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May 1, 2023 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Light Magic—Full Moon Lunar Eclipse—May 5th.

The miracle is light. The miracle is that we rise again out of suffering. The miracle is the persistence of the soul to find itself, to look hard into the darkness, reach back, and grasp remnants of ourselves. The miracle is that we create ourselves anew—Tina Davidson.

May arrives in an extravagance of blossom, sunlight that shimmers over undulating meadows festooned with buttercups and dancing daisies.

We’re mid-way between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. The Moon is waxing as she moves through the earthy sign of Virgo today, reminding us of primordial connection to the earth, an ancient memory of ritual that is rooted in the cycles of nature.

May Day, Beltane, is one of the oldest recorded Gaelic festivals, celebrated for centuries with May Kings and May Queens, gathering of communities, much bawdy merry making and dancing around May poles.

But in the darkness of the outer reaches of our solar system, Pluto, named after the Roman god of the underworld, begins its five-month Retrograde journey on this May Day, accenting the unknown and unknowable, prompting us to surrender, let go, and renew. Pluto’s influence can’t be grasped with the intellect. It relates to something archaic, those deep reservoirs of ancient memory, those heavy layers of accreted history, those fearful, shadowy realms of ourselves where we hesitate to look hard into the darkness; where we reach back and grasp the remnants of ourselves… and create ourselves anew.

Both Pluto and Mars preside over the full moon Scorpio eclipse on May 5^th, augmenting the emotional charge that courses through our heart field and bathes every cell of our body. The lunar eclipse opposes a Sun/Uranus conjunction in Taurus – material possessions, personal values, stability, and security—which may be suddenly toppled and overturned or liberated by unpredictable Uranus while the full Moon in Scorpio emphasises complexities, intangibles, mysteries, and the inevitable necessity of letting go our old stories, our familiar places of discontent.

The full Moon lunar eclipse illuminates the lavish £100 million carefully choreographed coronation spectacle, the cost of which will be borne by the taxpayer, not the billionaire King. Screened from public view, a private anointing with holy oil blessed in Jerusalem will emphasise the sacred import of the ceremony, a heavy 361 year old solid gold bejewelled crown with a comfortable padding of ermine will be placed on the royal head. Those who will be watching the ceremony will be invited to swear allegiance to the monarch and his descendants. The richly decorated robes and weighty sceptre will add magic and spectacle to this ancient rite rooted in patriarchy. “Charles III will share in a ritual that originally marked out the kings of Israel—Saul and David and Solomon—as the adopted ones of God. The 21st century will be joined by means of a living ceremony to the bronze age.” Writes Tom Holland.

Charles Philip Arthur George was born on an eclipse as the Sun moved through Scorpio, just as the Moon waxed full in Taurus. The Sun and Moon were conjunct the fated South Node. The Nodes are “destiny points” in a horoscope and Regal Leo was rising when he was born, as it will be at the time of his long-awaited coronation on May 6^th.

The solar eclipse of April 20^th conjoined Charles’s Taurus Moon, which was confronted by a square from Pluto. His Moon will be activated by Pluto all through this year and next, most notably on May 18^th as Jupiter moves into Taurus and makes a conjunction. As Pluto, now moving Retrograde, squares his moon for the second time, with three more squares in 2024, we may imagine an emergent awakening to deeper emotional truth that may be accompanied by a private personal metamorphosis that will not be without pain.

Charles was born with a painful Chiron/Sun conjunction which may have shaped his internal narrative, especially in his formative years a sense of being an outsider, a maverick, flawed, different. Might he in later years, seek to heal or reshape the institution of the monarchy, usher it into the 21^st Century? Transiting Chiron, the centaur associated with wounding and healing has been moving back and forth over his midheaven since May 2021. Mercury in Taurus is moving Retrograde now at the time of the coronation, while the Nodes of Fate will make a once in every 18-year return to his birth chart. So this coronation is most certainly a meeting with Fate. The way ahead may not be smooth for the elderly king. Disruptive Uranus, planet of upheaval and revolution, transits opposite Charles’s Sun, and contacts the North Node in his house of reputation, career, social standing.

The symbolism of the whimsical hand-painted invitation speaks to the romantic and artistic Venus/Neptune conjunction right at the root of his birth chart. Over the many years as May King in waiting, he has been an outspoken advocate for the preservation of architecture and the environment, for his alternative beliefs in the curative powers of homeopathy.

