Self Growth

October 12, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Shadow Season—New Moon Solar Eclipse—October 14th

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

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

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

Eclipses arrive in pairs, and more rarely, in threes, and there is an eclipse every six months when a new or full moon conjoins the moon’s nodes. Symbolically, eclipses amplify the intensity of power struggles, life-changing choices, triangular dramas, those pivotal moments that change our destiny. A new moon eclipse in Libra carries the symbolism of the scales of balance as we weigh up moral and ethical choices pertaining to our relationships.

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

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

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

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

The essence of Libra is paradox. Richard Tarnas, author of Cosmos and Psyche, writes, “Our time is pervaded by a great paradox. On the one hand, we see signs of an unprecedented level of engaged global awareness, moral sensitivity to the human and non-human community, psychological self-awareness, and spiritually informed philosophical pluralism. On the other hand, we confront the most critical, and in some respects catastrophic, state of the Earth in human history. Both these conditions have emerged directly from the modern age, whose light and shadow consequences now affect every part of the planet.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

August 29, 2023 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Once in a Blue Moon—Supermoon in Pisces— August 31st.

Heaven and earth, the Celtic saying goes, are only three feet apart, but in thin places that distance is even shorter. They are places that make us feel something larger than ourselves, as though we are held in a place between worlds, beyond experience―Kerri ní Dochartaigh.

Two full moons sit uncomfortably side by side, unnaturally confined in the man-drawn calendar month of August. This Pisces “supermoon” is the second “supermoon” in August, and in contrast to the previous big bold fiery supermoon in Leo, tonight’s moist full moon in Pisces skims across the heavens, silvering the earth’s thin places with her otherworldly light.

This anomalous 13^th moon is peculiar in her not-blueness. She travels through the last world-weary sign of the zodiac, signifying completion, release. This is a dreamy moon, a moon that may arouse our intuition, or remind us that, in the words of John O’Donohue, “we have fallen out of rhythm with the secret signature and light of our own nature.” The moon moves from a conjunction with authorative Saturn (tradition, rules, boundaries, limitations) as we reflect on the month now almost gone, the choices we’ve made, the decisions taken, the twists of fate that have brought us to this precious moment of now.

Four planets are in transition, changing direction between August 23^rd and September 4^th accompanying anticipated endings, threshold crossings and opportunities to choose again. What now needs to be lovingly repaired in our relationships, our communities, painfully polarised because we simply don’t and won’t pause long enough to listen and hear one another?

Pisces contains the symbolism of purifying, cleansing water, and Jupiter, the moon’s dispositor is one of the few planets that is still moving direct, prompting deep healing if we are willing to carefully examine our own biases and entrenched narratives.

Writes Kerri ní Dochartaigh “We have lost, broken, murdered, burned, stolen, hidden and undone—all in the false name of tradition. Lives, places, and stories have been ripped out by their roots because ‘that’s how it has always been’. I wonder, I wonder so very much these days, what wealth of imagery and meaning was lost when we became so focused on our differences here, that we buried the things that had once tied us together, the things that might still know a way through, for us all”.

Venus (those things and people we cherish and value) has been moving Retrograde in Leo since July 23^rd, drawing old lovers, friends not forgotten but perhaps neglected, from past to present.

During a Venus Retrograde cycle, we may revisit those things we valued and lost, seek out second chances, repair and heal those relationships that have become entangled in assumptions or frozen silences. Venus Retrograde periods are cosmic magnifying glasses, amplifying our inherent values.

Venus and Uranus turn in the night skies as one month ends and another begins. These celestial events carry a charge of energy. They are heavenly pivot points that are worth noticing as they brush across angles or planets in our own birth charts.

Uranus turned Retrograde on August 29^th (23° Taurus) and Venus moves direct on September 4^th (12° Leo) which will bring deeper insight, additional focus to Venusian themes if you have planets between 12-28 Leo, or 19-23 Taurus as capricious Uranus brings unforeseen opportunities to find a way through an impasse, break through a stalemate.

Now as Venus prepares to turn direct, it might be helpful to look back to July 23^rd when she moved Retrograde and reflect on the light of our own nature as circumstances and encounters have challenged and grown us.

The Sun entered Virgo on August 23^rd and made an opposition to Saturn as Spain’s football federation chief Luis Rubiables planted an unwanted kiss on the mouth of Jenni Hermoso during the World Cup Ceremony, igniting a conflagration of condemnation by politicians, and defiance from those who choose to ignore the toxic masculinity that pervades our culture.

Venus pivots, making her final square to disruptor Uranus on August 29^th, then the last square to Jupiter on September 17^th as gender issues challenge our default gaze; as our often messy, imperfect relationships offer opportunites to heal and to forgive.

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

Elusive Mercury switched direction on August 23^rd, turning Retrograde at 22° Virgo; direct once more on September 15^th (8° Virgo) out of shadow (the degree at which Mercury originally turned Retrograde) on September 30^th. A Retrograde Mercury asks us to be patient and tenacious in the face of delays or obstacles, amidst the ceaseless, clamorous chatter or the polarity of choice that skewers us in indecision.

We are collectively in the alchemical stage of solution. Jung describes this process as “the selfish hardness of the heart is dissolved: the heart turns to water. The ascent to the higher stages can then begin.”

As we make fluid our rigid routines, dissolve our hardened habits, cleanse the debris of emotional blockages, we draw moisture into our parched lives, may we flow outwards again. May we make our world beautiful.

