General

August 11, 2026 In Astrology, General, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

What we can’t See—Season of Eclipses.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of star stuff—Carl Sagan.

On the evening of August 12^th, the temperature will suddenly cool, and a strange silence will settle over the crowds who have gathered to witness the most dramatic solar eclipse in Western Europe in three decades. As the soft round body of the moon slips gracefully between the earth and the sun, a moon shadow will darken the face of the sun and for just a brief moment in time, we may be reminded of our ancient connection to the sun, the moon, and the stars.

This Leo eclipse begins in Siberia, arcs across Greenland and Iceland, the Arctic Circle, and the North Atlantic Ocean. The last place on land to view this eclipse will be Menorca and Majorca. A partial eclipse will be visible all over Europe. After months of drought and wild fires this super-charged new moon (20º Leo) conjures imagery heat and scorched landscapes. It is part of a great cycle of eclipses in the Saros Series 10 South. Astrologer, Bernadette Brady interprets this Saros Series as an opportunity to break out of a very negative situation… a worry that may have been affecting a person will suddenly clear. The solution is shown by the Cosmos and needs to be taken up without too much delay.

In the symbolic language of astrology, eclipses are threshold moments, moments charged with light and darkness. This eclipse carries a sense of urgency, a frisson of tension.

We may feel we are poised on the threshold of a new beginning yet not yet able to see our way clearly (the moon darkens the light of the sun during this total solar eclipse) but we will have time to follow the call of our heart as the effects of this highly charged new moon will last six months.

This solar eclipse aligns with the star Merak, in Ursa Major. Merak is one of the pointer stars in the Big Dipper, associated with guidance and direction as it leads us to the North Star. Eclipses often accentuate important check point times in our lives. This eclipse chart shows Mercury opposite Pluto, Venus opposite Neptune, Mars has just entered Cancer, and there is a powerful concentration of planets in fiery Leo.

Symbolically, eclipses amplify the intensity of power struggles, life-changing choices, triangular dramas, those pivotal moments that charge our lives with a new impetus, a new sense of direction.

Eclipses arrive in pairs, and more rarely, in threes, and there is an eclipse every six months when a new or full moon conjoins the moon’s nodes. On August 28^th, the body of the earth passes between the sun and the moon, throwing a shadow on the surface of the moon, a lunar eclipse in Pisces. Symbolically, our earthly concerns overshadow lunar qualities of intuition and imagination.

These two eclipses won’t cause anxiety, upset, a horrible argument, or propel us onto a new trajectory. They symbolise a moment where something is obscured, interrupted, brought to light, and revealed. Some imagination and self-reflection might be needed to interpret the meaning of these two eclipses:

Leo carries the energy of fire, courage, creativity, and authentic self-expression. In a world that is already awash with “influencers”, personal branding, and grandiose politicians, we might direct our energy towards those people or projects that feel whole hearted rather than performative or self-proclaiming.

Pisces encompasses the boundary-less realm of water, the collective, rather than the personal. This lunar eclipse might offer an opportunity to ask ourselves what must I sacrifice, surrender? How can I serve, what can I give, rather than what’s in this for me? Pisces is the imaginative dreamer, the sensitive and empathic expression of an open heart.

Not everyone will resonate with the same intensity as an eclipse brushes over their birth chart. Eclipses are feral, unpredictable things, yet for us all, the symbolism of this season of eclipses calls us to pause and gaze up at the heavens. To remember that we are connected to the earth, and the stars. That, in the words of Carl Sagan, “we are the universe experiencing itself.

Please get in touch if you would like a personal astrology consultation: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

February 25, 2025 In Astrology, General By Ingrid Hoffman

The Loveliness of Things—Venus Retrograde—March 1st to April 12th

[With apologies for the late arrival by email due to technical issues.]

Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time—Maya Angelou.

In these first hope-filled days of spring, a benevolent sun settles over city parks and woodlands. And for a brief moment, people look up from their screens and smile at the loveliness of things.

February is a month dedicated to Love. As cloyingly sentimental or overtly commercial as this celebration may seem, Valentine’s Day has survived world wars and financial crashes. On February 14^th in most places on this earth, millions of people demonstrated through chocolates and cards, music and flowers, their longing to love and be loved. “Perhaps it is true that we do not really exist until there is someone there to see us existing, we cannot properly speak until there is someone who can understand what we are saying in essence, we are not wholly alive until we are loved”, writes author Alain de Botton.

At sunset this month, Venus, goddess of beauty and love, shimmers in a sky striated with peach and gold. On Valentine’s Day Venus was luminous, reaching her greatest brilliancy as if declaring Love’s power to overcome all human sorrow. She lingers languidly in the evening skies and dazzles us with her beauty till mid-March, then she vanishes beneath the horizon, triumphantly reappearing as morning star in the last days of April.

The ancients tracked the passage of Venus in a perfect pentagram across the skies, ascribing her disappearance from sight to her descent into the Underworld. This descent into the darkness was a dangerous time for humanity. When Venus vanished from the skies, the pre-Colombian Mayans believed, kingdoms became unstable, regimes toppled, and an ancient bloodlust stirred in the heart of warriors.

In myth, Innana (Venus) is stripped of all her valued regalia and exquisite clothing. She enters the Underworld vulnerable and exposed for 40 days and 40 nights. 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 times are a cosmic reminder for us to dissolve, discard out-worn values and beliefs. In astrological language, Venus describes our self-worth and self-esteem, as well as the people or things we cherish and admire. Venus describes our loveability, how we give and how we receive love. We may be prompted to reconnect with our heart’s longing as we reevaluate our intimate and business partnerships, our friendships, our finances, our creative expression, and importantly, what value we place upon ourselves.

Between late January and mid-May this year, Venus becomes a maverick, expressing her qualities in unusual and unexpected ways as she moves over the Aries/Pisces area of our birth charts as well as the birth charts of our fallible leaders, and of nations.

