The astrology of this week stirred up a lot for me. Starting last week I began to see a lot of hype on other astrology accounts I follow about the Venus Jupiter conjunction, which occurs today, June 9, in Cancer. By all accounts it’s a lovely transit, but that’s not my issue. My issue is the human tendency to latch onto something “good” as if it’s going to save us, as if it’s going to resolve all our problems, as if it’s going to finally give us what we’ve been striving toward. It’s all over the internet: This week is amazing and magical and special. Not only that, it’s really the week you need to start something huge, take a trip to an exotic foreign location, make a bunch of money (or better just find it under a rock), marry the love of your life. It’s the week to harness the good energy. Take it by the neck and wring every last drop out of it. Don’t waste it! Don’t miss it!

I started to notice my heart rate going up every time I was seeing these posts. What if I do miss it? What if I’m in a bad mood when Venus and Jupiter are conjoining? What if something shitty happens that day? What if it’s not all good, shiny, bright, happy, lovey? I started getting annoyed at all the posts. I started feeling internally rebellious. It’s a funny thing when astrology falls into the same old capitalistic trap as everything else. Predictive, controllable, manipulable to our desires and wishes to always be growing and expanding and gaining. No space for resting, stopping, or god forbid, contracting.

Well, there I was, already contracting, negative emotions toward this transit and what everyone was making of it, spinning me into a black mood.

The paradox of it all is that oftentimes during so-called bad transits (give me a Mars square Pluto or a Saturn conjunction to the Sun), I often feel really good. I feel ready, motivated, prepared, connected to my inner drive to fight, protective, alert, awake, present, dynamic. I’m like a sailor who loves a stormy ocean because I love to feel the elements — the sea spray hitting my face, the ominous clouds threatening to break, the ship under my feet groaning as if it might split in two. The danger brings me right into the present moment. (Maybe this is *ahem* some type of hyper-vigilance learned in childhood??) In contrast, during the easier transits, I feel restless, jumpy, irritable. I tend to look over my shoulder, wondering what’s going on. It’s quiet. Too quiet.

I’m exaggerating a little. But my point is this: good transits don’t equal a good time. And bad transits similarly don’t equal a bad time. Also feeling bad isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as it doesn’t become chronic. How do we define what’s good and what’s bad? Is there more than a binary here? Is there a spectrum? Where is Wholeness in this equation?

A few days before the hallowed conjunction, which is at 25 degrees of Cancer, I had a funny experience. My moon is at 20 degrees of Cancer in my 7th house, so actually within the orb of this conjunction. I spent an entire morning sobbing dramatically, alone in my house, because of something going on in my relationship, that was not nothing, but was also not the end of the world. But my waterworks would have suggested otherwise. It was like a torrential downpour from my eyes. Cancer is water, the moon is the emotions, Venus is love and relationships, the 7th house is intimate partnerships, and Jupiter is abundance and amplifies whatever it touches. I was *ahem* premenstrual on top of it all. As I was crying over the sink while doing dishes, my vision so blurred I could barely see what I was doing, some small part of me was watching and going “wow, this is so indulgent.” So this was one expression of the conjunction. Was it good? Was it nice? Kind of… in the end crying felt like a good release. Talking to my love later and kissing felt even better. Did I win the lottery? No. Although… maybe figuratively I did, in that I got down to the gold of the situation and worked it out relationally eventually. If that’s not actually worth a million bucks I don’t know what else is.

It bothers me a lot how people treat astrology like a magic pill. Or like the guillotine. Either way, it becomes this things that’s going to make or break you. But what about the millions of people in the world who have no clue what goddamn transit is going through the heavens at any given moment? Does winning the lottery even cross their minds? Maybe, but only if Jesus comes to them in a dream and suggests they buy a lotto ticket. I often have people teasingly ask me about astrology, with a poorly hidden tinge of fear in their eyes, “What if my chart is bad?” They want to know, but they don’t want to know. And I can’t tell them. I can’t tell anyone if their life is going to be bad or good, just because of some signature in their chart or some transit in the sky. I can tell them about the particular configuration of planets, houses, signs I see. It’s like a mathematical equation. No more esoteric than that. (Although math is just about as out there as you can get.) Astrology won’t tell you if you’re an asshole or a saint. It won’t tell you if you’re going to be famous or destitute. It can tell you that you have a moon in Cancer, which is a signature that indicates an emotional nature, and in the 7th house it suggests wanting to connect to partners and friends on an emotional level. Astrology is the bare bones. Life is the meat. You have to live it out to see how it manifests.

If you have a beautiful day full of synchronicities today, then good on you. If you feel crunchy and weird and off, good on you all the same. I heard once that the Unabomber had every planet in exaltation in his natal chart. Everyone wants a planet in exaltation… until they become a sociopathic serial killer. Checks and balances. Good and bad. Dark and light. It all only and always comes back to the wholeness. The whole enchilada. In the end, I zoomed waaayyyy out on this Venus-Jupiter business and realized that there’s already so much beauty, love, abundance, connection, joy, and light in my life. I don’t have to go out and get it. I don’t have to hustle the universe. And on the flip side, there has been so, so very much heartache, pain and devastation. Maybe the real blessing is realizing that I honestly wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Mercury Square to Saturn, also occurring today, June 9, is, to me, a person with lots of Capricorn, a relief. For others it might be like a lead balloon, a downer, a buzz kill. It can indicate depressive thoughts, insecurity, fear, a hesitancy to speak or share. But it can also give you traction, the chance to get a grip on something. It’s decidedly grippy, textured. It will bring thoughts forward so you can wrestle and grapple with them, whether or not you need to speak any of it is up to you.

Later in the week Venus squares Chiron. Another buzz kill moment. Another chance to look at ways your childhood programming still runs your current relationship dynamics, and to shift it by becoming aware. But these are things that haunt us forever no matter how much we heal. Again, I take issue with the notion that healing is akin to capitalistic gain — that you can just have more and more and more of it, until you are like the Elon Musk of all the healed people. I AM THE MOST HEALED OF ANYONE IN THE WORLD. The f* you are. May Venus square Chiron be a manageable dose of that painful self-esteem crisis that rears its ugly head every once in a while at just the wrong time and place. It will pass. It’s all gonna be okay.

A New Moon in Gemini is on the horizon next Sunday, June 14th, so stay tuned.

This week began with a HUGE full moon in Sagittarius (on Sunday May 31), which was an illuminating, culminating, direction setting, truth telling lunation. It had a lot of positive energy (Sag is ruled by Jupiter, the planet of luck and abundance) and also may have been a little sloppy — over abundance and overindulgence can lead to messy situations. But overall it was like a massive swell in the ocean that pushes you forward and you’ve been riding that wave ever since. Sagittarius expands your beliefs, especially about what you’re capable of. As we move away from that moon, you can notice what you came away with, what nuggets of truth remain after everything else is sloughed off?

Mercury is now in Cancer, making our thoughts and words more heart-centered and feelings-conscious.

Tuesday June 2 had a Sun sextile Saturn (not noted in the horoscope) which had mega-get-shit-done vibes and that’s when I drove my dads ancient F150 truck to Santa Fe to pick up a new couch by myself (actually with my kid in tow). And damn I felt strong and capable!

Midweek was when it all came crashing down. Just kidding. The mercury square Neptune was actually felt in the full moon, and peaked on Wednesday June 3, and probably added to the foggy messy confused feeling of this week. Neptune and Mercury in tension is like a mini, but potent, Mercury retrograde. You feel out of sorts, porous, sensitive, like you’re not good at discerning and protecting yourself and so you feel anxious. It’s all behind us now!

Next week has a BEAUTIFUL conjunction between Venus and Jupiter in Cancer, the energy of which is already blessing us. Think all things APHRODITE. Venus emerging from the Ocean. Love. Sweetness. Beauty. Absolute divine showers of small and large BOONS. Just giving you a heads up so you already start to tune your awareness to that.

Today it’s raining — rare for our thirsty desert. I can’t say I’m settled, but I am home in a new way, and feeling all the petals of myself continually unfurling as inner and outer changes keep occurring.

I didn’t do a drawing at all for the week of May 10 - 16. I did a drawing for last week, but I didn’t post it on here. So this week I’ll post two.