To book a personal astrology session, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

August 15, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Spells of Sunlight—New Moon in Leo — August 16th.

It’s easy to see the beginnings of things, and harder to see the ends—Joan Didion.

Tonight, in a secret corner of the sky, a new Leo moon curls behind a bank of cloud. New Moons signify moments of conception, the beginnings of things. This new moon wears the crown of the lioness, as she unites with the sun in regal Leo close to Venus Retrograde, also in Leo.

This lunation makes an edgy, discordant square to Uranus, foreshadowing those things that arrive unannounced and drag us to the edge of a creative block, a change of heart, an important relationship commitment, a renegotiation of a contract that affects our finances, an unplanned pregnancy, or an disconcerting repetition of an old theme. The square is accentuated by Mars in Virgo trine Uranus which creates the impetus to begin again, or to reach a final closure, with clear intent.

Leo arrives with a confident rush of creative energy. An energetic force that powers our creativity and vitality.

Yet, in the fleeting hours of days that are already growing shorter, we may not feel warmed by inspiration. We may have wandered far from the divine spark of our innate creativity, estranged from our heart’s desire. Our passion may have deserted us, our creative spark may lie concealed within the nesting dolls of our long-forgotten selves.

Author Julia Cameron speaks to the suffering of a creative drought: “All artists get discouraged. All artists have deep inner wells of self-pity, into which we periodically dive. All artists specialize in self-doubt. It is how we hone the creative imagination.”

We’re in the nexus of a Venus Retrograde cycle and a double Retrograde period when Mercury turns Retrograde too.

Venus has disappeared from the evening skies, surrendering to the embrace of the darkness of each night, a fragile, vulnerable version of her former splendour. For thousands of years, the spectacular cycles of Venus have been tracked and observed by our prehistoric ancestors. The Mayan and Mesoamericans timed wars when Venus emerged as the Wasp Star from the darkness of her 40 days and 40 nights sojourn in the underworld—renewed, resolute, resplendent in her fierce beauty.

The ancients tracked the passage of Venus in a perfect pentagram across the skies, ascribing her disappearance in the skies to her descent into the Underworld. In myth, Innana (Venus) is stripped of all her valued regalia and exquisite clothing. She enters the Underworld vulnerable and exposed. In modern times, the Underworld is a symbol of our own unconscious: those shadowy, neglected, disowned parts of ourselves that need our love and compassion. As Venus travels Retrograde, absent from the night skies now until we may detect through the static of the past, a yearning, a passion long estranged from a life now bounded by responsibility and a never-ending list of things still to be done.

Venus will be reborn, a fragile crescent rising in the east before sunrise in late August. Venus follows her own unique cycle and her five retrograde periods within every 8 years creates a five-pointed star, an exquisite pentagram, a glorious rose pattern that ancient star watchers tracked because it is rare, because it is significant. This liminal space offers a replenishing retreat of 40 days and 40 nights that comes with an uncomfortable dilemma – how to indulge in pleasure, now to appreciate beauty, how to create how to stay present and connected when the world is in crisis. As wildfires razed parched foliage on Maui, the fire symbolism of Venus Retrograde in Leo speaks to mandarin skies smudged with smoke, and the horror of not knowing if someone precious has been consumed by flames. “We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least 5 square miles, and it is full of our loved ones,” Maui Police Chief, John Pelletier is quoted as saying, as Venus passed close to the heart of the Sun on August 13^th squaring unpredictable Uranus.

Venus squares Uranus for the last of three exact squares at the end of August (2^nd July / 9^th August / 29^th August) shattering perishable dreams, accentuating the impermanence and unreliability of things. This wrenching square is somewhat tempered by her three fleeting squares with optimistic Jupiter (11^th June / 22^nd August / 17^th September) revealing insights into past and present experiences around intimacy, worthiness, those things we value and deem to be beautiful, offering opportunities to move toward “what if” … “what could be” …

All planetary archetypes portray our human experience of relationship—attachment, separation, autonomy, and dependence. Tonight, we may feel the heat of fire as the sun and moon nestle close to Venus Retrograde. Jungian analyst Ann Bedford Ulanov suggests that “as the instincts are to the body, so the archetypes are to the psyche.” Those who have natal Venus in Leo or a Venus Retrograde placement and those with planets and angles in fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius) will have opportunities to witness and heal those parts of ourselves that have felt unloved and neglected this summer. Venus Retrograde invites us to place more worth on our creativity and our skills, to open to love generously and to seek healing through connection.

Mercury entered its shadow on August 4^th, turning Retrograde on August 23^rd (22° Virgo), direct on September 15^th, and out of shadow on September 30^th, so we may feel as though we have entered a liminal space. A place between two realities where our life force is dimmed and our hearts weighted by concerns that create distance from ourselves and those familiar pleasures that fuel our joy.

In our culture of haste, as we lean in, stretch forward to the next bigger, better thing, it might now be helpful reflect on the rich symbolism of the current Venus Retrograde cycle. She may reveal those things that pain us—the jagged schisms in our relationships, our concerns about money, our creative or sexual anorexia, our uneasy relationship with beauty and art, our terror of age and decay.

Venus leads us down to the Underworld to experience love, loss, and longing. We will emerge once more bearing the marks of our initiation.

