Relationships

Change of Heart—Full Moon in Libra—April 13th.

It isn’t too late. Time is not running out. Your life is here and now. And the moment has arrived at which you are finally ready to change―Cheryl Strayed.

Most of us can recall those pivotal moments when our lives were shaped by intuitive choices that catapulted us into a different direction. We may have moved continents, left a lover―or chosen to stay, walked away from a highly paid corporate career to create art. This weekend as we reflect on the turbulence of the eclipse season, amplified by the Mercury and Venus Retrograde cycles, we may realise how much our priorities have changed, how we have healed, how much we have grown.

Venus revisits the same area of the zodiac every eight years. Venus last moved through the Pisces/Aries houses in our birth chart in March-April 2017. Retrograde times deliver gifts of hindsight, or personal descents into hell that up-end our lives. This Retrograde cycle may have carried similar themes―a shift in values and priorities, perhaps sudden realisation that our butterfly-effect choices, even the seemingly small ones, have brought us to where we are tonight.

Venus is exalted in Pisces, the sign of the tethered Fish. As Venus moves direct once more through opaque, Piscean waters, we may feel connected to a deep force of compassion, a swelling of creativity, and―as a flurry of pale pink spring blossom shimmers in the bluest of blue skies―the sweet blessing of heartfelt gratitude. This Venus station might accompany a change of heart, a new realisation that the moment has arrived, deepened by time, to release the past and finally move on.

The pulse of spring quickens. The hedgerows blaze with white blossom. After a fractious eclipse season amplified by the Mercury (March 14^th-April 7^th at 26º Pisces) and Venus Retrograde cycles (March 2^nd-April 13^th at 24º Pisces), Venus glistens like a diamond on dawn’s softly curved breast as the full moon in the Venus-ruled sign of Libra turns her face to the sun this weekend.

Full moons symbolise completion. They are harbingers of light as we  see more clearly, finish now what must be finished. As this full moon moves through the Libran part of our own birth chart, we are called to practice the challenging art of balance, compromise, choice and fairness in a world that so often seems unjust and out of kilter.

Aries is the beginning, Pisces the end. Libra is midway, a crossroads where the old converges with the new, where the winds of change blow across our lives, exposing the roots, bringing us closer to ourselves, and to others in safe relationships where oxytocin and vasopressin activate parts of the brain associated with calm.

The moon and Venus, two quintessential symbols of femininity, infuse the heavens with peace and harmony tonight as we honour those relationships that have sustained us through our darkest hours and allow love to flow freely towards those who mirror those aspects of ourselves that we disown.

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.”

Author Gerald Jampolsky writes that love is letting go of fear, and that we choose either fear or love. The essence of Libra brings harmony to polarities, offers a possibility to let go of the melodrama, to transcend the personal, and touch the heart of another with hope. At this full moon, we offer the warmth and containment of a blessing to the world and those around us. As we bow our heads to our hearts, may we feel lighter, may we notice the grace and beauty in ordinary things. For those who will be celebrating Pesach, Easter or Ēostre, this from poet and mystic, John O’Donohue: May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquillities. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.

 Please get in touch with me to book a personal astrology reading: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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Blood Moon Lunar Eclipse—March 14th.

Life turns on little things. The momentous events in history can leave us untouched, while small events may shape our destinies―Jennifer Worth.

On the night of March 13^th or 14^th, depending on where you live, all the world’s sunrises and sunsets will be painted onto the soft curve of the moon as she sails through the atmosphere of the earth. A pair of eclipses bookmark the month of March: a full moon “blood” eclipse, (moon at 23° Virgo) followed by a partial solar eclipse on March 29^th  (sun at 9° Aries.)

During a lunar eclipse, the sun, moon and earth make a perfect alignment as the moon passes through the darkest part of the earth’s shadow and we collectively enter, for just a moment, the womb of darkness. We may feel quite literally in the dark about a situation that has been building. For many of us, it will be the little things, the small events, that shape our destinies. Yet, if one of these eclipses aligns with one of our personal or progressed planets (in the mutable signs of Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius) we will be touched by some kind of crisis or an abrupt awakening that marks an important turning point in our lives.

Blood is associated with the war and death in our culture, yet this full moon reminds us that blood is a female symbol of fertility and of new life. At this time of dimming light when we face the necessity of endings collectively and personally, this full Moon lunar eclipse may herald a return to clarity about what has been eclipsed in our lives, and may offer a glimpse of what can be birthed a-new.

