Jessica Shepherd's Blog, page 21

This week, warrior planet, Mars in Aries, squares Pluto in Capricorn (2/22), then conjoins Uranus (2/26). As the red planet heats up our world, it’s time to become more conscious about our personal Mars.

I read this post by astrologer Michael Lutin about the upcoming Mars-Pluto-Uranus aspects:… “Even the calmest, most patient, spiritually developed, all-chakras-aligned, organic vegetarians can be heard muttering under their breath, I’ve had enough of this shit.”

It takes a lot to make me chuckle, but I laughed out loud. There’s a lot to be angry about lately, and spiritual folk are not exempt from this.

It struck me that we do often think anger is un-spiritual. Anger is not un-spiritual. There is absolutely nothing wrong with saying “fuck this shit”, as evidenced by the popularity of the humorous but ultimately spiritual book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. I haven’t read the book, but one of my best ways for clearing energy when it’s stuck is jumping up from meditation and yelling “fuck this shit!!!”. I call this my “fuck it!” energy clearing technique (TM me, 2017).

Having anger is totally spiritual. Having anger is not the problem. It’s what we do next, or don’t, that matters.

Yes, what happens next…that’s often a problem. Most of us are not taught how to work with our emotions -especially not hot ones, like anger. Mars is a planet of extremes. We may flip out, or we may even deny our experience completely.  How can we be more conscious with Mars, so we don’t go off half-cocked, hurting our selves or others?

To work with Mars, the inner warrior in you, it helps to understand what anger is. What is anger? Energetically, when you look underneath the hood of anger you will always find fear. Fear that I’m not being valued, respected, important, cherished, and ultimately fear that I don’t exist at all. The existential cry of anger is: “I am no one. I don’t matter to you or anyone.” Know this and it’s easy to see how that perception incurs a great terror capable of great violence and harm.

So one of the great secrets of working with anger is to go underneath it. Admit that you are terrified that you really don’t exist, and you don’t matter at all. But that’s hard to do because anger disguises that terror (because its so afraid) by justifying a drama. Like a puffer fish, anger thinks, if I take up more space and oxygen and get really in your face, if I generate this feeling of strength and power, I won’t have to feel my deep vulnerability and fear. Hence, the puffer fish approach.

Attempting to protect our selves with big energy may work in the wild animal kingdom, preventing other animals from eating us, but in our human reality there are only a few occasions that actually call for that level of ferocity. Mostly, fear and intimidation causes harm, pain and suffering. After all, anger never inoculates us against our true fear of vulnerability, it just prolongs the fear we are protecting our self from honestly seeing, saving it for a later date. It distorts something so basic and natural to human life, our vulnerability, into something so big and scary that it takes on a life of its own.

Vulnerability is the sweet spot of anger. Vulnerability is your true strength… because it’s the truth, and the truth always has strength and freedom in it. The truth is that we are vulnerable, and none of us are protected from the pain of abandonment, rejection and betrayal. These are realities the Ego has experienced many times and denying that is believing a lie. The honest solution is feeling our fear and pain.

Truly, with Mars, “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”.

Mars actually has a very simple job- to say “ouch” when someone steps on our toe, to stand up for our self when we need to, to truthfully and appropriately assert our self, to generate energy for emergencies, and be the courageous hero and leader when that’s called for. Simple right? Not so. Conditioning and personality limitations distort Mars’ function (we can see that via Mars and aspects in the birth chart), making integrating our personal Mars more difficult, and necessary. I have quite a few Mars aspects in my chart, so I’ve worked at this for a long while. Here are my strategies, a method for your mad-ness, if you will.

How to work with anger:

1. Admit you’re angry, and know its totally okay to have it (don’t reject or deny it- it will become more explosive and painful!). Own that you’re feeling hurt, angry, resistant, pissed… and, if you can go there, maybe even a little afraid?

2. Make a safe space to feel your feelings fully, alone. You may scream in your parked car, throw an axe against a piece of wood, hammer nails, scream into pillows, punch pillows, write letters you never send, yell curse words at a personified empty chair. All of these work to discharge anger. You don’t want to let it build up because this literally harms your body and health, so these practices, as silly as they may sound, are actually forms of deep self-care that protect you from harm- which is the function of Mars. Note: When you allow yourself to fully express it, anger often shifts into sadness and fear. Don’t be afraid of that fear when it happens! It’s a sign you’re making progress.

3. Have a hard time feeling your anger? Throw gas on the fire. Peace-loving souls have a hard time being mean, nasty or angry. This build-up of anger can lead to toxic resentment that erodes confidence, happiness, promotes victim-hood mentality and can even cause physical pain. If you find it difficult to experience anger but you can feel it there like an ugly, dark thing silently seething in the corner, feed your anger, bait it with negativity, curse words, encourage your self to feel justified in being a “diva,” or whatever. For some people, it is totally appropriate to pour gas on a fire — to fully feel what we’ve been avoiding feeling because we judge anger as too ugly, dark, scary, wrong. For others, it is not (see no. 4).

4. If you are reactive, if you regularly say or do things in a fit of anger that you regret later, you need to ask this. What am I about? What are my values? Who am I? Do I even like the person I’ve become? Which leads to…

5. What are you fighting for, anyhow? Remember that 80’s REO Speedwagon song that goes “I can’t fight this feeling anymore. I’ve forgotten what I’ve started fighting for”? During any battle or fight, especially a prolonged or repetitive one, it’s very easy to forget what you started fighting for in the first place. Any battle or war, even if once initiated from a strong sense of principle and injustice, easily devolves into blind brutality. It’s important to be honest about how easy it is for your inner warrior to get pulled into a rage so blind that you no longer recognize your self, and thus do real, lasting damage.

