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Self Growth

Long Night Moon—December 4th.

We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep—William James.

In small suburban gardens, dancing reindeer and corpulent Santas twinkle. Fairy lights garland trees and hedges. As the old year dies in the darkness of midwinter, rituals—quirky and quaint—secure threads of continuity and connection, create meaning, beguile us with wonder.

The sun lies low on the horizon, just two weeks before the mid-winter solstice. For some, this may be a lonely wintering. For those unmoored by a cluster of losses, as the darkness closes in. The gaudy glitter and surfeit of this Christmas season amplify isolation. For some this may be a fallow time of scant resources. For some, the protracted dying of a relationship may rachet up the strength to shrug off a life that now feels too small, too tight. And for some, this festive season may be a time of joyful celebration, gifts exchanged, good food enjoyed, a long awaited reunion with family or a much-loved friend.

The last full moon of the year caresses the face of the earth on December 4th, an imposing supermoon in the sign of Gemini, an astrological archetype associated with duality.

Supermoonsa term coined by astrologer Richard Nolle in 1979arrive consecutively, in threes or fours, amplifying the gravitational pull of the sun and the moon upon the earth, affecting the circadian rhythm of all living things. This supermoon cycle ends on January 3rd, with a Cancer supermoon. The next cycle begins in November 2026.

December’s supermoon is accompanied by the Geminid meteor shower as the earth passes through the trail of debris left by a comet or asteroidshooting stars that streak across the skies. They emanate from the heavens near the bright star, Castor in the constellation of Gemini. They blaze through the night skies from December 4th to 17th.

The best time to view will be as the moon begins to wane from December 11th and  the skies darken, preceding a new Sagittarius moon, just before the mid-winter solstice on December 20th.

This lunation invokes Gemini’s contradictory, mercurial magic. The moon conjoins erratic Uranus Retrograde and squares the Nodes in Virgo and Pisces. Tonight, we might reflect on those bonds of love and loyalty that bind us, or the painful bruise of estrangement. We may be suspended between Piscean idealism/empathy and Virgoan pragmatism/discernment. Saturn (structure and boundaries) and Neptune (dissolution) are still moving through the final degrees of Pisces, stirring deep currents of sorrow, world-weariness and exhaustion, in the closing phase of this long cosmic cycle.

In the Greco/Roman world, Mercury/Hermes presided over thresholds, crossroads, and boundaries. As we prepare ourselves for the challenge of crossing a new threshold, we may meet the spirit of Gemini in the wind that rustles the branches of the tree outside our window, a reminder that nothing is constant. Against the rich warm browns of dying bracken and marmalade and honey-gold of the last autumn leaves, it is the oak that holds fast the green the longest. A reminder perhaps that change emerges discretely for some of us, or in a flash, with a sudden change of heart, for others.

Air is Gemini’s element. This is the energy of the trickster—versatile, elusive, clever, playful, and infuriatingly inconsistent. Gemini moves through its two personas, appearing in those either-or choices we feel compelled to make, sometimes showing up at crossroad moments in our lives. Through Gemini we encounter the power of two, the kindred spirit, those relationships we find most challenging, the conflicts that bring out our exiled dark twin. Spiritual teacher, Caroline Myss’ Gemini Moon conveys the archetype of the Storyteller, the Data Gatherer. She writes, “the challenge is for us to decide whether to make choices that enhance our spirit or drain our power.”

The deeper meaning of Gemini encompasses a subtle tuning into the invisible currents that flow through the fabric of life. The Sabian Symbol for this lunation is “Transcendent Connection”.  Tonight, we may feel conflicted about a choice (the sun and moon are in opposition at full moon times), yet if we can still our minds, connect with our heart, we will find the courage to be with what is. As Mercury, ruling both the moon and the south node, infuses the energy of this lunation a ritual, an intention, a heartfelt prayer will be amplified tonight.
Mercury is now moving direct in uncompromising Scorpio, yet the mood will lighten as he enters buoyant Sagittarius on December 12th, leaving his shadow (the degree at which he turned Retrograde) on December 17th.

We can’t avoid winter’s darkness, yet the Sun’s passage through hope-filled Sagittarius is a reminder that we may have become too rigid in our opinions, too wrapped up in anticipatory anxiety, or encased in cynicism to dare to trust and hope. Venus and Mars join the Sun in exuberant Sagittarius, as even the most churlish succumb, perhaps just a little, to the effervescence of this season.

Raising our glasses to the year almost gone, may we listen deeply to what is said around the dinner table, sensing a heartache or a longing that may be concealed in an emotionally charged silence; then choose to soften our stance, allow a change of heart, a deepening of connection.

 

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

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Rooted—Full Moon in Taurus—November 5th.

To be rooted is not the same thing at all as being tied down. To be rooted is to say, here I am nourished and here will I grow, for I have found a place where every sunrise shows me how to be more than what I was yesterday, and I need not wander to feel the wonder of my blessing—Kevin Hearne.

The moon rests her bright face close to the heart of the earth tonight. The extravagance of autumn is muted now. Flowers past their bloom. The scent of fallen leaves mingles with the earthy smell of burning wood. This is the season of bonfires, pruning, and staking.

Melody Beattie reminds us, “there are seasons and cycles in us, just as there are in nature. Learn to recognise and honour the seasons and cycles of the soul.”

