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Becoming Human—Pluto in Aquarius—2023—2044.

No one is coming to save us. But everyone is coming to save everyone—Sophie Strand.

Pluto’s entry into the humanitarian sign of Aquarius is no abstract event in the age of the Anthropocene.

Pluto returns to Aquarius after 245 years of colonisation, genocide and ecocide, a mere blip in the spiral of human his-story. Pluto’s potent energy will infuse all our lives over the next two decades as societies are destroyed and reshaped. Today, we begin a slow shedding of old skins.

This is a call to create a new relationship with nature, and with each small act, to tend to each other, to allow the ragged scars of patriarchy slowly heal from the bottom up. This is a call to reach out to a friend who is shrouded in the darkness of depression. This is a call to sprinkle wild meadow seeds on the barren edges of what was once a fertile marsh land, now a concrete parking lot. This is a call to remind ourselves, in the words of Paula Gunn Allen, that “snowflakes, leaves, humans, plants, raindrops, stars, molecules, microscopic entities, all come in communities. The singular cannot in reality exist.”

This is a call to become human.

Today, there will be no sudden shift into the golden “Age of Aquarius”. It’s unlikely that “peace will guide the planets and love will steer the stars.”

Societal reform, often accompanied by bloody revolution and fanaticism shattered societies during Pluto’s passage through Aquarius in the 1700s long before we had “discovered” Pluto in the darkness of our solar system. Pluto the invisible planet was orbiting silently in space when Herschel “discovered” Uranus, that planet associated with break-throughs and revolution. This was a time of upheaval and revolt in France, America and Haiti. The first Industrial Revolution was under way. Captain Cook and William Bligh searched for new consumables in southern lands. Pluto’s last passage through Aquarius (1778-1798) marked the beginning of the climate crisis and a soulless sense of alienation and loneliness that now threatens our survival as a species.

Pluto tends to dredge up all that lies rotting beneath the surface, so we can expect the shadowy aspects of Aquarius to rise up like bloated corpses from the fabled water of this paradoxically named fixed air sign. Pluto’s purging and purifying presence destroys all that no longer serves us. We die so that we can be reborn.

Aquarius, like all astrological archetypes is complex and nuanced. To add to the complexity of this problematic sign, Aquarius has two rulersvisionary Uranus which carries a Promethean vision of infinite possiblity for the future, a Utopian dream of a perfect society; and authoritarian Saturn that accompanies limits and boundaries, accountability, and responsibility. Today, Pluto rests at 0° Aquarius, and the Sabian Symbol for this degree is “Building structures for the survival of the group”. These new structures will only emerge slowly, as Pluto represents an invisible, unfathomable level of life. If you have planets or angles at 0° Aquarius, Leo, Taurus, or Scorpio, these next two years are especially significant for you personally.

Pluto’s long journey through Aquarius will radically trans-form our relationship with technology. AI trawls the internet, dredging up the dross we have dumped there since the 90s and spewing it back at us again in the form of misinformation. Its difficult to distinguish posts by real humans from “fake”; AI art from someone’s soulful self-expression. How effective social media regulations will be amidst the flotsam and jetsam of AI generated content will be a Pluto in Aquarius concern that will affect us all.

When Pluto enters the sign of the Water Bearer, it crosses the same 0° point as the Saturn/Jupiter conjunction in Aquarius on December 21st 2020. Trump’s bizarre presidency neared it’s final episode and Boris Johnson partied while the nation was in lockdown. This week, both Plutocrats are back in the news. The Trump show goes on with the former president appearing in court for his part in the payment of hush money to Stormy Daniels. Mars moves into Cancer on March 25th after a long journey through Gemini supersizing Trump’s vociferous Mercury on April 10th.  The Trump show is not over yet.

In London, Boris argues for his political career at a “Partygate” hearing. Transiting Uranus moves over his Ascendant and Mars in Gemini conjoins his Sun/Venus. Boris is also experiencing a second Saturn Return while Pluto casts a long shadow over that portion of his birth chart associated with his public life and life direction. Time to return to making millions as a writer and a guest speaker perhaps?

We speak glibly of “patriarchy”, yet as Pluto gouges out embedded beliefs and offers a different way to live, how many of us will be willing to relinquish our “comfortable” way of life? How many of us will be willing to live equally?

Writes Angela Saini in The Patriarchs, How Men Came to Rule, “patriarchy “is not ‘they’; it’s all of us”. And changing it would mean losing many of the things many people cherish…to really radically create a completely equal society would mean rethinking everything fundamentally. Marriage, childcare, how we structure societies … work, pay, everything. It would mean challenging class, capitalism … monarchies … We’re not just creatures who want to live equally. We’re also creatures who care about the cultures that we’re in. And challenging culture is really hard.”

