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February 19, 2020 In Astrology By Ingrid Hoffman

Stormy Weather—Sun in Pisces—February 19th—March 20th

Strong winds and lashing rains wake ancient rivers from their beds, drowning spring’s delicate cameo of white blossoms as they bravely emerge from winter’s lean pragmatism.

This week the Sun joins Neptune and Mercury Retrograde in the salty seas of Pisces. We dive full fathom five beneath the choppy waters of our lives.

Neptune was god of the ocean, and as our seas choke with plastics, storms sweep over the British Isles, washing away homes and businesses, submerging hopes and dreams in a sodden landscape.

Neptune turns a ghostly face to our human need to hold onto what we love. Boundaries dissolve, treasured possessions disappear. We learn that everything is transient. And when we hold on to too tightly, Virginia Woolf reminds us, “buildings fall; even the earth perishes. What was yesterday a cornfield is to-day a bungalow.”

As the Sun moves into Neptune-ruled Pisces this week, the future of Yosemite glittering Fire Fall is uncertain after drought, beetle infestation and wildfires. “Up until three years ago, it was fairly reliable that you’d have snow in February, spring conditions in June-July, and August would be dry,” says UK photographer, Paul Reiffer. “… the seasons have become “completely random” he says in a Guardian article.

Neptune is also associated with pandemics, plagues and contagion through dissolution of boundaries. As swarms of locusts blacken Kenyan skies, Mercury, the messenger, spreads the coronavirus “infodemic” as customers avoid Chinese shops and restaurants; Chinese children are taunted in schools and playgrounds.

Neptune was last in Pisces from 1848 through 1862. In 1854, Dr John Snow traced the cause of a cholera outbreak in London to a street pump in Soho, debunking the “fake news” that cholera was an airborne disease. Author, Karen Armstrong reminds us that the very Piscean quality of compassion is hardwired into our brains yet is constantly pushed back by our more primitive instincts for selfishness and survival. As the seasons transition, we may sense the discomfort of those confined to their homes as the coronavirus claims more lives and affects the supply chain from China to the West.

The Sun and the Moon consummate their union with the new Pisces Moon (4° Pisces) February 23^rd.

The Pisces/Neptune theme continues for the month of March as doctors and nurses on the front-lines face more challenges, more far-reaching economic effects. Mercury, (how we listen, how we communicate) turned Retrograde on February 16^th and will be immersed in the watery realm of Pisces until March 4^th, when he returns to the airy sign of Aquarius. Mercury moves direct again on March 10^th. Mercury Retrograde times are opportunities to pause, to go within, and to re-do or reverse an activity or a state of mind. We may see a shift in the progression of the coronavirus as Mercury changes direction and moves back into the element of air on March 10^th. There may be more tension and more cases of voluntary or enforced isolation as Mars moved into Capricorn on February 17^th and will conjoin Jupiter and Pluto from March 19^th.

Mercury, Neptune and the Moon will be in Pisces on March 22^nd, the day that Saturn dips into Aquarius, reflecting the swirling currents of change and uncertainty.

On March 9^th, a demure Virgo Moon (19° Virgo) casts a pale primrose trail over worldly events, reminding us to stay anchored amidst stormy weather; to seek comfort in our daily routines; to be discerning as fact and fiction become entangled amongst the slippery flotsam and jetsam that floats through cyberspace.

As Neptune trawls through Pisces, Lost Boys and Lost Girls skip the light fandango, turn cartwheels ‘cross a sea floor scattered with the bones of those who lingered and languished in the deeps.

Undines and mythical Mélusines lure us beneath the waves where we can escape from the harshness of our lives by binge-watching Netflix series as the storm clouds hang like bunches of black grapes overhead. Neptune was in Pisces during the Pre-Raphaelite movement and as images of sublime otherworldly beauty captivated the imagination of the elite, the squalor and stench of Les Misérables was portrayed by Victor Hugo.

Planets that wear iridescent Piscean clothing offer strange tinctures of genius and madness. In the watery-logged realm of this archetype is a marshy Never Never Land surrounded by an ocean of dreams.

Neptune’s spell draws us towards the sweetness of oblivion, the lure of addiction, the ultimate exit of suicide.

The corrosive effects of hate-speak and online trolling seep through the porous boundaries of social media while Neptune moves through amorphous Pisces. (2011-2025)

Television personality Caroline Flack took her own life on Saturday—Caroline’s words are diffused with Piscean compassion. “Be nice to people. You never know what’s going on. Ever.”

As Neptune expresses itself through the dreams and visions of the collective, fashion and movies reflect Neptunian themes, veganism and animal rights become part of an awakening awareness that has been stirring in the zeitgeist. As Neptune moves through Pisces genders have blurred, more men are using colour cosmetics and skin-care products, hair colours sparkle in shades of iridescent blue and silver-grey. Yet artifice comes at a price as the new TV series Beauty Laid Bare reveals.

Neptune is associated with glamour, with photography and the silver screen. With the seductive siren song of fame that casts its spell on hapless mortals, who become “stars” and shine their light brightly for a brief incandescent moment. In his impassioned acceptance speech at the Golden Globes Joachim Phoenix (Sun, Venus, Mars in Scorpio; Jupiter Retrograde in Pisces) conveyed Piscean altruism to the affluent and well-dressed audience, reminding us all that no one species has the right to dominate or control or use or exploit one another with impunity.

