Astrology

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Pluto, Saturn, Uranus and COVID19

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New Zealand is now in our first official day of lockdown. Only grocery stores and service stations are open; only essential service workers are allowed to continue to work together. The human world is in crisis and we are trying to pause the effects of the pandemic here before it’s too late. I have to say, New Zealand is doing an exceptional job on this. It’s the most organised emergency I’ve ever experienced. We must be embracing Saturn.

I’ve seen a lot of articles about the astrology of this pandemic, about the conjunction of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn – crushing society into transformational restructure, about the technological responses being very Uranus in Taurus.

Ever since Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008, along with the last financial crisis, the economy has been under the crunch of Pluto’s penetrating and deep-reaching transformational machinations, and now with Saturn in its home sign of Capricorn, the restructure has been expedited.

Those of us who are sensitive can feel it in our bones. The earth, the earth signs, and the planetary forces are pulling us, compelling us to change. It’s painful, but it’s necessary. We cannot continue frittering away in these unsustainable systems. A crisis brings all our fault-lines to the forefront and exposes our shadows. Our collective darkness is leeching out, into full view, and so is our collective goodness.

On a personal level we can, and many of us have, been looking at how these outer-planet nexuses of transformation affect our own charts. What houses do they fall into? How do they relate to our personal planets in aspects.

As Saturn heads into Aquarius there’s also the wide open possibility of further revolution brewing. Many people are welcoming the social initiatives put in place in response to the pandemic to protect people and encourage better labour practices, banking and rental protections and so on. Insight Astrology has recently shared this piece on Saturn in Aquarius: activists and visionaries getting organised!

What are we learning from this challenging and potent time?

On a personal level, I’m learning to restructure my routine, working from home, caring for my child and writing fiction. This is a very Saturnian – hard work! I’m getting up at my usual time, even though I could sleep longer, so that I can do my regular routine (5 minutes of stretching and writing) before work, and I’m fitting in a walk (which we are allowed to do as long as we avoid other people), and then I’m making the most of the extra time in the evening from not needing to walk home from work, by fitting in a bit of extra writing. I’m used to fitting my writing around a hectic schedule, so I’m finding ways to maximise the new opportunities that come with working from home.

Also, on an even more personal level, I’m working with my wonderful Gestalt therapist on processing childhood trauma that has been triggered for me recently. This trauma has a particularly Plutonian quality. Pluto is not aspected in my natal chart, which makes it harder to access that particular shadow work, but I have Saturn and Mars in Scorpio, and the latter squares my Sun, which is a painful natal aspect to carry. This is a great opportunity to process my Pluto shadow stuff. It’s heavy and deep and terrifying, as only Pluto can be. I’m hoping to emerge from this with a new level of calm and a new level of awareness.

How are Pluto, Saturn and Uranus affecting you, and how are you coping with and/or making the most of this extraordinary time?

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Re-writing your narrative this Mars retrograde

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It’s important to be deliberate and specific in what we want – often our stories have been shaped unconsciously. As a child you may have been told that you were lazy, selfish, useless, dumb, not creative, weak, pathetic… I know I was. It has taken me a long time to go over all these implanted limiting thoughts and re-examine them, discarding them when I realised that they were both untrue and harmful.

With Mars retrograde in Aquarius from now until September 2018, this is a great time to re-invent your story and re-write your narrative.  Words are spells, and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives are powerful in shaping our experience. Limiting beliefs often stand in the way of us accomplishing what we want and need to accomplish in our lives. In this post I will share with you my ritual for re-writing my narrative this Mars retrograde.

My Mars retrograde re-writing ritual:

  • First, write a re-cap of your story over the past few years focusing on what you have achieved, and how far you’ve come.
  • Second, because we have to be aware of what we want to transform, write down the limiting patterns and beliefs you are aware of in every area of your life – I did this focusing on the themes of each astrological house.
  • Thirdly, meditate on each area/house, and intuit what kinds of affirmations/messages you want to replace these limiting thoughts with.
  • The fourth step: be specific – for each of these areas make a list of very specific things you want to think, feel, see, and experience.

I have not quite gotten to step four yet but I will share my limiting patterns and affirmations below in case they are useful.

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Image from The Tiny Totem

1st house – feeling like I’m not good enough/not doing enough/not a good shining person

Affirmations: I am good enough – as I am – I am enough – I do enough – I shine and radiate warmth – I am good and whole – we are all good enough if only we can recognise it – I do well to be myself – I am proud of myself – I am a wonderful person – we are all wonderful beings – I am here to learn and share – I accept myself through and through. I love and approve of myself, 0 I am doing my best – we are all doing our best – I am whole and centred and full of light.

2nd house – not having enough, scarcity, fear of loss, financially disempowered, undervalued

I have enough – I am blessed with abundance – I am grateful to have everything i need and more – I have so much that I can share – I am generous and kind and giving with healthy boundaries – I am valued by others – I have strong values – I am secure in myself and my path. I have a fabulous income and I spend it on things that I value – I own just enough (not too much, not too little) – I have everything I need.