Carl Jung used the word, Shadow to describe the repressed, denied aspects of our lives, but that the Shadow doesn’t lie languidly, waiting to be redeemed. It regresses, becomes scaled, archaic, clawed. It rattles through our homes, our streets and our nations. It emerges as school shootings, rape, gang violence, and suicide filmed on social media platforms. It screeches as mountains are gouged out for metals and coal, as oceans are scraped empty of fish, and underground creatures are bulldozed to make way for yet another mall or motel. It emerges in the sanctioned bloodletting of war, the slaughter of nameless innocents.  We will all, consciously or unconsciously experience Pluto’s potent alchemy these next two decades. Circumstances that will strip us of our excess and draw from our hearts what is most authentic and loving, at best. What is self-serving and cruel at worst. Angela Saini offers this: “some will claim that oppression is permanently woven into who we are. They will say that humans are inherently selfish and violent, that entire categories of people are naturally dominant or subordinate. I have to ask: would we still manage to care about each other so much if that were true?”

This is our call to care. This is our call to rescue each other. This is our call to become human.

 

 

 

Please get in touch to book a private astrology session: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

 

 

 

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Happy Days—Sagittarius New Moon—November 23rd, 2022.

“We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again—Katherine May.

A weakened sun lies lethargically on the horizon. Here in the north, the sky story speaks of a season of falling leaves. As winter winds blow this year to a close, glittering party clothes beckon from shop windows; bright lights distract us from the darkness for a while.

This week, the UK government announced a recession as postal and rail strikes reveal the bare bones of collective frustration and discontent.  Authoritative Saturn is still square unpredictable Uranus in earthy Taurus (banks, money, climate crisis).  Strikes and civil unrest in many countries depict the existential angst and a general dis-trust of authority.  “The present convergence of crisesin money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, environment and moreis a birth crisis, expelling us from the old-world order into a new,” writes Charles Eisenstein, author of The Coronation.

For so many, this has been a challenging month. The New Moon Solar and Lunar eclipses in Scorpio and Taurus may have culminated in an ending of a way of lifethe sudden news of a retrenchment, an illness that initiates us into a new way of being, a divorce that reveals our bare bones. Taurus brings us down to earth—money, property, and those things we value—Scorpio dredges up those things we prefer to keep hidden from view.

The luminous lives of public figures portray the astrology of the moment. Prince Charles became Charles III during this eclipse season, and he will be crowned on May 6th during a Mercury Retrograde cycle and the day after a lunar eclipse—two celestial significators that suggest he will not settle comfortably on the throne. Charles was born on an eclipse, and will be familiar with this energy, so it’s unlikely that he will be beheaded like his predecessor, or banished to Europe. His Solar Return in 2023 (Sun/Mars conjunction in the 3rd house and Neptune on the Descendant) also suggests that his reign will not be an easy one as ghosts from the past return. Already truths blend with fantasy as the acerbic effect of the Mars/Neptune square can be seen in the “dangerous lies” peddled by the media, portrayed in season Five of The Crown.

Jupiter moves Retrograde at the poignant final degree of Pisces until December 20th and will make its third and final semi-square to Uranus on December 23rd, so the cult of progress and growth continues to take its toll on our ailing  planet. The astrology describes big wheels spinning, capricious dice that wobble and roll for those who fail to observe the cycles of life and death. Joe Biden celebrates his solar return on Sunday as Mars rises and squares Neptune, he attends to the nation’s petroleum reserves. Jupiter’s Wheel of Fortune turns for nations and humankind, as bellicose Donald Trump thrusts out his chin and turns his best side to the camera. An inflated Jupiter squares his Moon/South Node, and a battle-weary Mars takes a long shot, opposing his Moon, and moving back and forth over his Uranus/Sun/North Node in Gemini until March 2023. Saturn in Pisces will square his luminaries between May 2024-March 2025, not a great omen for a despot.  This week, Elon Musk’s fortunes plummet. Rotund Jupiter, purveyor of big dreams and big talk, opposes his power-over Pluto.  A disenchanted Mars Retrograde in Gemini conjoins his Venus (money, ruptured relationships, angry words) as his imperious demands for “a loyalty clause” raise mutiny and mass resignations.

The Mars/Neptune cycle began in on May 18th, 2022, and will peak with an opposition in August 2023, coming full circle with the next conjunction in Pisces in April 2024. The shadowy side of Mars Retrograde in Gemini erupts in hate-speak; language that severs bonds of relationship, switchbacks and U-turns, confusion, and utter exhaustion, and when Mars meets Neptune things become murkier, our will may be thwarted, our heartfelt desires swept away by things we simply can’t control. Mars is the war god, and this archetype describes battles, divisons, desire and action. This cycle may escalate a silencing of free speech, more emphasis on the currency of information, data and misinformation; cognitive dissonance, or pivotal events that challenge our beliefs as we defend or assert our version of the “truth”.

Yet the Sun joins Mercury and Venus in optimistic Sagittarius on November 22nd, Jupiter stations direct in Pisces, indicating a shift in circumstances, or perspective is possible. When the Sun moves into Sagittarius, we raise our hearts, our glasses, our vision, find magic in the mundane.  The New Moon on the same day escorts us into the season of goodwill and thanksgiving for Happy Days.

