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July 24, 2025 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Rewind—Mercury Retrograde—July 18th-August 11th.

There is always a risk in increasing your awareness. You risk seeing things you might rather not notice. You risk feelings you might rather avoid. You risk having to change what you think and worse—having to change what you do. Betty Martin.

July’s green days stretch drowsily into the endless arc of a china-blue sky. School’s out here in the North. Families flock to golden beaches, children make hearts and angels in the sand. Stunned by the glut of sunlight, hordes of visitors amble slowly along promenades, slump in deck chairs, grateful for any distraction from the ache of the world.

A brave new moon in Leo on July 24^th accompanies Mercury Retrograde passage in Leo. This lunation accents the powerful emotions we cradle in our hearts; what we love, and the anticipatory clench of what we fear. Leo rules the heart in medical astrology, so clasped within the darkness of this new moon lie heart-directed choices, opportunities to begin again. Pluto (irrevocable endings), opposes this lunation, adding a charge of potency to what we initiate this week as every bright promise of a beginning requires a little death.

Pluto demands honest soul searching. If you have planets or angles in early degrees Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius, you will be unable to avoid having to change course, you will be compelled to increase your awareness. Change will be an evolutionary imperative. And for us all, this is a year of life-changing ingresses―Pluto in Aquarius, Jupiter in Cancer, Neptune and Saturn now moving in tandem through Aries―an uncomfortable medley of distinctly different energies swirling through the collective and impacting on our own lives in some way.

Disruptive, inventive Uranus entered changeable Gemini on July 7^th agitating the frequency around us all, ushering sudden change and chaos to societies, as borders and boundaries are shattered. As our children play in the sunshine, our thoughts may turn to the children who endure the unspeakable terror of war.

Uranus is associated with innovation, civil unrest, revolution, and those shocking “wake up calls” that jolt us from our complacency. Uranus will hurtle through the sign of Gemini over the next eight years, accompanied by an unprecedented acceleration of technical momentum as AI appropriates our autonomy, requisitions our work, presses—unbidden—into our awareness.

This week, as Mercury (intellect, nervous system, transport, and communication) backtracks through Leo, the Trump administration signs executive orders to take the guard rails off AI, dismantling safeguards and standards that will protect us from hate speak and othering. The “Build Baby Build” also plan dismantles environmental and land use regulations to bolster the vast AI infrastructure, and the energy needed to power it.

Dharna Noor sounds the alarm in an article in The Guardian, “the AI sector is already depleting land and water rescources and taking a massive toll on climate, with AI-powered large language models such as ChatGPT taking up to 10 times more energy than a regular Google search, according to an estimate by the Electric Power Research Institute.” Good news for the Billionaire Tech Bros. An accelerant for global warming.

We know that when fear curls tightly in our nervous system it hooks us in anticipation of what lies ahead. When we feel the awful squeeze of fear, we become self-centred, we lose our capacity for caring and empathy. We are locked in developmental arrest.

They’re calling it the age of anxiety, says Kristen Lee, author of Worth the Risk: how to micro-dose bravery and grow resilience. Yet, amidst the overwhelming pain and chaos of it all, we may be moved to do something noble, gracious, kind today.

As the sun shines brightly and our children make sand angels on the beach, we may be reminded of what Mark Twain famously said: The worse things in my life never actually happened.

Mercury Rx periods so often bring to our awareness those thoughts that are entryways into a state of fear. We may linger in the past, fret about the future.

Spiritual teachers ask that we bring our fear to our awareness and tend to it like a timid wild creature. The shamans say that when we name a fear, it loses its power over us. Science corroborates this. We activate the pre-frontal cortex, calm the limbic system, when we can gently name and turn towards our fear.

The vibratory signature of this regenerative New Moon may light the way, even if dimly at first, to a flowering of purpose, a deeper way of listening, a different way of seeing, an outward rush of a life force that floods through us even in the darkness. “Despair is our chance to wrestle with fire and come through,” writes Christina Baldwin.

Today, let’s risk seeing things we might rather not notice. Bring to our awareness those feelings we would much rather avoid. Practice wishful thinking.

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

July 2, 2025 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Sign of the Times—Uranus enters Gemini—2025-2033.

To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before.

We must search out totally new ways to anchor ourselves, for all the old roots—religion, nation, community, family, or profession—are now shaking under the hurricane impact of the accelerative thrust—Alvin Toffler, Future Shock.

