I’m reading an academic book called ‘Affect and Emotion’ alongside watching a show called Altered Carbon on Netflix. The connecting point between these two things is a focus on the body, emotions and conscience. In the movie the main character’s body becomes the focus of the story – a man called Takeshi, an ex-military guy, loses his original body only to have it replace with another (a ‘sleeve’). He also receives his consciousness back, which is encrypted into some sort of microchip and this is how he is able to exist in a different body, after his death.

Takeshi’s new body is also the body of a tough guy, an army-trained detective, Alpha male and hypermasculine, and conventionally sexy. However, his new sleeve is problematic since it is that of a typical white hegemonic male, because Takeshi’s body and face were originally of Japanese-Slavic descent. One way to interpret this could be a reflection on post-colonial appropriation. How whiteness and all that it represents dominates other ethnicities in our collective unconscious, and this becomes problematic since politically we seem to be focused so much on borders between people and nations, in a general revival of nationalism.

What I liked about the show was Joel Kinnaman’s ironic and mellowed performance of his Alpha male role. For examples, an interesting stylistic choice is to have Takeshi wear a pink Unicorn child’s backpack as he goes around performing toxic, hypermasculinity by shooting aggressors. In a sense, I assume this detail tries to mock the image of the Alpha Male or in a sense humanize him, by showing his attachment to ‘kitsch’, a remnant of the wounded and traumatized little boy narrative that the viewer gets glimpses of as Takeshi has flashbacks from his violent childhood (once again, Freud seems dully appeased in yet another Hollywood script).

What makes it more puzzling is that not only has his consciousness been transferred but also his intense emotions associated with a past traumatic event (losing the woman he was attached to, who also trained him into combat techniques and was together with him in his past life and as part of a military resistance against the process of re-sleeving people). In a sarcastic twist of faith, Takeshi ends up physically living out the same thing he was fighting against in his previous life: re-sleeving and priviledge (even if a veiled one, in which he seems to be more a prized slave rather than a dominant White male).

I think the show was trying to counter-weight the post-colonial argument, by portraying Kinnaman as a slave to another White rich man (this time a British, London-born man) who threatens periodically to terminate him if he doesn’t help him solve the mystery of his own murder. Interestingly, this White rich guy, chose a hypermasculine blonde male to solve the crime for reasons not so well clarified; it is almost as if Takeshi’s overwhelming physical prowess – the guy is literally ‘dripping muscles’ – does not always equate his mental capacity for analysis and puzzle-piecing.

Even if he is good at neatly ordering holograms, as we are shown how in one scene Takeshi leans back into a chair and conducts some ‘criminal detective research’, he does neglect leading clues and ends up being captured and tortured by some evil Russian-accented guys (in American movies the villains always must have either a British or a Russian accent, so not much creative imagination there).

Continuing with Wetherell, she unpicks the trajectory of how affect has been understood and studied across various domains: cultural, anthropological, sociological, philosophical, hystorical (in parts) and psychological. She is proposing an understanding of affect as affective practice, and tries to consider how discourse completes and organizes affect through the body:

Massumi’s affect is pre-individual and pre-personal in all senses. Bodies affecting bodies comes to include all of social and material life. For these scholars of affect, ‘body’ is generalised away beyond the animate obvious. A body can be a rock, a capitalist exchange relation, a cat, a philosophy, a psychotherapy group, a social movement – any whole, that is, which is composed of parts where those parts are related together in ways that can be characterised in terms of their motion, speed and rest (Baugh, 2005, p. 30; Colebrook, 2006). The subject–object distinction is irrelevant, therefore, in the analysis of affected bodies, as is any distinction between inside consciousness and outside. Affect is a post-personal force exceeding the human (p.59, Wetherell)

However in Altered Carbon bodies are easy commodities, some of them are low value and interchangeable while others are best things money can buy, they are classed and thus organized hierarchically in terms of their usefulness, age and beauty and also enhanced to produce certain hormones or substances (perfected or engineered through ‘upgrades’ and ‘downgrades’, the privately owned expensive models or the state-provided reusable ones taken from dead people).

From another perspective, and in Takeshi’s case if emotions are influenced by consciousness and they in turn permeate it, BUT at the same time these reside in a specific body, what happens when you remove the consciousness of a person and place it into a new body? I would imagine that emotive memories might still remain but they would be reordered by the individual through the experience of being in a new body, as this creates ‘fresh’ affects (distinctive to that body). Say if you switch from a frail to a muscular tough body, or from being a man to being a woman, surely the ways in which you take in the world shift slightly, not only because of your experience of being in the world has changed but also because of how other react to you (so physiological but also socially constructed). Wetherell adds: “(…) both films and politics engage through rollercoasters of affect: identification, investment, disgust, cynicism and immersion.” (p.59)

Affect in relation to time and especially of taking ones time to register experiences, could be expressed physically through meditation. This also encourages towards paying attention to bodily movements and I believe also to affect or the control over negative affect especially through stilness (indirectly through the body), but I disagree with the last sentence, since Eastern thought attributes a lot of value to what happens non-consciously as a portal into enhanced awareness and a more comprehensive processing of the mind through its constant connection with the environment:

Paying attention strongly amplifies the patterns of activation, and is correlated with the experience of consciousness. It is likely then that much of what goes on non-consciously, and the kind of phenomena revealed by priming experiments, can be made conscious given enough time, information and context. In addition, it seems likely too that much of what occurs non-consciously is perhaps simply too weak, habitual and/or unimportant to mobilise the resources for more complex processing in the particular moment (p.65)

Looking at affect and emotions is important because it reminds us that we live in bodies and in a sense, activity and non-activity pass through the body or the body brings them into being. A still body could be resting but ultimately if it’s alive it has to move to prevent muscular atrophy. Being alive and bodying therefore pushes us constantly in an imperative to move. And taking action, at least in my understanding is connected to the process of emotionaly moving along. As Wetherell adds “Affect is always ‘turned on’ and ‘simmering’, moving along, since social action is continually embodied” (p. 12). Pluto in Capricorn is all about tangible and material results, and what could be more tangible than our body, perhaps the only thing in this lifetime that we can truly ‘own’. However, Altered Carbon reminds us that even this material attachment can be temporary and superficial.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

The current transit of Jupiter in Capricorn meeting Saturn in Aquarius at the end of this month (March 2020) will bring to surface the repression of our collective willpower by traditional institutions. No matter how you began 2020, it is clear that this is a bizarre and atypical beginning of this new decade (consider the corona virus lockdowns, urging us on some level to slow down and go within). This is because the fabric of our social reality is preparing for a drastic change, or the dawn of the infamous Age of Aquarius, which astrologers, shamans and tarot readers have predicted for ages. In line with this, a string of shamans, witches, warlocks, lightworkers, starseeds, astrologers and tarot readers are appearing world-wide and it is my opinion that they will gradually replace churches and temples or other traditional places of collective devotion, representing new forms of spiritual leadership. They will also bring with them a wave of advertising scams, fraudulent identity thefts and a string of confusing information which will be dispersed with the help of the Internet.