This so-called “supermoon” in Taurus will be followed by a regenerative new moon in Scorpio on November 20th and as this lunar cycle completes, Taurus symbolism directs our attention to our finances, the energetic terrain where we so often feel empowered/disempowered, lacking, or abundant.

Money matters, abundance blocks, accompanied by fear and shame, may be weighing heavily in the month that preceeds festive spending. 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 and conserve our resources, grow towards stability and security, stay connected to the material world. “Being grounded” can seem like one of those self-help adages, yet as moonlight washes over the face of our earth tonight, we may ask, what makes me feel  grounded, stable and safe? Have I planted roots in a place that feels nourishing? Am I tired and depleted; my body and nervous system dysregulated? How well am I managing the currencies of my time, skills, and money?

Taurus imagery offers us a chance to stay steady, perhaps begin to address our money wound, which usually is deeply rooted in our family’s relationship and attitude to money and possessions, charged with an energy that spans generations.

This full moon precedes an important celestial pivot point: Erratic Uranus back tracks into Taurus on November 8th. Uranus lingers at the potent, critical 29° point till December 1st, before stationing direct in Taurus on February 3rd, moving back over old ground before returning once more to that anaretic degree point between April 7-29th before leaving Taurus to move into Gemini.

As we review the years between 2018 and 2026, as Uranus travelled through the sign of Taurus, we recall those practical necessities that have shaped our choices, helped define our values. As Uranus moved through Taurus, crypto currencies gobbled fossil fuels and the climate catastrophe worsened. Stocks and shares rose and fell. A tariff war escalated anxiety and economic chaos. 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.

This month, Saturn and nebulous Neptune meet in Pisces. As they move over the sensitive degree point of the new moon eclipse on September 21st, there’s speculation of an AI bubble burst in a precarious world economy that teeters on the brink of recession. Saturn has been moving through through the liminal realm of Pisces since March 2023, and will remain in Pisces till February 2026. The archetype of Saturn carries ponderous associations with fate and consequence, and Saturn/Neptune conjunctions correlate with events that bring dissolution to structures; a sense of deep ennui, a vague, undefined sorrow and hopelessness that pervades the collective; confusion, disillusionment, political polarisation. Saturn and Neptune will be co-present in the same signs until 2028 and although these great astrological cycles and seasons don’t form in isolation, this corrosive cosmic energy unmoors, unsettles, makes it hard to discern truth from lies. Astrologer, Richard Tarnas writes: “There is also a tendency during Saturn/Neptune eras to experience a subtle but pervasive darkening of the collective consciousness, sometimes as a diffuse and difficult-to-diagnose social malaise, at other times as a direct response to deeply discouraging or tragic events.” This month, Saturn presses slowly forward, suffusing our experiences with necessary endings, the dissolution of outworn structures. Neptune invites us to grieve.

The effects of September’s two eclipses linger perhaps in our own lives, and certainly for Mr Mountbatten Windsor.

The lunar eclipse (15° Pisces)  fell on Mr Mountbatten Windsor’s Mercury. He now faces pressure to give evidence before the US Congressional committee about his relationship with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.The House of Windsor is still embroiled in a criminal crisis.

The explosive, deeply cutting Mercury/Mars aspect of October burns across the heavens this month. Mercury stations Retrograde on November 9th, with Mars now moving swiftly through the fire sign of Sagittarius close on its heels, gaining ground, till they meet in another combustive conjunction between November 11th and November 14th 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.

As nature contracts, exposing an uncompromising knot-work of bare branches and stubble fields, the primordial pulse of change stirs deep in our blood and bones. Yet, tonight, we may sense a slow, steady certainty moving through our body, a knowing, that at month-end, the invisible new moon in Scorpio carries the seed for repair, for release and renewal.

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 bathes the earth tonight, may we trust the rhythm of the universe, the cycles and the seasons that bring endings and new beginnings.

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

 

 

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Resolute—Sun Enters Scorpio—23rd October.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another—Anatole France.

In October, leaves of gold turn to mulch. Shimmering spiderwebs sparkle in coppery hedgerows. The sunlit days, charged with beauty, are more precious now as the light begins to dim.

October is when we turn towards the quiet darkness of winter. This is the season of dying things, a time of shadows. The season of Scorpio brings two powerful forces into sharp focus: life and death. This is a liminal time, halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. A time when we may notice an unsettling shift in the seasons. A time when melancholy wraps itself around the wan light of the dying year and ghoulish costumes create a safe diversion from our squeamishness about death. This is the month when the dead come callingDía de los Muertos, Day of the Dead with roots that twist down through the centuries to Aztec death rites.

Hallowe’en, loud and gaudy, prickling with single-use plastic, was once Allhallowtide, a time in the liturgical year that was dedicated to the departed, before that, the Celtic festival of Samhain.

Soft-bred pumpkins grimace with menacing faces; bonfires consume summer’s fruitfulness, light-hearted tricks and sugary treats sweeten the older tradition of guising (disguising ourselves from sinister wandering spirits) while ruby-red toffee apples symbolise the potent symbol of the pentagram that lives in secret within every store-bought apple; incantations against the supernatural, rituals for protection against the descent into the dark of the year.