6. Go underneath the anger. When you’ve exhausted your self, sit in a space of vulnerability and tenderness for your self (note: this is impossible to do if you’re still angry, so do #2). From that space, ask your self what your real and true need is in this situation. Then deeply listen. You may be surprised when what you truly need isn’t what you originally thought. Self-honesty is crucial at this stage. Anger may be trying to get us in touch with something we want, but don’t think we can have. Anger can do a smoke and mirrors dance, distracting us from something we don’t want to face. Sometimes, if you’ve been shamed for expressing anger, it simply needs to be felt, accepted, not judged.

7. On the other side of anger: your inner badass! Society tells us there is strength in violence and anger, and vulnerability is weakness. Cue: every action hero movie you’ve ever watched. From a spiritual perspective this is 100% opposite of true. Angry behavior does not make you strong; being willing to feel it fully, without judgment or acting out, does. When you allow all your hot feelings to exist without judgment or shaming, you discover true inner strength is the flexibility to compassionately allow whatever comes up. A ninja warrior is adaptable, permeable to others, and a master of self-honesty.

Because anger masks fear, it is much harder to work with anger than fear, in my experience, so give your self time and space to honor what needs to come up. If you’re in a process of releasing anger, it can take hours, days, even weeks.

This is honorable and necessary inner work though. Your balls, your power, your lady strength, your true badassery -in other words, your most courageous Mars- relies on you allowing your self to fully feel your hurt, betrayal, fear, nastiness and pain in a safe way. Everyone wants to embody the best of Mars, to be the valiant warrior hero they’re capable of being, and to do that, we’ve got to be willing to work with our anger.

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I was in Hawaii with my husband, walking by the gift shop of our resort when I saw them: a precious group of hula dolls. My inner child went “oooh!” and I immediately texted a picture to my sister, saying “I would’ve died for one of these when we were kids!” I bought a doll for my niece, whose eyes went wide as plates and then squeezed tightly shut as she hugged her new toy, exclaiming “I love her so much.” So, so sweet.

As we explored each glorious detail of the doll’s costume, together -the little gold arm band, the purple ribbon threaded in braided hair, and one, not two (as a serious Ella Rae pointed out) ankle lei- at the grass skirt, a memory was triggered. I remembered being in a school show as a child, probably around 8 or 9. I was excited to be dressed up as a hula girl in our class’s Hawaiian performance. The girls’ skirts were made out of trash bags cut into strips and cinched at the waist, which wasn’t as bad as it sounds. But standing in line to go onstage, I noticed mine was a green color indicating a capacity for heavy duty lawn yard work, while all the other girls’ were black. I remember feeling awkward, ashamed at my difference. Onstage, my excitement continued to plummet when my classmates continually stumbled over the graceful arm movements that made the dance so lovely, which had the effect of making everyone extra shy, our words accompanying the ukele barely audible. I so enjoyed the feeling of being my little lei, my tube top and the fact that I could hula.  I wanted a star moment. Instead, I was one of the – mediocre – crowd.

It was an interesting reflection for me, today, because I’m an introvert who does not covet the spotlight. Yet my younger self was very practical about her need and desire for it. She knew she had something to offer. She took pride in in the beauty of her costume, and her skills. She was excited about sharing this. She also experienced how being one of a sea of many, in a group, can either support an individual to shine, or not, and how conformity can create alienation and shame. Subsequently, she felt aching emptiness at having been denied feeling the fullness of her self.

Leo is the Divine Child. She is the part of us who wants to step under the spotlight simply because we are excited to be there. He is the part of us who recognizes we have a contribution that perhaps only we can make, and that knowledge fills us with enthusiasm, zeal and makes us feel (rightfully) a bit special. She is our inner child who can say, with utter practicality: I enjoy this, I’m pretty good at it, I’m excited about it, so logically I need to be seen and share what I have with others.

This is the first of the Leo-Aquarius eclipse sets (the mean nodes shift from Virgo-Pisces to Leo-Aquarius on 4/28/17). The North Node will enter Leo, which is to say, it’s a good idea to practice being the best of Leo. The South Node in Aquarius speaks to leaving something Aquarian behind, perhaps having spent too long alienated from people around us, thinking we don’t belong. Often it’s a self-concept that’s expired. Like having gotten so used to being an “outsider” that we don’t realize we’ve arrived, that we are the one we’ve been seeking all along. Or maybe we’ve been wondering whether we’ve incarnated on the wrong planet at the wrong time. The fact is, you’re here, and that means you’ve got something to contribute, create and share. Likewise, if an agreed upon “norm” of mediocrity feels uncomfortable, wrong, and stymies your light, that’s a sign that it is. Gather ’round people who feel good to you.

I’ve read several astrologers focus on the potential for narcissism with this eclipse set. Given our new leader, their concern is relevant. Those who grew up with narcissistic parents see all the signs. We know the way they manipulate to get their way, how they present themselves as confident, self-consistent, clear and yet they aren’t those things at all. They have no discernible plan other than getting what they want. We understand their emotional desire for power causes them to do things (like, saying the thing no one else will) that push the boundaries of right and wrong until everyone’s compromised (if you grew up with a narcissist and your unhealed issues are re-triggered by Trump, I highly recommend this article). The entire world is now getting a crash course in this personality style. Yet while this is certainly Leo’s shadow, that’s not the astrological Leo, not really. It’s just a small percentage.

So let’s all make the decision right now to allow Trump to carry and work out that shadow for us, because most of us don’t have to worry about having style over substance, or tooting our horn too much, but it’s opposite- not celebrating our self, enough. I like an observation I heard recently that most of us could stand to be more diva-like, not in the sense of telling other people what to do or not do around me, but honoring what I truly need so that my life works for me. If, to be effective, I need to book first class airfare, or start out every single morning with a salt bath, or go to bed at 2 AM and start work at 11 AM, so be it. Few of us are primadonnas. The greater chance is our life could use some diva-tweaking.