The jovial face of The Green Man dominates the flower-festooned design. Carved into ancient oak pews and ribbed ceilings of musty old churches, the Green Man has remained a potent symbol of fecundity and renewal for centuries.

We may be dazzled, indifferent, sceptical, or hostile as this new defender of all faiths is crowned in the dark of a Scorpio Moon. Yet, as the earth positions herself between the two luminaries and casts her shadow across the face of the Moon, we may sense the regenerative potency in these ancient rituals. As the glittering crown is raised over the head of this May King who also bears the name of the legendary Arthur, we may, even for just a brief moment, allow ourselves to be transported to a time of miracles and wonder, to fabled kings who reigned over England’s green and pleasant land.

To book an astrology consultation, or to join me and spiritual guide, Eileen Heneghan on June 24^th as we celebrate the Summer Solstice please email me: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Midsummer Celebration of Light—June 24^th

Breathe in the Light, the sweet scent of flowers. Today we celebrate this ancient feast of fire, the pairing of the Sun and the Moon, the strength and vitality of Midsummer.

Join archetypal astrologer Ingrid Hoffman and energetic healer and teacher, Eileen Heneghan for an inspiring afternoon of story, myth, folklore, and meditation at this still point of the year.

Our Wise Woman gathering will be on Zoom with plenty of time to reflect and to share, to deepen our connection with others, to explore new ways of finding ourselves a-new.

Together we will allow ourselves to be transported to the lush green hills of County Kerry, as we immerse ourselves in a powerful old Irish story of love and triumph. There will be plenty of time to reflect on what it teaches us about how we might live more authentically, how we might forge our souls, in challenging circumstances; how to make sense of a world that is changing so fast.

Join us on Saturday, June 24^th, 14.00-15.30.

Payment in advance: £20 via Paypal or €23.

Zoom link will be sent to you via email.

Contact Ingrid Hoffman: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

April 17, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

The Edge of Becoming—New Moon Hybrid Solar Eclipse—April 20th.

There is no place so awake and alive as the edge of becoming—Sue Monk Kidd.

This week, the Moon withdraws into the darkness, slipping between the familiar body of the Earth and the fierce light of the Sun. This new Moon invites us to stand expectantly at the edge of something new.

New Moons speak of fertile new beginnings. They signify those edges of becoming that make us feel young, alive again. And yet, as the Moon lays her soft white body over the Sun tonight, we may be overcome with a strange tiredness, a listlessness that sucks at our energy as if our own life-force was eclipsed.

This rare hybrid solar eclipse at the very last degree of Aries signifies an ending and the birth of something new, which may be a change in perspective, a new way of being in the world, a reliquishment of the need to hold on so tightly. If we imagine the moon’s pale body briefly obscuring the light of the sun, we may sense, in the darkness, the soft presence of a deeper knowing, the urgent thrust of life force that compels us to move beyond our fear.

Eclipses act like wild cards. They drop into our birth charts or into the charts of nations, catapulting us from our place of comfort, taking us to the edge. They fizz with an urgency that may reshape our choices and invite us to be more attentive to the longing of our soul. Hybrid solar eclipses occur only a few times each century. We will engage with the deeper meaning of this celestial event if this eclipse energises an axis or conjoins a personal planet in our birth chart.

Astrological Aries carries the heat of fire that ignites an ancient urge to battle and survive. Tonight we engage with the archetype of the heroine/hero. Tonight as we feel the firepower, we may be inspired by those who challenged patriarchy, dared to risk, to speak out. As we imagine the fierce courage and commitment of trailblazers like Cornish-born Emily Hobhouse who exposed the horror of the British concentration camps in South Africa and was an avid opponent of the first world war, or Jane Goodall who has worked tirelessly for the welfare and survival of primates, and writer and sage, Maya Angelou, (all born as the Sun moved through the flames of Aries,) we will sense the potency of this astrological archetype.

This Aries eclipse marks the beginning of the eclipse season that will last until October 28^th with this year’s final partial lunar eclipse (5° Taurus.) It charges the powerful, final degree of Aries (29° 50′) and belongs to a family of eclipses (Saros 7 North) that pertain to what astrologer Bernadette Brady describes as igniting “sudden passions and lust to birth and procreative drives that may catch people off guard and confront them with their own very deep passion which may have been hidden for many years.”

