Cheryl Strayed Tag

May 13, 2023 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

The Way of Beauty—Taurus New Moon—May 19th.

Nature is not a place to visit, it is home―Gary Snyder.

The sun-dappled days of May unfurl in a rapture of colour. Whether we live in cities made bearable by parks and public gardens, or whether we have our own small patch of earth to tend, nature calls us back home.

The constellation of Taurus rose at the vernal equinox, accompanying nature’s re-birth around 4,000 BCE-1,700 BCE. Over thousands of years, the earth has wobbled, and the Sun has shifted in what is called precession of the equinoxes. Now, as the Sun moves through Taurus, spring swoons to the warm exuberance of summer and Taurus season is festooned with flowers, daubed in many shades of green. Bluebells and buttercups, flutter of delicate pink apple blossom. A showy froth of cowslip and white daisies dance across the meadows. Trees flame out, emerald, lime green.

Encrypted in the sliver fire of the starry skies this month, are three important sky-stories:

Mercury stations direct
Jupiter enters Taurus and T-squares Pluto and Mars
New Moon in Taurus

Mercury enters the morning sky and stations direct (at 5° Taurus) on May 15^th and by May 29^th will be at its greatest distance from the Sun. Mercury leaves the ambiguous Retrograde shadow on May 31^st.

Mercury in the sensual clothing of Venus-ruled Taurus guides us across the threshold of change as one lavish British spectacle merges with the most-watched spectacle on earth. The Eurovision Song Contest staged in Liverpool, with an estimated audience of 180 million people culminates with the finals on May 13^th, as a Taurus Sun makes an electrifying conjunction with unpredictable Uranus. This signifies a high-voltage energy, tempered by a tender Pisces Moon conjunction with serious Saturn trine Venus in Cancer.

Just before sunrise, Jupiter emerges from behind the moon, shining like a yellow citrine in the apricot light of dawn. Jupiter enters Taurus on May 16^th and will square both machismo Mars in the royal sign of Leo and Pluto in Aquarius on May 21^st. This is potentially a cathartic T-square which may explode in the wastelands of war in Ukraine and Syria and could spark panic on the financial markets. The Pluto/Jupiter square at 0° Taurus/ Aquarius is a waxing square in a cycle that began with the Pluto/Jupiter conjunction at the beginning of 2020.

Jupiter and Pluto connect in a combustable square in May, April and June and move close once more from early December 2023 to February next year.

On May 19^th, the Sun and Moon caress the cool, soft flanks of Taurus. Her fleeting embrace with the sun is a heartbeat that pulses through our bodies, a monthly reminder that we are stardust, sea-borne, rooted in our animal bodies. New moons are celestial pause points. Tender moments when we can begin again, this time more gently, more slowly, more tenderly. To focus on one thing at a time. This is our prompt to breathe in beauty and cherish our belonging in the delicate web of life. Virginia Woolf remembers a moment of grace in a garden in St Ives, “It seemed suddenly plain that the flower itself was a part of the earth, that a ring enclosed what was the flower, and that was the real flower, part earth, part flower.”

This lunation in a fixed earth sign represents those things we value and desire. For some this may be a simpler life, a strong urge to pare down, to soften inside as we love and nurture ourselves. Author Anne Lamott suggests that that we start taking action, even if we don’t really have a conviction that it will ever help and change… “Little by little, I think the message becomes that we’re worthy of that and we’re deserving of that. We start to notice the softening inside of us, of being loved and nurtured by our own selves. Then buckle up because it is going to change every single thing about the world.”

Taurus which is not simply a personality trait or a list of keywords.Taurus is a metaphor for beauty, sensuality, and indulgence. Taurus invites us to attune to the slow circles of nature, to be receptive to those things that bring us pleasure and delight.

The new Moon in Taurus invites us to draw down, to focus on our senses, to dig our hands into the earth, to plant seeds that will grow. Where Taurus is in our birth chart is where we must work the ground, nurture our gifts and talents, attentively manage our resources, cherish those people and things we value.

