Scorpio New Moon: charged potential

Scorpio Mars is letting something off their chest, it’s been sitting on your diaphragm for some time now stifling your breaths, weighing you down. Mars has been plowing through our Scorpio houses for the past couple of weeks, moving FAST. Scorpio Mars has been amassing control. Mars in Scorpio is full goblin mode, it makes it’s own power: withholding, plotting and scheming, are tactics employed by Mars in Scorpio. Excellent at strategy games, Scorpio Mars is in it for survival. Sometimes you may not even notice the work it has been doing until you blink and things fall in line as a result of the moves they made way back in the game. Suddenly, open ground. Mars conjunct the New Moon is a displacement of this heavy energy through self prioritisation, through sudden catharsis. Through actually feeling the shape of the shadowy mass. Feeling it and ripping it out. Be gone! Now we can move.

Let’s electrify this combo with Uranus - electrostatic energy, and we have a New Moon feels a bit like hair standing on end, the midst of an electrical storm, no rain. Charged AF. If you think about it that way, we have charged potential. We are charged potential. A potential built that will release, like a coiled spring. We are in the space of the charging, we are setting the scene for the release. How are you conducting yourself to ensure when the release happens you are in the best possible situation. Have you arranged your knights to protect? Do your moves reflect truth? Are you moving just for the sake of moving, or is there intent? Is there feeling behind your movements? It is a good reminder to check in with your long term goals and make sure your actions are aligned. And if you do not have a long term goal, perhaps derive it back to your core values. Move your pieces around this central notion: compliment and strategise.

With the energy of this New Moon there is a lot of willpower and drive, you can make some excellent ground, there is a lot of courage. Perhaps you find yourself making that power move. But with Uranus in the mix there is warning to head: make sure you think through exactly what it is you are wanting to do because you may find yourself feeling impulsive, and impulsiveness does not always offer clarity of thought. In fact this New Moon kind of shuns normative thought. With Scorpio Mars growing power we might find ourselves doing things that are about gaining our own power. Try energising your current constructive habits, supercharge your rituals. Arrange those chess pieces. We might feel the need to release, so consider how you let off steam and do it safely. It is a water Moon, so perhaps seek a body of water for a cleansing swim, shower, or bath. This is about Scorpio, this is about your freedom, this is about feelings that drive you. What drives you? Unwrap these feelings from your core and lay them out to see them for what they are.

Thoughts:

• In what situations do you feel most powerful?

• What might feel good to cut out of your life?

• What do you want to do more than anything? What values drive this?

• Check your relationship to power - what are you taking from others for the gain of personal power? How can you act with integrity?

• Check your relationship with achievement - who defines your idea of success? Do you?

Lunar Eclipse in Taurus: cling and release

Taurus pulls and Scorpio pushes.

Both of these fixed signs have great inertia, they are like planetary bodies, amassing, until they no longer can sustain. Taurus is a bull grazing in their lush paddock - doing anything to protect the pasture from changing. Thriving in security and stability. Scorpio, quick and forceful, shifting in the dark, poised - similar in the ‘fixedness’ likened with Taurus, yet attracted to chaotic, challenging, and sometime uncomfortable spaces. Taurus is in the open for all to see, Scorpio exist in the intricate hidey-holes. Taurus are ruled by Venus; sensual, yin, fertile, tactile. The scents of the Earth; moss and lichen, pine forests and damp river beds. Scorpio are ruled by Mars and Pluto; power surging, emotion driven, transformative. Water based, smelling of steam, molten earth, and mysterious patchouli.

This eclipse cycle, that began in November 2021, has marked the space for a shifting along this axis, along this extreme, between clutching and letting go, stimulating themes of security, safety, personal power, emotional response. Eclipses often mark significant energies. In this case, there is sudden loss of our lunar reflective light. When the Moon guides so many, what force takes over when that guide is momentarily extinguished? The lapping of the tides, shifting. The nocturnal flowers caught mid-unfurl. This energy is sudden, confusing. But…you are left with your inner compass, always. Over the space of these eclipses how has your inner compass been tuned in. What I mean by this is, what parts of you do you notice take charge when you are emotionally stressed, when you are faced with change, when control slips through your fingers? In what ways have you practiced sense of self and presence to nurture you in sudden misfortunes. How have you given your spirit and soul and body and mind the sensory delight of Taurus, creating safe internal landscapes for you to retreat into. And taking advice from Scorpio: how have you acknowledged your outcast parts, the exiles you have shunned. Have you tried to understand them, nurture them, emotionally express for them.