2020 is without a doubt the year of ‘The Shift’: a massive collective transformation in our values & behaviors, and the way in which we understand our roles here on Earth, especially our gender and its connection to the Divine/Spirit/God. This isn’t only my opinion but that of more experienced astrologers as well, such as Pam Gregory, a British & fellow Piscean whose work I admire and who advocates for similar ideas. This year is an energetic minefield because it brings with it – among the usual three Mercury retrogrades – also a Venus Retrograde in Gemini (the sign of Union) awaiting us this Summer, and a Mars Retrograde in Aries (the sign of Courage) peppering our Autumn period. Both the bubbly air-sign in which Venus will be and the passionate fire-sing Mars will be, are squared by Jupiter and Pluto and the only good news is that they will be divinely supported by Saturn in Aquarius (for the most part). What all this celestial energy means is that this summer we will collectively enter a period of necessary redefinition in our relationships. A lot of us have abandoned play and love in favor of work (and in some cases over-work) just to keep on surviving or to attain higher status and wealth. This work-obsession is linked to a rise in sarcasm and emotional stoicism or toughness, that blocked us from nurturing ourselves and others (just consider the media obsessions with ‘work-life balance’ which in reality is a work-life imbalance).

It’s the first week of March as I’m writing this. Amidst the threat of the corona virus, we are having the energetic influence of three major planets, those being Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto (the rulers of karma and fate), all gathered in the sign of limits, repression, effort and hard-earned rewards, Capricorn. Moreover, Mars also joined the gang in February. Feel free to interpret Capricorn energy as you wish, but one thing is certain with this Sun sign – it is not a fun sign, and it is not at all about expansion but rather its opposite, limitation. Capricorn wants concrete and tangible results – it is not concerned with emotions but with work and effort. So there is a collective obsession at the moment with what we can touch and see, with what is practical and tangible – however, this makes us neglect our spirituality, our souls, our need to be loved and to love. Ruled by Saturn, Capricorn energy also separates.

Moreover, these 4 planets are joined by the South Node, one of the lunar nodes that represent excretion, letting go, and energy loss. This means that the more we cling to tradition, to how things were done for centuries we might get an immediate sense of comfort and stability, but we will also gradually feel depleted of energy. We go out to shop in a frenzy and then we come home to a house full of objects and no emotional warmth. We might also experience depression, heaviness and isolation, so turning to comfort-behaviors such as using drugs and alcohol might give the illusion that things will be alright and we are in love with unseen forces, but the reality is gloomy when we wake up hungover and cold (Neptune is in Pisces at the moment until 2025, and it is helping us deceive ourselves very easily).

Ironically, all this Saturnian, paternalistic energy is simply meant to remind us that what we need is true nurturing; that we lack love and understanding in our personal connections and that we are not better off just working and focusing on money to the expense of our feelings. To solve this issue, we have to blend masculine with feminine energy. And feminine energy is the path forward, to my mind. To use a cliché, the future is female, and by this I mean that what are traditionally considered ‘feminine traits’ will be an increasingly sought out forms of communication and used as a spiritual currency (exemplified in telepathy, precognition, astro-travel, clair-audience and clair-sentience etc, and potentially harvested in the future to control and mould reality for specific goals).

I think that spirituality & science will eventually blend, as people will understand that reason and emotions must work together for us to access new frequencies and to expand our consciousness. On another level, we are preparing to transcend the gender divide, just as collectively we will integrate our Divine Masculine with our Divine Feminine energy to make a spiritual leap forward in our progress as humankind on Earth. I also think our connection to Nature shall be merged with technological improvements and discoveries; it is not a case of polarizing them or rejecting one above another, since this will only lead to states of conflict. Until then we continue to love within the patriarchal social system, which is a conditional and limited way of loving. However, the rules of Saturn, of the land, of governing, and of the patriarchy are increasingly dismantled. So even if institutions seem to have garnered more and more power in recent years, they are actually like a super-nova, shining brightest right before it implodes.

With Pluto in Capricorn, politically and financially there is no middle-ground: we have the rich and the poor, the powerful and the vulnerable (we saw this since 2011 with the dramatic decrease of the middle-class in some of the wealthiest countries in the world). Globally, we are witnessing a desperate fight for the far-right to gain political control, and we see the corruption of democracy in the wake of ‘fake news’ fiascos. People are allowed to practice democracy only by means of manipulated votes; their elected representatives, instead of supporting the interests of many and helping society progress by tackling the string of environmental, economic and social problems at hand, mostly spend their political mandates engaged in power struggles which polarize them even further. With Saturn in Aquarius, the so-called ‘underdogs’ might experience a slow rise in power and new leaders might emerge from the poor and oppressed masses which genuinely might represent the interests of many (similar to spiritual leaders such as Martin Luther King and Gandhi), but it will be a battle of power and it will require effort (at least until Jupiter catches ground and stations in Aquarius in 2021). Such leaders might have it tough at the beginning of their career, but they shall foreground the general political mess and further underline the incapacity to lead of present, corrupt politicians. So I think that new political alternatives will gradually appear from this Spring.

In the meantime, ordinary people, like you and me, are left on-the-outside-looking-in, engaged in these survival-power struggles, and we are left to find creative ways to stoically manage our lives. The good part in all of this mess, is that we now have a spiritual, postcolonial and feminist awareness which is increasing each year in different parts of the world. People self-educate and have more discussions and debates than ever; we also have social media and the Internet, which allow people to speak up in spite of this ongoing institutional control. Despite having groups censured and denied the right to speak, we (as in the many) will only be kept under this pressure cauldron until Jupiter enters Aquarius next year. As Jupiter will join Saturn in Aquarius next year, the collective will finally get to breathe a general sigh of relief, and witness or participate in building new social foundations in the wake of Pluto’s ‘destruction’ of our trust in current governing powers.

On this background, the increasing rise of tarot readers, astrologers, shamans, doulas, counsellors, personal development trainers and life coaches is not something to fear but something to celebrate. More and more people are quitting their 9 to 5s to follow spiritually-based work. I find it beautiful that we are spiritually-led to work in service to others; to work by healing and revitalizing the tired hearts and souls of many, engaged for so long in corporate production, in the constant rat-race of capitalism (I might sound like a communist here, but we do have very few alternative economic systems in the world at the moment, so social cooperatives might be the future). Something has to give. A shift in the collective is bubbling up to the surface preparing us for the landscape over-haul of 2023-2024, when Pluto in Aquarius will enter and slowly begin the transformation of our communities, our connection to technology, our increasing dependence on machines but also – and this is the part that I find most significant – our link to the divine and to the energies of our solar system. This is because Uranus, the planetary ruler of Aquarius governs over astrology and the occult. It is also representing the Star energy in tarot, so there is renewed hope for mankind after living for so long in the Deviled Goat’s energy (aka Capricorn).

On a social and psychological level, people are increasingly becoming more aware of the chakras, third eye awakenings, manifestation abilities, capacities to co-create with Spirit, the different dimensions of existence, indigo children, how energy travels and can be manipulated or transformed etc. If you smirk at these things, this is just a reminder that this ‘trend’ is not about to stop – it might even evolve as our technological and scientific discoveries shall blend with our heightened awareness and developing intuition to produce new forms of mass, spiritual power (and pre-empting the Pluto in Pisces era). This blending could lead to ‘ghost in the shell/machine’ types of relationships. It will be interesting to witness how things will develop and I am certainly excited about the future, even if I remain cautious regarding the shadow side of the Pluto in Aquarius era (for example, low-Leo energy such as massive Ego trips or the wide-distribution of robotic sex-slave).

