Hildegard of Bingen Tag

November 22, 2018 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Merry and Bright―Sun in Sagittarius–November 22nd to December 21st.

sag 2 The Sun in exuberant Sagittarius this month escorts Merry into the days preceding the winter solstice, and the weeks before Christmas deliver an avalanche of excess and indulgence.

Our solar consciousness has been richly fed in the deep dark waters of self-scrutiny in Scorpio, and now, without a backward glance, we embrace the warming element of fire as winter closes in.

The Sun’s entrance into Sagittarius is closely followed by a Full Moon on November 23^rd in Gemini (00 degrees) culminating in another lunar cycle. Symbolically, she shines her light on those things that have completed a cycle in our own lives since the New Moon on November 8^th. This month’s Full Moon has a jumpy, nervous disposition, impassioned by her applying square to Mars in sensitive Pisces, so we could feel exquisitely attuned to subtle changes in psychic energy, or quick to regress into the Toddler brain. We could embrace the more positive symbolism of this lunation and respond to those intuitive “beams of light” that guide us through the darkness. The Moon opposes Jupiter and Mercury, ruler of Gemini. Mercury is moving Retrograde through Sagittarius (17th November—December 6th.) Mercury Retrograde invites introspection: a still-point of silence amidst the brouhaha. As friends and families gather together, we may feel unspeakably alone amidst the tinsel and the gaudy lights. Perhaps now is the time to acknowledge those uncomfortable emotions that pop like Christmas crackers at family gatherings and year end office parties. This is the culmination of the calendar year. This is the time of endings that carry a tincture of sadness or relief. As Mercury Retrogrades through Sagittarius, we may have to revisit, or re-do an issue or relationship dynamic associated with justice.

Sun in Sag Always 1 The year may be coming to a close now, but we may still be in the midst of a long winter cycle of intensely private grieving. If this is the first, or one of many festive seasons that swirls around the carousel of loss, we may be reminded of the soft presence of the one we have loved. Our heart may ache as the old year ends with such finality. Nostalgia may curl cold fingers around this season of exuberance and joy. The lyrics of a song played in a department store may draw us back to a different time and another place, to a small unmarked grave where a piece of our heart lies buried. We may be gestating a new greening. Or we may heroically be at the zenith of our own personal summer where we resolve to bring our Best Self to the silent spaces in relationships that speak eloquently of pain and disappointment, loss, and longing.

In the cyclical nature of our own lives, let’s take time to pause in these weeks before the holidays. Let’s tenderly anoint the scars of loss, finally relinquish any hope or expectation that things will be different. 30314d02d3166e2d941849d89fef7ebd

Mercury Retrograde is a time to acknowledge that if we were ready to make those changes in our life, taken that different road, we would have. We made the choices we made, we did the best we could at the time.

Jupiter is the astrological ruler of Sagittarius and also of Pisces, an archetype so often imbued with a tincture of loss and longing. Despite our prayers, despite our positive affirmations, we don’t get the things we wish for. Jupiter is the roll of the dice, Lady Luck, the Wheel of Fortune, and the jovial Father Christmas who brings us a casserole dish when we wanted perfume.

4d91ba09816b970e507ad87f0aa4f1f2 So, let’s go gently as the weeks gather momentum for the crescendo of the solstice on December 21^st. Amidst the Christmas carols that loop repetitively from sound systems in shopping malls and supermarkets, the frenetic hurrying to buy what we think our loved ones want. The strenuous exertion, the anticipation, the planning, the doing. Let’s be tender and kind to our weary bodies. In the flurry to buy food, gifts, stocking fillers, ask yourself today what is it I truly need now? Amidst the bright babble of the office party, the fairy lights of the crowded malls, amidst the heated rush of hurry, re-claim a few moments of sumptuous silence in the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath.

Now is the time to trust our intuition. What do I truly need now?