This eclipse period (thru January 2019) offers the opportunity to make a whole new level of creative contribution to the world. If you feel mediocre people are taking up too much space onstage, regard it as a personal invitation to step forward. As Divine child of Leo we only need to own what we love, what we are good at, what we enjoy. Choose to be around people who allow you to shine, because they play a supporting role in helping you succeed. Whether you’re in an industrial green hula skirt when everyone else is wearing a black one, or you show up at  ballet school in a hotdog outfit on princess day, your panache, your differences no longer hold you back but make you beautifully unique. You have no excuse not to share your self. After all, if for the first time in our country’s history someone with absolutely no qualifications for the job can be elected president, the sky’s the limit for me and you.

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Want to know how Spring’s eclipses (Leo 2/11/17 & Pisces 2/26/17) will impact you? Read more Click here to view more details">right here.

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This essay continues my series of my Saturn transiting through the houses, which is, so far the twelfth, first, and now third. I’m about 1/3 of the way through, and this is my current report.

My journey appeared straightforward at first, but in hindsight not at all. The second house holds our gifts, talents and skills; these are the resources we have – material, spiritual and emotional – and these can be liabilities when they are under developmental tension, receiving hard aspects in our natal chart. I have natal Neptune in my second house quincunx my Cancer Sun.

Within a month of Saturn entering my third house, which also coincided with my Uranus opposition, a Pluto-Moon transit (and transiting Saturn was also being squared by Neptune), I went from being highly sensitive to a full-on Empath. I have no idea why or how this happened, just that I became overwhelmed by emotions that weren’t mine. Saturated by external environmental energies I didn’t know how to manage, this created a lot of anxiety, uncertainty and at times, terror. Because I didn’t know how to deal with other energies in my energy body, all kinds of emotional and spiritual crises ensued. Surviving adversity is a transiting second house Saturn theme.

With new survival needs, helpers and guides often appear during our Saturn second transit and this can necessarily extend into the third house time. Which brings me to today. I’ve had to develop new skills, to understand my environment, to work with my mind, and to learn – the subject of Saturn’s transit through the third house.

Traveling in New Third House Territory

Imagine an 80 mph car ride on a three lane highway; you are taking in everything and anything all at once, often too quickly to really think about what you’re seeing. That’s the third house. Quick. Adaptive. Lots of new information and data. But now Saturn’s sitting shotgun, making notes of everything, going “Slow down. Did you see that!?”

With transiting Saturn now in the third house, we have entered a new mental, spiritual or physical environment and as with any new environment we’ve got to understand the lay of the land, how things work here. Imagine arriving in a whole new world without a map. To ease the potential for mental anxiety, it becomes ultra important to figure things out.

“If we must travel beyond our known territory, then a guide or at least a map is necessary. Instinctive survival in an unknown land is unreliable at best, so we often find that when Saturn is transiting the third house we become obsessed with detail. It is necessary to develop one’s mind so that it becomes more capable of making subtle distinctions…” – Erin Sullivan, Saturn In Transit

One way through the fear/anxiety of a third house Saturn transit is by getting intimately specific and discerning about our concrete experience, examine how our mind is interacting with what is happening in the here and now. Saturn asks us to deliberately slow down to examine our mental perceptions, to focus on how we relate to mind itself.

For instance, I’ve noticed my tendency to doubt, to question things without examination. A doubt or fear comes up, and I swat away at it like a fly, dismissively saying, “Ooh, that’s not true…” yet when I dismiss my concerns I lose center, get conflicted, and my energy field becomes vulnerable to picking up others’ energetic junk. Instead, if I sink into the mental doubt and ask: Okay, what’s my question? Is this the right approach to take? Do I really believe this? etc… let me feel into this. Then I’m free to answer from a deeper place of knowing.

Getting An Education

“One could consider the third house transit an education, no matter how it presents itself in events, circumstances, feelings. This education might be obvious, or subtle.” – Erin Sullivan, Saturn in Transit

Since Saturn casts a stark, sometimes unwelcome light on our mind, self-defeating mental habits, negative awareness can appear. You don’t want to take this so seriously that it paralyzes you, but use it to inform you about areas that you can take action on. For instance, I’ve had periodic insecurity/fear about my knowledge. In my childhood home, there was only room for one person’s knowledge and enlightenment- my father – and yet understanding this, energetically, during this time has freed me up to separate my energy from his, to clear it.

I’ve also been working with a mentor/helper who is literally teaching me how to work with my mind and the energy of my environment. I’m in elementary school again. Because a slip in thinking, or lapse of unawareness, can leave my energy body open to gunky environmental energies, I’m mentally training myself to notice how my environment and perceptions interact. I have to be super-conscious. As my environment challenges me, I receive direct feedback on how I’m doing with my learning: either I feel bad, or I feel good.

As Rob Hand says of this transit, in his Planets In Transit, “The main issue you will confront at this time is the actual structuring of your mind and how it operates on a day-to-day level, in other words, your everyday mental patterns, attitudes, habits, styles of speaking and ways of listening to others. Normally you take these issues for granted…They are very important in structuring your world.”

Siblings, Your Neighborhood and Environment

“You may have trouble with people in your immediate environment, especially relatives and close neighbors.” -Rob Hand

Environment has been a huge theme for me so far. My neighbors are crazy. I say this without affectionate. I feel their energies, unfortunately. I’ve had problems with mentally unwell neighbors wandering into my house uninvited, with mail being consistently stolen, and extreme weather taking out communication lines, so my immediate environment has taken on numerous troubling, dark Saturnian tones. This, combined with Pluto also transiting my third, as my astrology friend, Paul proclaimed at my last Solar Return, quipped “Well, you haven’t killed your neighbors yet!” Seriously. This has contributed to the decision that I need/want to move.