 As we pare down our expectations of how things “should be”, redefine what is truly important, we can practice being content, even happy, with the way things are. This New Moon wraps endings and new beginnings in the darkness of the heavens, so let’s toast to changing the old stories, finding what is possible within this new normal. As we review this year almost gone, may we celebrate how far we have come. May we give thanks for those bonds of friendship and heartfelt belonging that holds us to what really matters.

May we take time to reflect, to rest and restore, as winter draws us into the crucible of change. And in the intimacy of darkness, may we hold our loved ones close, find hope in hardship, opportunity in obstacles.

May we engage our imaginations in the darkness of the year almost gone, and re-discover joy and abundance in life’s simple pleasures. Here’s to Happy Days.

For a personal astrology consultation, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fintan O’ Toole, in a superbly written Guardian article, writes: “His skills as a fixer are finely honed – but they cannot restore a pre-Trump normality. As president, Biden’s private self, shadowed by loss, must come into its own.” Joe Biden’s private self is symbolised by four resilient planets in Scorpio which must find their way through the dark as they will be squared by Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn and Uranus in the coming months and years. Mercury turns Retrograde on January 30th (square Joe Biden’s Scorpio Sun). There is so much to be healed and repaired. The slow retrieval of what has been lost or captive will be painful. As Pluto opposes the US Mercury from 20172024 there will be walls to dismantle, bridges to build, digital communications to reform, and Silicon Valley Titans to tame.

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

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

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

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

—John O ’Donohue.

 

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

 

 

 

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Hope Springs—Sun in Sagittarius—November 22nd—December 22nd

This is the month of Thanksgiving. For counting our blessings. For celebrating just how brave and how resilient we have been this year, for grieving all those who have suffered, all those who have died in this difficult year.

The Sun blazes confidently through Sagittarius this month. As this annus horribilis comes to an end, we may be wishing and hoping that 2021 will be better. Hope, faith and optimism are nourished in the warmth of the fire element. If we can imagine that we all have a Centaur that looks towards new horizons in our Sagittarius house, we may get a sense that in some area of our lives, we now gaze into the future, perhaps dare to allow that small white feather of Hope to land, even amidst events that threaten to capsize our lives, circumstances that roll us into the depths of despair.

Sagittarius is The Pilgrim on life’s Camino—the pathfinder, who sets off on a quest, perhaps impulsively, but with a kind of innocent faith in the kindness of strangers, certainly trust in a benevolent god.

Jupiter is the astrological ruler of Sagittarius but also of Pisces, an archetype so often imbued with a tincture of loss and longing. Our Journey is not yet over. We may still need to metabolise our grief, mourn what we have lost. “There’s this collective sort of drip of adrenaline or cortisol in the collective psyche right now,” says psychologist Matt Licata, author of The Path is Everywhere and A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times. “It really does seem like structures, including the structure of human physiology, is being dissolved.”

Licata discusses one of the four stages in the alchemical process, citrinita, the yellowing. He says, “We’re in a dissolution moment. We’re in-between two things. I think many of us have a sense that we’re not going to be able to go back to the way things were. Not just COVID, but all of this sort of social upheaval that’s happening right now. We’re not going back, but we don’t know what’s being birthed. It’s like we’re still in this womb.”

In this liminal space of becoming, we may look back and reflect on our Journey this year. Sagittarius and Jupiter invite us on a journey to find meaning in difficult times. As we begin this new Journey, let’s ask ourselves what we will take with us, what we will have to jettison so that we can travel more lightly… In the days that precede the winter solstice, Jupiter in sombre Capricorn tempers our Pollyannaish exuberance and optimism with an infusion of realism as we prepare and plan for our personal and collective journey at the portal of this new epoch. There are no short cuts. The celestial injunction is to bunker down, be responsible, exercise caution and self-mastery.

Venus opposes Uranus (November 27-28th) amputating flimsy connections and light-weight encounters. Our our ability to be innovative or counter-intuitive with our finances will be accented, especially if we have planets or sensitive degrees between 7-8° Aquarius, Taurus or Scorpio. In early December, Venus square Neptune may gorge hedonistically on sweet dreams and empty promises. She may languish in the half-light of fantasy or linger too long beneath the glittering lights of the casino. This is the classic bankruptcy signature, so be wary of the siren call to buy more of what you want but don’t really need or can afford. This month Saturn, Pluto and Jupiter are still moving through Capricorn, reminders of financial austerity, new laws and restrictions imposed by those in authority.

We confront the cold facts, the consequences, the karma of our thoughts and our actions. Gloria Steinem once said, “hope is a form of planning.”  This is a time of re-imagining, of careful, considered planning.

This month ends with a spectacular Penumbral Lunar Eclipse on November 30th—A beautiful Full Moon that is the second in a series of six Gemini/Sagittarius Eclipses connected with truth and lies, belief and faith, travel and travel restrictions, education and publishing. In the affairs of nations, and in our own lives, Eclipses herald times of endings, they ease our ability to release, to let go: they are harbingers of new beginnings.