3rd house – lacking in confidence RE communication and esp in job interviews, fears about not being a good enough writer, frustrations with communication, meaningless communication, anxiety and unhelpful social media habits, wasting energy, dishonesty

I communicate confidently and with ease – I am intuitively guided to say what is best suited for the situation – I can be honest and open and safe by listening to my intuition on what is a good thing to say at the time – I listen to intuition – I come accross as competent and confident – I am a wonderful writer – people enjoy and appreciate and value my writing – I get lots ofgood and useful feedback – I communicate calmly and clearly – My communications are meaningful and I listen well – I am good at calming myself and centering myself in my body – I have healthy and productive communication habits – I use my time effectively – I integrate information and knowlegde to effectively share understanding with a wide range of people who are receptive to me.

4th house – Feeling frustrated/grumpy at home, and playing into power struggles with the child

I have a wonderful home-life – I am safe and comfortable and at-ease in my home – my home routines are good for my health and wellbeing – I spend enough time alone and looking after my needs – I nurture and noursish myself well – my home is beautiful and practical – I keep only the things I need, want, use and love, the things that enhance my life and bring me joy – my home is a solid foundation – My early life and family patterns have given me wonderful learning experiences and I process and let go of the emotion that no longer serves me. I live in healthy balance with my home and family, past and present. I take responsibility for my role and for my ability to help. I feel supported, connected, nurtured, and loved.

5th house – feeling insecure and anxious about creative exposure, fear of death through vulnerability/character assassination

I celebrate my creativity – I celebrate my creative work – I stand by my creative work – I feel good about my creative practice – I feel proud of my novels and other creative writing – I am comitted to my creative practice and to sharing it with the world in good ways – I have valuable things to say and my creativity helps me to share understanding with a wide audience – I am strong enough to stand in my vulnerability – I enjoy receiving useful feedback and let go of anything that is superflous to my needs – I understand that people project all kinds of things into what they read and I only take on-board what is useful for me – I am proud of my creative character and I am resilient. My creative practice is a balanced part of my life – I have a strong need for creative expression and I feel fulfilled in my creative practice – I share bravely!

6th house – feeling resentful/frustrated/disempowered about work, feeling like I ‘have’ to go there, rather than like I want to be there – feeling tired/low energy/afraid of exhaustion

I’m full of energy – the work that I do gives me energy – the work I do is meaninful and empowering – I am putting my skills and talents to good use – I’m contributing in a meaningful way – I work with great people – I enjoy my time at work – I love my work – I am healthy – I exercise well and eat nourishing food in balance with my body’s needs – I’m so grateful for my work – my work brings me joy – I’m satisfied with my income – I earn more than enough – I feel content and excited with my job – I do a great job with my work – I am grateful that I can be genuine at work, and be myself – I feel understood and appreciated and valued in my work – my work is in wonderful balance with my home life and my creative life!

7th house – judgement and negative projections about other people, including in close relationship and when we first meet. Feeling limited in ability for relationship with women, feeling inhibited.

I observe my own patterns and release myself from perspectives that do not serve me well – when I meet people I see the good in people and good is reflected back to me in my interactions with others – I am self-aware and notice my own patterns reflected in other people – my relationships are harmonious – I am happy and satisfied with my relationships – I am good at relationships – I feel free and empowered in my relationships – I am present in a way that brings out the best in people – I enjoy my interactions with other people – I feel happy and excited and safe in relating to other people.

8th house – feeling disempowered, pattern of powerlessness and being made powerless by other people in positions of power, disempowerment with money

I am empowered – I stand in my own power – I am strong and brave and courageous – I explore my own mind deeply – I am in a process of continuous transformation and unfolding – I grow, heal, let go of what I no longer need, rest, and come back into blossom – I am in-tune with my own cycles – I am empowered in my body – I am empowered in my finances – I am empowered in my interactions with people – I am empowered in my sense of self – I am powerful.

9th house – fear of not being taken seriously because of spiritual ideas, getting stuck on ideas, not feeling like I live up to my ideals, inhibition when it comes to exploring, travel, adventure and new experiences – fear of the unknown and of risk, fear of publishing failure

I am wise and intuitive – I am brave and courageous – I explore the fronteir of my own mind – I step out of my comfort zone to grow – I am always learning and exploring – I am an excellent researcher – I have excellent perspective – my publishing is successful – I am exactly where I need to be right now – I have faith in life – I trust in my path and my journey
10th house – ambition and its attachment to my self-worth RE work status/title, fear of not achieving enough at work and in the world, fear of inneffectiveness, power struggles at work, feeling superior, fears of failing to achieve my publishing dreams, fears of public ridicule, feeling held-back by gatekeepers, feeling underappreciated and undervalued at work, confusion about career path

I am happy and satisfied with where I am in my career – I am excited about my career path – I am working towards achieving my dreams in an effective and practical way – Every day I take another step forward towards greater independence, greater success, and greater effectiveness in my career – I am valued and well-regarded in all my work areas – I meet the public in a way that is good for me – I clear my own path and make my own way in the world and I am also well-supported – I am good enough and I am doing enough – I am on my best path.

