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April 29, 2022 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Under a Violet Moon—Solar Eclipse, Taurus New Moon—April 30th

There is no place so awake and alive as the edge of becoming—Sue Monk Kidd.

There are times when we need to return to the Earth, to the steady presence of trees, the song of a river’s flow, where we can return once more to a place of beginning. This weekend, the Moon withdraws into the darkness, slipping between the familiar body of the Earth and the fierce light of the Sun, inviting us to silence the mind, resonate to the heartbeat of the earth’s awakening.

The union of the Sun and the Moon symbolise the sacred embrace of the archetypal masculine and feminine, and this New Moon coincides with the ancient festival of Beltane, halfway between the spring equinox and the mid-summer solstice. Now the world bursts into bloom.

This is the time when the Queen of the May arrives in a cloud of floral fragrance. Bluebells, cobalt carpets unfurl across the woodlands. Ribbons of whitethorn thread emerald meadows into a velvety patchwork. Bonfires blaze from the hilltops sprinkled with golden buttercups. Bright ribbons and frayed clooties hang from the trees at holy wells.

Out of the belly of the earth, a surge of life emerges. And above, this New Moon in Taurus invites us to draw down, to focus on our senses, to dig our hands into the earth, plant seeds that will grow.

New Moons speak of fertile new beginnings, they signify those edges of becoming that make us feel young, alive again. Author Anne Lamott adds, “how do you begin? The answer is simple. You decide to.”

Our ancestors knew of the power of these natural rhythms that circled back to the same moment, reigniting the same intention, drawing from the grooves of ancient rituals worn deep by repetition. Just like the cycles of the Moon, the four cross quarter festivals weave past and future with a charge that holds us steady, binds us to those things that matter.

Like all astrological archetypes, Taurus is layered with older associations that draw us across the story lines of the ages, to the moist fertile flood plains of ancient rivers that spilled their life-giving waters and watered the origins of humankind.

For centuries, sacred cows with iconic, crescent-shaped horns have been bound to the symbolism of the Moon. An astrological cliché associates Taurus with money, and it is on this energetic terrain that we so often feel empowered/disempowered, lacking, or abundant.

Where Taurus is in our birth chart is where we must work the ground, plant the seeds of our gifts and talents, learn how to manage our resources of kindness, bravery, presence. Yet the skies are dark at New Moon times, a celestial reminder that we must learn to see in the blackness, wait patiently until the slim crescent appears.

This is a special New Moon as it accompanies a partial solar eclipse and heralds the start of an eclipse season that will sprinkle the weeks and months till October 25^th. In our brightly lit world, eclipses no longer deliver the visceral jolt they did in times when the world became dark, and the life-giving Sun vanished. In ancient times, eclipses foretold of the deaths of Kings, winters of discontent; they accompanied war, famine, disease, and floods. The root word is the Greek “ekleipsis” which can be translated as a failure to appear, an abandonment, or a leaving of an accustomed place.

This partial solar eclipse belongs to a family of eclipses that pertain to our own authority and authority figures. During this eclipse (a week before and after) we may be compelled to yet again to confront those sacred cows that perpetuate dissonant cultural myths that arose out of ignorance and denial. We can refuse to participate in the toxic negativity that pervades social media. We can look at ways we abandon ourselves when we allow others to overstep our boundaries, challenge our authority. Eclipses act like wild cards as they drop into our birth charts or into the charts of nations, catapulting us from our place of comfort, taking us to the edge. Eclipses that conjoin planets set new directions in our lives, suddenly change our perspective, confront us with choices that invite us to be more attentive to our soul. This eclipse will activate our Taurus house and any planet at 10° Taurus.

The Taurus Sun and Moon also connect iconoclastic Uranus, planet associated with Prometheus the trickster Titan who stole fire from the gods in myth. Uranus shatters the status quo, reveals gaping fissures in those things we believed to be safe and sure.

As Uranus moves through Taurus (2018-2026) we have been jolted by circumstances that have altered our course, we have crypto currencies that gobble fossil fuels as we reach the end of the fossil fuel era, financial crises that have altered our course. Uranus, like the Tower card in the Tarot, represents a toppling of a structure, a breakdown, a breakthrough, that shatters and shocks us into a new realisation, releasing a renewing surge of energy from the heavens.

At this time of emergence, we may not feel quite ready to emerge, to bravely step onto new ground, yet this New Moon is charged with the grace of new beginnings. So go back to the garden and feel the warm pulse of the earth this weekend. Unplug from the peremptory dictates of technology and go within.

Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you—Anne Lamott.

For private astrology session or to find out more about workshops and webinars, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

March 31, 2022 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Still I Rise—New Moon in Aries—April 1st.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise—Maya Angelou.

There are many ways to be brave in this world, to rise again with hopes springing high. As we wear our bravest smile and take the hand of a loved one whose light is dimming, courage is concealed in those seemingly inconsequential choices that flutter like monarch butterflies into a world where nothing is certain.

As most of the world now waits for a glimmer of hope in Ukraine, the New Moon in Aries invites us to begin again, to take that leap forward, to find ourselves anew. Aries marks a point of Beginning, which may be a lonely journey into the unknown. In Aries we encounter the mythic motif of conquest, which always implies an act of bravery and daring. Here we meet the mythic “Warrior” who sets off on a quest, the “Hero” who personifies courage and assertiveness. The leader who makes tough choices. Aries is where we encounter our own autonomy, our ability to return to life.

We may encounter many opportunities to be courageous this new astrological month. Petty tyrants may mirror our own discomfort about taking a stand while dangerous rhetoric morphs into bullets and the dark tide of anger rises, setting fire to old grudges and unexamined narratives.

Aries is a Mars-ruled sign. The dark face of the Ram is testosterone-fuelled anger, self-absorption, competitiveness, and conflict.

The raw energy of Mars is ignited by a goal; something to conquer or defend—the Romans pragmatically dedicated the month of March to the war-god as they set off on their campaigns, certain of fresh supplies. We may notice Mars energy all around us this month. Survival and procreation are embodied in the natural world as the urgent thrust of spring spills over the land in a cascade of colour and the sweetest song.

Writes Lissa Rankin in her book, The Fear Cure, “courage is not about being fearless; it’s about letting fear transform you, so you come into right relationship with uncertainty, make peace with impermanence, and wake up to who you really are.”