Venus entered her shadow period on January 28^th at 24° Pisces. On March 2^nd, she stations Retrograde at 10° Aries and stations direct at 24° Pisces on April 13^th. She will leave her Retrograde shadow on May 16^th at 10° Aries.

The last time Venus moved Retrograde through Pisces and Aries was eight years ago, so as we reflect back to the themes or our responses to events in 2017, we might get a sense of where we might need to focus our attention over the coming months. Venus and Mercury meet in Aries on March 12^th then Mercury stations Retrograde on March 14^thas we pause before making decisions and pay careful attention before signing any important documents. The few days before and after Retrograde and direct stations are risky times to enter into negociations or make long term decisions.

As Venus moves apparently backwards through the heavens, she will accent the building energy of the important Neptune/Saturn conjunction at that first initiatory degree of Aries, mirroring trigger points politically and economically, as well as important events and choices in our own lives as we grapple with what is “real” or illusionary.

As Venus begins to gather speed, moving direct, she passes over the important Aries point on May 1^st, she will also energise this jetstream of powerful political and cultural currents that will sweep away what has been built, and will ebb and flow, long after we are gone. As civil rights activist and writer, James Baldwin once said: “No time can be easy if one is living through it.”

As we move through the turbulent maelstrom of this moment in human history, with its darkness and its light, we might remember that there are cycles within cycles. As author John Steinbeck wrote during the darkest days of the second world war, “all the goodness and the heroisms will rise up again, then be cut down again and rise up… it isn’t that the evil thing wins—it never will—but that it doesn’t die.”

In our own private lives, Venus accents the impulsive, assertive, risk-taking Aries energy in our birth chart, as well as the caring, compassionate, intuitive part of ourselves as she moves through Pisces between now and early June.

Venus’s Retrograde passage may expose our vulnerabilities, our blind spots, and our lack of self-compassion.

Most of us are unskilled at self-love. It is often easier to look for what is wrong in our relationships or in the world around us, than to place our attention on what brings joy to our hearts. As we take time to hear our inner pulse beat, may we honour the stability of our own substance, resist the meaningless quantification of likes and retweets, and protect our tender hearts and minds from corrosive comparisons.

As our earth strains beneath the weight of our appetites and numbers—and so many of us sense the ultimate ending—Jonathan Franzen writes in his book, The End of the End of the Earth “even in a world of dying, new loves continue to be born… this is now the time to give yourself over to what you love, perhaps in new and deeper ways. Your family and friends, your animal friends, the plants around you, even if that means just the little sprouts that push their way through the sidewalk in your city, the feeling of a breeze on your skin, the taste of food, the refreshment of water, or the thousands of little things that make up your world and which are your own unique treasures and pleasures.

Make your moments sparkle within the experience of your own senses and direct your attention to anything that gladdens your heart.”

These posts continue to remain AI free and free of charge to all lovers of astrology. If you’d like a private astrology reading, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com or visit the consultations page of my website: www.trueheartwork.com

February 13, 2022 In Astrology, General By Ingrid Hoffman

Red White and Blue—Reimagining America —As Pluto Returns.

And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us—Pablo Neruda.

Few of us go willingly into the kind of initiation that accompanies a Pluto transit. When Pluto stirs up all that has fermented, all that has been banished in the dark basement of our psyches, we emerge irrevocably changed.

When Pluto slowly moves across the horoscopes of nations, what has been collectively repressed, conveniently ignored, rises to the surface.

Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 as the fissures in financial systems widened and the blight in governments exposed disturbing division and misuse of power. As Pluto razes down façades with relentless ruthlessness, it also regenerates, and in Capricorn this means governments, police, corporations, infrastructures.

As Leonard Cohen released his prophetic single, You Want It Darker in the September of 2016, Pluto and Jupiter were forming a square that intensified in January 2020 by conjunction. Neptune, purveyor of contagion, illusion, deception, and deceit, slipped in behind the green curtain, a making a slippery trine to Mercury in the US birth chart. The star-spangled banner fluttered in the winds of change.

Pluto’s opposition to Mercury in America’s birth chart (2017-24) reminds us that the foundations of The Land of the Free are dug deep into the black earth of genocide, slavery, and appalling exploitation of the natural world. Mercury presides over communication, intelligence, propaganda, paranoia, media, and travel. Old certainties are unmoored.

This month, America experiences its first Pluto Return (February 22^nd) as Pluto circles back to 27° Capricorn, returning to the place it started from on July 4^th, 1776 when the nation of America was born. Pluto moves slowly through the darkness of outer space, so we’re collectively steeped in Pluto’s darkness which permeates American culture well into the 2040s.

A Collective meeting with Fate.

Mercury, Venus, and Mars escort Pluto this month, accentuating the caution, contraction and discipline that has been attributed to the archetype of Capricorn, a sign ruled by frugal Saturn.

Banners of “freedom” flutter alongside boarded-up shops that offer cold comfort to the homeless as howling ghosts of debt haunt governments and the millions who have lost jobs and homes during the pandemic. As the rich continue to shore up colossal gains and coal factories continue to feed the illusionary bitcoin industry, grandiose Jupiter sails nonchalantly through the heavens, trailing promises of salvation.

Jupiter meets nebulous Neptune in early April, an obtuse union that inflates blind faith and optimism, engorges debt balloons that will explode as Jupiter moves into heated Aries in early May.

The triple conjunction of Venus, Mars and Pluto herald a sobering warning, perhaps a small crack in our collective denial, as Pluto returns to 27° Capricorn three times this year, (July and December.) This is a year that many believe is a make-or-painful-break year for Joe Biden as Pluto opposes his 8^th house Jupiter. Pluto also is in a tense T-square to Vice-President Kamala Harris’ Libra Sun/Aries Moon opposition.

As an impending catastrophe in Ukraine dominates mainstream media, the Moon makes her monthly round, ripening to fullness on February 16th in the sign of Leo.

