TrueHeartWork

November 12, 2021 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Heaven and Earth⁠—Full Moon in Taurus⁠—November 19th

My joy, my grief, my hope, my love, did within this circle move―Edmund Waller.

We are not the first generation to live in disquieting times. Yet, there may be days when the roar of the world unravels our calm. When worry drains our joy and the silent sob of collective grief surges through us, spilling over our morbid preoccupation with illness, our unspoken fear of death.

Ever-changing protocols hang like a miasma over our lives as politicians panic and numbers rise. American deer are now infected, amidst concern for cross species transmission and the emergence of new variants. We may feel stuck in a daily round of gloom. Yet as we lift our eyes to the heavens the luminous orb of the Moon reminds us that there are circles and cycles in our own lives and in his-story and that just when we think we have arrived, we must begin again.

As the last golden leaves of autumn flutter to the ground, the fading light reveals a landscape stripped of pretence. At this culmination of the lunar cycle, we may need to draw inward, rest, replenish. Revive our energy in a circle of calm.

In the mandala of the zodiac, the partial Lunar Eclipse on November 19^th is a harbinger for the eclipse cycle of 2022 which sprinkles over the Taurus/Scorpio Axis, an initiation of what’s about to unfold in the new calendar year. The changing Moon will be the last lunar eclipse of this year and as the Moon passes into the Shadow of the Earth, the eclipse will be visible from Europe, Asia, Australia, North and South America, and North/West Africa.

Eclipses are times of recalibration; self-nurture to rekindle our creative fire, time to dream, to pray, to stay still so that our energy may flow freely again. These are symbolic power points that hold the impetus to generate something new in listless situations, to cradle ourselves gently. The effects are felt most strongly on the day, but often within two weeks of the eclipse, so observe events as they unfold in our own lives and on the world stage between now and up to the New Moon in fiery Sagittarius on December 4^th. A series of Scorpio/Taurus eclipses dropped across the heavens in 2003/2004. In Scorpio we encounter the inevitable: death and taxes. In Taurus we dig deep into earthly matters. We may experience profound changes in our finances and in our shared material resources. Climate continues to plunder our home planet.

“Things do not change, we change,” wrote Henry David Thoreau, a pioneer in minimalism and authentic living, a man who knew the seasons of nature intimately. As we seek our quiet centre at this monthly moment of eclipse, we may see more clearly all the ways we have changed.

As the steadfast earthy Full Moon shines her light on the Sun and Mercury in Scorpio, she sketches a T-Square in the skies with Jupiter, an offering of faith, patience, and persistence.

Mars in Scorpio opposes Uranus and forms a T-Square with Saturn, and as the laws of Heaven and Earth circumvent our ordinary lives, we may have to humbly learn our limits, defer our dreams, take a detour, or return to where we began.

There are no planets in fire until the Sun enters Sagittarius on November 22^nd, just a few days after the Full Moon, so the mood may feel intense and volatile as we are forced to take a slower path, avoid loud and aggressive persons, as American writer Max Ehrmann suggests in Desiderata.

Our virtual and close encounters with others will be highlighted as Venus in pragmatic Capricorn enters her Retrograde Shadow on November 19^th and will encounter Pluto as she moves Retrograde from December 19^th– January 29^th. We may have to listen more deeply, honour our differences, speak our truth quietly.

Ancient adversaries, Saturn (boundaries, restrictions, fear, control, authority, stability) and defiant Uranus (insurrection, disruption, idealism, innovation) are still in a tense square, a square that has been building through 2020 and will still be in alignment till December 2021, edging close once more in October 2022 and in effect all through 2023.This waning square reflects the tension of opposites, a polarised force that may infuse the silent spaces in our relationships and root there.

Our ancestors knew about circles and spirals and the soulful journey of life. They carved them into the unyielding granite at sacred sites, they fashioned rounded drums that resonated with the heartbeat of the earth; they built languorous labyrinths and mysterious mazes.