A New Moon at 11° Aries initiates a fiery blast of energy carried by the winged messenger, Mercury (travel, trade, deal making and the tricky art of communication) who has slipped into hot-headed Aries. Aries is our self-directed quest for individuation, yet the trite injunction to “find our voice” may deafen the voices of others; our need to be “me” may mean breaking the heart of someone who loves us. The Sun and Moon join Chiron, the archetype of the wounded healer, as we learn, in the words of Ram Dass that “suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.”

As Neptune and Jupiter edge ever closer to their 13-year rendezvous on April 12^th, the collective is infused with idealism, compassion and a sense of unity that undulates through (some) nations as over 4 million refugees flee from the unspeakable horror of a war that will reshape all our lives.

Every 13 years, expansive Jupiter meets ambiguous Neptune and collectively, we arrive at a moment that may inspire our faith, our creative imagination, or inflate delusion, propaganda, extend suffering, swell our emotions. Although Neptune and Jupiter meet every 13 years in successive signs in the zodiac, this cycle is a once-in-a-lifetime moment because the last time they merged in Pisces was in 1856, which was 166 years ago when the Treaty of Paris deprived Russia of access to the river Danube, humiliating and stripping Russia of power at the end of the brutal Crimean War. These planetary archetypes manifest in manifold ways. When they united in the sign of Virgo in September 1932 millions starved to death under forced collectivization in Russia, Hitler gained power, and dust storms swirled over Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Texas and New Mexico.

The promises of peace seeded in this New Moon energy may dissipate in all too familiar falsehoods and a shared commitment to outrageous lies as Neptune and Jupiter will amplify Piscean associations with suffering and martyrdom. Nested like an assemblage of Russian dolls, flawed political decisions have resulted in our dependence on gas and oil (Neptune) which, along with the banks that finance them, are the most important source of Russia’s foreign income. As (some countries) decry the war in Ukraine, governments fund the war in payment for Russia’s fossil fuels. George Monbiot writes, “we have a truth crisis… it is much deeper and wider than we care to admit… it is systemic and universal.”

The celestial aqua-ballet dance of Jupiter and Neptune will infuse the collective throughout 2022. These amorphous planets linger within 6º of one another from the end of October to December 20^th when Jupiter enters Aries, the day before the Solstice. This leitmotif will wash over us all in waves all through this year, bringing back to shore what we are feeling and experiencing now. In the final weeks of November Jupiter hangs like a tear drop in the skies, at the culminating 29º point of resolution.

As Jupiter, Neptune and Chiron united in the humanitarian sign of Aquarius in 2009, James Cameron’s Avatar mirrored the zeitgeist of the time. Our personal and collective experience may be very different as Avatar 2 is released. Jupiter and Neptune in Pisces mirror a world-weariness, a collective post-pandemic grief that has been by-passed by governments eager for progress and profit. For those who have lost loved ones, for those whose lives have been dragged down into the undertow by loss of work or direction, everything may seem blurred, life’s pulse beat feeble. Yet in our grief may make fluid our rigid routines, dissolve our hardened habits, cleanse the debris of emotional blockages, we draw moisture into our parched lives. At this New Moon time of fresh starts and hopeful new beginnings, this beautiful quote from the first Avatar movie reminds us, “you are stronger and wiser and freer than you have ever been. And now you have come to the crossroads of destiny. It’s time for you to choose.”

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

February 26, 2022 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Tears of the World—New Moon in Pisces—March 2nd.

As the barest inkling of renewed life begins to emerge for humankind after months of prolonged uncertainty and life-shaping sequestration, a deadly percussion of explosions rocks Ukraine, ricochets across the world.

We’re still becoming acquainted with the rites of grief. And now an uninvited shadow of war casts its darkness over us all. Images of tanks and shattered buildings, wide-eyed children, and desperate mothers maroon us in the suffering and the numbing horror of state-sanctioned death and destruction.

The astrology of the moment reflects the temporal turmoil of this time. Millions of lives, human and animal, will be scattered across the wastelands of war as the tethered fish of Pisces draw us into the territory of grief, opening our hearts to a far deeper cry than our own. Planets that wear iridescent Piscean clothing offer strange tinctures of genius and madness.

Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac and there’s a world-weariness as we collectively empty out, let go, at the portal of a new era.

This month a porous Pisces Sun joins Jupiter and Neptune in the water-logged realm of the Tethered Fish. This archetype is a marshy boundaryless space where a miasma of uncertainty leaches moisture from our imagination. We may feel suspended in a sea of hype or unspeakable horror. Netflix’s Inventing Anna, Tinder Swindler and Fyre, depict Pisces propensity for glitz and glamour, charisma, and deceit. Neptune-ruled Pisces swirls in fantasy, drowns in deception. Film, oil, gas, and deadly viruses also fall under Neptune’s briny deeps. So do charismatic leaders and self-appointed messiahs.

On March 2^nd the luminaries meet in the darkness, a monthly tryst that carries a deeper significance as grandiose gas giant, Jupiter joins this lunation. This alignment may amplify Jupiter’s excess, immorality, and a potentially dark and destructive influence comes from the alignment of Mars and Venus with Pluto. Venus (diplomacy) and Mars (war) are still paired as they move through the skies. Mars and Venus edge closer to Pluto, god of ruthless destruction, and meet on this New Moon, as Jupiter and Neptune move to a tight conjunction on April 12^th (greater demand for oil and gas, propaganda, financial bubbles). Jupiter then moves into hot-headed Aries from May 10^th, amplifying blood-thirst and a demand for weapons of war.

Planets, like history, move in circles and cycles. The last time Neptune and Jupiter met in Pisces was on March 17^th 1856 (18° Pisces) when the Treaty of Paris deprived Russia of access to the River Danube, humiliating and stripping Russia of power at the end of the barbarous Crimean War.

Michel Eltchaninoff, editor-in-chief of Philosophie magazine and a specialist in the history of Russian thought, writes, “the Russian president’s dangerous sense of victimhood draws on 20^th-century ideas of his country’s frustrated potential. It is necessary, then, to understand that what is actually happening in Ukraine is the result of a vision of Russia that is deeply embedded in the mind of Putin.”

Neptune/Jupiter conjunctions accompany hype, great expectations, territorial expansion, and the kind of faith and hope that carries us through struggle. In a hopeful piece, historian and philosopher, Yuval Noah Harari writes, “at the heart of the Ukraine crisis lies a fundamental question about the nature of history and the nature of humanity: is change possible? Can humans change the way they behave, or does history repeat itself endlessly, with humans forever condemned to re-enact past tragedies without changing anything except the décor?”