The month of July marks a change in tempo. In indigo skies pricked with stars, Uranus explodes into the mutable air sign of Gemini, an accelerant for change in this living, dying world. On July 7th, for the first time in 84 years, Uranus leaves the solid ground of Taurus, to whirl through the unstable element of air.

Uranus briefly returns to Taurus on November 8^th, then returns to Gemini on April 26th, 2026 where it will rush through the zeitgeist till 2033.

Uranus accompanies innovation, disruption, anarchy, and rebellion. When Uranus moves through restless Gemini (information, communication, transportation) anything that is too fixed, too crystallised or rooted or limited, will be torn apart, as Uranus offers the promise of something better, more perfect.

Gemini is a mutable air sign. As the winds of change wrap around the globe, we might think back to the events that unfolded in our world when Saturn and Jupiter aligned in Aquarius, on the solstice of 2020. It was then that we collectively entered the astrological age of air, an element associated with ideas, information—and mis-information. Pluto entered the air sign of Aquarius (March 2023) and now, Uranus the archetypal creator-sky-god, enters Gemini, a hurricane force that will intrude on all of our lives in some way over the next eight years.

Futurist Alvin Toffler coined the term “future shock” and “information overload” to describe what happens to a society when change escalates beyond the human scale. We have lost our bearings in the swirl of social media, wearable tech, disembodied AI, algorithms and “influencers” that draw from our most tender places for commercial gain. The tempo of technological and social change coupled with climate chaos has shattered our illusions of autonomy and control. We are brittle, anxious, reactive, addicted to those very distractions that leave us feeling empty and alone. In 2023, at least 24 million Americans took drugs like Xanax, known as benzodiazepines, according to the Wall Street Journal. We are Generation Xanax.

Author and spiritual teacher, Caroline Myss observes, “we’re living at an unprecedented time of change in the world… the ingredients that are creating this chaotic rupture have never come together before, ever…now we begin to consider the unimaginable. That maybe life’s not casual. That a human life is a sacred assignment and that the purpose of life is not to accumulate stuff with a great big, huge shopping cart, but rather it is to experience how powerful every one of us is. And to decide, that every choice I make is an act of creation.”

Transits of Uranus to our own birth charts are often accompanied by sudden events that shake us awake, bring into sharp focus something, some hidden spark of light within us, that has been there all along. When Uranus transits jolt our birth chart, they take us by surprise; awaken us from the trance that anesthetises, offers a promise of something new, better, brighter.

Uranus transits come with a velocity that requires a whole new set of skills, that demands an honest soul-searching enquiry, a stepping back from the old coping strategies. Endurance and resilience alone won’t be enough.

This month, the sky-story invites us to take a sacred pause before tumbling into the future as Uranus draws us into the currents that swirl through the collective :

Neptune stations Rx on July 4th, Saturn turns Retrograde on July 12th. On July 18th Mercury turns Rx (15° Leo), turning direct on August 11th (4° Leo) and will move out of shadow on August 25th to enter detail-orientated Virgo on September 2nd. Pluto has been Retrograde since May 4th.

Venus enters Gemini on July 5th, a grace-note that may signal sudden reversals or unexpected surges in the financial markets, or the opportunity to revise our “wants” or “needs” as we revise our monthly budget, make new choices around what we truly value.

Venus aligns with Uranus between July 2nd and July 7th, highlighting this cosmic turning point and perhaps bringing to our attention those places where we feel bruised and vulnerable, which are so often triggered by those we are closest to.

Tara Brach talks of the trance of fear that keeps us imprisoned in a primitive survival mode. As Uranus moves through Gemini, we might notice the cycles of reactivity that play out in our own relationships—shaming, blaming, control, judgement and revenge—the need to break free, to be independent—and how these primitive survival mechanisms play out when nations go to war. Gemini is assocaited with the arms, hands, lungs and nervous system, our coordination and fine motor skills. When we soften our fingers and hands, we send a message to our nervous system to relax. When we hold our loved one close in tender embrace, we fortify our capacity to be with whatever is so scary.

Hindsight is often associated with Uranus, the kind of rear-view mirror gazing that only comes after some great force moves through the collective and impinges upon our own lives. Uranus in Gemini accompanies innovation birthed from chaos.

“Before the earth and the sea, and the all-encompassing heaven came into being, the whole of nature displayed but a single face, which men have called Chaos.” wrote Ovid in his poem, Metamorphoses around 8CE.