Weeks of negotiation show no signs of progress and now as embassies hasten to withdraw their staff, and nations urge citizens to leave as Venus (diplomacy) and Mars (war) descend into Pluto’s blackness. Psychologist, Terry Real reminds us, “under patriarchy, you can be connected, or you can be powerful, but you can’t be both at the same time because power is power over, not power with, it is dominance. So, if you move into power, you lose connection.”

On March 6^th Venus and Mars move into Aquarius, activating the degree of the Saturn/Jupiter conjunction of December 21^st 2020, a union that symbolised the dawning of a new era.
Venus and Mars make a tense square to President Putin’s Venus in Scorpio from March 17th-23rd, energising his four Libran planets.

In our highly individuated narcissistic culture, we may ask what values are being unearthed… equality, liberty, diversity, or McCarthyism, Jim Crow, an idealised Camelot? As Pluto’s gravitational force dredges up the grisly truths that lie buried under streets and skyscrapers, America journeys down into the Underworld to be scooped out, humbled, reimagined and reborn. What do the colours of the American flag symbolise now as the earth shudders beneath our feet?

Pluto will be in Aquarius from 2024 to 2044 as we begin to make reparations for historic injustices and re-image a world where exploitation of people, animals and nature will be relegated to his-story and we (hopefully) begin to address the collective grief and trauma that defines the experience of so many people whose lives are still curtailed by inequality and blatant injustice.

The first Industrial Revolution was under way as Pluto moved through Aquarius. Herschel “discovered” Uranus, that planet associated with breakthroughs and revolution as Pluto moved through Aquarius. Captain Cook and William Bligh searched for new consumables in southern lands as Pluto’s passage through Aquarius marked the beginning of the climate crisis and a soulless sense of alienation and loneliness that now threatens our survival as a species.

Carl Jung used the word, Shadow to describe the repressed, denied aspects of our lives, and that the Shadow doesn’t lie languidly, waiting to be redeemed, it regresses, becomes scaled, archaic, clawed. It rattles through our homes, our streets and our nations. It emerges as school shootings, rape, gang violence, and suicide filmed on social media platforms. It screeches as mountains are gouged out for metals and coal, as oceans are scraped empty of fish, and underground creatures are bulldozed to make way for yet another mall or motel. It emerges in the sanctioned bloodletting of war, the slaughter of nameless innocents.

As we all experience the potent alchemy that strips us of our excess as we travel the via negativa, the road through the depths that leads us to what mythologist Michael Meade calls dark wisdom, may we trust Pluto’s power to pull from our souls what is most authentic and loving. May we transform our suffering into wisdom and compassion. May the monuments that we erect to our power and importance, topple.

Rilke speaks to the soul muscle and faith we all need in our grief-phobic, death-denying culture.

“…but the darkness pulls in everything: shapes and fires, animals and myself, how easily it gathers them—powers and people. And it is possible a great energy is moving near me. I have faith in nights.”

Please get in touch if you would like to book an astrology consultation or to find out more about webinars in 2022: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

December 20, 2020 In Astrology, General By Ingrid Hoffman

Up in the Air—Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius—December 21st

The future of humanity and indeed all life on earth depends on us—Sir David Attenborough

The weary Sun lies low on the horizon and pauses at the mid-winter Solstice. The lights of Christmas sparkle in the windows and a cold wind rasps across empty streets. Many people will be at home alone this Christmas. Here in the UK, a new variant of COVID-19 heralds a third national lock-down in the new year reminiscent of March 2020. As the Sun moves into Capricorn on December 21^st, he is joined by Mercury in Capricorn and Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius, a Saturn-ruled sign. Saturn accompanies a heaviness and melancholy. Jupiter is the astrological ruler of Sagittarius and also of Pisces, an archetype so often imbued with a tincture of loss and longing. This Christmas may feel more like The Pogue’s Fairytale of New York than Mariah Carey’s boisterous rendition of All I Want for Christmas is You.

If we look to the West, we may see two bright “stars,” Jupiter and Saturn glittering in a tangerine sweep of evening sky. The sky script reflects the heaviness and exhaustion so many of us are feeling as this year of austerity and confinement draws to an end. For the first time in 20 years Saturn (restraint, contraction, and realism) and Jupiter (faith, expansion, and optimism) come together to symbolise the destruction of the old and the birth of something new. The cameo of Saturn and Jupiter in the skies depicts an age-old conflict between the old order and the new. What this “new” will be depends, as Sir David Attenborough is famously quoted, entirely on us.

These two planets foreshadow the dawning of a new age, a new geological epoch: The Anthropocene, The Age of Man. It aligns with the much anticipated “dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” Every 2160 years the Precession of the Equinoxes means a change of sign and a dawning of a “New Age”.

Jupiter and Saturn conjunct were seen by the Wise Men—astrologers—between May, September and December, 7 BCE marking the Age of Pisces, a sign infused with sacrifice and redemption, faith and renunciation.

This conjunction is different. This Great Conjunction, or Great Mutation, marks an elemental shift from earth to air. It is more about thoughts, communication, human rights and human wrongs. Saturn and Jupiter unite in the sign of Aquarius, which is associated with humanity, a broad-sounding brief. Like all astrological signs, Aquarius is complex and nuanced. Aquarius casts a long shadow that is mired in ideologies, cloaked in clever marketing and catchy slogans. Fanaticism, hive mind and totalitarianism. Conflict and unrest may be inevitable as the old order resists the cries for freedom and independence by the populace. Climate-crisis driven immigration will add more pressure to our overpopulated cities. Mooted Antitrust Laws may make it difficult for Google, Facebook, and Amazon to control our digital lives and personal privacy.

The Jupiter/Saturn conjunction will also square Uranus throughout 2021; coming close in January and February, September, and October, accompanying an economic rupture that follows this year of lockdowns and stimulus packages.

