Naomi Shihab Nye Tag

November 6, 2022 In Astrology, Relationship By Ingrid Hoffman

Rooted—Taurus Full Moon Lunar Eclipse—November 8th.

To be rooted is not the same thing at all as being tied down. To be rooted is to say, here I am nourished and here will I grow, for I have found a place where every sunrise shows me how to be more than what I was yesterday, and I need not wander to feel the wonder of my blessing—Kevin Hearne.

Her arrival is imminent. A tension building. On November 8^th, a blushing, expectant Full Moon lunar eclipse brings this month to a climax, her subtle silvery light illuminating things as they really are.

This corpulent Taurus moon collides with disruptive Uranus, delivering a jolt of edgy, unpredictable energy that reflects both the pressure for and the resistance to change in the collective, and perhaps in our own lives whether we are ready or not. If this eclipse awakens a planet or axis in our own birth chart, (16° Taurus) stay rooted in the faith that there are miracles wrapped in unexpected news, serendipitous moments, or the brave surrender of letting something or someone, go. This eclipse signifies irrevocable endings as Uranus sweeps through the collective, a harbinger of change.

As our Earth’s shadow obscures the bright face of the Moon tonight, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, and the South Node in Scorpio oppose her, we may be drawn back into darkness of the shadowdy Underworld, where we hear our own thoughts, sense our deepest longing.

Saturn (karma and necessity, structure, and limitation) makes a close square to this lunation, heightening our awareness, our instinctual need to be grounded in routine, well rooted in our relationships, securely connected to our interior life at this time of the earth’s turning.

At Full Moon times, the lunar cycle completes, so we may quite literally be at a time of ending, choosing what we will take in and what we will tune out. This Full Moon in earthy Taurus roots us in those things that matter—bonds of love and friendship, our connection to the natural world, those things we hold dear that bring us comfort and joy amidst shifting circumstance. Taurus is associated with material things, property, money, and sensual pleasures. And although “being grounded” can seem like one of those self-help amorphisms, we can hunker down with an audio book, share a delicious meal with someone we cherish, come to our senses with beautiful music, fragrant candles, or freshly baked bread. Grounding, rooting, being in the power of now, affirms the richness of our ordinary lives.

For some, the effects of this eclipse linger, weeks before and after the eclipse, and this Full Moon Eclipse alignment with disruptive Uranus may send shockwaves across the earth throughout November. The race to the White House in 2024 begins on this Lunar Eclipse as Pluto and Mars Retrograde make their fated returns to their natal positions in the US birth chart of July 4^th 1776. Mars in Gemini, now a battle-scarred and weary warrior, travels Retrograde from October 30^th to January 12^th making a jarring quincunx with Pluto, an aspect which so often accompanies ruthlessness, crisis, struggle, uncertainty and imbalances that can affect our health. Mars also makes an enervating square to Neptune in Pisces (exact October 12^th, November 19^th, and March 14^th, 2023) an alignment associated with scandal, disappointment, loss, illness, and vulnerability.

Jupiter Retrograde travels through the heavens at this final poignant critical 29° Pisces, a degree that accompanies a sense of urgency, overcompensation, suffering, or difficulty.

In Ukraine, the grim conflict drags on as a bloom of inflation congeals with fears of recession. Rising energy prices correlate with Jupiter’s return to Pisces (October 28^th-December 20^th) and its subsequent move into Aries and semi-square Uranus between December 23-24^th may bring further upheaval and shocks politically, economically as the climate crisis worsens.

“Everything you love, you will eventually lose. But in the end, love will return in a different form,” writes Susan Cain in her new book, Bittersweet: how longing and sorrow make us whole. In a world where enforced smiles and white-knuckled positivity clenches against the wild winds of adversity, she reminds us that “light and dark, birth and death—bitter and sweet—are forever paired.” At this in-between time of transition we may feel suspended between life’s crevices and cracks as Jupiter’s lingering longing expands the bitter and the sweet. And as Naomi Shihab Nye reminds us, “before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.”

Now, staying deeply rooted in the relationships, the ordinary pleasures that nourish us; allowing ourselves to feel the deepest thing inside during this turbulent time in our human history, becomes an act of rebellion. Kevin Hearne writes, “and when you are rooted, defending that space ceases to be an obligation or a duty and becomes more of a desire“.

As bare branches reach towards dove grey skies here in the north, and wild geese swim through the clouds in honking arrow heads, take a moment to look up at the moon tonight. Feel her presence, bathe in her light. This Full Moon/Eclipse is, as Maya Angelou once said, “plump with promise,” and inspiration and delight will come with the new Moon in optimistic Sagittarius on November 23^rd, an emissary of new horizons burgeoning in fallen leaves and rain-soaked grasses.

