Joe Biden Tag

November 19, 2022 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

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 crises—in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, environment and more—is 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 life—the 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 6^th 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 3^rd 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 20^th and will make its third and final semi-square to Uranus on December 23^rd, 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 18^th, 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 22^nd, 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

February 13, 2022 In Astrology, General By Ingrid Hoffman

Red White and Blue—Reimagining America —As Pluto Returns.

And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us—Pablo Neruda.

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 changed.

When Pluto slowly moves across the horoscopes of nations, what has been collectively repressed, conveniently ignored, rises to the surface.

Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 as the fissures in financial systems widened and the blight in governments exposed disturbing division and misuse of power. As Pluto razes down façades with relentless ruthlessness, it also regenerates, and in Capricorn this means governments, police, corporations, infrastructures.

As Leonard Cohen released his prophetic single, You Want It Darker in the September of 2016, Pluto and Jupiter were forming a square that intensified in January 2020 by conjunction. Neptune, purveyor of contagion, illusion, deception, and deceit, slipped in behind the green curtain, a making a slippery trine to Mercury in the US birth chart. The star-spangled banner fluttered in the winds of change.

Pluto’s opposition to Mercury in America’s birth chart (2017-24) reminds us that the foundations of The Land of the Free are dug deep into the black earth of genocide, slavery, and appalling exploitation of the natural world. Mercury presides over communication, intelligence, propaganda, paranoia, media, and travel. Old certainties are unmoored.

This month, America experiences its first Pluto Return (February 22^nd) as Pluto circles back to 27° Capricorn, returning to the place it started from on July 4^th, 1776 when the nation of America was born. Pluto moves slowly through the darkness of outer space, so we’re collectively steeped in Pluto’s darkness which permeates American culture well into the 2040s.

A Collective meeting with Fate.

Mercury, Venus, and Mars escort Pluto this month, accentuating the caution, contraction and discipline that has been attributed to the archetype of Capricorn, a sign ruled by frugal Saturn.

Banners of “freedom” flutter alongside boarded-up shops that offer cold comfort to the homeless as howling ghosts of debt haunt governments and the millions who have lost jobs and homes during the pandemic. As the rich continue to shore up colossal gains and coal factories continue to feed the illusionary bitcoin industry, grandiose Jupiter sails nonchalantly through the heavens, trailing promises of salvation.

Jupiter meets nebulous Neptune in early April, an obtuse union that inflates blind faith and optimism, engorges debt balloons that will explode as Jupiter moves into heated Aries in early May.

The triple conjunction of Venus, Mars and Pluto herald a sobering warning, perhaps a small crack in our collective denial, as Pluto returns to 27° Capricorn three times this year, (July and December.) This is a year that many believe is a make-or-painful-break year for Joe Biden as Pluto opposes his 8^th house Jupiter. Pluto also is in a tense T-square to Vice-President Kamala Harris’ Libra Sun/Aries Moon opposition.

As an impending catastrophe in Ukraine dominates mainstream media, the Moon makes her monthly round, ripening to fullness on February 16th in the sign of Leo.

Weeks of negotiation show no signs of progress and now as embassies hasten to withdraw their staff, and nations urge citizens to leave as Venus (diplomacy) and Mars (war) descend into Pluto’s blackness. Psychologist, Terry Real reminds us, “under patriarchy, you can be connected, or you can be powerful, but you can’t be both at the same time because power is power over, not power with, it is dominance. So, if you move into power, you lose connection.”

On March 6^th Venus and Mars move into Aquarius, activating the degree of the Saturn/Jupiter conjunction of December 21^st 2020, a union that symbolised the dawning of a new era.
Venus and Mars make a tense square to President Putin’s Venus in Scorpio from March 17th-23rd, energising his four Libran planets.

In our highly individuated narcissistic culture, we may ask what values are being unearthed… equality, liberty, diversity, or McCarthyism, Jim Crow, an idealised Camelot? As Pluto’s gravitational force dredges up the grisly truths that lie buried under streets and skyscrapers, America journeys down into the Underworld to be scooped out, humbled, reimagined and reborn. What do the colours of the American flag symbolise now as the earth shudders beneath our feet?