Saturn/Uranus alignments coincide with periods of civil unrest, economic collapse, revolution, radicalisation, and the collapse of systems that no longer serve their purpose. If we look back in history, the Saturn/Uranus square of 1928/1933 heralded the Wall Street Crash, the Great Depression, and the establishment of The Third Reich. Now, it seems likely there will be record levels of unemployment that will again precede enormous social change. Like the interwoven spirals and coils of Celtic knot-work, the astrology of our times is threaded with the amalgam of the past.

The earthy symbolism of Taurus encircles the natural world. When our Taurus house is activated by the motion of the Moon, we may seek simplicity, yearn for peace, and calm. Henry David Thoreau’s ground-breaking novel, Walden, the quintessential book about living simply in nature, down-sizing, getting off the treadmill, was written as transiting Saturn conjoined Uranus during turbulent times of xenophobia and polarised opinions about slavery in America.

Thoreau was born during a Saturn/Uranus square (Saturn in Pisces square Uranus in Sagittarius) and as Saturn now conjoins the comfort zone of the US South Node (burdens, old beliefs that are familiar and safe, though not always beneficial for growth) this quote may resonate with us all as we struggle to shed the skins of old beliefs and revalue our material possessions: “as a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.”

To live authentically in this new world, we will require grit and integrity and an interior life that contains us in turbulent world. .

Etty Hillesum, who was murdered at Auschwitz at just 29 years old, her first Saturn Return, wrote this in her diary, “when you have an interior life, it certainly doesn’t matter what side of the prison fence you’re on. . . I’ve already died a thousand times in a thousand concentration camps. I know everything. There is no new information to trouble me. One way or another, I already know everything. And yet, I find this life beautiful and rich in meaning. At every moment.”

To book a personal astrology consultations please email me―ingrid@trueheartwork.com

October 29, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Incantation—New Moon in Scorpio—November 4th.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves. We must die to one life before we can enter another—Anatole France.

Leaves of copper and gold blanket the black earth, and kelp-scented sea mists bejewel the fragile webs of spiders at this time when the veil between the worlds shimmers, gossamer thin.

This is a liminal time, halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. A time when we may notice an unsettling shift in the seasons. A time when melancholy wraps itself around the wan light of the dying year and ghoulish costumes create a safe diversion from our squeamishness about death. This is the month when the dead come calling—Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead. Hallowe’en, loud and gaudy, prickling with single-use plastic, once Allhallowtide, a time in the liturgical year that was dedicated to the departed. Soft-bred pumpkins grimace with menacing faces; bonfires consume summer’s fruitfulness, light-hearted tricks and sugary treats sweeten the older tradition of guising (disguising ourselves from sinister wandering spirits) while ruby-red toffee apples symbolise the potent symbol of the pentagram that lives in secret within every store-bought apple; incantations against the supernatural, rituals for protection against the descent into the dark of the year.

The truth is that the triple faced Cailleach drapes herself in her misty mantle at Samhain. She emerges from rocks of ancient granite and the smooth folds of glistening basalt to run her fingernails across the iron-grey belly of the sky, scraping loose bitter weather. Samhain is the Celtic celebration of summer’s end. A time when the Aos sí emerge from grassy fairy forts to traverse the “thin veil” into the world of humans. At Samhain, we seek to honour the dead who have walked before us. We engage in communal warding off those things that remind us of the fragility of life, the proximity of death.

For those of us who have witnessed the dying process of a cherished pet or a loved one, for those of us who have pared down to the bone after the dismemberment of a divorce, or the devastation of illness that has altered our lives forever know the pain of those irrevocable endings, those radical severances that bring us to our knees, rip off our layers of protection, leave us naked and defenseless. As we stand at the edge of winter, perhaps there is a deep sadness that still lies wetly over our hearts, a remnant of eternal timelines interlaced with others who have lived before us.