My hope is that within this newly emerging social landscape, and with the help of spirituality, many people will find the ‘God within’ (to quote Rilke) and will likely start to ‘see feelingly’ (as Shakespeare said), rather than completely cool-off their emotions to emulate our robotic counterparts or ‘alienate’ themselves from other people. And that’s were ‘we’ come in, the spiritual ‘freaks’, the new leaders that are able to use our skills and abilities to help people connect with their life purpose and with their hearts. What I mean by the word ‘leader’ in this context is certainly not domination, but guidance; spiritual leaders are those whom we meet, only when we are ready for them; just like that the old-fashioned saying ‘When the student is ready, the master appears’. These new spiritual leaders are the daughters and sons of the witches that could not be maimed and killed during Europe’s Dark Ages, the ones that survived the Inquisition, famines and the Plague, countless wars and oppressive political regimes, and lived on to empower others in the present. Our ancestors guide us to speak up and express ourselves, to embrace who we are and to heal; thereby we have a duty to remain connected to Spirit and to help others remain profoundly human in the midst of this massive shift.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Hello Saturns in Aquarius (December 2020 – March 2023) & Saturns in Pisces (March 2023 – February 2026)! These are the two main constellations that Saturn will influence in the next 6 years, so I thought a field-guide would be useful. People with these placements will be hit by this heavy energy first. However, the lists I compiled in this post apply to any other Saturn placements (and even to Saturn’s second return around the age of 55-57) because the questions are framed in such a way to help you do the inner work required whenever Saturn returns to your natal degree. In this post I won’t insist on what a Saturn return is, but for ease of reference I created this clip:

Returning now to the lists, I created these because Saturn wants you to reflect on pragmatic and tangible goals. The first list is a set of questions to ask yourself when you are experiencing a difficult situation caused by Saturn’s pressure. These questions can serve as a ‘touchstone’ to remind you that there is work to be done, that this will be a process throughout the transit (from beginning to middle to end), and that there are solutions to the challenges that you are experiencing. Use this list both for Saturn’s transit through a house and for Saturn’s transiting aspects to natal planets. So one way to deal pragmatically with this energy, is to ask yourself the following questions:

1. What can I learn from this experience?
2. How can I develop more maturity in this area of my life or this part of myself?
3. What do I need to be responsible for? How can I accept more responsibility in this area of my life?
4. How do I honestly feel about developing this area? Do I have resistance?
5. Am I judging people who are expressing qualities that I am learning to develop during this transit?
6. Am I willing to do the necessary work to develop these parts of myself?
7. Am I taking myself seriously? (Or am I just insisting that others do?)
8. The last time I experienced a similar Saturnian transit (7, 14, 21, or 28 years ago), what did I experience and, importantly, now that I have another chance, what can I do differently? (this applies to moments when Saturn was squaring or sitting opposite from your Sun)

It’s important to write you questions down and by using a pen and paper in order to activate the mind-brain connection (however, feel free to use a laptop as well if you find that words are pouring out of you faster). If you find it difficult to consider these questions, below is a simplified list of actions that I used during my own Saturn return period and which might be useful to you:

• put your trust in someone and something

• synthetize your knowledge into something that transcends limitations

• travel, explore, be open to immerse yourself in knowledge just for knowledge’s sake

• don’t be ashamed for liking different & odd philosophies
• don’t reject parts of yourself, embrace as much as you are aware of

• be ready to begin loving yourself and valuing tangible results: money, stability and objects; be also ready to share these with others (law of attraction)

• know the house where your natal Saturn is placed in your birth-chart, since this is the area of life where the energy will be played out (mine was the 2nd, and the test was – Can I make money? Can I find a job I love that pays me well enough? Can I know my true worth?)

I think you noticed that the key here is to examine your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the area of life (or the astrological house) within which your Saturn is residing. It’s important to consider not only the astrological sign your Saturn is in and any aspects that your Saturn is making to other planets and asteroids, but also the house in which it resides, because that will color your Saturn return in a different light than that of your generational peers. If your Saturn is in Aquarius in the 8th house, then Scorpionic themes of betrayal, sexuality, power and healing will emerge for you and you’ll need to use your mental power and communication (Aquarius) to overcome these challenges. If your Saturn is in Pisces in the 10th house (ruled by Capricorn) then issues of authority, leaderships, professionalism and career responsibility will emerge for you during your Saturn return and you might need to use your faith and imagination (Pisces) to live up to public, 10th house expectations.

For example, my Saturn is placed in my second house which is traditionally the house of Taurus. My Saturn return brought up a lot of Taurean themes in my life which are related to my struggle with pleasure, work, self-worth and earning my income independently. During the 2 years and a half that the return lasted, I had to un-learn negative beliefs about money and acquiring material goods. On a spiritual level, I had to amp up my self-worth through a disciplined, daily routine and by exercising. The optimism and vitality I earned during this transit didn’t happen over night but came incrementally by observing each day how my mind was expanding through study – I was finishing my PhD – and how my body was becoming fitter through sports. It was the work that brought me the joy, confidence and pleasure. So I had to reflect on these aspects during my Saturn return and to consider where to make an investment of my energy (whether romantic, spiritual, economic or educational). I chose to focus on myself and my PhD and to go for a really well-paid post and see if I get in. So I had to develop a good relationship with money and the material world, but also practice making calculated risks, so I exercised my natal Sagittarius energy (risk) in the house of Taurus (carefulness at work and with money). I was a relatively poor student working towards my PhD when the transit began and a full-time lecturer with a nice salary and a good pension plan by the time the transit ended. I was employed in a permanent position at an institution in the UK, even though I was an immigrant without a British passport. So in a way you could say I proved my worth as a foreigner (Sagittarius). Some things I had to consider during this period: If I wanted to make more money, I needed to ask myself how I felt about money? Did I value it? How did I treat it? Was I unappreciative? Did I complain about it, so it didn’t want to come near me? Is money my friend? Or a pain in the back? Did I think I deserved to have nice things? Was I willing to put in the hard work to achieve my dreams? What were my values? And was I living my life in accordance to them? Did I see myself as valuable as worthy? etc. During my Saturn return I developed as well a spiritual approach to money and realized that I should spend money or give it only to those causes, things and people I love and appreciate. I developed more gratitude and made my financial energy flow more easily by understanding the process of equitable give-and-take (law of prosperity).

In general, Saturn returns are about taking responsibility and ownership. They are periods of maturation, wherein we forcefully have to grow up. You will need to choose what you want to tangibly achieve at this time and this limitation could feel quite painful if you previously enjoyed just exploring your options and possibilities. Your commitment will manifest into a prestigious job, getting married, having a baby or purchasing your first home, getting a degree or a travelling challenge or opening up your own business. So, to ace this transit focus on who you are and what you can bring to the world in practical and material ways. Again, you can ask yourself:

What do I deserve?

Why do I deserve it?

Why do you deserve it more than somebody else ?

What can I bring to the table?

What are my gifts and my talents?

How can I use them to get what I want in an ethical way?

Build your foundations on that. Let go of what you used to hold onto in your twenties (for 1st time returners) or forties (for 2nd Saturn returners) – build up from what you are good at, work with what you have in front of you or around you at the moment, and you will be able to add on more, in time. Let go of the things that have created your life this far, if they are not of quality. What’s not meant to last and what does not fit on your lifepath, will be removed from your life even if you try to desperately hold on to it. The most important reflection during this period, is to think about who you are inside and to build a solid foundation within. For those of you that have been highly responsible until your Saturn return, a change might be needed to help you gain more material stability or some financial rewards are due during your return. For those expecting changes or undergoing them, then don’t be afraid to try something new. The trick here is to let go of a constant need for external security and to create a bit of chaos of your own. This is because until you know exactly what you’re looking for, your reality is not going to feel good. So in this process you might need to drop a significant relationship, or a marriage, to commit to something else or to take on a new responsibility.