11th house – feeling socially isolated and disconnected, feeling like I don’t belong, outsider, hating parties and being socially awkward, hating small-talk, feeling superior to the masses to protect myself from failure/shame/humiliation/embarassment – fear of failure/shame/humuliation/embarassment.

I am worthy of love and belonging – I am connected to many groups of people – I am great at having interesting conversations with the people I meet – I am innovative and in-tune with new developments – I value other people – I feel comfortable in my own skin and can easily relate to other people – I am comfortable with myself – I find it easy to connect with people – my creative work connects with a wide audience that resonates with me.

12th house – patterns of avoidance and hypochondria, being sick in order to escape, opting out of things that make me uncomfortable, too much screen-time as a drug, too much junk food as a drug, the urge to surrender myself to another person in wild infafuation, feeling weak and hopeless, fear of inprisonment, fear of the shadow, fear of powerlessness, fear of the void.

I face the difficult parts of myself with loving kindness and acceptance, I face up to my fears – I face challenges with bravery and courage – I am strong in myself – I surrender only to my path and the present moment – I let go of the past – I am well – I am healthy – I am present – I fear hopeful – I have faith in life – I am powerful – I find power in silence, stillness, aloneness and in the void – I follow my intuitive wisdom to create harmony and balance in my life – I am good enough.

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The progressed moon through the houses and shifts in life focus

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Moon-Girl by Stephanie Wild

I once had a friend named Roy. Roy was a business man with a keen interest in Astrology. He taught me about lunar progressions and what they mean in terms of life stages.

Roy was living in Amsterdam many years ago, and for the life of him he couldn’t make any business deals work. He had all the right contacts, he was networking in all the right places, meeting all the right people, but nothing went to plan. At this point Roy already had a good understanding of astrological natal charts and transits, but nothing here quite added up. He was living in his own personal dark ages – there must be some reason – he thought… It wasn’t for while that he learned about lunar progressions.

Little did he know it, but Roy’s progressed moon was in the 12th house. As soon as his progressed moon crossed over into the first house the business connections started happening, as if by magic. He went to meet a friend, who it turned out had left the country and Roy was able to pick up the business his friend had left behind and make a good amount of money very quickly.

Years later, Roy was living in Amsterdam with his partner, a vivacious woman Jules. Roy and Jules would go out to parties often, however she found that no one would really talk to her. She made no friends. She was lonely and isolated. Having experienced his own 12th house moon progression, Roy recognised the signs and sure enough – Jules’ progressed moon had also moved into the 12th house. He reflected that as soon as it crossed over again into the first house the phone wouldn’t stop ringing with friends calling for Jules, she made friends easily and was able to resume being a social butterfly again.

Roy told me other stories of the progressed moon in the 12th house. A friend of his was a jewellery maker in Amsterdam but could not sell any of his jewellery, no matter how hard he tried. Every week he would get a little bit of dole money and buy some silver and make a few rings. He managed to amass a large stock of rings over the few years of his progressed moon going through the 12th house. As soon as it crossed over into the first house he met a guy who owned a shop in the red light district who was keen to stock his jewellery in the front window. It all sold out in a month or two, and the 12th house transit paid off.

The progressed moon charts the emphasis of our lives – where your heart is – as Roy said. It takes around 2.5 years to go through a house, although sometimes it is shorter or longer, depending on the angles of the houses. As it goes through the house it carries the emphasis of the house meaning. You can find your progressed chart for free at astro.com, in the extended chart selection, just enter your birth details and select ‘progressed chart’ instead of ‘natal’.

In the first house, it is all about you – emerging into the world, new beginnings, new adventures. Self esteem, self love. It takes on the qualities of action, of Aries. This is a time to act, to be assertive, to be confident. Lessons of the first house may involve challenges to identity – identity crisis, losing a sense of self and finding oneself again.

In the second house the progressed moon focuses on security and material stability – on the physical and on comfort. This is time to hold your ground – or to find your ground. This is time to delight in simple pleasures and to ponder values. Lessons of the second house may involve losses or substantial gains to property. This is also a good time to focus on looking after your body by nourishing  yourself well.

In the third house it is all about communication. This is a time to write, to connect, to think and share, to go on short journeys and address issues with siblings. If you have been thinking about starting a blog or a journal or writing letters – this is the time. You may encounter challenges of communication or problems with siblings during this time you may feel childish or patronised.

In the fourth house the emphasis is on home – on roots – on ancestry – on the family. This is probably not a good time to travel or move overseas (unless you are moving home or to an ancestral home). During this time you may encounter problems with ‘home’ – you may be forced to move. This is all part of the learning of the fourth house. remember the deepest roots are not ones that can be taken from you. This is an important time for self care, you are more likely to feel sensitive and to try to protect yourself. Learn how to nurture yourself well. Revel in the comfort blanket.

