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

Endurance—Sun in Aries—March 20th

If your nerve deny you, go above your nerve—Emily Dickinson.

The days stretch long in the north. In the south, autumn’s honeyed light spills over sun-bleached grasses. On March 20^th, the Sun slips into Aries, marking the spring or autumn Equinox. The start of the astrological new year.

Aries is associated with vibrant reds; with the purifying heat of fire; with raw vitality and with that heart-stopping, breath-holding moment when we take that terrifying leap forward. When we go above our nerve.

Aries is where we encounter our own autonomy, our ability to return to life, to find ourselves anew.

It is in Aries that we must dare to find the deeper meaning of courage and endurance as we wear our bravest smile, take the hand of our loved one whose light is dimming. As our own Aries planets are forged in the heat of the Sun, we may feel hope that comes in a heated rush; a surge of ardor that emboldens us to speak out, make a move, before it’s too late. As the Sun climbs across the equator, we may feel a sense of relief and renewal as a relationship unspools, leaving us heartsore and lighter.

Aries is a Mars-ruled sign. The raw energy of Mars is ignited by a goal; something to conquer or defend—the Romans pragmatically dedicated the month of March to war-god as they set off on their campaigns, certain of fresh supplies. 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.

As Venus (relationships, what we hold dear to our hearts) moves into Aries on March 21^st and makes her annual appointment with the Sun (March 24^th), the words of author Isabel Allende may resonate as we burn for something new “we don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward…” Venus and the Sun conjoin Chiron on March 28–30^th—an indication that for most of us, the road ahead may not be easy.

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. Heroes slay nine-headed dragons, rescue hapless damsels, defeat degenerate villains. Yet 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.

Aries’s shadow is self-centred and brutal as depicted by the cruel anonymity of trolling, the persistent violence of stalking and digital voyeurism, the misogynistic harassment and assault that is endemic in our culture. This patriarchal power-over behaviour—directed at “foreigners”, blacks, gays, women, and those people who live with disabilities, has seeped through society for eons. Barely a week after International Women’s Day, the killing of Sarah Everard sent shock waves of grim recognition through everyone who has clutched a can of mace or hurried coiled, contracted, through a subway or a park. As a primal fear and rage bled across the internet, the vigil on Clapman Common was met by acts of aggression by the Metropolitan police, reminiscent of the brutality inflicted on the Suffragettes, the police killings that ignited the Black Lives Matter movement.

The dark face of the Ram is testosterone-fueled anger, self-absorption, competitiveness, single-mindedness. Our self-directed quest to “find our voice” may deafen the voices of others; our need to be “free” may mean breaking the heart of someone who loves us.

As Mars moves through Gemini (March 4^th– April 24^th) our negative thoughts and beliefs may be obstacles to conquer. As Nasa’s Perseverance grinds and clanks across the arid surface of the red planet in search of past life, we may feel this same sense of grinding and clanking against obstacles that demand resilience and perseverance. When Mars moves through the element of air, words become blades, rhetoric morphs into bullets and the dark tide of anger rises, setting fire to old grudges and unexamined narratives.

As existential angst heightens our human response to threat and uncertainty, surveillance capitalism harvest our emotional bonds, sells our anger and our shame as “data.” “The goal now is to automate us,” writes Shoshana Zuboff, in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

The motif of the Saturn/Uranus square—a cycle that began in 1988 with a Saturn/Uranus conjunction in Capricorn—infuses our lives with defining moments as regulations tighten, people push back. This year, three waning squares define the zeitgeist of disruption—the first was February 17^th, June 14^th is the second. In tandem and working in the darkness, the ominous Pluto/Eris square dredges up all that is putrid in our societies, as we wade through what Eckhardt Tolle calls “the pain body.”

The applying square of Saturn and Uranus back in 2000 brought recession after the dot-com bubble of the late 90s detonated. Alignments of staid Saturn and unpredictable Uranus mark economic collapse, civil unrest, radicalisation—the gain or loss of human rights and liberty. Martial law has been extended in Myanmar, a savage repeat of lethal confrontations between the military and the “’88 generation” of students that led the uprising in 1988.

As new lockdown measures are imposed in many countries, Mercury muscled into Aries on April 4^th. Frustration simmers. The passage of Venus (April 23^rd) sensitises the destabilising Saturn/Uranus square, followed by the Sun (April 30^th-May 4^th) and Mars adds fuel to the flames this year and next. (July/November 2021; March/April/July/ 2022.)