Since my relationship with my sibling is private, I’m not going to go into much detail with this but to say that this transit can bring up sides of your relationship that you’d pushed aside, or not thoroughly examined till now. Saturn shines a cold, hard, ultimately clarifying light on all third house matters, so naturally our sibling relationships are under his scrutiny. Saturn’s sober clarity gives invites us to drop any unrealistic expectations or wishes we’ve had for our siblings to be anything other than what it actually is. It’s tough. Siblings always bring up our shadow side, as they often carry the self-parts we wish we’d been (we’re the smart one; they’re the beautiful one, etc.), or we dump our shadow onto them (they’re the materialistic one; we’re the spiritual one, etc.). If we want them to be someone other than who they actually are, we will face that now, maybe in unpleasant ways, or perhaps in more subtle ways that draw this realization out.

Thinking & Knowing

The promise of the Saturn third house transit may be the acquisition of new skills, new forms of self-expression, new ways of perceiving the world and interacting with it, but first Saturn functions as a structural funnel, a focused, dedicated container for interfacing practical information about the here and now. At times, we may feel bored, frustrated by the limited, banal, concrete nature of our immediate reality, question whether we’re learning anything, or ask, what’s the point of this task that has no end in sight? That’s Saturn. Yet, in a pinch, we always have the ability to tap into our intuitive knowing.

Erin Sullivan spoke about Theseus’ labyrinth. It’s an apt metaphor. The third house presents an unfamiliar new world, and it feels a lot like a maze, a task with no real logic or order to it. We may not know which way to turn, but we have our intuition. And we may have a thread- a guide, someone who has walked these same steps we now travel.

In moments of third house uncertainty, we may be surprised to discover we know much more than we thought. And that’s exciting, magical –and likely the booty of the Saturn third house journey.

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It’s Aquarius Moon time –time to nurture your inner radical. If you think of rioters, hippies and uni-bombers when you think of radicals, you may be surprised to learn the etymology of the word radical comes from the Latin word radix, which means root. Radical literally means “forming the root” or “going to the origin, essence”. Uranus/Aquarius reminds us that radical acts are only those that form and strengthen our essence, origin, truth.

Our political climate is certainly giving us the opportunity to form the root. The women’s march that positively overshadowed the inauguration was started by one woman in Hawaii. The power of one person to start a movement is very Uranus in Aries, where change belongs to the individual who makes self-honest choices and takes courageous action.

Yet Aquarius/Uranus holds an uneasy tension with the social fabric of our lives. Because collective stability relies upon a level of group conformity and agreement, authentic root-forming acts are always disruptive and threatening to the social order. Ideally, the wild, authentic soul doesn’t ask permission about getting radical. It doesn’t say, “but, hey… Is my soul’s truth okay with you? Ya sure, babe?” Unless, like me, you’ve got Uranus in Libra on your Ascendant, or you’re Venus ruled. Then it gets a bit trickier.

For a long time, I tried to make a core Truth more palatable, nicer, more pleasant for my partner. Sure, I’d express my Truth. “I detest mashed potatoes,” I’d say. Yet they stayed on my plate, though I didn’t eat them. When I was around certain company maybe I’d even take a few bites of potato, to be polite. Around others I could insult the potato openly (for the record, I have nothing against potatoes). I could unhappily complain, but I didn’t step into my Divine Self and speak from that place. I kept gilding the hard edges of my Truth, making it soft and pliable till it was no longer recognizable. Which, of course, changed absolutely nothing. Truth simmering on the back burner, I grew sour and bitchy. I was becoming more and more misaligned, more compromised. I knew I needed to get those potatoes off my plate, forever, but I also knew that once this was out of my mouth, I couldn’t back down … and that was terrifying.

Then it came out. Like a force of nature made more powerful for having been repressed for so long. “These potatoes cannot stay on my plate one minute longer!, ” I said to the most important person in the world, the one I didn’t want to lose, who had the choice to say he wanted to be with someone who wanted mashed potatoes. My Truth sounded an awful lot like an ultimatum, normally ill-advised for any partnership. But I said it. It was a radical moment, chaotic, and as inconvenient as death. And it was liberating. I released months, maybe years, of feeling oppressed.

Radical times call for a return to our root essence. Political, personal, or both, these are pressing questions: Where are you ready to return to your root self-essence, core truth? Where are you in danger of being your own worst oppressor, not making waves? In your birth chart, the area this New Moon falls answers this, as well as the placement of natal and transiting Uranus. Here, getting radical means you will need to make waves. Freedom is promised, but only if you do the thing you’ve avoided doing – being inconvenient, “selfish”, shaking things up. Truth will ask you to: stop catering to others’ insecurities, compromising your self, to examine your relationship agreements -explicit and implied.

To creatively work with this New Moon, set your ego-mind aside for a moment. Go into meditation. Feel the freedom, clarity and detachment of air. Ask for the Absolute Truth of a situation or person. Then listen. Really listen. The answer may surprise you. You may sugar coat it, but the voice of Absolute Truth will not be sugar-coated. It will be freeing. Act on that voice of your essence. Form the root.

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Cancer is the sign traditionally associated with family, home and the past. And whimsy. Yes, whimsy. It’s our best kept secret, perhaps the secret to surviving emotional ups and downs. Whimsy is good for the soul. So when, during an emotionally exhausting stretch of days tethered to my house, due to heavy winter storms, damage and repair, I found myself wandering into a tea & coffee shop, this spontaneous diversion felt so nurturing, so fine, I decided to allow myself to linger.

I was drawn in by the stacks of tea cups in the window. My departed great-grandmother had many teacups. Like many of her generation, she collected things, and this was one of those things. They sat in a fancy showcase cabinet with glass doors, the kind that only grandmothers (and Cancerians) have, probably purchased at Sears Department Store. When I’d visit, I’d immediately run to the teacup cabinet, admiring the delicate flowers, looking for my favorite cup, a purple one showcasing a bouquet of mums.