Holographic Horoscope for May 17 - 23

Holographic Horoscope for May 24 - 30

I feel non-verbal after the frenetic busy-ness of the last few weeks, so that’s all for now!

Enjoy!

I started doing illustrated birth charts during the early days of the pandemic, when there was nothing to do and nowhere to go. I did them for friends, for free, and for fun. This brought me the most joy. Over the years, I started to have people reach out to me for commissions. It is still one of the most joyful things — to draw a birth chart with images and symbols and themes around it that reflect what a person’s planets say. It’s so mesmerizing to me to see what comes out, to see a design in my inner eye, and get it out onto paper. I love the process of adding color and seeing what surprising things happen with the paint. It’s always unpredictable, always forgiving, always a delight.

And yet sometimes it can be a really grueling process to get there.

It’s hard to explain but I can’t produce a chart until it shows itself to me. This can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. In the case of this chart it took… maybe six months?

It was painful because I felt like I was procrastinating. I felt like I was letting the friend who commissioned the chart for her cousin down. But every time I would sit down to mock up the design… nothing.

I don’t know what else to say except that it took the time it took. Some charts flow out with very little effort. Others, like this one, take a long time, a lot of failed attempts, and a painstaking, detailed approach. It demanded a lot from me.

But it was worth it. In the end, I see something that came from my mind, my hands, my art supplies, but feels entirely separate from me now that it is fully birthed. What a miracle!

While I knew instinctively this was the birth chart of a mermaid (Pisces rising with the ruler Jupiter in the first house — you don’t get more oceanic than that), it took a while to figure out what kind of mermaid. Eventually I landed on early medieval paintings of mermaids and sea creatures, because I loved how off-kilter and bizarre they were! They had this otherworldly quality to them that was perfect. I liked how the proportions and perspectives were totally disconnected from objective reality, but instead gave a real feeling of some underwater, dreamlike realm.

I LOVE these weird fish with noses and teeth, and the way their eyes glare red. I love how the sea appears to be above the land.

These mer-people exist in a harmonious little world of their own, inside a glass bottle. The tunnels on either side of them are so mysterious. Where do they lead? What is water and what is land? Is this whole scene underwater? Or above land, and the mer-people are floating in water in their jar? Their union blooms into a strange pink flower above them, suggesting a secret third thing that results from the two of them coming together. One of the original inspirations for the chart was the concept of Heiros Gamos - or sacred marriage. I saw this reflected in the balance between the chart owner’s first and seventh house, the houses of self and other. There is a great deal of learning to achieve in those arenas for this person. And the ideal balance is the divine union within the self.

The Leo sun in the fifth house had to be expressed somehow, and it came in the form of this mer-person, with a decidedly leonine head. Or is it a dog? A lion with the long hair of a maiden? It’s confusing and alluring and that’s what I loved about it.

There were many other images I found that I didn’t draw from directly, but were nonetheless inspirational.

I feel like we all came from this original mermaid. Mesopotamian?

She’s not even a mermaid per se, but she popped up when I searched Babylonian mermaids. I love the owl sentries.

Again, not mermaids, but Tiamat and Apsu are Mesopotamian deities who play an important role in the origins of the Gods in Babylonian myth. While the last three images don’t show up in the chart, they were subtly informing my psyche.

🌸 IT’S MAY 🌸
🪺🌞🫧🍭🎨💎🏺🗝️🪞🪩

You can’t deny it - May is lovely!
(And not *just* because it’s my birthday month).

It’s just a sexy time of year. Everything is bursting forth in buds and flowers and sprigs and sprouts. The waters are rushing. The meadowlarks are sewing the air with their gorgeous song. The days are finally starting to have that soft quality of air where you can be bare skinned without bracing yourself. The spareness of winter is finally loosening and there’s more sound, more smell, more texture everywhere.

On May 1, we had that wild Scorpio full moon. We’re just coming off of that, finding more balance after the rockiness of whatever came up. Sometimes you might feel amazing during a moon everyone is calling intense (maybe because Scorpio is the water you swim in), and sometimes intense stuff is going on around you but doesn’t necessarily directly implicate you. All to say there are many ways a moon might… moon you. For me it was just a dream — one of the craziest I’ve ever had — and I’ll be carrying it like a precious stone in my pocket for a while.

On Monday Mars squares Jupiter. This is a burst or BLAST of energy. Emphasis, exaggeration, exclamation! Bigness in the way you act, the way you move, the way you assert. It could be an overreach, or it could be the push you need to get to the finish line of something important.

On Tuesday Mercury squares Pluto. You might be talking smack. You might get yourself smacked by some smack someone else is talking. You might get to the gnarly root of some thought or idea or you might write the most potent sentence of raw hard truth you’ve ever written. A good time to NOT start something as the demons are stirred up and possibly flowing out of your ears and mouth or maybe you just have extra snakes in your hair and you need them there.

Pluto goes retro, which isn’t such a major deal since it happens every half a year. But when stationing direct or retrograde, there’s an added emphasis or focus on Pluto things: traumas, truths, darkness, willingness to face the dark. Our owl eyes are extra open at the moment.

Last week was inTENSE! Was it not? I spent the week in some kind of fugue state, moving from having shrimp-poisoning (my mom says it’s called an “allergy”) and lying on my couch, to calling all my utility companies to switch off service next month when I move, to frantically running around attending multiple birthday parties on the same day. Internally I was a mixture of apprehensive, exhausted, bored, tightly-wound, and limply unproductive. The perfect remedy was immersing myself in ’s well-written and absolutely BRUTAL memoir, Famesick. I highly recommend, not because it’s a cheerful read, but because it’s important historical documentation for Millennials. Her story is as devastating as the writing is needle-sharp and hilarious. The book comforted me all through the rocky astrology of last week. This week is some of the same story, with a little bit of new news…

On Saturday, April 25, something really major happened. Uranus moved into Gemini FOR GOOD, for the next seven years. It has been in Taurus since 2018. I have a very distinct memory of the FIRST time I ever sat down to illustrate some astrological transits — as I do now in a much more methodical and intentional way. It was in my favorite cafe, Manzanita Market, in my hometown, in my black spiral bound notebook. I was using a green fountain pen. And I was drawing and writing about URANUS MOVING INTO TAURUS. So that’s wild. I started that seven years ago, did it in various iterations all through the entire transit, and now here we are, with a new ingress.

There’s a lot all over the internet about what Uranus into Gemini means. We’ve had little tastes of it over the last year or so as the planet has been retrograding back and forth on the cusp of signs. During this time of fluctuation, we’ve seen the rapid and exponential rise of AI and its creeping and incorrigible influence in our daily lives. AI is definitely a signature that seems to encapsulate Uranus in Gemini. Gemini is all about communication. It’s quick, it’s dynamic, it loves a controversy. Uranus is innovation, technology, and revolution. AI is literally revolutionizing the way we think, speak, communicate, write, and it’s a technology that is becoming so integrated into our ways of being online and connecting with each other and the world that it’s already so difficult to tell where we end and it begins.

So while Uranus into Gemini certainly has the metallic ring of a new era of space-age technological advancements, humans and robots merging into one, and AI taking all our jobs — there’s another side to the whole equation. The other side, in my opinion is our HUMANITY. Precisely because of the advent of AI, we are now being called to ask ourselves questions we’ve never had to ask in quite this way before. What does it mean to be human? Are we human if we rely on AI for everything we do? Are we human if we have bots and chips in our literal bodies? Are we human if we never touch other humans, but simply shout at them across a vast chasm of underground fiberoptic wires? Just as AI is growing and expanding, so is a backlash response that is protesting against the various environmental costs of massive data centers cropping up all over the world, as well as the ethical, moral, artistic, and aesthetic quandaries that arise.

While Gemini is all about speed, the question of speed as a value is going to be really UP during this transit. Is it better for everything to be faster? When we place inherent value on efficiency, productivity, uniformity, and conformity, are we eschewing the very things that for hundreds of thousands of years have been foundational aspects of being human — namely process, making mistakes, learning, trial and error, uniqueness, quirks, and the funky, unfinished, messy business of living this life on earth?

