Easter Tag

April 12, 2022 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Fierce Grace—Full Libra Moon—April 16th.

In quietness are all things answered—A Course in Miracles.

As the pulse of spring quickens and the hedgerows blaze with white blossom, a soft circle Full Moon spills a blessing on the Earth this holy week. This is the season of emergence. Bluebells, wild garlic, primroses and slender stalked daffodils raise their faces to the light as nesting birds sing the sacred rituals of Pesach and Easter into being. We may feel porous, thin-skinned, as an invisible virus continues to circulate, while cities are reduced to ashes, lives broken. And we watch.

The tide is high this week, as expansive Jupiter and ethereal Neptune unite in Pisces sweeping through the Collective, breaching borders, bathing our dream time with images of refugees. Other-worldly Neptune is associated with illusive intangible abstractions like grace and faith. Yet we can be blind-sided by seductive Neptune’s promise of redemption, naively lured into believing what we want to believe as we swim through the muddy waters of media where the refrain of misinformation and propaganda merge as this chilling quote often attributed to Joseph Goebbles reminds us: “repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth”. Saturn’s ingress into Pisces in 2023 may bring a sobering glimpse of the extent of our magical thinking, the real price of our illusions.

The luminous alignment of Jupiter/ Neptune infuses the Collective all through 2022, and the once-in-a-lifetime confluence when both planets meet at 24 ° Pisces is on April 12^th, embracing the whole Zodiac for a brief moment in time.

Seductive Neptune stirs our emotions, sprinkles our imagination with star dust. Neptune blindsides us with glamour and magic, tantalises us with Utopian dreams. Jupiter, the astrological ruler of profligate Sagittarius and diffuse Pisces, is an archetype so often imbued with a tincture of loss and longing. Despite our prayers, despite our positive affirmations, the veils of illusion are washed away in unspeakable grief, we’re sucked into the belly of the whale.

Jupiter is the roll of the fickle dice, the ever-spinning Wheel of Fortune. In myth, Jupiter didn’t stay around long, he was always off, chasing the next conquest, taking what he wanted, when he wanted to, just because he could. The shadow that stretches behind Jupiter’s cheery positivity is self-absorbed grandiosity, a cavalier entitlement, which may be highlighted this year as themes of Dionysian excess, sacrifice and suffering play out on the world stage and perhaps in the events of our own lives.

Watery Neptune, god of the oceans riding in tandem with fickle Jupiter in shape-shifting Pisces may bring more hysteria, illusion, delusion, or an outpouring of compassion in the wake of another extreme weather event, or re-emergence of contagion that washes away our hubris. What is being asked of us now as individuals may seem shrouded in events and circumstances we can’t comprehend as we journey across a foggy sea to a destination we can’t yet see. As Neptune swims with Jupiter this year, we can drown, or we can surrender and float on the currents of this collective sea-change.

Themes of power-over, powerlessness, secrecy, and control, will surface as Pluto begins its five-month Retrograde cycle on April 29^th . The tide turns in economies as cunning Plutocrats scramble for higher ground and our personal and Collective Shadow stretches across stormy seas.

This month’s Libran Full Moon reflects the fierce light of an Aries Sun, forming an uncompromising and challenging square to Pluto (intense confrontations, destructive behaviours, toxic relating) symbolising the intensity of our times, the torture, rape and mass murder in Ukraine. On a personal level, this Full Moon may expose our deeply buried feelings, or shadowy behaviour like domestic violence, othering, jealousy, toxic power struggles in our relationships. The trine to Mars and Saturn offers opportunities for accountability, radical self-love, and a deep healing of our internal reality. As we hold the tension of opposites with Aries (self) and Libra (other) this Full Moon will reflect the state of our relationships, the bonds of love and loyalty that hold us tight, or the untethered ambiguity of those casual encounters that so easily tilt and topple. Full Moons are faithful companions in the circle of the month, harbingers of light as we return more fully to what really matters―the beauty in the ordinary things, Grace that glimmers through the darkness as we breathe out and let it be.

In the metaphorical language of astrology, the Libran part of our own birth chart will be illuminated at this Full Moon time as we practice the challenging art of relating to others in an uncertain world. Aries is the beginning, Pisces the end. Libra is midway, a crossroads where the old converges with the new, where the winds of change blow across our lives, exposing the roots, bringing us closer to ourselves, and to others in safe relationships where oxytocin and vasopressin activate parts of the brain associated with calm.

“I know that hope is the hardest love to carry,” writes Jane Hirshfield in her exquisite poem, Hope and Love. The essence of Libra brings harmony to polarities, offers a possibility to let go of the melodrama, to transcend the personal, and touch the heart of another with hope.