Keep this word in mind ‘responsibility’ because Saturn wants you to be accountable for things if they go wrong – you can repair things, you can let them fall by the wayside and move one; you now have some solid decisions to make and your character will be revealed in these choices. I recommend to make them in accordance with your values and not with what others want, because at the end of the day you are the one that has to go to sleep with your conscience.

Remember as well, that you don’t get strength of character by being ruthless, you get it by really knowing yourself. Saturn’s pressures might tempt you to lash out and hurt others, but such actions will not improve your circumstances. Also and highly important, you will feel how during this period things are naturally slowing down, your body is also showing the first signs of old age (initial first gray hairs and wrinkles, tiredness, severe hangovers etc.). So use the extra time to learn about who you really are, not who everyone else wants you to be, and learn to create a daily self-care regime, with periods of rest followed by periods of activity. Calmly and maturely figure things out, because when you find your centre, everything around you won’t seem as crazy and chaotic. The biggest reward is that at the end of a successful Saturn return, you know who you are and you’ll receive a tangible reward for all the effort you put into your maturation. In time, all the trials and tribulations will make sense and with the benefit of hindsight you’ll see just how far you’ve grown. And also remember that transits will continue to happen, as the lessons of other planetary transits will become gradually more important. Your Saturn is important but not the end all and be all. The Universe gives us ample time to correct our course and grow in life, so be kind to yourself in the process.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Should women chase men romantically and sexually with the same intensity that men are allowed to (and in most cases expected to)? Why is it that female sexual obsession is still sickly romanticized and taboo? Is it because it tends to emasculate men? And is it really emasculation of manhood or simply the contravening of a toxic and patriarchal form of masculinity, one that is expected to dominate and control sexuality? Would nurturing, progressive men appreciate being desired and sought? Usually women who seek their own pleasure and end up emasculating men are called Jezebels, Jolenes or Liliths, all fantasy-interpretations of our collective fears of female empowerment and its unbridled limits.

Let me tentatively reflect on these questions in this post, by focusing on two film representations of feminine desire that to my mind depict Lilith-like romantic obsessions: Isabelle Adjani playing Adele Hugo in The Story of Adele H (1975) a movie by François Truffaut, and Maria Bonnevie as Dina, in I am Dina (2002) directed by Ole Bornedal. I enjoyed watching these movies but they also feel provocative and as I wondered about what made them so intense, this article was born.

I spent a lot of time while growing up, watching tons of movies and avidly reading books, and it is there that I learned a lot about male-female relationships. Sure, you could argue that these are not real depictions of gender relationships but they do touch upon core concerns that the collective has with certain gendered topics. Only later, once I actually started dating and having sex, did I realize how removed from reality where these Hollywood portrayals of ‘cardboard’ masculinity and femininity. I met men of different cultures and interestingly in many situations I was placed in the role of the confident chaser. Then as I continued to watch European movies, I encountered two that resonated so deeply with some of the female romantic and sexual power I often had mirrored in my own life (although in my life it was less epic and it never reached obsession, as I easily tire of relating, preferring to return to my cozy solitude). These fantastic portrayals of female madness and intensity stuck with me for a long time, not necessarily due to the fact that I support madness in any shape or form, but that when you are a passionate woman yourself it is refreshing to finally witness the passion of other women unleashed onto the screen with such a devil-may-care attitude.

One thing I found delightful was how aware these two female characters are of their madness, and how they owned it and questioned it, even as they allowed their strong feelings to overcome them. There is a sense of freedom in acting on intense emotions in life, although the consequences in both cases are disastrous. Dina for example lets us know that “Kindness isn’t exactly what I’m best known for” and her story ends on a memorable cliffhanger. Adele, on the other hand feels that she is descending into a completely distorted version of reality, but compared to the domestic alternatives she was offered (limited in that century for women), she relishes in this intense and made-up love story that keeps her emotionally bound to the emotionally unavailable, social butterfly represented by a young English officer called Lieutenant Pinson.

When I was younger and I saw these movies I instantly loved not only how they seemed to take feelings to such an extreme (which I identified with) but also the freedom that these women enjoyed – these were women who travelled freely, were beautiful but not confined by decorum, managed their own money, and challenged men. Dina especially also sleeps with whomever she pleases and even rejects her husband’s advances on her wedding day (in a really funny scene played together with Gerard Depardieu). Dina also owns her own property and marries an older man, has a child with another (a stable boy) but falls in love with a third man, a Russian revolutionary poet. The melodrama increases the more you watch this film, which is why it is so mesmerizing. Decisions made impulsively, driven by instinct and emotion, one would say…almost like living as freely as a man, sacrificing consequences for the pleasure of the moment. Call me strange but I’ve always associated women with reason and calculation and men with impulse and pride, but maybe it’s just my Eastern-European upbringing. So it’s refreshing to see an unleashing of emotion, instinct, desire and emotion onto the screen which is led by women.

In astrology, one asteroid in particular carries this mark of instinctive female chaos, of deeply sexual magnetism paired with wounding and suffering and that is Lilith (asteroid number 1181). Astronomically, she lies in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, but mythologically Lilith was the Bible’s first woman, forgotten by (patriarchal) history because she refused to cater to Adam’s spousal needs and preferred to roam through the desert copulating with wild beasts than to serve her man. In lieu of her depravity, Adam had Eve created for him, a much gentler and docile version of the primordial woman. Some writers argued that Lilith became Lucifer’s counter-part, having in common with him the fact that they both led gilded lives in Heaven but their Divine disobedience angered God who banished them into the Shadows. Lilith is associated with infanticide, emasculation, intense erotic dreams, and romantic ruin. But more recently feminist thinkers have rescued her from the crypt of mostly male-dominant historical writings to usher her as a heroine of contemporary female empowerment and independence. Is Lilith a Demon? Or a Feminist Liberator? I like her myth and what she now represents, but am also cautious when working with Lilith’s energy and invoking her or dedicating rituals to her, mostly because her wild energy is hard to negotiate with. It’s fascinating at the same time to see how much Lilith lives in the roles of Adele and Dina as they are acted out on the screen.

Psychologically, one could interpret these two women’s actions and behaviours as unconsciouly searching for the displaced father figure within themselves, as struggling to reconcile with their animus and thereby they are locked into intense desire dynamics with the men in their lives. Dina desires her father’s love and approval, which she had been denied in her childhood due to accidental matricide, while Adele seeks the aproval and love of an emotionally unavailable modern-day version of the player.

For me personally, my attraction to them would be the opposite: reconciling with my anima, by accepting the image of the mother. But what is the anima actually? This term was coined by Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy (and Freud’s colleague), who considered it to be something similar to a universal symbol, that resides in our collective unconscious, or what he called ‘an archetype’. Anima is together with the Animus, part of the ways in which we magnetically gender certain aspects of our life – when we say ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘Father Sky’ etc. Here’s in a nutshell what he was referring to:

Ok, so how can Jung’s psychology lesson can be adapted to practical experience? I’ll illustrate by using my own experience since it’s the one I know best and it’s something I can share in this space. I grew up with a mother I perceived as cold, stressed and erratic, a mother who exerted power and negativity rather than warm, nurturing mothering. I therefore took in from an early age, an anima that reflected these characteristics. In in my life, I feel drawn to tough & powerful women on some level, because unconsciously I grew up experiencing the love of a tough, powerful mother who was emotionally withholding and dangerously envious of me. Not coincidentally, I find myself continuing on this path of working mostly with female bosses, in relationships of authority, with whom I constantly have to negotiate my boundaries, control levels of envy, and clear out toxicity through how I speak with them. By encountering and working through these karmic relationships, I discover my inner strength and develop spiritually as I heal my relationship to the distorted feminine within (and indirectly, I heal my relationship to my mother).