Pluto will be in Aquarius from 2024 to 2044 as we begin to make reparations for historic injustices and re-image a world where exploitation of people, animals and nature will be relegated to his-story and we (hopefully) begin to address the collective grief and trauma that defines the experience of so many people whose lives are still curtailed by inequality and blatant injustice.

The first Industrial Revolution was under way as Pluto moved through Aquarius. Herschel “discovered” Uranus, that planet associated with breakthroughs and revolution as Pluto moved through Aquarius. Captain Cook and William Bligh searched for new consumables in southern lands as Pluto’s passage through Aquarius marked the beginning of the climate crisis and a soulless sense of alienation and loneliness that now threatens our survival as a species.

Carl Jung used the word, Shadow to describe the repressed, denied aspects of our lives, and 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.

As we all experience the potent alchemy that strips us of our excess as we travel the via negativa, the road through the depths that leads us to what mythologist Michael Meade calls dark wisdom, may we trust Pluto’s power to pull from our souls what is most authentic and loving. May we transform our suffering into wisdom and compassion. May the monuments that we erect to our power and importance, topple.

Rilke speaks to the soul muscle and faith we all need in our grief-phobic, death-denying culture.

“…but the darkness pulls in everything: shapes and fires, animals and myself, how easily it gathers them—powers and people. And it is possible a great energy is moving near me. I have faith in nights.”

Please get in touch if you would like to book an astrology consultation or to find out more about webinars in 2022: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

April 19, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Practical Magic—Sun in Taurus—April 19th-May 21st.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions, he had money as well—Margaret Thatcher.

Money, digital currencies, bright shiny skyscrapers, land— wild, or tamed by industrial farming—are yoked to neck of The Bull.

As the Sun enters Taurus this month, this thing we call “money” calls our attention to what we value, to the money we have, or the money we long for. For most of us, our relationship with money is an emotional one, marked by tawdry secrets, cautionary tales, sleepless nights, and magical thinking. As the Sun moves into earthy Taurus, joined by Mercury and Venus, we’re reminded of the power of practical magic to alter the state of the material world. Magical thinking has been demoted to a response to acute stress and uncertainty: the lucky charms carried in the pockets of young men going off to war, the tiny talismans, rituals that come with the unshakeable belief that we can win the match, or the lottery. Author, Julia Cameron suggests in Faith and Will: Weathering the Storms in our Spiritual Lives, that we ask Higher Power to help us with our finances. This month, we pray, perform a ritual, light a candle, use our will to add a dollop of magical thinking to the mundane, as the winds of change scrape against all we thought was safe and sure.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence in her shoe… money makes the world go around and silver sixpences have morphed into cryptocurrency, symbolised by the seven-year transit of Uranus through Taurus, (2018-2026.) Uranus in Taurus has highlighted the climate crisis and accelerated the power-hungry cryptocurrency bull run which leaves such a heavy carbon footprint. China is now minting its own digital cash, “in a re-imagination of money that could shake a pillar of American power,” writes James T. Areddy in the Wall Street Journal. As Uranus shakes and shatters Taurean ground, this archetypal force of chaos and disruption reminds us that we are standing on the rim of the widening gyre between rich and poor. That even wealthy Samaritans with the best intentions can lose it all in what Joan Didion calls this “ordinary instant”. That for most of us there is no settling feeling of security when work is patchy; that money and a gig economy are incompatible bedfellows.

All through 2021, the Saturn/Uranus square will stir up the sediment of social inequality as the rich practice the art of elegant economics and swathes of homeless continue to forage on scraps and shelter beneath flimsy roofs of plastic. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction square Eris of 2020 continues to affect the lives of millions of people who don’t have the luxury of resting in bed as they recover from Covid. US President Joe Biden, who has a pragmatic earthy Taurus Moon, says, “don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” For those who live on the verges of society, there are no budgets. Just a continued search for a warm place to spread a strip of cardboard; perhaps a few silver coins to buy something to eat.