This full moon presides over the quiet rhythms and routines that root us in seemingly ordinary tasks as she moves through the modest sign of Virgo. Virgo reminds us to tend to the little things that matter—bonds of love and friendship, our connection to the natural world, those things we hold dear that bring us comfort and joy amidst shifting circumstance. Earth is Virgo’s element, and Virgoan qualities are so often depicted in fairy tale as the heroine performs tasks with humility and attention to detail. Humility derives from the Latin, humilis—down low, on the ground or of the earth. Executive coach, Vanessa Loder speaks about “following our energetic breadcrumbs,” a daily choice, a tiny moment, that we can all feel into when we begin to focus our attention to those seemingly ordinary encounters, when we notice the signs, pay attention to the prompts.

The Sun moved into watery Pisces on February 18^th (Pisces corresponds to our lymphatic system, our feet and toes, while Virgo’s domain is our digestive organs) so this full Moon brings our focus on the quality and origin of the foods we assimilate, the health of our colon, our immune system and the comfort of our feet.

Saturn in nebulous Pisces opposes this month’s Virgo moon, creating a force field of vulnerability and heightened emotion. Saturn aspects accompany frustration, obstacles often associated with laws, responsibilities, duty and demands. The sun in Pisces sextiles disruptive Uranusm so plans could quickly unravel, what seemed so straightforward, now might be complicated.

As our lives turn on those little things that shape our destinies, the shadows of both the lunar and solar eclipses this month, suggest that things will not be smooth in world politics. Venus, symbol of what we hold dear to our hearts, is moving Retrograde in Aries. Aries is a hot-headed, martial sign and Aries is where Venus is in her “detriment”.  Venus in Aries wears warpaint and battle gear. Venus stationed Retrograde on March 2nd and will turn direct at 24° Pisces on April 13th. Tempers flared and diplomacy dissolved in the Oval Office under the glare of the media on Friday February 28th in an undignified display of what psychologist Dr. Dan Siegel describes as “flipping your lid”―when the the amygdala, the emotional brain, hijacks the frontal cortex, the thinking brain. Mars (ruler of Aries) is moving direct now in Cancer, an emotional placement, that feels offended and can explode into immature temper tantrums.

The astrological weather for March and April will be unsettled as Mercury turns Retrograde (9° Aries) on March 15^th.  

Both Venus and Mercury sensitise the 9/10 degree points in our birth charts then move over the 24/26 Pisces degree points, the same degree point as the full moon total eclipse. Be prepared to be flexible and open to new moves. Expect the usual Trickster/Mercurial technical, transport, communication glitches that compel us to pause, re-think, re-work, re-do, and be mindful that Mercury in Aries can be brash, impulsive and reactionary. Pause, breath out slowly before responding. Engage the frontal cortex.

Midwife and nurse, Jennifer Worth who knew so intimately the power of female blood, the dark and the light of human nature, worked amongt the very poor in South East London in the 1950s. She writes so poignantly, “we do not get what we expect. We stumble on cracks, are faced with imperfection, bonds tested and tightened. And our landscapes shift in sunshine and in shade. It was light where you went once. It was light where you are now. It will be light where you will go again.”

For every one of us, this eclipse season marks a space between darkness and light, the bloodlust of war, or the blood that accompanies a new cycle of fertility, the miracle of birth. May we soften those places in ourselves that have become calloused and hard. May we cleanse our thoughts and open our hearts as events, big and small, shape our destiny. Peace and contentment to all who have entered a time of quiet reflection during Ramadan and Passover.

For personal astrology readings please contact me on ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Astrological Weather for 2025.

Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4Bc to 65 AD.

On January 1^st, we cross over the burning ground where our intentions, our resolutions are ignited. As we stand on the cusp of this new year, January’s promissory note offers a chance to do things differently, to dare to change our minds and our hearts. To move from what we have outgrown. To begin again.

This new year is shaped by some major astrological markers that will infuse the collective energy and impact on our own lives as familiar things fall away and we learn to adapt to all that is new.

On January 11^th, the North and South Nodes change signs, moving into the Pisces/Virgo lunar axis, defining the zeitgeist for the next 18 months, as we keep the faith while attending to those ordinary things that knit the days of our lives together.

The lunar standstill that has been building month by month since 2020 reaches its peak in March 2025. A lunar standstill or lunistice is similar to a solstice when the sun seems to stand still for a few days around mid-winter or mid-summer, but a lunistice lingers for a period of two years as the moon rises and sets in more extreme positions, reaching high in the sky in the summer, and low in the winter here in the north, affecting our emotions, the liquid in our bodies, the tides.

There are four eclipses in 2025: A total lunar eclipse in Virgo on March 13/14^th depending on where you live. A partial solar Eclipse in Aries on March 29^th. A total lunar eclipse in Pisces on 7/8^th September. And a partial solar eclipse in Virgo on September 21^st, each eclipse imbued with its own meaning and significance as it drops into your own birth chart, perhaps energising a passion that lies dormant, offering a prompt to discover a purpose within.