Uranus moved through Gemini in the 1940s (1942-49) as we emerged from the trauma and chaos of World War 11 into a period of geopolitical muscle flexing, we call the Cold War. Uranus in Gemini was expressed by espionage, propaganda, and the rapid development of science and technology, intercontinental ballistic missiles, jet aircraft, the space race, and the lingering threat of the annihilation of all life on earth as nuclear weapons proliferated. Portable television replaced the fireplace, as the focal point in the living room. America went to war when Uranus moved through Gemini during the 1860s. And once again, it was conflict and chaos that birthed innovation and technical advances.

Expect the unimaginable as Uranus moves through the unstable element of air. Stay anchored in Love. Mindful of the false stories we tell ourselves that shock our nervous system, scare us into feeling lost and alone.

At this time of transition, we may be seduced by the security of the old ways. We may try to continue as we did before. Yet there is another way. “Where do we begin? Begin with the heart,” wrote anchoress Julian of Norwich who was walled up in a small cell built onto the church for most of her life. “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well,” Julian of Norwich is quoted as saying.

Even as we feel the slow suck of apathy, a sense of numbness or hopelessness, the sharp stab of fear… All shall be well.

So, let’s rest awhile, then begin again, with tender, open hearts. All manner of things shall be well.

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

June 11, 2025 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Home Comforts—Jupiter enters Cancer—June 9th-June 30th 2026.

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned—Maya Angelou.

Here in the north, the shimmer of summer sparkles across newly mown meadows of powered gold. We’re drunk with light, overwhelmed with a surfeit of beauty. Now the sun pauses at the zenith of the year and ancient Sarsen stones drink in the heat of the midsummer sun.

The sun dips into the cool waters of Cancer on June 21st marking the midsummer solstice, a turning point in the solar/lunar cycle. As the days of June shimmer in shades of green and the scent of dog rose wafts on a hot honeyed breeze, we have come full circle.

Within the constellation of Cancer is a delicate brush stroke of stars in the sky called Praesepe, the Latin word for “manger”. Cancer is associated with wombs, and cradles, with nourishment and containment, with our ancient human longing to belong, to seek shelter and comfort in a place we can call home. The word “home” dates to the Old English, “ham” or “hamum”, and many settlements included the word, “ham” as they were dwelling places, places of belonging to clans. Cities like Nottingham and Birmingham are reminders of the importance of the places we come from, the bonds that are forged in our families and communities.

“I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and dragons of home under one’s skin, at the extreme corners of one’s eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe,” writes the inimitable Maya Angelou in her superbly written letter to her daughter.

Home, belonging, safe places, will all be highlighted over the coming months:

Mercury moved into Cancer on June 8th, followed by Jupiter on June 9 th. Jupiter finds ease, joy and abundance in Cancer, traditionally, the sign of Jupiter’s exaltation. It is in the tender embrace of Cancer that Jupiter expands our innate human abilities to nurture, create, belong, to feel “at home” in a place, community, or country.

Jupiter travelled through Cancer from June 2013—July 2014 and will be moving through Cancer from June 9^th June 30^th, 2026.

Jupiter’s 12- month journey through Cancer will influence all our lives in some way if we tune into Jupiter’s benevolent wavelength and focus on positivity, abundance and success. Cancer is the Moon’s sign, and Jupiter expands the qualities of Cancer, heightening our sensitivity and empathy, our innate ability to nurture, to form deeper, heartfelt connections that add meaning and texture to our own lives. There may be new arrivals in our family—babies born, the joy of an engagement or a wedding, opportunities to reconnect with a family member, to excavate an important event from the past, to heal and repair.

As Jupiter enters Cancer it squares Saturn and Neptune in Aries, demanding discipline and imagination as we overcome challenges, make sacrifices in pursuit of our dreams. This final square between Jupiter and Saturn (it has been in play since last August) suggests closure, a final restructuring, opportunities to in pursuit of a dream.

Venus is moving through Taurus, the sign of her domicile (June 5th-July 4th) as we celebrate the sweet-scented days of midsummer with sensual indulgences and root ourselves in what we truly value. We may need to focus on money matters this month and this will be an auspicious time to invest in a property, or list our home, or spend our money on something or someone we value.

A luminous full moon in Jupiter-ruled Sagittarius on June 11th (20 ° Sagittarius opposite the Sun at 20 ° Gemini) squares the fated lunar nodes, nudging us towards brave life decisions, journeys to be taken. Jupiter rules this full moon, bringing blessings and abundance if we are open to them, yet this lunation is quickly followed by a volatile, unsettling square between Mars in Leo and unpredictable Uranus on June 15th, one day after of Donald Trump’s 79th Birthday.