Five weeks ago, I took Instagram off of my phone. I still have my account and I can still log on from my computer (which is really unappealing and not fun and not conducive to scrolling). Once a week I download the app so that I can post my astrology posts, and I leave it on for about 24 hours to receive notifications about that post, and then I delete it again.

Prior to taking it off my phone, I had BAD habits. I would wake up and immediately open Instagram. I would look at it for twenty minutes to an hour before I went to bed, often with my book lying unread on the nightstand next to me. Most disturbingly I would find myself opening Instagram probably twenty-five to thirty times a day, mindlessly searching for something, I didn’t know what. Whatever it was, it was never enough. I searched and searched, experiencing micro-triggers ten times a minute, and then trailing off with a vague sense of “Now, what was I doing?” I lost my train of thought a thousand times a day because my brain was constantly derailed by the endless, scattered, erratic algorithm. My mood was generally low and anxious, overstimulated and under-inspired.

I knew it was time to make a change.

Recently, I remembered a game I used to play with my best friend, Sierra, when we were kids. We called it “Being Ordinary.” It was a totally made up and I have no idea where we came up with it. The way we played is, one of us would suddenly say, “Let’s be Ordinary!” and we would grab some paper and sit down and make a list of Ordinary things that we imaged Ordinary kids did — kids not like us, but kids who lived in other, Ordinary places — and then we would proceed to go down the list, checking things off and well… being Ordinary

The list would look something like:

1. Wake up

2. Brush teeth and comb hair

3. Get dressed

4. Eat Breakfast

5. Play Catch

6. Read a Book

7. Do Homework

Etc…

What you have to understand is that where we came from, the environment we grew up in, was anything BUT the vibe we were going for when we were Being Ordinary, which was something decidedly Leave It To Beaver-style 1950s white Suburban America, which only existed on TV and in our imaginations, and was certainly not echoed anywhere in our actual, on-the-ground lives.

On an average day at my house, Sierra and I could be found up to our necks in mud, slopping around in a man-made pond that was meant as a watering and shitting hole for cattle, out on the tract of Pueblo-owned sagebrush-covered land that ran adjacent to my parents’ property. Or at her house we’d be lost somewhere in the scrub oak in the forest, wearing velvet capes and swords tucked into our belts, concocting potions out of pine needles and clay. Or we’d be inside, filming a movie in which we played all the characters in a made up heist narrative, speaking in Humphrey-Bogart-esque accents. Or we’d be breaking into a neighbor’s well and climbing down a rickety wooden ladder into a bottomless, dank tunnel. Or we’d be chopping up the asphalt on the road in front of Sierra’s house in a valiant effort to play our small part in combatting the “hole in the Ozone layer” we were hearing so much about in 1999.

For us, the brilliance of Being Ordinary was bringing a scintillating contrast to our wild rural Southwestern hippie upbringing. In a world of ant bites, spider bites, wasp stings, sap on your hands and in your hair, holes in your clothes, callouses on your feet and hands, sunburns, rashes, and scrapes, the idea of clean cotton underwear and carrying your schoolbooks under your arm on the walk to school was so foreign, so quaint, and just so… satisfying.

While the list was just the barebones structure to the game, Being Ordinary wasn’t so much about what we did as it was an ethos. It was a momentary interruption of awareness that made life ultra vivid, texturally intoxicating, and profoundly gratifying.

I am amazed that we as children came up with something so simple that served to vivify our existence without anything artificial, or even external. It was completely within us. It infused the way we put on socks and shoes and tied the laces, with deliberate focus. With animated attention. As if someone was watching and saying “Yes, that’s how a shoe is tied, exactly so.” It was as if we were acting out some essential quality of being children, or even just being human, but with the conscious awareness of much older, vaster beings. Every action was imbued with superficial, comedic, and profound, meaning. It was the awareness. It was the simplicity, simplicity as a fetish almost, a pleasurable pastime to play act at being, which actually landed us so in the moment it became transcendent. We were playing with consciousness, and while we were at it, deriving extreme joy.

Going off Instagram has been like remembering that I can Be Ordinary. It is an act of awareness, of consciousness. A choice to wake up to where I really am, instead of dissociating to be somewhere else one million times a day.

It has not been difficult. Sure I have some moments when I’m not working or being with my kid where I mill around, not sure what to do in my own home — until I decide to take a nap or take a bath or take a walk or do some weaving or read a book or vacuum or draw or write. It has been like taking some weird blurry glasses off and seeing life clearly for the first time in a long time — for just what it is.

Uranus in Gemini might bring — surely will bring — faster technology, even more integrated AI systems, totally new and never before seen modes of communication that will blow our minds. But on the flip side, it will also ask us to question and define for ourselves as individuals what our humanity is made of, and how we will embody and live that out in a day to day way. Some of us will choose to continue writing without AI to put words in our mouths or edit out the kinks and quirks that mark it as having come from someone’s brain instead of a microchip. Some of us will choose to continue to make art with our hands, and build things out of mud and sticks, and wrangle animals, and have sex with other living breathing humans instead of paid-for intimacy subscriptions online. We will still go out to cafes and read books and meet friends and have lively, awkward, engaging, strange, funny, intelligent, confusing communications that come from ourselves and not a script. Some of us might just find ourselves remembering the magic of being present, in a body, in community — in other words just Being Ordinary.

I haven’t talked a lot about the astrology of the week. There are some lovely little things Venus is doing, some squares and trines and sextiles going on that seem rather like blips compared to Uranus ingressing into Gemini. The main event this week is a Full Moon in Scorpio on Friday, May 1, at 11:23 am MST.

This moon is making a loose T-square to Pluto, which is one of the rulers of Scorpio, which mainly just amplifies the Scorpio-ness of this lunation. Scorpio is deep, penetrating, real, confronting, and decidedly no-bullshit. It’s psychological, emotional, and intense. A Scorpio full moon with a t-square to Pluto and also a simultaneous conjunction between Mercury (our minds) and Chiron (core wounds) means this is just generally a DEEP moon. It will probably hurt. It will probably be triggering. But sometimes triggers come up in order to be examined under a microscope — Scorpio IS a detective after all. It’s also a shaman. So there’s potential for understanding your triggers and wounds at a new level and even for transforming them into something else, for releasing and healing them.

Coming off that rather heavy week last week, and heading into this Full Moon right on May Day, I would simply say: we’re still on the ride, folks. We’re still in the water. We’re still heading out into space. So buckle up, babes!

I started this week’s horoscope three times, while attempting to make a cheesecake that I burned and then spilled all over my oven, prompting me to start over again with both the horoscope and the cheesecake and I realized the best way to describe the week was: WILD ENERGY!

April has already been… a lot. And it doesn’t quit. Mars and Saturn came together on Sunday, April 19. The question there was whether the energy was like exploding a stick of dynamite inside a sealed metal box OR using a flamethrower to write your manifesto in burning letters on a wall and realizing maybe that was a little bit overkill. Mars and Saturn have a distinctly push-pull dynamic when they’re together. Will they, won’t they? Stop/GO! It’s frustrating, but can also enable you to get something magnificent accomplished — if you can find the proper channel for all that fire.

THEN, with Mars and Saturn still on top of each other Mercury came to the party on Monday, April 20. Mercury is the mind, thoughts, speech, perception, and relationships with friends, coworkers, and neighbors and these areas are all getting highlighted by the already combustible, pressure-cooker energy. Conjunctions are when energies combine. They are not bad or good - but they’re A LOT. Amplified, intensified, exaggerated, aggravated. So you might feel like everything is slipping out of your hands (or your mouth). It’s a bottleneck of emotions, sensations, communications, happenings, perceptions. Depending on who you are and how you handle things you might get a lot done, or you might just go off the rails. Likely some combo of the two.

Hooray - It’s TAURUS SEASON! Just in time to read Lena Dunham’s amazing memoir (of course she’s a Taurus queen 👑) and rewatch Girls. 10/10 recommend.

On Thursday, April 23, Venus and Uranus come together at the last degree of Taurus before Uranus moves into Gemini for the next 7 years. Some kind of revolution or reinvention around money things, beauty things, love things. Relationship redefinition, an aesthetic update, an experimental spending spree or investment plan.