We begin a series of consecutive 20-year conjunctions in air signs that will continue until 2199. For the past 200 years, Jupiter and Saturn have united every 20 years in earth signs, except for a brief encounter in 1981 in the air sign of Libra. This conjunction in Libra (1980-1981) birthed the personal computer and the mobile phone, neoliberalism, deregulated markets, and an ominous widening of the gap between the rich and the poor.

The current Great Conjunction takes place when the Sun enters Capricorn, underscoring the serious Saturnian flavour of the moment. Saturn is the celestial task master, Lord of Karma, demanding accountability, enforcing rules and regulations. This conjunction is significant because the last time Jupiter and Saturn joined in the sign of Aquarius, a Renaissance—a new consciousness was beginning to blossom. This was the dawn of a new age of scientific discovery and unprecedented exploitation of the natural world and indigenous peoples.

At the threshold of a new age on this over-populated planet, what are we paying attention to? What is the future we envision? Greta Thunberg (Sun, Moon and Mercury Retrograde in Capricorn) says, “this is not the time and place for dreams. This is the time to wake up. This is a moment in history where we need to be wide awake.” As the ghost of Jacob Marley brings us glimpses of Christmases past and present, and still yet to come, we may awaken this Solstice with more awareness and more integrity, sobered by the spectre of climate change, strengthened by hope and the will to imagine another way to live.

Thank you for all your love and support during this difficult year. Wishing you and those you love and a peaceful and restorative festive season.

Love,

Ingrid.

There is hope—I’ve seen it—but it does not come from the governments or corporations, it comes from the people. The people who have been unaware are now starting to wake up, and once we become aware we change. We can change and people are ready for change—Greta Thunberg.

May 19, 2020 In Astrology, General By Ingrid Hoffman

New World in the Morning—Sun in Gemini May 20th—June 21st

An agitation of conflicting communication about COVID-19 eddies and twirls across our screens. “There shall in that time be rumours of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are,” says the Boring Prophet in Monty Python’s Life of Brian.

We become deafened to our own thoughts amidst the torrent of talk. Vacillating opinions deplete our analytic stamina.

The Sun moves into Gemini this week. The Gemini archetype lives within us all in our restless minds. Venus is Retrograde and conjoins the Gemini Sun (opposing Sagittarius Moon and South Node) of America’s maverick President. Venus will conjoin Boris Johnson’s Gemini Sun/Venus on August 5^th. As governments and epidemiologists grapple with too many variables, the immune response to COVID-19 is still not fully understood, and there is still no definitive data on post-infection immunity. Gemini rules the nervous system and the lungs.

Robert Skidelsky, in an article entitled the Unspoken Reason for Lockdowns writes, “What “flattening the curve” really means is spacing out the number of expected deaths over a period long enough for medical facilities to cope and a vaccine to kick in.”

As we venture into this liminal space, the road maps offered by our leaders are ambiguous. The familiar landmarks have gone. We’re speculating about fragmenting globalisation. Supply chains are sagging. Prices are higher. Cities are empty. Our ancient human instinct to gather, to touch, to hold and to kiss has lost its innocence. We’re hunkering down. We’re distancing. We’re separating.

The story of Gemini’s mythic twins is a story of loss and longing. Of trickery and lies. This is a story of two handsome twin brothers separated by death.

In alchemy, the process of separation isolates and defines. As we try to separate apparent truth from fiction, as we try to define our post-COVID-19 roles as colleagues, parents and partners, we may look back at what has grown from these slow days of waiting. As we knitted and baked, as we cleaned, and home-schooled our children, as we spent hours connecting on social media, as we danced around the sofa, as we anxiously watched our income dwindle, as we strained to support those we love from a distance, some of us flourished as we strengthened our bonds with those people who matter in our lives, contained in a circle of belonging. Yet for many, this has been a time to rely on the kindness of those strangers who brought food and essentials, who offered the comfort of connection during the long lonely days.

COVID-19 has brought seismic change and lingering disruption and uncertainty to our lives. For those who have not sheltered in the safety of secure and loving relationships, those who have endured the trauma of watching a loved one die, those who will not be able to pay their mortgage, or endured domestic violence, the three Ds—Divorce, Death and Destitution—are the only certainties.

Under a cloud of obfuscation, a sequence of planets—Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn—move Retrograde, reflective perhaps of a shift in our collective perspective. The planets mirror the grim modus operandi of change and shrinking economies as they regress through the heavens.

Venus (those things and people we cherish and value) is the puella in Gemini. She has vanished from the sky, her carefree spirit subdued as she moves through the dark, in Retrograde from May 13^th to June 25^th (Retrograde at 22° Gemini and direct at 5° degrees of Gemini.) During a Venus Retrograde cycle we may revisit those things we valued and lost, seek out second chances, repair and heal those relationships that have become entangled in assumptions or frozen silences. Venus Retrograde periods are cosmic magnifying glasses, amplifying our inherent values and intimate desires.

Venus squares dreamy Neptune, raising our hopes high in love but also in escapism, delusion, illusion, and fantasy. She may be the victim, the rescuer. The glimmering Venus/Neptune square (May 3^rd, May 20^th, July 27^th, and December 30^th) adds a tincture of loss and longing, a heady cocktail of truth and lies, or a restless yearning for something or someone who is unattainable.

Intoxicating Neptune is notorious for delusion and disappointment. As the music dies and the fairy dust dissolves, we fall out of love with our soul mate, or realise that our dreams have been blown off course. This will be the initiation of devastating disappointment, the searing pain of grief and unspeakable loss, or the peak experience of shedding our illusion, adjusting our vision, seeing through the mirage.

Venus Retrograde may amplify the sense of awakening from our cruise on autopilot, as we exhume our buried desires and atrophied longings and embrace each moment with renewed intensity. As we prepare to emerge into this new world, there’s no going back. The way is forward. Something greater than us is governing our lives and we must walk in this direction.