On July 4^th, 1776 when the new nation of America was born, the Sun was moving through the sign of Cancer, Venus and Jupiter were conjunct in Cancer, and Mercury was Retrograde in Cancer. Home, family, belonging, and safety are enduring qualities in this country of settlers and immigrants, qualities that are deeply rooted in the American psyche. This week, active-duty marines and members of the national guard were mobilised against Americans who have protested over travel bans, rushed deportations without due process, and mass detentions, all targeting immigrants and their families.

Now as the Sun dips into the cool waters of Cancer, a sign that clasps us to the familiar breast of comfort and security, may our hearts my open to the plight of immigrants, to families torn apart by conflict or political ideology.

At this sacred time of pause, of empty space, may we send prayers for the displaced and the homeless out into the darkness. May our prayers blaze with light, find safety and shelter in Love.

To book an astrological reading, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

May 18, 2025 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

A New Me —Saturn in Aries —25 th May 2025—April 2028.

She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess―Helen Oyeyemi.

“Be yourself” we’re told as we muster our confidence and bravely step out of the shadows. Yet as e.e. cummings once said, “the hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be someone else.” In these uneasy times of uncompromising nationalism, polarised ideologies, changing boundaries, displacement, gender rulings, increasingly we may ask—who are we, how independent is our will?

Novelist Virginia Woolf believed that there are a great variety of selves to call upon… “far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may have many thousand…and these selves of which we are built up, one on top of the other, as plates are piled on a waiter’s hand…”

On May 24^th, just before a buoyant new moon in Gemini (May 27^th), Saturn moves into the sign of Aries, marking the beginning of a three-year journey that will touch all our lives in some way. Autonomy and identity will be the nucleus of Saturn’s transit through Aries. For some of us, this may be the exhilarating fresh start of everything we have been waiting for. We may finally have the courage to stop tip-toeing around people or situations that keep us small, to emerge unapologetically, as a new me.

Aries is the hero/warrior archetype, and its shadow, the destroyer. In myth and in fairy tale, the hero/warrior archetype is typically masculine. As the bedrock of our civilization shifts and cracks, revealing a new landscape, we imagine new myths, seek out new heroines who collaborate, relate and share. For most of us, our hero’s or heroine’s quest is not muscular but a courageous response to the challenges of life. As Saturn travels with Neptune in Aries our perspective may shift. During the next three years, as unseen forces move through the Collective, our attention will be drawn to the complex notion of identity and belonging, freedom and self-expression. This is the impetus of the risk-taking trailblazer. This is when we feel the fear and do it anyway. As Saturn moves through Aries, we claim our own authority, clarify our goals, grow in maturity and self-acceptance. For those of us with planets or angles in Aries, this three-year-Camino may compel us to unapologetically reveal a brighter, braver version of ourselves as we claim our own authority, grow in maturity, soften in self-acceptance.

Saturn stations Retrograde from July 12^th to November 27^th, 2025, and moves back to the final degrees of Pisces on September 1^st and then enters Aries on the day before Valentine’s Day 2026, to journey through Aries until April 12^th, 2028. Saturn transits compel us to conserve our energy and reserves to focus on those things that we may now find meaningful, that serve us in some practical way.

These next few months deliver a preview of the substance of Saturn’s three-year journey through Aries. Saturn moves back into Pisces briefly from September 1^st; until on February 13^th, it moves decisively through Aries until April 2028.

Saturn represents the principle of structure and form, restraint and responsibility. Aries is the impulse that prompts us to take a risk, to venture into the unknown. Saturn’s presence will cool and temper the rashness of Aries and activate the Aries section of your birth chart, already primed by the long Venus transit and her Retrograde cycle, as well as Chiron’s journey through Aries (2018-2026). In myth, Saturn is depicted carrying a scythe so there is an emphasis on cutting, severing and when Saturn is in Aries, patience will be needed before we cleave something apart too hastily or commit to something prematurely. On the day of Saturn’s ingress into Aries, Mercury conjoins Uranus in Taurus for the last time (May 24^th) so pay attention to new stories, developments in world events that foreshadow events that will unfold over the next three years. Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale spoke out at the British Book Awards: “Words are our earliest human technology, like water they appear insubstantial, but like water they can generate tremendous power… Political and religious polarisation, which appeared to be on the wane for parts of the 20^th century, has increased alarmingly in the past decade. The world feels to me more like the 1930s and 40s at present than it has in the intervening 80 years.”

Yet the world is a different place now. Humankind has evolved, access to information and misinformation is more widespread. Pluto is moving through Aquarius. Uranus enters Gemini on July 7^th; Neptune has moved into Aries. These outer planets reflect the profound changes in the collective consciousness.

