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January 31, 2023 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Lions on the Loose—Full Moon in Leo— February 5th.

Nature stirs here in the north. The days begin to stretch into greening hillsides smudged with impressions of lilac and fuchsia as heather blooms amidst a stippling of wildflowers.

This week, the feast of Imbolc and the celebration of Brighid accompany the first snowdrops and crocuses, the daffodils that spill sunshine all along bridlepaths and woodland tracks.

The lengthening days remind us that our lives move in cycles that reflect our soul’s circumambulations and regressions.

As winter wanes, our creative spark may have dimmed, we may feel lost in a bleak and shadowed wasteland. Sometimes it’s a slight tremor that cleaves a reservoir of ancient sorrow. News that careens through the efficient, logical pace of our life; hidden things, suddenly seen that snag our gaze. Lions on the loose that hunt us in our dark-night dreaming, or an initiation into loss that dismembers who we thought we were. In our reverence for straight lines and upward arcs of evolution we have forgotten the soft curve of the circle that cradles us through times of darkness and a tentative re-emergence. Thomas Moore offers this: “when we’re shocked into awareness by a tragedy or a failure, this is the time not simply to make resolutions for the future, but to choose to live an awakened life.”

In homes where the old Celtic rituals are still practiced, Imbolc is a festival of inspiration as the first delicate, hardy snow drops break through the cold earth. As nature quickens with the seeds of new life, there will be many who will honour the ancient Celtic goddess Brighid who symbolises the liberation of the land from winter’s icy grip, and the animation of passion and vitality as we reimagine and create our world once more. Brighid’s lunar fire festival of Imbolc coincides with the Sun’s passage through Aquarius, one of the four fixed signs in the zodiac. The solar and lunar symbolism is apparent here in the north, as the earth begins to warm.

On Sunday, February 5^th a numinous Leo moon brandishes her glittering mane across the heavens, a grand finale in the lunar cycle that may accompany a recognition of a heart-longing worthy of tender care. Leo, like the lion, symbolises strength and courage. Leo is associated with the heart—le coeur. That sacred repository of joy that contains the delicious delight, the audacious longing that emboldens us to rise up strong.

This lunation falls at 17° Leo and makes a departing square to Uranus, that may accompany a sudden epiphany that announces the presence of something that ignites our passion, emboldens our heart.

In her resplendent memoir, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” Maya Angelou writes: “I believe that each of us comes from the Creator trailing wisps of glory. We are born to this moment for the purpose of realizing our inherent strengths and striving to become all that we are capable of being. But we are not capable of being our best unless we have the courage to face who we are and to live out our full potential.

Venus, the planet that signifies our values and relationships, is moving through compassionate Pisces now, and she squares Mars in Gemini as the moon comes full circle. The ancients spoke of the scintilla, the vital spark, that vivifies and brings joy to those timeless moments of creativity in the studio, the kitchen, or the garden, or when our hearts are moved by beauty, inspired and replete. Venus and Mars call forth our desires―great and small. A longing for chocolate may nestle in a soul-longing for more joy, more sweetness in our lives. The intimacy of sex may be a place where divinity dwells, a holy place of pleasure. As the moon in Leo receives the light of the sun in Aquarius, (a sign with two dissimilar rulers, Saturn and Uranus) we evoke the limitations and boundaries of Saturn and the unexpected discharge of Uranian energy, as we find the courage to welcome the joy and the sorrow of our desire in the knowledge that our soul-hunger may be a longing for spiritual, not earthly, nourishment. May we emerge from stagnation or fear with brave hearts and feel the quickening.

Imbolc Blessings.

Please get in touch if you would like to find out more about forthcoming webinar events, or to book a private astrology reading: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Shadows on the wall
Noises down the hall
Life doesn’t frighten me at all

Bad dogs barking loud
Big ghosts in a cloud
Life doesn’t frighten me at all

Mean old Mother Goose
Lions on the loose
They don’t frighten me at all.

Maya Angelou.

January 20, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Possibilities—New Moon Aquarius—January 21st.

I felt like some watcher in the skies when a new planet swims into his ken—John Keats.