At at this time of Full Moon illumination and natural ending of a cycle, may we feel peace in our heart as we root deeply in what we cherish and linger a while with what brings us joy.

To book an astrology consultation, please email me: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

September 9, 2022 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

High Flight—Full Moon in Pisces—September 10th.

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace… the high trespassed sanctity of space, put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Royal Canadian Airforce Pilot and war poet, John Gillespie Magee. Died in a mid-air collision over England in 1941.

The Queen is dead. She has slipped the bonds of Earth, along with millions of others who died yesterday. Public reaction to the death of the Queen surged quickly. A strange, spontaneous tide. And as a nation mourns, sorrow lands wetly on the hearts of those who never knew her on the eve of a watery Pisces Full Moon. “From the loss of Diana to Brexit, spontaneous outpourings of emotion terrify those in power. How will they respond now?” writes Marina Hyde in The Guardian.

The archetype of Queen is a powerful one. In England, the monarchy serves as a receptacle for collective projections, a fulcrum of purchase and stability amidst a churning sea of change. While politicians carry our collective imperfections and foibles, a Queen sits high above us all, serene, steadfast, unsullied by the messiness of life.

Change has its own cadence. It slides in, suddenly, catching us unprepared, or it seeps in softly, lapping at foundations of our lives, rising in increments until we are fully submerged.

Tonight, an incandescent Pisces Moon carries us across the threshold of emotion, bathing us all in luminous light as we grieve private losses, as we mourn a dead Queen and a dying world. This Full Moon conjoins elusive Neptune, a planet associated with sacrifice and redemption; with contagions that cannot be contained, with hysteria that surges and spills over; with those unfathomable, mysterious things that we can’t measure, touch, or see.

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 too tightly, Virginia Woolf reminds us, “buildings fall; even the earth perishes. What was yesterday a cornfield is to-day a bungalow.”

Grief, Faith, and Belief are strung like precious pieces of coral around the Fishes’ tails. The delicate essence of Pisces—so often infused with a tincture of loss and longing—awakens our yearnings, diffuses our dreams with dappled remembrances, inchoate sorrow. This rhythmic, watery imagery may permeate our world-weary lives with a longing to return to what we have neglected: those simple pleasures that are the arteries of life itself, those bonds of love that nourish and sustain.

Pisces is associated with The Hanged Man in the Tarot, directing us as initiates to suspend our worldly concerns and turn our gaze inwards, shifting our perspective. 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.

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 sharp-edged transitions that precede new beginnings in our own lives.

Mercury turned Retrograde in relational Libra on September 9^th and will be apparently travelling backwards through the heavens until October 2^nd. The Retrograde cycle of Mercury occurs three times every year and moves through the elements of fire, air, earth, and water, in a procession across the zodiac, alerting us the rhythm of inner reflection that is needed for a more conscious experience of living. In Libra, the sign associated with balance and harmony, the focus falls on our relationships, with each other and with all living things. As we widen our circle of compassion, Plato reminds us “be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”

Mercury’s realm is magical trans-formation. He was the god of crossroads and times of transition. This fluid, shape-shifting archetype influences communication, transport, and learning, and this Retrograde offers an opportunity to pause, to catch up, to review our inner lives, our inner truths.

A Retrograde Mercury asks us to be patient and tenacious in the face of delays or obstacles, amidst the ceaseless, clamorous chatter or the polarity of choice that skewers us in indecision. We are collectively in the alchemical stage of solution. Jung describes this process as “the selfish hardness of the heart is dissolved: the heart turns to water. The ascent to the higher stages can then begin.” As we make fluid our rigid routines, dissolve our hardened habits, cleanse the debris of emotional blockages, we draw moisture into our parched lives, as we flow outwards again. As we pray. Emily Dickinson’s brief poem captures the sea-language of Pisces. When a dear friend she loved died, she wrote: “each that we lose takes part of us; a crescent still abides, which like the moon, some turbid night, is summoned by the tides.”

Mercury slips back into Virgo on September 22^nd, the day the Sun moves into Libra on that important cross quarter day of the Equinox. As they cross the threshold, the Sun and Mercury join Venus and the Moon in Virgo, honing our ability to attend to the details, to pare away those things that are superfluous, to act with humility and discernment. In myth, Mercury was the only god who travelled back and forth from the Underworld.

“Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth,” writes Naomi Shihab Nye. As the tethered fish of Pisces draw us deeper, may they guide our prayers and direct our dreams, heighten our empathy for those who are struggling with depression or loneliness; for those who feel that they have lost their way and yet are in quiet motion. We are collectively moving through a time of initiation that may transform us at our core. Our healing may come from losing things, feeling our future dissolve in a moment, stirring us into a more conscious awareness of the power of Love that blooms in our hearts.

To book a private astrology session, or to find out more about future webinars, please connect with me by email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com