The Total Solar Eclipse on December 14th gathers Mercury in an awkward square to Neptune—offering a symbolic release of illusion and deception. Mars, the warrior god flexes his muscles and squares Pluto (over the festive period) triggering a release of willful determination that may aid the ingestion of a sugarless spoonful of realism. For so many, the mood may not be merry and bright. Yet, this Full Moon illuminates an uncomfortable contradiction—amidst the excess and the exuberance of Christmas, there are millions of people who live their lives in the shadows of society. The old, the homeless, the working poor we summons from Uber and Deliveroo.

Donald Trump was born under a Total Lunar Eclipse and this Solar Eclipse will “eclipse” his natal eclipse as it moves over his Gemini Sun and Sagittarius Moon. This week, his Nodal Return marks a karmic contract; and ending and another chance to evolve more consciously. His Nodal Return is a turning point, a time to re-evaluate and adjust to the changes in his life and his relationships. Pluto is still making an uncompromising opposition to his Saturn, while Neptune squares his Nodes.

Jupiter and Saturn’s entry into Aquarius on the winter solstice usher in a period of new social order. In the horoscope of the Inauguration (January 20th, 2021 at Noon) the Sun joins Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius and makes an uneasy square to Uranus in Taurus, suggestive of the challenges that will face those in the White House.

As the weeks gather momentum for crescendo of the solstice on December 22nd and the much- heralded Saturn/Jupiter conjunction in Aquarius, let’s linger in the warmth of Sagittarius’s fire. As we reflect on 2020, may we allow grace and gratitude to wash over us as we savour all we have learnt; how much we have changed on this Journey. Poet Mark Nepo writes, “to journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journeying is to be a pilgrim.” May this pilgrimage lead us all towards a place of healing and Love.

I post regularly on Facebook. I will gladly send you these posts featuring more regular astrological updates and the lunations if you prefer to direct your time and energy away from social media.

For private astrology readings please email ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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The Last Stand—Pluto/Jupiter Conjunction—November 2020

America is not nearly done. We’re only in the beginning. Who knows who we will be? Who knows what colour we will be? It is all something that, may our descendants—if they survive that long—will see—Alice Walker.

The whole world watched and waited as the divided states of America turned Red and Blue. Masks on or off signalled allegiance.  Now one last stand, one last grasp at power by the outgoing president. We are not nearly done.

We may still be wrapped in the folds of uncertainty about our future, trying to reconcile our ambivalence and incredulity as we plan our festive meals with family members who are angry about the outcome of the election; still divided around the care of a terminally ill parent; still trying to engage with friends who believe COVID-19 is just a hoax; still knowing that those we care for are just as hurt and confounded by how we think and behave.

The sky-script this month reflects the age-old issue of power and boundaries. We may work in an office where patriarchy infuses the woodwork, where we are treated like functionaries. In our relationships, we may feel that it is our duty to give our time, our energy, our love, even our body, in support of those who feel entitled to whatever they ask of us.

Our nations have been founded on elitism and supremacy. Our relationships, with our siblings, our parents, our partners, may be founded on the same principles.

We have only just begun. If we are to survive as a species on this troubled earth, we must not go back to the way we were.

Pluto (ruthless destruction, purging, elimination) and Jupiter (amplification) have been in conjunction all through 2020 (the aspect perfected on April 4th and will do so twice more on June 29th and November 12th). These conjunctions contain an explosive energy that so often coincides with turning points in our human story—as all that is corrupt and rotten in governments, institutions, and  in the often flimsy structures of our own lives is revealed. Pluto/Jupiter conjunctions can be combustible when they brush against our birth charts or the chart of our relationship, dredging up buried truths, destroying what is, and inviting us to revision a new future. They may ignite tinder dry resentments. Set ablaze those vows we made to ourselves and forgot to keep.

Jupiter inflates and expands, and Pluto terminates, destroys, ends, irrevocably.  As the contagion agitation builds, as Donald Trump makes his last stand, thousands of new cases of COVID-19 are reported. And although scientists and politicians promise a vaccine that will give us back our freedom, there will be the formidable logistics of delivery and safety to overcome. The pandemic will not be prettily wrapped up by Christmas.

Pluto abducts us and takes us into the Shadowlands of our psyche, and draws up all that has served its purpose in the world. Pluto will remain in in Capricorn until 2024. The fabled Hydra will continue to sprout more rapacious heads as Pluto inexorably purges our own birth charts, and the charts of our leaders and our nations. We must befriend the monster within ourselves. We must dare to challenge the creation stories that have driven our civilization to this point of crisis.

The birth charts of nations are conceived in acts of supremacy. Dominion over the Earth and over indigenous peoples. We are still enacting our origin stories, tales of heroism, individualism, and supremacy. “Once metabolised, the old stories are hard to shake from the mind of an individual or the hierarchy of a family or the guiding principles of a country,” writes Elizabeth Lesser, author of Cassandra Speaks, When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes.

As the rhythm of our lives moves to the shape of the changing seasons, each new day may present new possibilities to engage in this collective birthing process more deeply, more consciously, even amidst the uncertainty. Mars still Retrograde, glowers, red and angry in the night sky. He stations direct on November 14th but will blaze a trail of fire through Aries until January 6th.