It wasn’t a new planet that swam into the skies over sodden California this week. A rapturous tweet from the NWS announced, “it’s the Sun!” A sign of hope, after nine deadly “whiplash” storms upended homes and trees, ripped power lines, pitched viscous rivers of mud down hillsides.

This first new moon of the year falls in the very first degree of Aquarius and conceals within her darkness the husk of endings. This may manifest quite literally as an ending of a relationship, a job, moving home, or perhaps in a shift of perception that helps us to embrace those unexpected things that upend our carefully laid plans. Pluto, mythic god of the Underworld, infuses this lunation with a sense of endings, in some cases quite literal. For most of us, endings creep up incrementally, a twist in the evolutionary spiral of time.

The Sabian Symbol for this new moon is An Unexpected Thunderstorm, reminding us of “the need to develop the inner security which will enable us to meet unexpected crises,” according to one interpretation by astrologer Dane Rudhyar. And although the moon’s silvery light is swathed in darkness, she makes a hopeful sextile to optimistic Jupiter and a trine to Mars, as we prepare to begin again.

Water or lack thereof will be prominent themes with the zeitgeist awash with watery symbolism in this year of the Chinese Water Rabbit, infusing it with potential for deep healing, fertile new beginnings. Pluto’s entry into the sign of the Water Bearer in late March, and Saturn’s ingress into watery Pisces on March 7^th are preceded by a brief period of easy flow.

In the ever-changing skies, Mercury and Mars moved direct this week and Uranus offers a glimpse of possibilities as it stations direct on January 22^nd. Mars will begin to move with more steel-tipped precision in March, picking up speed, energising our intentions and our actions.

Pluto’s promissory note, as he sweeps into the fixed air sign of Aquarius on March 23^rd may not be glaringly obvious in mid-January, but a change of signs stirs up what came before—the blunt trauma of toxic patriarchy, the rapacious plunder of the earth, and the wild silence of the death of millions of living things. Pluto dips in and out of Capricorn until November 2024 and then begins a 20-year residence in Aquarius, deepening our understanding of what it is be to human amidst the inexorable spread of human civilization amidst societal collapse and epic climate breakdown. The bloody American and French Revolutions erupted when Pluto moved through Aquarius in the 1700s, and this ingress in March may provide a glimpse of what is yet to come.

Lynne Tripp, author of Living a Committed Life: Finding Freedom and Fulfilment in a Purpose Larger Than Yourself writes, “The greatest threat to creating the future we want is fear, discouragement, and cynicism. It’s easy to be cynical, it’s easy and cheap because it asks nothing of us. Cynicism is like a disease, an infection, and it’s cowardly. What takes courage is to hold a vision and live into it.”

She presents Paul Hawken’s optimistic view that global warming and the breakdown of democracy is happening for us, rather than to us. That within the disastrous endings are the seeds of the transformation of the human condition.

But, we will need more than magical thinking, vision-board manifestation, or the disturbing TikTok’s Lucky Girl syndrome which seductively suggests that we can shape reality and get anything we want, and of course create exactly what we deserve.

These next 20 years will see hierarchical structures of wealth and power fracture. Breakdowns and break-throughs so vast that they may bring a commitment to systemic change that destroys human supremacy and restores the Natural Order to our home planet.

“We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world,” writes Gabor Maté.

Aquarius, like all astrological signs, draws deeply from the minds that created the world millennia ago. For thousands of years, The Water Bearer has been identified with the invigorating waters that bring renewal and hope from Heaven. As we shrug off the cynicism and negativity that disempower us, as we refuse to swim in the negative conversations that pervade the media, a flood of kindness and collaboration may begin to swell.

Aquarius speaks to our instinctual need to bond, to belong. Tonight, we might reflect on the vital nourishment offered by friendship and the precious bonds of belonging that sustain us during difficult times. We may sense something stirring in our soul, a sensitivity to the fault lines of division that thread across the collective, a deep knowing that for as long as this world has existed, we have been inexorably moving to this moment in time. For some of us this might be shifting our focus from thoughts or conversations that keep us stuck in our victim narrative, for others this might be looking for what is working in our lives and shifting the light of our focus on that with appreciation and gratitude.