For so many of us it is the dying of the earth as we know it that haunts our dreams, intrudes on our walk through the woodlands or on the beach where the corpses of tiny turtles blacken in the sun. As we keep company with the collective grief, we may be brought to tears by an act of kindness, a soft word of sympathy from a stranger—reminders that people are kind, caring. That we are not alone in our sadness. As the invisible threat of the pandemic, the existential crisis of climate crisis continues to strain our limbic system, tire our brains, keep us on high alert, psychologist Emma Kavanagh writes, “this phase we are in now, where everyone feels kind of on the edge, but no one can really articulate why—is what happens when you survive a disaster. When you live through what we have lived through, the net result means being broken by tiny catastrophes.”

As Nature withdraws, the fading Sun slips into the shade of Scorpio and couples in darkness with the Moon on November 4^th, sombre Saturn squares the luminaries, a melancholic reminder of all that has been lost since those first reports of a strange new pathogen emerged from Wuhan. Minimalism, restraint, austerity, checks and balances, will be imperative as hollow men gather in Glasgow to talk, yet again, about the climate crisis. Missing in action will be collaboration and altruism, the solvents that ensure the survival of our species.

It was sixty years ago that Rachel Carson, ill with cancer and in great pain, wrote Silent Spring, a book that was denounced and vilified by the major chemical companies. She said then, “I think we’re challenged as mankind has never been challenged before to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature, but of ourselves”.

Re-reading her words, now, two full Saturn cycles later, as we continue to beat nature into submission like little dictators, it is hard to imagine that we will have the maturity to change our behaviours; to comprehend that we are only a small thread in the web of life.

Yet, innovative, radical Uranus makes an opposition to this New Moon and Venus moves into serious Capricorn as Mercury enters Scorpio on November 6^th, adding a colourwash of practicality and depth to our human interactions this month.

Pluto and Mars are invoked when we talk about the Scorpion. Mars moves fearlessly into the blackness of Scorpio on October 30^th followed by fleet-footed Mercury, and though we talk glibly of transformation, Pluto, still moving through Capricorn and square to Eris, coils around that over-used cliché. When we enter the realm of Scorpio, the mystery of life and death are at work. Snakes shed their skins and feathered phoenixes emerge from scorching flames in a world that is no longer pristine and pure, but is still breathtakingly beautiful even as microplastics and chemicals seep through the earth’s capillaries, and the wild flowers and butterflies we knew when we were young have gone.

Scorpio, in its true essence, asks us to dive deep into waters diffuse and dark; to dredge up what lies beneath: a collective fear that concretises into protocols and incantations that we hope will keep us safe; a collective scarcity that clutches and clings; the fragile vulnerability of the top predator with imposter syndrome who has forgotten the interconnection and interdependence of all living things.

Writes Rachel Carson, “the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

As the light slips softly off the hillsides, we stand now in the potent darkness of this New Moon. New Moons are generative times. Seeding moments when we plant wishes in the darkness and wait patiently, expectantly, for them to grow. Rachel Carson invites us to consider this: “one way to open your eyes is to ask yourself, “What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?”

For astrology readings and more information about forthcoming virtual workshops please email me directly: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

October 19, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Born this Way—Full Moon in Aries—October 20th.

“Being different, it’s easy. But to be unique, it’s a complicated thing.”
― Lady Gaga

The last Full Moon of October burns brightly in the sign of The Ram. Aries is where we encounter our own autonomy, our sense of Self in a world where being different has a price and uniqueness is rare.

In Aries we encounter the mythic motif of conquest, which always implies an act of bravery, daring and autonomy. The leader who makes split-second choices in situations that could tip either way… the employee who dares to speak out, the parent who takes a stand against bullying, the friend who leans closer when others turn away.

For most of us, the battle for autonomy is enacted in those held-breath moments of choice, our fingers poised to respond to words that invade the temenos of our minds―other people’s opinions that school our eyes, ignite archaic reactions, fuel fears and insecurities that thread through our nervous systems.

We may discover that autonomy is concealed in the small choices we make each new day and that the hardest battle is with our self as e.e cummings, Sun in Libra and Aries Moon wrote, “To be nobody-but-yourself—in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else—means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight.”