Mercury stationed direct on the day of the US Election and will return to Scorpio on November 11th, emerging from the shadow on November 19th. Venus makes a cardinal T-square to Mars and the Capricorn stellium between November 9th and 19th. A regenerative New Moon in Scorpio on November 15th consecrates our collective longing for healing and “normality” while the Full Moon on November 30th beckons us with the warm glow of possibility, fortified by the Sun’s presence in Sagittarius (November 22nd) as winter closes in and we make plans for the festive season.

“It takes a strong back and a soft front to face the world,” writes Roshi Joan Halifax. We will need courage and compassion, and firm boundaries as this year draws to a close and we face into another year of restrictions and economic uncertainty.

As we feel the ache of our humanness, the sadness of collective loss that has permeated 2020, one origin story that may be worth remembering is the story of Pandora who opened the jar and released evil spirits into the world. What is often not told is that Pandora shut the lid just in time to keep one spirit from flight Elpis—the spirit of Hope.

From the bottom of the jar of this difficult year, Elpis beckons us to imagine a better world. May we take the energy of the fire symbolism and hold the light of hope in our hearts. May we imagine a kinder world as we move through the ever changing experience of being human.

Elizabeth Lesser says, “women know something the world needs now. We know it in our bones. We’ve always known it. It’s time to dig deep, to excavate our voices, to elevate our emotional and relational intelligence and to transcend the limiting stories of the past. It is time for us to be the scribes and the teachers of a new way— to dream a little before we think as Toni Morrison said— and to stitch the world back together through care and inclusion.”

As this year draws to an end, we may be asking ourselves difficult questions; changing our lives in ways that we never thought would be possible, feeling more attuned to a story with a new beginning, a different ending. But first we must examine our stories. We must question who wrote them. And why.

Please email: Ingrid@trueheartwork.com for a personal astrology consultation.

 

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You Want It Darker

darker-1The New Year stretches and yawns from the crumpled wrappings of the festive season. The old is not yet old enough to be forgotten. The new is not yet quite born. There’s a certain quality about this threshold time, coloured by our hopes and dreams; our resolutions to emerge into life in a new way.

There’s an edginess in the zeitgeist now. The sound of thunder as dark clouds gather across nations at this time of jagged transition. The old ways have led us to the gaping maw of the destruction of habitats and species that is now probably irreversible.  Our appointed leaders seem incapable of  making the changes to policies despite petitions, pleas and protests. Civil disobedience seems the only option. Spiritual teacher, Andrew Harvey writes,“ the future of the world depends on the full restoration of the Sacred Feminine in all its tenderness, passion, divine ferocity, and surrendered persistence.” But what does that really mean to the billions of people who live their lives in sound bites, plugged in, plugged out?

standing-rockIn a superbly written post, Vera de Chalambert writes “As the spirit of the Dark Mother hovers upon the collective waters, she has much to teach us. Kali is the great protectress and ultimate sacred activist. She is standing at Standing Rock, roaring against the black snake and the abuses of corporate capitalism. She is marching in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

She is here mourning the dying out of species and showing her terrible tongue at the shocking xenophobic, nationalist regressionism swallowing the planet. She is the changing of the tides, and she meaphotograph-by-brent-stirton-national-geographicns business. She has come to burn up the old paradigm of separation and transfigure the collective heart.

Scientists tell us we live amidst the 6th extinction. Every 20 minutes, another species disappears from our planet. Our oceans are dying, our rivers are burning. Kali beckons us to embrace our sacred fury and let our heart roar for all living beings. Like her, we must rise as protectors, else perish as fools. She knows that we belong to each other and share one fate.”

Kali, the Dark Goddess is the giver and taker of Life. Hekate, the Dark Goddess, who stands at the crossroads. Hel, Ereshkigal, the Black Madonna, Sara-la-Kali, the Morrigan, the Badb, the Cailleach Bheur, Sheela na Gig, Divine Rotting Hags. Dark Goddess all.8b41931fd79ddf7540a720e1db1c247d

I associate Pluto with the Dark Goddess – a female deity of the Underworld; I do see this as a Dark Time, part of a cycle that will be unsettling, disruptive and as necessary and as inevitable as the winter that comes before the spring.  Jupiter opposes Uranus—December 2016, March 2017 and September 2017— a wake-up call, shaking things up, bringing unexpected shocks, sudden change for us collectively as well as personally. Mercury turned Retrograde on December 19th when the US electoral college certified Donald Trump as the 45th president, a regressive turn of events? An opportunity to look within at our own prejudices, our own wasteful consumerism and exploitation?

