Astro Report: Gemini Season

Sun into Gemini: May 20th at 1:31pm.
New Moon in Gemini: Thursday, May 25th at 12:44pm.
Mercury is Direct in Taurus.
Saturn – Uranus trine at 26 degrees (Sagittarius and Aries respectively) TODAY.
Venus Direct in Aries.  Mars Direct in Gemini.

Silence of the Night, Reiji Hiramatsu

I’d say the big thing is this trine with Saturn and Uranus today. This is a harmonious connection between two complete opposites:

Saturn is reality, time, responsibility, history, discipline, commitment, stability, and the establishment. It is slow, solid change.

Uranus is revolution, invention, science, rebelliousness, genius, Change, disruption, electricity and awakening. It is sudden change.

So these two are having a friendly conversation today, which is interesting.  If you have a duality in your life, you might find some common ground today. The main thing is that Saturn will INSIST on any changes you make being well thought out and solid. In my view, Saturn is heavier than Uranus and so those energies carry more weight, BUT they will have to find a compromise since Uranus will not be silenced.

A new physical reality comes into view.
A revolution with a solid foundation.
A path to making aspirations into realities.

This is a good day to set some goals 

This trine is also happening in the fire signs of Aries and Sagittarius, which brings guts, confidence, self esteem and passion. Creativity and adventure. Composers, artists, actors, musicians and performers are ignited by this energy today. Let your light shine.

April Rewinds: Astro Report

Lots of retrogrades (and introspection) affecting us this month, giving us the chance to review our growth since the start of the year. We are slowing down, making sure we have solid foundations.

April 5th at 10:06pm (pacific): Saturn Retrograde in Sagittarius.
April 9th at 4:14pm: Mercury Retrograde at 4° Taurus.
April 10th at 11:08pm: Full Moon at 21° Libra.
April 15th at 3:18am: Venus (currently R) goes Direct in Pisces – exalted!
…and Jupiter Retrograde in Libra until June 8th!

And TODAY, Sunday, retrograde Venus in Pisces is squaring retrograde Saturn in Sag at exactly 27°.

Partnerships are being seriously reevaluated this week. Relationships regarding love and business are tested to see if they can withstand the pressures of long term commitment. Saturn doesn’t fool around. Are you willing to do the hard work necessary to keep your pledge to another person? If yes, the relationship has a strong center and will probably be a lasting one. But if they are castles built of sand, they will diminish.

This is an important time to take inventory of what’s working and what’s not working, and to gauge the commitment level of each person. This tension will be accented by the Full Moon in Libra tomorrow, and Venus’s’ stationing at the end of the week.
There are four planets retrograding together this week. That’s pretty amazing! I can’t remember the last time this happened. In general, all of us need to:

1. Re-evaluate things you’re committed to.
2. Re-examine your VALUES and adjust if necessary. What’s most important?
3. Start with getting grounded; take each day as it comes.
4. Don’t expand into future worries – but deal with what’s in front of you right now.
5. Be in the present.

The great RE-VALUE is here.

Love for Oakland

I’m so moved and saddened by the lives taken in Ghost Ship fire Friday night. When I first heard the story, I understood exactly what it was, because myself and many of my friends have attended gatherings like these many times around the Bay Area. They are exuberant, liberating, creative, inspiring and energizing events for the underground artistic community. To me, they are the heartbeat of the Bay Area, and communities everywhere. I’ve personally been inspired musically by attending these events.
But I wasn’t ready to start seeing the faces and hearing the back stories of the people that perished. I feel rocked to my core this morning; helpless and grieving for the young lives lost. To me, the artists, writers, performers and musicians of this world are hugely important and VITAL – especially as the world is becoming more conservative and protectionist. The world desperately needed to hear more from these brilliant kids, who had their whole lives in front of them.
You can read some of their stories here.
What can be said? What can be done other than to grieve? There is something each of us can do for the ones we lost. We can speak up. We can get disciplined and get to work. We can express ourselves. And we can DO OUR ART. I’m picking up my guitar today in honor of them.

Neptunian Direct

Neptune Direct in Pisces today at 8:38pm Pacific

Excellent day to float around your house in a creative dream world, do Magick, draw, paint, write and ESPECIALLY make MUSIC!

Neptune, planet of fantasy, dreams, spirituality, clairvoyance, movies, divine power, spiritual strength, and the occult is standing still over our heads this weekend. It has been moving backward for the last several months and will turn forward, or Direct this evening at 8:38pm. When a planet is standing still or “stationing” overhead, it’s energy is more concentrated than usual, and greatly impacts our personal lives and society at large.