Sometimes, losing our guidepost results in disorientation; imagine a child spinning without a grounding point of vision, a lack of centre of gravity, limbs flailing, chaotic. Our strength of spirit is something that we can always count on to guide us, it brings our focus inwards, concentrating it at the core. Cultivate this strength of spirit. Depend on yourself to guide you. Love yourself. Scorpio and Taurus teach us that although we wish to control everything, we simply cannot. This practice of release is a daily reminder that there are times when we just can not be in power of our external circumstances, and it calls for a relaxing and expanding. From clinging on with fingertips, to grasping into the free space. Exhaling with the release. Existing in the void of the unknown. And sometimes we need to consciously remind ourselves to stop clawing at the past and learn to TRUST (because trust is always a Scorpio/Taurus issue).

It is all going to be ok.

The Sun is saturated in Scorpio

Scorpio is a fixed, water sign that is known for it’s intense, sultry dominance. Scorpio are professionals at feeling emotion, delving into the deep, dark places, and staying there for some time, saturating in the potency. The Sun in Scorpio is expert at disguise; somehow managing to hide their true feelings, but be expressive and raw at the same time. Simultaneously shying away from expose, yet radiating magnetism. The Sun in Scorpio is expressive, passionate and dynamic, in tune with the feelings of others. The Sun in Scorpio is the most beautiful rose, with the prickliest thorns, for to have such beauty one must have great pain. This Scorpio season we are reminded to feel the feelings: tread water with grief, shower with joy.

As someone that is a Scorpio, I have learnt that in order to feel fulfilled in my life I must “live life in every moment, to the full scope of the spectrum. Commit to the cause.”

Notes from a Solar Eclipse in Libra - choosing love

Simply, a Solar Eclipse is when the solar power goes out momentarily. The Moon slides between the Earth and the Sun. Our solar power is the light of the Sun, it is the driver of life, the catalyst for photosynthesis that feeds our ecosystems. It is our pure expression. What is there if the solar light is blocked? What creatures come out when they are no longer have to hide from the spotlight? The strange, the interesting, the unexpected. More personally, what parts of you are constantly repressed by your golden light? By your aspirations, by your expectations, by your goals, by the good to be done for others. Symbolically, it is when our subconscious comes to the forefront when we are no longer driven by the conscious. It is when glimmers of our own depths bubble to the surface, the lava of our core, bringing forth deep seeded wants and needs. When we are so use to functioning from our conscious place, we might not recognise these as our own. They are our dreams, the whispers that do not fit the ideas we have of successful lives, the feelings or bodily sensations of lives we have once lived, the parts that do not conform with societies expectations of ‘pretty’. The primal messages from within.

This Solar Eclipse is in Libra. Boundaries is a key word associated with this axis. Other people’s needs and your own. There are constant reminders on social media to “choose yourself”, “look after yourself”, “self care is an act of self love” etc etc, like you can only do one or the other. These messages do not always sit comfortably with me as I am attuned to associate them with selfishness, and that is something that has always been scorned upon in my world, for better or worse, probably a result of the system. And then some people go the other way and over compensate for others because they want to feel good, or maybe simply because they care, and then they lose themselves in the process, wondering how they got there. I think about moving along this continuum from ‘me’ to ‘us’ at different times in my life and remind myself that sometimes there is a need to just look out for yourself, for example, when protecting oneself, physically, mentally, emotionally. When you take a sick day and feel guilty for not cleaning the house, but you are sick! And so you sit with the discomfort of this and resist and it feels selfish and yucky but you deserve some rest! Choosing myself in this situation takes practice and firmly establishing some boundaries. And sometimes there is a need to give all of your energy to others’ - when those you love are in pain or need help. I think it is important to remind ourselves not to get too caught up in the extremes of this axis and what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’. It can feel like a lot of pressure to constantly choose yourself/others - so, relaxing this grip on the expectations to be ‘perfect’ for yourself, or for others, alleviating the guilt by choosing kindness and love.

And this is where Libra and Aries show up for us, reminding us that we drift along this polarity from day to day, moment to moment - and that is ok. So, take the day off and do nothing, say “no” if you don’t want to go, think of yourself first, or, drop everything for your friend in need, mow your mum’s lawn, care what other’s think, it’s all good. I see you there trying your best, going from one extreme to the other, or somewhere in the middle seeking terminal velocity, in this ‘free-fall’ we call life. Go forth and oscillate with compassion.