The suffering in Ukraine affects us all. Lynne McTaggart proposes, “if a quantum field holds us all together in its invisible web, we will have to rethink our definitions of ourselves and what exactly it is to be human…if we’re not separate, we can no longer think in terms of “winning” and “losing.” We need to redefine what we designate as “me” and “not-me,” and reform the way that we interact with other human beings, practice business, and view time and space. We have to reconsider how we choose and carry out our work, structure our communities, and bring up our children. We have to imagine another way to live.”

George Monbiot points out in his book, Out of the Wreckage, that humans are unique, spectacularly unusual, when it comes our sensitivity to the needs of others. We have an innate altruism, an inborn sense of community. Neuroscience, evolutionary biology and psychology all conclude that we have evolved to care, to cooperate with one another. “By the age of fourteen months, children begin to help each other, attempting to hand over objects another child cannot reach. By the time they are two, they start sharing some of the things they value. By the age of three, they start to protest against other people’s violation of moral norms—we are also, among mammals, with the possible exception of the naked mole rat, the supreme co-operators,” Monbiot writes.

We may feel bone weary after months of adrenaline-charged coping, of being our best and bravest, kindest selves, yet the sky-story this month depicts a sequence of events that will marshal our good manners, our co-operation, our wisdom and our compassion.

“I am marooned on a crag of superiority in an ocean of soldiers,” wrote Wilfred Owen, (Sun and Venus in Pisces) who was killed in the mud and blood of World War I, one week before armistice was declared.

We are collectively moving through a time of initiation that may transform us at our core or maroon us on a crag of authoritarianism.

What will we choose?

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

January 12, 2022 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Watercourse—Full Moon in Cancer—January 17th

Now let us welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been—Rainer Maria Rilke.

January, named in honour of Janus the two-headed god of thresholds arrived without the usual swaggering bravado, or wishful “this year will be better”. An unpretentious New Moon in Saturn-ruled Capricorn welcomed in this first month of the calendar year, her silvery light swathed in darkness.

On January 17^th the Full Moon in Cancer gifts us with a luminous reminder of the opposing energies of Capricorn and Cancer—structures and boundaries, anchoring and love; or the shadowy qualities of muscular authoritarianism and alienation.

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.

For forty days and forty nights of “quarantine”, Venus has been in the underworld, inviting us to turn within, to gather clarity, strength and commitment. She has been moving Retrograde since December 19^th when she united with Pluto at 26° Capricorn for the first of three intense encounters (December 19^th, December 25^th, and March 3^rd). We all have Venus in our birth chart, an archetype that reflects our heart’s initiations, our deep soulful attachments, our satiated fullness, and our tortured emptiness.

Venus has been moving through Capricorn for four months (she enters Aquarius on March 6^th) and during her time in the darkness, we may have been confronted with love’s shadows—loss of trust or hope in a relationship, changes in friendships that reflect our changing values and personal aspirations; separations and betrayals that ultimately lead us to a fuller experience of self-acceptance and a deeper understanding of what our soul yearns for. At the time of the New Moon, Venus disappeared as an Evening star and if you’re up early on January 15^th, Venus will rise resplendent, a bright star in the East, a vision of beauty and fertility and power; a moment that was welcomed by our ancestors.

Elusive Mercury switches direction and begins to apparently move in reverse across the skies in Retrograde (10° Aquarius) on January 14^th-February 3^rd, inviting us to listen more attentively, to reconnect with the archetypal realm of our imagination, the subtle prompts of our intuition, to acknowledge the power of our intention and the psychic energy we bring to our encounters with others. As winter’s frosty grip softens, our earth-born bodies respond to the light, new dreams seed themselves in our imagination as Jupiter floats through Pisces, a luminous star of Hope that shimmers in the west after sunset, with Saturn still close by.

Saturn accompanies rules and authorities; sober realisations that things may not turn out as we want them to. Saturn in modern times is associated with fate or destiny, with necessity and restraint, those things we have cast out in our mechanistic material culture where we, in our hubris and our self-inflation, believe that we are all powerful—we can fix, manifest, cut away, or buy our way out of any mess we make. This New Year, Saturn may lay his hand on a defining moment in your life. There may be no escape, except a shift in perception as we pare down our doomed to fail resolutions, hold ourselves tenderly as we work with what is, rather than what we wish it could be.

In the ever-changing sky, Saturn and Uranus are still in a discordant square all through 2022 and 2023, a celestial symbol of clashing points of view, polarities, and divisions, as these ancient mythic enemies confront each other in the heavens and an old order collides with the new. Saturn transits arrive as the henchmen of stasis that often thwart our efforts to move forward, yet they present as circumstances that grow us up, if we’re willing to learn. When these two archetypes face off in the heavens, they reflect tension, upheaval, limitations of freedom, resistance, and rebellion. In our own birth charts, transits of Uranus break us open, shatter and destabilise those things that are too tightly defended or have outlived their purpose.

Mars, the warrior god, joins forces with unpredictable Uranus in August and Pluto makes an opposition to Venus around then. So, although many of us are longing for some hope that the pandemic will end soon, Creation stories always tell of darkness and chaos that come before creation. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction of January 2020 has fermented all that is rotten in our world. The dross has risen to the surface and each one of us now faces the consequences of those things we have repressed or simply ignored. In the tumultuous confusion, perhaps something greater ushers humanity towards what is yet to be.

The discordant Saturn/Uranus energy is reflected in the cacophonous deluge of sentiment and divisive hate-speak that has reached its nadir as tennis star Novac Djokovic’s fate is now determined by Australia’s health minister. The agitation in Australia reflects our collective psychosis after almost two years of uncertainty, on/off lockdowns, and exposes the shadowy underbelly of an Establishment that continue to ignore the plight of incarcerated asylum seekers, and those who live on the edges of society, without the fame or financial resources to employ legal aid or seek release from their circumstances.

As tensions mount, scapegoats will be driven out, minorities become criminals. A Saturnian policing bill now targets Roma, Gypsy and Travellers in the UK if they “trespass” in places that have not been designated for them. In 1930 Saturn and Uranus were in Square and between 1933-1939, the Roma and Sinti were interned and murdered by the Nazi Regime.