The other main thing I remember about my great-grandmother is her poetry. A realtor by day, she moonlighted as a poet and she wrote poetry especially for me, her first grandchild, which she slipped into Valentine’s Day cards, early childhood Birthdays, Easters. When she imparted those sweet and loving words to me, she may not have known she was supplying me with the gift of a lifetime: an innate sense that I was beyond a measure of a doubt, loved. With Venus conjunct my Mercury in Cancer in my tenth house, administering cups of comfort in the form of words is surely a direct imprint from my lineage, too, because while I firmly believe I am my own person, aren’t we often born into families that directly or vicariously nurture both the learning, and the gifts, we’re meant to bring into this world?

This is how whimsy works. A playful interlude, an intentional diversion, can take us right back to our roots, into our soul. Sometimes we need a pleasurable rabbit hole to fall into for a brief spell, a swaddling cocoon to get wrapped up in – to comfort, and heal. It was a nice reprieve, too, remembering the gifts from my lineage, as I tend to focus on the other -because those have been what has spoken the loudest, needed healing.

Cancer Full Moon can bring up a lot of emotions- surrounding family, home, loved ones, an aching heart. Insecurities and fears can weigh heavy. Feelings we’ve been too busy, or not allowed our self, to feel, may rise to the surface of awareness. Cancer is the healer of the zodiac, and Cancer heals through feeling. Clumsy, subjective and messy as they are, feelings are not facts, but they are breadcrumb trails that offer us clues about how and who we are. About any given issue, we may not yet know “what to do”, but after a good cry, a journaling session, a vulnerable share, we will definitely be one step closer to knowing.

The same goes for whimsy, an underrated soul healer. Right now, a step off the beaten path, perhaps triggered by… a faint memory, a long-lost pleasure, a perfume whiff of nostalgia… inspires and heals. A brief waltz with wonder, a tryst with imagination, can restore comfort, calm and continuity better than you might first think. Because the Cancer archetype, isn’t only about therapy offices and emotional family drama.

Happiness belongs to the Moon, mistress of whimsy. Feel free to follow yours.

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Imagine traveling to a land with no Sun. Travel far north enough in Norway and you will find yourself at Earth’s northernmost year-round settlement, called Svalbard, located right below the North Pole. Yes, that’s Santa’s North Pole. I spent Christmas there one year. We even saw his workshop. Which, for the still-believers, looked like a cottage nestled in the glacial mountain range– but I couldn’t really tell you what I was looking at, or anything in Svalbard, really, because it was Polar Night, where for four months there’s no visible difference between midnight and noon. 

What was that like? Imagine walking through the howling arctic winds at 30 below zero into pitch black darkness, banshee winds and snow crunching underfoot like styrofoam. This is a harsh, unforgiving environment.

Whether an Explorer of 1813 or 2013, I learned your experience varies only slightly; we may use gas and electricity instead of whale oil and fire, but even today you are at the mercy of the elements and technology. In my modern hotel, the grocery appeared indefinitely closed and there was only one option for food: the hotel bar, which served a variety of frozen everything.

One particularly memorable event was dogsledding on Christmas Eve. Imagine happening upon this vision: sheets of snow and wind tearing through a yard of dogs where they lived in crates, who were howling with excitement — or so we were told. I wavered between compassion, grief and horror, because looking at their icy snow matted fur, how couldn’t they be suffering, living outside in subzero temperatures? I also felt pretty sure I’d happened upon a mythical, supernatural scene. I was seeing the hounds of hell, guarding the gates of Tartarus. It sort of terrified me. But then, because everything in me was frozen- feet, hands, brain- I had a hard time feeling.

In this environment, there’s no room for mistakes. Many explorers of this early outpost did not survive, where navigational errors, lack of preparedness, sudden changes in the weather or inattention to your environment could prove fatal. It takes a hardy, clear-seeing character to settle here. One early settler left these words in her diary, now displayed in the town museum: “The ability to adapt, and the art of resignation, are some of what is needed by those who shall live in Svalbard.”

As we looked at the window displays, this was not what the on-site travel agency promised,  -a polar majestic beauty, and perhaps a glimpse of the famed northern lights! Bah! We didn’t see the northern lights, polar bears, ice glaciers or even the mountain ranges surrounding us. We didn’t see anything. Our fellow travelers, whom we met at the bar and had travelled from as far as New Zealand and Africa, co-miserated about this. One gorgeous blonde, well-manicured and severely disappointed woman told me she was trying to move up her plane ticket by several days.

Yet, for all the adjusted, err, dashed expectations, our trip to the North Pole remains one of the most memorable experiences of our travels. We talk about the lutefisk, a Scandinavian fish delicacy that we ate at Christmas dinner in the big communal dining hall, and how even the bacon topping couldn’t disguise the awful taste. We reminisce about the young nervous New Zealander sitting next to us who confessed he would pop the question to his girlfriend, this night. We were the only ones he told, he said. For the rest of the trip, when we passed in the halls, waving a brief hello, we eagerly searched both of their faces, wondering, did she say yes? We remember dressing up like astronauts to brave the 500 foot walk from our room to the lodge, and then undressing to our sock feet only a minute later, as it’s Scandinavian custom to remove your shoes before entering a home or lodge. We remember the delight of a blazing fire, the simple blessings of connection, warmth, the funny stories we re-tell.

Capricorn Season

Capricorn season, in some respect, is a lot like my experience in the North Pole. There’s an icy edginess to the festive holiday expectations, and for the weather alone, adaptation to some level of hardship is implied. It’s also the end of a cycle, the end of the calendar year. As Saturn, the timekeeper and grim reaper, looks backward and forward, we cut our losses, take stock of our resources, and plan our ambitions for the year ahead — not always the best “law of attraction” frame of mind from which to plan our resolutions.

It’s also a time of reminiscing. Certain memories are burned on our brains at this time of year, and not always happy ones. Yet doesn’t it speak to the wisdom, humor and resilience of the soul, how we manage to find the jewel in a harsh holiday experience? The time Uncle Lester set the Christmas tree on fire and we had no presents –but wasn’t that funny? 