In the fifth house there is a strong focus on what we can create. Do you have a hobby? Do you lack one? Do you want to make more meaningful creations? Do you want to have children? These are some of the questions of the fifth house. This is the natural home of Leo. The lessons here are about play, performance, creativity. This is also a good time to start a blog, take up painting, photography, or join a theater group… that kind of thing. The challenges you will face may arise around questioning your purpose in life and your self-worth, in setting out to do the kind of creating you feel compelled to do – or in struggling to find a worthwhile kind of creation that you feel confident in doing. Friendship is very important to this time, and you may encounter difficulties with close friends which teach you more about yourself.

In the sixth house the emphasis is on work. Hard work. Analysis. You may feel like a slave to your work or to your home. You may feel your efforts are not acknowledged or rewarded enough. This is a chance to develop your skills at meticulous work, at finer details, at critical analysis. The work you do now will pay off and you have the opportunity to work your way into a life of more freedom. This is the sign of Virgo, analysis and hard work. Facing the hard stuff will have lasting results.

In the seventh house the focus is on relating – on partnership. This may be a time when relationships become central. Romantic relationships and other kind of partnerships (eg: business) take on a greater significance. Relationships are largely based on projection and expectations – and that is the primary learning here. Become as aware as possible about your expectations of the other, and about what these say about you. You may take on a stronger interest in balance, harmony, peacefulness, beauty and aesthetics during this time.

In the eighth house these two or so years will be spent understanding depth, power dynamics and other Scorpio themes. The eighth house is INTENSE. It is the deep, dark, the esoteric. Your progressed moon in the eighth house will likely compel you to seek to understand power or get subconsciously caught up in power games. If your relationship focus from the 7th house continues it will change substantially. You will seek more from life – more experience, more depth, more challenge. You may become overly cynical. Watch out for your own dark side. Lean on empathy. Power without empathy is hollow and unfulfilling.

In the ninth house the focus shifts to a much broader lens. You will become interested in wider philosophy and theory, in exploration and travel – either in the mind or in the outer world. You may develop new spiritual understandings or join a different school of thought. Your thirst for depth from the eighth house will develop into a quest for knowledge, research and understanding. You may seek to develop a platform to share ideas, you may yearn to spend more time in nature.

In the tenth house your journey towards greater philosophical ideas will shift from the theoretical into the practical. How can you influence the world? If you previously have shown little interest in career development this is the time in which you may feel compelled to find a vocation, or it may be time for a career shift towards one that is more fulfilling. You may feel powerless, you may need to confront childhood issues with an authoritarian figure (eg: father/mother/teacher). This time is the right time to keep casting your rod into the ocean, you will eventually catch a fish or at least learn a lot in the process. Be practical. Take the opportunities that arise and shape them into ones that fit your values, don’t just sit around waiting to be discovered. Learn to fail, and to process rejection and find strength in vulnerability. These are very important lessons. You are finding your place in the world. Look to your midheaven sign and any strong aspects for the nature of your lessons.

In the eleventh house you take your new place in the world in a different direction. This is a time for networking, meeting new acquaintances and socialising. This is also a time when you may feel more detached from personal turmoil and more interested in humanitarian pursuits. How do you want to improve the world? What issues do you care most about? You may feel compelled to get involved in activism, charity or volunteer work. You may be interested in learning to use new technology for greater communication and to have a further reach. You may connect more with people over the internet.

In the twelfth house you may gather, as the first part of this post is all about the twelfth house, that this time is a time when things in the outer world do not tend to go to plan. This is an inner-focused time, a time for deep self-work. Roy told me: the work you do at this time won’t seem like it’s doing much but the results will show later. He also said: Go somewhere where they bring you food. Wouldn’t that be nice? Lock yourself away in a convent if you have the opportunity, go on silent meditation retreats, spend a lot of time doing flow activities, yoga, journalling, walking in nature – if you have such luxury. The biggest thing to remember is not to have too many expectations of yourself or of your life at this point. Inner processing is important. It may feel like your creative projects, your career, your social life or your goals can’t seem to gain any traction. It may feel like everything is going backwards. This is the inner part of a big spiral, where things seem to become very circular. Do the work. This time, as it relates to Pisces, reflects the lessons of ALL THE OTHER SIGNS COMBINED. Work through them as they arise. Your Saturn work will help you now. Your hard work will pay off, especially if you learn to question yourself. If you cannot face shame and the shadow now you may be prone to megalomania when the Sun progresses back to the first house. This is a very good time for therapy.

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Sometimes healing sucks: Chiron rising, the problem with progress, and Inanna in the underworld

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Collage by Stephanie Wild

The problem with the idea of healing is that the narrative of progress does not always fit well with reality. Life is both a process of growth and of entropy, and many many other things. I find myself, amidst this life, focusing always on getting better – on progress, healing, renewal.

Chiron, the asteroid symbolising the wounded healer, was rising at the time of my birth. It sits in my 12th house, in Gemini. Chiron conjuncts my North Node, linking it closely with my learning in this life. I still have a lot of unpacking to do around understanding these prominent aspects of my chart but I can tell you what it resonates with so far in my life.