On Saturday, April 25, Pluto and the Sun will come into a tense square with each other bringing a crunchy reckoning of some sort, having to do with stuff you’d rather not deal with or face coming to the surface — stuff that’s usually kept hidden away, even from yourself. Shadow stuff, old skeletons-in-the-closet stuff. The Sun will want to illuminate it. Let it.

This week is peak Aries season. Peak Mars energy. Mars is the God of War. Martial. Warrior. It is drive, passion, motivation, action, invigoration, aggression, intensity, energy, vital force, sexual drive, anger. It is the Doer. This whole week is infused with Mars at the early degrees of Aries, coming into contact with the Neptune Saturn conjunction, as well as quicker-moving Mercury. These four planets right at the beginning of Aries create a pretty clear picture of what is changing in your life. Something has truly and fully dissolved. Structures, ways of being, ways of living, perceiving, relating — have broken down. Maybe really material things have changed in a very real way. Maybe it’s been a more internal process. Maybe some of both. By now it’s probably clear to you that you’re in a new land. You can look at your chart to see where Aries falls to get a concrete idea of where the changes are occurring.

For me, using Whole Sign Houses, Aries is my fourth house of home, family lineage, foundation, and deep inner life. Last week a house basically dropped into my lap and over the course of about four days I decided that it was the right move to break my current lease and take the new place. I wasn’t necessarily looking for somewhere to move, but I knew a change was coming. I mulled it over, going back and forth between desiring and fearing change, weighing the pros and cons. Then one night I popped awake at 3am and realized that despite my fears and all the things that could possibly be imperfect about the new place, there were many more aspects of moving that were giving me excitement and joy and that my energy was already going in that direction. I texted my new landlord at 6am, telling him I would take it. I’ll be moving in one month.

As a Cancer Moon, home is extremely important to my emotional wellbeing. I get attached to things and houses. I surround myself with comforting, soft, warm colors, textiles, and objects. I love plants, ceramics, pillows, blankets, sheepskins, and lights. Tending to my home is a constant, creative, nourishing, life-giving project. It is where I pour a lot of my nurturing Cancer energy. I can also be really averse to change and disruption in my home life. When I was a kid and my parents changed the tile backsplash in our kitchen I literally cried and then kept two of the tiles as sentimental memorabilia. Home for me is not just about the house. It’s about my foundation. It is the ground, the bedrock, upon which I depend for balance, and which determines my ability to launch out into the world.

A foundation is a base. It’s the bottom. It’s literally at the bottom of the chart, a point called the Imum Coeli. It’s the most private, hidden point. It relates to where we came from on an ancestral level, a soul level, and how we build or create our own family or home or lineage going forward. From that place, we can extend outward to meet the world. If the foundation is solid, imagine the strength you can draw upon in order to act and show up in the world.

This is an awesomely obvious example of the way the current astrology is impacting me. All these planets in Aries, signifying great change and new beginnings, and I’m literally moving to a new house, creating a new foundation that feels more aligned with who I am at this time. The new house has more space, beautiful potential, will have a wood stove installed by winter (which I’ve always wanted), and is so close to the beautiful mountains that have always been the backdrop of my psyche from the moment I was born in this Taos Valley.

***

Mars conjoining with Neptune on 4/12 and then with Saturn on 4/19 is by no means easy. The first transit is likely to bring up feelings of total confusion, delusion. It’s like a firebolt plunging into pea-soup-thick fog and burning out right then and there. It’s hard to get traction with Neptune, and Mars wants nothing more than to grip the road and tear forward with great momentum. So necessarily it brings about frustration and disorientation. As I write this on 4/16 we’re already coming out of that deluded space of swirling confusion and heading toward the perhaps more challenging of the two transits.

Mars conjunct Saturn is like a red light and a green light flashing simultaneously. Mars says GO. Saturn says STOP. This conjunction is like putting dynamite into a steel box and the destructive force of an explosion that has nowhere to go. It might feel like you want to just get something over with but you have to wait and deal with a bunch of really hassling constraints. Saturn brings reality and consideration and consequences and shitty problems. It also makes sure you check all the boxes to make sure you really did something right. Mars wants to blast through obstacles and when very aggravated can tend to just set fire to whatever is in its way. Be very cautious about getting into fights this weekend. The atmosphere may be really tense!

On 4/14 Mercury, the messenger planet, planet of thought, speech, learning and communication, entered Aries, clustering right up close to Mars, Neptune and Saturn. This lights everything up on a mental level. Our perceptions are honed and focused on this already heavily activated part of life. Mercury makes a sextile to Uranus in Taurus, which is in its very final days of that sign, until it enters Gemini FOR GOOD on April 25. This sextile offers even more support to our thought process, opening up to more possibilities, eccentric and different ways of seeing and talking and learning.

Thursday 4/16 is a big day — the day I am writing this. Mercury comes into contact with Neptune, which is like a miniature Mercury Retrograde in its quality. This will be a moment of uncertainty, doubt, confusion in your thinking. You might feel uncertain, brain-foggy, a little turned around. The upside of this transit is that you might also experience a dissolving of previously existing mental or perceptual boundaries, which will allow your mind to open in a new and unforeseen way.

On this day, in fact it just happened, Chiron and the Sun come together, also in Aries. They are at the late degrees, whereas everything else is sitting at early degrees.

The Sun is the self, vitality, identity, how you shine. Chiron represents your deepest, core wounds. So these two coming together illuminates some wound you might have in relation to who you are. How has it been difficult to shine? To be seen? How have you struggled with identity, defining yourself, making a mark in the world? What has hurt your sense of self, drained your life force, or smothered your exuberance? The fact that something painful is coming up might really suck, but it also gives you a chance to see it, heal it, transform it. Or at least learn something more about it.

Mars in Aries and Pluto in Aquarius are forming a sextile, which brings some needed courage, bravery and grit to that healing process. Things will feel FAST and intense.

***

All of this is present as we move into the NEW MOON IN ARIES on Friday 4/17 at 5:52 am MST.

At this New Moon, we have Mars, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune, the Moon, the Sun, and Chiron in Aries. That’s a massive stellium! So much focus, so much energy, so much gravity at that point in the zodiac. Aries is very intense. It’s cardinal fire. It’s super energetic, aggressive, action-oriented. I LOVE this New Moon, and it promises to be WILD because the Chiron-Sun conjunction is present, as well as the sandwich of the Mars-Neptune and Mars-Saturn conjunctions.

This New Moon represents a FLAME OF INITIATION. Speaking of wounds to our identity, you are no longer who you were. Especially, I find, compared to the person you were in April of 2019 or 2020. Think back to that time. Can you even relate to that person? Maybe you can in certain ways. You are probably essentially the same, but you have likely gone through some SERIOUS life-changing experiences since then that have shaped and changed you on a fundamental level.

I really view this New Moon as truly stepping into the powerful unknown. New territory. It has a once-and-for-all vibe. Like really letting go of something and REALLY not looking back, holding on, hesitating. REALLY going forward, becoming who you really ARE now! It is so cool, so beautiful, so exciting. And it’s also freaking fearsome. Awe-some! Awe-inspiring. This moon is not fooling around. It’s truly alchemical in its nature. Even more so because Pluto is sextiling the stellium in Aries, adding that depth and willingness to GO THERE, to face the shadows and demons and really see them and really conquer them.

This is such a powerful time. It is a ritual in and of itself, without us having to do or perform anything ourselves. It just IS a ritual of becoming.

🌑🌑🌑

🔥🔥🔥

Easter always feels like a major turning point in the year. The months from New Year’s to Easter are hard emotionally and psychically. This year especially there’s been a feeling of continuously combing through old material that’s really dead, but still needs to die. Patterns that keep cropping up in order to be finally finally finally released. A death knell of worn out stuff that has a zombie-like unwillingness to truly pass away.

Physically, too, we are running on the least amount of sunlight exposure, our bodies and hormones and nervous systems running on metaphorical fumes. The end of winter is a time of depletion.

But come Easter, there’s a shift. There’s been a shift for the last week or so. Planets moving from Pisces to Aries give a sense of waking up from a dream and into the exuberant energy of spring. It’s time. It’s time to get going. The sun is back. Plants and animals are waking up.

Symbolically, it’s a moment of resurrection.

