Age Of Aquarius Tag

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

December 20, 2020 In Astrology, General By Ingrid Hoffman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love,

Ingrid.

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

January 20, 2020 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Brave New World Sun in Aquarius—January 20th —February 18th

The psychedelic rainbows and purple haze have all gone up in smoke. The fabled Age of Aquarius with its promise of peace and understanding has withered now, like the flowers we wore in our hair.

Yet today’s bright Aquarian Sun offers another perspective, a new vision, perhaps a glimpse of Hope that is the last to fly from Pandora’s Box of worldly woes.

This month we may meet people and circumstances that challenge our conditioning, that stir in us a vision for a better world. We may see our uniqueness or longing to belong reflected in electric blue hair, piercings and tattoos that make a statement of personal self-expression in a world where conformity and tribal affiliations are difficult to avoid.

This is our time to question our beliefs about the world, our assumptions based on how other people look or behave. “When explorers began traveling across oceans and undertaking bold expeditions in previously unknown territory, an entirely new kind of encounter emerged. Cortés and Montezuma wanted to have a conversation, even though they knew nothing about the other,” writes Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Talking to Strangers: What we should know about the people we don’t know.

We may sense something stirring in our soul, a sensitivity to the fault lines of division that thread across the collective, a deep knowing that for as long as this world has existed, we have been inexorably moving to this moment in time. “One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them” wrote Aldous Huxley in a Brave New World.

As our thoughts and preferences are nudged along by Google and Instagram, spiritual teacher Eckhardt Tolle reminds us of the ancient schisms that make it so easy for us to de-humanise one another. “Sometimes the “fault” that you perceive in another isn’t even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.”

Aquarius is associated with the welfare of humanity, with altruism, with disruptive ideas and ideals that may be way ahead of their time. If the zodiac ended with Capricorn, there would be duty and status, but no progress or innovation. Our high Aquarian hopes and brilliant insights may collide with the harsh reality of Jupiter, Saturn, Pluto and the South Node currently in dutiful Capricorn. Yet as Eckhart Tolle reminds us all, “life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”

The energy of the Aquarian archetype escorts anomaly into our carefully constructed lives. Aquarius has two rulers—traditional, law-abiding Saturn, and Uranus the iconoclast, the rebel, the innovator and the revolutionary. As we near the end of the horoscope this month, we may feel the undertow of pain and suffering that pulsates through the collective. We may sense the inconvenient truths of the narratives we absorb into our blood and bones. We may see the beauty, the nobility in our humanness, we may feel a stirring of something extraordinary, something dawning that is greater than we can possibly imagine.

In myth, Prometheus’s altruistic impulse to steal fire from the gods, to see the potential for genius and innovation in the human race, is one of the important themes for those who are born this month. Zeus was enraged by Prometheus’s audacity. He was pinioned to a rock and each day an eagle came to gorge on his liver. It restored and regrew again each night so Prometheus endured the same excruciating agony again and again until the hero Hercules that set him free from his torment. The theft of fire comes with a price to pay for those who incur the wrath of the gods, who dare to upend the natural order, or bring an idea, a vision, that is too far ahead of its time.

Like fire, which is volatile and unpredictable, we are facing into an uncertain future as our home planet faces certain destruction by our hubris and our lack of foresight.

Uranus escorts the kind of change that uproots the past, scatters the status quo like dust in the wind. On Harry and Meghan’s wedding day, May 19^th, 2018, Uranus was conjunct the Queen’s Sun at 0° Taurus. As the young couple free themselves from “The Firm” and embark on their “progressive new role” they will set a precedent for the future. And pay the price.

This month may be part of an unfolding journey for us personally and collectively. We may feel out of sync with the status quo as we dream of an incipient future as the days grow lighter in the North and sun-baked leaves begin to fall in the South.

The first aspect the Sun makes is a square to Uranus, an energy that so often catches us off-guard, scatters our plans, brings us closer to the deep “I” that is our consciousness, devoid of ego.

The single conjunction of Saturn and Pluto on January 12^th will have an orb of influence of two years, magnifying collective debt and accountability; bringing to the surface the dark matter of power that is used for self-gain. As Mars enters earth-bound Capricorn on February 16^th, we may find that our dedication to our beliefs is shaken, our collective human foibles that may seem more extreme.

The visionary new Aquarian Moon on Friday, January 24^th (4° Aquarius) makes a resilient square to Uranus, emphasising this impetus to seek higher ground, to set aside our ego and serve our community, or a cause that resonates with our desire to leave the world a better place. The Full Leo Moon (20° Leo quincunx Pluto) on February 9^th carries the power and wonderment of Miranda’s exclamation in The Tempest: “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in’t!”

