Queen Elizabeth 11 Tag

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

May 11, 2022 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Crimson Moon—Lunar Eclipse—May 16th.

And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bed was more painful than the risk it took to blossom—Anaïs Nin.

In the north, an artist’s palette of green thrusts skywards, a glorious celebration of summer’s full flowering extravagance. As the slow circles of nature accustom us to the changing seasons, the sky is changing too.

On May 15-16^th, depending on where you live, a crimson Full Moon Lunar Eclipse moves silently through the shadow of our Earth. This Lunar Eclipse (Scorpio 25°) has been titled Blood Moon, as dust particles from the Earth spill scarlet pigment over the face of the moon. The Earth’s shadow darkens the Moon two or four times each year during the Eclipse season. As the Moon drifts away from the Earth (about 4 centimetres every year) lunar eclipses will be become rarer, and if humanity survives global warming and climate change, these spectacular moments will be relegated to our collective memory. Eclipses may accompany those fork in the road choices when there’s no turning back to the way we were. We might be sitting in the symbolic darkness of a difficult choice, patiently waiting for news after a job interview that will change the tragectory of our life, or poised to leave a relationship that has become pot-bound, the roots entangled in a painful knot, our armoured hearts showing no mercy.

May’s Scorpio Moon embodies a fated quality as she aligns with Saturn (fate, accountability, responsibility, authority) by square, a reminder that change, becoming conscious, requires stamina and commitment. The effects are felt most strongly on the day if an eclipse drops into your birth chart, or the chart of a nation, sensitising a planet, and very often Eclipse symbolism may be strongly felt within two weeks on either side of the eclipse.This Lunar Eclipse conjoins Saturn and the Midheaven and squares Mars/Jupiter in Queen Elizabeth’s Saturn-ruled birth chart suggesting the mobility issues and an end to her long reign as Monarch. It may be helpful to notice what unfolds in our own lives and in worldly events between now and the New Moon on May 30^th (9° Gemini.)

In ancient astrology, Scorpio was The Serpent that shed its skin, renewed itself. The Serpent was the symbol of healing, associated with ancient snake goddesses and oracles who possessed the gift of prophetic sight. In modern times, the archetype of Scorpio carries with it a primal energy that carries the force of trans-formation as we let go of those things that no longer serve us, amputate those parts of our lives that are beginning to rot.

Recreating a new life from the ashes of the old one is a soul craft that requires patience, skill, and compassion. This may mean searching for the roots of the lotus flower in the dross of circumstance. Jungian analyst, Jean Shinoda Bolen (who has a Scorpio Moon natally) draws us into Scorpio’s terrain when she declares, “nobody gets through life without a degree of suffering or betrayal or illness or loss. The question is, every time that dark quality comes into our lives, what do we do? How do we respond?… What have we learned? How can we grow through this…”

This Scorpio Full Moon Eclipse may deliver concentrated wisdom in that comes concealed in the bruised bewilderment of a relationship ending, a careless action that has caused us great pain. It might be helpful to remember the Zeigarnik effect – which postulates that the human brain remembers those things that are interrupted or incomplete more easily. Those “open tabs” that draw us back again and again to an encounter an event in the past. Our brain, our heart, our soul, our body quite literally ache when things are left incomplete, unbound by the balm of ritual, still-born, buried alive. Technology focuses energy on ourselves. As we engage with our devices, less facial gaze dulls our empathy, our ability to read social cues. In the West, studies show there has been a precipitous decrease in empathy levels in young adults. Modern dating is consumerism, with apps that offer myriad possibilities for tenuous connections that so often lack boundaries, deep respect, or good manners as there is always someone better, more attractive, just one swipe away.

On May 10^th, Mercury, moving through loquacious Gemini, begins his backward dance, moving Retrograde and dipping briefly into Taurus on May 23^rd, returning to Gemini again on June 3^rd. The archetype of The Twins accompanies choice and duality. “Every action and every word carries a consequence, writes intuitive healer,” Caroline Myss. Mercury Retrograde in communicative Gemini presents an opportunity to do some inner house cleaning, evaluate our beliefs, our choices, our boundaries and consider how our words and actions may land in the heart of another.

This Retrograde cycle occurs in the middle of the unpredictable trajectory of the Eclipse season and coincides with Jupiter’s entry into Aries on May 11^th as pandemic protocols and prohibitions ease, sandy beaches and margaritas entice holiday makers away from routine and responsibilities. Jupiter inflates, expands, and amplifies and in Aries this could mean that our challenge may be committing to something, seeing it through.