As impetuous Mars and the North Node in Taurus aligns with Uranus (April, May, October and November) frustrations may intensify and spill over nebulous and overvalued cryptocurrency as governments (symbolised by Saturn) attempt to regulate this environmentally devastating disruptor to established banking systems.

A subtle backdrop this year is the idealistic union of Jupiter and Neptune (April 12^th), a rare meeting in Pisces and one that amplifies Piscean qualities of compassion, creativity, but also a celestial blind spot, something hidden in the collective midstream that may seduce or anesthetise, conceal a truth or weave a web of lies. Jupiter and Neptune co-rule Pisces. The fish are ephemeral, lacking in substance, intoxicating, seductive and illusionary, and perhaps swimming is futile. All we can do is to relax and float until we are sure that what we have seen is not a mirage.

Jupiter and Neptune were last united in Pisces in March 1856 as Wagner completed Die Walküre and Sigmund Freud was born. 1856 was a year of senseless warfare and sacrifice, ships were lost at sea, native communities were exterminated, and the barbarous Crimean war ended.

Piscean symbolism includes oceans, but also extremist ideologies that offer the promise of redemption from suffering. 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, suffocate seabirds in sticky black oil as giant oil tankers run aground. This is the seductive 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.

We may feel pulled apart by a longing to escape from it all as this expansive, boundaryless Jupiter-Neptune conjunction forms while the next constrictive and frustrating Mars/Saturn conjunction emerges; an echo of the Mars/Saturn conjunction of late March early April 2020 as the magnitude of the pandemic permeated through the collective and nations locked down.

The conjunction of Mars and Saturn of late March and early April 2022 signifies an ending of a cycle, and the start of a new one that occurred during the early outbreak of the pandemic and the early phases of the lockdown, and continued as Mars moved through Taurus, Leo, and Scorpio in 2021 and new COVID variants emerged accompanied by mandates and restrictions. The North Node entered Taurus on December 23^rd 2021, and will move through Taurus till July 12^th 2023, meeting Uranus this July. There’ll be a sprinkling of eclipses in Taurus on April 30^th, and November 8^th and in Scorpio on May 16^th and October 25^th, as Pluto returns to the place of its inception in the American birth chart this year. Modern astrologers tend to agree that eclipses are wild cards, and the effects are unpredictable, though solar eclipses tend to be externalised and lunar eclipses are subtler, more internal, often related to the past, to our emotions and perceptions.

As the archetypal energies of Taurus and Scorpio are energised in the coming months, in our own birth charts and in the birth charts of nations, we may be reminded of the bull-headed, flesh-eating half-man who lived in the centre of the labyrinth. This hideous monster, the Minotaur, was also called by another name. Asterion. Star.

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, rooting back into the earth.

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

For astrology consultations, please get in touch with me, I would love to hear from you: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

November 12, 2021 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Heaven and Earth⁠—Full Moon in Taurus⁠—November 19th

My joy, my grief, my hope, my love, did within this circle move―Edmund Waller.

We are not the first generation to live in disquieting times. Yet, there may be days when the roar of the world unravels our calm. When worry drains our joy and the silent sob of collective grief surges through us, spilling over our morbid preoccupation with illness, our unspoken fear of death.

Ever-changing protocols hang like a miasma over our lives as politicians panic and numbers rise. American deer are now infected, amidst concern for cross species transmission and the emergence of new variants. We may feel stuck in a daily round of gloom. Yet as we lift our eyes to the heavens the luminous orb of the Moon reminds us that there are circles and cycles in our own lives and in his-story and that just when we think we have arrived, we must begin again.

As the last golden leaves of autumn flutter to the ground, the fading light reveals a landscape stripped of pretence. At this culmination of the lunar cycle, we may need to draw inward, rest, replenish. Revive our energy in a circle of calm.

In the mandala of the zodiac, the partial Lunar Eclipse on November 19^th is a harbinger for the eclipse cycle of 2022 which sprinkles over the Taurus/Scorpio Axis, an initiation of what’s about to unfold in the new calendar year. The changing Moon will be the last lunar eclipse of this year and as the Moon passes into the Shadow of the Earth, the eclipse will be visible from Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America, and North/West Africa.

Eclipses are times of recalibration; self-nurture to rekindle our creative fire, time to dream, to pray, to stay still so that our energy may flow freely again. These are symbolic power points that hold the impetus to generate something new in listless situations, to cradle ourselves gently. The effects are felt most strongly on the day, but often within two weeks of the eclipse, so observe events as they unfold in our own lives and on the world stage between now and up to the New Moon in fiery Sagittarius on December 4^th. A series of Scorpio/Taurus eclipses dropped across the heavens in 2003/2004. In Scorpio we encounter the inevitable: death and taxes. In Taurus we dig deep into earthly matters. We may experience profound changes in our finances and in our shared material resources. Climate continues to plunder our home planet.

“Things do not change, we change,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, a pioneer in minimalism and authentic living, a man who knew the seasons of nature intimately. As we seek our quiet centre at this monthly moment of eclipse, we may see more clearly all the ways we have changed.

As the steadfast earthy Full Moon shines her light on the Sun and Mercury in Scorpio, she sketches a T-Square in the skies with Jupiter, an offering of faith, patience, and persistence.

Mars in Scorpio opposes Uranus and forms a T-Square with Saturn, and as the laws of Heaven and Earth circumvent our ordinary lives, we may have to humbly learn our limits, defer our dreams, take a detour, or return to where we began.

There are no planets in fire until the Sun enters Sagittarius on November 22^nd, just a few days after the Full Moon, so the mood may feel intense and volatile as we are forced to take a slower path, avoid loud and aggressive persons, as American writer Max Ehrmann suggests in Desiderata.

Our virtual and close encounters with others will be highlighted as Venus in pragmatic Capricorn enters her Retrograde Shadow on November 19^th and will encounter Pluto as she moves Retrograde from December 19^th– January 29^th. We may have to listen more deeply, honour our differences, speak our truth quietly.

Ancient adversaries, Saturn (boundaries, restrictions, fear, control, authority, stability) and defiant Uranus (insurrection, disruption, idealism, innovation) are still in a tense square, a square that has been building through 2020 and will still be in alignment till December 2021, edging close once more in October 2022 and in effect all through 2023.This waning square reflects the tension of opposites, a polarised force that may infuse the silent spaces in our relationships and root there.