May our vision for a brave new world flutter with the hopes and dreams of all humankind. May we draw hope, renewal, and spiritual guidance tonight as we gaze up at the heavens, and may we be reminded that we are all connected to each other, and to the stars.

To book your personal astrology session, please connect by email: ingrid@trueheartwork.com

January 5, 2023 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Reflections—Cancer Full Moon—January 6th.

Now let us welcome the New Year, full of things that have never been—Rainier Maria Rilke.

The first Full Moon of the New Year arrives ripe with possibilities. She rests in the snug encasement of Cancer, a sign that evokes treasured rituals, home comforts, the sweetness of belonging to a loving family or caring community. It’s Christmas in Ukraine tonight. Possibilities and certainty darkened by the scream of sirens and the menace of deadly drones that swoop like raptors from the skies.

January is Capricorn’s month. As we pack away sparkling decorations and prepare to cross the threshold into this next year, we may feel the austere pragmatic presence of Saturn, Capricorn’s ruling planet, we may sense the archaic presence of Janus, the two-headed god as we glance backwards and remember the highlights and the lowlights of 2022, and imagine the blank slate of this year yet to be.

What we conceived of at the darkness of the midwinter Solstice on December 21^st may still lie coiled and unformed as we stand at the portal of this brave new year. A sombre Capricorn New Moon on December 23^rd, just a few days after the Solstice, reflected the determination of those lives that have been darkened by suffering. Now we have arrived at the fullness of a lunar cycle, a glimpse of hope, a whiff of defiance, on this day of Christmas, this day of Epiphany.

The sky-story for this new year speaks of liminal spaces, slow transitions, small, brave steps. There are no major planetary aspects in 2023 but a tide of cosmic changes that will scatter star dust over all humankind.

Already the days are growing longer and the primroses on the riverbanks turn their delicate yellow faces to the sun as we begin to resume the routines and rituals that ground us in our ordinary lives. As winter’s frosty grip softens, our earth-born bodies respond to the light, new dreams seed themselves in our imagination. Silently, irrevocably, great cycles of birth, life, death, and regeneration are at work. Mars is still Retrograde in Gemini, stationing direct on January 12^th, and Mercury turned Retrograde in earthy Capricorn on December 29^th, and will be moving direct again on January 18^th inviting us to listen more attentively to what feels authentic, to pause in the quiet shade of the unknown before we enter the fray.

We’re on the cusp of a celestial turning point with two major ingresses: Saturn enters Pisces for a period of three years. Pluto enters Aquarius, marking a major shift in the zeitgeist that will colour our world for the next 20 years. As Pluto moves through Aquarius, we will see the axis of power shift from the west to the east, radical changes in society, politics, religion, a growing awareness of the Frankenstein Monster that is Big Tech and AI, a demise in the great myth of progress amidst environmental collapse. Notice events in March which will be prequels to the zeitgeist of the coming decades.

As Jupiter rushes through fiery Aries in the first months of this year, we may feel a heated rush of courage, the faith in ourselves to start something new. Jupiter moves into Taurus on May 16^th, and our focus may shift to what we value—money, material possessions, or lack of these will be highlighted, especially when Jupiter unites with the North Node in June, emphasised by Venus moving Retrograde in Leo which will mine the gold of our inner resources. This celestial prompt could be the cornerstone for self-care, sound financial management, creative self-expression, and joy.

Cancer draws us back to our coiled origins in the watery warmth of the womb, to what nurtures and nourishes us deeply.

May the light of this Full Moon offer opportunity to ease in gently to the steady routine of life, to reflect on what nourishes and nurtures our souls, and to what brings comfort and healing to our physical lives. This is the year of living bravely, soulfully, imaginatively, abandoning those things that are irretrievably broken and reimagining our place in the world, rooting back into the earth.

Onwards we go into this brave, beautiful new year.

For a private astrology consultation, please get in touch with me:
ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Stories Written in the Stars: Friday, January 6, 2023 from 10:30 AM to 12:00 PM PST: 6.30 GMT. If you would like to join me tomorrow night for an overview of 2023 which begins with a double Retrograde, please get in touch and I will send you a link, or register and pay here: https://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/eventReg?oeidk=a07ejjic613b83e1aa4&oseq=&c=&ch=

December 13, 2022 In Astrology, Relationship, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Solstice December 21st⁠—Capricorn New Moon December 23rd.