Chogyam Trungpa taught the practice of the awakened heart—“the genuine heart of sadness”, which he said was natural to us all when we allow ourselves to receive the full experience of life with open hearts. It is in this “genuine heart of sadness” that we discover our repressed grief, our forgotten anger, our thin shard of shame, our intoxicating joy and our boundless capacity to Love.

On June 3^rd, Venus aligns with the Sun, a mythic mating, a Venus “new moon”, a union that is an alembic for our inner values. This Venus Retrograde transit may expose our deeply buried desires, our failure to ask for what we need. Venus Retrograde may dredge up discord that signals just how far we have drifted off course from what we value. Upheavals in our relationships may intensify as lock-down thaws. Mars moved into Pisces (May 13^th) as Venus changed direction. Mars will conjoin with Neptune on June 12^th adding to our discontent, or augmenting our compassion and ability to forgive.

Mercury is moving through Gemini, and will unite with Venus on Friday, May 22^nd (square Neptune), an invitation to be discerning about the information we ingest or pass along with an unthinking swipe. This is a time of flux, an invitation to grieve what is lost, to bring Neptunian qualities of compassion, communion, and imagination into the world we are returning to. Systemic family therapist Richard Schwartz writes, “it’s possible that this massive shock to our planetary and national systems will wake up enough leaders that we can get off the suicide train we’ve been on and create a slower, fairer, greener one for ourselves. I believe a lot of that depends on how each of us responds to this crisis.”

The New Gemini Moon on May 23^rd may draw us back to our natural rhythm. To the moment of now. Jeff Foster, author of Falling in Love with Where you Are distils the essence of this month’s lunation: “This moment is not life waiting to happen, goals waiting to be achieved, words waiting to be spoken, connections waiting to be made, regrets waiting to evaporate, aliveness waiting to be felt, enlightenment waiting to be gained. No. Nothing is waiting. This is it. This moment is life.”

As we reflect on the sacrifices we have made and the enormous challenges we now face, poet Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us, “let me not squander the hour of my pain.”

Please get in touch if you would like a private astrology reading: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

New World in the Morning. Songwriter: Roger Whittaker.

September 16, 2018 In Astrology, General, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

In the Balance—Sun in Libra—September 23rd—October 23rd.

In tough times, everyone has to take their share of the pain—Theresa May, Libran.

The souls of the dead were weighed against the Feather of Truth by the ancient Egyptians, and this month, for many of us, there will be a sense of arriving at a crossroads of a situation that requires sound judgement and careful consideration.

The Sun enters Libra on September 23rd, and as it moves over the equator, day and night are equal. This is the midpoint of the zodiacal round, representing the seasonal shift of the Autumn and Spring Equinox.

For so many of us, balance is something we may wistfully talk about when the rhythm of our days begins to gyrate, scattering the weight of unattended tasks and responsibilities like a mantle over our minds. Balance is something we strive for when world weariness infuses the marrow of our bones. Yet, 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.

The Sun, the symbol of our creative self-expression, is said to be in its fall, or debilitated in Libra. A perpetual state of balance is impossible to achieve, as we continually re-create ourselves amidst the complexities of our relationships.

In the Tarot, Libra is Justice XI reflecting the advancement of culture, away from the “primitive” instinctual life. Libra and Aries mark the Equinoxes and where Aries is the beginning, Libra is midway, a crossroads where the old converges with the new. Where reason, justice, and law must be carefully weighed in the balance. As the Sun moves through the sign of Libra this month, we may be standing at a personal crossroad of choice, where our decision must be carefully weighed. efb774662916bf305165d27bb11f2435

The month of October may bring us all closer to a more tangible rendition of this sole inanimate sign. Venus rules Libra, and she goes Retrograde on October 7^th, moving apparently backwards, through the deeply sensitive sign of Scorpio, quickening our hearts as she demands only the most honest and loyal bonds of attachment to those things we hold dear to our hearts. Venus symbolises our inner values, and in Scorpio, superficiality and masks just won’t do. She moves into a second square to Mars on October 11th. Mercury moves into Scorpio on October 11^th when there is a repetition of a theme of choice, or an issue around a relationship or something we deeply value that might have begun in the week of September 11^th.

The essence of Libra is paradox and as 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.”

Libra 5 Margaret Thatcher and the last woman standing, Theresa May, both represent different aspect of this complex cardinal sign, yet share one of the most underestimated of all the Libran traits: intractability. Perhaps, they believed themselves to be agents of change and justice. The astrology documents the events that have unfolded for the often-inscrutable Mrs May since the start of the election campaign on June 8^th 2017. We have no accurate birth time for Mrs May, but the positions of the Sun and most especially Mars in her birth chart reveal the stressors and coping strategies deployed during this turbulent time in British politics. From May to August 2017 Neptune conjoined Mrs May’s Mars, suggesting that striking out in self-interest would be undermined in a swirling sea of confusion, delusion, and discouragement. Neptune Mars contacts bring a sense of idealisation that clouds our willingness to accept “reality”. The essence of this transit is about surrendering our ego to a greater cause. Mars represents our will, and Neptune undermines and dissolves, making it difficult to succeed. She is quoted as saying, “I’ve been clear that Brexit means Brexit.” And as Neptune conjoins her Mars at the end of October for the last time, stationing direct on November 26^th and remaining there till late December, whatever clarity Mrs May was referring to may emerge like a chimera to haunt her and the Conservative Party in November/December.

Saturn has been in square to Theresa May’s Libran Sun—March, May and early December 2018. A time of critical development where she will be challenged, perhaps her ambitions thwarted. Saturn square her Sun represents a period of trial, of low vitality. Projects she began seven years ago are now facing a crisis, and she will need all her Libran diplomacy and hopefully the ability to compromise to try to save what she believes is worth saving. Jupiter squares her beleaguered Mars in early January 2019 against the backdrop of Pluto’s transit through Capricorn. In the words of William Butler Yeats, “things fall apart, centre cannot hold.”