And now, as Venus travels through the darkness, may we trust that our creative gifts will be welcomed with love and appreciation, that we will remember our joys and our pleasures so that we can return to the world, replenished, stronger.

To book a personal astrology consultation please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

July 26, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Marriage of Opposites—Sun in Leo and Supermoon in Aquarius—August 1st.

Another world is possible. On a quiet day, I can hear her coming.

Arundhati Roy.

On this day when the first fronds of bracken turn to gold and tawny grasses are shorn and wrapped in rolls the colour of burnt butter, a supermoon charges the world with light.

We’re half-way between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox as this super-charged full moon falls on the ancient harvest festival of Lughnasadh – named for the Celtic sun god, Lugh.

On August 1^st, as the sun makes his grand tour through the vibrant fire sign of Leo, and the moon circuits close to the earth through the opposite sign of Aquarius, a full supermoon pulls at the tides and our tears.

This is a marriage of opposites: Leo, all heart, and Aquarius, ideals and intellect. Firey Leo radiates charisma, dramatic declarations of heartfelt emotion. Aquarius is a cool air sign associated with technical and scientific innovation, ideals ahead of their time, grassroots communities, as well as the exiled parts of ourselves and the collective – fanaticism, totalitarianism, cancel culture. This lunation offers a glimpse into the future, and it presents in our own lives and in world events, themes that will be accentuated during Pluto’s 20-year passage through Aquarius (November 2024 – March 2043).

As wildfires blaze across desiccated landscapes in Southern Europe and an AI arms race gathers momentum in Silicon Valley, humankind is poised on an existential precipice.

Yet, this lunation makes an applying square to expansive Jupiter in Taurus, illuminating our unlimited potential as human primates in these flammable, heart-opening times. Tonight, as we align ourselves with the life force that flows through the universe, author Lynne McTaggart reminds us that “the power of mass intention may ultimately be the force that shifts the tide toward repair and renewal of the planet.”

There are days when despair settles like ash over our weary bodies and psyches as we collectively emerge from a pandemic into a world that feels so fragile; a world where those in power just don’t seem to care.

Mercury has just joined war-god, Mars in Virgo (workers) to oppose Saturn in Pisces (creative arts, movies, music) as the battle over human creativity and labour and AI continues in Hollywood; as deepfake technology captures the voices and likenesses of celebrities for advertisements, porn and song; and human extras, as well as make-up and costume artists are replaced with digital scans.

“The wave of the future is on the local level,” writes activist and author Joanna Macy. “Don’t waste your heart and mind trying to pull down what is already destroying itself. Come to where you’re almost below the radar and reorganize life. We want communities where we live and work and fight for the future.”

During the hottest July in fifty years, a conflagration of wildfires scorches vast tracts of desiccated land. Temperatures soar to brutal unbearable levels.

As flames rise higher, turning the land to smoke and ash, Venus in Leo and Chiron in Aries, both associated with the element of fire, turned Retrograde on July 23^rd symbolising the literal wounding of the land that we all feel rippling through the web of life, as heat-induced fires increase. Venus, goddess of pleasure and love moves Retrograde for six weeks and will vanish from the evening skies on August 6^th as her underworld journey begins. She’ll make an unsettling square to Uranus (sudden shock, break throughs, break downs, and reversals) between July and late September, and the square tightens on August 9^th, close to the midpoint of her Retrograde cycle.

Whatever happens to upend our plans, a devotional approach to this Venus Rx cycle (July 23^rd – September 3^rd) invites a space to pause and reflect on relationships past and present, to what we truly value and desire, as we feel the flames of the climate emergency.

Venus Retrograde calls us back to the past, to those things we love, those things that bring pleasure and joy, those things that make us feel young again.

Rising on a pink wave of nostalgia, Barbie bursts onto the screen as Saturn moves Retrograde in imaginative Pisces (fantasy manifest.) Greta Gerwig’s creative offering is now the biggest debut ever for a film directed by a woman. As the Sun travelled through Pisces, on March 9^th 1959, Barbie was born, long legged, wasp waisted, wearing a tiny black and white striped swimsuit. Barbie was not welcomed by skeptical buyers at the New York Toy Fair, but how could they know that there was a new moon in Pisces on that day? How could they possibly see that Barbie would capture the hearts and the imaginations of men, women, and children in her many manifestations for 64 years?

The supermoon arrives on the anniversary of the catastrophic annihilation of Hiroshima (August 6^th, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9^th, 1945) as America dropped two atomic bombs, unleashing an insatiable lust for destruction in those who cling to old beliefs of scarcity and dominion.

Oppenheimer, haunting, overwhelmingly dark, is Christopher Nolan’s account of the hero-scapegoat physicist who gave humanity the means to destroy itself. Death by fire, nuclear fission, plutonium, not the Disney dog but Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld, the “unseen one,” first sighted in 1930 and back in the collective psyche once more.

J. Robert Oppenheimer (portrayed by the superb Irish actor by Cillian Murphy), the theoretical physicist widely known as the “father of the atomic bomb” (Sun at 1 ° Taurus, now activated by the square from Pluto also conjunct his natal Uranus Rx,) emerges even long after his death as he again returns to public consciousness and Pluto lingers on the edge of icy Aquarius.

The astrology suggests that we are in a cycle of turbulence and destruction. We may keep afloat if we have global co-operation, but the waves of change will be tumultuous, even for those who can afford a first-class cabin.