As the sun moves through the sign of the scorpion this month, we may become acutely aware that our time here is finite, as we ask ourselves, “what is really important to me?”

It was the serpent, not the scorpion, that ancient Hebrew and Egyptian astrologers associated with the qualities of the modern archetype of Scorpio. Snakes, in ancient times, were associated with wisdom, prophecy, and healing as well as destruction. The cyclical shedding of the snake’s skin was thought to be symbolic of renewal and immortality. In modern times, Scorpio is associated with the far-sighted eagle that soars high above the mayhem. The mythical Phoenix that soared from flames and ashes. Now, as the sun moves through Scorpio, we may be letting something or someone go, rebuilding, starting anew.

When confrontational Mars and communicative Mercury, both personal planets, meet in the still waters of Scorpio this month, they can deliver a nasty bite that wounds. Power struggles, Machiavellian betrayals, buried truths emerge. Snakes and scorpions move easily through the darkness.

On the world stage, Mars/Mercury themes have played out in the truce violations in Gaza and the unspeakable horrors of torture, executions that continue to ravage any hope of peace. As Mars and Mercury move through Scorpio, a sign connected simplistically with the regenerative act sex, comes the unsurprising revelation that Prince Andrew hired internet “trolls” to harass Virginia Giuffre, the courageous advocate for justice for the survivors of sex trafficking, who committed suicide in April this year. As new sordid allegations emerge, Prince Andrew is stripped of his royal titles, just as transiting Mars and Mercury travel in tandem across his secretive Scorpio moon, and Saturn (law, responsibility, accountability) conjoins his fated south node (the past, karma) and Chiron lingers over his Midheaven (reputation and status). It is unlikely that he has willingly and generously given up his prestigious titles. This decision has been made to bolster the power and reputation of the Royal Family brand. Prince Andrew continues to resolutely deny his part in the abuse and sexual assault of Virginia Giuffre.

Cosmic static begins this month as  Mercury has entered its Retrograde shadow (misunderstandings, travel delays, technology glitches all start creeping innotably the major website outage experienced globally on Monday, October 20th)  and will station Retrograde in fiery Sagittarius on November 9th, finally moving direct in watery Scorpio on November 29th. With Mercury moving Retrograde in Scorpio, we may feel a strong desire to withdraw from the world. Our dreams may be intensely disturbing or revealing. This is a cosmic nudge to slow down, focus, pay attention, repair, heal, before moving forward. Fact-check what you post online before you send it, resolve an old argument with a loved one, attend to the tedious admin, read the fine print before signing a document.

Scorpio carries enormous power, for good or ill. The deadly sting or painful bite may self-inflicted.

Just as splinters can get embedded in our body, old emotions and beliefs can act like toxins and become embedded in us too. We may have picked up residue along the way, beliefs we didn’t consciously choose, feelings we weren’t safe enough to feel, toxins from the world around us”  Melody Beattie writes. “What hurts? What are you remembering? Who has come back into your life? Sometimes the process will sting just a bit when you pull out the splinter, or the process of releasing old toxins can be as gentle and natural as the way a flower or tree grows with sunshine and rain.”

Scorpio is associated with the element of water, so tune into what flows and what feels frozen and immovable in your life. Pay attention to what rises to the surface now, what is worth holding onto, and what must be allowed to die.

Swedish archaeologist Cornelius Holtorf observes, in a field of work where preservation is so valued, that accepting loss and change can be important in fostering resilience. Holtorf believes that seeing things fall apart may help us recognise that life is not static. He warns that we can all be drawn into the swamplands of melancholy, rabid nationalism, fanaticism, ghoulish witch hunts, in the name of keeping things “as they were”.

As we prepare for the coming of winter, the sky-story carries a message of hope and regeneration through its association with the snake that sheds its skin, the mythical phoenix that rises from dust and ashes, and the all-seeing eagle that soars above the beauty and the suffering. Let’s enter this Scorpio season of change with the willingness to trust the process of shedding, embrace the sorrow of  loss. Let’s turn towards life with grateful hearts.

 

To schedule a virtual astrology reading, please email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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Season of Eclipses—September 2025.

Hope has holes in its pockets. It leaves little crumb trails so that we, when anxious, can follow it. Hope’s secret: it doesn’t know the destination–it knows only that all roads begin with one foot in front of the other—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.

 

All too soon, leaves of crimson and gold flutter and fall.

As the seasons turn, September arrives accompanied by two eclipses that rhyme with the changes in our lives.  We may be moving through our own season of metamorphosis as summer ends. Change, even change that is longed for, unstitches us from all we know, unravels those things that offer familiar comfort. A beloved child leaves home, a relationship strips us of our innocence, a retrenchment escorts us to a crossroads of choice.

On September 7th, a super-charged full moon daubs her silver light across our earth. As the moon slips between the earth and the sun, she blocks the sun’s light and energy, a temporary power outage, a cosmic punctuation point that marks an ending and an in-between space for a new beginning. Full moon eclipses catapult us from those soft places of comfort. Like an escape room experience, we must find our way in the darkness for a while, and then quite suddenly, something is revealed.

Eclipses often accompany resolute shifts in consciousness, changes of heart. Relationships are illuminated at full moon times and more intensely at full moon eclipses. We may realise our own role in a power struggle or misunderstanding. Quite suddenly, the grace of a  gentle compassion settles. We forgive ourselves and the one who has bruised our heart.