Chiron rising conjunct my North Node for me coincides with a life focusses around healing and teaching. As a young child I felt a deep hopelessness at my atheist upbringing. I developed a paralysing phobia of death due to phychological abuse from about age six. Around that age I also had a kind of spiritual epiphany – a vision of connectivity – of people holding hands over the world – a sudden deep understanding of empathy. These are all very 12th house themes. My childhood trauma seems to coicide with early Pluto transits – adding to the death themes. Around the age of 12 I developed depression which I spent many years working through – with counselling, shamanic work and various kinds of paganism (in my teens), and then meditation, copious affirmations, hypnotherapy, energy healing, more counselling and writing (in my 20s). I have done so much healing: food/nutrition based healing, yoga, journalling… basically every kind of healing I came across that resonated in order to try to deal with chronic illness and chronic fatigue. A huge thread through my life story has been healing in one form of another.

By now, in my early 30s, I would expect to be really good at it. I have a couple of decades of actively seeking out, learning and participating in healing processes – and teaching them as well. But life is full of challenges – difficult transits like Chiron squaring my natal Neptune and also (simultaneously) Neptune squaring my natal Chiron. Going through journeys of losing faith and re-growing it, the pain of psychological dying giving way to the pain of psychological rebirth. So much healing.

Healing for me has taken on a very different process, in recent years. It is no longer about crystals and guided visualisations as it was in my teens, or about re-programming my mind with beneficial thoughts and tracing back my past life lessons as it often was in my 20s. Post Saturn return, my healing process is mostly about journalling and paying attention – cultivating my ability to listen to deep intuition, and also every form of self-care that makes sense to me. Astrology, a language I began to learn in my early 20s, has been very useful to me in understanding the learning that I am currently going through – every transit is surprisingly relevant to my life, and the knowledge of the transit’s lessons, challenges and opportunity helps me to get the most out of the difficulties.

Sometimes healing sucks. Probably, most of the time. It is hard. it is painful. It often requires trying multiple things that don’t work before, hopefully, we find something that does. I like to use metaphors for the psyche based on biology and ecological systems: some wounds require intervention in order to heal – we must clean out the pus and muck, untangle and separate ourselves from the things we are caught up in, remove psychic splinters. Other wounds need to be rested in order to heal – too often we think of ourselves as we think of doctors – as active agents of healing, however the real healing is not an active process, just as doctors themselves do not heal. In order to heal, we must remove all obstacles to the healing process which is a natural process.

When I am going through painful healing processes my main coping strategies for this kind of thing are going for walks and journaling. Also – doing all the things I know that help me to take care of myself – which are not always the things that are easy and comfortable. When I am going through a difficult time I want to stay in bed and eat junk food but that leads to feeling worse! The problem with knowing all about healing is that you have high expectations for yourself and want to feel like you are progressing. The processes of healing often don’t feel like that. It can feel hopeless and hard – a big struggle with no clear light at the end of the tunnel.

Sometimes healing sucks because it doesn’t feel like we are making progress at all – and we feel like we should already know how to deal with this shit by now! Sometime the fixation I have with progress – with always getting better – just makes me feel worse. Awareness of this allows me the opportunity to release my grasp on the fixation with progress. I do not need to be always getting better. Life is a process that will always lead to death – ageing and entropy are inevitable if we life long enough. There is still so much to accept here. These topics can be terrifying psychological terrain to tread. When we do stumble upon them the dread sets in, we have stepped towards the shadow, across the boundaries of light and into the underworld.

In Sumerian mythology, Inanna’s descent into the underworld provides a wonderful metaphor for the suffering and pain of such a journey. The goddess Inanna is often archetypal linked to Venus, the divine feminine aspect, the goddess self. Inanna journeys into the underworld to meet her sister Ereshkigal. To prepare for the journey she dresses elaborately, with lapiz lazuli, her garments represent her power, but along the journey, each of the seven gates she passes through force her to remove her garments and jewelery,  piece by piece stripping her of her power. These are the snags along the dark path we tread into our own shadows. When she reaches Ereshkigal, the dark feminine archetype, Inanna is naked. Ereskigal and the seven judges shout at Inanna and murder her. She is hung on a hook. Three days and three nights pass before the god Enki helps to resurrect Inanna. She is reborn, just as we may be when we emerge from deep painful healing, cutting away the deadwood of our lives, clearing space to make way for new life to grow.

We are good at celebrating the light and success – we also need to learn to honour death, to sit with pain, understand anguish, to embrace struggle, and to accept the inevitable, when it arrives.

 

 

 

 

Chiron Rising: empathy, connectedness and metamorphosis
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Chiron Rising: empathy, connectedness and metamorphosis

Lately I have been feeling unsettled… actually this has been going on for quite a while. We have moved four times in the last year, living in different temporary places, without having enough information to make decisions or plan out what to do next.  A few months ago I gave away all the furniture I still owned, and most of my other possessions and packed my little car with the things my daughter and I need (mostly clothes). We drove to Wellington, stopping on the way to visit my step sister and to play in the snow on the mountain. I have been doing my best to be guided by intuition. The uncertainty has been so challenging. I’m leaning into my fear and vulnerability, and letting go… and letting go.

In my natal chart Chiron, often called the wounded-healer archetype is ‘rising’ in my twelfth house, in Gemini. My life has had a massive focus on emotional and spiritual healing, both for myself and for other people… and for society and the planet (at least in terms of intention if not effect). This call has dominated my narrative and my life, but it has changed a lot over the years.