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

March 9, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Wild Water Swimming―Sun in Pisces―February 18th―March 21st

So, this is how you swim inward. So, this is how you flow outwards. So, this is how you pray―Mary Oliver.

For so many of us, the routines and rituals that swaddled and sustained us last March have begun to feel stifling. Some of us may dream of golden beaches, yearn for the crowded conviviality of our favourite coffee shop. So many are still stranded, far from their place of belonging.

Our old lives feel may so distant after this year of life-shaping sequestration. For those who have lost loved ones, for those whose lives have been dragged down into the undertow by loss of work or direction, everything may seem blurred, life’s pulse beat feeble. Hundreds of thousands of people have died since last March. Millions of people are grieving broken bonds of belonging. In the UK, March 23^rd, the first anniversary of the UK lockdown, is a National Day of Reflection.

For grief, there is no inoculation.

Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac. We are collectively at a time of emptying out, letting go. This week, as the porous Pisces Sun unites briefly with diffuse Neptune (20° Pisces) we may pause and compassionately reflect on the year that has passed, the sacrifices that were made. The Sun and Moon unite with otherworldly Neptune on the New Moon of March 13^th as Mercury emerges “out of shadow” and we slowly step into a world touched by change.

This rhythmic, watery imagery may permeate our world-weary lives with a longing to return to what we have neglected―those simple pleasures that are the arteries of attachments to that which quenches our thirst. When a miasma of uncertainty leaches moisture from our lives, we may need to tend to the well within, quench our imagination, reaffirm our lives as we inhabit a new dimensionality in the face of challenges and defeats.

In the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, the Black Lives Matter movement highlighted the long dark shadow of racism and inequality that stains our communities and is embedded in our institutions. The sky story describes a long, slow and painful healing process for us all on some level.

The signature of 2021 is the slow-moving Saturn/Uranus square that suspends us all collectively between the elements of air (intellect, communication) and earth (matter, “reality”) as our visions and ideals crash against a wall of inertia. Saturn, (conservatism, authority) and Uranus (shock waves, idealism, anarchy, innovation) are mythic enemies. Meghan and Harry’s “kryptonite” interview with Oprah Winfrey depicts this upsetting energy as shockwaves ripple and racism shakes the bedrock of the Monarchy and the nation. Writes David Olusogo in the Guardian, “be in no doubt this is the most serious crisis ‘the firm’ has faced since the death of Princess Diana – according to some, since the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. But this is not just a crisis for the royal family – but for Britain itself. Yet rather than use this moment to embark upon an honest national conversation about race and racism there will, I fear, be further demonisation of Meghan and Harry. Trapped in denial – about everyday racism, structural racism, slavery and empire – there are parts of British society that appear incapable not just of change but even of its necessary precursor: honest self-reflection.”

Pluto (virus) and the recently “discovered” planet, Eris, more aptly named Discordia by the Romans form a fractious square all through 2020 and 2021 (exact on August 27^th and October 9^th.)

Eris is in Aries, that sign associated with autonomy and Self, and as she sows discord and upset, many rebel against heavy-handed rules, as individual and national selfishness ricochet across fractured communities. The altruistic “We’re all in this together” has been subsumed by individualism and nationalism as Eris, sister of the war-god Mars creates sparks that illuminate Pluto’s long shadow that will continue to dismantle redundant structures and smoke out corruption and misuse of power as Pluto moves through Capricorn (2008-24.)

From hoarding toilet paper and tinned beans, we are now witnessing vaccine nationalism and a new kind of equality as the virus mutates and spreads in the slums of Brazil, India, or South Africa, and the so-called “first world” looks to the vaccine for redemption. Writing for the Financial Times, Yuval Noah Harari observes, “even the richest people in the most developed countries have a personal interest to protect the poorest people in the least developed countries. If a new virus jumps from a bat to a human in a poor village in some remote jungle, within a few days that virus can take a walk down Wall Street.”

We are still 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, flow outwards. As we pray. Emily Dickinson’s brief poem captures the sea-language of Pisces. When a dear friend she loved died, she wrote: “each that we lose takes part of us; a crescent still abides, which like the moon, some turbid night, is summoned by the tides.”

As the tethered fish of Pisces draw us deeper, may they guide our prayers and direct our dreams, heighten our empathy for those who are struggling with depression or loneliness; for those who are defined by their sexual preferences, or the colour of their skin; for those who feel that they have lost their way and yet are in quiet motion. We are collectively moving through a time of initiation that may transform us at our core. Our healing may come from the shocks that stir us into awareness, reverberate through our bodies, bloom in our hearts.