The volatile Mars/Pluto opposition peaks on January 3^rd as unresolved anger and trauma resurface perhaps in our own lives if this aspect ignites an angle or planet in your own birth chart. This is the intractable energy that accompanies power struggles, stand-offs and ruthlessness.  Mars remains opposite Pluto until February 22^nd as we tame our inner beasts and appreciate what is beautiful and graceful in our lives. Mars stations direct on February 24^th at 17° Cancer, accompanying abrupt reversals, maybe a loss of interest in a goal, and awareness of a turning point that exposes a lingering problem and a choice to be made as Mars brashly unsheathes his sword and we are compelled to change course.

If you are poised to travel or make a commitment that concerns a relationship or money, there may be delays or setbacks as Venus and Mercury go retrograde in Aries back into Pisces in March. March 14^th to April 7^th for Mercury. March 1^st to April 12^th for Venus.

This year will have a different tone as Jupiter slips into Cancer, a sign of its exultation, a feminine counterbalance to brute force and assertive action. This transit might direct our energy and rescources to our sense of safety and belonging as we focus on home, family and community. Jupiter enters Cancer on June 9^th and will remain there until June 2026, as we nurture ourselves, and perhaps as we look deeper, find depth and meaning in the word, “mother”…

Pluto entered Aquarius on November 19^th, 2024, and will re-shape our experience of being an individual in a world where science and technology will utterly transform societies and nations for the next twenty years.

Neptune enters Aries on 30^th March 2025 and stays until 22^nd October before returning to Aries from 26^th January 2026 until 2039. This transit will inspire many new beginnings in spirituality, creativity, art and politics that may be idealistic and imaginative, or delusional and self indulgent. Uranus enters Gemini on 7^th July 2025 and stays until 8^th November before returning to Gemini from 26^th April 2026 until 2033. This transit will revolutionise, possibly disrupt how we think, communicate, and share information, and impact on our use or mis-use of media, as well as ways we educate and transport ourselves.

Saturn takes charge as he enters Aries on 25^th May 2025 and stays until 1^st September before returning to Aries on 14^th February 2026 until 2028. This transit is about taking a realistic approach to defining our identity, our integrity and reliability. Saturn represents our rule-book for life, and describes important developmental processes that garner more meaning as we mature and age.

In March, a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune nudges close to the North Node in the very last decan of Pisces, moving within half a degree orb at 0° Aries in July. As Saturn and Neptune dance together all through 2025 what we knew to be safe and sure may become untethered. Neptune breaches, erodes and undermines the steadfast structure of Saturn, which release a tsunami of disillusionment and disorientation. We may be called to make sacrifices for the greater good. We may discover qualities of resilience, steadfastness and courage as we draw from our inner reserves of strength and passion.

On February 20^th, 2026, these two celestial dancers will meet at 0° Aries point (the first degree of the zodiac, signifying endings and new beginnings), setting in motion precipitous deconstruction of what seemed indestructible. Saturn and Neptune contacts in Capricorn coincided with the gradual dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, the end of the Cold War, and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Nothing stays the same. Not here on earth, nor in the heavens. The sands of time rush ever more swiftly through the hourglass of our life. Today,  we take a leap of faith and bravely cast our hopes and wishes towards the ever-shifting horizon of the possible. Nothing is certain. All is flux and change. This new year can be shaped by what we have lost or what we yearn for. It can be remembered by how well we have loved.

In loving memory of Mary Whelan, July 11^th 1961 – 29^th December 2024. Thank you for shining your light so brightly into this world.

For personal astrology readings in March, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

What Lies Beneath— Full Moon in Scorpio— April 24th.

It’s not the conscious changes made in their lives by men and women which really shape them… but a long, slow mutation of emotion, hidden all-penetrative—Nadine Gordimer.

All-penetrative change is inscribed across the heavens this month.

The sun slips into sensuous Taurus on April 19^th and a Scorpio full moon on April 24^th supports the transformative power of intention to clear the clutter from not only our physical space, but what is outworn and unfulfilled in our hearts, so that we can move more freely again.

This month’s lunation squares Pluto, primeval god of destruction and regeneration, emissary of hard truths. As we sort through those sentimental things that bind us to a past we have outgrown—dusty ornaments, clothes that no longer acclaim the person we have become, shoes that torture our toes, books that now offer no sustenance or new learning, beliefs that mire us in regret or resentment—this lunation offers the impetus for cathartic release. Taurus is a dependable earth sign. Although “being grounded” can seem like one of those self-help amorphisms, grounding, rooting, being in the power of now, affirms the richness of our ordinary lives. Scorpio involves a confrontation with destruction and darkness, and like the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes, we gain insight, healing, and renewal when we drink Scorpio’s strong medicine.