The Star Card in the Tarot is often associated with Aquarius. And the myth of the beautiful, but curious Pandora who searches for the truth, dares to open the forbidden casket, and releases a swarm of stinging, biting insects that fills the world with darkness; primal cold-blooded creatures that bite, puncture, and goad—terrible afflictions that infect mankind. Pandora kneels at the casket, her long-lashed eyes raised heavenward as she gazes at a shining star, for Hope remains in a corner of the chest, still there amidst all the confusion, despair, and suffering. And as old structures teeter and fall, as we sift through the rubble of broken promises, shattered dreams, landscapes blighted by drought or caught in the flames of war, the moon in Aquarius, its image an elegant urn filled to the brim with regenerative water, is a reminder that throughout his-story there have been cycles of destruction and renewal.

Like the ebb and flow of the tides, war lords will grow weary of battle, those who acquire and accumulate might grow weary of the extracting and the gathering and find a deeper connection with their heart-mind.

The earth is changing beneath our feet. As we look to the moon tonight, may our hopelessness be transfigured by an infusion of lustrous moonlight, our dreams and visions of rivers and glistening oceans teaming with life, cities where children play amidst tall trees, their little bare feet planted on green grass, their tiny lungs gulping clean air.

Tonight’s full moon sends an energetic charge across our earth. It is a reminder to hold the tension of opposites, to treat each other with tolerance and respect, to embrace our differences and come together in community to re-imagine a kinder world. May we do everything we can do to be in right relation with this precious pale blue dot, this earth, and all sentient creatures.

Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

In our obscurity—in all this vastness—there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

Carl Sagan.

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

June 17, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Just the Two of Us—Gemini New Moon—June 18th.

We learn to love ourselves precisely because we have experienced being loved by someone. We learn to take care of ourselves because somebody has taken care of us. Our self-worth and self-esteem also develop because of other people―Stan Tatkin.

Things are not all they seem at Midsummer. An excess of light shimmers, bright and strange. We’re drunk with heat, dazed by the beauty of nature in full bloom. This month’s new moon in Mercurial Gemini hides behinds a girdle of sparkling stars. She makes a mystifying square to Neptune that may heighten our intuition and creativity, or blindside us with promises that swirl like swathes of mist that evaporates at sun rise. Neptune, god of the oceans, turns Retrograde on June 30^th going direct on December 6^th.

Saturn languishes in watery Pisces, then stations Retrograde the day before the new moon, going direct on November 4^th.

Retrogrades bring gifts of hindsight, necessary delays that invite us to pause long enough to look around us, reflect and reassess. As both Neptune and Saturn travel Retrograde in Pisces over the coming months, we may have time to integrate the substantial or subtle changes that have washed over our lives since March when Saturn entered Pisces and Pluto dipped into Aquarius. Saturn represents those challenges, responsibilities, limitations, that bring wisdom and maturity. Neptune accompanies our soul’s longing, our fantasies, and yearning. A Neptune transit to our birth chart dissolves the boundaries of separation, and it is this motif of unity that shines so brightly in Gemini. Asteroid Juno accompanies this new moon, highlighting our human need for connection. Juno, signifying intimate partnership in dualistic Gemini, suggests that there may be a difficult choice to be made, and with Neptune’s influence, something must be sacrificed. Mercury, ruler of this lunation squares Saturn, adding gravitas, which will be felt by those with planets or angles in early degrees of Gemini, Virgo, and Pisces. Take a little time to breathe out before responding or reacting. Create space to rest this weekend. The Neptune overlay to this lunation brings drowsiness, spaciness, confusion, or delusion.

Beneath the popular astrological descriptions of breezy Gemini, the fun-loving and fickle eternal child, lies a story of loss and longing, a life-long search for someone from whom we feel separated and then joyfully reunited. Gemini tells a story of human bonds, siblings and twin souls.

Gemini’s two brightest stars are Castor and Pollux, twin brothers, twin souls. When his brother, Castor died in battle, a bereft Pollux implored Zeus to allow him to die also. Zeus agreed and now they are sibling stars, twin souls. In Gemini we encounter the Other that comes in the guise of the Twin Soul, the phosphorus twin flame who burns into our life like a shooting star. Twin souls rarely appear by choice. They appear in many guises. Often the timing is all wrong, circumstances impossible, yet there’s a recognition that pulls us together again across lifetimes. A divine Grace that directs us with absolute certainty towards a life we would never have imagined.

Stories of Soulmates are threaded with the pathos of loss and separation, woven with duality and ambiguity. Twins in myth and fairy tale, are similar at first glance, then reveal themselves to be fundamentally different. The story of Castor and Pollux, and their beautiful twin sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra is a brutal story of theft and revenge, kidnapping and murder, love and loss. Maya Angelou once said, “I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”

Working at it can be a Herculean labour that may erode our energy, gnaw at our resolution to untie the knots that keep us bound in conflict or rivalry. Siblings betray one another, they quarrel, they become estranged, and yet they love one another with a love that is different from the love we have for our parents. Brenna Yovanoff writes so poignantly, “I wanted to tell her that I loved her, and not in the complicated way I loved our parents, but in a simple way I never had to think about. I loved her like breathing.”

Yet, whether we’re twinned, a resourceful only child, a pioneering first born, or the lost child in a family too big or too poor to give nurture, we’re engaged with the mythic story of the Twins in our everyday human encounters with friends and colleagues, lovers and husbands. Those sympathetic similarities that draw us in; those polarised differences that repel. Author Brian Weiss offers this small crumb of comfort: “Sometimes, Soulmates may meet, stay together until a task or life lesson is completed, and then move on. This is not a tragedy, only a matter of learning.”