With a challenging square to Pluto and a weakening conjunction to Jupiter, this eclipse releases a renewing surge of energy from the heavens that may inspire us to confront a situation, or bravely relinquish our need to engage in a futile power struggle.

There’s nothing subtle about this hybrid eclipse. It conveys the qualities of Pluto’s long passage through Aquarius, which will influence world events and our own lives for the next 20 years. The effects of this solar eclipse will linger for six months and may manifest as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, financial and political crisis, socio-economic change.

The Sun advances into the steady earth sign of Taurus on April 20^th, as Mercury moves Retrograde in Taurus (April 21^st to May 14^th) bringing our attention to those things we value, perhaps quite literally our material possessions, property, finances, or income. As Pluto’s evolutionary influence threads through the collective consciousness, the AI arms race accelerates, spewing torrents of misinformation on social platforms. As AI research and tech leaders call in vain for a pause on the AI arms race, data warehousing expert, Dr Barry Devlin adds his voice to a group of concerned industry gurus and warns, “this rapid, profit-driven growth in generative AI which uses as its lexicon the clearly biased, deeply flawed, and completely un-curated corpus of internet text and imagery is a massive, unregulated social experiment.”

AI-generated art, writing, and photography scrapes billions of words and images from the internet without their creators’ knowledge or permission. The mythic-poetic symbolism of this first eclipse of 2023 draws us down into the Underworld of AI-generated deepfakes, a collective social experiment where we face not only ethical concerns, but also the loss of millions of jobs—actors, models and model agencies, artists, writers and photographers, accountants, and teachers, to name but a few, will be obsolete. Writes senior Vox reporter Sara Morrison, “Levi’s will be able to use AI models to show off its gloves, while the rest of us might be thrown into a new world where we have absolutely no idea what we can trust — one that’s even worse than the world we currently inhabit.”

She cautions, “if you see an image of Pope Francis strolling around Rome in Gucci jeans on Twitter, you might want to think twice before you hit retweet.”

At this time of emergence, we may not feel quite ready to emerge, to bravely step onto new ground. But this new Moon is charged with the grace of new beginnings, and we must step cautiously and bravely into an earth that is dying, a new world that is becoming.

Poet Rainer Maria Rilke offers these words of encouragement, “fear not the strangeness you feel. The future must enter you long before it happens. Just wait for the birth, for the hour of the new clarity.”

The significance of this rare eclipse can only be fully understood in silence. There may be times over the coming months, when we need to unplug from the peremptory dictates of technology and go within. As we stand bare-footed, rooted to the Earth, as we feel the steady presence of a tree, as we hear the sweet song of a river’s flow, we return again to a place of beginning.

Anne Lamott who was born under the sign of the Aries Ram asks “how do you begin? The answer is simple. You decide to.”

Join me for a Midsummer Celebration of Light—June 24^th
The Midsummer Solstice is a pivot point in the Great Wheel of the Year. A time of celebration and plenty, a time of magic and mystery, when the veil between the worlds is thin, the Sun is at its Zenith, and the world is infused with Light.

We’ll explore an old Irish story of love and triumph; we’ll attune to the phases of the moon and the best time to be newly creative.

We’ll journey with Eileen Heneghan in a soulful meditation and connect with the Light within.

Join us on Saturday, June 24^th, 14.00-15.30.

Price: £20 or EURO 23.

Zoom link will be sent to you via email.

Contact Ingrid Hoffman: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

April 4, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

The Balance of Heaven—Libra Full Moon—April 6th.

Your pain, your sorrow, your doubts, your longings, your fearful thoughts: they are not mistakes, and they are not asking to be ‘healed.’ They are asking to be held. Here, now, lightly, in the loving, healing arms of present awareness—Jeff Foster.

The Sumerians called the constellation of Libra Zib-ba An-na, “the balance of heaven.”

The Egyptians weighed the souls of the dead against the Feather of Truth in golden scales of balance.

At this time of pause and reflection celebrated with ritual and reverence in so many tradtions, we are called to hold ourselves tenderly at this point of stillness.

Tonight’s full moon makes an exact opposition to the Sun, Jupiter, and Chiron, the wounded healer, all warmed by the fire of Aries highlighting the ways we wound and heal in all our relationships, inviting us to bring harmony, beauty and balance in our own lives. As we cradle our pain and our sorrow, our doubts and our longings, may we also tend to our tired bodies while the full moon silvers the world with her light tonight.