In the Spring of 2021, The New York Times coined the term, the You Only Live Once Economy, the YOLO Economy, which describes Jupiter’s exuberant race through Aries this year and next. Sex Therapist Esther Perel reminds us, “historically we have asked the question am I happy here? Today we ask the question, could I be happier somewhere else?” We may naively equate Jupiter with “luck” and “good fortune”, forgetting that grandiose Jupiter is fickle and self-serving. As we emerge from more than two years of social atrophy, the sheer volume of opportunities to enjoy ourselves is tantalising. Our appetite for pleasure heightened by a release (in some countries) from the collective fear and powerlessness within the tribal mind, which activated that primitive part of our brain wired for survival, shifting energy from the prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain that registers compassion and empathy. Jupiter in Aries could symbolise a heated rush of self-focus, grandiosity; or courageous, self-willed efforts to seize the day and reinvent our lives.

Please get in touch if you would like a personal astrology consultation or to find out more about forthcoming webinars: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

July 26, 2015 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

One Day I’ll Fly Away

“Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”

True Originals are rare. Original thought and pioneering acts of great daring are attempted by only a few brave souls on this earth. The courage to be different requires a stalwart steadiness that few of us possess.

Pioneering computer scientist and mathematician, Alan Turning’s seminal work shorted the war against the Nazis, saving countless lives. He was prosecuted for homosexual acts in 1952 and chose chemical castration as an alternative to prison. Sixteen days before his 42^nd birthday he died of cyanide poisoning and was posthumously “pardoned” by Queen Elizabeth 11 in 2013.

As a young prodigy at boarding school, Alan was savagely bullied and tormented for his differentness. His rescuer is an older boy, Christopher Morcom, who says these words which carry him through the rest of his short life: “Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.”

Later in life, Alan Turning says, “Do you know why people like violence? It is because it feels good. Humans find violence deeply satisfying. But remove the satisfaction, and the act becomes… hollow.” His differentness and courage is compellingly portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the 2014 movie, The Imitation Game.

The courage to be different is risky. Like shooting stars, burgeoning lives are extinguished as they soar too high to be seen or fully understood. Joan of Arc was nineteen years old when she was burnt alive. Vincent van Gogh was 37. Steve Biko was 30. They dared to be different.

For some Ugly Ducklings, for some Mistaken Zygotes, the courage to be different requires leaving the known and taking the risky and often life-threatening journey to find our swans. We are Outsiders. Sometimes persecuted, scapegoated for our differentness. Sometimes we are lucky enough to find a swan who loves us because we are different.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes, “from the time they are babies they are taken captive, domesticated, told that they’re not right, they’re wrong headed and improper.

They were trained to remain contained. To never really spread their wings, and especially never to find those who are like themselves. That was considered very, very dangerous.”

Bravery is weighted with risk. We may jettison our most cherished relationships, our livelihood or our lives along the way. Despite the anachronisms and soap suds, the TV series Masters of Sex depicts the pioneering research by William Masters and Virginia Johnson into human sexual response and sexual dysfunction in a time of hypocrisy and bigotry. They dared to explore taboos and expose fear and ignorance during the counter revolution of the 1960s. They were the lucky ones. They risked and succeeded with a roll of the dice in times when it was dangerous to be different.

“We talk about being emotionally healthy and often overlook the spiritual emotions.” In Thomas Moore’s latest book, A Religion of One’s Own, he suggests A courageous approach to caring for the soul when most psychologists label a cry from the soul as ADD and silence the exquisite poetry of symptoms with drugs.

“Many people begin a spiritual project – meditation, yoga, a new religion – while they have complicated emotional problems entangled in their spiritual longings… I recommend self-therapy, exploring your fear, desire, sexuality, anger, personal past and relationships. I don’t see therapy as fixing what is broken but rather as tending to you whole psyche.”

Mark Haddon explores mystery and exquisite beauty of differentness in his profoundly moving book, now also an award-winning London play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night Time. Soul lies entwined in the entangled threads of human relationships and most certainly in the supreme sensitivity of the young narrator, Christopher John Francis Boone, who describes himself as “a mathematician with some behavioural difficulties.”

We’re probing the mysterious frozen mountains of Pluto and her five shadowy moons. Perhaps this is a metaphor for a Collective transformation. A brave exploration of calcified structures, fundamentalist rigidity, faded injunctions in dusty tomes that no longer serve humanity and all the other sentient beings that share our blue planet. On a personal level, this could signify a time to bravely venture into the chlothic underworld of our own psyche and meet the Minotaur at the centre of the Labyrinth.

Christopher says, “And when the universe has finished exploding all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall towards the centre of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving towards us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.”

Sometimes it’s the very people who no one imagines anything of who do the things no one can imagine.

Randy Crawford – One Day I’ll Fly Away