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

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