Spiritual teacher, Eckhardt Tolle reminds us, “all things that truly matter―beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace―arise from beyond the mind.”

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

February 9, 2021 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Heart’s Desire—Venus meets Jupiter—February 11th

Love is fearlessness in the midst of the sea of fear—Jalaluddin Rumi

As cloyingly sentimental or overtly commercial as this celebration may seem, Valentine’s Day has survived world wars and financial crashes. It has evolved from rumbustious fertility ritual origins enacted by the Romans, emerged from the gruesome torture and execution of men we now call saints and martyrs.

On February 14^th in most places on this earth, millions of people will demonstrate through chocolates, music and flowers, their longing to love and be loved.

For those of us who have been shamed and shunned, harmfully shocked, brutally intruded upon, the scar tissue that wraps around our heart may ache in the month that is dedicated to Love and Lovers. Betrayal, loss and entropy may press their leaden weight on our resolve to dare to love again.

“We live in a patriarchal, narcissistic, addictive culture that has a lot of anti-relational bias in it. Within that culture, we just don’t give our sons and daughters the skills that they need to have the kind of wonderful relationship we all want these days,” says relationship therapist, Terry Real.

This week, the New Moon in Aquarius on February 11^th symbolises a new beginning, after a time of turmoil; the seeding of a creative new vision that may include second chances, repair and healing. Venus and Jupiter in Aquarius, meet on February 11^th for a sweet caress in the apricot light of dawn. This brief union happens only once a year, yet it carries the promise of serendipitous meetings, joy-filled celebrations, favourable outcomes. For birthdays and weddings, for the fruitful budding of professional or intimate relationships, this day is incandescent. Aquarius encompasses our friendship circle, those anam cara, soul friends, who hold our hands tightly when we’re broken hearted. Mercury in Aquarius, still travelling Retrograde, encounters the sweetness of Venus and the optimism of Jupiter this week, draping our dreams in silken images that sparkle and inspire, offering us an opportunity to re-write the narrative of our lives and move toward “what if” … “what could be”…

Yet, wrapped in the sweetness of Love’s beginning is also the sorrow of it’s ending. Anais Nin wrote so poignantly, “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we do not know how to replenish its source.” So how do we replenish Love’s source? David Schnarch writes, love and desire are “not a matter of peeling away the layers but of developing them—growing ourselves up to be mature and resourceful adults who can solve our current problems.”

Love requires an artist’s eye, a poet’s sensibility, a gourmet’s palate. The willingness to be curious, to engage in the mystery, to re-ignite the flame of Eros with the spark of our human imagination.

The Sun enters Pisces on February 18^th. In the archetypal journey around the zodiac, we’re invited to wear our mermaid tails and adorn our hair with seashells. Perceptions may shift, new insights may wash to the shore of our consciousness, or ambiguity, uncertainty and confusion may swirl around us as we swim in uncharted waters. In Pisces, we dive deep into opaque waters where music and poetry melt walls that divide. We may experience, in the words of Eckhardt Tolle, “all things that truly matter―beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace―arise from beyond the mind.”

Pisces is not an easy constellation to see with the naked eye. And in our birth chart, Pisces planets or the house, may be concealed by louder or more overtly visible planetary archetypes. A rumbustious Aries Sun or dutiful Capricorn Moon may be more comfortable in a world where we compare, compete, do our duty, and have a “nice day.” We may hesitate at the water’s edge, admiring other people’s creativity, their altruism, their faith. Julia Cameron, writes, “The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations.” Pisces is where we journey to those soulful regions of our psyche, those places where we encounter mysterious daimons, and where powerful currents of emotion surge like a rip-tide, shattering our peace, bringing us to our knees, altering our own expectations. In this underwater realm, we hear the songs of the whales, the whisper of the sea grasses, the prayers of our ancestors who lie full fathom five.

As we immerse ourselves into this sphere of water this month, there are sea changes that reflect the swelling tide of worldly events. Saturn and Uranus clash on February 17^th in a fractious square that will send shards of social unrest and disruption across the globe throughout 2021.