For a long time I felt broken. I felt I needed to fix myself. But the emotional woundedness and the healing were all part of the same cycle, the same archetypal pattern, much like the victim/rescuer complex. It took me until my Saturn return to really restructure this patterning, and I am grateful, every day, for the stability I have built over this time.

The vulnerability I have been processing recently has been more to do with myself in the world. The process is also one of healing in a different way, because it it one of growing, and growing always involves healing as we push through our own boundaries. In this way I have felt a lot like a seed, sprouting. The hard shell of protection has softened and now I am trying to break through, out of the dark, into the light… perhaps up until now I was planted in the dark soil, learning these subconscious lessons. Perhaps as a child I was a delicate blossom, easily damaged, which became a fruit, which was eaten by the bird of adolescence which took me to such a dark place (to extend the metaphor out too far).

It is a similar metamorphosis to that of moths and butterflies… it is the process of fighting its way out of the chrysalis that pumps vital blood into the butterflies wings. Human beings undergo similar metamorphoses. We are phoenixing beings. We must die to the past to remain in the present. Like Inana’s descent into the under-world, in this journey of deep soul alchemy, we much let our riches be torn away. We must let go of everything… in order to gain everything. It is a painful process. I understand why many people avoid it… and it is not for everyone. We all have different meandering paths through this chaotic social wilderness.

Chiron is not just about woundedness, and not just about healing. It is about empathy. Suffering is something that unites us all, and when we can process past the self-isolation and absorption of the wound, when we can untangle these knots and allow them to heal, that scar tissue remains as a connecting point. Chiron can connect us to the whole, in much the same way Neptune can. Chiron can feel like all the sadness in the world, which is a heavy emotional burden, but Chiron can also blossom into exquisite empathy. I have been feeling this empathy well up in me, as well as a deepening sense of holistic connectedness. I have let go my old life, over and over, mourned the past, and been reborn into the present.

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Chrysalis by Stephanie Wild http://www.stephanie.me.uk/

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The dark moon: regeneration and cradling the self

Collage by Stephanie Wild http://stephanie.me.uk/

Collage by Stephanie Wild http://stephanie.me.uk/

In a world where we are constantly encouraged to shine, to compete, to perform, to do more, there is not much emphasis put on the other side of the cycle: on rest and renewal. When we find ourselves producing less, doing less, we tend to ask “what’s wrong?”. We tend to medicalise ourselves, and seek help for this problem of not being absolutely amazing all the time. Actually, the downswing of the cycle is just as beautiful as the expansion of growth, it is just quieter.

The dark moon is a time for reflection and regeneration. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés tells a story about an old man who struggles through the dark forest towards the light of a small lamp in a hut. When he reaches the hut a kind woman takes him in her arms and rocks him… and rocks him… and rocks him… and just before morning he is a young man with golden hair, and she continues to rock him, until the very beginnings of breaking dawn, when she plucks three hair from his head and throws them to the half, and the man, now a little golden-haired baby, runs out the door, jumps into the sky and becomes the sun.

Even in the chaotic hectic lives that we find ourselves in, there is always be a corner of the psyche where that kind woman sits in her rocking chair. There is always time where we can visit her, even just for a moment, even just with a resting thought, a hot bath or shower, a hot drink, a solitary walk, a pausing glance toward the horizon, the minutes before sleep, where we are as cradled as we possibly can be. We need to rest. We need to heal. We need to consciously nurture the self.Do you hear yourself coming up with explanations and excuses of why you cannot possibly rest? That is normal, the mind wants to say busy, to reap reward. There are a million things that you would possibly do… go go go. But even one moment of dropping the pressures of the mind, of letting the world slip away and falling into deeper awareness is precious gold for the inner self… and every step towards deeper intuition is a step towards looking at things a different way, of shifting and dissolving tensions, of solving the problem from a deeper level than the one in which is was created.

This is a lesson in self-care and regeneration. It is not always the time to perform or shine. Our dreams and ideas and hopes need nurturing too, they need to be rocked sometimes. Take this dark moon, and the next and the next… take the two or three day before the new moon every month, to sit quietly at any possible moment, to walk quietly, to rock gently… to be in that space of nurturing. Take this sacred time to honor and cradle the self in whatever way possible. Take this time to heal, because healing is a natural part of growth, of life. When everything is moving so fast, stillness is powerfully transformative.

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Forgive life: Neptune squares my natal Chiron


I don’t quite know how this one snuck up on me, although it does make sense considering Neptune is so elusive and my natal Chiron is in the 12th house of hidden and subconscious things. Perhaps I should have noticed when the stability I had been enjoying since my Saturn Return seemingly morphed into what feels like several months of PMS. I was feeling SO emotional, but couldn’t cry. I even resorted to watching the sad parts of kids movies and Thai life insurance ads (the saddest ever) just to force the tears to flow.