The full moon holds the tension of opposites between two hot-headed Aries new moons (March 21^st and April 19^th). Alluring Venus in sensual Taurus disposits this full moon heightening her charm and her grace, a celestial reminder that we need more beauty, more sensual pleasure, more harmony and ease in our lives. Mercury joined Venus in Taurus on April 3^rd and begins to lose pace as he slides into shadow on April 7^th, the day after the full moon. We enter a Mercury Retrograde cycle in a fixed element of earth from April 21^st-May 14^th, which accents practical concerns like finances, property, working conditions, and importantly the most valuable rescource, our body and its needs. For those who have angles or planets at fixed degrees (5-15°) Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, or Aquarius, this will be an opportune time to attend to the most fundamental details of life. Jupiter will amplify themes of abundance or lack (finances, love and loneliness) when it enters Taurus in May and also accents that 15° point, turning Retrograde at 15° Taurus on September 4^th and moving direct again at 5° Taurus on New Year’s Eve.

As we contemplate the worth and the meaning of the associations that support or challenge us, this lunation illuminates the patterns in our relationships, and the part we play in braiding the ties that bind.

For some, this will be the moment in time when we harvest all the thoughts and emotions that have brought us to a place of ending. This will be a time of departure from a relationship that for far too long has provided scant nourishment. Within every human heart is a longing to be cherished and to be seen. Psychologist Sue Johnson writes, “this drive to emotionally attach—to find someone to whom we can turn and say ‘Hold me tight’—is wired into our genes and our bodies. It is as basic to life, health, and happiness as the drives for food, shelter, or sex. We need emotional attachments with a few irreplaceable others to be physically and mentally healthy—to survive.”

We expect so much from our partners, in love, and as we continue to live with the existential anxiety of the climate crisis, those relationships that have sustained us—friendships old and new, the intricacies and vagaries of family relationships, the encounters with our virtual tribe or colleagues at the office—we absorb and embody experiences that take us down the twists and turns, repeats and spirals, back to ancient themes.

Spanish philosopher, Ortega y Gasset wrote that “no land in human topography is less explored than love.” It is the exploration of love’s landscape that is essential to the soul’s holy longing, and we must be brave wayfarers. Although all planetary archetypes portray our human experience of relationship—attachment, separation, autonomy, and dependence. The Venusian art of relating and healing the heart’s contraction has evolved from Agony Aunt columns and our urge to pathologize, improve or fix, into the collective experience of relationship therapy. The “telly-therapy” of Esther Perel and Orna Guralnik offers voyeuristic participation in couples therapy, revealing the archetype of Venus in all her guises, and inviting personal identification with couples who are living in the trauma world of fear, disconnection, and shame.

“Intimacy is a difficult art,” Virginia Woolf once said. Intimacy is a difficult art in a world where technology replaces the warmth of human encounter. Voyeuristic TV series like Married at First Sight portray a lonely absence of intimacy, a hungry urgency to find shelter for the soul. In a culture so focused on measurables and certainties, we may find the candlelit depth and substance of intimacy a difficult art. The Sun, the symbol of our creative self-expression, is said to be in its fall in Libra implying that a perpetual state of balance is impossible to achieve, as we continually re-create ourselves amidst the complexities of our relationships and metastasise 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. 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 open-hearted, willing to be held and to hold.

Please get in touch if you would like a private astrology consultation or to join me and spiritual guide and teacher, Eileen Heneghan on Saturday June 24^th in Celebration of the Midsummer Solstice: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

March 22, 2023 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

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 rulers—visionary 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 21^st 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 25^th after a long journey through Gemini supersizing Trump’s vociferous Mercury on April 10^th. 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

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

Genesis—Aries New Moon—March 21st.

If the shoe doesn’t fit, must we change the foot? ― Gloria Steinem.

On March 20^th, the Sun slips into the initiatory sign of Aries, marking the spring or autumn Equinox. The quality of light is different now. A vigorous Sun blazes across the skies, moving faster, rising earlier, lingering later now as the year begins to tip and turn and balance briefly between light and shadow. As V-shaped flocks of migrating birds trace ancient pathways in the skies, searching for places of rest and refuge amidst the spread of human settlement, the astrology heralds a significant shift in the collective consciousness. A new aeon is birthed.