Money has no power of its own according to “Money Lady”, financial advisor and millionaire Suze Orman who says, “Self–worth equals net worth.” She links money with internal power. “You alone are the power source. You are the one who makes the choices to spend money, to save money, to borrow money… money is an amazing teacher; what you choose to do with money shows whether you are truly powerful or powerless.” Her words carry a potency that has brought her riches and fame. Yet for most of us, it’s the personal powerlessness that chafes and scrapes. Emma Mitchell writes in A Spell in the Wild, “late capitalism is not a meritocracy. We do not do well in life simply because we show up or try hard to be clever or well-behaved or good. Most often, people succeed because of the financial and institutional networks that sit behind them. From private education to parents who know important people in an industry to being able to afford property, to living in affluent areas with better health outcomes.”

The Age of Taurus (4,000-2,000 BCE) coincided with the prosperous river civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia; and for eons, the Bull and the Cow have been associated with wealth, with the flooding of the great rivers, the rich black sediments of the earth. Taurus, despite its association with the muscular bull, is associated with “the feminine”, which has been denigrated, distorted, disowned for thousands of years. Yet she is still there in the sharp green scent of green growing things, in the soft contours of the land, the artists brush that sweeps turquoise and violet across the tangerine skies at sunset. We know her indomitable presence that emerges in the daisies that turn their faces to the sun from cracks in the pavements, in sluggish city rivers filled with plastic, in filthy alleyways strewn with syringes and layered with human detritus where bright yellow dandelions grow.

Accompanying our global rite of passage, Pluto moves through Capricorn, (2008-2023) intensifying and complicating matters of the physical world, highlighting the “masculine” qualities that we glorify in our culture. Pluto turns Retrograde on April 27^th, and this retrograde journey lasts five months until Pluto stations direct on October 6^th . Retrogrades can feel disruptive especially if Pluto moves over planets and angles in our own birth chart. The intense energy of Pluto may compress and pulverise our tenuous relationship with what we grasp too tightly. Pluto destroys those things that have outlived their purpose; those things than no longer serve the evolution of the whole. As Pluto’s raw power activates our own birth chart, we finalise unfinished business, eliminate and end those things that must be ended, and we contain our own resilience, draw deep on our own rescources.

Expansive Jupiter dips into the dazzling and confusing waters of Pisces on May 13^th-July 28^th, and will return there for most of 2022, amplifying Piscean themes of compassion and suffering, illusion, and delusion. This is the realm of long-distance travel, higher learning, pharmaceuticals, High Hopes, and Grand Designs. Jupiter turns Retrograde on June 20^th, moving “backwards” through the cosmos till October 17^th (22° Aquarius) and will eventually join Neptune in Pisces in May 2022. Expect a sharp undertow that draws us back to those things that matter most in our lives right now as we continue to live amidst a global pandemic, economic recession, and the harsh reality of the climate crisis. Naturalist, John Muir wrote “everyone needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul alike.” As we are propelled from the comfort of the old, we may need to borrow the wisdom of the indigenous Americans—only when the last tree has died, and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.

As we face into the reality of many more years of mask-wearing, curtailed freedom, and economic thrift, may we discover that our health is our wealth, that there are diamonds in the dust of loss, and that good intentions are magical resources.

Please connect with me directly if you would like an astrology consultation: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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

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 14^th (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 20^th 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 28^th 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 30^th (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 2017–2024 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

September 21, 2020 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Small Great Things—Sun in Libra—September 22nd—October 23rd

But you know, you go on, right? Because what other choice have you got―Jodi Picoult

As the Sun moves into the sign of Libra at this turning of the seasons our “surge capacity”—as psychologist Ann Masten calls our human ability to stay the course during short term stressful situations—stretches to breaking point.

In the metaphorical language of astrology, the Libran part of our own birth chart will be illuminated for the next month as we practice and perfect the art of relating to others in an uncertain world, as we continually adjust, realign, re-establish our balance on the beam of life. Libra and Aries mark the Equinoxes. Aries is the beginning; Pisces the end. Libra is midway, a crossroads where the old converges with the new, where the winds of change blow across our lives, exposing the roots.