A lot of people around me have been talking about how time feels strange. They say they can’t remember what month it is, what day, what season even. In New Mexico we had a strange bout of 80 degree weather at the end of March which certainly contributed to a sense of disorientation. But I think it goes deeper than that. I think there’s a big wrapping up of a process, which began in the spring of March 2020, when the entire globe shut down and our lives were changed forever. Parts of us got lost during that time. Other parts probably were found as well. But for some reason, I feel like this spring hearkens back to that spring, and we’re pretzeling back to pick up those lost bits and integrate them back into our present selves. This is disorienting indeed.

Who knows…

I do think sometimes we are changing and making great strides in our growth, more than we realize, and it can take a while for all of us to catch up.

This week astrologically is relatively chill, with just two minor exact transits, which both speak to a kind of enlivening, new sense of self and expansion of our capacity. It feels a bit like a pause before we have a massive Aries explosion for the last two weeks of April. Soon Mars will enter Aries and conjoin with Neptune and Saturn. Mercury will be in the mix. There will be a New Moon in Aries.

This week has newness, sprinkled in with that same death knell energy. The zombies are still groaning their last groans before they truly expire and we blast ahead into unknown territory.

This week stars a Full Moon in Libra, on Wednesday April 1, at 8:12 PM MST.

This full moon is going to bring RELATIONSHIP to the forefront. How are your relationships? How is your primary relationship? Do you have one? Do you want one? What’s the state of it? Do you need to end something? Do you need to change something? How’s your relationship to yourSELF?

Libra is represented by the scales. It’s all about balance. The balance is between YOU and ME. How DO you balance such a thing as yourself and another person? Often in relationships the scale is tipping back and forth. Sometimes you’re giving too much. Sometimes you’re being too selfish. Sometimes you need more alone time and space. Sometimes you need to find a way to connect. These are Libra things. Libra intuitively senses where things are out of balance and seeks to bring harmony by equalizing. It’s a beautiful quality — unless it becomes too much about people pleasing or not having an opinion so as not to rock the boat. Aries — which is on the opposite side of Libra — has the opposite problem. Rocking the boat TOO MUCH. Saying whatever is on their mind without thinking about it. Flying off the handle in one moment, letting it go the next. The balance between being who you TRULY are, and meeting another person halfway — whether it’s your partner, friend, business associate, anyone at all — is where it’s at this week. It’s about ALL relating.

Libra is ruled by Venus and Venus is getting majorly tested by Pluto on Friday, which we’ll be feeling all week. Pluto dredges up all the terrible shit we’d rather not have to deal with. It’s trauma, unconscious behavior, coping mechanisms (most likely unhealthy ones), survival mechanisms. The things we learned that helped us get through but which are no longer serving us, but are engrained into who we are at this point and have become the filter through which we relate to others, and sometimes it just fucks everything up, even though to the best of our knowledge we really WANT a relationship to work out, but we compulsively ruin it. Yeah. Venus square Pluto. Fun stuff.

So the main point is: relationships are going to be on the chopping block. Under the interrogation light. They’re just going to be UP. The issues, the things, the patterns, the feelings. It’s all surfacing. The plus side of Pluto is that it DOES bring things up so that they can be alchemizing and transformed and released. A higher octave may be reached. That’s the best case scenario for Pluto. There’s immense potential there. But it’s hard and scary and super hero’s journey vibes. Like you DON’T want to go on that quest. But if you don’t, you’ll just be stuck in the same quagmire going around and around and around forever, but if you DO go on it (you don’t have a choice, really), it’s going to suck the soul from you and demand everything you’ve got and you’re going to have to face really terrifying demons and and slay them. It’s intense.

What’s important to do this week is NOTICE it all. It’s all coming up. It’s all swirling around. The chaos, the questions. What should I do? Should I be with this person, should I leave, should I change something, how do I communicate, what’s working, what’s not, what do I really want, for myself and in relationship, are the two mutually exclusive or is there a way to make them work together without undue sacrifice on one side or the other??? Etc. MAJOR THEMES.

Try to allow all the questions to exist without making any decisions, JUST YET.

Full moons are very emotional. They are intense and extreme. They function to reveal and show us things. And then LATER we make moves. This isn’t the time to make moves. It’s the time to sit with it all. It might be so damn uncomfortable or overwhelming or sad or anxiety-provoking. But if you can just sit in it… just a little…

Whatever happens is not written in stone. It’s not final. It’s passing. You might realize something DEVASTATING about yourself or about your relationship. That’s the point of this moon.

But just because you have the realization it doesn't solidify the outcome. The realization is the most important part. It’s the way things unfold. It’s the lynchpin, the flood, the avalanche that might need to happen inside you. You don’t have to DO anything about it. Aries (where the Sun currently sits) is about choice, agency, risk, and go-getter energy. No matter what you realize or recognize or face this week, you ALWAYS have a choice in terms of what you do about it. That’s what needs time to percolate and settle and unfurl at a natural pace.

OR it might just be an explosive, compulsive, reactive shit show. And that’s okay too.

Whatever it is this week, there are likely to be major developments in your relationships. Confrontation with big truth can be scary and painful, and it can bring major relief. There will be lots of support for good conversations on Friday, with Mercury trining Jupiter. Your mind will be open. You’ll be good at listening and talking. Maybe you can articulate something you could never quite say.

I’d say the astrology of this week is MEDICINAL. It might not be really pleasant, easy, or nice. But it might be what we need.

The Sun has entered Aries and this week it conjoins Neptune (on Sunday 3/22) and Saturn (on Wednesday 3/25). The Sun passing over Neptune and Saturn ignites and intensifies the current energy of the moment, which is heavily defined by Neptune and Saturn sitting at early degrees of Aries. In a very large sense we’re on the threshold of new and unknown territory. The Sun passing these points illuminates how this moment is reflected in your personal life and identity. It’s not going to be a long lasting transit, as the Sun moves somewhat quickly. But it is highly significant and holds clues for the future as it unfolds.

The Sun is your Self. It’s your vitality, energy, identity. It represents how you shine and express who you are, uniquely. In Aries, the Sun is finding its spark again after the dissolution of the final weeks of winter, Pisces season, where the self surrenders its separation and unites with all. In Aries, the process of individuation, of the embryo taking hold and the singular soul coming into being, begins again.

Last week the New Moon in Pisces was like a final ego death and the next day, when Mercury went direct and the Spring Equinox occurred and the Sun moved into Aries, it was like the first breath of new life. A renewing of the cycle. A fresh beginning. When endings and beginnings come so close together, it’s disorienting and hard to discern which is the part of you that’s dying and already gone, and which is the part that’s ready to begin anew, start something, venture out into the unknown. The jumbledness of that transition speaks to the nature of growth and change and life - it’s never so clear cut as an ENDING and then a BEGINNING. It’s all happening simultaneously. It can be difficult to get your bearings.

This week continues to be a mixed bag of simultaneous confusion and clarity. As I said last week, we’re on a clarity - confusion continuum, probably sliding between the two poles, or existing at both at the same time. You can be both deeply uncertain and totally clear. Or maybe certain aspects of your life are still shrouded in mystery, waiting to be unveiled, while others are finally being revealed and giving you a path on which to move ahead.

Neptune brings the same energy as Pisces. It’s the modern ruler of Pisces after all. On the positive side, it’s about communion. Being one with all things. It’s the part of you that can get totally swept away by a piece of music or poetry, can envision the most beautiful future imaginable, can connect with other beings and other planes on an ethereal level. It’s not tied to the earth or the body, but rather floats in a mystical realm of dreams. It’s glorious — unless you are trying to get concrete answers or manifest anything on a material level, or achieve certainty or objectivity of any kind.

When the Sun passes over Neptune, it’s like a diffusion of your life energy. On one hand it might make you highly attuned to other levels of consciousness, opening your psyche to profound mystical and spiritual realms. On the other, it might loosen your grip on reality and a solid sense of identity, which can produce anxiety and fear and general existential malaise. Neptune conjunct the Sun is disorienting. The Sun wants to shine and Neptune is like a screen of smoke or fog, obscuring the Sun’s brilliance. It can make you feel drained, sapped, exhausted. Your life force has no channel; it simply disperses.