The influence this weekend is powerful because of this stationing – AND the fact that it’s happening IN Pisces – Neptune’s natural home. It’s cold and raining where I am; the two qualities of elemental WATER, which inspire us towards imagination, music and creativity. We want to stay in and watch movies or daydream – both very Neptunian activities. Pay attention to any intuitive insights or flashes of inspiration you receive, because the air is crackling with divine communication. The only thing to watch out for is escapism – don’t overdo drugs or alcohol right now because it will backfire on your efforts. Tap into the deep, spiritual eddies flowing around you, and embrace the current of Love. Write out your dreams because they contain powerful keys of inspiration and self knowledge.

From Mystic Medusa: “Neptune peeps can be hideously alluring, charming and yet deceptive. Haute Neptune is great art, mystics and people such as Jesus Christ. Low Neptune is, well, out of it. Neptune energy infuses your perceptions when you’re drunk or otherwise escaping or enhancing reality.

Some peeps give their whole life over to Neptune, never a particularly good idea.

You need to master Saturn before you can ‘do’ Neptune satisfactorily.  Neptune always makes me think of the kind of beach that has a steep drop all of a sudden and you can go from bopping about in the shallows, shore in sight, to swimming with slippery, deceptive and potentially dangerous sea monsters.

Neptune can break your heart. Via drugs, alcohol, madly escapist tendencies or those strange, addictive romances some people get hooked up in where the feelings evoked are nothing short of religious…but it’s basically hopeless.

Sometimes i get people emailing me who are clearly in the grip of Neptune – not drunk (?) but wanting my idea on when someone they last saw eight years ago but still hold our hope for might return. Or the classic someone-married scenario. I always want to tip an urn of Saturn-chilled ice water over them but nothing works when Neptune has gotten a grip.

You can have Neptune strong in your chart – in which case you need to get some good Saturn habits strong to augment the good qualities of Neptune – or you can have a powerful Neptune transit going on that renders you temporarily Neptunian. When you’re Neptunian, you get easy access to other realms – ghosts, visions, angels, spirit guides….dark matter maybe. You will have a Muse. You will be exquisitely sensitive….like a Medium. Every night your R.E.M. mind is a like a blockbuster epic movie.

So how Neptunian are you?  Do you have the “easy” or “challenging” aspects of Neptune to other planets in your chart. Never mind the sextile to Pluto. We’ve basically all got that one. Think more of what Neptune is doing to Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars and Ascendant.

Or are you having a Neptune transit?  For the next two years, Neptune hangs out in the late degrees of Aqua/early Pisces…So that’s your key Neptune zone. Also, if you’ve got anything in a late Fixed sign (Leo, Taurus, Scorpio) or early (up to three degrees) of a Mutable (Virgo, Saggo, Gemini) consider that Neptune haunted as well.

Also, how many of you got nearly drowned by a Lower Neptunian? Or had Neptune break their heart? I think it happens to lots of peeps when they’re young.”

Reclaiming The Radical Legacy of The Witch

Article by Danielle Prohom Olson:

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about witches. Not just because top ten lists of hot tv witches and sexy Halloween selfies currently swamp my social media feeds, but because my tables and shelves are currently so laden with herbs, plants, berries, phials and bottles that if an inquisitor of old were to enter, I’d find myself quickly tied to the stake. And while this worry seems remote, it’s a plain fact that women in third world countries are still hunted down, tortured and set aflame for the crime of witchcraft.

Sure, the witch is emerging from the world of taboo and shadows onto the world stage. Sure, she’s being touted as a feminist icon  – a “powerful feminine model free from male influence or ownership”. But I’m not so sure. Because how can it be that the witch, once associated with everything transgressive and beyond the realm of normative society, is now so trendy and positively mainstream?  Is it really a feminist step forward that W magazine declared Fall 2016, the season of the witch, replete with pouting models in gothic dresses, chains and black lace underwear?

And while many believe the witch of the middle ages was a spectre created by the church, I believe she was real. Yes, many put to death were just ordinary women who practiced folk magic, herbalism and midwifery, but many were powerful spiritual leaders of the indigenous, animist faith traditions of the old world – and their magic was earned through a lifetime of spiritual discipline spent in communion with nature.

And I worry her make-over into nubile fashion siren not only obscures this history, but her true relevance as a role model to us today. One that if resurrected, would be just as subversive and dangerous to the powers that be. 

Today the witches tall black hat and burbling cauldron have become icons of Halloween kitsch, but they were once hallowed items of the holy women and priestesses, the healers and herbalists, the oracles and diviners of old Europe. Their conical hats and cauldrons date back to the 2nd Millennium BCE and were connected to the female shamans of the Indo-European peoples.

Their cauldrons (as well as crystal balls and magical wands) were still being used thousands of years later by the “witte wieven” or wise women, the sibyls, seers, and female druids of Celtic, Anglo Saxon, and Norse traditions of the middle ages.