The myth of Snow White applies very well in this case, just that in this situation the step-mother is actually my birth-mother. When I became aware of this sad truth, it hurt a lot to acknowledge it – that the person who is supposed to nurture you and care for you was keeping me in a state of low energy, bound and controlled, and even made me sick quite often, so she could feel good about herself. As I grew older, I see these patterns very clearly and I can emotionally detach from them and to accept them. I now observe rather than react and feel pity rather than anger. And why? Well it’s because I’m learning to love myself, in spite of all the hatred, envy and vitriol I keep having thrown my way. I’m learning on my spiritual journey how to alchemize the vitriol inherent in toxic relationships into the golden clarity of wisdom.

Nonetheless, I keep the hope that one day, I’ll encounter my soul tribe and not have to lead this battle alone. Each challenge helps me grow stronger in the awareness that I am worthy and valuable and unique. Healing in my case takes the form of writing and analysis much like for Adele, while for other characters such as Dina, healing her connection to the ‘wounded feminine archetype’ and surpassing the guilt of having killed her mother, took the form of playing the cello, using music as a way to make herself whole again. Having said this, an interesting exercise would be to check if your own natal Lilith placement is compatible with your mother’s own Lilith natal placement, and this can be easily achieved by exploring a synastry chart.

Being truly feminine does not need to feel like giving into false modesty and learned helplessness (two practices I actively try to control in my own behavior, even if they are so deeply ingrained in feminine socialization practices), and I enjoy these movies because they remind me of these things (also, they feature very good-looking actors, so it’s a pleasure to watch them). I guess my experience is one example of many that show that change is possible, even one that occurs at a deep, psychological level.

In connection to the two characters above & Lilith as a female Archetype, the current Star Wars series also spoke volumes on a soul level regarding how we perceive female empowerment, as shown in Rey’s character. I was so happy to see how female power shown here through courage, healing and mirroring others’ destruction to themselves, was exemplified in the Rise of Skywalker. Symbolically Rey Skywalker was also costumed in white throughout the whole movie, which to me represents her role as Lightworker. So could we envision female power as something pragmatic, brave and not necessarily soaked in darkness? Do followers of Eve always have to be docile & obedient in order to be the good ‘gals’?

I mean Rey is not only spiritually linked to a dark male character (Kilo Ren), but she foregoes her weapon, a lightsaber, for the power of her spirit. By training her mind, her intuition and her body as she telepathically connects to her opposite (in what felt like a deep twin flame reference), Rey manages to turn Kilo Ren back into Ben through her perseverance and conviction of ‘killing him with kindness’. She also takes Leia as her Jedi mentor and not Obi Wan Kenobi or Yoda (two previous male representations – although, to be honest, I’m still not sure what gender Yoda is), and she heals the serpent-monster in the desert cave through touch rather than chopping its head off by displaying violence. Rey also cares more about her friends and her life-path goals, rather than her love life and in some way, this is how she is different than Adele or Dina. I enjoyed the ending to the George Lucas-created saga, because of how it shifted female representation in a blockbuster.

I enjoy working through my past and childhood wounds with the help of movies and literature, and perhaps this post might inspire you to see associations as well between silver-screen projections and themes that are taking place in your own life. It’s almost like a form of self-therapy, which I think increases self-love (and the more loving we are with ourselves the better our reality becomes and the more our relationships improve). My only regret is that there aren’t more movies I could include in this post – if you know of others, please recommend some (and also let me know why do you think they are unique representations of femininity on film).

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

A Mercury retrograde is an excellent 3-weeks period for going on a vacation or taking a couple of days off from work, for visualizing and creating art or music, for doing deep healing, resting, reflecting and re-evaluating. This is because the rational mind is temporarily submerged in a state of creative moratorium, so it is best to not push for logical explanations where there are few to be found. Check where your Mercury is placed in your birth-chart, which house it is in and if there are any neighboring planets or asteroids there, or get in touch with me for a birth-chart reading by sending me an email at macht.alexandra.georgiana.pfa@gmail.com.

Your Mercury placement can affect your energy differently according to the placements: whether it is your body and the social opportunities you attract (your Ascendant), your goals in life and your vitality (the Sun), your unconscious patterns and ways of nurturing yourself (the Moon), communication and processing speed (Mercury return), your relationships and sense of self-worth (Venus), your sexuality and desires (Mars), your structures and boundaries (Saturn), your connection to spirit and the divine (Neptune), your capacity to heal and transform (Pluto), your individuality and sense of freedom (Uranus), or your sense of growth and luck (Jupiter). Make sure you also read this article I wrote which describes each of the 12 Mercury placements: https://spiritualsocial.wordpress.com/2020/02/09/502/

During a Mercury retrograde it is also an excellent time to do some healing cleanses, some energetic replenishments and some chakra balancing tune-ups. Here is one I swear by:

In addition, I keep updating my list of tips and tricks to stave off negative energy & one thing I learned recently is that rose oil and rose essence are excellent against negative entities. This information floated in the ether for a while now but it was this current Mercury retrograde that really made me pay attention. You can use roses in your home either as potted plants or freshly cut flowers (but make sure to throw them away as soon as you see the first signs of withering, because otherwise dead flowers are harsh energy for your home’s Chi & can attract bad luck). Another way to use them is that you could burn some rose-scented incense sticks or use essential rose oil in your bubble bath and even in your tea (I’m currently passionate about a brand of Romanian black tea scented with Jasmine and roses). Alternatively, and for a deeply sensual sleep, sprinkle some rose oil drops on your bed sheets as you can sniff their essence as you slowly drift to sleep. I also like to put some rose oil in my hair, for a more naturally perfumed experience. If oil is too much for you, you might want to try a rose-water mist for your body or to cleanse your witchy work-space before you divinate. And you can even use rose water in cooking, here is a beautiful recipe: https://mynameisyeh.com/mynameisyeh/2017/5/saffron-cardamom-and-rosewater-tiramisu

For centuries roses have been associated with femininity and love, the fulfillment of one’s own deeply intimate wishes. Which makes me think that perhaps there is a link between ‘being in our feelings’ and getting in touch with feminine energy and protecting ourselves from toxicity, negativity and low vibrating relationships. It is femininity that protects and not the male savior complex…hmmm. It’s a highly romantic retrograde because Mercury is in the emotional and poetic sign of Pisces, so I guess roses of all kinds come to mind 🙂

And just to complement this romantic and dreamy energy of the current Mercury retrograde in Pisces with the focus on rose essences, I offer below a list of some of the songs I consider to have deeply healing messages, songs that spark emotions within and can help guide you into a different world for a while. I’ve collected these songs throughout the years and they have helped me get through some very dark times, times when getting up and going about my life was nearly impossible, when letting go and moving on proved more difficult than I thought. My heart was broken only to be renewed again by the healing and universal power of music. I hope these songs serve you & remind you that in spite of everything, life is beautiful.