Neptune in a difficult aspect is a lot like a big dissolving/yearning/dream/delusion/spell which can feel impossible to live through and chiron is all about being wounded and healing, so there are some obvious emotional ramification here, but because this transit surprised me, I googled it to see what else the internets could tell me: not very much and came across a Saturn Rising post of an interpretation except (not sure where from) that resonates deeply:

The deeper meaning underlying the depressed emotional state
you are likely to experience is a need to face, understand, and
let go of the pain of the past. You may be clinging to hurtful
experiences in ways you have not realized, storing them up
and nursing an unconscious sense of grievance and mistrust
which may be secretly affecting many of your decisions and
responses to other people. It is not that your past experiences
are unimportant, or that your unhappiness is or was unreal.
But right now you are being challenged to find the capacity to
forgive life for not meeting your expectations. If you can see
where your idealization or unrealistic expectations might have
led you into disappointment, you could go a long way toward
healing these past wounds. Also, you may need to learn to
accept life as it is, rather than as you wish it could be. The
proverbial choice of perceiving a glass of water as either half-empty
or half-full applies to you now. If you see life only in
terms of its unfairness, you will become bitter, cynical and
martyred. If you see it only as wonderful, or maintain spiritual
convictions which are too simplistic or naive, you will be
disillusioned when life turns out to be more complex than you
thought. But if you see it as a mixture of dark and light, and
can be flexible enough to accept both, you will be able to find
the resources to cope with the dark while enjoying the light.

Despite being a glass-half-full person already, I could make some more ground with forgiving life. Faith is something I found, as a child, out of desperation. I was raised as an atheist, and got lost in the forest when I was eleven and prayed to every god I had ever heard of. I found Jesus at camp a few months later and converted to Christianity, then dropped it in favor of polytheistic paganism in my teens when I needed magic the most. Gradually, I let that go too, as I found my own power and needed gods and goddesses less and less. My spirituality evolved into an experiential one, moment to moment, interconnected with everything. The beliefs I have now, I am less attached to, they are lenses: tools for gaining clarity, wisdom and understanding… and yet, over the past few months I have felt this tugging absence of faith.

Feeling confused about my life, anxious about not knowing what the hell I’m doing, I have been intellectualising too much – trying to think my way out of feelings of powerlessness. Feeling frustrated with Uranus on my Midheaven, squaring Pluto in my seventh house, I have been going around in circles into brick walls trying to figure out what to do about my ambitions and relationships… I have been getting stuck on “how?” – the impossible question, when one is walking in the dark. I have been willing myself to have faith. I have been trying… but I don’t think I can find faith in desperation anymore… I think I have to find it in letting go… in forgiving life.

When I was fourteen I chose to write my school speech about forgiveness. It seemed like an important thing at the time, I remember a quote I found in my youth bible: “resentment is like a hot coal in the palm of your hand – the longer and tighter it is held, the deeper the burn, bitterness will leave a scar than even time cannot heal.” – That was when I was learning that forgiveness isn’t about letting someone/thing off the hook, it’s about releasing yourself from pain. I have been progressively seeking out and releasing pain from old wounds, releasing myself from depression, working towards forgiving specific people, but I haven’t yet framed it in terms of ‘forgiving life’. Life is hard and often painful; it’s complex and beautiful and joyful; it can be agonising. Life is full of injustices and unfairness, of vulnerability and betrayal, of being hurt, of fear and powerlessness. Life is a big thing to forgive.

Neptune is all about dissolving, and combined with Chiron there is a great opportunity to both dissolve into pain and woundedness and to dissolve from it – to release it. Towards the end of my last Neptune transit I started writing a poetic journal: “The art of dissolving.” I think I will go back to that now, especially as Neptune is also opposing my Venus and I need a positive creative channel to avoid getting lost in a lower-Neptuanian ocean of spaced-out yearning. In these moments of unreasonable despair I will allow this emotion to come up and affirm the thought that is bringing in light and space right now: forgive life.

write a list

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I haven’t been living in the forest for a while…

The Forest

‘Living in the forest’ is a metaphor that I drew from Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés‘ monumental book ‘Women who Run With the Wolves’. The final story of the Handless Maiden is a journey of deep and total transformation, the healing part of this takes place over seven years of living in a forest. When I began this blog I was living in a forest and I was undergoing deep transformation and healing, so it seemed an appropriate title. The last two years (at least) have been overwhelmed by thorough psychological restructuring: Saturn in Scorpio, for me, especially by a very long Saturn return before it squared my Sun. It’s now right on top of my natal Mars.

For the past six months I have been sporadic with blogging. I’m trying to write my doctoral thesis, and I moved out of the forest and into the small coastal township nearby because I had been struggling to focus living where I was. To some extent I’m still ‘living in the forest’ in the self-work that I’m doing: in the processing and journalling, but in some ways I always have been doing this work.