Our ancestors knew about circles and spirals and the soulful journey of life. They carved them into the unyielding granite at sacred sites, they fashioned rounded drums that resonated with the heartbeat of the earth; they built languorous labyrinths and mysterious mazes.

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

The earthy symbolism of Taurus encircles the natural world. When our Taurus house is activated by the motion of the Moon, we may seek simplicity, yearn for peace, and calm. Henry David Thoreau’s ground-breaking novel, Walden, the quintessential book about living simply in nature, down-sizing, getting off the treadmill, was written as transiting Saturn conjoined Uranus during turbulent times of xenophobia and polarised opinions about slavery in America.

Thoreau was born during a Saturn/Uranus square (Saturn in Pisces square Uranus in Sagittarius) and as Saturn now conjoins the comfort zone of the US South Node (burdens, old beliefs that are familiar and safe, though not always beneficial for growth) this quote may resonate with us all as we struggle to shed the skins of old beliefs and revalue our material possessions: “as a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

To live authentically in this new world, we will require grit and integrity and an interior life that contains us in turbulent world. .

Etty Hillesum, who was murdered at Auschwitz at just 29 years old, her first Saturn Return, wrote this in her diary, “when you have an interior life, it certainly doesn’t matter what side of the prison fence you’re on. . . I’ve already died a thousand times in a thousand concentration camps. I know everything. There is no new information to trouble me. One way or another, I already know everything. And yet, I find this life beautiful and rich in meaning. At every moment.”

To book a personal astrology consultations please email me―ingrid@trueheartwork.com

March 19, 2021 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Endurance—Sun in Aries—March 20th

If your nerve deny you, go above your nerve—Emily Dickinson.

The days stretch long in the north. In the south, autumn’s honeyed light spills over sun-bleached grasses. On March 20^th, the Sun slips into Aries, marking the spring or autumn Equinox. The start of the astrological new year.

Aries is associated with vibrant reds; with the purifying heat of fire; with raw vitality and with that heart-stopping, breath-holding moment when we take that terrifying leap forward. When we go above our nerve.

Aries is where we encounter our own autonomy, our ability to return to life, to find ourselves anew.

It is in Aries that we must dare to find the deeper meaning of courage and endurance as we wear our bravest smile, take the hand of our loved one whose light is dimming. As our own Aries planets are forged in the heat of the Sun, we may feel hope that comes in a heated rush; a surge of ardor that emboldens us to speak out, make a move, before it’s too late. As the Sun climbs across the equator, we may feel a sense of relief and renewal as a relationship unspools, leaving us heartsore and lighter.

Aries is a Mars-ruled sign. The raw energy of Mars is ignited by a goal; something to conquer or defend—the Romans pragmatically dedicated the month of March to war-god as they set off on their campaigns, certain of fresh supplies. We may notice Mars energy all around us this month. Survival, and procreation are embodied in the natural world as the urgent thrust of spring spills over the land in a cascade of colour and the sweetest song.

As Venus (relationships, what we hold dear to our hearts) moves into Aries on March 21^st and makes her annual appointment with the Sun (March 24^th), the words of author Isabel Allende may resonate as we burn for something new “we don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward…” Venus and the Sun conjoin Chiron on March 28–30^th—an indication that for most of us, the road ahead may not be easy.

When the Sun enters Aries, a flash of light shines through an aperture—igniting the hero/warrior archetype, and its shadow, the destroyer. In myth and in fairy tale, the hero/warrior archetype is typically masculine. Heroes slay nine-headed dragons, rescue hapless damsels, defeat degenerate villains. Yet the destroyer lives amongst us, tattooed in the distortion of the Hero/Warrior depicted in the media, enacted in our homes, behind closed doors, or in the shadowy realm of cyberspace.

Aries’s shadow is self-centred and brutal as depicted by the cruel anonymity of trolling, the persistent violence of stalking and digital voyeurism, the misogynistic harassment and assault that is endemic in our culture. This patriarchal power-over behaviour—directed at “foreigners”, blacks, gays, women, and those people who live with disabilities, has seeped through society for eons. Barely a week after International Women’s Day, the killing of Sarah Everard sent shock waves of grim recognition through everyone who has clutched a can of mace or hurried coiled, contracted, through a subway or a park. As a primal fear and rage bled across the internet, the vigil on Clapman Common was met by acts of aggression by the Metropolitan police, reminiscent of the brutality inflicted on the Suffragettes, the police killings that ignited the Black Lives Matter movement.

The dark face of the Ram is testosterone-fueled anger, self-absorption, competitiveness, single-mindedness. Our self-directed quest to “find our voice” may deafen the voices of others; our need to be “free” may mean breaking the heart of someone who loves us.

As Mars moves through Gemini (March 4^th– April 24^th) our negative thoughts and beliefs may be obstacles to conquer. As Nasa’s Perseverance grinds and clanks across the arid surface of the red planet in search of past life, we may feel this same sense of grinding and clanking against obstacles that demand resilience and perseverance. When Mars moves through the element of air, words become blades, rhetoric morphs into bullets and the dark tide of anger rises, setting fire to old grudges and unexamined narratives.

As existential angst heightens our human response to threat and uncertainty, surveillance capitalism harvest our emotional bonds, sells our anger and our shame as “data.” “The goal now is to automate us,” writes Shoshana Zuboff, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

The motif of the Saturn/Uranus square—a cycle that began in 1988 with a Saturn/Uranus conjunction in Capricorn—infuses our lives with defining moments as regulations tighten, people push back. This year, three waning squares define the zeitgeist of disruption—the first was February 17^th, June 14^th is the second. In tandem and working in the darkness, the ominous Pluto/Eris square dredges up all that is putrid in our societies, as we wade through what Eckhardt Tolle calls “the pain body.”

The applying square of Saturn and Uranus back in 2000 brought recession after the dot-com bubble of the late 90s detonated. Alignments of staid Saturn and unpredictable Uranus mark economic collapse, civil unrest, radicalisation—the gain or loss of human rights and liberty. Martial law has been extended in Myanmar, a savage repeat of lethal confrontations between the military and the “’88 generation” of students that led the uprising in 1988.

As new lockdown measures are imposed in many countries, Mercury muscled into Aries on April 4^th. Frustration simmers. The passage of Venus (April 23^rd) sensitises the destabilising Saturn/Uranus square, followed by the Sun (April 30^th-May 4^th) and Mars adds fuel to the flames this year and next. (July/November 2021; March/April/July/ 2022.)