As we get pared down by life, our expectations whittled to a bare minimum, there’s something spiritually satisfying about that. Don’t you find this to be true, in your own life? When it’s always about getting or not getting what you want, life is a real bummer. Our Spirit loves getting back to the essentials, reminding us of what’s truly important: love and connection, peace and pleasure, those eternal, unchanging values. And our Spirit needs the time to do this. Frankly, it’s the only time of year when we have the time, and the stillness, to devote to connecting within.

To the Capricorn Hermit -for whom time, simplicity and unhurried solitude are luxuries unmatched by its flashier versions- all we ever need is exactly what we have, right here in front of us. Capricorn is utterly pragmatic. A warm fire, a warm soup, a warm heart. A meditation cushion, a good book to read, a pet to be walked, a mountain trail to hike. From this place, true happiness dawns, looking far less like a spectacular sunrise and more like the slow dawning of realization: I am here. I am okay. All is well.

Whether I imagine myself as an explorer of the North Pole, or Capricorn,  I think, yes, the ability to adapt and the art of resignation are what’s needed. Resignation is not a negative thing, something we do begrudgingly, but an ability to meet what is, and work from there. We don’t give up our dreams; we give up pretending. That life, we, or others, should be any different. Instead of trying to book the first ticket out of Svalbard to chase northern lights that may or may not happen as my bar companion did, we choose what is. From that place, an enlightened Capricorn form of happiness emerges, and it is the one form of happiness that endures –contentment.

Enduring happiness. Isn’t that what everyone wants? Will resolutions and checklists help you find that? No judgment, here. You can set your goals, and get into the Capricorn spirit of accomplishment right now. It’s solid astrological advice. But if that’s not for you –if you find that this time of year is consistently fraught, with pressure, expectation and high emotions, that any attempt at do-ing rather than be-ing is “pushing the river”, there is an alternative. You can be a Hermit. You can settle into the stillness. You can read a book. Claim solitude. Simplify. Connect to your Spirit within.

Capricorn (and Saturn) often gets a dull reputation, but this archetype knows far more about the art of happiness than we give it credit for. Especially when life doesn’t match the promises made by the colorful brochures in the window. Perhaps what we most need at this New Moon is to surrender our expectations about what we think we want, for what truly makes us happy.

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It’s here. The end. And what a year it’s been. There has been more death, and transitions of great magnitude than I can remember. My work as a healer has been taken to all kinds of different levels this year. On all, it’s been a demanding, rigorous year in terms of extreme change and adaptation.

But it’s all slowing down now. Nature follows cycles. Cycles have acceleration and deceleration points. All new journeys have endings. My husband often notes that critical point when we are on a trip where everything we will be doing from that moment forward is totally focused on one thing- getting home. We’ve similarly reached the point in our journey right now, this December. We’re in the final stretch.

Earth time is not boundless in supply; we feel this in the archetype of Capricorn. The ending of a year, marking our human time here on Earth, reminds us. The holiday frenzy can have us feel frantic, but that’s a choice. If you get present, feel into the energy of the season, you’ll discover that, right now, time has a slow, delicious, gliding quality to it. The rain. The snow. The long hours of darkness. Time off work for holidays.

So… it’s about time. To finish what has been preoccupying your attention and focus. Don’t overwhelm yourself, though. It’s cold outside; nature has fewer resources to spare, too. Be winter-minded about it. That is, be economical, efficient with your energies and resources, knowing you’ve only got a single candle left to burn, one nut squirreled away in your storehouse. Focus on just one thing you’d like to work on or finish up. 

That’s your sweet spot, the juicy place that wants your focused, solid attention for the rest of the year, at least, and maybe a little into the new year. Mercury retrogrades Dec 19, 2016-Jan 8, 2017 from 15 Cap to 29 Sag. Dedicate your self to that (Capricorn always rewards your dedication).

If you need help figuring out what that is, here’s a hint: It’s square in front of you, so omnipresent that when you put one foot in front of the other you step right in it. It’s the thing that keeps tripping you up, the issue that persistently occupies your attention, or a brick wall you can’t get around.

An end of year clearing is always in order at this time. Let yourself reflect by the fire. Solstice (December 21) rituals always involve fire. You can do a release ritual by writing down what you’re ready to leave behind, and burning the list. It can be very purifying to see your baggage go up in flames.

The slowing march of Mercury says: It’s time to slow down. To savor solitude and silence. No matter how busy it looks out there, we have plenty of time to devote attention to what matters, in here. We have time to sink into these important issues. We have time to have hard conversations. We reflect, purge, finish, let go of the past… so we can move unencumbered into the new.

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I was just turned away at the airport, from a much awaited trip to a handful of my favorite places: Vienna, Paris and Versailles.

The ticket agent was unusually spry, warm and caring, a person you just feel good around. A good person for breaking bad news. As my husband prattled on about bag weight, she hesitated. I could tell she had something to say to me that she didn’t want to say. “What is it?”, I asked. It turns out, for France, your passport must be valid for at least three months beyond your planned departure date. Mine was only valid for one. As I stood there shocked, I thought she might cry over the tragedy of it. It was tragic. A girl denied a European trip.

I cried big fat crocodile tears. All over SFO airport. And on the way back home, driving. And when I arrived home to my dog- who wagged his tail and jumped on my lap, clearly happy to see me again- I cried then, too, because as much as I love my dog, I thought I’d be on my way to eating chocolate almond croissant, visiting the Louvre, shopping in the Marais, and seeing the Paris lights at Christmas. So many plans made, now dashed.

I couldn’t bear to unpack, or do anything. As the tears gushed on, I realized these tears were much bigger than just this trip. It was an existential sense of disappointment and grief, that crestfallen feeling of being so close, yet denied; I was crying for the times in my life I’d anticipated, worked for something and had fallen apart and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. Sadness moved into an existential fear, that I was just this small dot, that my own efforts against external forces were too easily undermined, terrified me.