The Equinox marks the start of the new astrological year. On March 24^th, Pluto moves into the fixed sign of Aquarius, marking the start of a new epoch, the Age of Aquarius. This is the genesis of a new spirit of the time that will be more deeply concerned with self-questioning, with understanding what it means to be human. As we face into a dystopian future, there will be socio-economic upheaval, financial and political change, symptomatic with the deeper changes within the collective consciousness. Pluto’s passage through Aquarius will dredge up all that is putrid and rotting in politics, technology, and in the structure of our societies. It will be tempting to project our collective shadow onto the Frankenstein Monsters of Big Tech and AI, to make technology the new bogeyman, yet already Pluto’s shadowy presence has sent ripples of fear through Silicon Valley. Just days after the demise of Silicon Valley Bank, Credit Suisse shares plunge to record lows. As Pluto edges to the final degrees of Capricorn (big business, corporations) SVB is biggest bank collapse since the 2008 financial crisis that marked Pluto’s entry into Capricorn. There’s more to come.

On April 20^th the first procreative new moon Solar Eclipse of 2023 squares Pluto, a Collective and personal meeting with Fate.

The Nodes of Fate will be moving through Scorpio/Taurus till July 12^th, shaking our attachment to what we value, purging and pruning all that it no longer fit for purpose, all that is toxic and hidden, in financial instiutions, insurance companies, pensions, joint investments, while Uranus in Taurus continues to rattle and shake what is established, what we thought was safe and sure. The Eclipse season lasts till October 28^th, with a partial lunar eclipse square Pluto (back in Capricorn then) and the Nodes will have slipped backwards into Aries and Libra. Leaning against the weight of worldly concerns (pension funds, banking, insurance, stock markets, those material things we value) how we relate to others during times of tension and change will need to be re-evaluated particularly if you have planets or angles between 27-29° Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn, or planets or angles in the early degrees of Aquarius, Taurus, Leo, or Scorpio. “We’ll never solve the feminization of power until we solve the masculinity of wealth,” Gloria Steinhem once said.

Few of us go willingly into the kind of initiation that accompanies a Pluto transit. When Pluto stirs up all that has fermented, all that has been banished in the dark basement of our psyches, we emerge irrevocably transformed. For many of us, the events of the next months will instigate life changing choices, a deepening capacity for compromise and cooperation.

Mars entered Gemini in August and has been making a debilitating square with Neptune (fogginess, confusion, misinformation, lethargy, and confusion) in October, November, and finally March 14^th, which for many of us has felt like a long time at sea. Mars, the war-god finally leaves Gemini on March 25^th.

Mars in sensitive Cancer collides with what is harsh or resistant and symbolises an uneasiness in an unsteady, confusing world, and we will need to tend to our psychological bruises, listen with compassion to our own repetitive soundtrack, be brave enough to soften our defences.

The Sun and Moon meet on March 21^st in the fire sign of Aries. Aries is a Mars-ruled sign, an energy that accompanies assertiveness, individuation, new beginnings.

We may notice Mars energy all around us this month. Survival and procreation are embodied in the natural world as the urgent thrust of spring spills over the land in a cascade of colour and the sweetest song. When the Sun enters Aries, a flash of light shines through an aperture—igniting the hero/warrior archetype, and its shadow, the destroyer. In myth and in fairy tale, the hero/warrior archetype is typically masculine. The old heroes slaughtered nine-headed dragons and defeated degenerate villains. The destroyer lives amongst us, tattooed in the distortion of the Hero/Warrior depicted in the media, enacted in our homes, behind closed doors, or in the shadowy realm of cyberspace.

This is Aries’ shadow. Self-centred. Brutal. Depicted today in the callous anonymity of trolling, the persistent violence of stalking and digital voyeurism, the misogynistic harassment and assault that is endemic in our culture. As the bedrock of our civilization shifts and cracks, revealing a new landscape, we will need new myths. Heroes who collaborate, relate and share. For most of us, our hero’s or heroine’s quest is not a muscular or spectacularly heroic response to the challenges of life. So often, it’s the austere grip of necessity that wrenches us out of our ordinary lives and gives us no choice but to dare greatly. Financial ruin, illness, the noxious fallout from a ruined relationship may ignite within our hearts the courage we never knew we had.

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

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

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