The answer may come as one of those delicious surprises we find behind the tiny windows of the advent calendar. Our needs may be quite simple really. More sleep. This might mean loving ourselves enough to get into bed earlier. A sudden craving for rice pudding and custard that brings comfort reminiscent of a childhood when it snowed, and all the word was white? This might mean buying pearl rice and switching on the oven to pre-heat. The strength to let go, to forgive the one who has hurt us so deeply. The willingness to forgive ourselves for hurting them too. This will certainly require humility and Grace. 0f95029b6f84481eed503e3977c92350

What we need may be priceless. The simplicity of being in the presence of those we love with all our human hearts. A pause in the busyness. Time to think. The strength to say no. In a voice that speaks as authentically now as it did in the 12^th Century, the mystic Hildegard of Bingen invites us to “glance at the sun. See the moon and the stars. Gaze at the beauty of earth’s greenings…”

Sagittarius is associated with the Quest for Vision, the Journey not the Destination, the Search for Meaning. We may never find any of the answers in this human life time, but we are ready to stretch and grow into all possibilities. The essence of Sagittarius contains an ember of optimism and good cheer. Sagittarius is associated with long distance travel where we may encounter tastes and smells and rich new experiences, where we meet people who challenge our conditioning, free our minds, break away from boring routine. In Sagittarius we look up. And we’re amazed.

As the gyre of this year comes full circle, cultivate gratitude and optimism. See the delight in a little child’s eyes. Embrace comfort and joy. To take someone’s hand and begin a new journey. c7fcac1ef7fef4575de8b5cf1f0dfbd2

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February 20, 2018 In Astrology, Relationships By Ingrid Hoffman

Sun in Pisces—Rolling in the Deep—Mystic, Mélusine, Misfit

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it—J.M Barrie, Peter Pan

Bruised clouds hang in bunches over the parched land, delivering thunder and lightning and a meagre measure of rain. Yet as river beds turn to dust in the wind, jasmine bursts, a froth of fragrant creamy white, from tight-coiled cerise buds. Eight months before spring.

Faith and Hope hold us airborne. There’s a life-force that spirals from struggle. Writer and civil rights activist, James Bladwin, says of Shakespeare’s life in Elizabethan England, “It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it—no time can be easy if one is living through it.”

Throughout human history, times of drought, plague, famine, flood, and myriad human atrocities have crushed civilizations. Yet from the shards of broken lives rise mystical visions and Marian apparitions. New perceptions perfume the air. From the confines of her monastery in the politically hazardous 11^th Century, Christian Mystic, Hildegard of Bingen wrote, “I am the fiery life of the essence of God; I am the flame above the beauty in the fields; I shine in the waters; I burn in the sun, the moon, and the stars. And with the airy wind, I quicken all things vitally by an unseen, all-sustaining life. ” And as the Black Death scythed 50 million souls or more, in the 14th century, came this reassurance from Julian of Norwich: “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.” As we spiral through our ordinary life’s seasons amidst a maelstrom of political and climate change, magical thinking, practiced by shamans and visionaries for centuries, offers sustenance in our own difficult times.

There’s a sublime sensitivity, an innocent faith in the celestial sky-story this month. The Sun moved into the sign of Pisces on February 19^th, joining Mercury, Venus, Neptune, and Chiron in the unbounded depths of the sky. The Sun and the Moon consummate their union with the new Pisces Moon on March 17^th. 23494e332063871e31b4fcc990a16b4f

The Sun’s passage through Pisces awakens our yearnings, diffuses our dreams with dappled remembrances. It stirs our faith in the ineffable, the non-ordinary realms, bringing magic and wonderment to lives so often infused with a tincture of loss and longing. Pisces is associated with The Hanged Man in the Tarot, directing us as initiates to suspend our worldly concerns to turn our gaze inwards, shifting our perspective.

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. Here 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.

Faith and Belief are strung like precious pieces of coral around the Fishes’ tails. Jupiter, the traditional ruler of Pisces, is associated with “luck”. The kind of abundance we evoke by using affirmations as talismans to ward off the spectres of lack and loneliness that haunt us. “Buildings fall; even the earth perishes. What was yesterday a cornfield is to-day a bungalow,” wrote Virginia Woolf. Jupiter’s Wheel of Fortune spins for each one of us, oblivious to status and wealth, to prayers and affirmations or the amount of exercise we do.

Jupiter crossed the border into Scorpio in October 2017 and will turn retrograde on March 9^th at 23 degrees Scorpio. Jupiter in the sign of Scorpio stirs up dark sediment: the outing of sexual predators, the massacre of seventeen students on Valentine’s Day. Mars, the planet of war, and Jupiter, the planet of excess and amplification, are now in mutual reception before Mars changes sign on March 17^th. With Jupiter, be careful what we wish for.

