Scorpio New Moon trick or treat!

by with No Comment Astrological InsightsAstrology and me

Once more trying to keep up with information on lunations…

Truth is that because it’s so cyclical it somehow bores me to write about full moon-new moon stuff.

But never mind that, because I do understand the importance of cycles (I feel that a huge part of astrology’s benefit is enhancing awareness on life’s cycles!) and I also understand how much easier is for us, in general, to connect meaning with the lunar cycles rather than the other planetary ones.

So here it goes…

This month’s new moon (which happens in the early hours of the 28th of October) resonates a little with my restless tendencies of natal Uranus in the first house (hence the boredom I talked earlier…) as the sun and the moon in Scorpio will be forming an exact opposition with Uranus in Taurus.

As I stare into the astrological map of this new moon I realise how much Mars and Venus are prominent in each other’s rulership sign: Venus in Scorpio (the sign ruled by Mars) and Mars in Libra (the sign ruled by Venus).

Traditionally they both are in fall, which would be interpreted by some people as an unfavourable position. Venus, which talks about our values and capacity for sharing and loving would feel uncomfortable in suspicious and protective Scorpio. At the same time, Mars which is about how we fight for what we want is less direct in Libra, the sign associated with relationships and sharing.

The way I see this interesting mutual reception between these planets during the new moon, is reflecting a need to work creatively within our capacity to relate and relationships themselves.

An echo of this idea is the axis of Scorpio (Moon and Sun) and Taurus (Uranus) which talks about, amongst other things, intensity and attachment (either emotional or physical/material), and with Uranus making its presence in the mix, I feel that challenges on letting go will feature strongly here.

Possessiveness or impulsiveness on breaking loose from someone could be part of the drama during this month (lunation). The old conflict, which I have written about in here a few times, between freedom and commitment.

A few years ago, during a very challenging time in my Saturn Return (which by the way is in Scorpio!), I read the book ‘Eastern body, Western Mind’ by Anodea Judith and had a great insight into the theme I believe this new moon to be about. The author linked this split with the second chakra and she talked about how the soul needs commitment and the spirit needs space and freedom. According to her the secret is in balancing these two needs because if we identify with only one side then the other person naturally compensates by playing the opposite. So, the more I want someone to commit to me the more the other person craves his freedom.

During this new moon I have the feeling that it is a great time for setting intentions for healing and balancing our two needs, being conscious of them both and not fully projecting one side of it into our significant other in order to avoid extreme situations.

Progressed Moon conjunct IC

by with 4 Comments Astrological InsightsAstrology and meInner lifeSearch for home

I’ve been back in Brazil for just over 3 weeks and much has happened already, or has it not?!

Since my progressed Moon entered the sign of my natal IC in the beginning of September my attention has naturally turned towards exploring and understanding more about my roots.

I’ve been socialising quite a bit and going out observing everything with the curiosity of an anthropologist doing field work in some remote and yet familiar place.

I used to feel that I don’t belong here, and for the first time I am willing to recognise a slight sense of belonging that seems to be increasing as time goes by…

Not sure.

Perhaps Im getting more comfortable with being part of the syncretism that I come from. Being some sort of Alien Frankenstein (how much Aquarius on the IC does this sound?!) returning ‘home’… home?!

Transiting Saturn is forming its last square to my natal Moon and I don’t feel the typical symptoms associated with this transit: loneliness, depression, etc. I really don’t, which is a reminder to never dismember astrological symbolism too much. What I sense happening instead, is me questioning if I should come back to live here…  or not…

Libra New Moon intentions soon

by with No Comment Astrological InsightsAstrology and me

This is my last day in Rio de Janeiro before going to São Paulo and Im contemplating many things. I’ve been back in Brazil since the 23rd of September and for the first time since I left the country I came back more open to seeing what my place of birth can reveal about my identity. I am more open to staying for a little longer than usual.

As I contemplate my feelings of nostalgia and wonder about life’s ways, I thought I’d have a go on interpreting the energies reflected in the cosmos for this new lunar cycle.

This new moon will be taking place at 5 degrees Libra and one of its main aspects is an opposition to Chiron in Aries. I feel the symbolism to be strongly pointing out to issues of equality in relationships rising to the surface through acknowledging the pain connected with expressing our individuality.

How comfortable do you feel stating your individual needs to your partner and other people in general? And how about compromising, does that feel like a major challenge to you?

Any issues that we might have connected with the process of giving and taking in relationships will be featuring here. Another thing will be how much time we spend on our own versus how much we are willing to spend in the company of others.

Reflected by the equinox that happened a week ago, light and darkness are balanced again, and I feel that we as well should follow these steps and try to find as much balance as possible within ourselves.