You can return to this healing playlist every time you want to get into your feelings, during this deeply spiritual Mercury Retrograde in Pisces and beyond:

Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah

The National – Val Jester

The Antlers – Kettering

Doris Day – Dream a little dream of me

Nils Frahm – Promises

Massive Attack – Protection

Fka Twigs – Cellophane

Warpaint – Baby

A Silver Mt Zion – 13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of your Bed

Lamb – Gabriel

Ólafur Arnalds ft. Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir – Particles

Bon Iver – Skinny Love

The Everly Brothers – All I have to do is dream

Radiohead – The Pyramid Song

Rihanna feat Mikky Ekko – Stay

Glass Animals – Cocoa Hooves

Madonna – Take a bow

Cat Power – I found a reason

My Bloody Valentine – Sometimes (best with headphones)

Tindersticks – Dick’s Slow Song

The XX – Our song

Bush – Letting the cables sleep

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Recently, I uncovered that Nr. 6 is an ideal number for your home, as it is represented by the planet Venus, the ruler of the finer things in life, beauty and love. This was brought to my awareness only when I moved into my new flat, two weeks ago and felt curious about the apartment’s numbers which added up to a 6. Since then I find myself reflecting on 6, 66 and 666 as numbers which in the collective unconscious are usually associated with the Devil, fornication, bad luck and unfortunate events, and yet occult teachers who dabble in numerology tell us that 6 is a number deeply connected to Venusian energy.

How did we get it twisted for so many years ? Well apparently, Christianity had something to do with it, and the bad rap that this number got went hand in hand with most things that suppress the Divine feminine and have distorted how we understand femininity in two unimaginative and extreme polarities: either the Maddona or the Whore, the weeping mother or sex-starved, fallen woman. Due to my sociological education and training as a feminist thinker, I am highly critical of the religious background I was born into, one that seems to continue to infiltrate common sense thinking and propagate the same tired clichés regarding what it means to be a woman (the man’s so called subordinate, a mere ‘rib’) & a man (i.e. built in the image of God).

Fortunately, some aspects of reality are far removed from popular thinking beliefs, as both men and women live their lives at varying degress of strength and capabilities and vulnerabilities, but these beliefs continue to hold water, and for some unreflective and unaware people, they continue to represent ‘the natural truth’. Life would be easier if there would be one obsolete truth that we could all follow, but things don’t function so neatly in practice.

So, to counteract the trend of distorting femininity, I keep reflecting on Venus and the meaning of 666, and I find that this number represents nothing to fear and everything to consider. Since I moved into my 6-themed new home, I spontaneously created a shrine to Venus in my bathroom one night when I was feeling depleted of energy. I drank some Weissbeer and took a bubble bath. Slowly, I regained my energy, and got into a routine of self-care: eating well and drinking water, doing morning yoga, putting on make-up and feeling inspired to write and share ideas.

At the moment, I feel a very strong Venusian presence in my life, and I am not entirely sure if this came with the place or if I am entering a period of my life where with age came the wisdom to simply accept my femininity, to be kinder to myself as a woman and accept that taking care of myself does not mean that I am subordinate to men, just that society chooses to see me this way (and well to see women, in general). I like to live in this discrepancy between what I think and feel about my gender and what society tells me I should feel and think. I am aware that it would be easier to blindly give in and conform to social norms and traditions, but the cost is to live within a sado-masochistic relationship with myself, one in which I hate myself for the things I want, for the skills I have and the personality I choose to express. So I’ve decided to let go of pain in my life, to slowly shed learned helplessness and compulsory modesty since I’ve no longer been able to lie to myself like I used to.

In astrology the suppression of the feminine is tied in with Venus-Pluto aspects. Venus represents our way of loving someone, how we earn money, how we value ourselves. The astrological sign in which our Venus falls and the house into which it is placed, determines our relational worth. A Venus in Scorpio or Venus conjunct Pluto would show an individual who represents soft power under external duress, a person who constantly transforms their value and loving patterns. So thinking of the symbolic dance between Venus (the bright) and Pluto (the dark) inspired me to write this post.

To offer some guidance, if you have strong Venus-Pluto links in your chart, the combinations, can be the following:

• a square: this represents explosive sexual tension, the kind that builds up in time and one day finds an unexpected outlet, also the person is perceived as sexual and lusty and attracts a lot of unsolicited sexual attention from others, heated arguments, power struggles)
• an opposition: an aspect of imbalance and excess, either too much sex or too little, too much money or none at all, a lot of personal worth or feeling dejected by others, a game of hiding the true Self or coming out with an uproar, keeping secrets or engaging in overt healing, one is empowered through beauty and a personal sense of style or feels awkward and disempowered.
• a trine or a sextile: these are harmonious aspects, they bring a lot of dignified sexual partners, tantric sex, being a really good secret keeper and confidant; if money is earned through sex there is a sense of quality and respect about it, of luxury and it is kept hush-hush; natives with such placements are also excellent artists.
• a conjunction: which works the same way as having Venus in Scorpio, since Pluto rules Scorpio – and makes the person a center for power and sexuality, for secrecy and smouldering good looks; this aspect imbues the native with strong intuition and keen analytical insights, as well. In my interpretation of this natal aspect, Venus-Pluto conjunctions are creators of sexual and healing karma, rather than karma receivers, which means they have a lot of power to change people’s lives as long as they become aware of their intense magnetism and use it for good and healing (otherwise it backfires on them and involves them into Ego-scenarios were they believe people ‘hate them for being beautiful’)

One way to deal with this energy is to accept your vulnerability rather than act from a place of constant defense and embodying aggressive, macho power. This means that one could encounter violence in life and respond with soft power, by drawing from the power inherent in the feminine archetype. Examples can be found in the amazing book of Leymah Gbowee, inspired by the events of the civil war in Libya, which details how groups of unarmed, vulnerable women of all ages, together with their children, used their vulnerability to counteract toxic, militant masculinities through comming together to pray and help each other. In one episode even, when threatened with sexual aggression from military men, Leymah described how she managed to disempower men by getting completely naked and oferring herself up, treating the sexual exchange not with fear but almost as a business exchange. When faced with this dignified surrender, men lost the capacity to draw pleasure from domination – which unconsciously lies at the root of sado-masochistic sex, the kind of sex that is used to control women’s bodies and is considered manly and normal in some cultures – and in some cases, men gave up using sexuality as a way to punish their victims. By meeting this soft power, they felt momentarily emasculated and lost the incentive to gain power through exploiting others’ weaknesses. This experience reveals the dynamics of gender intimidation and offers a soft strategy of overcoming Venusian power challenges.

The problem is not that women are the weaker sex, but that they are taught repeatedly to think they are weak, so that men psychologically can feel they are stronger by dominating them (this is what psychologists have coined as the ‘learned helplessness’ complex or in more popular terms, being a damsel in distress that needs a hero). This power dynamic brings nothing but tension between genders, and while it might lead to sex and procreation, it does not lead to fulfilling and respectful relationships where both partners can grow, because there is an imbalance of power which constantly has to be measured against human worth and dignity (which continues to be problematically gendered in society). Releasing this tension means that women need to let go of ‘learned helplessness’ and the pervasive idea that they are weak and frail and thereby ‘feminine’ and men need to let go of ‘machismo’, and the idea that they are real men if they drink hard, fuck hard and work hard. No. We can all drink, work and have sex, we can all build muscles and have feelings, we all eat and argue and cry and create. We can all be moral, peaceful and loving. Both men and women have estrogen and testosterone in their bodies, and just the simple fact that we have it in different quantities shouldn’t be the defining pillar of how we structure our social relationships. Well the upcoming 22-years long transit of Pluto in Aquarius is going to bring this point home to most of us, as we will see the collective transformation of the social fabric.