As the Full Moon on October 20^th ignites Aries in our birth charts, we may dare to re-imagine ourselves and those who hold different opinions in a new light. In a world that may feel split and polarised, where being congruent, uniquely ourselves, the daily battle is seldom tidy or neat as our dopamine levels are stroked by algorithms. “In ancient times, having power meant having access to data. Today having power means knowing what to ignore,” writes historian Yuval Noah Harari.

As Mercury approached the midpoint of this three-week Retrograde cycle (October 7^th-8^th) a “configuration error” silenced Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp for almost six hours. This was one of many outages that have occurred over the years that have highlighted our collective reliance on a complex and outdated web that some joke is “older than the Spice Girls; designed on the back of a napkin.”

Perhaps a more important symbol of Mercury Retrograde in Libra is that former Facebook data scientist, Frances Haugen, has dared to speak out and say what most of us know: that the loudest voices re-route their rage and their pernicious pain through the lightning rods of social media.

Her indictment of the careless theft of time, self-esteem and profitable personal data by the big tech companies is one of many little fires that will inevitably become a conflagration as Pluto moves through Aquarius (March 2023-January 2044) fanning profound social and technological metamorphosis as we journey through the age of the Anthropocene.

Pluto was also moving through Aquarius when the wealth of Europe and America was accumulated on the bodies of African slaves, and the Conquistadors plundered the riches of South America. It’s looking likely that bots will be the new slaves; our personal data the new gold; and that malware and cyber warfare will topple our digital infrastructure in seconds.

On October 18^th, both Mercury and Jupiter reversed their Retrograde motions as we circumambulate the curves and the rough ridges of life, as we sense the emergence of something new. Opportunistic Jupiter moves direct at 22° Aquarius, accompanied by Mercury at 10° Libra invoking a new impetus to bring more of our matchless and truthful selves to our relationships, and to be curious and welcoming to those who dare to be vulnerably unique.

As the ardent Aries Moon blazes across the skies, spreading her light, she may spark glistening embers of passion, setting a-blaze all that is caged and conformist. This Full Moon is a symbolic challenge to seize new opportunities; dare to break out of the tired old roles that keep us cornered in our relationships.

This Full Moon activates Eris and the square to Pluto, an aspect which has been in effect all through 2020. Eris stirs up latent competition and jarring discord. And when she makes a catalytic square to Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, all that is repugnant and buried emerges from the darkness of the collective mire. The cosmic masculine, the Sun and Mars, confront the fierce feminine. This Moon symbolises the courage of Queen Boudica, who dared to challenge the might of Rome, yet Boudica was flogged. Her beautiful daughters, raped. In the end, she took poison, rather than become enslaved. It may be worth remembering that the glyph for Aries is the Ram. And Rams are sacrificial animals, their holy golden fleeces, held aloft by conquering heroes. The Moon’s sextile to Jupiter may stoke volatility as hot-headed Mars makes a confrontational square to Pluto on October 22^nd and 23^rd arousing ruthlessness or violence, so it may be wise to temper rugged individualism with empathy and compassion.

The swallows have flown south. Crows, strung like necklaces of obsidian, perch darkly on the wires in the lessening light. The beauty of summer feeds the flames of bonfires that attend summer’s end. May we bask in the generative heat of fire as we fortify our willpower, strengthen our resolve, dare to be nobody but ourselves as we strive to make a difference in the world today.

For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it…brave enough to be it―Amanda Gorman.

Please drop me a private email if you would like to find out more about the whys and the hows in your own life and in the world, from an astrological perspective. I offer sessions via Skype or Zoom.
ingrid@trueheartwork.com

September 9, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Ring of Love—Crescent Moon—September 11th

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater—Haldir.

A shimmering crescent of silver light holds the mystery of promise contained in the fertile darkness of the Crescent Moon tonight. She opposes unpredictable Uranus as she moves through the sign of the Scorpion, a sign that attends the great mysteries in life, death, rebirth, and the shape-shifting shadows that we turn from when we gaze only at the light.