This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath―Margaret Atwood.

The days before the shortest day of the year are shaped by the honest starkness of winter. Colours seem brighter, a flurry of buttery-yellow gorse, a russet flash of a fox daintily picking her way across a glistening frosty field, a tangle of burnished bracken, the glossy green boughs of holly, the silouette of a red deer―all reminders that in the darkness of winter, life begins anew.

On December 21^st, a new Sun is conceived in the dark womb of the heavens. It quickens and stirs at Imbolc (Candlemas), to be resurrected in the urgent thrust of Aries accompanied by a melody of green shoots and delicate blossoms at the Vernal Equinox.

Anchored to the restless tail wind of strikes and industrial action sweeping across the UK, the Sun and Moon meet in stoic Capricorn on December 23^rd. This final New Moon of 2022 makes a determined square to Jupiter in energetic Aries, as we steady ourselves, prepare for change. This Saturn-ruled lunation reminds us that like the animals who survive in what is left of their natural habitat, in the dark of the year, we must gather our resources, prepare for lean times, adapt, to grow in ways we never dreamed were possible. New Moons are times of conception, transitional moments, times when the heartbeat of heaven resounds through the blackness of the night skies. New Moons signify endings and brave new beginnings, that may be overlooked in our brightly lit, forward-thrusting lives.

Capricorn is an earth sign, a sign that is associated with the quiet alchemy of winter, with lean times and stoic determination. The essence of Capricorn is structure, so amidst our midwinter rituals, this is a perfect time for putting things in order, preparing for a spiritual or physical metamorphosis.

For some this may be a lonely wintering. A period of poignant, painful anniversaries of the heart. A fallow time of scant resources. For some, the protracted dying of a relationship may rachet up the strength to shrug off a life that now feels too small, too tight. For others, this festive season may be a time of joyful celebration, as we welcome a new baby into the family, or reunite with a much-loved friend.

Mercury swings into reverse on December 29^th (24° Capricorn) a Retrograde cycle that lasts till January 18^th 2023. This is a reminder, as we re-imagine our future lives to focus on what we can “realistically” manage.

A slow-burning Gemini Mars Rx (retrograde) exacerbates residual frustration as our will may be thwarted by those things we simply cannot control. Mars Rx often signifies an internal war. Those unsettling “climates of feeling” that author Anne Morrow Lindbergh describes so beautifully. Amidst the last minute shopping, the wrapping of gifts, take time to rest, hone a sense of humour, be kind. Mars in Gemini has been in a murky square with Neptune in Pisces since October, and will make a final square in March, though Mars moves direct (8° Gemini) on January 12^th, reigniting embers of hope, a latent passion, clarity, as we rise above the mists of confusion.

With both Mercury and Mars moving Retrograde, we may feel burnt-out, fractious, an illness may confine us to bed, redressing an imbalance of energy, depending on what area of our birth chart they are now traversing back and forth.

There’s a deeper message contained here, said so simply by the Buddhist monk, Haemin Sunim: When everything around me is moving so fast, I stop and ask, “is it the world that’s busy, or is it my mind?”

Thank you all for all your love and support during this year now almost gone. Wishing you a restorative and hope-filled Solstice.

Please get in touch if you would like to book an appointment for an astrology session for 2023. ingrid@trueheartwork.com

Welcome in the new calendar year with a deeply nourishing exploration of the astrological weather forecast for 2023, combined with inner reflection, poetry, music and art.

Stories Written in the Stars Friday January 6th, 2023, 10.30 AM PST and 6.30 pm GMT.

Join me, and mythologist Dr Kayleen Asbo, poet Rosemary Wahtola Trommer, and artist Johanna Baruch, for an epiphany of comfort and joy, an exploration of the sky story for 2023, and a celebration of the gifts we each bring to at the turning of the year.

To register, here is the link:

December 6, 2022 In Astrology, Relationships, Self Growth By Ingrid Hoffman

Love and War—Gemini Full Moon—December 8th.