“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace,” writes May Sarton.

The moon is exulted in moist, fertile Taurus. If you have a herb or vegetable garden, now is the best time to plant root vegtables and salad greens and ease back on the weeding.

The Chelsea Flower show is now re-branding “weeds” as “hero plants” and Alys Fowler suggests “rather than going to work in our gardens, we could all relax a little, spend more time looking and listening, waiting rather than reacting, being in the garden as much as actively gardening.”

Neurologist, Oliver Sacks once said, “in forty years of medical practice, I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical “therapy” to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases―music and gardens.”

There are many ways to remember our connection with the natural world and cherish the beauty that is all around us. We might take ourselves on an “artist’s date”, allow ourselves to be seduced by beauty when we visit a gallery. We might let music fill our senses. Wrap our arms around a tree. We might start this new day with a cup of tea or coffee in a beautiful mug, a fresh flower picked from the garden in a vase on our breakfast table.

Cheryl Strayed writes, “there’s always a sunrise and always a sunset and it’s up to you to choose to be there for it… put yourself in the way of beauty.”

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

July 27, 2022 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Striking Fire—New Leo Moon—July 28th

Tonight, in a secret corner of the sky, a New Leo Moon hides her flaming face. It’s been a cruel hot summer.

In the ever-changing sky, Saturn and Uranus remain in a discordant square all through 2022 and 2023, a celestial symbol of turbulent times, bitter division, as these ancient mythic enemies confront each other in the heavens and an old order collides with the new. Saturn transits arrive as the henchmen of stasis that often thwart our efforts to move forward, yet they present as circumstances that grow us up, if we’re willing to learn. Transits of Uranus break us open, shatter and destabilise those things that are too tightly defended or have outlived their purpose. When these two archetypes face off in the heavens, they reflect tension, upheaval, limitations of freedom, resistance, and rebellion. Creation stories always tell of darkness and chaos that come before creation. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction of January 2020 has fermented all that is rotten in our world. The dross has risen to the surface and each one of us now faces the consequences of those things we have repressed or simply ignored. In the tumultuous confusion, perhaps something greater ushers humanity towards what is yet to be.

There are few who can stare at the pain of the world without blinking. We all long for some light, vacuous distraction from the reality of raging wildfires that consume forsaken landscapes, the tumult of politics, and the vagaries of the obscenely rich.

Global debt has ignited fear and scarcity and sparked an inferno of unrest that has been simmering for decades―first Sri Lanka, with other poorer countries to follow. Here in the UK, politicians bicker while railway strikes disrupt the lives of millions; in the US the far right are gaining ground, while millions get their news from Chinese-owned TikTok.

Hot summer streets and the pavements are burning… It’s a cruel cruel summer, sang Bananarama.

And now as the carefree weeks of summer holidays are seared and sealed seamlessly by the sun, nowhere is this more apparent than on talcum beaches, where sea spray infuses the pervasive smell of sun block and the scent of sea grass. Stunned by the glut of sunlight, hordes of visitors amble slowly along promenades or slump in deck chairs, drowsy participants in these halcyon holidays, this all too brief escape from reality, from society in decay.“Humankind cannot bear very much reality,” T.S Eliot once wrote.

Jupiter/Zeus, the celestial father-archetype, also associated with excess and grandiosity, turns Retrograde in over-heated Aries today (till November 23^rd) highlighting moral and cloistered religious codes that are deeply entrenched in our culture. This will test our own values and choices, our moral angst in the months to come. In the nuanced language of astrology, Jupiter will amplify the aggression and haste of Aries. And when planets go Retrograde, the celestial instruction is to slow right down and then look within.