During these next few days as the eclipse energy builds, and we attune to this powerful cosmic energy, we may find ourselves assimilating what we have taken in during the hopeful days of spring, and the sun-saturated days of summer. This lunation gifts us with a serving of practical Virgoan self sufficiency as we realise we are much stronger than we think.

This eclipse carries the poignancy of endings, the hopeful promise of fresh starts. As life coach, Martha Beck, writes so beautifully in her book, Steering by Starlight, “no matter how many years have been stolen from you by your own ignorance, by cruel fate, or by the acts of others, you have a clean, broad slate before you. In this instant—this one now—you can begin steering by starlight, and if you do, the rest of creation will conspire to guide, teach, and help you.”

If this eclipse sensitises your natal moon, a house move, a birth in the family, or a situation pertaining to a woman will be emphasised. The moon in our birth chart is delegated to our most intimate, private life, our security, as well as our popular appeal if we are a public figure. Eclipses begin a cosmic process that take time to ripen. Some astrologers suggest that the effect of an eclipse to a personal planet may linger for up to three and a half years. In 2001, before the insider trading scandal broke in 2003, an eclipse fell on the moon of the ultimate Homemaker, Martha Stewart. Her public popularity was about to be eclipsed.

Another note to the cosmic symphony in this season of change is Saturn’s Retrograde into Pisces on September 1st. One final pass, one last opportunity to lay to rest what we experienced between March 2023 and May 2025 when Saturn moved through this soulful sign.

On September 6th, Uranus makes its first station in Gemini, a precursor to what will unfold for the world and for us personally,  until 2033.

Birth charts with placements in early degrees of Pisces, Gemini, Virgo, or Sagittarius will encounter this unpredictable Uranian energy that accompanies change, sudden awakenings, shocking revelations. There will be opportunities to open our hearts wider. Take those small resolute steps into unchartered territory.

Just days before the autumn Equinox on September 21st, a Partial Solar Eclipse at the final degree of Virgo offers a powerful opportunity for inner house keeping. Now is the time for clearing, healing and repair. This new moon eclipse opposes cautious Saturn, now backtracking through Pisces for one last time: a cosmic intruction to clear the decks, prepare for change, to begin anew. Even as the sly rogue thought lands with a reproachful “what’s the point?” Virgo energy supports us as we clear our thoughts, declutter our homes, tidy our desks. In this clear bright space, something new is possible. All roads begin with putting one foot in front of another.

And suddenly you know: It’s time to start something new and trust the magic of beginnings. Meister Eckhart.

To book an astrology consultation, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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Bittersweet—Saturn Neptune Conjunction—August 2025.

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears, or the sea—Karen Blixen.

Blackberries glisten in the hedgerows, black and juicy. Wave upon wave of sun-bleached grasses ripple across the meadows, branches sag under the weight of blushing fruit. This is a time of harvest here in the north, and for some, as the sweetness of summer begins to fade, a bittersweet sadness settles, a listlessness lingers.

Celestial Titans, Neptune and Saturn whirl closely through the heavens, just zodiacal minutes apart. Saturn and Neptune, are an ambivalent pair, reflecting fundamental human conflicts that accompany “Days of honey, days of onion,” as an Arabic proverb describes this bittersweet experience of life. They’re moving through the sign of Aries, not the most collaborative of zodiac signs. These two archetypal forces collide on February 20th 2026 at 0° Aries, closing an astrological cycle that began in 1989. Saturn dips back into world-weary Pisces from September 1st to February 13th. and then both planets journey uncomfortably together in Aries until the spring of 2028.                   

August gives us a preview of what this cosmic reshaping of the coming times might look like. Already the stage is set the lights are raised as petty dictators dismember democracy and the ultra-rich control every aspect of government and society.

Astrologer, Richard Tarnas describes a sense of depletion and ennui which so many of us are feeling now as we witness the ravaged landscapes of Gaza and Ukraine. “In wartime, Saturn/Neptune alignments often coincide with the later stages of a war when a collective sense of physical and spiritual exhaustion, disillusionment, and low morale—often on both sides—is dominant.”

When the contradictory forces of Saturn and Neptune converge, the boundary between what is known and unknown becomes blurry. What is solid and certain, fantasy, or fiction becomes difficult to see clearly. Collectively and personally (as these planets move across your own birth chart) we may be drawn into an undertow of diffuse energy. Things fall apart. People betray and dissapoint us. What we believed was solid and real is washed away.

Saturn signifies boundaries and structure, realism and practicalities. Neptune, named by the Romans after an ancient sea-diety, carries the salt of our tears as it reflects a facet of the collective consciousness that calls for some kind of sacrifice accompanied by boundless compassion.

These times can be the best or the worst of times. We can harness the power of our imagination to dream something into being or finally accept that what we believed in, what we worked so hard to build, is simply a sandcastle, swept away by the turning of the tide.

 

When Saturn/Neptune met in 1989 as students poured onto Tiananmen Square. Their cries for freedom (idealistic Neptune) silenced by guns and tanks (Saturn).