At this new moon time, may the motif of the Soulmate enrich our imagination this month. May the winged sandals of Mercury carry us towards those extra-ordinary encounters that bring everything into focus. May the mythic Twins preside over those soulful tugs that herald of radical change in the way we live and the way we love.

Get in touch for a private astrology consultation: ingrid@trueheartwork

A Celebration of Light: Join me and energetic healer Eileen Heneghan on Saturday June 24^th at 2pm BST for a deeply nourishing afternoon of story, myth, and meditation this Midsummer Solstice, please book your place here: www.trueheartwork.com/workshops

June 2, 2023 In Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Fortune’s Moon—Full Moon in Sagittarius—June 4th.

’’Break the tyranny of your ordinary awareness. The rest will begin to unfold itself—Cynthia Bourgeault.

A full moon bastes the earth with liquid buttery light tonight, seeping moon magic into the pores of our skin, penetrating deeper than words as we stand in her beauty. As the stars flicker and fade into moonbeams, some say that an energetic portal opens and that what has been concealed in the spaces and cracks of our lives suddenly becomes quite clear. This full moon, in the expansive sign of Sagittarius, points at possibilities. Reminds us of what neuroscience now validates: what we practice consistently—qualities like honesty, generosity and gratitude, or those skills that we tend to and nurture—become embedded in our spiritual muscle. What we practice, we become.

This confident lunation trines energetic Mars in Leo and Chiron in Aries, a hyperbole of powerful energy that may compel us to take that first brave step towards our heart’s desire. The moon also squares Saturn which may represent a set-back or emotional state that demanded our attention around May 27^th and 28^th when the Sun made a fleeting square to Saturn. Sagittarius is ruled by jovial Jupiter, hedonistic, entitled King of the gods in Roman mythology. In the language of astrology, Jupiter is often simplistically described as bringing “good luck.” Yet “good luck” is as ephemeral as happiness, as fleeting as our attention. We invoke the buoyancy and resilience of Jupiter when we keep the faith, when we dare ourselves to hold the white feather of hope long enough to notice the silver lining in the dark clouds of circumstance.

Venus joins Mars in Leo on June 6^th, energising the square between Jupiter/Pluto and the Nodes of Destiny, which was activated by the entry of Mars into Leo on May 21^st. Pluto squares the Nodes from June-September, tasking us to break the tyranny of our ordinary awareness. Venus opposes Pluto till mid-June, and Venus/Pluto aspects so often accompany what spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle calls the pain-body. He explains: “the pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness… if you don’t face it, if you don’t bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again.” As Venus and Mars move in tandem through the fiery sign of Leo, we may see an enactment of the Venus/Pluto tension in the public lives of celebrities and politicians, and in explosive acts of war in our own relationship dramas if we deny the pain that lives within.

Venus enters her Retrograde Shadow on June 19^th and will descend into darkness for 40 days and 40 nights from July 23^rd (28° Leo) to September 5^th, finally leaving the shadowy Retrograde landscape on October 7^th. This Venus Retrograde ingress has a disruptive energy as Venus will consort with unpredictable Uranus on July 1^st, a call to be creative, resourceful and wise. Venus Retrograde periods invite us to reflect upon who and what we hold dear to our hearts. Venus presides over love and beauty, aesthetics and quite literally, money and social events. Many astrologers suggest it might be wise to postpone a marriage or commit to any important financial venture, invasive “cosmetic” procedures, home renovation.

Ancient sky watchers plotted the tight inward loops of Venus’s eight-year Retrograde cycle that form a perfect pentagram or five-petalled rose in the night skies. In 2015 (July-Sept), Venus moved Retrograde in Leo and it may be helpful to reflect on events and themes in our lives eight years ago as we prepare for this next Retrograde cycle. Retrograde periods lead us back over well-worn paths, quite literally as we circle back once more to deal with the residue of something that still lingers. Retrograde periods invite reflection. Out of the blue, a circumstance or a reunion with someone we once knew, and what was left undone can now be healed or resolved as with the wisdom gained from experience.

This Venus Retrograde cycle will activate Ukraine’s birth chart as well as the birth chart of Volodymyr Zelenskyy (who has Mars at 0° Leo, possibly a Leo Moon, and Saturn at 28° Leo). This could be a critical pivot point in the gruesome course of the war.

Pluto’s 15-year passage through Capricorn is not yet over. Pluto, planet of death, decay, and rebirth, slides back beneath Capricorn’s dark underbelly again, stirring up unconscious material which may feel ominous, even fearful. Pluto returns to Capricorn on June 11^th, and will continue to stir up toxic sediment that has not yet been purged collectively. Pluto transits unleash primal forces that may coalesce as irrational obsessions, trauma, power plays, and ruthlessness. We will continue to witness the exploitation of the powerless, the hypocrisy of those who hold power as old structures decompose.

Pluto enters Aquarius in November 2024 and will stay there until 2044 as we collectively and personally experience what it is to be human and begin to deal with the Frankenstein’s Monster of AI.

The opposition of the sun and the moon tonight is a reminder that what we relegate to the dark side of the moon will emerge in our experiences and circumstances—the peace loving yoga teacher who meets a confrontational student, the idealistic social worker who encounters hatred and bigotry.