43ff4608b3d5a7ce2c4ff73558b1e8c9 Neptune is the more elusive modern ruler of this amorphous sign. Neptune’s associations are born of the sea, carried in the deep roll of the waves by the Muse that inspires music and art, ecstatic intoxication, and slow wasting diseases that are impossible to define or to cure. Lodged in this archetype is our debt to eons of human history. A soulful yearning for redemption and transcendence. With Neptune comes necessary sacrifice, carried for us all by the gory image of a crucified Christ and a dismembered Dionysus.

Neptune, turns a ghostly face to our human need to hold onto those things we love, to keep things just as they are. We learn that everything is transient. That what we hold on to too tightly, fades into nothingness. Writes mystic and poet, John O’ Donohue, “transience makes a ghost out of each experience. There was never a dawn that did not drop down into noon, never a noon which did not fade into evening, and never an evening that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night…” Still we search, like children on a pebbled beach, for miracles and wonder. We discover “synchronicities” that shape our sense of reality. We hold the flame of faith that things will be better as we welcome new presidents, new Father-Redeemers to lead us to the Promised Land.

So, come with me, where dreams are born, and time is never planned. Just think of happy things, and your heart will fly on wings, forever, in Never Never Land!―J.M Barrie

For workshops and private consultations, please email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

November 18, 2017 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Follow your Bliss: Sun in Sagittarius—November 22nd

Follow your Bliss The weeks before Christmas deliver an avalanche of excess and indulgence. The Sun in exuberant Sagittarius this month escorts Merry into the days preceding the winter solstice.

The essence of Sagittarius contains an ember of optimism and good cheer. Our solar consciousness has been richly feed in the deep dark waters of self-scrutiny in Scorpio, and now, without a backward glance, we embrace the warming element of fire as winter closes in.

Mercury goes Retrograde from December 3^rd-24^rd . This retrograde period begins with Mercury conjunct sombre Saturn, amplified by the Mercury-ruled Gemini Full Moon. Mercury Retrograde invites introspection: a still-point of silence amidst the brouhaha. As friends and families gather together we may feel unspeakably alone amidst the tinsel and the gaudy lights. Perhaps now is the time to acknowledge those uncomfortable emotions that pop like Christmas crackers at family gatherings and year end office parties.

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The year may be coming to a close now, but we may still be in the midst of a long winter cycle of intensely private grieving. If this is the first, or one of many festive seasons that swirls around the carousel of loss, we may be reminded of the soft presence of the one we have loved. Our heart may ache as the old year ends with such finality. Nostalgia may curl cold fingers around this season of exuberance and joy. The lyrics of a song played in a department store may draw us back to a different time and another place, to a small unmarked grave where a piece of our heart lies buried. We may be gestating a new greening. Or we may heroically be at the zenith of our own personal summer where we resolve to bring our Best Self to the silent spaces in relationships that speak eloquently of pain and disappointment, loss, and longing.

Follow your Bliss 11

full-moon-451605_640_1 So let’s go gently as the weeks gather momentum for the crescendo of the solstice on December 21^st. Amidst the Christmas carols that loop repetitively from sound systems in shopping malls and supermarkets, the frenetic hurrying to buy what we think our loved ones want. The strenuous exertion, the anticipation, the planning, the doing. Let’s be tender and kind to our weary bodies. In the flurry to buy food, gifts, stocking fillers, ask yourself today what is it I truly need now? Amidst the bright babble of the office party, the fairy lights of the crowded malls, amidst the heated rush of hurry, re-claim a few moments of sumptuous silence in the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath.

What do I truly need now?

The answer may come as one of those delicious surprises we find behind the tiny windows of the advent calendar. Our needs may be quite simple really. More sleep. This might mean loving ourselves enough to get into bed earlier. A sudden craving for rice pudding and custard that brings comfort reminiscent of a childhood when it snowed and all the word was white? This might mean buying pearl rice and switching on the oven to pre-heat. The strength to let go, to forgive the one who has hurt us so deeply. The willingness to forgive ourselves for hurting them too. This will certainly require humility and Grace.

child-659283__340 Sagittarius is associated with the Quest for Vision, the Journey not the Destination, the Search for Meaning. We may never find any of the answers in this human life time, but we are ready to stretch and grow into all possibilities. Sagittarius is associated with long distance travel where we may encounter tastes and smells and rich new experiences, where we meet people who challenge our conditioning, free our minds, break away from boring routine. In Sagittarius we look up. And we’re amazed.