We all collectively influence the uni-verse at a very deep level. The energy of the planets is never external. They are celestial mirrors. Our politicians are simply playing their part, speeding things along. On January 20th, Trump is sworn in as President when Saturn squares Mars (traditionally associated with strife and conflict, accidents and injury) and the expansive Jupiter/Uranus opposition is still in force, so the pace quickens, tension rises, a clarion call. This aspect suggests a theme of polarisation, the die is cast—losses and gains.

darker-8 Back in the 1930s, a Pluto/Uranus square brought social and economic crisis and the world went to war. The Pluto/Uranus conjunction of the 1960s brought the innocent idealism and light of the Counter Culture Movement, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the deadly herbicide agent Orange in Vietnam, the system of apartheid in South Africa. As Pluto and Uranus joined forces in a conjunction during that decade, Marshall McLuhan coined the term, “the global village”, The feminist movement of the 1960s and ’70s broke down barriers, and the Black Panthers raised their fists for civil rights. Hair became the symbol of freedom and power. From 2007 to 2015, Pluto has been in a tense square aspect to Uranus, a theme that overshadowed global events and will continue to do so over the coming years. If we track the planetary cycles back through his-story, there have been no quick fixes.

We want it darker.

Leonard Cohen, in his final and prophetic album, writes chillingly:

Magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name
Vilified, crucified, in the human frame
A million candles burning for the help that never came… we want it darker.

ff0be5bf172d37e026b0ad0741d06914The issues that were not fully addressed during the 1960s now require our most urgent attention: the age-old issue of war as the only solution to boost capitalism, establish power bases, dominate and subjugate will raise its gory head. Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn suggest that these issues will become increasingly explosive as Pluto squares Jupiter, three times between November 2016 and August 2017.darker-2

 

What the world needs now is a grass-roots movement that is willing to serve in practical ways. The movement seeded in the 1960s by Birkenstock-wearing flower children must now be imbued with the energy of the Dark Goddess with her angry eyes and breasts with nipples of claws. But the old injunction, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth will leave us blinded, toothless. His-story has left a grim and gristly record of the bones of the intelligentsia, writers, artists, and those who dare to speak up against oppression. And yet, as Martin Luther King declared, “darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that.”

We are not defined by external forces. We are not trapped in our his-story, the purgatory of our tribal mind. We can make new choices, as we we cross this threshold into this new year. Leonard Cohen said, “ To offer oneself at the critical moment when the emergency becomes articulate. Its only when the emergency becomes articulate can we create the willingness to serve.”

amma

On January 1st, the Sun will rise again. The moon will cast her silvery light across the contours of our Mother Earth. “The grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere, the dew is never all dried at once, a shower is forever falling, vapour ever rising…” wrote the man who inspired a nation and a president to set aside land for the magnificent American national parks, John Muir.

Things may not be solved. But we can offer ourselves. We can serve with strong hearts.

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I’m Still Standing

music-festival-1“Donald Trump is the  best live performer who doesn’t sing and doesn’t play a musical instrument,” Sir Elton John once quipped.

He’s promised Brexit Plus Plus Plus. He’s promised to Make America Great Again. He’s the man in the golden jet who will run Apprentice America like a business.

The Power Base of the world is slipping and protectionism and nationalism are sandbags against the rising tide. The reality TV US Presidential Election campaign and Donald Trumps election as President may have come as a shock to many though “it’s written in the stars. As Pluto moves through the sign of Capricorn (2008 to 2024) expect to be confronted with all those things we have ignored, disowned in our smiley- face-have-a-nice-day-consciousness. Any thing that has outlived its purpose, is rotten, in need of amputating will be irrevocably destroyed—within those megalithic bastions of Power in our governments and in big business, in our personal lives and in the dynamics of our relationships.

trumpThe last time Pluto was in Capricorn, the American colonies rejected the British Monarchy and declared themselves independent of Great Britain by taking up arms and revolting (1765 to 1783 ) declaring that all men are created equal and that they have the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. It’s the child-like  pursuit of fun and happiness that has come up against the hollowed out heart of America today where there are no winners and many disillusioned and dis-empowered losers.

“ The winner takes it all
The loser standing small
Beside the victory
That’s her destiny…”

hope-2This year, the insidious Neptune-Saturn square (26 November 2015, June 18 2016 & Sept 10 2016)  brought us Brexit and waves of refugees. Walls,  borders and boundaries (Saturn ) crossed with redemption, glamour, illusion and delusion (Neptune). Many people declared their own Brexit and walked away from relationships where they felt victimised, hemmed in and trapped.

Jupiter moved into the sign of  Libra in September. Many astrologers consider this enormous gas giant to herald “luck” and “good fortune”. But large-bellied Jupiter also inflates and expands and takes things to the extreme. So when Jupiter comes to square Pluto three times between November 23rd  2016 and early August 2017, the optimistic Jupitarian drive to achieve success and influence will be tinged with Plutonian ruthlessness, obsessiveness, fanaticism and extremism. Pluto is about power and survival. Pluto’s realm is the underworld where treasure lies buried in the fathomless depths of our unconsciousness. When Pluto meets Jupiter, the impetus to succeed, the single-minded belief that you are destined for greatness, no matter how many bodies you have to step over to get to the top of Mount Olympus, may be carried to the extreme. Jupiter is about excess, perhaps over-estimating, over-reaching the mark at any cost, and when this energy combines with Pluto’s primitive instinctual survival, we’re in Jurassic Park.