This full moon reflects the light of a mercurial and ambiguous Gemini sun. We may be challenged to acknowlege another point of view as we practice (again) patience and kindness. We may choose gratitude and hope even when we don’t feel grateful or hopeful. In this light-infused moment may we notice the silver lining in the dark clouds of circumstance. Mary Oliver asks: “Do you bow your head when you pray or do you look up into that blue space? Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions”.

Get in touch for a personal astrology consultation by email please: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Midsummer Celebration of Light June 24^th at 2pm BST.

May 1, 2023 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Light Magic—Full Moon Lunar Eclipse—May 5th.

The miracle is light. The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering. The miracle is the persistence of the soul to find itself, to look hard into the darkness, reach back, and grasp remnants of ourselves. The miracle is that we create ourselves anew—Tina Davidson.

May arrives in an extravagance of blossom, sunlight that shimmers over undulating meadows festooned with buttercups and dancing daisies.

We’re mid-way between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. The Moon is waxing as she moves through the earthy sign of Virgo today, reminding us of primordial connection to the earth, an ancient memory of ritual that is rooted in the cycles of nature.

May Day, Beltane, is one of the oldest recorded Gaelic festivals, celebrated for centuries with May Kings and May Queens, gathering of communities, much bawdy merry making and dancing around May poles.

But in the darkness of the outer reaches of our solar system, Pluto, named after the Roman god of the underworld, begins its five-month Retrograde journey on this May Day, accenting the unknown and unknowable, prompting us to surrender, let go, and renew. Pluto’s influence can’t be grasped with the intellect. It relates to something archaic, those deep reservoirs of ancient memory, those heavy layers of accreted history, those fearful, shadowy realms of ourselves where we hesitate to look hard into the darkness; where we reach back and grasp the remnants of ourselves… and create ourselves anew.

Both Pluto and Mars preside over the full moon Scorpio eclipse on May 5^th, augmenting the emotional charge that courses through our heart field and bathes every cell of our body. The lunar eclipse opposes a Sun/Uranus conjunction in Taurus – material possessions, personal values, stability, and security—which may be suddenly toppled and overturned or liberated by unpredictable Uranus while the full Moon in Scorpio emphasises complexities, intangibles, mysteries, and the inevitable necessity of letting go our old stories, our familiar places of discontent.

The full Moon lunar eclipse illuminates the lavish £100 million carefully choreographed coronation spectacle, the cost of which will be borne by the taxpayer, not the billionaire King. Screened from public view, a private anointing with holy oil blessed in Jerusalem will emphasise the sacred import of the ceremony, a heavy 361 year old solid gold bejewelled crown with a comfortable padding of ermine will be placed on the royal head. Those who will be watching the ceremony will be invited to swear allegiance to the monarch and his descendants. The richly decorated robes and weighty sceptre will add magic and spectacle to this ancient rite rooted in patriarchy. “Charles III will share in a ritual that originally marked out the kings of Israel—Saul and David and Solomon—as the adopted ones of God. The 21st century will be joined by means of a living ceremony to the bronze age.” Writes Tom Holland.

Charles Philip Arthur George was born on an eclipse as the Sun moved through Scorpio, just as the Moon waxed full in Taurus. The Sun and Moon were conjunct the fated South Node. The Nodes are “destiny points” in a horoscope and Regal Leo was rising when he was born, as it will be at the time of his long-awaited coronation on May 6^th.

The solar eclipse of April 20^th conjoined Charles’s Taurus Moon, which was confronted by a square from Pluto. His Moon will be activated by Pluto all through this year and next, most notably on May 18^th as Jupiter moves into Taurus and makes a conjunction. As Pluto, now moving Retrograde, squares his moon for the second time, with three more squares in 2024, we may imagine an emergent awakening to deeper emotional truth that may be accompanied by a private personal metamorphosis that will not be without pain.

Charles was born with a painful Chiron/Sun conjunction which may have shaped his internal narrative, especially in his formative years a sense of being an outsider, a maverick, flawed, different. Might he in later years, seek to heal or reshape the institution of the monarchy, usher it into the 21^st Century? Transiting Chiron, the centaur associated with wounding and healing has been moving back and forth over his midheaven since May 2021. Mercury in Taurus is moving Retrograde now at the time of the coronation, while the Nodes of Fate will make a once in every 18-year return to his birth chart. So this coronation is most certainly a meeting with Fate. The way ahead may not be smooth for the elderly king. Disruptive Uranus, planet of upheaval and revolution, transits opposite Charles’s Sun, and contacts the North Node in his house of reputation, career, social standing.

The symbolism of the whimsical hand-painted invitation speaks to the romantic and artistic Venus/Neptune conjunction right at the root of his birth chart. Over the many years as May King in waiting, he has been an outspoken advocate for the preservation of architecture and the environment, for his alternative beliefs in the curative powers of homeopathy.

The jovial face of The Green Man dominates the flower-festooned design. Carved into ancient oak pews and ribbed ceilings of musty old churches, the Green Man has remained a potent symbol of fecundity and renewal for centuries.

We may be dazzled, indifferent, sceptical, or hostile as this new defender of all faiths is crowned in the dark of a Scorpio Moon. Yet, as the earth positions herself between the two luminaries and casts her shadow across the face of the Moon, we may sense the regenerative potency in these ancient rituals. As the glittering crown is raised over the head of this May King who also bears the name of the legendary Arthur, we may, even for just a brief moment, allow ourselves to be transported to a time of miracles and wonder, to fabled kings who reigned over England’s green and pleasant land.