For most of us, our hero’s or heroine’s quest is not a muscular or spectacularly heroic response to the challenges of life. So often, it’s the austere grip of necessity that wrenches us out of our ordinary lives and gives us no choice but to dare greatly. Financial ruin, illness, the noxious fallout from a ruined relationship may ignite within our hearts the courage we never knew we had.

Cheryl Strayed writes, “you go on by doing the best you can. You go on by being generous. You go on by being true. You go on by offering comfort to others who can’t go on. You go on by allowing the unbearable days to pass and by allowing the pleasure in other days. You go on by finding a channel for your love and another for your rage”.

For some of us, an ordinary life lived with as much consciousness and courage we can muster is heroic. Our quest is cyclical, not linear: we so often face the same obstacles and foes along the way. And even though there are times when it takes every last spark of courage to unearth something positive, anything hopeful, to hold onto, we go on. And we do the best we can.

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

February 9, 2021 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Heart’s Desire—Venus meets Jupiter—February 11th

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

As cloyingly sentimental or overtly commercial as this celebration may seem, Valentine’s Day has survived world wars and financial crashes. It has evolved from rumbustious fertility ritual origins enacted by the Romans, emerged from the gruesome torture and execution of men we now call saints and martyrs.

On February 14^th in most places on this earth, millions of people will demonstrate through chocolates, music and flowers, their longing to love and be loved.

For those of us who have been shamed and shunned, harmfully shocked, brutally intruded upon, the scar tissue that wraps around our heart may ache in the month that is dedicated to Love and Lovers. Betrayal, loss and entropy may press their leaden weight on our resolve to dare to love again.

“We live in a patriarchal, narcissistic, addictive culture that has a lot of anti-relational bias in it. Within that culture, we just don’t give our sons and daughters the skills that they need to have the kind of wonderful relationship we all want these days,” says relationship therapist, Terry Real.

This week, the New Moon in Aquarius on February 11^th symbolises a new beginning, after a time of turmoil; the seeding of a creative new vision that may include second chances, repair and healing. Venus and Jupiter in Aquarius, meet on February 11^th for a sweet caress in the apricot light of dawn. This brief union happens only once a year, yet it carries the promise of serendipitous meetings, joy-filled celebrations, favourable outcomes. For birthdays and weddings, for the fruitful budding of professional or intimate relationships, this day is incandescent. Aquarius encompasses our friendship circle, those anam cara, soul friends, who hold our hands tightly when we’re broken hearted. Mercury in Aquarius, still travelling Retrograde, encounters the sweetness of Venus and the optimism of Jupiter this week, draping our dreams in silken images that sparkle and inspire, offering us an opportunity to re-write the narrative of our lives and move toward “what if” … “what could be”…

Yet, wrapped in the sweetness of Love’s beginning is also the sorrow of it’s ending. Anais Nin wrote so poignantly, “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we do not know how to replenish its source.” So how do we replenish Love’s source? David Schnarch writes, love and desire are “not a matter of peeling away the layers but of developing them—growing ourselves up to be mature and resourceful adults who can solve our current problems.”

Love requires an artist’s eye, a poet’s sensibility, a gourmet’s palate. The willingness to be curious, to engage in the mystery, to re-ignite the flame of Eros with the spark of our human imagination.

The Sun enters Pisces on February 18^th. In the archetypal journey around the zodiac, we’re invited to wear our mermaid tails and adorn our hair with seashells. Perceptions may shift, new insights may wash to the shore of our consciousness, or ambiguity, uncertainty and confusion may swirl around us as we swim in uncharted waters. In Pisces, we dive deep into opaque waters where music and poetry melt walls that divide. We may experience, in the words of Eckhardt Tolle, “all things that truly matter―beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace―arise from beyond the mind.”

Pisces is not an easy constellation to see with the naked eye. And in our birth chart, Pisces planets or the house, may be concealed by louder or more overtly visible planetary archetypes. A rumbustious Aries Sun or dutiful Capricorn Moon may be more comfortable in a world where we compare, compete, do our duty, and have a “nice day.” We may hesitate at the water’s edge, admiring other people’s creativity, their altruism, their faith. Julia Cameron, writes, “The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations.” Pisces is where we journey to those soulful regions of our psyche, those places where we encounter mysterious daimons, and where powerful currents of emotion surge like a rip-tide, shattering our peace, bringing us to our knees, altering our own expectations. In this underwater realm, we hear the songs of the whales, the whisper of the sea grasses, the prayers of our ancestors who lie full fathom five.

As we immerse ourselves into this sphere of water this month, there are sea changes that reflect the swelling tide of worldly events. Saturn and Uranus clash on February 17^th in a fractious square that will send shards of social unrest and disruption across the globe throughout 2021.

As we heal our hearts, unrest ferments in Myanmar and in Russia, perhaps mirroring our own fear and unrest; our own heart-call for change or freedom. The first of three squares will be exact on February 17^th, followed by the second on June 14^th and the denouement on December 24^th. Perhaps in the break-down of all we know is safe and sure, we discover that it is our partner who has been taking care of our marriage after all. In stretching out of our familiar roles, seeing each other with new eyes, we rebuild a relationship that has collapsed under the heavy weight of our fear and control―or we dare to love fearlessly as we begin again―with someone new.

On this Hallmark day of commercial brouhaha and the echo of the death cries of the martyred Valentine, let us pause a while amidst the plethora of heart-shaped second chances to speak our truth, buy those red roses, to dare to say I love you. Let us celebrate the confounding mystery and magnificence of the human heart. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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

January 19, 2021 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Ring the Bells—Sun in Aquarius—January 19th—February 18th

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be—Leonard Cohen

In these fallow times, as we burrow down in the quiet containment of our ordinary lives, hesitant to trust the torrent of news that so often enters our consciousness, unbidden. Many of us are numb, suspended in the eye of the storm; held hostage by loss and grief; struggling to feel at home in a body that feels fragile and pained. Many of us are wondering what is yet to be.

Yet now is the time to start again. A slew of powerful astrological transits swirl around us. We pay our collective debt to the gods today as the Sun joins Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury in Aquarius. In the ever-changing sky, Uranus, the “awakener”, turned direct on January 14^th (6° Taurus). As exhilarating as an awakening may seem, it is so often accompanied by an obliteration of life as we knew it. Saturn and Uranus will be in square three times this year. Saturn transits arrive as the henchmen of stasis that undermine our efforts to move forward. Uranus breaks us open.