0813-man-made-indoor-clouds-belgium-670Human history is a record of the rise and fall of civilizations, of revolutions that promise freedom to the oppressed and leave scorched earth and the blackened stumps of smoldering hopes and dreams. Carl Johan Calleman talks of a Sixth Wave of Creation and a dark age for global civilization in terms of rational thinking. “ The darkness is evident in an almost complete lack of rationality on the Trump side, but also in the role that conspiracy thinking has come to play in it… People are unaware that we have gone into a night, which may bring out the shadow side in many human beings, an unprecedented tendency has emerged to project this darkness onto others. This is the reason that despite the fact that Trump is a billionaire with many obvious patriarchal and Hitler-like traits, his supporters tend to project these supremacist traits onto the opposing side.  Hitler was elected and took dictatorial powers in Germany exactly at a shift to a night (in the Seventh Wave) and blamed (projected) all the difficulties of the German people after a lost war on an international conspiracy. Something similar may now come to happen in the United States. ” 

trump-1For most of us, 2017 will bring a heady mix of tension, rapid change, extremes, single-minded determination to succeed as Jupiter opposes Uranus ( January, March and August 2017 ) to add a lightening blot of the unexpected upset into the mix. Change is  necessary for our evolution. Change is the momentum of Life. And if Brexit and the political circus in America seem far removed from your life today, know that everything is interconnected, pulsating, set in motion at the slightest flutter of a butterfly’s wings.  Our challenge is to remain supple and pliable as the winds of adversity blow across the planet. To stay standing when everything about us is falling apart. To trust that the changes we fear are the very ones that might catapult us from the cocoon of our ordinary lives and give us wings to fly.

 

 

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Sacrifice

sacrifice 1Make America Great Again. It’s a call to action that offers the promise of something tangible amidst the vague rhetoric and mud-slinging in America’s House of Cards.  Pluto has been opposing the Sun of the American chart all through 2014 and 2015. The Titan Nation is approaching the end of a cycle with its Pluto Return in 2023/2024 and all that is rotten, untenable for the evolution of America will be pruned over the coming years.

Who will tend to the Garden? To some, Donald Trump’s appeal is crazy. With his fly-away corn-yellow hair secured beneath a baseball cap, the ageing billionaire steps up to the podium and delivers a message that entertains some and baffles others. He’s the Jester, the Comedian, the Wizard of Oz. He offers to a population fed on a banal diet of Reality TV and processed food a message as feel-good as a bucket of KFC. American author, David Eggers, writes, Is it more troubling, or less troubling, knowing that no one in the audience really cares what he says? And could it be that because Trump’s supporters are not all drawn from the lunatic fringe, but in fact represent a broad cross-section of regular people, and far more women than would seem possible or rational, that he could actually win?

For more astrology listen to this week’s podcast:

imagesX0JLUBI0America’s back yard is a tangle of weeds. From the outside looking in, we can glimpse the wood, not the trees.  Neptune and Saturn have been in square aspect since last November. These three squares symbolise what is going on collectively in a world where young men die as they dance and in Europe, refugees in threadbare clothing risk their lives in flimsy boats. The middle square occurred on June 18th when Saturn was at 12 degrees Sagittarius and Neptune at 12 degrees Pisces. Those of us with planets or angles at these degrees will be sensitised to the opposing energies of these two planets as we confront a choice between whether to be in Fear or to have Faith in a world that seems poised on the brink of madness.

The final square will be on the 10th of September this year when both planets are at 10 degrees of their respective signs and it will be interesting to see how things play out on the political stage in November. Saturn calls for realism and practicalities. Neptune reflects a facet of the collective consciousness that calls for some kind of sacrifice. With Neptune there is an irrational emotional identification that sweeps us along in a swirling murmuration. Trump may represent the distracting delight and glamour of Neptune as he says inappropriate things into the microphone and Elton John’s Tiny Dancer heralds his arrival at rallies with lyrics that have absolutely no relevance at all to the gravity of political office.

sacrifice 13Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you’ll marry a music man
Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand…

Trump’ s birth chart resonates with the chart of the USA.  Trump’s Gemini Sun squares Neptune in the US chart and there’s an interesting Mercury Venus/Jupiter/Sun contact. He is a mouth-piece for the collective psyche at this point in American history. The US chart has Sun square Saturn and Trump has Saturn conjunct Venus, a painfully self-deprecating aspect that builds a defense as thick as the soon-to-be-extinct rhino’s hide against rejection, feelings of inadequacy or vulnerability.

Yet, with Saturn-Neptune contacts there tends to be a blind spot which contains the seeds of sacrifice of some kind. If we look back in history to previous Saturn-Neptune contacts there is a sense of a collective sacrifice involved.

Saturn square Neptune in 1909/1910 heralded the Suffragette hunger strikes, the Saturn square Neptune in 1944/1945 birthed the Atomic Bomb and the V1 V2 rockets that reigned terror and destruction on Germany.