To book an astrology consultation, or to join me and spiritual guide, Eileen Heneghan on June 24^th as we celebrate the Summer Solstice please email me: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Midsummer Celebration of Light—June 24^th

Breathe in the Light, the sweet scent of flowers. Today we celebrate this ancient feast of fire, the pairing of the Sun and the Moon, the strength and vitality of Midsummer.

Join archetypal astrologer Ingrid Hoffman and energetic healer and teacher, Eileen Heneghan for an inspiring afternoon of story, myth, folklore, and meditation at this still point of the year.

Our Wise Woman gathering will be on Zoom with plenty of time to reflect and to share, to deepen our connection with others, to explore new ways of finding ourselves a-new.

Together we will allow ourselves to be transported to the lush green hills of County Kerry, as we immerse ourselves in a powerful old Irish story of love and triumph. There will be plenty of time to reflect on what it teaches us about how we might live more authentically, how we might forge our souls, in challenging circumstances; how to make sense of a world that is changing so fast.

Join us on Saturday, June 24^th, 14.00-15.30.

Payment in advance: £20 via Paypal or €23.

Zoom link will be sent to you via email.

Contact Ingrid Hoffman: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

April 17, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

The Edge of Becoming—New Moon Hybrid Solar Eclipse—April 20th.

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

This week, the Moon withdraws into the darkness, slipping between the familiar body of the Earth and the fierce light of the Sun. This new Moon invites us to stand expectantly at the edge of something new.

New Moons speak of fertile new beginnings. They signify those edges of becoming that make us feel young, alive again. And yet, as the Moon lays her soft white body over the Sun tonight, we may be overcome with a strange tiredness, a listlessness that sucks at our energy as if our own life-force was eclipsed.

This rare hybrid solar eclipse at the very last degree of Aries signifies an ending and the birth of something new, which may be a change in perspective, a new way of being in the world, a reliquishment of the need to hold on so tightly. If we imagine the moon’s pale body briefly obscuring the light of the sun, 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.

Eclipses act like wild cards. They drop into our birth charts or into the charts of nations, catapulting us from our place of comfort, taking us to the edge. They fizz with an urgency that may reshape our choices and invite us to be more attentive to the longing of our soul. Hybrid solar eclipses occur only a few times each century. We will engage with the deeper meaning of this celestial event if this eclipse energises an axis or conjoins a personal planet in our birth chart.

Astrological Aries carries the heat of fire that ignites an ancient urge to battle and survive. Tonight we engage with the archetype of the heroine/hero. Tonight as we feel the firepower, we may be inspired by those who challenged patriarchy, dared to risk, to speak out. As we imagine the fierce courage and commitment of trailblazers like Cornish-born Emily Hobhouse who exposed the horror of the British concentration camps in South Africa and was an avid opponent of the first world war, or Jane Goodall who has worked tirelessly for the welfare and survival of primates, and writer and sage, Maya Angelou, (all born as the Sun moved through the flames of Aries,) we will sense the potency of this astrological archetype.

This Aries eclipse marks the beginning of the eclipse season that will last until October 28^th with this year’s final partial lunar eclipse (5° Taurus.) It charges the powerful, final degree of Aries (29° 50′) and belongs to a family of eclipses (Saros 7 North) that pertain to what astrologer Bernadette Brady describes as igniting “sudden passions and lust to birth and procreative drives that may catch people off guard and confront them with their own very deep passion which may have been hidden for many years.”

With a challenging square to Pluto and a weakening conjunction to Jupiter, this eclipse releases a renewing surge of energy from the heavens that may inspire us to confront a situation, or bravely relinquish our need to engage in a futile power struggle.

There’s nothing subtle about this hybrid eclipse. It conveys the qualities of Pluto’s long passage through Aquarius, which will influence world events and our own lives for the next 20 years. The effects of this solar eclipse will linger for six months and may manifest as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, financial and political crisis, socio-economic change.

The Sun advances into the steady earth sign of Taurus on April 20^th, as Mercury moves Retrograde in Taurus (April 21^st to May 14^th) bringing our attention to those things we value, perhaps quite literally our material possessions, property, finances, or income. As Pluto’s evolutionary influence threads through the collective consciousness, the AI arms race accelerates, spewing torrents of misinformation on social platforms. As AI research and tech leaders call in vain for a pause on the AI arms race, data warehousing expert, Dr Barry Devlin adds his voice to a group of concerned industry gurus and warns, “this rapid, profit-driven growth in generative AI which uses as its lexicon the clearly biased, deeply flawed, and completely un-curated corpus of internet text and imagery is a massive, unregulated social experiment.”

AI-generated art, writing, and photography scrapes billions of words and images from the internet without their creators’ knowledge or permission. The mythic-poetic symbolism of this first eclipse of 2023 draws us down into the Underworld of AI-generated deepfakes, a collective social experiment where we face not only ethical concerns, but also the loss of millions of jobs—actors, models and model agencies, artists, writers and photographers, accountants, and teachers, to name but a few, will be obsolete. Writes senior Vox reporter Sara Morrison, “Levi’s will be able to use AI models to show off its gloves, while the rest of us might be thrown into a new world where we have absolutely no idea what we can trust — one that’s even worse than the world we currently inhabit.”