As the days of May pass by, the first delicate blush of spring assumes a new confidence. White and mauve wisteria, blowsy magnolias, the last of the bluebells sheltering beneath a canopy of green. Nature reminds us of the transience of life.

As Saturn enters Aries, we reimagine our identity. We may meet ourselves, or a new version of ourselves at the starting line. We break new ground. We find the strength to let something, or someone go, to venture forth, to meet ourselves a-new, to feel the fear and dare greatly.

Bronnie Ware worked in palliative care for many years. In her memoir, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying; A life transformed by the Dearly Departing, Bronnie writes that is not money or status, but “the regret of not having lived a life true to themselves was the most common of all.”

Here are the five most common regrets:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.

On June 16^th, Jupiter and Saturn make their third square, in new signs, Saturn working hard, pared down to bare essentials in Aries, the sign of its fall, Jupiter in its exaltation, in Cancer, calling us back from the busyness of life to those things that provide shelter from the world.

Once we acknowledge that limited time is remaining, although we don’t know if that is years, weeks or hours, we are less driven by ego or by what other people think. Instead, we are more driven by what our hearts truly want. Acknowledging our inevitable, approaching death offers us the opportunity to find greater purpose and satisfaction in the time we have remaining.”
― Bronnie Ware.

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

April 11, 2025 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Change of Heart—Full Moon in Libra—April 13th.

It isn’t too late. Time is not running out. Your life is here and now. And the moment has arrived at which you are finally ready to change―Cheryl Strayed.

Most of us can recall those pivotal moments when our lives were shaped by intuitive choices that catapulted us into a different direction. We may have moved continents, left a lover―or chosen to stay, walked away from a highly paid corporate career to create art. This weekend as we reflect on the turbulence of the eclipse season, amplified by the Mercury and Venus Retrograde cycles, we may realise how much our priorities have changed, how we have healed, how much we have grown.

Venus revisits the same area of the zodiac every eight years. Venus last moved through the Pisces/Aries houses in our birth chart in March-April 2017. Retrograde times deliver gifts of hindsight, or personal descents into hell that up-end our lives. This Retrograde cycle may have carried similar themes―a shift in values and priorities, perhaps sudden realisation that our butterfly-effect choices, even the seemingly small ones, have brought us to where we are tonight.

Venus is exalted in Pisces, the sign of the tethered Fish. As Venus moves direct once more through opaque, Piscean waters, we may feel connected to a deep force of compassion, a swelling of creativity, and―as a flurry of pale pink spring blossom shimmers in the bluest of blue skies―the sweet blessing of heartfelt gratitude. This Venus station might accompany a change of heart, a new realisation that the moment has arrived, deepened by time, to release the past and finally move on.

The pulse of spring quickens. The hedgerows blaze with white blossom. After a fractious eclipse season amplified by the Mercury (March 14^th-April 7^th at 26º Pisces) and Venus Retrograde cycles (March 2^nd-April 13^th at 24º Pisces), Venus glistens like a diamond on dawn’s softly curved breast as the full moon in the Venus-ruled sign of Libra turns her face to the sun this weekend.

Full moons symbolise completion. They are harbingers of light as we see more clearly, finish now what must be finished. As this full moon moves through the Libran part of our own birth chart, we are called to practice the challenging art of balance, compromise, choice and fairness in a world that so often seems unjust and out of kilter.

Aries is the beginning, Pisces the end. Libra is midway, a crossroads where the old converges with the new, where the winds of change blow across our lives, exposing the roots, bringing us closer to ourselves, and to others in safe relationships where oxytocin and vasopressin activate parts of the brain associated with calm.

The moon and Venus, two quintessential symbols of femininity, infuse the heavens with peace and harmony tonight as we honour those relationships that have sustained us through our darkest hours and allow love to flow freely towards those who mirror those aspects of ourselves that we disown.

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.”

Author Gerald Jampolsky writes that love is letting go of fear, and that we choose either fear or love. The essence of Libra brings harmony to polarities, offers a possibility to let go of the melodrama, to transcend the personal, and touch the heart of another with hope. At this full moon, we offer the warmth and containment of a blessing to the world and those around us. As we bow our heads to our hearts, may we feel lighter, may we notice the grace and beauty in ordinary things. For those who will be celebrating Pesach, Easter or Ēostre, this from poet and mystic, John O’Donohue: May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquillities. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.

Please get in touch with me to book a personal astrology reading: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Prices go up from May 1st 2025.