Mars, the warrior god, joins forces with unpredictable Uranus (rude awakenings, shocks, and unexpected events) and although so many of us are straining for some kind of change in our lives, some hope that the pandemic will end soon, there will be more losses, more deaths, more grieving.

Creation stories always tell of darkness and chaos that come before creation. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction of January 2020 has fermented all that is rotten in our world. The dross has risen to the surface and each one of us now faces the consequences of those things we have repressed or simply ignored. In the tumultuous confusion, something greater ushers humanity towards what is yet to be.

Few of us go willingly into the kind of initiation that accompanies a Pluto transit. Pluto is still in Capricorn, square Eris and opposing the Mercury of the US birth chart. America’s Pluto Return (2017-2024) and the former President Trump’s Pluto opposition (2019-December 2021) to his heavily armoured Saturn/Venus conjunction require a head bowed humbling of will. Pluto transits never leave us intact.

The Eris square to the US Pluto will permeate American culture well into the 2040s. A Collective meeting with Fate.

The torrent of Tweets has stopped. In the silent space between chaos and something new, there is the descent into the unknown. Joe Biden has answered the call. He has worked and waited and prepared for this day’s dawning. He gazes out at a map of shifting possibilities. If he is to succeed, it will be as a Shaman, a Wounded Healer, not a problem-solving politician. January 20^th is the first anniversary of the first case of Covid in America. As the death toll rises, it may soon surpass the 405,000 Americans who died in the chaos of WW II.

The Moon moves into Taurus on the day of the US Presidential Inauguration and for a brief moment, she will brush gently over Joe Biden’s pragmatic Taurus Moon, at the pinnacle of his political career. The Leo Full Moon of January 28^th illuminates the Pluto/Moon square in Joe Biden’s birth chart, as he begins a process of initiation that will test him to the limit.

Fintan O’ Toole, in a superbly written Guardian article, writes: “His skills as a fixer are finely honed – but they cannot restore a pre-Trump normality. As president, Biden’s private self, shadowed by loss, must come into its own.” Joe Biden’s private self is symbolised by four resilient planets in Scorpio which must find their way through the dark as they will be squared by Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn and Uranus in the coming months and years. Mercury turns Retrograde on January 30^th (square Joe Biden’s Scorpio Sun). There is so much to be healed and repaired. The slow retrieval of what has been lost or captive will be painful. As Pluto opposes the US Mercury from 2017–2024 there will be walls to dismantle, bridges to build, digital communications to reform, and Silicon Valley Titans to tame.

“This will not be an American spring,” writes O’Toole, “the political Biden is not the man who can change America. It is that other, richer persona, the private self, shadowed by time and loss and a sense of tragedy, that must come into its own.”

Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands suggests that the healing of America will be long and slow and will take many generations. He offers: “If we are to survive as a country, it is inside our bodies where this conflict needs to be resolved… the vital force [behind] white supremacy is in our nervous systems… You start with things that are maybe uncomfortable but not hard to do, like: Put yourself in situations. If you’re a white person, go someplace where there are gonna be a lot of black bodies, and just feel what happens in your body. And go back again.”

Here in the North, golden daffodils glisten in the spring sunlight. The first blue bells brush cobalt across the woodlands. The air is scented with the promise of renewal. Today, may our salty tears bring cleansing and deep healing.

May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquilities. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.

—John O ’Donohue.

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

September 21, 2020 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Small Great Things—Sun in Libra—September 22nd—October 23rd

But you know, you go on, right? Because what other choice have you got―Jodi Picoult

As the Sun moves into the sign of Libra at this turning of the seasons our “surge capacity”—as psychologist Ann Masten calls our human ability to stay the course during short term stressful situations—stretches to breaking point.

In the metaphorical language of astrology, the Libran part of our own birth chart will be illuminated for the next month as we practice and perfect the art of relating to others in an uncertain world, as we continually adjust, realign, re-establish our balance on the beam of life. Libra and Aries mark the Equinoxes. 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.

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, news of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg ricocheted around an increasingly fragmented world. This diminutive octogenarian, who championed the rights of minorities in the most powerful court of America, has left us. She is mourned by all who loved and admired her indomitable spirit. Her intuitive Pisces Sun trines Pluto in Cancer, signifying her resilience and her power to bring about profound change in the system. Her Moon is most likely in uncompromising Scorpio (there is no record of her birth time). Her response to the then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe Biden, who suggested that judges should lead society in some circumstances, carries enormous weight this week—judges must be mindful of what their place is in this system and must always remember that we live in a democracy that can be destroyed if judges take it upon themselves to rule as Platonic guardians.

This is the month of changing seasons and changing guardians. As we summons our last reserves of energy, the weary Sun begins to flag. The unthinkable has become normal as our civilization slides towards its end. Some of us embrace the soft comfort of denial. Some of us are outraged. We push back, we take to the streets. We trust no-one. At this time of balance and weighing up, it is intelligent reasoning that is needed. Don’t be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time… real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time,” said the Notorious RBG.

In the Tarot, Libra is Justice XI reflecting the advancement of culture, away from the “primitive” instinctual life. Perhaps it is this advancement of culture, our move away from our “primitive” and instinctual life that is the soul sickness of our age. Perhaps we were collectively ailing long before COVID-19 floated through the air, leaving us lost, adrift, in a strange new world. Perhaps it is this pandemic of our own narcissism that is mirrored in the media, in the behaviour of those we elect as our leaders, our addiction to the steady IV-drip of social media that is the pandemic that rages through the brittle scaffolding of this dying civilization.

The astrology indicates a period of turn-arounds, fuelled by Mars Retrograde—September 9^th to Friday, November 13^th —symbolising enmity, an increasing hard-right deep distrust of authority, online extremism that stretches the fissures in our societies, and opens the way for Redeemer/Savours to step in with a simple solution to mass unemployment and unwanted migrants. Saturn in Capricorn (authority figures, rules and restrictions) turns direct on September 29^th, and Pluto (plutocracy, trauma, trans-formation) switches direction on October 4^th, as does seductive Neptune (viruses, addictions, con-men, Redeemer/Saviours, the mirage that draws us into the belly of the whale) on November 28^th.