Full Moon in Aries - the state of emotions

This Full Moon is a book end to an important lunar cycle we began 6 months ago when we had a New Moon in Aries. Back then, we were being asked to live more aligned with our soul, no matter what. So, with the Moon back in Aries and in fullness, this cycle asks us how we have showed up for ourselves with bravery and passion over the past 6 months? How have you been more assertive in cementing your boundaries? Assertion is a skill, a balance between aggression and submission. This Full Moon carries an echo, a reverberation about the challenges of this balance; a Sun in the peaceful pleasing sign of Libra, the Moon full of emotion in a forward forceful Aries. Dipoles of emotion, polarities of presence. This is not to say you have to exist in the middle of the continuum, there are times that call for strong emotions such as anger, and then of course there are times when you will hold your tongue and play the diplomat. It is not to say that you need to be one or the other, there is a need for all emotion. I realised this, watching my husband play with my children, splashing and chasing one another in the ocean. I felt at peace. The joy i experienced from witnessing their happiness in presence came with feelings of sadness and pain too; the fragility and momentariness of life always there as a reminder of what we have to lose. I felt both of these feelings simultaneously, tears pricking my eyes. But, as i allowed these feelings to coexist I felt…relief. Relief of allowing pain to show it’s face, relief of the acknowledgement of the fear of loss, but persisting with joy nonetheless. And as quickly as these feelings came, they were gone again. I like to think they were carried away with the ocean.

So, we have an interesting recognition of balance and extremes and with Pluto hanging around square the nodes, this feels familiar, a highlight of a pattern you might have been in before. Pluto speaks of power play, vulnerability, depth. Mars is copresent in Libra too, the ruler of this Full Moon and forms an opposition to Chiron in Aries. This feels a bit like repossession of self. Reclamation. This is not a Full Moon carrying ease. This is a Full Moon that is tenderising, activating and embodying. This is an instinctual lunation that acts in the visceral sense of safety and survival. This is about feeling into who you are and what your soul needs.

There is also a whisper of a need to be soft with yourself. Just because this Moon might bring up tremors of the past, it does not mean you have not evolved. Celebrate how you have changed, no matter how small you deem the change to be. Chiron reminds us that we are always moving through teachings. We are always learning. This Mars activation might ask that we step away from this and take a contemplative perspective with a clearer mind. The Mars, Chiron aspect accompanying the Full Moon might be challenging and flighty, but offers a chance to play it cool and practice observing our reactions. Something might become apparent if we give it a cooling space to coagulate. Space allowing a change in perspective, a change in form. Think of how the properties of water change when it changes state of matter. Water, liquid, flowing into every corner, consuming, energetic particles as they slide over one another. As it cools and changes to a solid, it carries less energy, less chaos, it condenses, becomes something you can assess easier. You can see its borders, it has firm boundaries. The particles are interacting in different ways, and we see them differently too. When we give space to our feelings and thoughts, we come at them with fresh eyes, eyes that are less energetically involved or consumed. Softness and passion is what I will be granting myself this Full Moon.

This lunation occurs on Friday, 29th of September, 2023.

Full Moon in Aquarius thoughts

This Full Moon in Aquarius is about existing in the extremities, skirting the boundaries of the usual. Aquarius is always about how we are the same, yet different from everyone else. We are alike in our difference. We come together through adversity, through a commonality of existence. Aquarius teaches us about systems of society with a deep fastidious understanding for the coding behind them. Once equipped with the intel, Aquarius zooms out and ponders how they can hack the system. How they can break the patterns of predictability. This Full Moon might highlight the self imposed, or the boundaries that have been erected by society in which we dwell. There is potential for awareness of things beyond our current vision.

When we consider this lunation, we see that Jupiter, the planet of expansion is squaring the Sun, Moon combination. Jupiter is currently in Taurus, so this feels like a lot of slow inertia. Jupiter is happy to hold his ground and make it about him. Jupiter in Taurus will be adding ideas of grandeur. Perhaps those notions of luxury and richness infuriate us even more now we can see the divisions they create. Or maybe they remind us that life can be easy and full, but how does this juxtapose our ideals of happiness and success? This Full Moon might shine a light on things that we no longer need, those that are surplus to necessity, or frivolous to our new paradigms. Jupiter always has some big ideas to share and is egging on Mars in Virgo to action our beliefs with care. Mars in Virgo teaches us about game plans and details needed for success - perhaps we find ourselves plotting how we can move the goalposts. Long term vision is endorsed by small actions. Micro sustained actions create big change, think habit stacking, daily rituals, atomic habits etc etc. Mars in Virgo also likes to dig for the truth, do the research and sniff out lies; active questioning. Saturn is opposing Mercury too; there might be some harsh feedback necessary, a shifting in our vision, a tweaking to our words. Mercury in Virgo wants the detail, and Saturn will remind us of the bigger picture, the long term vision. Perhaps we are just too caught up in the small things and this lunation will remind us of the broader thinking necessary to break the boundaries. The thinking that reconnects us to our place in society, as humans.

