Mercury Retrograde Conjunct the Sun | what information is being spotlighted for you? what has come to light? transparency, truth, it ain't over 'til it's over

11835547086 by kosmodisk

Moving backward (from our view on Earth) Mercury hits the halfway point of his/her retrograde - meeting up with the Sagittarius Sun at 17 degrees.

Called the Sun's inferior conjunction to Mercury - information, maybe answers, will 'come to light' now. 

Whatever a retrograde Mercury has us working on re-leasing, re-working or re-vising will be in the spotlight.

Remember that Mercury is still retrograde, so today's 'answer' is not the final, final.

BUT we can trust that what we learn now is the real deal.  

We are not through working with it though.

This aspect is good for giving a fiery (visible) speech. Good for business dealings. Commerce (Mercury) is active (the Sun) - with people making purchases more in line with their beliefs (Sagittarius) and how they see themselves (the Sun). Maybe just shopping for themselves. Our creativity (the Sun) is active and in flux (Mercury). Good for writing. We can do two things at once today and get alot done. People will be busy and active. And opinionated. 

Jupiter is sitting with Vesta at 13 degrees Scorpio - expansion/optimism of what we are devoted to.

Vesta is the Goddess of hearth and home. Her sacred flame in the temple of Vesta was kept alive 24/7 by the Vestal Virgins (Virgin meaning woman who wasn't owned by a man) to warm the city and provide a space of peace and stability.

Vesta has been in deep Scorpio since November 15th (through January 14th) asking us to honor our shadows. This doesn't mean we let our shadow energies (taboo, obsession, secrets, control. manipulation) run the show, but it is time we commit ourselves to understanding/honoring their place in our story.

During this transit we are intended to work with 'what we have been refusing to look at'.....

Sit with the parts of yourself that are fearful. Don't try to change anything. Just imagine yourself creating a warm and safe space for these denied stepchildren. Light a candle. Commit to keeping the fire burning today.

Vesta's meeting with Jupiter now will expand whatever this transit is about for us. If we can collaborate with (not control) Jupiter in Scorpio's incredible power and re-lease the fear/judgement - what would be possible here? Almost anything.

xo all

Mars into Scorpio | strategy, what we do in secret, compulsion, obsession, passion, strengthening our emotions, plastic wire ties

What grows in me by Anina-Bird

The Moon is in Virgo today focusing us on the nuts and bolts of whatever we have going on. If you woke up worrying or focused on a to-do list - this is why. Ha!

Late tonight and really very early Sunday morning we will have Mercury trining Uranus - with Sagittarius and Aries energies in play this is about assimilating an ideal/belief into our personal identity. It could also indicate a sudden change of plans (for the better), meeting new people or unexpected news.

If you sell things, tonight and tomorrow's aspects will be good energy for people to be engaging in commerce (Mercury). Purchases will likely be practical with that Virgo Moon, but they could be impulsive (Uranus).

The big news today if we take a step back is Mars moves from his detriment in Libra into a much stronger position in Scorpio (a sign he once ruled) until January 27th.

With Mars (action, initiative, passion, anger) here we will think about what we are going to do before we do it. Scorpio likes to premeditate. And, yes, that sounds slightly criminal and mostly devious, but this is Scorpio we are talking about! This energy works pretty well with the Mercury retrograde energy we are already dealing with now - re-do, re-visit, re-think, re-vamp, re-define.

We could be doing things in secret. Shh!

Mars here can be good for our physical energy since Scorpio is continually re-generating itself. So, maybe we go to bed exhausted and drained, but somehow we still wake up ready to give the world another go.

Because Scorpio rules our 8th house of compulsions and obsessions we could find our actions driven by our impulses. If you find yourself caught in a loop - STOP - ask yourself - why am I doing this again? why am I so mad? why do I want this so badly? what am I really trying to get?

We can get alot done with Mars in Scorpio (although Mercury retrograde will impact what we are able to accomplish) let's just make sure it is stuff worth doing.

Scorpio is our fixed water sign. It's job is to strengthen our emotions. But fixed water is well, kind of fixed. Think frozen. Think concrete. Think quicksand. It can make it hard to change course if we get too emotionally wedded to whatever it is we are focused on. Just keep in mind Mercury is retrograde. Stay flexible somehow.

If you are heading into the quicksand anyway, keep one hand on a tree branch, like they do in the cartoons, to pull yourself out later. But don't say I didn't warn you if the branch breaks.

Where is Scorpio in your natal chart? That area of life will snap to attention now.

This is also a good time to take action with Scorpio ruled themes - other people's resources, debts, loans, inheritances, mortgages, taxes, insurance payments, intimacy, sex, reproduction, death issues, stuff that is dead in the water (or caught in the quicksand). With Mars blasting through this collective area we will have more energy, initiative and control over these subjects than we usually do. Keep in mind we will also be more passionate about them and easier to anger.