She cautions, “if you see an image of Pope Francis strolling around Rome in Gucci jeans on Twitter, you might want to think twice before you hit retweet.”

At this time of emergence, we may not feel quite ready to emerge, to bravely step onto new ground. But this new Moon is charged with the grace of new beginnings, and we must step cautiously and bravely into an earth that is dying, a new world that is becoming.

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke offers these words of encouragement, “fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the hour of the new clarity.”

The significance of this rare eclipse can only be fully understood in silence. There may be times over the coming months, when we need to unplug from the peremptory dictates of technology and go within. As we stand bare-footed, rooted to the Earth, as we feel the steady presence of a tree, as we hear the sweet song of a river’s flow, we return again to a place of beginning.

Anne Lamott who was born under the sign of the Aries Ram asks “how do you begin? The answer is simple. You decide to.”

Join me for a Midsummer Celebration of Light—June 24^th
The Midsummer Solstice is a pivot point in the Great Wheel of the Year. A time of celebration and plenty, a time of magic and mystery, when the veil between the worlds is thin, the Sun is at its Zenith, and the world is infused with Light.

We’ll explore an old Irish story of love and triumph; we’ll attune to the phases of the moon and the best time to be newly creative.

We’ll journey with Eileen Heneghan in a soulful meditation and connect with the Light within.

Join us on Saturday, June 24^th, 14.00-15.30.

Price: £20 or EURO 23.

Zoom link will be sent to you via email.

Contact Ingrid Hoffman: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 15, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Genesis—Aries New Moon—March 21st.

If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot? ― Gloria Steinem.

On March 20^th, the Sun slips into the initiatory sign of Aries, marking the spring or autumn Equinox. The quality of light is different now. A vigorous Sun blazes across the skies, moving faster, rising earlier, lingering later now as the year begins to tip and turn and balance briefly between light and shadow. As V-shaped flocks of migrating birds trace ancient pathways in the skies, searching for places of rest and refuge amidst the spread of human settlement, the astrology heralds a significant shift in the collective consciousness. A new aeon is birthed.

The Equinox marks the start of the new astrological year. On March 24^th, Pluto moves into the fixed sign of Aquarius, marking the start of a new epoch, the Age of Aquarius. This is the genesis of a new spirit of the time that will be more deeply concerned with self-questioning, with understanding what it means to be human. As we face into a dystopian future, there will be socio-economic upheaval, financial and political change, symptomatic with the deeper changes within the collective consciousness. Pluto’s passage through Aquarius will dredge up all that is putrid and rotting in politics, technology, and in the structure of our societies. It will be tempting to project our collective shadow onto the Frankenstein Monsters of Big Tech and AI, to make technology the new bogeyman, yet already Pluto’s shadowy presence has sent ripples of fear through Silicon Valley. Just days after the demise of Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse shares plunge to record lows. As Pluto edges to the final degrees of Capricorn (big business, corporations) SVB is biggest bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis that marked Pluto’s entry into Capricorn. There’s more to come.

On April 20^th the first procreative new moon Solar Eclipse of 2023 squares Pluto, a Collective and personal meeting with Fate.

The Nodes of Fate will be moving through Scorpio/Taurus till July 12^th, shaking our attachment to what we value, purging and pruning all that it no longer fit for purpose, all that is toxic and hidden, in financial instiutions, insurance companies, pensions, joint investments, while Uranus in Taurus continues to rattle and shake what is established, what we thought was safe and sure. The Eclipse season lasts till October 28^th, with a partial lunar eclipse square Pluto (back in Capricorn then) and the Nodes will have slipped backwards into Aries and Libra. Leaning against the weight of worldly concerns (pension funds, banking, insurance, stock markets, those material things we value) how we relate to others during times of tension and change will need to be re-evaluated particularly if you have planets or angles between 27-29° Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn, or planets or angles in the early degrees of Aquarius, Taurus, Leo, or Scorpio. “We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth,” Gloria Steinhem once said.

Few of us go willingly into the kind of initiation that accompanies a Pluto transit. When Pluto stirs up all that has fermented, all that has been banished in the dark basement of our psyches, we emerge irrevocably transformed. For many of us, the events of the next months will instigate life changing choices, a deepening capacity for compromise and cooperation.

Mars entered Gemini in August and has been making a debilitating square with Neptune (fogginess, confusion, misinformation, lethargy, and confusion) in October, November, and finally March 14^th, which for many of us has felt like a long time at sea. Mars, the war-god finally leaves Gemini on March 25^th.

Mars in sensitive Cancer collides with what is harsh or resistant and symbolises an uneasiness in an unsteady, confusing world, and we will need to tend to our psychological bruises, listen with compassion to our own repetitive soundtrack, be brave enough to soften our defences.

The Sun and Moon meet on March 21^st in the fire sign of Aries. Aries is a Mars-ruled sign, an energy that accompanies assertiveness, individuation, new beginnings.

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. 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. The old heroes slaughtered nine-headed dragons and defeated degenerate villains. 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.

This is Aries’ shadow. Self-centred. Brutal. Depicted today in the callous anonymity of trolling, the persistent violence of stalking and digital voyeurism, the misogynistic harassment and assault that is endemic in our culture. As the bedrock of our civilization shifts and cracks, revealing a new landscape, we will need new myths. Heroes who collaborate, relate and share. 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