This Full Moon has a lot of masculine energy, because of this it feels quite hard and exposed, a little uncomfortable. Especially since it is occurring concurrently with the Venus Retrograde in Leo. We might have the tendancy to be a little too cognitive, wound up in our thinking, in ourselves. Conversation with actual humans, face to face, might be of assistance to help workshop thoughts and feelings. It is tempting to think that we are the only ones that feel a certain way, but reality is there are so many people that are thinking or feeling the same thing. Because of all the interactions with the planets in this lunation we might consider ourselves harsh critics - soften up! Soften for yourself! Soften for others! Start the conversation instead of allowing it to swirl around and around in your head. Open up. A casual “hello” will do. Since it is Aquarius we are talking about, connection is always a good thing.

Saturn in Pisces as a creative commitment

Saturn has been in Aquarius since April 2020. Saturn is cold and earth bound and hard and somber colours. In Aquarius it wears a community minded hat, the foreman of humanity. But not the aliveness of humanity, more the functioning and the dynamics. It speaks to technology and crops and factories. It shows up in our lives through diligence, testing and rewarding our patience. It believes in tertiary education, and cognitive creativity. An Aquarian Saturn works on the big picture. It works on innovation of systems, but pens black and white plans and omits the colour to satisfy the softness and diversity of being a living thing in a man-made environment. Aquarian Saturn is efficient, effective and runs on rules, enforcing boundaries. Measuring things, dividing things. Getting rid of what is not working for the long term.

Breaking things down and rebuilding. Saturn wipes it’s boots on the door mat as it marches out of Aquarius.

Fade left, and Saturn arrives in the Jupiter ruled sign of Pisces. It’s limbs soften and the lines of tension and determination ease. A loss of some of it’s hardness and a dimming of the high definition. In the underwater world of Pisces, Saturn has blurry vision - so measuring, weighing, dividing becomes more difficult and we are left with a Saturn that is more concerned with spiritual growth and connection of hearts. It seeks to order through art and music and creation.

A Pisces Saturn will be committed to hope, to the vision of the unknown, in finding the ways in which we can do better but we do not yet know what that looks like. It is about finding hope and sticking to it. Adhering to it. Clinging to it. Chunking it into bite sized pieces to fuel you on the daily. Pisces Saturn is commitment to loved ones, to love. It is no longer creative cognition, but instead, creative imaginings. To believing and acting for the best of people, for the best of humans, in the array of colours needed to speak to our softness. To dreaming, to feeling things in our body.

It is a reminder that your creative self deserves time and energy and is as much a valuable part of you as your thinking self is.

Saturn Pisces will show up in our lives as a manifestation of our imagination. Trying new things that we might have been scared don’t ‘fit’ with our ideas of identity or community. It will live in the micro rituals we embed in our days to make our lives that bit more magical. We will see it in the way we love our family and friends and make time to talk to our pets. It is about honouring that reality is very much about our perceptions. And if this is true, then how can we infuse our ideologies with a little more of the magical than what we have systemised them to be?

Committing to a creative vision

As of tomorrow I start my year off teaching, and begin a year of creativity. I decided to take a year off my professional career as a classroom teacher at the end of last year. Several things moved me to do this; exhaustion, burnt out, lack of vision, amongst other things like wanting to tend to my family, nurture my self, and curiosity at what might unlock within me if I l gave it the time and space. I was sick of waking up tired, sick of ignoring that voice inside me that asked..”what if?”. Creativity is born from curiosity. So what will this year look like for me? I plan on living a more mindful existence where I am not too busy to take in the small details of wonder around me. Fuelled by my studies in astrology I will live more in tune with the natural world, seeking inspiration from archetypal energies, symbolic synchronicities in my surroundings, and imaginative realms. I hope to develop not just my pottery, but also dabble in other modes of creating routinely in order to practice creativity. You know that quote that even your breakfast can be poetry? Well, I want my life to be poetry. I will embed magic and grace and wonder throughout the day, in all the mundane and liminal spaces my hands and mind can reach. I will write, I will draw, I will paint. I will create. And ultimately, I want to share these learnings with you, so that your life can be poetry too.