At this Full Moon, we offer the warmth and containment of a blessing to the world and those around us. As we bow our heads to our hearts, may we feel lighter, may we notice the grace and beauty in ordinary things. For those who will be celebrating Pesach, Easter or Ēostre, this from poet and mystic, John O’ Donohue: May all that is unforgiven in you be released. May your fears yield their deepest tranquillities. May all that is unlived in you blossom into a future graced with love.

For private astrology sessions or to find out more about forthcoming webinars, please connect by email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

April 4, 2012 In Astrology, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Angel of the Morning

As the slanting autumn sun burnishes the leaves and bleaches the tall grasses on the mountainside, I contemplate the intricate knot-work in the tapestry of tradition that human beings have woven across generations and clamorous centuries. The stores here are crammed with raisiny hot cross buns and ubiquitous Lindt gold bunnies. Shelves festooned with Hello Kittys, trucks and trains, rabbits and hens, all bearing bright foil-wrapped chocolate eggs. As Christians eat their sugary eggs, Jews celebrate the Passover Seder with matzah and other traditional paschal offerings. Resurrection or freedom from slavery may have a religious significance for many, and yet the potency of these holy-days is embellished by the deeper resonance of what lies beneath these relatively recent overlays of something more primal, more irrevocably solid.

At this turning time in the cycle of the seasons, the Moon is in her full luminescence in the sign of Libra, as she dances across the skies in full view of her fiery consort, the Sun in the sign of Aries on April 6th. Few of us glimpse the glittering brilliance of the stars or the silvery orb of the Moon from beneath the saffron cloud of our polluted cities. Yet this change in season, marked by the vernal equinox on March 21st, is a portal time in the cycle of the year, more powerful than hollow abeyances to the god of commerce. The cosmologies of our ancestors marked the coming of the spring as a time of fertility and re-birth, as the tender buds of spring unfurled and winter released it’s cruelly tenacious grasp on the frozen land. Before modern observances, Eostur-monath was a month of feasting in honour of the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn. Like the dawn, this was a sacred time of birth – the welcome coming of the new sun. Perhaps the first hopeful blushing of the the morning sky heralded a sense of possibilites, the comfort of continuium, after the inky blackness of unsullied night skies. To the ancient Egyptians, the goddess Nut watched over sleeping souls until the dawn. The russet-stained sky signified her birthing of the sun. Ishtar, was the Lady of the Dawn to the Sumerians, and the ancient Greeks counted their days by mornings, so Eos was the rosy-cheeked goddess of day break. Aurora birthed the new day in the Roman world-view.

To secure a cornerstone in a life that feels more honest, more authentic, perhaps we might consider that beneath the veneer of our traditions, those things we do, eat, drink and say, at certain times of the year, there may be a fecund well-spring of something more quenching. Our souls require nourishment. Without nutrients we may feel a debilitating numbness, a slippery tendril of despair, that enfolds us in the stifeling grip of melancholia or the dry rattle of meaninglessness. In this lifetime, we may never walk the Camino, visit Mecca, Machu Picchu, Lourdes or Avebury, never set our footprints on a sacred pilgrimage to a holy place. We may never sit in a church or a temple to feel a connection to the Divine. Perhaps we may invite that sense of the sacred into these markers of our days – the dawn, the sunset.

In our hive-like cities, our manicured parks, in the shrinking wild places on this planet, we may come across an ancient rock, a leaf-spangled tree, a small patch of grass that feels holy, timeless. In our offices, in our homes, it may be a cloud passing our window, the sound of birdsong above the throb of the traffic, that transports us in an instant, to a sacred place of holiness. A friend of mine who works in a noisy open plan office plugs herself into Celtic Women, and is transported into a deeply nourishing place that resonates and restores. Another infuses her soul in a weekly drumming circle, another has a special stream on the mountainside that energises her spirit, and yet another lights a candle and places it beside her bath in a soothing ritual that allows her a hiatus in the doingness of her life.

Being present in those soulful places, or with those people who make our hearts expand, can lift our resonance to a higher vibration. Being mindful of the significance of these holy-days in our tapestry of tradition, can ignite a sense of renewal within the customs and the ceremonies that bind us to the past, gifting us with a sense of continuity. We can choose to invite the refined essence of the soulful into our everyday lives, to consciously seek out experiences that make our hearts expand, our spirits soar above the banal. So this holy day weekend, perhaps we might set the intention to do less, rather than more. Accept, flow into, breathe into the unexpected gift of a traffic jam, or a long queue in the supermarket. We can choose to take a moment of silence at dawn, or to witness the soft silent sinking of a marmalade sun. We can set aside soulful times to reflect, to soften, to smile, to be in the moment, grateful for the Angel of the Morning who comes to bless our new day with wonder.

Here is A Morning Offering by John O’ Donohue to place on the altar of your holy days:
I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

~ I was inspired by the magical art of self-taught artist, Amanda Clark.

Here to remind you, is Olivia Newton John’s version of Angel of the Morning.