This is the month of truth or dare. Mercury turns direct on April 25^th and celestial lightning rods, Jupiter and Uranus, partner up between April 18^th-26^th at 21° Taurus, prompting us to dare greatly.

This once every 14-year union offers a powerful boost of energy, an opportunity to slice through ambiguities, renew our resolve, realign with what we truly value. Jupiter, “Optimus Maximus”, philandering god of the Romans who presided over laws and agreements, represents our search for meaning, faith and hope, yet also accompanies bloated optimism, grandiosity, and greed. Uranus, ancient sky god Ouranus, catapults us into alien territory of unexpected change, with rude awakenings, abrupt events that separate us from what once we thought we valued, often constellating a frisson of anxiety, even fear that undulates through our nervous system.

Uranus transits so often accompany a sense of alienation from bedrock aspects of life and thrust us into the unchartered terrain of choice and crisis that we’ve been doggedly resisting. Expect the unexpected with Uranus. It will shatter stability, overturn what we thought was safe and sure. Jupiter expands the bitter and the sweet, lack or largesse. This is a celestial push for concrete change and innovation.

The Sabian Symbol for this degree of Taurus is “A white dove over troubled waters”, a hopeful image of peace and calm as the waters of society churn darkly and the devastating conflicts in the Middle East, Sudan, and Ukraine shape world politics for decades to come. This is a beautiful invitation to look for guidance in the signs symbols around us.

Jupiter-Uranus conjunctions occur every 14 years, but they haven’t aligned in Taurus since May 1941, when incendiary bombs plummeted from the night skies, raining death and destruction over London. On December 7^th that year, America declared war on Japan, one day after the attack on Pearl Harbour. Social structure was upturned as women left their homes to work in factories. Unspeakable horrors were inflicted on millions of people in the name of war.

This Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus coincided with a slow economic recovery after the longest and deepest depression in the US which lasted more than a decade.

Jupiter-Uranus in earthy Taurus symbolise the acceleration of extreme weather events like the flash flooding in Oman and UAE, and climate break-down which has resulted in a wet winter in Europe and UK and drought in places like Morocco.  Expect to see stock markets shudder, food prices rise—Taurus is an earth-bound sign encompassing those things we value—money, property, sensual pleasure. Depending on where this conjunction falls in your own birth chart, we might ask ourselves, what is it I truly value? Is it worth my investment of time and energy?

This conjunction follows the turbo-powered solar eclipse in Aries of April 8^th  (reminiscent of the solar eclipse of 2017 which also sliced a path across America, the cross point in Texas,) and the arrival of a Green Comet, unimaginatively-named 12P/Pons–Brooks which orbits the sun every 71.18 years. This space traveller sails close to the sun on April 21, 2024, and to close to our earth on June 2^nd, its ever-changing taillight, blue, its swirling outer coma, green, as it plummets across the heavens.  Ancient sky watchers associated comets with the bloodshed and plague. They were “vile stars” that foreshadowed war and disaster.  As the light and dark, death and rebirth symbolism of the solar eclipse on April 8^th still lingers like the fragrance of a sweet perfume, in world events and possibly in our own lives, we may invoke the symbolism of the full moon in Scorpio to clear and release anything vile and putrid from our own orbit and take a fresh look at what drains our energy, diminishes our capacity for joy and gratitude.

Major planetary conjunctions are usually easier to observe in retrospect. They represent important cultural shifts that shape our lives personally and collectively. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction of early 2020 heralded a year of restrictions, polarised viewpoints, cultural change, as authorities imposed lock-down and nature breathed out. The great Saturn/Jupiter conjunction on the winter solstice of 2020 was a pivot point that will affect us all for decades to come, and as Jupiter merged with apocryphal Neptune in April 2022, floodgates opened (Neptune was an ocean deity) and a sea of misinformation washed away familiar shorelines.

This full moon offers a moment of refuge amidst the distractions and the to-to-lists, a wonderous moment to commit to our own desires, to sense the thrilling return of joy after a period of arid disappointment or despair.

Although nothing and everything has changed around us, quite suddenly our heavy heart feels lighter with no more room for secret sorrows. Tonight, may a slow mutation of emotion flow through us.

Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible—Doris Lessing.

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

What Matters to the Heart—Full Moon in Leo—January 25th.

Chase away the demons, and they will take the angels with them—Joni Mitchell.

The first Full Moon of 2024 sails across a mantle of stars tonight, blessing the earth as she travels through heart-centred, self-mythologising Leo.

The essence of Leo is vibrant self-expression. Yet in our light-poisoned cities, in a culture where so many are infected by a sense of alienation, numbed, and dumbed by a relentless press of competition or spurred by a false sense of lack to consume more and more, our spontaneous self-expression may be injured or lie dormant.