Saturn is quite different. Saturn rules Capricorn. Capricorn is the archetype of the elder, the teacher, the hermit and the parent. It is responsible, knowledgeable, reliable, diligent, steadfast, disciplined, and just generally all around no-nonsense. Capricorn is brass tacks. Cold hard reality. Saturn wants you to get real, get focused and get to work. It wants you to plan for the future. To be realistic about what you can and want to achieve and to put in the necessary hard work over a long period of time to get there. Saturn is nearly the opposite energy of Neptune. Whereas Neptune removes all boundaries and structures in favor of infinite flow and connection to all that is, Saturn builds walls and barriers, introduces obstacles and blocks, and asks you to account for each and every expense of your energy. Whereas Neptune is unbounded and generous, Saturn is controlled and even miserly. On the positive, Saturn can help you direct and focus your life energy. But it can also make you feel smothered by constraints and restrictions. Every dream you might have is met with a, “Yes, but—” from Saturn, like a parent who is always presenting reasons why something won’t work out. Saturn’s constrained nature comes from wisdom. It knows why something is likely to fail. But it’s kind of a downer.

As the Sun passes over Saturn, you will be asked to account for your hopes and dreams. You must put them into a container of real possibility and let go of unrealistic expectations and pipe dreams. You’ve got to bring it into form. It’s hard work. It’s necessary. It’s depressing because it doesn’t encourage day dreaming or folly, which are necessary and life-giving elements of building the life you want. The fact that this conjunction in occurring in Aries does lift the energy a bit, simply because Aries is inherently hopeful and brave. There’s a sense of “This is going to be hard but I know I can do it!”

On Thursday, Venus and Chiron come together in Aries, bringing up opportunities for healing. Chiron is the wounded healer - an aspect of yourself that is forever painful, bleeding, vulnerable, and is there to teach you greater self acceptance. Venus is your relationships. It’s how you bond and connect and love. It’s also how you relate to the world around you aesthetically. Issues around how you look, how you dress, how you express yourself aesthetically might surface. Interpersonal and relationship issues, where your wounds get in the way of intimacy, might surface as well. The opportunity is for greater awareness and healing to take place in these arenas.

While these transits are somewhat heavy, there’s also a ton of forward momentum. We are out of the retrograde and out of eclipse season and out of the quagmire of Pisces season. Spring is waking up, the sun is out. We’ve gone through a ton of transition in the last few months and this week, with the influence of Saturn especially, we’re finding some balance — a leg to stand on so to speak. What will you make of all the change you’ve been going through? What will you do with your life energy? What are you long terms dreams and goals and how do you plan to achieve them?

I took a little break for Spring Break, so this is late. But better late than never!

I drew this in a grove of trees called Trees of Heaven, under a blue shade, skin tingling from exposure to sun and heat after the long winter. I dropped out of time and routine to soak in hot springs surrounded by mesquite and ocotillo and yucca in the southern New Mexico desert.

Much about the astrology of this week signifies moving forward. Aries season, Mercury going direct, the equinox. And yet the swirling waters of Pisces still pull us deep inside. Much has been unearthed in the last few weeks. It will take time for it to clear fully. We are on a confusion - clarity continuum, as Neptune and Saturn play with the energies of Pisces and Aries, tapping the new moon. The astrology of the moment seems to be so singularly focused. All the planets are in a cluster. Wherever they are in your chart is heavily activated. Somehow you tug one thread and the whole thing unravels. OR you place the final stone and the entire house is supported. Either way each piece seems to connect to all the other pieces. So if you’re feeling like everything is in question, or everything must change, or everything is coming together, or all of the above - it probably is.

Reeling in the post-eclipse swell, ebb. Was it one of the most bodily, physical eclipses you ever felt? I thought about the ways emotions and thoughts are expressed in the body. Virgo - the pit of the stomach. Clenching. Deep holding. Now a long out breath, recovery. But still, reeling. Sorting. Feeling.

Venus - love, connection, relating - contacting the dissolving influence of Neptune. Where is my love? How can it land? Express in a true way? What’s illusory. The anxiety that comes from being unsure. So much uncertainty is so hard for our animal selves.
Simultaneously - early Aries - Venus touching Saturn. This one’s really hard. Feeling unloved, unlovable. The coldness of the heart that keeps intimacy away. How could anyone love me? Saturn keeps us real - but sometimes too real. Is it real or is it fear.

Pluto comes in to transform. Rip off the neat facade. Just what’s needed. Poison/medicine.

Keep in mind where we truly are. Jupiter shines a big bold light on our minds in review, retrograde. Sleepless. Words tumbling out in all the wrong ways. The frame of the body struggling to contain all that’s within it. Mirrors. Distortions. Sorting through to find clarity. A deeper healing might be happening, but this wash, scuttle, scrabble, clawing is the hard part. What’s the purpose in it all? Pisces Season is headstrong with us this year, not pulling any punches.

Where are we in relation to the void? What’s your relation to the void? Do you avoid the void? How do you cope with the void? 🌀

This morning I had tea with a friend and she is much older and wiser than me and she exclaimed, “Everybody’s got fucking trauma - so what!! That’s life, that’s being human. We’re all fucked up. Who cares???”

I love her so much. And this is the exact message of the Lunar Eclipse in Virgo that occurred early this morning at 3:33 am PT (although some people are saying 3:37, but I like the symmetry of 3:33). In so many words, this eclipse is about letting go of the perfectionist tendency to think you can heal or cleanse or fast or shamanically clear or pray or therapize — (or whatever) — your way out of the human condition. You can’t.

This is a nuanced discussion because of course healing is important. Taking care of our bodies and our minds and our relationships and our jobs is important - as the Virgo archetype teaches. That dedication, detail-oriented approach, critical eye, discernment — it can make or break you. But I’m talking about when it edges into a fixation to FIX. Is your healing practice, your therapy, your crystal mandala, your belief system, your group session — (again, whatever) — bringing you closer to actual life, or is it actually making you paranoid and becoming a buffer between you and reality, enabling you to dissociate and imagine that you can toolbox your way out of the impermanence that is inherent to this existence? This is the question this eclipse is asking.

This week was WILD. I was literally ON THE VERGE of totally losing my shit so many times. There was a high pitch-ed-ness to everything. To people who are sensitive, when energies like these are swirling around it can be almost unbearable. It might start with a sensation in your physical body. Tension in your gut. But because we’re human, we have all these stories that get attached to sensations, and then we have pasts that have associations with those stories, and then we go on social media, and we go down some rabbit hole and it triggers all the triggers that are already triggered and before you know it, you’re just a walking ball of TRIGGER and you don’t even know it so you can’t stop yourself before saying something weird or acting weird and then it all compounds it and you just want to dissolve into the ground and disappear forever.

Oh, you’ve never experienced that?

The level of crazy paranoia online was off the charts this week. That Jim Carrey conspiracy theory?? I mean, I am not opposed to the notion that crazy wild stuff is going on right in front of us and getting covered up and you never really know what’s real or not. But that hall-of-mirrors quality right now is just exponential. It doesn’t even matter if it was or wasn’t him, or what the heck was actually going on, but the swirl and chaos and confusion and delusion that it illustrates and exacerbates and amplifies — that’s what’s poignant to me. The result is feeling like there’s no reference point that makes any sense on any level. It makes it hard to stay grounded.

Yesterday, I went with my love to a really special place where there are massively huge boulders and you can clamber all around them and you get up really high and you can see for miles, and there are ravens flying over head and the wind whistling through the ponderosas, and it’s just beautiful. At first I was all in my head, all the usual patterns were running. It was all extra because I was exhausted, hadn’t had enough sleep etc. etc. etc. But gradually, something started to shift. We got down off the highest point because it was freezing and windy and we found a little nook down in a sheltered place amongst the cliffs. We found a little bed of grass and we lay down in it. We felt like deer. The place felt like the heart of the stones. The earth was warm, the sun was warm, and the wind was cold and kept us alert and a little chilly. We dozed, in each other’s arms. We were contained. Suddenly everything just drifted away. I realized how pointless all the machinations of modern life are. What if I was a deer, and I just slept in that grassy heart of stone with my partner, and that was it? For that moment, it was.

And, damn, was that healing.