Between January 26^th and 28^th, Venus and Neptune conjoin in Pisces, and make a seductive square to Mars in Sagittarius. We may become swept away by the sweet surrender to something that feels otherworldly, spiritual or intoxicatingly romantic. We may be buoyed by an illusion, carried away by a will ‘o the wisp dream. Or we may choose to use this energy creatively to birth something magical that will transcend the smooth round of routine that flat-lines our joy and bleaches the colour from our days.

As we encounter our fellow human travellers―the eccentrics, the rebels, the innovators and the Holy Fools, may we shake off the shackles of our conditioning. May our vision for a brave new world flutter with the hopes and dreams of all humankind.

For astrology consultations, please connect in person: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

May 1, 2014 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Delicate

And so it all ended with a whimper. An event “so scary that I’m giving classes on it,” said one astrologer with a keen nose for fear-based hype. The heralded Cardinal Grand Cross of 2014 did not bring the fireworks or big bangs predicted by many astrologers who warned clients to lie low, not to make any decisions. There were the usual political smoke and mirrors. The usual human dramas. The ominous rumble of anarchy in the Ukraine. The ghastly spectre of yet another self-serving dictator in Russia standing on the bodies of those he has trampled as Putin struts and pouts. But for most of us mere mortals the astrology has spotlighted the need for some kind of internal shift. Tension, crisis, chaos, pain, is how we humans have evolved over the millennia, and many of us may choose (unconsciously) to “hit rock bottom” in our lives – illness, relationship break-ups, or the euphemistically-named “down-sizing”, all of which is change coming at us from the outside. Change thrust upon us through illness, divorce or retrenchment so often leaves us truly down-sized as we clear our desks and carry out our possessions in a small brown box.

The eclipse season began with a much publicised lunar eclipse on April 15^th, and ended when she met by her consort, the Sun with a solar eclipse on April 29^th, all celestial markers for new cycles of change in our lives if we are willing to do what it takes and stick with the programme.

We say we want to change. And there are times we truly mean it. We begin new eating regimes, new jobs and new relationships. We find a new hairdresser. We have a make-over.

Change is a word that slips silently through the cracks of our over-committed, overwhelmed lives. We know the world around us is changing in a way that leaves us breathless. The delicate ecology of our Blue Planet is in a process of mass extinction. Forests are felled for the cancerous spread of housing estates, shopping malls, and factories that make more stuff for us to buy and throw away. Bees are dying; coral reefs now pale spectres of their incandescent beauty. Robotics are replacing humans. Without work we cannot feed our families. Yet, like laboratory rats in a frenzy of heated oestrus, we continue to breed more and more children. We want to change; we know our collective survival depends upon it. But we don’t.

For many of us “change” has no more power than a low-wattage light bulb to shine light into the dark corners of our personal lives. Change means to make different, to alter, to modify, to transform. And yet, deeply rooted in the meaning is also a sense of barter – an exchange of energy or substance. Change, like love is also a verb. When we change something in our life, whether it is a habitual pattern of thinking or behaving, a job or a way of relating, we need to let go of something. Even if this means walking away from a relationship that has ignited our Victim, Addict or Rescuer Archetype or literally endangered our health or wellbeing. Change means no more excuses. To change is to choose.

Most of us (unless we live in tribal communities or cower in silent submission in the shadow of repressive political or religious tyranny), choose the cereal we want to eat in the morning, the material we read on the internet, the lovers we invite into our beds. Most of us know, or think we know, that all evolution requires continual change and that life on this earth is a cycle of birthing and growing and dying. And yet when the Angel of Opportunity comes and taps us on the shoulder, we ignore her. We walk on by tenaciously clutching the bony hand of old behaviours and beliefs about the world. Every moment of every day we make choices – mostly driven by ghosts from the past that move silently through the chambers of faded memory. Thought patterns and behaviours with long dark cords that connect them still to the Tribal Mind are woven into synapses. We fret and chafe against the stifling cords that bind us to our pain. We stand, trussed up in our fears, our excuses, our hot-headed reactivity, our slippery avoidance, at the threshold of change which we say we want – but only on our terms at our own pace – and in a way that will not shatter the casing of our lives.

As we cross the threshold into this new astrological Age of Aquarius and terms like “The Law of Attraction” or “The Field” become part of the common lexicon, we know that change can happen in a nanosecond. So our choices mirror our experiences, draw in our lovers, our friends. Our choices bring us those who prick our delicate skins with betrayal, acts of violence, greed or callousness. We can choose to forgive – not condone the behaviour of those who have wounded our hearts with carefully calculated actions that puncture but leave no exit wound.

Our spiritual teachers have been saying over and over again: Every thought creates form. Every choice has a consequence. Every thought, every emotion is an act of creation – there is no such thing as any activity of our mind or heart that is not an act of creation. Our choices are enormously powerful. We can choose to accept things the way they are. We can choose to take action to change those things which can be changed. And we can pray for wisdom to know the one from the other.

Damien Rice. Delicate