In medical astrology, Leo rules the heart, the guardian of the soul. This lunation offers a reminder that we all have an authentic, divine spark within, an instinctual force that does not emerge from an acquisitive, competitive ego, but from what matters to the heart.

The Sun and Pluto in Aquarius oppose the Moon in Leo on January 25^th, and the New Moon of February 9^th will accent the Aquarian energy that will infuse the zeitgeist for the next two decades.

On January 20^th the Sun joined Pluto in Aquarius at the sensitive 0°  as Mercury moved out of the shadow, signifying that some new force is stirring in the collective and in our own lives.

This critical 0°- point circles back across celestial song lines to the mid-winter solstice of December 21^st, 2020 when Saturn and Jupiter conjoined in the heavens in Aquarius, heralding a start of a new air sign era. Sabian Symbol for this degree is “Building structures for the survival of the group”. For new souls incarnating this month and next, the Aquarian celestial signature will be part of a life long journey: Pluto and Mercury will be in Aquarius on February 5^th, joined by the war-god, Mars (February 13^th,) and Venus (February16^th.) These personal planets rendezvous with Pluto at the supercharged 0° signalling a slow emergence of a new consciousness that will require clarity and discrimination, profound self-inquiry, and an intelligent questioning of societal norms and values.

Pluto’s entry into the humanitarian sign of Aquarius is no abstract event in the age of the Anthropocene. The first astrologers, the stargazers of Mesopotamia believed that the stars transferred messages from the gods.

Pluto returns to Aquarius after 245 years of colonisation, genocide and ecocide, a mere blip in the spiral of human his-story. Aquarius like all astrological archetypes, is nuanced and complex. There will be no sudden shift into a golden “Age of Aquarius”. It’s unlikely that “peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.” The New Age dream  may become a nightmare as we witness the rise of popularist governments, autocratic leaders, fanaticism, and groupthink, accompanied by unprecedented emphasis on science and technology.

For many, Pluto’s two-decade passage through Aquarius will incite a slow internal awakening, a deeper questioning of our place in our community. For some of us, this will mean a different approach to activism as social and environmental issues press into our ordinary lives. For others, the challenge of seeking meaningful, paid work as AI supersedes what we thought would be a life-long career.

Pluto, or Hades as he was named by the Romans, represents natural law, the cycles of life and death which involved a descent into the darkness of the underworld. In myth, Pluto is depicted as wearing a helmet which rendered him invisible, so we only sense his presence as we glimpse the shadowy truth of what has been buried alive in our own psyches. Collectively, Pluto tends to dredge up all that lies rotting beneath the surface, so we can expect the shadowy aspects of Aquarius to rise up like bloated corpses from the fabled water of this paradoxically named fixed air sign.The old order will resist change.

Pluto dipped into Aquarius briefly last year (March 23^rd -June 11^th) as ChatGPT and Nividia were heralded as the harbingers of a technological renaissance. As Pluto moves through Aquarius these next two decades our quasi-religious reverence for technology, our faith in science to provide all the answers will be challenged.

As you are reading these words, AI trawls the internet, dredging up the dross we have dumped there since the 90s and spewing it back at us again in the form of misinformation and repetition. We may find it difficult to distinguish posts by real humans from “fake”; AI art from someone’s soulful self-expression. How effective social media regulations will be amidst the flotsam and jetsam of AI generated content will be a Pluto in Aquarius concern that will affect us all. The superb ITV drama, Mr Bates vs the Post Office directed our gaze on an indifferent, omniscient institution and a  flawed technology that wreaked havoc on human lives. It was a human story that touched a raw nerve in the collective and unleashed a torrent of rage. Columnist Charlotte Higgins writes, “our current tragedy is that in the 21st century we have replaced the idea of cruel, unpredictable and all-powerful deities with our very own human-made institutions that are just as terrifying as, and rather more real than, any vengeful Greek god.”

Pluto makes one last and brief visit to Capricorn from September 1^st – November 19^th and  will remain in Aquarius till 2044 as humankind re-imagines the myth of progress or succumbs to the illness of alienation, a numbing soul-loss as we lose our hand-crafted lives, forget what matters to the heart.

This is a call to create a new relationship with nature, and with each small act, to tend to each other, to allow the ragged scars of patriarchy slowly heal from the bottom up. This is a call to reach out to a friend who is shrouded in the darkness of depression. This is a call to sprinkle wild meadow seeds on the barren edges of what was once a fertile marsh land, now a concrete parking lot. This is a call to remind ourselves, in the words of Paula Gunn Allen, that “snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities, all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.”

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

New Dawn Rising—2024 Astrological Weather

Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.

Anne Lamott.

“This year will be better…” we say hopefully, perhaps as a talisman to ward off potential heartbreak and hardship.

