive.”

We expect so much from our partners, in love, and as we continue to live with the existential anxiety of the climate crisis, those relationships that have sustained us—friendships old and new, the intricacies and vagaries of family relationships, the encounters with our virtual tribe or colleagues at the office—we absorb and embody experiences that take us down the twists and turns, repeats and spirals, back to ancient themes.

Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset wrote that “no land in human topography is less explored than love.” It is the exploration of love’s landscape that is essential to the soul’s holy longing, and we must be brave wayfarers. Although all planetary archetypes portray our human experience of relationship—attachment, separation, autonomy, and dependence. The Venusian art of relating and healing the heart’s contraction has evolved from Agony Aunt columns and our urge to pathologize, improve or fix, into the collective experience of relationship therapy. The “telly-therapy” of Esther Perel and Orna Guralnik offers voyeuristic participation in couples therapy, revealing the archetype of Venus in all her guises, and inviting personal identification with couples who are living in the trauma world of fear, disconnection, and shame.

“Intimacy is a difficult art,” Virginia Woolf once said. Intimacy is a difficult art in a world where technology replaces the warmth of human encounter. Voyeuristic TV series like Married at First Sight portray a lonely absence of intimacy, a hungry urgency to find shelter for the soul. In a culture so focused on measurables and certainties, we may find the candlelit depth and substance of intimacy a difficult art. The Sun, the symbol of our creative self-expression, is said to be in its fall in Libra implying that a perpetual state of balance is impossible to achieve, as we continually re-create ourselves amidst the complexities of our relationships and metastasise the events that are unfolding in the world right now.

Balance is as capricious as the patterns of neuronal firing in our brains, as fleeting as our emotionally charged perceptions of the world around us. It will be the small gestures of love and kindness, the careful harnessing of our untamed thoughts, the brave reimagining of how this world could be that keep us open-hearted, willing to be held and to hold.

Please get in touch if you would like a private astrology consultation or to join me and spiritual guide and teacher, Eileen Heneghan on Saturday June 24^th in Celebration of the Midsummer Solstice: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

February 1, 2022 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Kiss from a Rose—Venus Emerging

Love is fearlessness in the midst of the sea of fear— Rumi

The first flurry of delicate blossom ushers spring’s joyful arrival as the Sun and Moon meet in the sign of Aquarius today.

New Moons denote entry points, like doors ajar that invite us to garner new experiences, to cross back and forth between the past and the future, to experience the joy of new beginnings and the ache of final endings.

This month begins on a New Moon in Aquarius, a sign that encompasses our participatory belonging to humankind. Aquarius’s wavy glyph suggests those powerful currents of energy that flow through the deepest stratum of our relationships with friends, family, and those intimate soul filled engagements.

The ancient cross-quarter festival of Imbolc on February 1^st and 2^ndis the first midpoint in the cycle of the year, welcoming the first tentative stirrings of spring, a guiding metaphor of new beginnings.

Saturn joins the new Moon today, and unites with the Sun at the week’s end, as Mercury turns direct on February 4^th, an invitation to attend to our responsibilities with patience, to seek fresh perspective as familiar themes circle and cycle in our own lives and in the world around us.

There’s a solemnity in the sky script as seven Saturn-ruled planets speak to the challenges of the literal events that absorb our attention, and those things that matter. As some governments try to find a way to move through the pandemic by removing mandates, tens of thousand tonnes of Covid waste spill from landfills, contaminate the air, and clog rivers and oceans, a dark counterpoint to our collective longing for play and pleasure.

Cautious Saturn stands sentinel at the threshold of this month dedicated to Lovers as commerce pays homage to the brutally murdered martyr and unlikely lover, Valentinus with symbols of sensuality—red roses, dark chocolates wrapped in cerise or shiny scarlet foil, pretty cards that offer love’s promise. For those who may be grieving the loss of a loved one; for those who have been shamed and shunned, harmfully shocked, ignored or brutally intruded upon, the scar tissue that wraps around the heart may ache as lovers walk arm in arm in the soft light of spring.

For thousands of years, the spectacular cycles of Venus have been tracked and observed by our prehistoric ancestors. The Mayan and Mesoamericans timed wars when Venus emerged as the Wasp Star from the darkness of her 40 days and 40 nights sojourn in the underworld—renewed, resolute, resplendent in her fierce beauty.

On January 15^th Venus appeared, strengthened, transfigured, glistening like a diamond on dawn’s softly curved breast after her 40 days and 40 nights descent into the Underworld. Venus stationed direct on January 29^th and will linger in her post-retrograde shadow until March 1^st while Venus and Mars unite in the sign of the Mountain Goat on February 14^th—a tender embrace that signifies a new tempo in a soulful life.

All planetary archetypes portray our human experience of relationship—attachment, separation, autonomy, and dependence. Jungian analyst Ann Bedford Ulanov suggests that “as the instincts are to the body, so the archetypes are to the psyche.”

Our entire birth chart, and more specifically, the archetypes of Venus and Mars, describe our innate responses to our environment; the myriad ways we love or defend ourselves from the soul mate we long for. Mars is the warrior god. In so many cultures, he has been associated with the masculine principle, with fierce gods of war. To the Greeks he was Ares, his name emerging from the root, “to destroy” or to be “carried away” which is so often experienced in the ecstasy of falling into love when we are carried by our desire, within reach of our holy longing.

We may experience Mars energy vicariously through movies or sport; or in the narcissism of our times, embody Mars in impassioned exchanges on social media or through the windscreen of our vehicle when we’re stuck in traffic. In our culture of haste, as we lean in, stretch forward to the next bigger, better thing, it might now be helpful reflect on the rich symbolism of the current Venus Retrograde as she has revealed those things that pained us—the jagged schisms in our relationships, our concerns about money, our creative or sexual anorexia, our relationship with beauty and art, or angst about ageing. In myth, Venus was not faithful. She delighted in variety, she evoked jealousy. She defied the patriarchal Greek and Roman morality. In our birth chart, she leads us down to the Underworld to experience colourful explosion of passion, loss, and longing, to emerge once more bearing the marks of our initiation, willing to be utterly loved, shored up, supported as we offer our creative gifts to the world.

Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset wrote that “no land in human topography is less explored than love.” It is the exploration of love’s landscape that is essential to the soul’s holy longing, and we must be brave wayfarers. The Venusian art of relating and healing the heart’s contraction has evolved from Agony Aunt columns and our urge to pathologize, improve or fix, into the collective experience of relationship therapy. The “telly-therapy” of Esther Perel and Orna Guralnik offers voyeuristic participation in couples therapy, revealing the archetype of Venus in all her guises, and inviting personal identification with couples who are living in the trauma world of fear, disconnection, and shame.

We might pause in our focused busyness today on this New Aquarian Moon and follow a thread of memory back to the Venus Retrograde in the air-sign of Gemini that began on May 13^th-June 25^th, 2020—a cycle that was defined by the pandemic, worldwide lockdowns, economic recession, as well as major bushfires in Australia and the Western United States. We may pause to remember the brutal killing of George Floyd that unleashed the Black Lives Matter protest cry that bloomed and flowered all too briefly. We may ask ourselves what we have done to be kinder, more conscious, more tender. Now, as Venus emerges in the sign of Capricorn as a Morning Star may we replenish our faith in the unseen, may we trust that our gifts will be welcomed in love and appreciation, may we feel a sense of purpose and value in our community. May we cherish each other and find shelter in Love today.

For astrology consultations or more information about webinars, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com