The Moon is in her waxing Crescent phase now. She gathers the psychic energy we sent out into the world at the New Moon on September 7th.

It’s been twenty years since we watched in stunned disbelief, the dark smoke rising from those flaming Twin Towers. The Moon was moving through Gemini at the time of the first attack. She was in her sharply angular Third Quarter phase, signifying strong beliefs, inflexibility, and a likelihood of putting those beliefs into action.

As we reflect on this calamitous event that stripped us of our innocence, we may remember that there were 21 years between the “war to end all wars”, and insanity of mass violence that began on September 1^st, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. It was in the reeking mud and terror of the trenches at the Battle of the Somme, that J.R.R Tolkien succumbed to trench fever and was shipped back to England. Only a few of his comrades-in-arms survived the carnage.

In a letter to his son, Christopher, he reminisced, “in those days chaps joined up, or were scorned publicly. It was a nasty cleft to be in for a young man with too much imagination and little physical courage.”

J.R.R. Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, on a waxing Pisces Crescent Moon. He began writing The Hobbit and the first two volumes of The Lord of the Rings after the insanity of the first World War. The Lord of the Rings was first published in 1954, as Saturn and Uranus were separating from their square (1952/53) inciting crisis, uncertainty, civil unrest, and repressive authoritarian reprisals.

As news of an invisible air-borne virus emerged from China, our collective “Shires” clouded over. Fear drove us into shadowy places. And the Ring of Power pressed its weight into our daily lives.

The fall-out from 2020 is still in the air as swirling sea mists chaperon the changing seasons, soaking russet leaves and weighting spider webs with glimmering orbs of dew. As we learn to adapt to life in changing times, new warnings of waning immunity, emerging strains, more waves and mutations, accompany this recent crisis in our human his-story. All through 2021 Uranus and Saturn are in conflict. This waning square is in effect all year, symbolising eruptions of repressive crackdowns (Saturn) and uprisings (Uranus.) The Great Depression and the rise of Hitler were also in the shadow of a Saturn and Uranus waning square (1930-32), and then, like now, a long and arduous journey lay ahead. The chaotic nature of this Saturn/Uranus cycle presents us with polarities, extremism, instability, and new choices.

As we grieve, as we remember those who died, those whose lives were irrevocably changed, on 9/11 Aragorn reminds us, “this day does not belong to one man but to all. Let us together rebuild this world that we may share in the days of peace.” The slender Crescent Moon of September 11th, 2021, offers us the opportunity to love, to rebuild this world. To share in the days of peace.

As we honour the rings that encircle our human story, the Moon arrives, ripely round, full-bellied, on September 21st. This is the last Full Moon before the Equinox on September 23rd. This Full Moon falls in the final degrees of nebulous Pisces, an archetype associated mystics and dreamers, artists and blank-eyed addicts who cannot bear the jagged edges of this world. Pisces is where we retreat from the shrillness of life, where we withdraw to weave our dreams. Pisces is where we dissolve into love and faith and Oneness with all living things. As this Pisces Moon floats through the skies, we may be drawn to our soul place, through a dream, a feeling, the waft of a scent that transports us to a place where “oft hope is born when all is forlorn,” as Legolas reminds us.

Our human struggle between the ring-of-love and the ring-of-power is poignantly portrayed in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and in Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, which took twenty years to complete. It’s a story of misuse of power and the utter destruction of the universe, yet from this catastrophe there is some hope of understanding and the possibility of redemption and a revisioning of a world where the ring-of-power is replaced by a ring-of-love. The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is a stark reminder to us all of the ring-of-power that we may consciously or unconsciously re-enact in our encounters with others.

Writes Linda Schierse Leonard in her book, On the Way to the Wedding, “only in the ring of power do we ask another to give up his or her centre or give it up ourselves, and this usually happens out of our fears and desires, our dependency, projections and power needs.”