In South Africa, after years of resistance and unrest as well as international sanctions, the cracks of institutionalised racial segregation widened. Prime Minister, PW Botha resigned, and FW de Klerk became State President. Fast forward to 2025. Millions now live in the sprawling shanty towns that ring the fortressed communities of the rich. Their  cries for equality and freedom subsumed by a relentless struggle for survival.

In 1989, the year of the last exact Saturn/Neptune conjunction, the UN established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). A closing square took place during 2015-16, which saw Obama bringing the US into the Paris Climate Agreement and Trump withdrawing from it a year later. As Neptune (signifier of oceans) meets Saturn (laws, sobering re-structuring) will we treat our waterways and oceans with care, or will water-wars define this next Saturn/Neptune conjunction?

These are times of fear and uncertainty. We may feel overwhelmed, powerless, hopeless. Our innate negative bias overwhelms our ability to see any hope for our children during these turbulent times. Yet, the astrology points to a potent possibility.

As Saturn and Neptune glide through the skies, Saturn also sextiles Uranus this month, a portal of opportunity and the second of a sequence of three aspects, with the final one on January 20th. August’s new moon in Virgo on August 23rd is an opportune day to begin to harvest those thoughts that nourish and strengthen our resilience. Start small by committing to a daily practice of prayer, mindfulness, or simply weeding out fear-based doubts and self-limited beliefs. As Anne of Green Gables said brightly, “because when you are imagining, you might as well imagine something worth while.” In the bittersweetness of this moment in our human story, the courage to imagine something worthwhie is our greatest rescource.

 

Please get in touch if you would like to know more about what this luminous astrological invitation means for you. To book a session, pop me an email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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Rewind—Mercury Retrograde—July 18th-August 11th.

There is always a risk in increasing your awareness. You risk seeing things you might rather not notice. You risk feelings you might rather avoid. You risk having to change what you think and worse—having to change what you do. Betty Martin.

July’s green days stretch drowsily into the endless arc of a china-blue sky. School’s out here in the North. Families flock to golden beaches, children make hearts and angels in the sand. Stunned by the glut of sunlight, hordes of visitors amble slowly along promenades, slump in deck chairs, grateful for any distraction from the ache of the world.

 A brave new moon in Leo on July 24th accompanies Mercury Retrograde passage in Leo. This lunation accents the powerful emotions we cradle in our hearts; what we love, and the anticipatory clench of what we fear. Leo rules the heart in medical astrology, so clasped within the darkness of this new moon lie heart-directed choices, opportunities to begin again. Pluto (irrevocable endings), opposes this lunation, adding a charge of potency to what we initiate this week as every bright promise of a beginning requires a little death.

Pluto demands honest soul searching. If you have planets or angles in early degrees Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius, you will be unable to avoid having to change course, you will be compelled to increase your awareness. Change will be an evolutionary imperative. And for us all, this is a year of life-changing ingressesPluto in Aquarius, Jupiter in Cancer, Neptune and Saturn now moving in tandem through Ariesan uncomfortable medley of distinctly different energies  swirling through the collective and impacting on our own lives in some way.

Disruptive, inventive Uranus entered changeable Gemini on July 7th agitating the frequency around us all, ushering sudden change and chaos to societies, as borders and boundaries are shattered. As our children play in the sunshine, our thoughts may turn to the children who endure the unspeakable terror of war.

Uranus is associated with innovation, civil unrest, revolution, and those shocking “wake up calls” that jolt us from our complacency. Uranus will hurtle through the sign of Gemini over the next eight years, accompanied by an unprecedented acceleration of technical momentum as AI appropriates our autonomy, requisitions our work, presses—unbidden—into our awareness.

This week, as Mercury (intellect, nervous system, transport, and communication) backtracks through Leo, the Trump administration signs executive orders to take the guard rails off AI, dismantling safeguards and standards that will protect us from hate speak and othering. The “Build Baby Build” also plan dismantles environmental and land use regulations to bolster the vast AI infrastructure, and the energy needed to power it.

Dharna Noor sounds the alarm in an article in The Guardian, “the AI sector is already depleting land and water rescources and taking a massive toll on climate, with AI-powered large language models such as ChatGPT taking up to 10 times more energy than a regular Google search, according to an estimate by the Electric Power Research Institute.” Good news for the Billionaire Tech Bros. An accelerant for global warming.

We know that when fear curls tightly in our nervous system it hooks us in anticipation of what lies ahead. When we feel the awful squeeze of fear, we become self-centred, we lose our capacity for caring and empathy. We are locked in developmental arrest.

They’re calling it the age of anxiety, says Kristen Lee, author of Worth the Risk: how to micro-dose bravery and grow resilience. Yet, amidst the overwhelming pain and chaos of it all, we may be moved to do something noble, gracious, kind today.

As the sun shines brightly and our children make sand angels on the beach, we may be reminded of what Mark Twain famously said: The worse things in my life never actually happened.

Mercury Rx periods so often bring to our awareness those thoughts that are entryways into a state of fear. We may linger in the past, fret about the future.

Spiritual teachers ask that we bring our fear to our awareness and tend to it like a timid wild creature. The shamans say that when we name a fear, it loses its power over us. Science corroborates this. We activate the pre-frontal cortex, calm the limbic system, when we can gently name and turn towards our fear.