Those startling synchronicities, those things that “happen” outside ourselves, so often mirror what is moving through the collective or in our own lives. Mars, the war-god, rams into an intractable Saturn on August 7^th, which can bring enormous frustration and a sense of being thwarted as Saturn accompanies rules and authorities, sober realisations that things may not work out as we had hoped. Writer Cheryl Strayed wraps this planetary aspect up in her own inimitable way― “writing is hard…. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.” When Mars meets Saturn, we may feel as though we are “hitting our heads against a brick wall”, “fighting against the odds”, and these contacts often manifest as exhaustion, low libido, feelings of frustration, being motivated by fear or duty unless we simply dig. We may attempt to “start something” without true inspiration and verve, or reach a very stuck place where, eventually, events or emotions erupt, bringing destruction of the old. Yet amongst the little fires or the flames of the inferno, new possibilities will grow, the much longed for changes we dreaded, yet unconsciously manifested.

The sky story speaks of simmering tension that will ripple and churn with increasing intensity as Uranus in Taurus unites with the North Node on July 31^st and Mars makes trouble by joining the fray on August 1^st, sparking tinder dry disputes and the madness of war. As we yearn for the stability and calm of Taurus, the undertow of the Scorpio South Node may suck us back into conflict and what Eckhart Tolle calls “the pain body.”

Mercury in Leo enters the conversation this New Moon making a frustrating square to a twitchy Mars in Taurus / Uranus / North Node―a meeting that is often associated with a heated rush of energy that may accompany rash behaviour, sudden upsets, accidents. “Wake up calls” that jar and jolt us from our complacency. The Sabian symbol for the Uranus / North Node alliance that sweeps through the heavens until February 2023 is “a new continent rising out of the ocean.” This union encapsulates enormous potential, yet like Prometheus, the god who stole fire to gift to humans, there is a price to pay in defying the gods and daring to seek “new worlds” instead of tending to this one.

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.

“Despair is our chance to wrestle with fire and come through,” writes Christina Baldwin. 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. Trust. Don’t let go.

There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this―Terry Pratchett

Please get in touch if you would like to know more about forthcoming webinars, or to book an astrology consultation: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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

Endurance—Sun in Aries—March 20th

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 3, 2018 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Burning Ambition—Mars and Saturn in Capricorn—Simply Dig!

There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this―Terry Pratchett

As the rhythm of our lives moves to the shape of this new month, each new day may present new possibilities to engage more deeply, more consciously, even amidst the repetition and predictability of our daily lives. Mars takes the lead this month, demanding an output of focus and energy which is book-ended by a close conjunction to Saturn that separates gradually over the next few days―March 29^th to April 9^th―and Mars conjunct Pluto at month’s end. A clarion call to show up, get to work with urgency and self-discipline.

In Tarot the Three of Pentacles symbolises this focused effort which brings recognition and rewards for hard work, for not letting go of the balloon. In astrology, Mars/Saturn contacts encapsulate the Puritan work ethic: self-denial, hard slog that manifests something of value and worth. Cheryl Strayed wraps this planetary aspect up in her own inimitable way― “writing is hard….Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.” Modern culture venerates efficiency and busyness. In the bland drudgery of the workplace we may feel we are “hitting our heads against a brick wall”, “fighting against the odds”, as Mars/Saturn contacts may manifest as exhaustion, low libido, feelings of frustration, being motivated by fear or duty. There are bills to pay, encumbrances and obligations that bind us to roles, titles, and positions that harness our identities, that chafe against the pull of our souls. Mystic and poet, John O’Donohue, writes about an epitaph on a gravestone somewhere in London―“Here lies Jeremy Brown born a man and died a grocer.” Mars/Saturn can consume our identity. Self-abstinence can shrink our lives, imprison us in our titles, starve us of our joy.

The sky-script this month reflects the age-old issue of power. We may work in an office where our dignity is compromised, we may be in an environment where we don’t feel welcome, where power is misused, where we are merely treated like functionaries, our life force claimed and used, our souls never engaged. We are reminded that no system or corporation can exile us from our imagination, from the possibility of renewal that coheres to fresh possibilities for creativity in the work we do, or the passions that feed us after hours.