The mood this month is serious, focused on the goal-directed activity, underscored by a determined Capricorn new Moon, on January 11^th augmented by Mars in Capricorn, a celestial prompt to get things done and as author, Doris Lessing reminds us, “whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.”

Elusive Mercury moves direct on January 2^nd and Jupiter, the planet associated with abundance and “good fortune” moved direct on December 30^th after a three-month backspin in the sign of Taurus, a sign where where change comes incrementally, one small step at a time.

The astrological signature for 2024 wraps itself around the next three years, signifying the changes that have been emerging since the solstice of 2020, in our own lives and collectively.

Pluto moves into Aquarius on January 22^nd , dipping back into Capricorn as profound evolutionary forces sweep through the collective psyche, breaking down what no longer serves us. Since Pluto entered Capricorn in 2018, we have witnessed the rise of authoritarian governments and the revelation of the abuse of power, the #MeToo campaign and the #BlacklivesMatter Global Network. As we bring our attention to any unfinished business in our own lives regarding power or powerlessness, responsibility and accountability, Pluto will finally enter Aquarius on November 19^th and will remain in Aquarius till 2043. Already, we have a sense of what Pluto in Aquarius what might be like as the climate emergency, mass migration, gruesome conflict and fanaticism cast a long shadow. The unprecedented proliferation of AI that is already hardwired into our daily lives is a taster of things to come as the Silicon Valley Plutocrats gain omnipotence. Pluto’s presence will be felt in politics this year. 2024 is the year of The Election as more than 40 countries hold national elections, some free and fair, others determined by despots.

Pluto, mythical lord of the underworld, sovereign of the dead, draws us all into his shadowy world to confront the truth with courage and honesty this year. In myth, Pluto was custodian of what has been interred: the complexes, patterns that have not yet been accepted or exorcised.  As Pluto arrives at the end point of its 14-year passage through Capricorn, those who have planets in early degrees Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, and Aquarius will feel Pluto’s presence as it crosses over the charged 0° Aquarius once more. Saturn conjoined Jupiter at this sky point on 21^st December 2020 as we began a slow emergence from the pandemic.

Saturn and Neptune are still floating in the nebulous waters of Pisces, moving closer to a conjunction in 2025/2026 as things become blurrier and in the echo chambers of social media, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern fact from fiction.

When Saturn and Neptune perform a Dionysian dance in the heavens, we swoon. This intoxicating combination offers the sweet promise of redemption, intensifies our yearning to return to Eden. These are the murky waters where charismatic con men create cults that offer a false belonging, where opiates and psychedelics carry us away from the harshness of this world, and cyber criminals and hackers hunt across the dark web. When Saturn meets Neptune, wonder who or what is real, or we wake, as if from a trance, bitterly disillusioned. When Saturn (carbon) conjoins Neptune, permafrost thaws and noxious gasses, bacteria, and viruses (Neptune) are blown by the wind. This combination of celestial energies may unleash a tsunami of pent-up grief and suffering; it may surge through cryptocurrencies, drown the hype, dissolve castles in the air. This is the hungry energy of the speculator, a glimpse of hope that may be unfounded, perhaps, the realisation that as we drop the salvational fantasy we are freed up to sweetness of simple pleasures, self-acceptance, and a deeper appreciation of the poetics of life.

Uranus, Saturn and Neptune both move into new signs in 2025, and the rest of this decade will be infused with the energy of Uranus trine Pluto, Neptune sextile both Pluto and Uranus.

April may be a tumultuous month for many as rotund Jupiter aligns with explosive Uranus, an indicator of volatility in financial markets, inflation, and the potential for seismic activity. Jupiter will amplify the uncertainty and unpredictability of Uranus, and this energy will permeate society, paving the way for Jupiter’s entry into Gemini, on May 25^th which may amplify divisions and polarisation on social media platforms, or offer the opportunity to heal a ruptured relationship, offer words that land gently.

2024 ends as Mars moves Retrograde in Leo opposite Pluto (in orb from October 2024 to January 2025) with one close contact on November 3^rd, only two days before the US election and one more on January 3^rd. Mars/Pluto contacts accompany unscrupulous power struggles that have a life-or-death quality and have the potential to erupt in violence. The eclipse season begins with an Annular Lunar Eclipse (5° Libra March 25^th), followed by a Total Solar Eclipse (19° Aries, April 8^th), and ends with a Partial Lunar Eclipse (25° Pisces, September 18^th) and an Annular Solar Eclipse (10° Libra, October 2^nd.)