On January 6th, Mars is going to meet up with Jupiter at 17 degrees Scorpio. This will expand whatever actions we have been taking with this Mars energy. So take strategic action from now until then. You have the benefit of astrology to see this magnification coming. Use it wisely.  

And you are smart as a whip. I can see you have already tied yourself to that branch with some of those nylon cables you had left over from hanging the Christmas lights. Smart girl.

xo all

Astrology Forecast for Creatives | let's take a look at 2018 - reality bites back, part II

I Was Broken by Martin Stranka

OK, back to the future!

Chiron moves into Aries in April (until 2026).

Chiron is called the wounded healer. Read the centaur myths for background. Chiron comes from the opposite side of the Sun, from the "otherness/darkness" of outer space. Chiron's placement in our natal chart shows us our own space of "otherness/darkness"; our wounded heritage.

Sometimes when we work with Chironic energies we find we can do more to help other people than we can do to help ourselves.

Chironic happenings make us more healed and more whole AND at the same time they make us more fragile and more vulnerable - so the cure and the wounding are both experienced at the same time.

If you were born with Chiron in Aries, this would show a kind of hypersensitivity to the idea of self in whatever house Chiron shows up. This is a wounding to our self-worth. It can show up as an inability to assert our own needs. It can make us over-reactive and over-sensitive to criticism. Since Aries rules the first house of our physical self - it could even make us accident prone, particularly in regard to accidents involving our head. It can produce headaches or situations we speak of as "a headache".

A musician friend with Chiron in Aries in his 5th house (also North Node 5th house) worked in a music store. The owner of the store wanted him to take on some students and teach them to play the guitar, but he always said no. He just didn't think he could do it, although he told himself he didn't want to do it.

Over the years as his money and joints got tighter and his love of music grew less enthusiastic, he found himself pushed into a corner (Aries requires us to be brave and we often, unless we have strong Aries/Mars in our chart, must have our backs against the wall to act) and finally agreed to try teaching - just "a few" students.

Three years later his 'few' students has grown to 60 students. He is the most sought after music teacher in his city. He teaches the children music, but he also helps them with their self-esteem. They tell him things they don't tell anyone else. They never miss a lesson. Their parents are amazed at the changes in their most bashful children. My friend's joints aren't as achy. His money isn't quite so tight. He is more self-assured, too.

He still has some issues asserting himself outside that classroom though.

Maybe it is something we can never totally 'fix' because it is the fragility, vulnerability and authenticity it opens up in us that is needed (for us and for other people - there is only one of us here) and not the actual healing (for us).

OK, so what does Chiron's move into Aries in 2018 mean to us.

It will bring a focus on our personal accountability to self. It will push into our awareness, any way it can (remember Uranus has just been creating chaos in this space opening everything up), whatever aspect of our personal existence we have abandoned.

Collectively, maybe the Chiron archetype itself morphs as we move into a new cycle with Aries, the first sign, the starting point. Maybe we can move from the 'wounded healer' into more of our own wholeness over the next few years. Surely we will be working with the more Aries/masculine woundedness - the spaces wounded by war and competition.

Some things this could bring up for us since our Chironic wounding is very much an inherited wounding - 1. Patterns we need to release, especially the stuff we have done in the past to keep us safe that is now keeping us stuck. So stuff will happen to us and we will react in our usual ways and either our usual ways will not work or we will see what we are doing in time to be brave (Aries) and do what is most loving and healing for ourselves 2. The childhood pacts and compromises we signed in order to be loved and accepted by others that are not very loving and accepting to us. We are starting a new cycle with all of this stuff. Those contracts have expired. We may find we aren't sure who we are for a while without these types of commitments and that's OK. Again we are starting a new cycle. We might have more questions than answers.

The years between now and 2024 when Pluto moves into Aquarius are a crisis point - crisis meaning both danger and opportunity.

There is alot of energy in 2018 that will focus us on being self-supporting and self-sustaining.

Where is Aries in your natal chart - this will be the house Uranus has been rocketing through the past seven years - something here is ripe for healing. 

The North Node moves into Cancer and the South Node into Capricorn - coming home - in part III.

xo all

Astrology Forecast for Creatives | let's take a look at 2018 - reality bites back, part I

I Found The Silence by Martin Stranka

I have been hesitating to look too closely at 2018 until we get through this month's Mercury retrograde on Saturn and Saturn's ingress into his home sign of Capricorn. Because we don't know what we don't know yet.

Some things are best viewed/felt from a closer perch. That menacing blob in the corner that looks just like the deadly Brazilian Wandering Spider we saw on the Discovery Channel last night from 20 feet away (one has never been spotted in New Jersey, but who knows I am sure they call the tenacious little fellow 'wandering' for a reason, right?) can turn into the rolled up sock we lost doing yesterday's laundry as we get within spitting distance. Of course, there is always that light in the distance that turns out to be a train, too ... so it can pay to be prepared.