Leonard Cohen approached his creative work with doggedness and determination. He drew nourishment and meaning from hard work. “I think unemployment is the great affliction of man. Even people with jobs are unemployed. In fact, most people with jobs are unemployed. I can say, happily and gratefully, that I am fully employed. Maybe all hard work means is fully employed.” The combination of Mars/Saturn demands true grit, single-pointed focus, and the courage to lean into our lives when there are things that must be done, to tackle those things we fear the most, and also to stand on the edge of the rut, to turn towards those things that moisten, that nourish our soul. To say, happily and gratefully, that we are fully employed with those things that bring vitality and passion to our lives.
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Mercury is in Retrograde ’til April 15^th—a cosmic instruction to pause, step back from the busyness, disengage, focus inwards before making any decisions, carefully read the small print before signing any documents. Most astrologers would agree that these three-week Mercury retrograde phases are wonderful times to revalue, revise, repair, relocate, remember, regress, reunite, re-create, re-arrange and re-do on the purely physical mechanical level.

Mercury is in the element of fire, in the sign of Aries. Fire symbolism is associated with creativity, the Jungian intuitive function, the way we create our future. Mercury Retrograde in the element of fire signals a break in old patterns, a transition in our creative focus. We may attempt to “start something” without true inspiration and verve, or reach a very stuck place where eventually events, or emotions erupt, bringing destruction of the old. Yet in the rubble are new green shoots, new possibilities to grow, the much longed for changed we dreaded, yet unconsciously manifested.

b78166531030d114975548f27a768630 We may have to find the courage to respond to the challenges in our lives with increased awareness, with more resilience. This is a time to shift focus, to perceive our lives with new vision. This is a time to adapt to change more creatively.

Physical illnesses that emerge during this time may nudge us back to those parts of our psyche that we have neglected or overused. The writer’s “block”, the flatness that we feel, might be a signal to change our daily routine, our technique. To try on something new, to experiment.

Depending on where Mercury is natally and in transit in your own birth chart, these next three weeks until Mercury goes direct again on April 15th may be a richly creative time. A time to seek your own inner wisdom, reclaim your own inner voice.

Saturn moves Retrograde at 9 degrees Capricorn on April 18^th and will station direct on September 7^th urging us to be resourceful, realistic, and pragmatic, as we take stock of those things that frustrate us, confront those fears that thread through our neural pathways, ambushing our peace from the shadows.

This month’s New Moon carries the standard of rejuvenation, represented by the lightning bolt conjunction with Uranus, the planet associated with the destruction of complacency and rigidity. This lunation heralds destruction and renewal. The Moon waxes Full on April 30^th at 9 degrees Scorpio. Both lunations this month are ruled by Mars, the ancient god of war who awakens Eros, heats our blood, spurs our will.

The month ends as Mars confronts Pluto―April 24^th to April 30^th ― in a separating conjunction that may bring an honest acceptance of our own part in the soap opera of our relationships, our addiction to busyness, perhaps an awareness of the drives and compulsions that lie buried in our brain’s amygdala. This energy may be described as drawing a line, setting a boundary, and knowing what it is that we want, then going out to get it.

Mars and Saturn 89

Mars and Saturn in Capricorn awaken our will to give space to the spontaneity of our feral souls, to shake off the chains that bind us to prescribed roles or identities which shrink us and dull our lives with repetitive, mechanical habit. We are reminded that we do not have to sell our souls to the seductive undertow of security. We do not have to stay trapped in the coal mine amidst dark seams of similarity. The turbulence of our soul’s yearning will guide us to leave the to-do lists aside as we step outside of our over-scheduled lives to engage deeply with ourselves. To be happily and gratefully, fully employed.

For private readings and more information about forthcoming workshops, please connect with me: ingrid@trueheartwork.com