As the Sun moves through Libra many of us may be washing our hands, keeping our distance, hoping for the best as we try to keep our balance in a world that feels gaslit and murky right now. 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 worry like a mantle over our minds, and a world weariness that infuses the marrow of our bones.

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 and the events that are unfolding in the world right now. Balance is as capricious as the patterns of neuronal firing in our brains, as fleeting as our emotionally charged perceptions of the world around us.

The Equinox today signals movement and change that comes with the reassuring beginnings and endings of the seasons. Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods, moves into Scorpio on September 27^th and will turn Retrograde on October 14^th, slipping back into Libra on October 28^th, turning direct once more on November 3^rd, and diving back into Scorpionic waters on November 10^th; signifying the need for resilience and flexibility as lockdown measures are revised, as we cultivate a deeper awareness of our mental chatter that disturbs our peace, stirs our feelings.

Lévy-Bruhl and, later, Jung, wrote of the Participation Mystique. That mystical participation that can manifest in situations and material things in our lives. As the epicentres of civilization shudder across the globe, as America and Britain face their “Darkest Hour”, it will be the small gestures of love and kindness, the careful harnessing of our untamed thoughts, the brave reimagining of how this world could be, that keep us calm, help us to take one step at a time. Use these last precious stores of energy. There’s no going back. The Scales of Balance are poised. As we hold the tension of two opposing forces, a third way will emerge, transfiguring, regenerating. This is the beginning, the middle, and the end. We start from here.

For private astrology readings and more regular astrology updates please connect with me by email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from—T.S. Elliot

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult

September 11, 2020 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Handle with Care—Mars Retrograde—September 9th—November 13th

There is a fire raging, and we have two choices: we can turn our backs, or we can try to fight it—Jodi Picoult

We may feel as if we have stumbled through a portal into a forgotten realm as we communicate with our thumbs-ups, as we crinkle our eyes over our masks. Perhaps a strange tiredness has settled into the crevices of our ordinary lives. Yet, as we adjust and adapt, as we draw deeply on our faith and tend to the lamp of hope, we may sense the heat in the flame.

As COVID-19 continues to sweep around the globe, we all walk through a tunnel of uncertainty. This health crisis that has affected us all in some way, has revealed the brutality and injustice in our systems, the disintegration of checks and balances, popularist demagogues that deliver simplicity in sound bites and visuals. What we believed was solid and sure is threaded with words that summon danger as Barack Obama presciently warns, “that’s how a democracy withers, until it’s no democracy at all.”

We stand at an historical crossroad. The road well-travelled stretches towards profit-driven business models; the rapacious destruction of natural ecosystems; the numbing, dumbing down generated by the echo chambers of digital platforms; the banal flash fiction from our leaders.

During lock-down, many of us dreamed of a better, kinder world. As we gazed at the glut of stuff squeezed into our homes and felt this urge to pare down, to give away, to live more sustainably, our priorities became clearer, our hopes for when this is over carried us to a future where we lived more simply, more consciously; where we appreciated our loved ones. Yet now, we may feel a strange kind of emptiness, a crisis of meaning, a flatness as we witness the same posturing by our politicians, the same worship at the altar of profit, the same precarity of work and opportunity.The roads are gridlocked again. The silence, the sweet air has gone.

Now there is a fire raging. Mars, the mythical warrior glowers red in the night sky as he stations Retrograde from September 9^th (28°Aries) to November 13^th (15°Aries) moving through the shadowlands from July 24^th 2020 to January 2^nd, 2021. A regressive Mars reminds us that we are battle weary. That we have been wearing our armour for far too long. That our bodies are aching, that we need more sleep.

It’s Mars that gets us out of bed in the morning; gives us our resolve to carry on. It’s Mars that takes a stand for justice, that fights the flames in California and ignites the flames of wrath in overcrowded refugee camps on Lesbos.

A Retrograde Mars turns white-hot energy inwards. Mars is our inner toddler that acts out when thwarted. We may sense rising levels of frustration, a need to push back at what is wrong in our lives, in our societies. The dark face of Mars is the radicalised berserker who unleashes fear and carnage, stokes up trouble on digital platforms. And as we scroll down our screens, skim through the news, Google snippets of “information”, we may inadvertently enter the fray of battle.

Mars, the fearsome night warrior is in his own sign of Aries. He bristles for a fight as he makes a tense square to the authoritarian men in suits—Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn over the coming months. This volatile energy will be in effect until the end of December 2020.

When Mars moves Retrograde, he draws his power from within, rather than submitting to the will of authority. Mars is also our daring greatly, our heroic ability to rise up again when we’re downhearted, when we’re bruised. We may have to go back, re-do, reset something we have planned. We may be forced to retreat. To take some R&R. Mars changes his relationship with the Sun when he turns Retrograde, so this is an inner battle for many of us, a time to face our night terrors, confront our shadow, sheath our sword, make amends.

Mars retrograded into Aries in 1909, 1941, and 1988 as conflicts arose and were quelled, as luck and rhetoric enabled demagogues to cling to power within the context of turbulence, unemployment, uncertainty, and fear. Now as Machiavellian manoeuvring on the 200-year-old bedrock of US democracy opens fault-lines that fracture across an entangled world, deep divisions become weaponised, outrage spills out onto the streets. We can turn our backs, try to fight, we can take that first step into the unknown because that fire has left us uneasy to go on as we are.

“Every decision you make—every decision—is not a decision about what to do. It’s a decision about Who You Are. When you see this, when you understand it, everything changes. You begin to see life in a new way. All events, occurrences, and situations turn into opportunities to do what you came here to do,” writes Neale Donald Walsch.

In her new book, Spark Change: 108 Provocative Questions for Spiritual Evolution, author Jennie Lee guides us along a road less travelled. A road of courageous introspection where we may ask ourselves, “what am I supposed to learn from this?” She says, “that puts us into a place of humility because often we want to cast the blame outwardly towards another person or just the greater world situation, and we feel victimized by it.”

Use this Mars Retrograde cycle wisely to ask those provocative questions, to take refuge in slow time, to engage with life in a new way and to do what we came here to do. Writes Elif Shafak in her new book, “How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division, “after the pandemic, we won’t go back to the way things were before. And we shouldn’t.” It is up to each one of us not to return to the coping mechanisms, the distractions, the addictive behaviour that ravages our spirit. We stand at a new frontier. May we bring with us only those things we need to travel lightly on this earth.

For astrology sessions, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com