As we heal our hearts, unrest ferments in Myanmar and in Russia, perhaps mirroring our own fear and unrest; our own heart-call for change or freedom. The first of three squares will be exact on February 17^th, followed by the second on June 14^th and the denouement on December 24^th. Perhaps in the break-down of all we know is safe and sure, we discover that it is our partner who has been taking care of our marriage after all. In stretching out of our familiar roles, seeing each other with new eyes, we rebuild a relationship that has collapsed under the heavy weight of our fear and control―or we dare to love fearlessly as we begin again―with someone new.

On this Hallmark day of commercial brouhaha and the echo of the death cries of the martyred Valentine, let us pause a while amidst the plethora of heart-shaped second chances to speak our truth, buy those red roses, to dare to say I love you. Let us celebrate the confounding mystery and magnificence of the human heart. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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

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

Ring the Bells—Sun in Aquarius—January 19th—February 18th

The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be—Leonard Cohen

In these fallow times, as we burrow down in the quiet containment of our ordinary lives, hesitant to trust the torrent of news that so often enters our consciousness, unbidden. Many of us are numb, suspended in the eye of the storm; held hostage by loss and grief; struggling to feel at home in a body that feels fragile and pained. Many of us are wondering what is yet to be.

Yet now is the time to start again. A slew of powerful astrological transits swirl around us. We pay our collective debt to the gods today as the Sun joins Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury in Aquarius. In the ever-changing sky, Uranus, the “awakener”, turned direct on January 14^th (6° Taurus). As exhilarating as an awakening may seem, it is so often accompanied by an obliteration of life as we knew it. Saturn and Uranus will be in square three times this year. Saturn transits arrive as the henchmen of stasis that undermine our efforts to move forward. Uranus breaks us open.

Mars, the warrior god, joins forces with unpredictable Uranus (rude awakenings, shocks, and unexpected events) and although so many of us are straining for some kind of change in our lives, some hope that the pandemic will end soon, there will be more losses, more deaths, more grieving.

Creation stories always tell of darkness and chaos that come before creation. The Pluto/Saturn conjunction of January 2020 has fermented all that is rotten in our world. The dross has risen to the surface and each one of us now faces the consequences of those things we have repressed or simply ignored. In the tumultuous confusion, something greater ushers humanity towards what is yet to be.

Few of us go willingly into the kind of initiation that accompanies a Pluto transit. Pluto is still in Capricorn, square Eris and opposing the Mercury of the US birth chart. America’s Pluto Return (2017-2024) and the former President Trump’s Pluto opposition (2019-December 2021) to his heavily armoured Saturn/Venus conjunction require a head bowed humbling of will. Pluto transits never leave us intact.

The Eris square to the US Pluto will permeate American culture well into the 2040s. A Collective meeting with Fate.

The torrent of Tweets has stopped. In the silent space between chaos and something new, there is the descent into the unknown. Joe Biden has answered the call. He has worked and waited and prepared for this day’s dawning. He gazes out at a map of shifting possibilities. If he is to succeed, it will be as a Shaman, a Wounded Healer, not a problem-solving politician. January 20^th is the first anniversary of the first case of Covid in America. As the death toll rises, it may soon surpass the 405,000 Americans who died in the chaos of WW II.

The Moon moves into Taurus on the day of the US Presidential Inauguration and for a brief moment, she will brush gently over Joe Biden’s pragmatic Taurus Moon, at the pinnacle of his political career. The Leo Full Moon of January 28^th illuminates the Pluto/Moon square in Joe Biden’s birth chart, as he begins a process of initiation that will test him to the limit.

Fintan O’ Toole, in a superbly written Guardian article, writes: “His skills as a fixer are finely honed – but they cannot restore a pre-Trump normality. As president, Biden’s private self, shadowed by loss, must come into its own.” Joe Biden’s private self is symbolised by four resilient planets in Scorpio which must find their way through the dark as they will be squared by Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn and Uranus in the coming months and years. Mercury turns Retrograde on January 30^th (square Joe Biden’s Scorpio Sun). There is so much to be healed and repaired. The slow retrieval of what has been lost or captive will be painful. As Pluto opposes the US Mercury from 2017–2024 there will be walls to dismantle, bridges to build, digital communications to reform, and Silicon Valley Titans to tame.

“This will not be an American spring,” writes O’Toole, “the political Biden is not the man who can change America. It is that other, richer persona, the private self, shadowed by time and loss and a sense of tragedy, that must come into its own.”