Then I practiced what I’ve been doing lately: I began breathing light into the fear. I moved my consciousness back and forth, between breathing into the fear without trying to change or resist it, to imagining my being flooded with pure, white light. Like Paris snow softly falling, covering me. I reminded myself: There’s no fear bigger than light. If I can see a fear, that means there’s just a place to bring light to it within my own being. Slowly, I began to feel the fear ease up. It became less heavy, less oppressive, lighter. When I laid down on the sofa and rested my head against my dog, Magnus, I peacefully, blessedly, slept.

Love or fear. Disappointment or fulfillment. Shadow or light. The human ego tends to resist one experience and want the other, but we don’t get to choose- we are given all of it. With Gemini, we can move betwixt and between, allowing everything to exist all at once. I’ve never met a Gemini who can’t swiftly glide, practically carefree, over topics, people and ideas that tie others in knots. This has often annoyed my Saturn in Gemini, forever seeking substance, clear logic, facts. But this has fascinated me, too. Gemini gives equal weight to every possibility. Gemini can regard a disappointment… as an interesting new development. Maddening? Yes. Especially when you’re attached to a point of view.

But this skill is extremely helpful for healing the spirit, where becoming whole and integrated relies on the surefooted ability of the Magician to relinquish our attachments, to sew our humpty-dumpty self-parts back together again. The Magician can entertain contradictory feelings, thoughts and impulses in our self, without having an attachment to or opinion about those same things. There’s an inherent neutrality to Gemini. When we feel confused or torn by conflicting inner states, the Magician deftly shelters our contradictions, holding all until it merges into one.

To play with this tool, start with lighter, easier fears, then move on to the bigger ones. Maybe start with the fear that I’m not going to get a good night’s sleep ever again, or a fear for a family member’s well being. Ground yourself, through your feet, your sitz bone. Lean back into your pelvis and get comfortable with the fear. You’re not trying to get rid of it. Now just bring in the light. Imagine one in each hand: fear in one hand and light in the other. Move back and forth, spending a few seconds with each. Notice how this slightly eases the fear. The more comfortable you get with this, the deeper you are able to go into the layers, until you get down to the ultimate fear which is: I’m not really here. I am not real. At this point you may be surprised to find you’re not scared at all. You actually feel good because this is the true reality, that you are light, and that’s a huge relief.

Saturn is the planet of fear and separation; Saturn figures strongly at this Full Moon. Saturn in Sagittarius is square Chiron in Pisces- symbolic of old emotional patterns of fear/control, separation from source, light and love, that we’re ready to release. If we want to heal the divisions in our Spirit, the wounds to our optimism and faith, we can work with our fears-not by trying to control (Saturn) what we’re afraid of, but by becoming willing to meet it.

Life is a study in meeting all our experiences and disappointments without bias, and for this, the Gemini Full Moon is marvelously equipped. Fact and fiction. Disappointment and victory. Dark and light. Loss and gain. Fear and love. We can hold it all. Until telling one thing from the other is beside the point. Until it’s all pure light.

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Waking up the morning after the election was traumatic for many. It was for us. My husband turned over and said, “the last time I felt this way it was 9/11.” A component of trauma is shock and surprise, along with feelings of powerlessness.

The shock was perhaps made more surprising because it was occurring on home soil, in a place we thought we knew, in this land we’ve lived our whole life and so maybe have taken its familiarity for granted. We woke up to a new world, that day. Clearly, we’d been asleep in more ways than one.

Waking up in America on that particular day reminded me of a visit to Egypt. A strange land with odd customs, faces with expressions I couldn’t interpret, Egypt thrust me into raw, messy, undigested and unfamiliar life. In a taxi screaming down the highway, barely missing entire families crossing the road, Egypt felt chaotic, and terrifying. It was my first experience of culture shock. I remember balling up on the bathroom floor in tears, my nervous system overwhelmed by too many differences that didn’t add up.

Yet in the world of Sagittarius, that’s called growth. If you don’t want to grow, says Sagittarius, don’t ask the big questions, and never leave home. Don’t seek higher knowledge, and don’t expand your mind. Certainly, don’t interact with anyone who sees the world differently from you.

In Egypt, I had to open my mind, look at life, culture, people, from a different point of view. I didn’t argue with the clothes required in this one-hundred degree heat (even though it was crazy). I learned to embrace being on totally foreign territory, externally and inside myself – because disorientation isn’t just a physical, material phenomenon, but a spiritual one. As a traveller and journeyer, we accept disorientation as part of the price of the journey. By being thrust into the unfamiliar, we learn to expand our inner boundaries.

Lately living in America is a study in being on newly unfamiliar terrain. Yet something beautiful is happening. Emboldened or appalled by the changes occurring, people are sharing experiences, ideas and beliefs on levels that we haven’t in many decades. Misogyny, racism, the electoral college, new cabinet appointments are all being questioned and discussed.

Sure, it’s messy, and ugly, at times, but like it or not, political upheaval is opening us up to having discussions about important things. People are being forced to deal with their emotions, anxieties and fears, and to be adults about it. This is what it means to be alive during uncomfortable times; we have uncomfortable feelings. As passivity is looking much more like apathy, the invitation is to engage, in the way that feels right for you, but to allow your self to engage in new ways. I can’t help but think that this is what it looks like to wake up from a slumber. As many others have said, the election results have shown us to the extent we have been living in a bubble.

This New Moon is square dissolving, illusory, uncertain Neptune. We don’t exactly know what’s next.  We’re all a little disoriented. We do know is something has been permanently altered. We may not know what to do, but temporary non-action is actually part of figuring out what to do. Our consciousness needs time to process, assimilate, and that’s okay.

Yet those of us who heed astrology know it provides a reliable GPS, giving us instructive advice for any season in which we find our selves. Astrology can be quite grounding in times like these. Rather than place our peace in precarious external influences, by flowing with the planets, our inner compass clicks into place and we connect with our own guidance.