On September 6^th, Mercury entered its pre-Retrograde shadow period, in readiness for this last Retrograde cycle of 2021. Mercury will be moving Retrograde in Libra (September 27-October 17th) as we choose to wear rings-of-love or the rings-of-power in our soul encounters.

As the seasons turn, and the cycles of nature begin a-new, may we embrace life’s energy in the rapture of spring’s blossoms and in the ruby and gold ripened leaves that flutter to the ground as summer’s extravagant beauty dies.

As we honour this 20th anniversary of 9/11 and ready ourselves for the decent into the darkness of winter, may we return again in the spring, more open, more generous, more loving. May we vow to encircle our earth and all living things with a golden Ring of Love.

May it be a light to you in dark places, when all other lights go out—Galadriel.

Love Apples—Celebrating the Sacred Feminine in Astrology and in Fairy Tale—Saturday 25th September 2021—14.30 BST.

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again—C.S. Lewis.

Fairy Tales were fireside stories told by women to women. These were stories of envy and revenge. These were stories of love and enormous courage. As we move through the painful birth pangs of this new era, fairy tales and the metaphor of astrology offer guidance and hope at a time when rewilding the psyche is so urgent.

Join me at this time of changing seasons and personal harvest. We’ll meet Snow White and learn more about the regenerative power of matriarchal goddesses, Venus and Eris in our own birth charts.

Set aside 90 minutes on Saturday afternoon for a virtual treat. Nothing to do. Just curl up on the sofa and gather together with other wise and wonderful women. We’ll begin at 14.30 BST and the date to diarise is September 25th. There will be rich and nourishing sharing and lively discussion afterwards if you wish to stay on longer.

If you aren’t able to join us on the day, I’ll send you a recording.

Cost is £40. I will send a PayPal request which converts to local currency, or banking details if you prefer. Please pop me an email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com to book your place on the day.

In Love,

Ingrid.

August 18, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Bolt from the Blue—Full Moon in Aquarius—August 22nd

We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world—Gabor Maté.

Dew-spangled spiderwebs glisten from the hedgerows. The rosehips and blackberries have ripened, and burnished bracken flecked with shocks of gold covers the hillsides. As the Sun melts across the dome of the horizon, Jupiter, a dazzling bright star, and a primrose yellow Saturn, accompany the graceful presence of a pregnant Moon.

This August Full Moon in the humanitarian sign of Aquarius falls at the powerful 29^th degree, which carries a charge of energy and seems to define the intensity and changeability of our feelings and circumstances. Aquarius like all astrological signs, draws deeply from the minds that created the world millennia ago.

For thousands of years, The Water Bearer has been identified with the invigorating waters that bring renewal and hope from Heaven. Now the waters have become airwaves and modern minds have assigned two rulers to Aquarius: Saturn, the autocratic authority figure, and Uranus, a planet that could have been more aptly named as Prometheus, the Trickster Titan who dared to steal fire from the gods—and paid the price.

This lunation is charged with the unexpected as she gathers in Jupiter’s overblown, expansive energy. Jupiter in Aquarius is moving Retrograde (between June 20^th and October 17^th) amplifying the shadowy side of Aquarius—misuse of science and technology, fanaticism; the callous crushing of individual freedom and human rights under the boot heel of ideology or in the “interests of public safety”. This Full Moon symbolises our collective trauma, our private heart ache; the loss of autonomy as the impending heat death of our earth home overshadows humanity.

In Kabul, fear and grief hang heavy over the city as lives are obliterated, women raped and beaten into silent submission.

We are still in the eye of the storm, a dark night of the soul as Pluto moves through Capricorn and the dark stain of hardline patriarchal power continues to infuse our lives. Pluto, god of the Underworld who abducted and raped Persephone in Greek myth, squares Eris, chthonic Goddess who holds the stories of countless women silenced and forgotten. The so-called witches and whores. The unacknowledged healers and midwives. Those who made bold bids for freedom and justice. Those who paid the price with their lives.