Indeed, some do some of these things better than others, but gender does not have anything to do with it as much as we traditionally thought – it is just the ideas that we attach to gender and we believe to be ‘a natural & inalienable truth’ because thinking along such stiff lines gives most people a sense of comfort; these ingrained beliefs about femininity end up perpetuating a string of boring, unimaginative comments on women’s plight. And this is where Pluto comes in: to disrupt what is stagnant in our psyches, to transform what is suffocating and does not help us all grow on a soul level. Even if Pluto has been demoted from the rank of a ‘planet’, it continues to pack an energetic punch and because Pluto transits are so long (it takes the planet aprox 248 years to complete its movement around the Sun and through the 12 zodiac constellations!) this transform happens slowly and in bursts which are usually triggered by the aspects Pluto is making to other luminaries (the most infamous ‘detonator’ being Pluto squaring Uranus which represents a period of intense, extreme, often violent, rapid social growth)

Individuals with strong Venus-Pluto aspects often exert a fascinating power of seduction over both genders, and project outwardly an unforgetable androgynous look. Some examples include Kurt Cobain (Pluto in the first house, Venus conjunct Sun & opposite Pluto) or Wynona Ryder (Sun conjunct Venus in the sign ruled by Pluto, Scorpio):

So how is the number 6 then integrated with Venus-Pluto aspects? To sum up my initial analysis, I would say that individuals who have a Venus-Pluto imprint in their chart could live out their soft power by experiencing moments of disempowerment in their personal connections which shame them and urge them to rise into their own self-control and empowered thinking. These tough lessons happen through the intermediaries of money, sex and personal agreements, and through how their body, style and beauty is perceived. With such an astrological signature, they also have to negotiate their trust limit and adapt it in order to build strong bonds of intimacy with others. So, if Venus-Pluto people go through a life-long process of bringing to their conscious awareness more and more of their self-worth in the world, this can increase their distorted self-image which usually stems from toxic relationships from their childhood or inter-relational trauma (usually of a sexual kind) experienced in the process of growing up. The Devil then becomes Venus again, as strife and anger is symbolically converted into peace and harmony in their personal relationships. So in a way you could see this symbolic process of the Venus-Pluto person as a reclaiming of the original meaning of the number 6’s energy. I think the number 6 can also be reshaped and rescued into our collective awareness, since it carries Venusian energy and Pluto can purge its bad reputation throughout time and helps us collectively reappreciate the number 6. The 6 can be transformed, or rather returned back to its original, pre-Christian meaning, from the number of the Devil to the number of Venus and Love.

Numerology is useful and wonderful, because it does exactly this, it rescues the numbers 6, 66 and 666 from a dogmatic meaning to one purely focused on the vibration of the symbol. By stripping away the religiously uptight and judgmental understanding of Venus – seen as something ‘amoral’ because of her association with pleasure and prosperity – and by celebrating her as the Goddess of Love, Beauty and Pleasure once more, we could collectively learn to heal one aspect of the Divine Feminine and perhaps begin to value soft power again, to prize intuition together with courage, and strength together with vulnerability. That is my hope.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Have you ever wondered if your Mercury placement can affect the quality of your self-talk? It took me some courage to finally write about the act of talking to myself, mostly because this is one of the first symptoms of an aggravated mental health condition. Then I started searching the web with ‘Dr. Google’ (obviously, the normal thing to do when you consider ‘accurate’ self-diagnosis) and I found some resources which brought me a sense of solace:

• http://theconversation.com/is-talking-to-yourself-a-sign-of-mental-illness-an-expert-delivers-her-verdict-77058

• https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-minute-therapist/201712/do-you-talk-yourself

And especially this podcast which was informative and sweet (and I agree with the speaker that our inner narratives can often feel like court hearings, depending on how we use the inner critic):

• https://podtail.com/podcast/help-me-be-me/ep-121-inner-dialogues-when-others-trigger-us-we-g/

I enjoy the fact that the first article mentions the work of Jean Piaget, who was one of the first psychologists who described the mental stages of development for children. Piaget found that there were largely 4 of them: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational and formal abstract (or formal operational). In his view, there is a link between the development of our mind from childhood onwards, and moments of intense emotional upheaval. Terapeutic stories depict how in moments of intense emotional upheaval and trauma, adults could regress to a younger version of their Selves, a less sophisticated one, a version of their Self usually experienced during childhood. Or in Piaget’s terms, when we grow up we develop naturally from stage 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 so we could operate at the level of abstract thinking (even if many psychologists following from Piaget onwards, debunked this neat linear development of the mind). However, in situations where we experience trauma – with its strong emotional content – some of us could overload the cognitive system and momentarily inhibit our capacity to think at a formal level. Thereby, a life event could get an adult to move back from stage 4 thinking (formal operational) to stage 3 thinking (concrete operational), and that’s when internal talking could become externalized self-talk or thinking out loud.

At the same time, and at the level of language, adults also revert from what the sociologist Margaret Archer called ‘our inner conversation’ into its predecessor: the explorative loud-talk of children. Little known, is that this regression is helping the wounded Adult Self to heal from the shock of the present situation, by temporarily escaping into the past. The real problems appear if the adult escapes completely into the past or in a world of illusions and is incapable of reverting back to mature forms of relating, or to act on the principle of reality. Part of the process of healing from trauma is getting an individual to reach that stage of formal mental development (and there are many others such as Erik Erikson’s emotional stages of development etc.)

I think there is something profoundly beautiful about how we return to our inner child, when as adults we experience trauma. Of course, I am not supporting traumatic events, nor do I say that there must be the condition of trauma in order to access your inner child – you can easily do so by playing with other children, by enjoying yourself and having fun in the present. It is just that during situations of trauma, one facet of our inner child usually pops up – the wounded aspect. What I find beautiful is that the Self seeks solace in a previous version of ourselves, one that was more open, and more vulnerable to the social world. Psychologically, the mind attempts to learn again and heal, and this is a unique function that demonstrates the plasticity of our brain, and the hunger to learn and to improve. As the old saying goes, sometimes you need to go two step-backwards in order to move forwards in life.

In such circumstances, talking to oneself becomes like the Freudian ‘talking cure’, just that instead of lying on a couch talking to a paid professional, you carry these conversations with yourself as you go about your day. Sometimes these self-talks can produce some funny and quite embarrassing situations, such as when someone else notices how passionately you might reprimand or guide yourself in the supermarket or on the street. This happens to myself relatively often, since my Moon sign is in Sagittarius and I get some of my best ideas when I move, when I walk and roam around the city streets.

One way in which I managed to escape embarrassment, was by recording my thoughts into my phone with the audio recorder function; in this way, talking to myself looks like I am keeping an audio diary or talking to someone on the phone and it appears less crazy (or so I hope 🙂 I also speak quite silently when talking to myself, almost as if I am praying, which again lessens the mad aspect of this peculiar behavior.

One one hand, talking to ourselves shows once again how social we are as human beings – even by ourselves we long to connect to something, to discuss, to relate to someone – just that in moments of deep solitude this relating means we only can socialize with our-Selves. For some of us, being alone means being yourself, and being protected from judgement, harm and criticism, while being near someone who doesn’t understand or accept our self-talk could feel like one version of a personal hell.