Pluto opposes the UK Moon (representing the people) in Libra 8 the last of five oppositions in early December, signifying irrevocable destruction, and eventually a rebirth, and we will all feel the pain. Pluto opposed the British Sun in the 1920s (1922/23) and conjoined the nation’s Moon between 1930/31, at the time of the Great Depression. During the Thatcher years (1975/76) Pluto squared the nation’s Sun and in 1979 and 1980 at a time of unemployment and austerity and the miners’ strike, Pluto squared the nation’s Moon.

Pluto conjoined the Sun of the UK chart in 2013, squaring the Nodal axis, which gives a “fated feel” to the unfolding drama. From March 25^th 2019, Saturn opposes the nation’s Moon and on April 14^th 2019, Neptune squares Mercury, with Uranus square Jupiter (June-April 2019) signifying the disruption and upheaval that has accompanied what will be a hard (Saturn) Brexit.

Many Librans are prone to agonising procrastination and inertia in their quest for balance, peace, justice and harmony. In the need to please, to be gracious and charming, they offer concessions, subjugate their own needs, and stumble into the shadowy realm of obsequiousness and repressed resentment.

3875fcadda1911e6520ac6b48f85a547 Compromise or polarisation. Judgement or discretion. Quiet desperation or the grace to remember that this is precisely what we have come here to do. In the scales of Libra we hold the tension of opposites. Light and shadow. The paradox of our humanness in the eye of the storm. Perhaps, as Carl Jung believed, if we hold the tension between two opposing forces, a third way emerges, uniting, transfiguring, transcending the two, giving birth to something new.

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January 18, 2017 In Astrology, General By Ingrid Hoffman

Bubble

barer-1803877__480 The world is charged, flaming out into the freshness of a new year. With our private hopes and wishes, our fervently made resolutions still gathered close to our hearts, a Trump-et call heralds the dawn of a new era.

For some of us, staying calm and centred amidst the turbulence of world events that press into private spaces of our lives, has been a challenge this new month. Icy weather conditions in the north, scorching temperatures, angry wild fires in the south reflect the extremes. Fire and Ice. There seems no middle ground as we venture into this new landscape and prepare for a new cycle of inevitable change.

Mercury went direct on January 8^th in the earthy pragmatic sign of Capricorn. An invitation to balance our perceptions of the world and to refrain from asking the futile, Why is this happening—rather to empower ourselves with the more pragmatic—What are we going to do?

For those of us with personal planets in the mid-degree Cardinal signs, the days of January have unfurled like a patriot’s flag in a strong wind. The effects of the last Full Moon in Cancer on January 12^th are still apparent as she animated the energy of the Uranus/Pluto square augmented by Jupiter.

Astrologically, 2017 will be a transitional year for many of us. A time of waiting, perhaps for Brexit or Trump to spin the Wheel of Fortune as the swell of social media, the cacophony of tweets compete for sensationalism in a chorus of brief banality.

borders As political borders have been destabilised, our porous membrane of connection to Mother Earth earth and to all sentient creatures is all that remains. We are all in this together. This year, Saturn blazes grandiosely through fiery Sagittarius. The focus will continue to be on boundaries and borders which will be cemented when Saturn moves into Capricorn in mid-December this year and all through 2018. This is a return of a cycle redolent of the late 1980s, early 1990s. If you recall the fashions, remember Reaganism and That Iron Lady, if you know the lyrics of ABBA’s Super Trouper, you may already be sensing the stirring of the zeitgeist. Thatcher and Regan

On January 18^th both Venus and Mars in Pisces squared Saturn, reflecting the mood of dissonance and dissension in world politics and perhaps some tension in our own personal relationships, a reminder to stay heart-centred, and see one another with soft eyes. The Sun moves into Aquarius on January 20^th. The Changing of the Guard. And an Aquarius New Moon seeds another monthly cycle on January 28^th. Another heavenly reminder to re-evaluate our own ideologies, draw deeply on our own still centre of peace and calm.

Space-national-geographic-6845389-1600-1200 The centre point of this year is the flamboyant Leo (28 degrees 52 minutes) eclipse on August 21^st which casts a long shadow over America this summer and will traverse the President’s Ascendant and his Leo Mars. A celestial re-calibration.

This eclipse (Saros Cycle North 1) is interpreted by astrologer, Bernadette Brady as “unexpected events involving friends or groups place a great deal of pressure on relationships…the individual would be wise not to make any hasty decisions since information is distorted and possibly false… the eclipse has an essence of tiredness or health problems attached to it.”

January 20th 2017, the world waits for the Hollywood spectacle of an inauguration that has deeply divided America. We have collectively, on some level, chosen a leader with a Gemini Sun conjunct the North Node and the unpredictable planet, Uranus as a catalyst for breaking through, breaking open. Nothing is certain. The back-drop is still the Pluto/Uranus square which brought the financial crash and property bubble burst of 2008/2009. _93634585_gettyimages-631747382

We’re entering a new era that will peel away the illusions that float like myriad bubbles in the flashy brightness and the fake news. After the brash flash of this curtain call is over, we enter the more austere landscape of 2018 (Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn). Markets lose their buoyancy. Bubbles burst. The recessional undertow of conservatism and the hard reality of Brexit and job losses will trim the trivialities. Our challenge will be to stay centred in Love not Fear. To bend as the winds of change blow across the globe.

Elvis 1 Capricorn-Sun truck driver-turned-icon, Elvis Presley, announced: “I’m all shook up and I want to shake you up.” Elvis shook up America and the entire world with a pelvic thrust and a new sound that epitomized a new era. President Trump is simply playing his part.
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Bubble Agnetha Fältskog

May 23, 2016 In Astrology, General, Relationship, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Lemonade

beyonce 8

“Are you cheating on me?”

Beyoncé throws open a door. A torrent of water gushes forth, the salty tears that wash the wound of Betrayal.

Beyoncé’s powerful new visual album Lemonade, depicts her profoundly painful experience of infidelity by husband, Jay-Z. And we watch as she rises, renewed and invigorated by the pain of loss and announces to the world, “If we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious!”

