TrueHeartWork

September 20, 2023 In Astrology, Relationship, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Transitions—Full Aries Moon — September 29th.

We can’t make another person change his or her steps to an old dance, but if we change our own steps, the dance no longer can continue in the same predictable pattern. Harriet Lerner.

This is the month of changing seasons.

Bracken, the colour of butterscotch, swathes the hillsides. Diaphanous sea mists settle softly over lilac heather. As our wise bodies respond to the waning light, we may feel the need for more rest, more time alone, a yearning to revisit what has lain neglected in the extroverted brightness of summer. Change, like all initiations rearranges our feelings, evokes a profound stirring of the soul. Psychologist Harriet Lerner writes, “all of us have deeply ambivalent feelings about change. The will to change and the desire to maintain sameness coexist for good reason. Both are essential to our emotional well-being and equally deserve our attention and respect.”

At this turning point in the year, we might find value in turning over the material of our lives as we approach the autumn Equinox, remembering the way we were at the spring Equinox when the round of the year began a-new and the Sun moved into Aries.

Mercury turned direct just after the new moon in Virgo on September 14^th and now we navigate the territory of transition. Virgo is a mutable sign, symbolised by the wheat-bearing Virgin. As we reflect on what we have harvested this year, what we would like to keep and what we need to discard.

The Sun enters Libra on September 23^rd. As it moves over the equator, day and night are equal. This is the midpoint of the zodiacal round, representing the seasonal shift that accompanies endings, and beginnings. 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, practicing new dance steps, small, manageable moves.

The souls of the dead were weighed against the Feather of Truth by the ancient Egyptians, and this month, for many of us, there will be a sense of arriving at a crossroads of a situation that requires sound judgement and careful consideration. 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. Libra is symbolised by a pair of balancing scales. Libra is an air sign, and the element of air may make us feel unsettled, unsheltered, and ungrounded. At this time of the Equinox, as the seasons shift, we may feel we need more rest, foods that support our digestion. In Ayurveda, autumn is the vata season, a time to enjoy grounding, warming soups or hearty casseroles.

As a slow soft light settles over the meadows, the moon is ripening as she circles the heavens. The full moon this month (6° Aries on September 29^th) sweeps across the birth charts of those of us with personal planets and points between 2-10° Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn, symbolically illuminating what is ripe and ready to be gathered into our consciousness; how we seek closeness or distance in the intricate dance of relationship, knowing who we can count on when the going gets tough. This full moon speaks to what author and psychologist, Harriet Lerner describes so succinctly as “that delicate balance between separateness and connectedness…as we confront the challenge of sustaining both without losing either.”

One day after the full moon, Mercury moves out of shadow and will cross the threshold into Libra on October 5^th.

Mars has been in opposition to Chiron since mid-September and this painful energy will become more intense around the equinox, (September 23^rd – 24^th) so this lunation may offer an opportunity to heal and repair a rift, rebalance a relationship that has become lopsided in terms of power and mutual respect.

The Venus Retrograde cycle which began on July 23^rd at 28° Leo echoes an earlier station-retrograde cycle 8 years ago when Venus transited this sector of the horoscope. Venus retrograde cycles are important, as they don’t happen frequently. These symbolic forty days and forty nights are times for quiet introspection, honest and serious appraisal of who and what we value, what feels authentic and real right now.

Now, as Venus accelerates through Leo, she reveals what was stirred up in June as she squared Jupiter for the first time (June 11^th) and then Uranus (July 2^nd) with three more squares culminating with the final Venus/Uranus square on September 29^th, that may reveal the gap between our inner values and what the tribal mind deems as respectful and relational.

If you have personal planets or Angles between 10° and 25° Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius, this Venus/Uranus/Jupiter sequence of squares carries a super-charged energy around those things you value: literally money or possessions, property, as well as those you hold dear to your heart.

Venus is now accelerating direct in Leo and she makes a final volatile square to unpredictable Uranus on September 29^th, which might add sizzle and excitement, but may also bring a sudden realisation that more spaciousness, more independence, more fun is needed in a relationship.

This week’s Russell Brand exposé reveals a culture still marinating in toxic masculinity as feminine Venus blazes through Leo, shining her numinous radiance on the dark underbelly of exploitation and misogyny. Carl Jung is often quoted as saying, “until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” The Nodes of Fate and Pluto have been respectively square and opposing the Venus/Saturn square Chiron in the birth chart of Russell Brand, who has been accused of rape, sexual predation, and emotional abuse. Astrologer Liz Greene describes contacts between Venus and Saturn as “one of the most painful contacts to deal with… more than any other aspect, Venus-Saturn appears to strike at a person’s happiness…a nagging discontent and the feeling that one will never be able to be happy or take pleasure in life.” As Youtube suspends Russell Brand’s revenues, promoters pull his appearances and his publisher pauses all future book projects, the second of three Pluto oppositions to Brand’s Venus/Saturn/Chiron closes in on the full moon, and the noxious fall-out will linger all through next year and the next.

“It is the area of relationships that human beings are the most vulnerable, and consequently it is here they can make the greatest steps in growth and self-understanding,” writes Liz Greene. This is the month of changing seasons, of incremental or more noticable changes in our own lives.

We hold the tension of opposites with Aries (self) and Libra (other) in all our relationships. In those precious bonds of love and loyalty that bind. In those untethered casual encounters that so easily tilt and topple. 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, bringing us closer to ourselves, and to others.