93 million miles away, solar storms create magnificent aurora spectacles on Earth, yet can also distort the magnetosphere, the protective magnetic wrapping of our earth, disrupting our body’s magnetic field, as well as distorting electrical grids, GPS signals and the movements of the millions of satelllites that circle our home planet.  A peak of “solar maximum” between January and October 2024 will be stronger and longer than estimates made back in 2019 according to a US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration statement. Neptune was backtracking Retrograde (26° Pisces) on September 1st, 1859 when The Carrington Event, the most intense geomagnetic storm ever recorded, caused wide spread fires and powerful auroral displays. This year, it might be worth noting that transiting Neptune is now moving direct (25° Pisces) and will turn Retrograde on July 2nd.

Already the days are growing longer and the primroses on the riverbanks turn their delicate yellow faces to the sun as we begin to resume the routines and rituals that ground us in our ordinary lives. As we welcome this brave new year and sit with the paradox of those things that stir our anger and release our tears, let’s pause for a while in the quiet shade of the unknown before we enter the fray.

This is the year of living bravely, soulfully, imaginatively, abandoning those things that are irretrievably broken, and reimagining our place in the world as we root, with profound gratitude into the rhythm of our lives.

Wishing you all a gentle beginning to this new year.

With love,

Ingrid.

For an in-depth exploration of your own birth chart, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

The Light Within—Partial Lunar Eclipse in Taurus—October 28th.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending—J.R.R. Tolkien.

As mist curls in spectral plumes across swathes of rust-coloured forest, the plaintive roar of a rutting deer echoes across the valley.

In the north, Scorpio season draws us into rot and decay. This is the realm of dragons and serpents, scorpions that sting, endings that ambush, darkness that seeps from night to day.

October is the month of mulching and composting, of endings and letting go. The ancient festival of Samhain, at the midpoint between the equinox and the winter solstice, marks the death of summer and the impending darkness of winter. October is the month of the dead, monetised at Halloween when the dread of darkness is brightened with a parody of plastic costumes and grotesque face masks destined for land fill. At this time of the earth’s shedding, many of us sit with uncertainty, painfully aware that climate change and the unspeakable brutality of war continues to deliver death and devastation to millions consumed in the conflagration. As news of more suffering washes over our safe, comfortable lives, we may feel scooped out. An unhealable grief sits wetly in the chambers of our still beating heart.

“Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it, ends,” wrote Joan Didion when her husband of 39 years died of a heart attack while she was mixing the salad.

On October 28^th, a Scorpio Sun and Taurus Moon hold a séance in an autumnal sky. At Full Moon times, the lunar cycle completes. An eclipse is a super-charged full moon, so we may quite literally be at a time of ending as we draw deep and find the courage to let go and face in the growing darkness, whatever losses we inflict or must endure.

This eclipsed full moon marks the culmination of an 18-month cycle of eclipses in the signs of Scorpio and Taurus, that brought up issues relating to security and rescources and the existential crisis of climate change. 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  lunar eclipse calls us to slow down, feel our feet on the earth and connect with our heart so that we can send love and healing energy out into the world, wrap love around war-ravaged places.

Taurus is associated with material things, property, those things we value and deem to be beautiful, and sensual pleasure. Taurus is a dependable earth sign. Although “being grounded” can seem like one of those self-help amorphisms, grounding, rooting, being in the power of now, affirms the richness of our ordinary lives. Scorpio involves a confrontation with destruction and darkness, and like the mythical phoenix rising from the ashes, we gain insight, healing, and renewal when we drink Scorpio’s strong medicine.“Light thinks it travels faster than anything, but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it” writes Terry Pratchett, in Reaper Man. Death, darkness, trans-formation may be unfolding themes in our lives this month and in our collective future.

At this in-between time of transition, we may feel suspended between life’s crevices and cracks of a choice about a relationship, career or a place of belonging. Eclipse moments bring us to the heart of the matter. Tonight, we may be drawn to what we cherish and hold close to our hearts.

October’s eclipsed moon (5° Taurus) conjoins Jupiter Retrograde as she opposes a coven of planets in Scorpio: Sun, Mercury, and Mars.

Jupiter expands the bitter and the sweet. And Scorpio’s uncompromising intensity takes us deep below the surface, if we are willing to go there.

The symbolism of this lunar eclipse may play out in world events, as Mars and Mercury meet in Scorpio one day after the lunar eclipse, a caustic combination in the fixed sign of Scorpio, amplified by Jupiter Retrograde in the fixed sign of Taurus and the Taurus lunar eclipse. This could be enormously challenging for hostage negotiations as Mars, the war-god, viciously slices through communication (Mercury). Poet, Andrea Gibson, speaks to hunting out the fear, which might mean facing a painful truth and harnessing rampant reactivity or finally daring to open to that difficult conversation.