As the wheel of his-story turns, the disorientating Uranus/Saturn square may be making its presence felt in discord in those personal relationships that ache to stretch and grow beyond the silences and painful stasis. The energy of this capricious square has unsettled financial markets, destabilised economic structures, jarred us from a sense of complacency as the climate crisis blazes into our awareness with increasing urgency.

Uranus arrives like a bolt from the blue, shattering our innocent illusions, upturning those structures that are ripe for change. Saturn at best brings stability and structure, and at worst contracts, concretises, mires us in fear.

Richard Tarnas, author of Cosmos and Psyche, writes, “Our time is pervaded by a great paradox. On the one hand, we see signs of an unprecedented level of engaged global awareness, moral sensitivity to the human and non-human community, psychological self-awareness, and spiritually informed philosophical pluralism. On the other hand, we confront the most critical, and in some respects catastrophic, state of the Earth in human history. Both these conditions have emerged directly from the modern age, whose light and shadow consequences now affect every part of the planet.”

Uranus begins to switch back and will move Retrograde on August 20^th (14° Taurus) and will move direct on January 18^th 2022 at 10° of the same sign as we respond to the external events in our lives. Mercury, god of communication, and Mars, god of war, make a harmonious trine to this unpredictable planet, offering at best new possibilities, new information, and the impetus to take the initiative. If used unconsciously, carelessly, this energy takes on a speedy trajectory prompting reactivity, sudden decisions, painful words that twist in mid-air and harpoon our hearts.

Mercury meets Mars again on October 9^th in Libra and November 10^th in Scorpio. The current meeting is in the discerning sign of Virgo, which can have a waspish quality if not moderated by compassionate listening and some thought about how our words will land. “I always say that if people’s physical appearance matched their emotional age, human behaviour would be a lot easier to understand,” writes Gabor Maté.

Virgo also presides over our health—what we ingest into our bodies and our minds. As we remain rooted in the essentials of what matters, may we be rooted, in “the life of significant soil” as T.S Eliot reminds us in Four Quartets.

Poet and novelist, Ben Okri writes, “bad things will happen, and good things too. Your life will be full of surprises. Miracles happen only where there has been suffering. So, taste your grief to the fullest. Don’t try and press it down. Don’t hide from it. Don’t escape. It is Life too. It is truth. But it will pass, and time will put a strange honey in the bitterness. That’s the way life goes.”

This Full Moon will reflect the state of our relationships. The bonds of love and loyalty that nourish us. The untethered ambiguity of those casual encounters that so easily tilt and topple. Tsoknyi Rinpoche writes so beautifully, “Every time you connect, a little bit more clarity stays around the love, a little bit more space opens up around it. Your mind becomes clearer. You experience expanded possibilities.”

We can discover the Miracle in the suffering, we can taste the strange honey in the bitterness of our grief as we feel what needs to be felt—in the light and the beauty of this Full Moon.

Love Apples—Celebrating the Sacred Feminine in Astrology and in Fairy Tale—Saturday 25^th September 2021—14.30 BST.

Feast of Fairy Tale and Sky Stories—Take 90 minutes just for you.

“Without leaps of imagination or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all is a form of planning”―Gloria Steinem.

This is a time of seasonal change and perhaps a time of profound change or challenge in our own lives. As Hope unfurls her bright wings to settle upon new green shoots in the south, or a shimmering spiral of golden leaves here in the North, let’s get together to discover the practical wisdom of fairy tales, and the ancient messages encoded in the language of astrology.

Together let’s dream, imagine, plan―as we encounter feisty heroines, narcissistic stepmothers, poisoned red apples, and apples of pure gold.

Together we can celebrate the sisterhood of kindness and radical strength of empathy as we meet at this time of trial or celebration in our own personal journey.

Payment is £40 via PayPal. Discounts are available, if your income has been affected by the pandemic so do please get in touch. Everyone is very welcome. I will send you payment details if you e-mail me at ingrid@trueheartwork.com to book your place on the day. If you can’t join us, I’ll send you a recording to savour later.

With Love,

Ingrid.