The vibratory signature of this regenerative New Moon may light the way, even if dimly at first, to a flowering of purpose, a deeper way of listening, a different way of seeing, an outward rush of a life force that floods through us even in the darkness. “Despair is our chance to wrestle with fire and come through,” writes Christina Baldwin.

Today, let’s risk seeing things we might rather not notice. Bring to our awareness those feelings we would much rather avoid. Practice wishful thinking.

 

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

 

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Home Comforts—Jupiter enters Cancer—June 9th-June 30th 2026.

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned—Maya Angelou.

Here in the north, the shimmer of summer sparkles across newly mown meadows of powered gold. We’re drunk with light, overwhelmed with a surfeit of beauty. Now the sun pauses at the zenith of the year and ancient Sarsen stones drink in the heat of the midsummer sun.

The sun dips into the cool waters of Cancer on June 21st marking the midsummer solstice, a turning point in the solar/lunar cycle. As the days of June shimmer in shades of green and the scent of dog rose wafts on a hot honeyed breeze, we have come full circle.

Within the constellation of Cancer is a delicate brush stroke of stars in the sky called Praesepe, the Latin word for “manger”. Cancer is associated with wombs, and cradles, with nourishment and containment, with our ancient human longing to belong, to seek shelter and comfort in a place we can call home. The word “home” dates to the Old English, “ham” or “hamum”, and many settlements included the word, “ham” as they were dwelling places, places of belonging to clans. Cities like Nottingham and Birmingham are reminders of the importance of the places we come from, the bonds that are forged in our families and communities.

“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe,” writes the inimitable Maya Angelou in her superbly written letter to her daughter.

Home, belonging, safe places, will all be highlighted over the coming months:

Mercury moved into Cancer on June 8th, followed by Jupiter on June 9 th. Jupiter finds ease, joy and abundance in Cancer, traditionally, the sign of Jupiter’s exaltation. It is in the tender embrace of Cancer that Jupiter expands our innate human abilities to nurture, create, belong, to feel “at home” in a place, community, or country.

Jupiter travelled through Cancer from June 2013—July 2014 and will be moving through Cancer from June 9th June 30th, 2026.

Jupiter’s 12- month journey through Cancer will influence all our lives in some way if we tune into Jupiter’s benevolent wavelength and focus on positivity, abundance and success. Cancer is the Moon’s sign, and Jupiter expands the qualities of Cancer, heightening our sensitivity and empathy, our innate ability to nurture, to form deeper, heartfelt connections that add meaning and texture to our own lives. There may be new arrivals in our family—babies born, the joy of an engagement or a wedding, opportunities to reconnect with a family member, to excavate an important event from the past, to heal and repair.

As Jupiter enters Cancer it squares Saturn and Neptune in Aries, demanding discipline and imagination as we overcome challenges, make sacrifices in pursuit of our dreams. This final square between Jupiter and Saturn (it has been in play since last August) suggests closure, a final restructuring, opportunities to in pursuit of a dream.

Venus is moving through Taurus, the sign of her domicile (June 5th-July 4th) as we celebrate the sweet-scented days of midsummer with sensual indulgences and root ourselves in what we truly value.  We may need to focus on money matters this month and this will be an auspicious time to  invest in a property, or list our home, or spend our money on something or someone we value.

A luminous full moon in Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius on June 11th (20 ° Sagittarius opposite the Sun at 20 ° Gemini) squares the fated lunar nodes, nudging us towards brave life decisions, journeys to be taken. Jupiter rules this full moon, bringing blessings and abundance if we are open to them, yet this lunation is quickly followed by a volatile, unsettling square between Mars in Leo and unpredictable Uranus on June 15th, one day after of Donald Trump’s 79th Birthday.

On July 4th, 1776 when the new nation of America was born, the Sun was moving through the sign of Cancer, Venus and Jupiter were conjunct in Cancer, and Mercury was Retrograde in Cancer. Home, family, belonging, and safety are enduring qualities in this country of settlers and immigrants, qualities that are deeply rooted in the American psyche. This week, active-duty marines and members of the national guard were mobilised against Americans who have protested over travel bans, rushed deportations without due process, and mass detentions, all targeting immigrants and their families.

Now as the Sun dips into the cool waters of Cancer, a sign that clasps us to the familiar breast of comfort and security, may our  hearts my open to the plight of immigrants, to families torn apart by conflict or political ideology.

At this sacred time of pause, of empty space, may we send prayers for the displaced and the homeless out into the darkness. May our prayers blaze with light, find safety and shelter in Love.

To book an astrological reading, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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A New Me —Saturn in Aries —25 th May 2025—April 2028.

She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess―Helen Oyeyemi.

“Be yourself” we’re told as we muster our confidence and bravely step out of the shadows. Yet as e.e. cummings once said, “the hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be someone else.”  In these uneasy times of uncompromising nationalism, polarised ideologies, changing boundaries, displacement, gender rulings, increasingly we may ask—who are we, how independent is our will?

Novelist Virginia Woolf believed that there are a great variety of selves to call upon… “far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may have many thousand…and these selves of which we are built up, one on top of the other, as plates are piled on a waiter’s hand…”

On May 24th, just before a buoyant new moon in Gemini (May 27th), Saturn moves into the sign of Aries, marking the beginning of a three-year journey that will touch all our lives in some way. Autonomy and identity will be the nucleus of Saturn’s transit through Aries. For some of us, this may be the exhilarating fresh start of everything we have been waiting for. We may finally have the courage to stop tip-toeing around people or situations that keep us small, to emerge unapologetically, as a new me.