“The strongest relationships are between two people who can live without each other but don’t want to.” Harriet Lerner.

To book an astrology consultation, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arundhati Roy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carl Sagan.

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

July 14, 2023 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

In Each Other’s Care—Cancer New Moon—July 17th.

Emotional dependency is not immature or pathological. It’s our greatest strength—Sue Johnson.

After the hottest June on record, July’s green days stretch languidly towards the blue dome of the horizon.

We’re now past the midsummer solstice, the turning point in the solar/lunar cycle. Now the Sun moves through Cancer and the days grow shorter as we circle back into the dark.

A powerful lineage of moon-goddesses encircles Cancer. Cancer is bound to the archetype of the feminine, the creatrix mother, who cradles us in protective arms. Cancer is associated with the element of life-giving water, with feelings that ebb and flow like the tides. Wombs, cradles, caves, cellars, hotels, and homes are all Cancer-ruled. Cancer encompasses the comfort of kinship, the safety of belonging.

As the Sun and Moon meet in Cancer, we attune to the cry of something needing our fierce protection, perhaps without holding on too tightly to the outcome. This might be a physical property or an energetic boundary, a now-adult child, soon to leave home, or the grief we feel as a relationship fractures and we must let go.

This New Moon opposes uncompromising Pluto, a regenerative energy, charged with both destruction and rebirth. Pluto/Moon transits are fleeting, yet this could be an opportunity to resolve a destructive power struggle in a relationship or change a thought or a behaviour that keeps on producing the same result. Einstein is often quoted as saying, “no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it”. And in the superb symbolism of astrological language, this new moon also squares Chiron, offering a way to shelter in each other as we repair and re-connect deeply once more.

For millennia, indigenous wisdom has described a vital energy force, a biofield that permeates our energy system. If we are bathed in anger, chronic anxiety, or despair in our homes or offices, these disturbances to our energy systems will colour our interactions with others and the world we see around us. They will eventually manifest physically. Writes Stan Tatkin, author of the new book, In Each Other’s Care, “your personal growth depends on your relationship remaining safe and secure at all times, because if either of you feel the least bit unsafe, untrusting, or insecure, you won’t have the internal resources for personal growth. Instead, your mind and body will be preoccupied by doubt and threat.”

The highs and lows of our cherished relationships intensified this month.

Mars moved into detail-orientated Virgo on July 10^th making an exact opposition to Saturn on July 20^th-21^st, as we re-set our intention to connect to our hearts, and manage the tendency to return to default settings of anger, anxiety, or negativity.

On July 12^th, the Moon’s North Node slipped back from Venus-ruled Taurus into Mars-ruled Aries. The South Node is now in Libra, a powerful cosmic push to cleanse and release old ways of relating and stretch beyond our cultural conditioning, our calcified roles as we bring our heartfelt intention to relating more generously to those around us.

The Moon’s Nodes aren’t planets, they are sensitive points that mark the moon’s path around her sister Earth as she crosses the ecliptic, and they move backwards through the signs of Aries and Libra till January 2025. In Western astrology, the North Node is what the heart longs for, a celestial arrow pointing at our evoltionary path towards our becoming and engaging with more sensitivity and conscious awareness with the web of connection that unites all living things. Yet, going towards what we yearn for so often feels uncomfortable and alien. The South Node pulls us back to familiar places of ease or discomfort. We may attempt to follow our North Node pathway towards growth and fulfillment of our birth right, our destiny; yet we may hestitate, turn back at an important threshold crossing as we succumb to fear of failure or rejection.

South Node behaviours are usually most apparent when we are children. They are easy to express because they are often safe and familiar. As the South Node moves through Libra, the shadowy aspects of that sign will be evident in our relationships and of course played out in world events.

Libra is a cool aesthetic air sign, frustratingly prone to procrastination, compromise, or injustice that festers in a relationship built on flimsy scaffolding. The North Node in Aries is bolstered by assertive Mars the war-god. This is where we collectively and personally will need to find the courage to defend someone or something we care for. If we’re coupled, it’s unlikely that our relationship dance has always been in sync, without strife. As the world becomes increasingly complex, more preoccupied with virtual realities, we might notice how we distance and avoid being in this reality, how we take each other for granted, ignore our partner’s needs and longings. This nodal shift asks us to take care of unfinished business, focus on what is right in the relationship, reassess what is not working, and be kind and respectful to each other.

As the Nodes move across our own birth chart, we will need to rouse our inner war goddess, and act with focus and determination when boundaries are crossed, implementing grand, generous gestures to repair, amend, make things right.

Acts of kindness, sincere words of appreciation and gratitude calm the amygdala which continuously scans the environment for threat. Touch and eye contact decrease depression, boost oxytocin levels, and strengthen the immune system.

“Unconditional love is reserved for children and pets,” writes psychologist Stan Tatkin. “Your lives as well as your happiness depend on each other as competent caregivers. Your abilities to be better people, creative, successful, good parents, good friends, good employers, hinge on you being good at each other.”

As the Nodes travel through Aries and Libra, may we devote our energies to fostering nourishing and tender connections, to attuning to the needs and longings of those we love.

“Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. The world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.”
Marianne Williamson.

To book an astrology appointment, please get in touch, I would love to hear from you: ingrid@trueheartwork.com