I thought about how opposite that type of healing is, to the kind where you’re searching for the thing that’s perpetually wrong so you can eliminate it forever and just be not-that. But THAT is the human part of us. I don’t know how to explain it all. But just being in that rocky mountainous place for that period of time, it was a wholeness-moment. And so profound because of that.

All the machinations are still there of course. They don’t go away. They are part of being human at this time in history too — the bombs, the potential outbreak of war, the lies, the conspiracies, the cost of living, social media, AI. All of it. And all the beauty too.

This eclipse was a release, and for me it was a release on a deeper level than I could ever really put into words.

The astrological shifts occurred right now are really truly SEISMIC. The eclipses, the retrograde of Mercury in Pisces, the Mars square to Uranus, the Saturn Neptune conjunction - these are just enormous. We are feeling all of it, riding the waves. This week, the wobbliness continues, and all of March is still going to be like a total realignment on a cellular, DNA level. We may not recognize ourselves come April, but that will probably be a good thing. It’s human. And it’s whole.

Welcome to Pisces season. Music, poetry, and day-dreaming abound. The catharsis of belting out anything by Chappell Roan (The Pisces Queen herself) is giving me strength to navigate these very strange times. On a side note I highly recommend going to see the Norwegian film Sentimental Value if you haven’t already and want a good weep.

As far as the astrology of the week goes, we are in between eclipses, hence ECLIPSE PORTAL, and we are still very much in the Saturn/Neptune conjunction that occurred last week. These planetary movements are rocking the damn boat. Creating shockwaves that are felt throughout our entire beings. Are you totally disoriented? Overwhelmed? Reeling? Submerged? Shape shifting? Blocked? Having weird sleep and weird dreams? Having Déjà vu? Whatever it is, I just have to say that it’s totally NORMAL!

When we’re in between eclipses, anything goes, and everything goes wonky and wobbly. It’s like we’re traveling through a black hole and this is the singularity… whatever that means. Advice from the Pisces side of things: just FEEEL it. Right now, nothing is clear or certain or stable or making sense or any of that. (I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot lately). But it’s true! We’re up, we’re down, we’re all around.

Will clarity be coming ‘round the mountain when she comes? Ohhh no. The lack of clarity will actually increase on Wednesday when Mercury goes retrograde in PISCES! Wooaahhh sea-horsey! This season is giving: OOBLECK. If you don’t remember oobleck, look it up. Make some. Perfect Mercury RX nostalgia. Basically we’re dissolving and we’re going back in time, into alternate dimensions… for all of March. Almost. Until Spring Equinox on March 20th. RX, annoyingly, brings more review and reflection and retrospect and recalibration. Annoyingly, because can’t we get on with it already? No. Nope. No we can’t.

The end of the week has an extra zschhhhingg. It’s spiky, it’s sharp, it could bring accidents, breaking glass, electroshocks, fighting spirit, crazed words that rupture. It’s Mars square Uranus!! We will be feeling this transit all week. It brings unexpected twists and turns. It’s upsetting the apple cart, so to speak… by setting it on fire. The best thing to do is just be aware that this is going on — for everyone. So give a little grace. We are in a wobbly time. It won’t be until much later that we can look back and make sense of this week. Or the last few weeks. Or really the whole first part of 2026. Or… the last five years? Okay, too far, too much. Let’s focus on getting through the now.

Deep breaths.

This week, all beings on earth are going somewhere we’ve never been, and will never come back from. We’ll never be the same again. It’s life changing. It has been life changing, but this is a peak moment. Three days apart, we have a Solar Eclipse in Aquarius and then the conjunction between Saturn and Neptune.

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The Eclipse occurs on February 17, 2026 at 5:00am MST at 28 degrees of Aquarius. Getting toward the end of the sign, it’s anoretic, which amplifies the Aquarian energies. Aquarius is an archetype of the Future. It represents Evolution and Revolution. It is ruled by both Saturn (traditional) and Uranus (modern). There’s an internal tension between the two because Saturn rules tradition, while Uranus rules innovation. How can these two opposing ideas be held within the same archetype? Maybe it’s about foundations, which lead to evolution, like a springboard that sends us soaring into space? Or maybe it’s about how old structure must be destroyed in order for new ones to take their place? Maybe it’s the whole question of how history repeats itself. Are we doomed to repeat the lessons we don’t learn? Or are we here to evolve along a spiral continuum of constant learning through experience and that’s the whole point and there’s no way to fail?

The old adage is: Don’t do rituals during an eclipse. Even though it’s a New Moon and usually that’s a good time to set intentions (if you’re into that kind of thing), astrologers caution against it. Why? Because the eclipse is the ritual. You don’t work on an eclipse because it’s working on you. The energies are chaotic, unstable, and unpredictable. There is a great re-arranging going on. After the dust settles, you can pause and take stock. Before and during, it’s best not to do anything at all.

There’s a paradox with astrology: sometimes it’s better not to know what’s going on. A friend and I were texting each other about this last week. We agreed that it’s often just stress and anxiety-producing to fixate on what’s coming. It’s out of your control completely. We both felt that usually it’s much more helpful to look back on transits and understand them from hindsight. And yet, I can’t seem to help it. I love the archetypes, I love the language, I love the symbols. I feel a little like someone riding at the very prow of a ship as it careens up and down on a super stormy sea. I’m looking at the jellyfish and the porpoises and the orcas in the water, and the seagulls and cormorants in the air and marveling at their beauty. I’m gonna get soaked and maybe fall overboard. And yet that’s where I want to be.

The Saturn Neptune conjunction in Aries occurs three days after the eclipse, on February 20, 2026. I find myself kind of sick of talking about this, and sick of hearing about it. For some reason my mind can’t quite grasp onto what it all means. Maybe because it’s so massive. How could you possibly explain an event like the breaking up of Pangea in a few keywords? It feels like that. Like hundreds or thousands of years from now, astrologers will be like, “Ah yes, the time of the Saturn Neptune conjunction, which was the dawn of the age of… blah blah blah.” It’s so meaningful and consequential and epoch-defining that it’s kind of a joke to try to understand what’s happening.

But back to symbols, which I do love: the Sabian symbol for the first degree of Aries, where the conjunction is occurring is really cool: A woman just risen from the sea. A seal is embracing her.

Just sit with that for a moment. It’s a beautiful, mythological, potent image. It’s comforting to me, somehow. It’s like a dream.

This week, I don’t think any of us know what to expect. To try to encapsulate it all is a fool’s errand. But Aries is the Fool. He leaps without looking. He’s bold because of his lack of experience. There’s something beautiful about that. We are the onlooker, trying to warn the Fool before he steps off a cliff—and we are the Fool himself.

We are stepping off the cliff.

Free-fall, guts in our throats. Faith, a wind in our hair.

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If last weekend felt rough it was probably because of Venus squaring Uranus. I don’t know about you, but all my plans had wrenches thrown in them (Uranus brings upsets and surprises) when my kid got the stomach flu. Not only that, but specifically my plans with my love (Venus). This can happen any day but my reaction to the sudden changes was admittedly out of proportion. I was so upset! After my kid being sick with two gnarly flus in the last two weeks, I was like, you’ve got to be kidding me. I cried a lot, I fought against fate, and eventually I accepted it — I had to since I ended up catching the same stomach bug my son had and we were both laid out. This is a perfect example of how Uranus can derail the direction you think you’re going in. It’s best to be flexible and understanding. The upside was that while I was stuck at home for several days (and before I got hit with the flu myself), I was able to spend time on a very important job application and submit it (fingers crossed!). Venus has to do with our values, so even while I had all my expectations for the weekend dashed, I was able to turn my focus toward something that really mattered to me — and that kept me somewhat sane!

The really big news this week is that Saturn moves into Aries on February 13th, where it will remain until spring of 2028. This is significant for many reasons. Any time a planet ingresses into a new sign, there is a tonal change. The shift from Pisces to Aries is like moving from the warm, salty, watery union of the fetus in utero, to the harsh and awakening moment of actually being born. Aries is a cardinal fire sign and has so much to do with birth. The amount of energy it takes for a baby to be born, a mother to give birth, a sprig of grass to push through the soil, the blossoms on a tree to burst forth — is HUGE! There’s a spark, a jolt, a ripping, bright, frightening, opening sensation. Birth is both beautiful and terrifying. You’re on the precipice of a transformation so large you can hardly even comprehend it. And think of a baby: coming from wherever they came from, and arriving into this world!