In 1963 the square manifested as Vietnam and the Counter Culture. In 1979-1980 we had Thatcher and Reagan and in 1998/1999 the seeds of the Financial crash were sown by the internet stock boom.

Neptune is an outer planet. It’s not personal. Astrologer, Liz Greene once referred to Neptune as death by drowning… an intoxicating woman at gravepull into something bigger than ourselves that envelops us into something that is beyond our individual understanding. The numinous quality of Neptune may draw us into situations where we lose our sense of clarity. We believe the promises of redemption offered by self-appointed Messiahs posing as politicians. And then perhaps these Messiahs themselves must be sacrificed, engulfed in Neptunian waters  to atone, to redeem something deeply off-centre in a world where there is so much polarisation, so much disconnection from Manley’s “ the dearest freshness deep down things.”

sacrifice 2Neptune is the silver screen, the make-believe world of film and television. Neptune may dissolve or distort our sense of reality or expose our sense of personal inadequacy which is Saturn.

The show is not over. When the last Saturn – Neptune square in September lifts the green curtain… The Tiny Dancer will sing.

So at this time of the Solstice, let’s take a moment to pause. To stand still long enough to allow clear vision and courage to anchor us amidst hype and confusion. In the words of poet and mystic John O’Donahue, “May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.”

Elton John, Sacrifice

Neptunian Ocean by Pierre Carreau

 

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Hard Time

0311-scottish-highlands-snowstorm-714We’re at the threshold of a new month which contains the seed of new possibility. The month of March is named after Mars, the god of war. And this month, conflict and strife continue to rasp and rattle across the globe.

Frustration festers beneath the scab of these acts of violence. Territory and  wealth are clasped in the hands of only a very few on this planet.

 

hard time 1

Hoary old bastions of power and authority are in a process of  rupture as they no longer serve our collective evolution. This has been mirrored by the Pluto-Uranus square which has been in orb since 2008 and is now separating. So much in our modern world has changed and yet so much remains just the same: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Despite the financial crash and property bubble burst, despite the bombs that are taped to the bodies of young men and women, there are still no new financial, political or social systems to replace those that have out served their evolutionary purpose. Ideology has become a smokescreen for a castrated Mars energy that seeks scapegoats – white, black, Christian or Moslem in simplistic, formulaic rhetoric – them and us. The much reviled Donald Trump serves as a mouth piece for the great sludge of humanity and dares to give voice to what so many only think about: our prejudices our greed. He speaks through the polarized prism. Them and us. In his crassness lies something that resonates with those who live their lives like worker bees, so lightly dispensed with when profits are down. Perhaps it will take a global catastrophe to irrevocably destroy old systems and structures. It will necessitate brave new choices to build a-new with original materials.

March has been a special month astrologically.  Every six months we have a pair of special lunations that we call eclipses. Eclipses enclose certain themes at certain times. Some astrologers call eclipses ‘wild cards’. They tend to present quite uncompromisingly, situations that may present to us those yes or no kind of choices that challenge our glib promises, that compel us, like territorial animals, to move away from the familiar safety of basic ground.

 

hard time 3There have been two eclipses this March. A  new moon solar eclipse in Pisces and  a full moon partial lunar eclipse in Libra. If any of these eclipses spotlighted the personal planets in your own birth chart (they would be at 18 degrees Pisces or 3 degrees Libra) you may have had to make some kind of choice to make some lasting changes in the way you  perceive the world around you or examine how authentically you relate to those around you.  The effect of the solar eclipse will last for six months, so  as March folds into the arms of April give yourself permission to pause in the frenetic  over-scheduled busyness of your life and gently observe your inner landscape and what you truly value so that you may be Graced with a new realisation.

birds flying

Eclipses fly in pairs. The ones in March  re-activated another pair of eclipses that occurred last September – a  new Moon eclipse at 20 degrees Virgo and one at 4 degrees Aries ( the polarity to Libra ) So the planets that rule the signs of Virgo and Aries, Mercury and Mars symbolize our restless attention deficit minds and our primal urges. As we review the month of March, gently consider how did we evangelize, idolize or hold too tightly onto those convictions and thought loops that imprison us like convicts behind the bars of un-examined thinking or explosive impulse?   Hard time 2

Hard times are a choice even if the only choice we have is a change in our perception of our circumstances or how we see what is unfolding globally. We can choose to attribute good or bad to every thought, every behaviour that pricks our skin or pierces our hearts. Everything is interconnected. “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe,” wrote environmental philosopher John Muir.

Spiritual teacher Neale Donald Walshe writes, “no one does anything they do not want to do,”  says  “You always have a reason, usually, a pretty good one, for doing what you are doing and choosing what you are choosing. Be careful not to convince yourself that you are doing something against your will…be honest with yourself as to why you are choosing to do a particular thing. Then, do it gladly, knowing that you are always getting to do what you want.

The statement “I have no choice” is a lie. You can choose.

So select the outcome that you most prefer.  Isn’t that power?”older couple kissing

Seinabo SeyHard Time

For astrology consultations on Skype or in person and for more information about workshops please email me on ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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