According to Max Dashu, author Witches and Pagans: Women in European Folk Religion,  these “dream-readers, sooth-sayers, and herb-chanters, fire-gazers in Switzerland, or water-gazers in France and Spain”, practiced “all the elements of shamanism: chants, prophecy, healing, weather-making powers, and shapeshifting”. Legends tell of their sacred cauldrons in which “they simmered mysterious herbs to produce a drink of immortality and resurrection.”

These women were the guardians of the earth, the protectors of the sacred groves, lakes and springs, from which they derived their magical power. And until the middle ages they were highly respected, sought out and consulted for healing and divination by common folk, nobility and clergy alike.

But according to Barbara G. Walker , it was during the 14th century that the Catholic Church, during its relentless expansion and appropriation of sacred land, began to distinguish between witchcraft, perpetrated by women, and sorcery, a legitimate pursuit of men.

While books on sorcery were condoned well into the enlightenment, female witches in contrast were said to “magically injure crops, domestic animals, and people, and in general “outrage the Divine Majesty”. And thus their religious practices (as described by Dashu) of “sitting-out” on the land “gazing, listening, gathering wisdom” were extinguished by a priesthood that sought to bring nature, magic, women (not to mention their land and property) under male control.

These women did not go easily, or take usurpation of their holy sites and old ways lightly – it took the Church hundreds of years to hunt them down. And so it seems likely, at least to me,  that the stereotype of vengeful witch, casting curses and blighting crop, was real, at least for the church. She must have been the original eco-feminist, fighting the patriarchy with one of most powerful tools at her disposal, magic. And the Church took it pretty seriously indeed.”

Read More here: https://gathervictoria.com/2016/10/23/reclaiming-the-radical-legacy-of-the-witch/

New Moon in Virgo and Mercury Retrograde

New Moon in Virgo: 5:03am.
Solar Eclipse at 9 Virgo: 5:07am.

Mercury Retrograde in Virgo all month.
Sun, Moon, Jupiter and the North Node in Virgo. That’s a LOT of action in the skies right now where Virgo falls in your chart. You can find your chart here, or set up a reading with me here.
Saturn at 10 Sagittarius
Mars at 13 Sagittarius
Neptune at 10 Pisces

It’s time for us to get organized and clear on our priorities as the Earth turns towards Autumn. How do you want to live this Winter? With Saturn and Mars squaring this eclipse, and Neptune opposing, we need to get serious and assess where we put our energy. How do you spend most of your day? What have you been ignoring? Where are you in fantasy? Today is a giant reality check. This is heavy energy so be gentle with yourself.

The North Node (destiny) is in the middle of this eclipse, leading us to our future. This is a wonderful aspect, allowing us to let go of the past and clear a path forward. You can actually get a glimpse of your future if you pay attention.

And regarding the Mercury Retrograde? Don’t freak out. Just try not to sign anything important or make large ticket purchases. Hold off on doing mercurial Magick until it’s done.

Whatever starts today and this weekend will build over the next two weeks. Huge opportunity for healing but focus on being of service to others.

Jupiter is entering Libra on September 9th which sets off a two year cycle of focus on partnerships of all kinds. What was happening in your life 12 years ago? Those issues are about to be revisited in September. You can also connect with like-minded people.

"What is Mercury Retrograde?

Three times a year (sometimes four), the planet Mercury appears to move backwards in its orbit. Do planets really move backwards? No. But a difference in orbital speeds creates the illusion of Mercury moving backwards.

What does Mercury represent in astrology?

In astrology, Mercury is the planet that symbolizes speaking, writing, critical thinking, information, the five senses, education, the mind, travel, transportation, movement, contracts, the market, duality, twins, and siblings.

Of course I cannot tell you what you should and should not do, but these activities are considered inauspicious during Mercury Retrograde: signing contracts, buying electronics, buying a car, and traveling — all Mercury ruled activities.

Other things to keep in mind?

• The retrograde is about review.
• Mercury Retrograde should not cause anxiety. Don’t spend three weeks in total fear of making the wrong move. Fear is the lowest energy to create from and you are an aspect of the Creator made physical. Work with Mercury Retrograde. Go back to something that’s been on the back burner. Revise a manuscript. Try a different path. Meditate and reflect."

"A month with two eclipses and Mercury Retrograde is NOT for a sudden move - it is for staying grounded. Pace yourself."

Full Moon in Taurus

Excellent advice for Taurus: 

Why get a reading?

I find when I give a person a reading, I help them clarify their thoughts and find the direction that serves them best with their present circumstances. For me, it’s sometimes less about being “psychic” and more about READING ENERGY in the PRESENT. We create our futures by focusing on the next step of this moment. What path will you choose of the hundreds set before you?

“The true power of a reading is to help you see how you are creating your future right this minute. Where you are now and the choices you have are the results of decisions you’ve made before-it’s all about choices.”

– Nancy Antenucci & Melanie A. Howard