Light and shadow are opposite sides of the same coin. We can illuminate our paths or darken our way.

It is a matter of choice—Maya Angelou.

Mars, the ancient war-god, escorts the Moon across brow of the heavens tonight, a celestial reminder of those choices that take us down dark and lonely paths—or paths that sparkle with possibilities. As we prepare for the holidays, this last lunation of the calendar year, arrives in convivial Gemini, a mutable air sign associated with communication, connections, and with the choice we make every time we say something that may land like an arrow in the heart of another.

This full moon marks the climax of the Mars Retrograde cycle. When Mars meets the Moon, our battle for security and safety is not yet over. We may still be grappling with impossible choices, still embroiled in misunderstandings that erode our trust, still aching from a betrayal that armours the ache in our heart. We may have slipped into the habit of expecting a catastrophe, we may find it safer not to hope or dream. We may be wintering, even though the sun is shining.

As the Sun opposes the Moon and Mars tonight, a restless and confusing T-square with Neptune offers a choice, aided by a sextile with practical Saturn. Raising our glasses to the year almost gone, may we listen deeply to what is said around the dinner table, sensing a heart ache or a longing that may be concealed in an emotionally charged silence, and make our choice. We can’t avoid winter’s darkness, yet the Sun’s passage through hope-filled Sagittarius is a reminder that we may have become too rigid in our opinions, too wrapped up in anticipatory anxiety to dare to trust and hope. Says grief mentor, Julia Samuel, “hope is a feeling, but it’s also a plan.” We are living in anxiety-inducing times. Amidst the rubble of war, families are fractured, lovers separated by choice or by necessity; millions are exiled from their homelands. Mothers, fathers, teachers, store owners, are now simply refugees.

Through Gemini we encounter the power of two and the archetype of the sibling, the power of the pair to shelter one another during the fallow times when we are frozen and disheartened. The choice to make a new plan.

The numinous image of the Twins is mirrored by the Lovers card in Tarot, depicting the awakening of a partnership of equality. Also, the strands of individuality, separation, and loss that are woven into love knots. In the round of the Zodiac, this is the first meeting with the Other, the Twin Soul.

Like so many stories steeped in patriarchy and dominion, that form the bedrock of our civilization, the enduring stories of twins, siblings and soulmates are threaded with the pathos of loss and separation, woven with duality and ambiguity. Beneath the popular astrological descriptions of the breeziness of Gemini, the fun-loving and fickle eternal child, lies a story of loss and longing, a life-long search for something or someone from which we feel separated. A story that’s so often punctuated with long stretches of aloneness. A story that stumbles into the sinkhole misunderstanding. A story that ends with nothing more left to say.

Sibling stories underline Rome’s foundation myth and draw us into the story arcs of fiction and movies like Shakespeare’s Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, SK Tremayne’s chilling story about the death of a twin, The Ice Twins, and the marvellous Harry Potter books. Gemini is also the sibling we love or loathe, the bonds of blood that bind or divide. The Swimmers (Netflix 2022) is a Gemini story that marries the light and the darkness of two young sisters, Sara and Yusra, who escape the trauma of the war in Syria in a leaking boat, hoping to be reunited with their family. Theirs is a story of sexual assault by a trafficker, soulless immigration queues, barren refugee detention centres, and the triumph of being selected to compete in the Rio Olympics of 2016.

Twins in myth and fairy tale, are similar at first glance, then reveal themselves to be fundamentally different. The story of Castor and Pollux, and their beautiful twin sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra is a brutal story of theft and revenge, kidnapping, murder, and loss. Maya Angelou once said, “I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”

This month, Mercury-ruled Gemini appears as the winged messenger, delivering choices which are seldom packaged in black and white, choices that arrive on the restless wind and arc through the air like the ideas that tumble through our minds. It is in the light and the dark of our relationships that we encounter our human complexity and discover the light and the dark within us.

May the winged sandals of Mercury carry us towards those extra-ordinary encounters that bring everything into focus. May the mythic Twins preside over those soulful tugs of choice, careful planning, that herald radical change in the way we live and the way we love.

If you would like to book a personal astrology session for 2023, please get in touch: ingrid@trueheartwork.com