Therapist and trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother’s Hands suggests that the healing of America will be long and slow and will take many generations. He offers: “If we are to survive as a country, it is inside our bodies where this conflict needs to be resolved… the vital force [behind] white supremacy is in our nervous systems… You start with things that are maybe uncomfortable but not hard to do, like: Put yourself in situations. If you’re a white person, go someplace where there are gonna be a lot of black bodies, and just feel what happens in your body. And go back again.”

Here in the North, golden daffodils glisten in the spring sunlight. The first blue bells brush cobalt across the woodlands. The air is scented with the promise of renewal. Today, may our salty tears bring cleansing and deep healing.

May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquilities. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.

—John O ’Donohue.

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

January 7, 2021 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Insurrection—Saturn/Uranus Square January 2021

To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of Fate is strength undefeatable—Helen Keller

This is the year of reversals. Centrifugal forces tug at our priorities, upend our plans, propel us towards changing what feels too rigid or too obsolete.

The astrological autograph is imbued with a tincture of unpredictability and intensity. The new year begins with the disruptive energy of the waning Saturn/Uranus square which infuses 2021 with drama, unexpected events, plans upended, shocks and serendipities. The waning square is in effect throughout 2021 up close on February 17^th, June 14^th, and December 24^th. Saturn is in airy Aquarius and Uranus in earthy Taurus. We are suspended between earth and air, the past and the future. Our hopes and aspirations, our efforts to get moving or make plans meet an intractable wall of inertia. This is an astrological autograph for colossal political change.

War-god Mars enters pragmatic Taurus on January 7^th reflecting the electrical current of change that is rushing through the zeitgeist. Mars confronts Uranus on January 20^th (Inauguration Day in America) and for those who have planets in early degrees of Scorpio, Taurus or Aquarius, late January to late February could feel electric.

A bullish Mars conjunction with Uranus speaks of angry mobs, violence and rage as frustration erupts. Mars has been moving Retrograde through hot-headed Aries (September 9^th to November 13^th) and the applying conjunction with Uranus will fan the flames in the weeks to come. When we are disconnected from our personal Mars energy or when the collective is overwhelmed by a sense of impotence or anger due to economic or social circumstances, this combination can be explosive and destabilising. Mars/Uranus aspects often signify the start of wars as suppressed energy becomes intolerable. Mars makes an explosive conjunction to Uranus and Jupiter inflates this energy by square on US inauguration day so there may be more uprisings, accidents, chaos and disruption. Neptune (delusion, confusion, disappointment) squares the transiting Gemini/Sagittarius Nodes, calling up old karma, highlighting issues around education, justice, morality; obscuring our “realities” as the disinformation pandemic surges through social media. Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius are joined by Mercury (January 9^th) and the Sun (January 20^th).

Revolutionary Uranus stations direct on January 14^th catapulting us into alien territory with rude awakenings, abrupt events that separate us from what once we thought we valued. Uranus constellates anxiety and fear that has perhaps been deeply buried in our psyche. It accompanies a sense of alienation from bedrock aspects of life and thrusts us into the future in quest of some ideal that undermines the old and replaces it with the new in its ideal form, which inevitably results in disillusion and enormous frustration.

Venus moves into Capricorn on January 9^th, where she can become despondent and leaden unless we rework rhythm and routine into the days of our lives. Venus symbolises what we truly value and hold dear to our hearts.

Many of us may feel emptied, listless, as we stand on the shoreline of this year and see the storm clouds gathering. We may still face heart-rending reckonings, impossible choices, thwarted cravings for adventure, and new experiences, as we contemplate the same routine, the same sense of confinement and restriction. For most of us, 2021 will feel like a long uphill climb back to sanity and security.

This is the year to shore up our courage and perseverance when we feel anxious or despondent. This is the year of paring down to the bare bones of living simply, of tending to what matters in our lives, drawing on our creativity, our determination, our blind faith, perhaps, as we practice what spiritual teacher, Pema Chödrön calls “compassionate abiding”.

As we seek out a quiet rhythm that rocks us back to our selves amidst the grim news of death, contracting economies, civil unrest, and a catastrophic climate crisis, may we commit to restoring our serenity, slowing down to bring our awareness to the present moment as we make the bed, comb our hair, dance around the living room to the kind of music that sings us back to ourselves.

May we spend less, appreciate more this year. May we speak gently, listen carefully. May we seek out sublime moments of unexpected pleasure, cocooned contentment as we create a private respite from the stormy weather.

Please get in touch if you would like a private astrology reading: ingrid@trueheartwork.com or visit my website: www.trueheartwork.com