Aries is the hero/warrior archetype, and its shadow, the destroyer. In myth and in fairy tale, the hero/warrior archetype is typically masculine. As the bedrock of our civilization shifts and cracks, revealing a new landscape, we imagine new myths, seek out new heroines who collaborate, relate and share. For most of us, our hero’s or heroine’s quest is not muscular but a courageous response to the challenges of life. As Saturn travels with Neptune in Aries our perspective may shift. During the next three years, as unseen forces move through the Collective, our attention will be drawn to the complex notion of identity and belonging, freedom and self-expression. This is the impetus of the risk-taking trailblazer. This is when we feel the fear and do it anyway. As Saturn moves through Aries, we claim our own authority, clarify our goals, grow in maturity and self-acceptance.  For those of us with planets or angles in Aries, this three-year-Camino may compel us to unapologetically reveal a brighter, braver version of ourselves as we claim our own authority, grow in maturity, soften in self-acceptance.

Saturn stations Retrograde from July 12th to November 27th, 2025, and moves back to the final degrees of Pisces on September 1st and then enters Aries on the day before Valentine’s Day 2026, to journey through Aries until April 12th, 2028. Saturn transits compel us to conserve our energy and reserves to focus on those things that we may now find meaningful, that serve us in some practical way.

These next few months deliver a preview of the substance of Saturn’s three-year journey through Aries. Saturn moves back into Pisces briefly from September 1st; until on February 13th, it moves decisively through Aries until April 2028.

Saturn represents the principle of structure and form, restraint and responsibility. Aries is the impulse that prompts us to take a risk, to venture into the unknown. Saturn’s presence will cool and temper the rashness of Aries and activate the Aries section of your birth chart, already primed by the long Venus transit and her Retrograde cycle, as well as Chiron’s journey through Aries (2018-2026). In myth, Saturn is depicted carrying a scythe so there is an emphasis on cutting, severing and when Saturn is in Aries, patience will be needed before we cleave something apart too hastily or commit to something prematurely. On the day of Saturn’s ingress into Aries, Mercury conjoins Uranus in Taurus for the last time (May 24th) so pay attention to new stories, developments in world events that foreshadow events that will unfold over the next three years. Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale spoke out at the British Book Awards: “Words are our earliest human technology, like water they appear insubstantial, but like water they can generate tremendous power… Political and religious polarisation, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade. The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years.”

Yet the world is a different place now. Humankind has evolved, access to information and misinformation is more widespread. Pluto is moving through Aquarius. Uranus enters Gemini on July 7th; Neptune has moved into Aries. These outer planets reflect the profound changes in the collective consciousness.

As the days of May pass by, the first delicate blush of spring assumes a new confidence. White and mauve wisteria, blowsy magnolias, the last of the bluebells sheltering beneath a canopy of green. Nature reminds us of the transience of life.

As Saturn enters Aries, we reimagine our identity.  We may meet ourselves, or a new version of ourselves at the starting line. We break new ground. We find the strength to let something, or someone go, to venture forth, to meet ourselves a-new, to feel the fear and dare greatly.

Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care for many years.  In her memoir, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying; A life transformed by the Dearly Departing,  Bronnie writes that is not money or status, but “the regret of not having lived a life true to themselves was the most common of all.”

Here are the five most common regrets:

  • I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
  • I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
  • I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
  • I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
  • I wish that I had let myself be happier.

On June 16th, Jupiter and Saturn make their third square, in new signs, Saturn working hard, pared down to bare essentials in Aries, the sign of its fall, Jupiter in its exaltation, in Cancer, calling us back from the busyness of life to those things that provide shelter from the world.

Once we acknowledge that limited time is remaining, although we don’t know if that is years, weeks or hours, we are less driven by ego or by what other people think. Instead, we are more driven by what our hearts truly want. Acknowledging our inevitable, approaching death offers us the opportunity to find greater purpose and satisfaction in the time we have remaining.”
― Bronnie Ware.

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

 

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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 14th-April 7th at 26º Pisces) and Venus Retrograde cycles (March 2nd-April 13th 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

Prices go up from May 1st 2025.

 

 

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Light the Light—Aries New Moon Solar Eclipse—March 29th.

You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose bothBrené Brown.

When we take our first tentative steps back into life after the long winter of a debilitating illness, it’s courage, not comfort that makes us well again. When our income withers; our life’s work is no longer deemed valuable, courage is that act of will that gets us out of bed when all the colour has faded out of the world we once knew.

The sun enters Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, on March 20th, marking the spring Equinox. Aries marks a point of Beginning, which for most of us may be a lonely, often scary, journey into the unknown.

In Aries we experience the mythic motif of conquest, which implies an act of courage and daring. Aries encapsulates the heroine, the mythic warrior. Aries is where we dare bravely, find our own agency, return to life, will ourselves to begin again. To choose courage, not comfort.