With Mercury, Venus, Sun and Moon in Libra, and Mars in Virgo, there seems to be an emphasis on thinking about the other and serving. Chiron in Aries reflects a need to not forget who you are as an individual, your free will and independent spirit. But the emphasis on Libra, Virgo and Capricorn (with Saturn, the South Node and Pluto) in the sky seems to be stating that compromising and taking action that will benefit others as well is paramount during this lunar cycle.

I believe that this needs to come from a place of fullness provided by practicing healthy self-care, reflected by the North Node in Cancer. This is an important aspect to keep in mind while we walk this tightrope in search for more equilibrium in our lives and relationships.

 

The dark side of the Moon

by with 2 Comments Astrology and me

This is another one about or based on astrology’s fluidity.

I’ve been tracking my progressed moon since 2012, when I started officially studying astrology at the LSA. I wanted to check and see for myself how each shift from houses or signs would be reflected in my life.

Recently my progressed moon has moved from Capricorn into Aquarius, forming a square to my natal Pluto in Scorpio. I went from to do lists and working full time plus studying, (basically from being ultra busy), to freeing myself and spending a lot of time with an aquarian friend who also happens to have his natal moon conjunct Pluto.

Interestingly, with the progressed moon making that square to my natal Pluto I’ve observed how entertainment has been taking a darker tone for me… I have been reading ‘The dark of the soul’ written by Liz Greene on psychopathology in the horoscope and I just finished watching a tv series called ‘The Act’ with Patricia Arquette.

The series is based on real facts about this girl who was raised by a mother who suffered from ‘Munchausen syndrome by proxy’, also known as ‘Factitious disorder imposed on another’, according to wikipedia a ‘condition where a caregiver creates the appearance of health problems in another person, typically their child’ in order to get attention and sympathy from others.

The girl was confined to a wheel chair and basically forced to pretend that she had a whole myriad of health issues that she did not have. And as she starts growing up, wanting to get a boyfriend and look beautiful etc, problems start arising between her and her super, over the top, protective mother and the girl end up finding a way to assassinate her and break free.

This is such a crazy story, in so many levels, and in my opinion reflective of an extreme manifestation of Moon-Pluto contacts in astrology. I have tried finding their astrological charts to look into the symbolism and compare to the story, but it has proven to be quite difficult with unreliable birthdates etc.

Myth seems to mix up with reality rather often, but this is a case where the devouring mother mythic theme is overwhelmingly powerful.

Liz Greene talks about the conflict between the rational ego and the ‘instinctual energies of the unconscious’ saying that: ‘particular individuals are like safety valves for the pressure that builds up. They are the scapegoats and vessels for what is, in effect, a collective madness.’

I wonder if that is what happened in that story, or if at least there was an element of that.

The importance of developing a strong and healthy ego, capable of mediating unconscious material that seems to well up into consciousness is paramount in the process of becoming an individual. And according to Greene, with more individuals comprising society the less likely that there will be a collective psychosis breaking out like in nazi Germany for example.

This is a very interesting idea, and timely for the current weird political climate. By developing healthy individuality we can contribute with less collective madness.

 

 

Solar return intentions

by with 4 Comments Astrology and me

I remember astrologer Frank Clifford telling us that on our solar return we should do a little bit of everything that we would like to be doing for the next year. I love this idea and in every birthday I try to consider it in my choices of what to do to celebrate.

So today writing this blog post is part of my intentions for my next personal year, to do a lot more writing in general..

Im loving my solar return chart for this coming year. Every single personal planet is in Virgo and falling in the third house.

That is a lot of mercurial energy!! (I love that, Mercury is the strongest planet in my chart!)

And I want to make sure that I make the most of it by writing as much as I can, not only for this blog, but also for University and potential publications. The third house also reflects public speaking and teaching so this is also a big thing that I want to get myself more involved with.

Im off now to continue with birthday celebrations and intentions 🙂

Reflections on life’s changes…

by with 16 Comments Astrology and meInner lifeSearch for home

I am getting ready to move out from where I’ve been living for the past year and a half.

Writing down organisational lists, to do lists, to let go lists, getting very organised, after all, is Virgo season!

I don’t feel devastated or fearful.

Having a Pluto transit to the natal Moon works as a kind of painful initiation. The transit is still within orb for me, and I guess all this moving around in the last 4 years is a reflection of it.

This moving out is also marking the end of a relationship that began when Pluto was forming the 3rd exact square to my natal Moon.  I have learned a lot and there are not many regrets, I try to look forward to my next steps.

I actually catch myself feeling excited about these changes as I think that my life was somehow stuck in a rut. My job as a chef and volunteer’s coordinator in the community wasn’t doing anymore for a long time. Working full time in something that isn’t my true passion is very difficult for me. Well… I think that working full time is difficult for me in most circumstances, if we consider full time hours as 40 hours per week.