Aries is a bold risk-taker because a lot of ventures would be over before we even started them if we took too long to ponder all the ways things could go wrong. Aries says, “Just do it, and figure out the kinks later.” Saturn by contrast is a slow-moving, responsible, hardworking, and painstaking planet. It’s the opposite of Aries in many ways - not wanting to rush into things, not wanting to make mistakes, relying on experience to be its guide. So how does Saturn feel in Aries? It might feel like an old codger being rushed by his grandchildren too eager to get to the park, but it’s raining and he hasn’t grabbed an umbrella, but the kids are already out the door and they might get hit by a car if he doesn’t hurry up and keep track of them. It might feel like the push pull between impulse and the part of us that knows better. On a brighter note, maybe the perseverance we never had to finish something we started actually finally shows up and challenges us to stick with something once and for all. There’s an inherent tension that comes with this combination. We will have two and a half years roughly to work it out.

Another reason this ingress is significant is that it means that Saturn and Neptune will join together at zero degrees of Aries very soon. This is an astrological event that has NEVER happened before! Ever. What does it mean? Again it’s the birth of something new - that first degree of Aries. Newborn energy. We are reaching as a species and a world into new territory never before explored. We are inexperienced here. There’s risk, chance, a sense of animal instinct. The pace is fast. But Saturn brings discipline and focus. It brings hard boundaries and hard lessons. Neptune runs the gamut of divine union and mysticism to straight up illusion and delusion — discernment is KEY. This conjunction, which perfects on February 20, but we are definitely already feeling it, brings a MASSIVE shift in consciousness for the entire planet as it brings all these energies together. It’s all already happening all around us.

Lately I’ve been dreaming astrology. Like when you’re studying a foreign language and you become so saturated in it that you start dreaming in it. Last week, twelve-sectioned charts populated my psyche as I slept. I saw relationships between axes. I saw the angular shapes cut by aspects between planets. While dreaming about one friend’s chart in particular, I heard the word “thermonuclear” to describe her Sun-Mars conjunction in Leo, squaring Pluto.

Thermonuclear also felt apropos of last week. Mars and Pluto came together on January 27, and it was a bit like a nuclear fission bomb. The energy is obliteration. It’s violent, combustible, crazed. Just look at the headlines all around the world. There’s hatred, power struggles, oppression, the powerful dominating the weak, and all manner of ugly portrayals of humanity everywhere you look.

There are also people taking to the streets, protesting, rebelling against the powers that be, rising up, and creating a building wave of change. These are very Aquarian themes, and there are still five planets transiting through Aquarius, creating a backdrop of social unrest, dynamic breakthrough, and upsetting the system. Aquarius when seen through the lens of its modern ruler, Uranus, is about awakening. More than that, it’s about collective awakening.

January has not been a smooth introduction to 2026. It feels like the waves just keep coming. There’s no sugar coating this. It IS like that. The astrology has been LOUD. It’s been challenging. Aquarius season brings up themes of rebellion and revolution; it can also spur feeling of exile, isolation, detachment and coldness. We are experiencing Uranian times, and Uranus is inherently unstable. It can be difficult to find anywhere to land, to ground. The unrest can be exciting, but at bottom it’s also just unsettling and chaotic.

This month begins with a Full Moon in Leo, in Sunday February 1st at 3:09 pm MST. Leo is the sign opposite Aquarius and it is the balance to the energy of the collective by bringing the energy of ME. Leo is the Sun. The solar center. The heart as the center of the body. It is the urge to express yourself. To roar like a lion. To claim and take up space. To shine and get attention. To witness and be witnessed. It represents the inner child — that part of us that was not shy to dance and twirl and sing and perform in front of an audience, before some voice of social or familial convention came in and told us we were being too much, too loud, too brash, too bold, too crazy, too wild. If Aquarius can be cold and detached, Leo is burning hot, Tiger, Tiger, burning bright. It’s the burning bush. It’s the king or queen holding court on the throne of our lives.

So with all these planets in Aquarius, driving this larger sense of revolution, the full moon in Leo it like striking a match and igniting the hope within our hearts. It’s a call back to what motivates us to fight for something. A movement, a resistance, a renaissance, isn’t sustainable if there’s no passion behind it. Leo brings the passion. It asks you, what did you love to do as a little child? What did you think you’d be when you grew up? Now, as adults, we are called to tend our inner children, show up for them as magnanimous parents, to be the best mother or father we could ask for. From that place, we resource ourselves. We hold the tender places and gain the strength to do the work we need to do in the world, to protest, to make art, to add our voice in some way to the collective voice of humanity. Leo is JOY and no revolution can occur without it.

Later in the week, we will be supported in excavating where we might be cut off from passion, boldness, courage, and expression in our thoughts and our relationships, when both Mercury and Venus (still in Aquarius) sextile Chiron in Aries. These supportive aspects aid us to talk about and explore those wounds in a productive way that leads to solutions, understanding, and conflict resolution.

And the last transit of the week is a Mercury square to Uranus, (and next week Venus will also square Uranus), which is again destabilizing. Squares bring tension and Uranus is, again, unsettling and shocking. Some surprising developments around communication and relationships might arise. The challenge is navigating the zingy anxious energy that Uranus can bring. Continue to ground. Uranus goes direct in Taurus mid-week, which will at least bring a sense of forward momentum, even in the midst of the earthquake times we’re living in.

An ingress of a lifetime occurs this week. Neptune leaves Pisces, where it’s been since 2012 and enters Aries, where it will remain until 2039. We will only experience this shift once in our lifetimes. Such a long transit shapes culture, shapes a generation, and shapes our lives. While Neptune was in Pisces, what dreams did you dream? What mystical poetic visions did you have? What dissolved? Where did you get lost and disoriented? What lies or illusions did you fall for — and wake up from? Pisces represents the final stage of full surrender. It’s the last sign of the zodiac, the completion of a cycle. As Neptune moves into Aries, the cycle renews itself. Aries calls us back into form. It is the spark of the first signs of life after death. It’s new, fresh, inexperienced, and bold. Aries wants us to take initiative and forge ahead with courage and bravery and maybe a little necessary recklessness. A battle demands us to become engaged, not just observe from a dissociated place “on high.” With Aries, the rubber meets the road. Neptune’s ingress into the sign of the Ram will challenge us, asking: what ideals do you believe in enough to catapult you into action to bring about concrete changes to reality?
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We still have a stellium of the Sun, Venus, Mars, Mercury and Pluto, now in Aquarius. Mars and Pluto come together on Jan. 27, which is a cataclysmic energy, with scary potential for violence, war, and traumatic ugliness. The mark of this conjunction is evident in the abuses of power running rampant throughout the fabric of our society. The positive is that it’s being revealed for what it is: the horrible reality of a culture that profits off of oppression, control, domination, and always has. May that revelation lead to transformation.
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A look ahead to February: we’re heading into eclipse season, a Mercury Retrograde, and the lifetime defining conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in Aries. All I can say is we are on a ride 🎢 Hold on tight. Or maybe just let go? Nothing will be the same…

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Something was set in stone this week with the New Moon in Capricorn. A line in the sand. A commitment. A truth. Clarity. Finality. Something was finished and with that a whole new set of possibilities and goals and intentions for the future set in motion. It was a new moon of becoming. Of meaning it. Coalescence into the reality of who you are and what you’re here to do. Powerful shit. Speaking of power, Pluto is up to something this week. The stellium that was in Capricorn is now shifting into Aquarius (HELLO AQUARIUS SEASON), and therefore crossing over Pluto. This means one after another, planets that are very personal to our psyches are getting POWERWASHED by the Lord of the Underworld. The overall sense this week is of SHIFTS. The heaviness of Capricorn gives way to the weirdness and infiniteness of Aquarius. Pluto is like a really scary bouncer, letting all the personal planets into the club of the next phase of our lives. You will be X-rayed. And then upleveled. There were so many other transits happening this week, a plethora of sextiles and trines and cazimis, but I chose to focus on the heavy hitters. I think they are making the most noise.