Sagittarius season always asks us to expand our perspective: read a new book, talk with a wise man or woman, take a journey, venture outside your culture or comfort zone. You might want to befriend your inner traveller or journeyer at this New Moon, as cranky or weary as they are. It’s been a long, harrowing and surprising journey. Chances are, they are, you are, tired, in need of refreshment, inspiration… and perhaps a nice foot rub (Neptune in Pisces)? With Neptune’s involvement, remember that We Are One, that behind all the rhetoric of ego consciousness, we all come from and return to the same place.  We can hold the paradox of taking the world seriously enough to remain awake and aware about what’s happening around and within us, but not so seriously that it undermines our basic goodness and confidence in our self, others, life itself.

And allow Sag to remind you of this very important fact: life is good. Even if you’re barreling down an Egyptian highway (so terrified, your eyes are closed) wrapped in blankets of clothing in one-hundred degree heat. Even then. Because while being disoriented in unfamiliar territory is shocking, as we have these very different experiences, we eventually regard our self, our world, differently. If we can see this time as an exciting adventure, ripe with opportunities for growth, that’s the spirit of Sagittarius.

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The world is a spell, an enchantment, an amazement, an arabesque of such stunning rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state of involvement where we forget that it is a game. – Alan Watts

I’ll be honest, I was hoping the content of this essay would be different, that the spellbreaking I’m writing about, today, would be the broken enchantment of Donald Trump.Poof, in a puff of orange gas, gone, many glad to see him as a distant, strange memory. But, as we’ve learned, his spell has more power than we’d thought.

How does a spell begin? I know this from working magic. You must hold an image of your desire in your mind. Then you use words, incantations, that you repeat over and over again. The more you imagine this image, and the more you repeat the incantations, the more your emotions respond and the stronger the spell becomes. This is the essence of spell-working.

There are personal spells, like the spell of romantic love… and collective ones that make a direct leap from the imagination of one person into many, as propaganda. Hitler was good at this. So is Trump, a Trickster figure who, perhaps by sheer luck, spoke just the right words and images to en-trance a majority of our country into believing that he is the answer to their unrest and dissatisfaction. Match an image with the right words, add emotion, repeat, and you have a spell.

Lynn Bell gave an excellent talk at ISAR on spellbreaking, the inspiration for this essay. We each fall under different enchantments in life, which she suggested we explore by planet. The spell of love is Venus. Perhaps the spell of loyalty belongs to Saturn or Moon, misplaced idealism to Jupiter/Neptune, power to Pluto, etc. Each spell has its own compulsive quality, and it’s subsequent dis-enchantment… falling out of love, falling from power, disillusionment over a job, person or place that formerly enticed us. There are toxic spells. Lynn told the story of a young woman whose mother told her she was unwanted from birth — a very toxic spell.

Via Lynn, Carolyn Myss has said, “I don’t think people realize how easily influenced they are, and the worst aspect of it is that, for the most part, the people who cast spells in our lives hardly qualify for holding that kind of power over us. Give that a serious thought for a moment. Breaking a spell takes a great deal of conscious effort, especially if the source of that spell is a person with whom you have a complex relationship. By complex, I mean that the relationship can be loving, competitive, aggressive, or approval-based — or the person could be deceased.”

So how does a spell break– and when? In magick, to break a negative spell you must understand all the components of it, see the situation clearly, and know that you are not a victim, that you have your own power. You strengthen yourself spiritually and mentally, via meditation and affirmation. You remove yourself from any situation that reinforces the spell (ironically, traveling over a body of water, to another country, is a powerful spellbreaker). And finally, there’s the act of ritual, of taking symbolic action. If this sounds similar to a strategy you’d take in a counselor’s office, psychology and magick have big overlaps.

Through client work, Lynn has linked the progressed balsamic Moon phase, and transits of Saturn, to times in our lives when old patterns can finally end. I’m a counseling astrologer, so I can only look at the US as though it were my client. In the US Sibly chart, transiting Saturn is taking its sobering first house journey, while shadowy Pluto opposes our Cancer Sun. We’re having an identity crisis. Who are we?  If this were the chart of your child, or you, would you abandon them/you for another country, throw negativity into the mix, or try to compassionately understand and heal them/you? I experienced both of these transits over the past six years, and I can say the temptation of my lower nature was strong and compelling. It was hard to love myself through it, to change my perception, to not get pulled under by fear and negativity, but it can be done. We can grow through this. This spellbreaking will take time.

Full Moons are spellbreaking times. Every month we have an opportunity to break hypnotic patterns. We’ve reached the apex of the lunar cycle whereby we gain the fullest illumination, or awareness, of a situation before the Moon starts her process of letting go into the dark hemicycle. At these monthly Moons, we stand in the middle of the fullness of life, yet apart from it, can more objectively see what’s come to pass, and what’s ready to be let go.

There’s a lot to let go of at this Full Moon. Grief, shock, anger and fear, for a start. Yet Taurus Full Moon is a gorgeous affirmation of our personal values, and the beauty of this natural world. The Sun still rises each day, and the Moon, too. On my daily walk with my pup, Magnus, we watch hummingbirds drinking from flowers. No election result changes that. The landscape of our future may be uncertain, but when isn’t it?The real questions are, will this era lower the degree of love we have in our hearts, or raise it? Who will we be? What is the best possible response we can have? It’s time to love stronger, harder. To put our values into action. As we’ve learned, love without power is no match for fear with power.

We can break any negative enchantment with our willingness to see our own true power in this situation. Let’s rise, daily, just as the Sun and Moon do, to our better natures (and imagine that for Donald Trump, too, because we need that from him). And let’s acknowledge we are always weaving spells with our words, images, and emotions, and choose only positive, empowering spells in our lives, knowing that the images and words we give our emotions to, and the frequency we repeat them, verbally and in the privacy of our own mind, will create our reality. And so it is.

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