That is crazy!! I mean, what about time for yourself, for organising your life, or taking care of our basic needs for food and personal hygiene etc, plus our needs for novelty and creative endeavours, plus our need to stimulate our intellect… Jesus, working 40 hours a week makes quite impossible to do all of that in a well balanced manner.

I cannot do that.

I believe, selfishly or not, that the belief that we have to be constantly productive and working is a fallacy. I probably have written about this here many times in different ways, but I cannot stress this idea enough. We need time to wonder, to just be. That is not laziness, is rather a necessity for our mental, physical, and spiritual health.

Screw the full time hours system!

Thats the thing, I feel so excited and happy and relieved that I am free again to think about whatever I want to think about, that the sadness of leaving or breaking up isn’t making such a huge impact on me at the moment. I think I have grieved quite intensely during the new moon eclipse in July so I feel ready to move on again.

As tiresome, hard work and uncomfortable as moving out and changes in general can be, I love and need them rather often… or so it seems. Or is that the Pluto transit still in orb with my Moon?

The fact is, and here is a Uranus/Mars conjunct in Sag in the first house speaking, I thrive in change and it seems to me such a delusional idea that one day there will be a plateau of peace and contentment in life capable of leaving changes and disruptions at bay. And as human beings I think that we somehow gravitate towards this idea of placidity and total fulfillment in a somewhat unchangeable situation. No…

The only constant is change.

We are a process, a life process, constantly changing and expanding, and there is nothing we can do about that other than aligning ourselves as best as we can and dance to the music… life will throw different rhythms at different times, and astrologically we can associate that to planetary transits, and somehow there is less suffering in surrendering to these rhythms.

Cheers to life!

Continual shifts and changes

by with 2 Comments Astrology and meInner lifeProfessional Astrologer

I just sent an article in Portuguese for a Brazilian blog/website and it was a little challenging to write in my mother thong can you believe it? I think that because I’ve been working pretty hard on writing my assignments for the MA, and also because I’ve been living abroad for almost 12 years as well I suppose… I feel that somehow, at the moment, is easier for me to write more beautifully in English. The words and its combinations come out more easily, I don’t know.

I got the results from my last module and have done pretty well again. Sometimes is hard to believe in your own abilities. The director of my course, Nicholas Campion, sent me an email yesterday regarding some university bureaucracy and mentioned that after two excellent marks he hopes that I will continue doing the course. That was really nice and encouraging as I feel that my sense of self and personal potential gets a bit blurred somehow.

Im also currently writing an article about Saturn in general plus a bit about what happened during my Saturn Return for an online magazine. What an interesting symbol, Im beginning to really love Saturn and its potential for pondered growth, discipline and maturity.  I think that, to my surprise, I am pretty saturnian myself.

Anyway, this blog post was intended to be more about the changes that are happening soon in my life though.

I have given the notice at my job in the community as I realised that I can’t dedicate so much of my time to something that I don’t really want to do it anymore. I want to have more time for my masters and also astrology work, which has never stopped completely but I have been pushing it to the side a bit because Im so busy with other things.

As I was brainstorming about what to do next, Brazil just spontaneously came to my mind, and I decided to go to Brazil at the end of September probably for a longer period than usual. And then I realised that my progressed moon will be shifting to Aquarius in September and my natal IC is in Aquarius. How wonderful symbolism is that? For the first time in almost 12 years I genuinely feel the urge to explore and see with my own eyes, rather than my mother’s, where I come from. I feel that somehow I need to reconnect with that land through like minded people rather than my past only.

It will be interesting going back after Pluto transited my natal Moon and so much transformation and personal work has taken place within myself.

Excited to see what will happen…

Embodying the planets

by with 11 Comments Astrological InsightsAstrology and meProfessional Astrologer

Im currently writing a research project for the MA about the outsider’s perspective of astrology with a target group that came to ASHA for a training course on Holistic Education.

My search for literature review on Holistic Education turned out to be quite inspiring. Im finding many of its themes really interesting, particularly the idea that knowledge could and should be experienced through different channels, not only through the mind.

In traditional/formal sets, education is mainly connected with thinking and developing logic, but we also have our emotional bodies, our spiritual bodies as well as our physical bodies!

This quote from one of the papers I’ve read for my project summarises really well:

‘Education is longing for a deeper more connected, more inclusive, and more aware way of knowing. One that connects heart and hand and head and does not split knowledge into dualities of thought and being, mind and body, emotion and intellect, but resonates with a wholeness and fulness that engages every part of one’s being.’