On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, news of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg ricocheted around an increasingly fragmented world. This diminutive octogenarian, who championed the rights of minorities in the most powerful court of America, has left us. She is mourned by all who loved and admired her indomitable spirit. Her intuitive Pisces Sun trines Pluto in Cancer, signifying her resilience and her power to bring about profound change in the system. Her Moon is most likely in uncompromising Scorpio (there is no record of her birth time). Her response to the then chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Joe Biden, who suggested that judges should lead society in some circumstances, carries enormous weight this week—judges must be mindful of what their place is in this system and must always remember that we live in a democracy that can be destroyed if judges take it upon themselves to rule as Platonic guardians.

This is the month of changing seasons and changing guardians. As we summons our last reserves of energy, the weary Sun begins to flag. The unthinkable has become normal as our civilization slides towards its end. Some of us embrace the soft comfort of denial. Some of us are outraged. We push back, we take to the streets. We trust no-one. At this time of balance and weighing up, it is intelligent reasoning that is needed. Don’t be distracted by emotions like anger, envy, resentment. These just zap energy and waste time… real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time,” said the Notorious RBG.

In the Tarot, Libra is Justice XI reflecting the advancement of culture, away from the “primitive” instinctual life. Perhaps it is this advancement of culture, our move away from our “primitive” and instinctual life that is the soul sickness of our age. Perhaps we were collectively ailing long before COVID-19 floated through the air, leaving us lost, adrift, in a strange new world. Perhaps it is this pandemic of our own narcissism that is mirrored in the media, in the behaviour of those we elect as our leaders, our addiction to the steady IV-drip of social media that is the pandemic that rages through the brittle scaffolding of this dying civilization.

The astrology indicates a period of turn-arounds, fuelled by Mars Retrograde—September 9^th to Friday, November 13^th —symbolising enmity, an increasing hard-right deep distrust of authority, online extremism that stretches the fissures in our societies, and opens the way for Redeemer/Savours to step in with a simple solution to mass unemployment and unwanted migrants. Saturn in Capricorn (authority figures, rules and restrictions) turns direct on September 29^th, and Pluto (plutocracy, trauma, trans-formation) switches direction on October 4^th, as does seductive Neptune (viruses, addictions, con-men, Redeemer/Saviours, the mirage that draws us into the belly of the whale) on November 28^th.

As the Sun moves through Libra many of us may be washing our hands, keeping our distance, hoping for the best as we try to keep our balance in a world that feels gaslit and murky right now. For so many of us, balance is something we may wistfully talk about when the rhythm of our days begins to gyrate, scattering the weight of worry like a mantle over our minds, and a world weariness that infuses the marrow of our bones.

The Sun, the symbol of our creative self-expression, is said to be in its fall, or debilitated in Libra. A perpetual state of balance is impossible to achieve, as we continually re-create ourselves amidst the complexities of our relationships and the events that are unfolding in the world right now. Balance is as capricious as the patterns of neuronal firing in our brains, as fleeting as our emotionally charged perceptions of the world around us.

The Equinox today signals movement and change that comes with the reassuring beginnings and endings of the seasons. Mercury, the winged messenger of the gods, moves into Scorpio on September 27^th and will turn Retrograde on October 14^th, slipping back into Libra on October 28^th, turning direct once more on November 3^rd, and diving back into Scorpionic waters on November 10^th; signifying the need for resilience and flexibility as lockdown measures are revised, as we cultivate a deeper awareness of our mental chatter that disturbs our peace, stirs our feelings.

Lévy-Bruhl and, later, Jung, wrote of the Participation Mystique. That mystical participation that can manifest in situations and material things in our lives. As the epicentres of civilization shudder across the globe, as America and Britain face their “Darkest Hour”, it will be the small gestures of love and kindness, the careful harnessing of our untamed thoughts, the brave reimagining of how this world could be, that keep us calm, help us to take one step at a time. Use these last precious stores of energy. There’s no going back. The Scales of Balance are poised. As we hold the tension of two opposing forces, a third way will emerge, transfiguring, regenerating. This is the beginning, the middle, and the end. We start from here.

For private astrology readings and more regular astrology updates please connect with me by email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from—T.S. Elliot

Small Great Things by Jodi Picoult