Mars, ruler of Aries, is still moving slowly forward after stationing direct on February 24th in emotional Cancer. We may feel exhausted, battle-weary, as we traverse the smouldering ashes of a situation that still does not feel fully resolved.

If you have been feeling stuck in an impasse, things may begin to move quickly from March 22nd as a turning point is reached when Venus Retrograde slips into the heart of the sun in Pisces (a union called a cazimi.) For a brief moment, we may see a way through a dilemma, sense a turning point, feel a surge of courage that emboldens us to take action even though we can’t see a way through quite yet. If we have been grappling with a relationship dilemma, this potent cazimi could bring clarity about a relationship, a passionate renewal of commitment, or it may coincide with a wrenching apart, an ending of that relationship, as Venus separates from the firey embrace of the sun.

Venus stationed Retrograde on March 1st in the sign of Aries. For forty days and forty nights, she journeys through the underworld, her brilliant beauty now gone from the heavens. Just before the solar eclipse,Venus backtracks into Pisces(March 27th.) Her Retrograde cycle ends on April 12th as we reassess what it is we truly need and what we truly value in life.

As Venus vanishes from the heavens, hiding her glittering brightness from the world, we might be questioning our assumptions about who or what truly brings us joy and pleasure. On a literal level, if Venus Rx moves through our 4th house, we may feel the urge to de-clutter, to redecorate, beautify our home, as our tastes have changed. If Venus Rx moves through our 11th house, we might end a one-sided friendship, widen our social circle, seek connections that feel more equitable.

Venus is now gliding through Pisces, drifting close to Neptune and Saturn in her Retrograde cycle. The romantic dream, the seductive vision, may need some practical readjustment, some anchoring in what is realistic and possible.

As Venus travels Retrograde in Pisces, we may be blind-sided into squandering our rescources—money, time, affection—in misguided attempts to be compassionate or charitable.

Mercury moved Retrograde in Aries on March 14th, the day after the lunar eclipse, amplifying the Venus Retrograde energy and boosting the chaotic energy of the two eclipses that bookend the month of March. Mercury brings some logic to Venusian matters and we may be prompted to end a one-sided romance, to attend more diligently to our finances, to set boundaries so we don’t feel used or victimised.

When Mercury moves Retrograde through the element of fire, it is vital to seek passion and meaning in our lives. Psychosomatic illnesses or a creative “block” may be the symptom that indicates the need for deeper change in our life, or a radical new perspective on the story we tell ourselves about a person or a situation that depletes our energy.

Fire symbolism carries the momentum for creative re-imagining, for aligning ourselves with all possibilities and probabilities, focusing on the higher ground, and using the force of our will to get there. As Mercury moves Retrograde we may be forced to slow down, check the facts, question assumptions, re-view and re-do, exercise courage and patience.

On March 29th, the first new moon solar eclipse of the spring drops a blade of blackness over our earth at the end of a tumultuous month that for so many of us has accompanied endings and important new beginnings.

A partial solar eclipse ignites 9° Aries in our own  birth charts and in the charts of nations. This eclipses, (Saros Series 9 New North)  is described by astrologer Bernadette Brady as “physically expressive, so requires effort and may accompany accidents or violent events.”

The Aries new moon semi-squares wired, wakeful Uranus, a planet that accompanies haphazard, unsettling events that shake us from our steady routines and conjoins both Mercury and Venus. Like all solar eclipses, this eclipse nudges close to the north node. The lunar nodes are delicate astronomical points that mark where the moon’s passage around the belly of the earth intersects with the earth’s seamless reel around the sun. The north node is more imaginatively called the dragon’s head, where we hungrily draw in new energy, nourishment, life force. The south node is the dragon’s tail where we release, eliminate all that has been digested. Because this eclipse falls in Aries, the first sign of the zodiac signifying new beginnings and fresh starts, this could be an extremely potent time to initiate something new. This will also be the last eclipse in the Aries (self) Libra (other) cycle until the next eclipses in the Aries/Libra cycle will be in 2032/2033/2034.

Significantly, Neptune moves into Aries on March 20th, charging the collective energy with ambiguity, amplifying the shadowy darkness of this solar eclipse. Neptune dips in and out of Aries all through this year and a new era begins as Neptune finally enter Aries from January 2026-March 2039, carrying our collective hopes and dreams, our fanciful yearnings, our wild imaginings. Neptune’s entry into Aries is one of the most important astrological signatures of this year. This transit may inspire the momentum for creativity, a renewed focus on spirituality, but may also accompany sorrow and sacrifice, delusion and a world-weariness that saps our strength. Neptune’s passage through Aries stirs idealism, fires the imagination, but can also be delusional and self-indulgent as we try to grasp onto what is real and what is illusory.

If we imagine the moon’s pale body briefly obscuring the light of the sun on March 29th, we may sense, in the darkness, the soft presence of a deeper knowing, the urgent thrust of life force that compels us to move beyond our fear. Harriet Lerner writes, “It’s not fear that stops you from doing the brave and true thing in your daily life. Rather, the problem is avoidance. Avoidance will make you feel less vulnerable in the short run, but it will never make you less afraid.”

This new Moon invites us to stand expectantly at the edge of something new. To muster the courage to move from our place of comfort. Author Anne Lamott who was born under the sign of the Aries Ram asks “how do you begin? The answer is simple. You decide to.”

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

 

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