With that in mind, yesterday, with the help of a lovely actress that has been coming to ASHA for a while now, I gave a session on embodied astrology to the group of EVS volunteers. I have been teaching them astrology for a while but it was the first time that I dared coming out of my comfort zone of brainy virgoan lectures into the fluidity of performance and feeling the knowledge.

The result was really positive!

I’ve been interested in experiential astrology for a long time but did not have the courage to experiment with it.

We worked with both the Sun and the Moon yesterday and after incorporating each we had a little chat and discussion about how that would personally manifest for each one of us by bringing the qualities of the star signs in, but also, a discussion about how it felt to embody each luminary.

It was very powerful and enlightening as another layer of understanding was added to our previous discussions. Even to me, who has been studying and reading charts for a number of years, it was quite mind blowing to play the planets like that.

At the end of our session I was really excited and thinking about eventually experimenting with a constellation exercise involving someone’s astrology chart, with each participant playing one of the planets of that particular chart.

I have heard of that before, I wonder if any of you have heard or experimented with it before?! Any experiences, tips or insights to share?  🙂

Saturn-Pluto nightmares…

by with No Comment Astrology and meInner life

Yesterday I had the pleasure to watch a webinar that astrologer Lynn Bell gave on the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn (already within orbit, will be perfecting in January 2020).

She made use of some powerful photographs made by artist Nicolas Bruno (who has a natal square between Pluto and Saturn) to illustrate the archetypal energies of Pluto and Saturn encountering each other.

I have experienced Saturn and Pluto’s powerful symbolism through family stuff, even though neither is placed in the 4th house in my chart.

Lately I have been feeling a little unsettled with the powerfully changing energies around, especially because of my father. He has Sun in Capricorn at the exact degree that the conjunction between Pluto and Saturn are going to happen in January next year. My mother has Sun in the last degree of Cancer, and my brother’s Sun is in the last degree of Capricorn with his Moon also in the final degrees of Cancer.

With all of my willingness to focus on spiritual growth and the powers of transformation and healing through crisis, I couldn’t ignore the fact that the Pluto-Saturn conjunction is activating every member of my nuclear family in a powerful and fundamental way!

The webinar was very helpful because it somehow helped me to keep a sense of the bigger picture, not to mention a deeper understanding of that planetary configuration. Interestingly, Lynn Bell shared that most of the pictures taken by the artist is inspired by his recurrent problems with sleep paralysis and nightmares, and she said that this transit is actually asking that we face those paralysing fears ourselves.

Something needs to die and we cannot hold it anymore.

Uranian impulses

by with 10 Comments Astrology and meInner life

I’ve been reading Liz Greene’s book ‘The Art of Stealing Fire’ about Uranus and already had some powerful insights on the archetypal energy that the planet represents. She starts by saying that in her perspective, contrary to what we find in many astrology text books, there is nothing individual about Uranus. According to Liz Greene all of the outer planets represent collective yearnings and impulses that are best mediated by a strong (healthy) ego rather than the person being identified/possessed by it.

In her words: ‘Human nature, without individual consciousness and reflection, cannot contain Uranian vision, which tends to break loose and overwhelm the powers of individual reason and individual feeling.’

I resonate with that, and looking back in my life I feel that there were many moments where I unconsciously had a reaction based much more in ideas and visions rather than how I was truly feeling. I feel that the masculine has somehow overpowered the feminine in me over and over again, especially before my Saturn Return in 2012. (Uranus is conjunct Mars [my chart ruler] in the first house, square Sun/Mercury in the 10th, and opposite Chiron in the 7th).

Further in the book, on Uranian people’s difficulty in expressing feelings, Greene says : ‘Something inside keeps saying, “Don’t get stuck in all that emotional glue, keep the door open so you can leave if you have to.” (…) I think Uranus shuts itself up, because the expression of personal feeling binds us to other people, and the daimon wants us to be ready with our luggage packed and our tickets and passports in our hands.’   This quote really summarises how I dealt with attachments many times, wanting to suddenly break them and just walk away. There is a strong impulse in me that feels pretty much like what she describes in the book.

It has been a journey making this part (the one represented by the strong Uranus in my chart) conscious and stopping identifying with it as ‘myself’.

At the moment, for the last three years,  I have attracted a partner that is also highly Uranian and he somehow had been carrying a lot of the rational, logical, removed from human emotions type of inclinations for me. It’s just recently, after we separately went to see a jungian therapist astrologer, that it somehow dawned on me what was going on. (or at least one layer of it all!)

So now, even finding this book by Liz Greene in a shop in Glastonbury for a very good price seems to be reflecting this new understanding that perhaps Im ready to embrace… I don’t know. But I silently stop blaming him for the lack of ‘human connection’ in our relationship.