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beyonce 6 Betrayal punctures our child-like illusions of Love, expels us from the fusion-state with the archetypal Parent, shatters the projections that cloud our vision of our partner. Infidelity pins our butterfly-winged innocence to a deep awareness of human limitation and our own un-lived psychic life. In the torrent of emotions swirls guilt, anger and despair. Betrayal leaves no room for titillation, morality or judgement. Betrayal is about passion, hot sex, erotic energy, life and death. Betrayal is about broken hearts.

We live in a culture that is sexually immature. There is a collective adolescent preoccupation with the tawdry tacky side of sex that diminishes and obscures its sacred power and sublime sensual beauty. We cloak our obsession with sex and obscure it’s deeper meaning. Saturn has been transiting over Jay-Z’s Sagittarius Sun since January 2016 and Mars moves over his Venus/Neptune conjunction in late Scorpio till early August. In the same time frame, Mars comes to Beyoncé’s Scorpio Moon/Uranus conjunction … “Grief sedated by orgasm, orgasm heightened by grief.” We can speculate that their healing is ongoing and powerfully revitalising for them both.

Lemonade 3-beyonce-jay-z-lemonade In the nuclear aftermath of an affair, therapists may guide couples through various stages of atonement, stripping the soul of sex of its nuances. As sex therapist, Esther Perel, points out, we speak of “victims and perpetrators; injured parties and infidels; confession, repentance and redemption…” Dr Shirley Glass, “Godmother of infidelity research”, writes in her book, NOT Just Friends, about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and yet it’s the Scorpionic essence of trauma, the powerful emotions of grief, jealousy, passion and erotic energy that must be acknowledged if we are to repair, heal and be glorious!

On May 24^th, Venus moves into the Twinned sign of Gemini where she hangs in all her magnificent sparkling splendour in the skies, opposing her lover, Mars in his return journey into the frozen reflective depths of Scorpio.

beyonce 3 In Venus’s inviting arms, Mars surrenders his brutish crudeness, puts aside his weapons of war to envelop her sensuality with a solid sense of power and strength. So think of Venus dressed in Gemini clothing – communicative perhaps, playfully flirtatious, curious in the face Mars’s attractive thrust of strength and the assertiveness he now displays in fiery Sagittarius… And yet he is moving away from his lover, moving backwards into an area of the zodiac, where we must all at some time or another confront issues of our deepest longings, our deepest repressions and frozen fears. In Scorpio we confront our shadow. With Mars in this area of the zodiac, we may feel brave enough to take action, to lean in, to draw our vitality from the deep well of sexual energy, bringing our creative offspring to life in the form of new ideas that come to the surface, new initiatives that are there but may not be quite ready to be birthed until Mars moves direct again on June 30th.

beyonce 11 Betrayal is the means through which our fantasies are punctured and recognised. Venus-Saturn and Venus-Chiron – and in Beyoncé’s birth chart a Venus-Pluto conjunction – do not cause a person to be drawn into triangles, but they describe a deep and innate awareness of human limitation. In childhood a distant or unavailable parent will then unconsciously be attributed to our own unloveability because a rival will take them away. And yet it is the depths of our pain that we discover hidden treasure in the dark silence of renewal. An affair becomes the crucible where we burn away stagnation and destroy our false selves. Our recovery and healing thrust us back into a more authentic life.

Sex gives colour and vitality to our lives.When we hide from it or displace our sexual energies in excessive work, unexamined beliefs or restraining morality, where does this powerful erotic energy flow? Writes Thomas Moore in his superb book, The Soul of Sex: many cultures perceive sex as a sacred cosmic force. Like all the elements in the soul, sex needs to be manifested or we suffer from the sudden return of the repressed – sex breaks through in negative and uncontrollable ways.

So take time this week to cherish your body, delight in your sexuality. Allow the life-giving energy of your passion to melt away irritation or victim-consciousness. Use the energy of Mars in Scorpio from May 28th for deep healing.

“if we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious.”

June 14, 2015 In General, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Every day is a Winding Road

For a while Happiness may be contained in bucket lists or slipped into shopping bags. For a while Happiness may tear through the ventricles of our heart and roar through our veins. For a while Happiness is the sweet taste of our lover’s mouth. For a while it is the brush of their skin.

In his first novel, Le voyage d’Hector ou la recherche du bonheur, author François Lelord writes about the experiences of a psychiatrist called Hector who embarks upon a journey in search of what makes people happy. The book and the subsequent movie (2014) portray the shape-shifting quality of happiness.

Happiness is as unique as our fingerprints. As immeasurable as the dust that slips from a barn owl’s silent wings. We don’t know who or what will meet us on this journey we call life. We may lose our way on the Yellow Brick Road or discover that the great and wise Wizard of Oz is just a conman from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hector says, “the basic mistake people make is to think that happiness is the goal.”

Many people think that happiness comes from having more power or more money. We live in a world marinated in a collective belief which permeates our lives with admonishments to “Just Do It” or slogans that announce unequivocally, “Impossible is Nothing.” Simplistic formulaic slogans may sell cars or sports shoes but they cage the human soul, leach our happiness, clatter through the hermitage of our peace. And as Hector discovers,“making comparisons can spoil your happiness.”

For a while we believe that happiness lies in quixotic pleasures, in things that can be bought and sold. For a while we believe that we can “Open Happiness” when we open a can of Coke. Yet Happiness evaporates in the uncompromising distance that spans polarities – we were happy then, not so happy now. These one-dimensional assumptions about ourselves are embedded in mainstream culture and rooted in the often misinterpreted Herbert Spencer’s phrase “survival of the fittest”.

Hector discovered that “fear is an impediment to Happiness.”

Mostly, happiness often comes when least expected. It may bloom in the unexpected delight of a first kiss. It may pervade our entire body as we watch the sun setting over the coppery rim of the ocean.