On November 4^th, Saturn (boundaries, structure, self-discipline) turns direct at 0° Pisces, the last sign of the zodiac. Saturn presses slowly forward, suffusing our experiences with necessary endings, the dissolution of outworn structures. Saturn moves through the liminal realm of Pisces from March 7^th, 2023, to February 2026. The archetype of Saturn carries ponderous associations with fate and consequence as the western civilization turns to rubble, and unfettered growth and expansion are bounded by the inconvenient truth of climate crisis and mass migration. “Everything you love, you will eventually lose. But in the end, love will return in a different form,” writes Susan Cain in her new book, Bittersweet: how longing and sorrow make us whole. In a world where enforced smiles and white-knuckled positivity clenches against the wild winds of adversity, she reminds us that “light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired.” 

Nature contracts, exposing an uncompromising knot-work of bare branches and stubble fields. The primordial pulse of the year stirs deep in our blood and bones and tonight, as we sense a slow, steady certainty moving through our body. This lunation carries the seed for repair, for release and renewal, if we trust the instruction of our hearts and acknowlege that death, like birth, is both an ending and a beginning. As we pause awhile, in this world of dying things, may those dead places in ourselves open to Love in new and deeper ways. And as the moon’s light grows dark tonight, Tolkien reminds us of the light within: May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out.

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

Shadow Season—New Moon Solar Eclipse—October 14th

The beauty of darkness is how it lets you see. Adrienne Rich.

We’ve entered eclipse season, the season of shadow. As the days grow shorter a small flock of wild geese have returned to the estuary near my home. Spider webs glitter with dew in the misty mornings and scarlet hawthorn berries hang in bright bundles from bare branches.

As the shadows lenghten, the light of the sun will be darkened by the moon. This is the first eclipse of the autumn and falls at 21° Libra.

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. Symbolically, eclipses amplify the intensity of power struggles, life-changing choices, triangular dramas, those pivotal moments that change our destiny. A new moon eclipse in Libra carries the symbolism of the scales of balance as we weigh up moral and ethical choices pertaining to our relationships.

Mars the war-god entered the shadowy realms of Scorpio on October 12^th, charging this new moon eclipse with passion and intensity. The luminaries oppose both Eris, Greek Goddess of discord and strife, and Chiron the wounded healer, associated with profound pain and woundedness. The eclipse also makes an unyielding square to Pluto.

Now as the dark shadow of war stains the Middle East, eclipsing the devastating conflict in Ukraine and the myriad conflicts that fester in forgotten countries, we glimpse the gateway to hell.

As a tornado of destruction rips through the land, Pluto turned direct this week (October 10^th at 27° Capricorn) bringing into our consciousness the insanity of war. Pluto (collective and generational survival angst) moves Retrograde every year for five or six months, dredging up the darker elements of life: issues of power and powerlessness, death, survival and fate, prompting us to look at the shadow we cast across other people’s lives, so often quite unconsciously, by our thoughts and our behaviour.

The attack by Hamas on Israel has been described by some as a “Pearl Harbour moment”, “an opening of the gates of hell”. The event chart for the flare-up of the conflict is remarkable. It contains numerous painful and explosive conjunctions that reflect the enormous scale of the pain and wounding on both sides as this relationship breakdown will displace, wound, kill, and polarise so many people. As the Biblical “eye for an eye” commandment, is reactivated, measure for measure, the trauma of this war will reverate for generations to come. Historian and author, Yuval Noah Harari writes, “the current conflict is likely to put the last nail in the coffin of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”

The essence of Libra is paradox. 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.”

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. Compromise or polarisation. Judgement or discretion.  Quiet desperation or the grace to remember that this is precisely what we have come here to do. 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.

For those with planets or angles at 21° Libra this new moon solar eclipse offers a powerful boost of energy and an opportunity to reflect on the changes that have prompted us to learn and grow since the spring eclipses (solar eclipse in Aries on April 19^th and lunar eclipse in Scorpio on May 5^th.)

For us all, this is a time to rebalance and reflect on how, in the words of author Stephen Richards, “our level of love or our level of fear determines the state of our reality.”

Our evolutionary challenge this month is inner serenity and a selective, deliberate focus on those things that are right in the world and in our relationships. Life coach and author, Shannon Kaiser offers a reminder to return to a prayer or a mantra when we feel frazzled or fearful, exiled from unshakable inner peace. “The outside world is going to keep being chaotic. When we’re looking out there, it will pull our energy. It will keep us stuck in fear. It will keep us in exhaustion… when we use a mantra such as “can choose peace instead of this… this anchors us back in the moment, to the light within you.”

The essence of Libra brings harmony to polarities, offers a possibility to let go of the melodrama, to transcend the personal, and touch the heart of another with hope.

“I know that hope is the hardest love to carry,” writes Jane Hirshfield in her exquisite poem, Hope and Love.

This from poet and mystic, John O’Donohue: May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquillities. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.

Please contact me directly for private astrology readings and for more information about forthcoming webinars—ingrid@trueheartwork.com