Astrology is a language of metaphor and symbolism that mirrors what emerges in the collective and in our personal lives. We are at a time of collective ending, already glimpsed in extreme weather, the miasma of political machinations, and the endings that precede new beginnings in our own lives. As we widen our circle of compassion, Plato reminds us “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”

Get in touch if you’d like to know more about your own birth chart: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

August 9, 2012 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Bad Moon Rising

I am often touched, more often confounded, by the alacrity with which we share the most intimate details of our lives on social networking sites. We proudly show and tell – our holiday pictures, our new kitten, what we ate last night. Share our plans for the weekend. We fervently express our frustrations, share our delights, our heartbreaks, in the safety of cyberspace. We are relational creatures. And social networking sites give us a safe illusion of community, of friendship, even love, without the messy bits we inevitably encounter in the flesh. We are attracted by bright shiny things – what’s trending, what’s new. And just like in our often messy “real lives”, how often do we pause to question, think, pay attention, before we accept someone else’s version of “the truth”. As we chatter unceasingly, like birds on a wire, how often do we question the hive mind? Ask ourselves, “is this really true?”

The Buddhist term, Monkey Mind, means “unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable”. It is our insatiable curiosity, our restless minds that both sanctify and bedamn our humanness.

In my quest for what lies beneath, my Monkey Mind seized “The Filter Bubble”, which offers Eli Pariser’s appraisal of a silent revolution which will have far-reaching implications for each one of us… until we choose differently. With no fanfare, as Saturn squared Pluto on December 4^th, 2009, Google began personalising its search results to each user. Like jellyfish, we floated benignly into the Bubble. Few people paused to absorb the implications and far-reaching repercussions of a world that will be shaped to fit like a suit of armour. A world where we may think we have choice, but where we go through the motions of our lives, reacting to stimuli like Pavlov’s unfortunate dog. The “personalised search for everyone” now flourishes in a world where so many of us feel unimportant, invisible, unloved, and where now there is someone out there who suggests what we would like to buy, where we would like to eat, tells us what we should be doing next. Google now tracks every move you make, from where you were logging into yesterday to what browser you were using, to make guesses as to what sites you’d like…even if you are logged out. For now, Google says it will keep our personal data to itself, in the feeding frenzy for highly profitable personal data, other companies are gobbling up our credit ratings, the medication we use, the music, movies, sport and holidays we enjoy.

Our monkey minds have created a deluge of information, so the allure of The Ark is a safe bet in a rising ocean of crashing stimuli. By 2014 we’ll need new units of measurement, new power plants to cope with the deluge of blog posts, tweets, Facebook status updates, and emails that ricochet into cyberspace every single day. Two years ago, Google chairman, Eric Schmidt claimed that in 2003 we were creating as much data every two days as had been recorded between the dawn of civilisation. That torrent of data is accelerating faster now.

Most of us naively assume that when we Google something we all see the same results, but since December 2009, this is no longer true in the “Filter Bubble”. Algorithmic observers watch our every click. Search engines are biased through our narrow lens of perception, so we see through the one way mirror darkly our own preferences and prejudices reflected back to us. As our attention deficit focus flickers through the swirling sea of information – we sink comfortably into a custom-made world that is inhabited by our favourite people, palatable ideas. We sit back as all the potentially disturbing bits fade away, we we all live happily ever after in Pleasantville. Even our choice of language is confined to the banal, and subjective, “like”. So we “like” a friend’s post to bump up visibility. And with the same limited choice of word, would we “like” the atrocities in Syria?

Says Eli Pariser,…“my sense of unease crystallised when I noticed that my conservative friends had disappeared from my Facebook page. Politically, I lean to the left, but I like to hear what conservatives are thinking, and I’ve gone out of my way to befriend a few and add them as Facebook connections. Their links never turned up in my Top News feed…Facebook is doing the calculations and noting our links, deciding what to show us and what to hide… Proof of climate change might bring up different results for an environmental activist and an oil company exec.” No more chance encounters, no more jarring collisions of ideas or cultures.

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, claims that Facebook may be the biggest source of “news” in the world. With ominous bravado, he announces, “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa,” And some sources say 36 percent of Americans under the age of 30, garner their “news” from social networking sites. Are we regressing into a “global village” where we stay behind our fibre optic screens, wary of strangers? Where we interact only with those who share our world view, bolster our biased beliefs. Like little children we go out to play, while the Cyclops stare of our new iPhone watches where we go, knows who we call, what movies we like, what we read… Are we doing a lot of talking, with scant connection beyond the narrow niche of self-interest? We can, to a certain degree, choose to buy a certain newspaper, or watch a certain news channel, knowing that the editorial team’s bias suits our perception. We can choose not to have a Facebook account or an iPhone. But for me, that would be like denying the invention of the wheel. Byron Katie says, “placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience. Taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them.”

Perhaps our liberation lies in the mercurial brilliance of our Monkey Minds to investigate our own filter bubbles where we live with our own stories. To pause, consider, before we become anesthetised by the lack of oxygen in our own biased beliefs. To be discerning, aware, of what words and images we imbibe. Says Byron Katie, “An uncomfortable feeling is not an enemy. It’s a gift that says, get honest; inquire.” We will not see the bad moon rising, unless we choose to.

Photography by Tacit Requiem – Full Moon Rising

Creedence Clearwater Revival Bad Moon Rising