For most of us, Happiness is feeling completely alive.

Often our happiness hides in the smallest places in the intimate folds of daily life. Poet Mary Oliver writes, “once, years ago, I emerged from the woods in the early morning at the end of a walk and — it was the most casual of moments — as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the drowning sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle toward it; it was given.”

Happiness is answering your calling.

For a while we believe that happiness lies in pleasing others. Sometimes it does. Sometimes it doesn’t. “I’m taking one day at a time,” the woman says in a voice planed with sharp blade of cutting grief. Her eyes, the colour of denim jeans that have seen many years and many washes, fill with tears. “The thing was, you know, we had our ups and downs over the years, but I thought I made him happy.”

Hector discovers that when it comes to love, sometimes Happiness is not knowing the whole story.

It is in our intimate relationships that our survival strategies emerge like monsters from fetid caves. When there is already a well-worn neural pathway, it takes time and wholeheartedness to encourage the growth of a new neural pathway, to allow new behaviours to flow through new riverbeds of relating. The old track is always there; the familiar well-trodden winding road.

For most of us, Happiness is being loved for who we are. And yet, as Hector discovered, “Avoiding Happiness is not the road to Happiness.”

Happiness, we know, is a state of mind. A choice we make, mostly. Every day of our lives. We may decide to forgive ourselves for something we did in the past. We may decide to forgive someone who has not loved or appreciated us in the way we wanted them to.

Hector discovers that sometimes a long stretch of unhappiness can teach us what it is like to be happy.

For some of us, happiness lies in silence. In switching off the technology that tyrannizes. In shutting out the ceaseless noise and movement of the world and entering the inner sanctum through contemplation or meditation or prayer.

little girl reading

Author Brene Brown spent twelve years of research exploring the relationship between joy and gratitude and says that she never met a person who described themselves as joyous who did not practice gratitude. Gratitude for what is right about the world ushers in more awareness and more mindfulness and invites happiness into our lives.

Hector discovered that Happiness is knowing how to celebrate. And yet how many of us have the courage to wholeheartedly celebrate with presence and joy?

Benedictine monk, David Steindl-Rast said that “in daily life we must see that it is not happiness that makes us grateful, but gratefulness that makes us happy.” He suggests: “pausing right before and right after undertaking a new action, even something simple like putting a key in a lock to open a door. Such pauses take a brief moment, yet they have the effect of decompressing time and centering you.”

Happiness, like gratitude, may require an internal shift, a pause to centre and soften. A willingness to open and to receive. Perhaps just for a shimmering moment this new day, as we close our eyes and bow our heads to our hearts, we can find one thing to be grateful for and smile!

Sheryl Crow – Everyday is a Winding Road

Illustration by Julie Paschkis

December 19, 2013 In General, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Smooth Operator

And so it’s Christmas. You’re worn to a frazzle. The sleeping herpes virus has awoken and painfully alerted you to its presence. You drive to the doctor. Then to the pharmacy. It’s nothing really in the great scheme of things. A bit of discomfort, especially in the heat, this time of year. But it’s something about yourself you don’t want to share on Facebook, or with your former or future lovers, or with your insurance company, advertisers, or the government – or leave hanging up there in the cloud do you? Well if you own a smartphone darling, it’s thank you for sharing. You are leaving a trail of dots that can be joined. There’s nothing stopping the multi-trillion “Smart things” business now. The internet lives in your wristwatch, the locks on your doors, your car, in your eyewear, in your phone. Our physical world is on the brink of morphing into a virtual one. We’re tiny frogs in hyper-connected water that’s hotting up.

And yet in this interconnected world where we are all stardust, all part of the Great Design, what’s so ominous about being transparent? Is this Western need for individualization and privacy passé? An anachronistic foible of ageing Baby Boomers? A dinosaur in a quantum age?

Christopher Mims, science and technology correspondent for Quartz writes that 2014 is the year of the internet of things. And the internet of things will replace the web and tell us what we want – continually. No surprises. No spontaneity. It will moderate our lives, anticipate our thoughts and feelings – till we’re too dumbed down to wonder, whose life is this anyway? “The web will survive, just as email survived the arrival of the web.” Science Fiction, Double Feature. We are but players, joined by invisible threads that urge us to buy more stuff, that know exactly where we are and what we’re doing. We may feel important, special, seen. But there is a price to pay for our narcissistic specialness.

BI prophet and founder of 9sight Consulting Dr Barry Devlin, writes in a recent blog post: “ The sad truth is that we have lost most of our privacy already, having entered into a Faustian pact to share, both knowingly and unwittingly, the details of our daily lives.”

It’s a trade-off. Like most things in life it must be made with as much consciousness and alertness as we can muster in our dazed and dazzled minds. At it’s best it’s a symbiotic relationship. At it’s worst it’s parasitic. In exchange for everything there is to know about our lives, Facebook and Google give us social networks and information we may find useful – or not .

“Even the acceptance that our smartphones report our location minute by minute is driven by a consensual belief that we may be offered a coupon for a nearby coffee shop at any moment. The payoff for ultimate traceability… Which aisle in the supermarket are you in? What about some very specific retail therapy recommendations? These, and other soon to emerge toys, have the addictive quality of sex to many of the current generation of CMOs and proponents of big analytics,” writes Devlin.

Dave Eggers’ The Circle: A Novel is chillingly prophetic in the same way that George Orwell’s 1984 was 30 years ago. “The world has dorkified itself,” he writes about the insidious encroachment of technology in every aspect of our lives. Oh, but this is just a novel, he cleverly states up front. A chilling read and well worth slipping into your own Christmas stocking. Big Brother is watching us in our dorkified new world – every breath you take. Every move you make. Every bond you break … every time we use our credit card or phone a friend.

So step off the grid this Christmas. Meet those you love in real time. Embrace the spirit of Christmas with real hugs and real kisses.

Smooth Operator songstress Sade’s molasses voice melts the world away…