As the gyre of this year comes full circle, cultivate gratitude and optimism. See the delight in a little child’s eyes. Embrace comfort and joy. Gaze at the beauty of earth’s greenings.

December 6, 2012 In Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

There is a Season

The weeks before Christmas leave me breathless. Perhaps like me, you have a clamorous inbox of shoulds and ought-tos. An avalanche of choices, decisions to be made. Deadlines to complete before the holidays. For many of us, uncomfortable emotions pop like Christmas crackers at family gatherings. We toss, turn and fret over problems that are still-born. How do we soothe the seeping hurt that curls cold fingers around this season of exuberance and joy? If this is the first, or one in many year ends that swirl around the carousel of loss, we may be still mourning the presence of the one we have loved.Our heart may ache inexplicably as the old year ends with such finality. As families gather together we may feel unspeakably alone amidst the tinsel and the gaudy lights. How do we draw up festive ebullience within ourselves when our well is dry? When what we really want to do is close the door, turn out the light, stay home tonight – and tomorrow night?

Ancient traditions and spiritual wisdom are underpinned by the knowledge of the silent circuit of the great wheel of the year. As the seasonal energies realign with the solstice, our body rhythms realign with the seasonal shifts. Western medicine is largely ignorant of what shamans, Chinese and Indian healers have known for centuries. Our minds, our bodies, our psyches have cycles. The calendar year may be coming to an end now, but we may still be in the midst of a long winter cycle of intensely private grieving. The lyrics of a song played on New Year’s Eve may draw us back to a different time and another place, to a small unmarked grave where a piece of our heart is buried. We may be gestating a new greening. Or we may heroically be at the zenith of our own personal summer where we resolve to bring our Best Self to the silent spaces in relationships that speak eloquently of pain and disappointment, loss and longing.

The calendar year is a man-made construct. In the cyclical nature of our own lives, let us take time to pause in these weeks before the holidays. Perhaps to tenderly anoint the scars of painful losses. Perhaps to finally relinquish all our hopes or expectations of things being different. Perhaps to find the Grace to accept those things we cannot change. Endings can be stock taking times. Times to acknowledge that if we were ready to make those changes in our life, taken that different road, we would have. Times of knowing that we did the best we could at the time.

So let’s go gently as the weeks gather momentum for the crescendo of the solstice on December 21^st. Amidst the Christmas carols that loop repetitively from sound systems in shopping malls and supermarkets, the frenetic hurrying to buy what we think our loved ones want, the strenuous exertion, the anticipation in the planning, the doing, as this calendar year draws to a close, let us be kind to our weary bodies. In the flurry to buy food, gifts, stocking fillers, ask yourself today what is it I truly need now? Amidst the bright babble of the office party, the fairy lights of the crowded malls, amidst the heated rush of hurry, re-claim a few moments of sumptuous silence in the gap between the in-breath and the out-breath. What do I truly need now? The answer may come as one of those delicious surprises we find behind the tiny windows of the advent calendar. Our needs may be quite simple really. More sleep. This might mean loving our self enough to get into bed earlier. A sudden craving for rice pudding and custard that brings comfort reminiscent of a childhood when it snowed and all the word was white? This might mean buying pearl rice and switching on the oven to pre-heat. The strength to forgive the one who has hurt us so deeply. The willingness to forgive ourselves for hurting them too. This will certainly require humility and Grace.

Know that our soulfulness ebbs and flows. Know that it has seasons of joy and of sorrow. So as the gyre of this year comes full circle, take time to harvest the abundant treasures of your heart. Tell yourself how well you have done, how far you have travelled, how very brave you have been. Cultivate a garden of gratitude. Pause and smell new fragrances. Stop and really see the moon and the stars. Savour the flavours of this season, and know that this too shall pass.

Art by Julianna Bright.

The Byrds sixties classic – Turn! Turn! Turn!