Since I am out of a certain size rivet until today's UPS delivery and am pretty much at a production standstill with the donut-making aka locket business, for a few hours, let's take a brief look ahead.

I got back into astrology during a time I was feeling very uncertain about the future (wait, has there ever been a time I didn't feel this way ... uh, probably no!) and wanted to know what was going to happen. What I have discovered is there is not a 'thing that is going to happen'. The future isn't something waiting out there for us to meet up with it - it is more like a collection of possibilities.

Instead of buying into the idea that the future (Age of Aquarius) is either something like a utopian heaven or something like a dystopian hell, maybe we need to be more accepting of the idea that we are living in a magical, unfolding universe that we are influencing but not controlling. We don't get to know "what is going to happen" because there isn't a thing that is "going to happen". Yet.

Now through Astrology, which is a language that speaks through archetypes and patterns, it can seem that it is possible to look ahead because a good puzzle-solver can make some pretty good and often pretty accurate guesses, but guesses are still guesses.

If a dreamy Neptunian person is about to have stabilizing/restrictive Saturn transit her first house an astrologer could know she is about to be 'sobered up' in some sense.

But her lifetime of thoughts and decisions and actions will dictate what this 'sobering up' looks like.

If she is an artist using her Neptunian skills to illustrate a children's book maybe she will pull the book from the bedroom closet (where it had been gathering dust while Saturn transitted her 12th house) and get serious about finishing it. If she has been hiding empty wine bottles in that same dusty closet maybe she will get serious during a DWI arrest. Maybe both things will happen during the transit. Or maybe something else altogether. So we can see the 'sober up', but not so easily the way this sobering up will play out until we get to a closer perch.

That said, let's take a look at 2018 and see what we see while understanding we will get to a closer perch later and things will be clearer.

In or near 2018, four slow moving planets will change signs (very unusual) as well as the Nodes of Fate. Both Venus and Mars will go retrograde (not so common during the same year). We will have five eclipses instead of the usual four. The Aries point will be hit again and again by Saturn and Chiron. Multiple energies move into earth signs. Earth replaces fire. So we see lots of change, lots of feminine energy.

What we know:

Jupiter will be in Scorpio for most of 2018 - deep conversations, radical honesty. We can see what this transit is about within the collective as sexual harassment and unbalanced/corrupted power issues (Scorpio) expand (Jupiter) until the elephant in the room can no longer be ignored. Any similar imbalances within our own lives (intimate and financial) will do the same thing. If you have planets or points in Scorpio, Jupiter will conjunct them in 2018 (if he hasn't already) - if you have planets in Taurus, Jupiter will oppose them, planets in Aquarius and Leo will be squared. You can see how everyone will be impacted by this, but some people to a greater degree than other people. The lessons for this transit will be about authenticity and real power - not being afraid to speak up. Relationships are rock 'n rolling.

Saturn will be in Capricorn in 2018. Saturn was last in Capricorn in 1989 (what was happening in your life then?), he rules Capricorn and is very strong here (he is also the ancient ruler of Aquarius his next stop, so he will be strong for at least five years!). I am writing a big post about this, by sign, for later this month, so am not going to go deeply into it here. This is the 'winter is coming' energy. This is structure, boundaries and limits. Dad's home. So, yes, the party's over (why didn't anyone tell me there was a damn party, why do I always miss the damn party?) and we have to knuckle down and be in by curfew and study for the exam and mow the grass. On the other hand alot of really stabilizing things can get done when dad's home. It can feel good to get enough sleep and be prepared to ace our test and come home to a fresh cut yard.

Uranus will move into Taurus in May 2018. Taurus rules our 2nd house of what we own - our self esteem, our values, our possessions, our money, Mother Earth. Uranus will shake this stuff up for the collective. There could be some kind of shock to the banking system/money markets and/or the planet around mid-May 2018 when Uranus ingresses into Taurus. Over the next seven years the way we use and value money will be totally revolutionized. Over the next seven years the way we use and value Mother Earth will be changed and revolutionized, too. Since we are all part of this collective energy we will be impacted by these changes. Uranus's change of signs will also impact us personally as he shifts into a new space and interacts differently with our natal energies. Wherever he goes we can expect change and a need for greater freedom.

Chiron will move into Aries in 2018.

We'll talk about this in part II. In the meantime don't miss the monthly because December 2017 is a very important month and we don't want to be looking too far ahead just yet (says the girl who is looking too far ahead).

Time to make the donuts.

xo all

I haven't forgotten the personalized Uranus transit (starting May 2018) write-ups for everyone who volunteered - they are almost complete. I think they will be better read after we get through 2017's energies, too.