I don’t know where I will live next or what I will do. Part of my recent processing has been about coming to terms with uncertainty and change – which are actually the only constants in life. For a long time I clung to the prospects of security – of owning property, of safety, of regular income… but while these things can be nice, they are not actually security or certainty, because that’s not a real-life thing, it’s a fantasy. Over the past two years everything has changed. I don’t want the same things and it surprises me. I don’t know why I want the things I do want, or why I’m drawn to the places that now seem so appealing. Even more surprising is my sense of stability and the noticeable absence of emotional trauma from my daily lived experience. I suppose these are some of the rewards of Saturn in Scorpio work. Anyway, I will continue to blog (more) regularly, because these sacred, private things are important to share, and because that seems to be a part of my journey.

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Parenting by the Moon

You’ve probably heard of ‘gardening by the moon’, of planting at new moon and weeding as the moon wanes. Many people think these lunar cycles are reflected everywhere in the ebb and flow of daily life.  Last year I began to notice distinct synchronicities between the moon and my life. I would suddenly get the unusual urge to clean out kitchen cupboards and spend the whole weekend tidying and organising, only to check my emails on Monday and find that the moon was in Virgo, and that was exactly the sort of thing one ought to be doing.  I started paying more attention, and even deliberately allowing time to sort and organise my messy life when the moon was spending her 50 odd hours in the virgin sign.

This weekend was another-such time. Without giving it much thought I went about my usual Friday night routines only to find my six-year-old on the floor of the room, sorting through her paperwork! Of course, I thought, this is time to do those things I usually put off. I began cleaning the bath, and my daughter came into the bathroom and requested that she be allowed to clean the bath, please. Sure, why not? It occurred to me then that ‘parenting by the moon’ might be quite a good idea.

 

We can clean and sort when the moon is in Virgo, balance and harmonise with Libra, challenge and explore depth with Scorpio, and do magic spells to quell our fears.  We can philosophise with Sagittarius, love nature, and sleep under the stars, then be ambitious with Capricorn, make plans and climb hills.  We can dream and paint under a Pisces moon, then network and socialise with Aquarius while we explore radical new ideas and new technologies.  When the moon goes into Aries we can start new projects and race each-other. With the moon in Taurus we can lounge around together and eat decadent foods. When the moon goes into Gemini we might need to play on a trampoline and write each-other notes, as parents, we can allow ourselves to be more child-like and laugh. Then, when the moon goes into Cancer we can nurture ourselves especially with extra cuddles and warm milk before we emerge, a few days later, under a Leo moon, to be dramatic, create, perform, put on a show and applaud.

I think I might be onto something. Of course it’s not just the sign but also the phase of the moon that can be considered. A new moon is for new beginnings, then the energy builds as she waxes. When the moon is full the energy is manic and intense, it needs an outlet.  As she wanes we take stock and take special care of ourselves, and take respite especially in the time right before new moon, the dark moon.  Last night I asked my daughter what I thought we should do under the Libra full moon. “I think we should put on really cool clothes and do make-up and maybe we can have a fashion show” the girl with the Libran ascendant replied.

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The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton: astrological archetypes through literature

I thoroughly enjoyed this 800 odd page novel, set in gold-rush New Zealand. The astrological symbolisim is obvious from the outset with star charts drawn up to represent the planets at the time. It doesn’t include Uranus, which was discovered some seventy years earlier, just the old astrological planets. Incidentally, Neptune was being discovered around the same time the novel is set (1865). I just found out that Eleanor Catton read the collected works of Jung before she embarked on the novel and had the idea that 12 characters would represent the zodiac while others would represent the planets. It’s very clever but doesn’t cut in on the story which is wonderfully well written, so much so that it has been shortlisted for the Booker.

I do believe Catton used the movements of the planets to guide the plot and decide the scenes she was writing.  It would take much re-reading to figure out all the intentional synchronicity.  She takes great care to describe each character, slipping in the properties of the astrological archetype in a way which could easily go unnoticed. Of course every zodiac sign and planet has many different facets and Catton seems to draw on a few of these for each character and also incorporates other characteristics which might better fit the story.  I won’t go too much into what is obviously stated, I will focus instead on broader reflections of the novel’s symbolism.

This story begins in the 12th house of the psyche, whereupon Walter Moody (Mercury) unwittingly interrupts a secret meeting of 12 very different men at the crown hotel. It must be in the 12th because we are so in the dark, and where else would we find 12 men, symbolising the twelve zodiac signs, than in the natural home of Pisces? In fact, this whole story belongs to the 12th house as the character symbolising the sun and psyche, Emery Stains (fantastic name) is literally stumbling around in the dark for the almost the entire journey.  Therefore, treating this novel as a Jungian journey means delving into the exploration of one’s psyche in the dark, with minimal illumination that grows as we progress.

Despite not being represented, the archetype of Neptune is obviously in the room, probably sitting in the back corner smoking opium. Opium is very prominent in this story both in the pipe and in laudanum tinctures.  There are many delusions at play, of grandeur, of love, of mysteries and plots that might actually not exist. This story also has a very strong Pluto/Scorpio theme, secrets, suspicion and paranoia add tension to the narrative. There is gold involved as well as prostitution and death. You can’t get more 8th house than that.

I would indeed like to re-read this novel and observe the characters in relation to my own personal archetypes in the style of Clarissa Pinkola Estes. It promises to be an interesting and illuminating journey into the dark recesses of the subconscious.