Solitude can be a fortress into which we retreat to ‘lick’ our social and emotional wounds (and sometimes even actual, physical wounds); we share this behavior with animals, and how they act after a fight. Solitude can then be a way of coping with running away from toxicity and a way of coping with life’s struggles. The downside to such an approach is that, if it is prolonged, it can end up alienating us from others and ultimately, from ourselves. This is why solitude has to be temporary (and regression as well) so that the link to reality is somehow maintained. So that we may find our way back to the present moment, if we lingered a while in the past.

In astrology when we think about the mind, we would usually think of Mercury, the planet associated with communication, speed and fast processing. While, Neptune would be the planet associated with healing, the past and any form of emotionally-rooted communicative problem. Neptune rules the sign of Pisces, while Mercury rules the signs of Gemini and Virgo. The Piscean world of escape, fantasies and dreams can heal. But if you spend too much time alone in a Neptunian haze, you might not be able to find your way back to reality, or the secure, stable ground of Virgo-logic. I understand the energy of Pisces to exist on a continuum with that of Virgo – in spite of the fact that these are two very different astrological signs, and are placed opposite from each other on the astrological wheel. Piscean dreams need Virgo practicality, and Virgo’s extreme sense of reality needs encouragement from the fantasies and rosy-eyed scenarios that Pisces usually spin out of thin air —> Sidenote: I made a series of videos about the dual qualities of both of these signs on my Youtube channel, for those interested in knowing more:

Neptune is about the splendors of liminal experiences, of in-between states of mind & being; it is about learning to love uncertainty and the unknown in life. The center of all creativity is this foggy territory of doubt. In connecting astrology to psychology, I would argue that Neptune governs over post-trauma recovery. Regression as well is a very Piscean strategy of coping with the harshness of the social environment. And Virgo, as its opposite sign and a sign that is ruled by Mercury (the God of communication), influences how we process self-talk as a protective psychological device (or what Freud would call a ‘defense’, and said in more common terms ‘building walls around you’).

But I want to switch now from the depths of this discussion to each astrological signs’ communication style, based on their Mercury placements. After all, the way we think and speak affects how others relate to us, and in learning about your Mercury placement, there might be further healing clues for how to handle post-trauma energy.

Since I am writing this article during the weekend of the Full Snow Moon in Leo and right before the first retrograde of 2020 (which takes places across the sign of Pisces starting from Feburary 17th for 3 weeks), let me briefly break down what each Mercury sign is about:

Mercury in Pisces (or Mercury conjunct Neptune) gives the native limitless creativity. Your strongest point is your capacity to imagine and quickly download ideas from the ether. You also make many associations between elements which people overlook. Your weakest point is the tendency to repeat yourself, gloss over details and speak with doubt and lack of authority.

Mercury in Aries (or Mercury conjunct Mars) gives the native a quick, sharp mind. Your strongest point is your capacity to be direct, funny and concise with your speech. Your weakest point is that you come across as curt and impatient, and a bit of a bully in how you give indications.

Mercury in Taurus (or Mercury conjunct Venus) gives the native instant authority. When you speak, people listen, and what you say tends to stick around for a while, so choose your words carefully. Your strongest point is your capacity to clearly state what you think and to perseveringly back it up. Your weakest point is that your communication tends to be one-way or inflexibile, and you find it hard to explore alternatives (the ‘horse blinkers’ effect).

Mercury in Gemini (domicile placement) gives the native a brilliant mind for communication! You are excellent with verbal, written, audio-visual or online transmissions and you have a knack for flexibly moving between all these different mediums with ease, speed and grace. Your strongest point is being a PR powerhouse since you understand speech and thinking in many different ways and you are very adaptable. Your weakest point is your tendency to distort the truth and reality to the such an extreme that these disintegrate into nothingness and you could be pessimistic about outcomes.

Mercury in Cancer (or Mercury conjunct the Moon) gives the native a depth to their speech that is incomparable. You can soothe people emotionally through how you speak. Your strongest points are emotional healing and poetic tendencies, you are also a very good storyteller. Your weakest point is that your mind and speech are driven by emotions, so you can also be mean and emotionally explosive when angry. Nonetheless, you make a great storyteller.

Mercury in Leo (or Mercury conjunct the Sun) gives the native a mind that is focused on having the best and being the best. You speak of your work, your life and yourself in a positive light and are able to encourage others and coach them into action. Your weakest point is that if someone does not give you attention or disrespects you, you cut off communication with them immediately and burn all bridges. Give people second chances and ample opportunity to discuss things with you, since no one is perfect.

Mercury in Virgo gives the native a well-balanced mind, but often a nervous one as well. You are more connected to your senses than any other astrological sign, so you could be clair-sentient or clair-audient, for example. The downside is that this mental sensitivity needs a lot of care, so that you don’t veer into pettiness and small-minded thinking. You speak by crossing your T’s and dotting your I’s, and you are excellent at details. You process new information slowly and only in an organized way, so give yourself time to get accustomed to new facts.

Mercury in Libra (or Mercury conjunct Venus) coats their speech in beauty. You have the mind of an artist, and when you speak you are fair and detached, but can also think of funny things to say to lighten up the mood around you. Your weakest point is that what you say today might not hold tomorrow, as you tend to speak to please others and hold ideas that are approved by many. However, you have phenomenal abstract-thinking skills and can be a good strategist.

Mercury in Scorpio (or Mercury conjunct Pluto) does not waste words or thoughts. This is the mind of an ultra-sharp thinker, who understands what lies beneath people’s words and their actions. You can get gloomy & silent, but you always match verbal speech to non-verbal elements in how you understand someone, and you keep a mental score if a person is telling you the truth or not. This is why you’re not so good at written communication, texts, DMs, emails (on a daily basis), but you could shine at short directives or sexting, for example. Deep & solitary analysis is your thing and you can unearth information that changes the way people think about a situation.

Mercury in Sagittarius (or Mercury conjunct Jupiter) gives the native a sense of expansion in their thinking. They are as limitless as a Mercury in Pisces, but they speak from a more logical framework. You are often mystical in how you speak, since you are capable of grasping the big picture and connect this easily to ordinary thinking. You are in touch with the higher realms and think like an abstract painter. You love to discuss philosophical interpretations of life and to explore truth and meaning, but you are also impractical and you tend to not stick to what you promise. Tone down the fibbing in order to get others to trust you more.

Mercury in Capricorn (or Mercury conjunct Saturn) is the structured thinker who enjoys mental effort. You are serious in how you express yourself, and use caution in your speech. Sometimes you speak deliberately, slowly and perhaps even monotonously. You might have speech impediments which stem from childhood, but you usually overcame these with effort and patience. Your thoughts and words produce karma, so you learn to discern how you use them. People seek you for advice the older you get.

Mercury in Aquarius (or Mercury conjunct Uranus) is highly inventive. You use words in new and sparkling ways, creating funny and unexpected reactions in people. There is a shock-quality to how you think and how you express yourself. Sometimes you drop eff-bombs in the middle of a high-brow conversation, or you chit-chat superficially, and then expurgate a really deep truth. ‘Expurgating’ is certainly a word you would use, as well as many tongue-twisters and other witty technical devices. The downside is that you are often misunderstood by others who feel that they are being talked down to or that you are just too weird.

In relation to each of these Mercury placements in your birth chart, Neptune (being currently in its own sign of Pisces, until 2026) communicates in either: a) trine (flowing, easy aspect of support), b) conjunction (it infuses your Mercury in Pisces with its energy), c) sextile (friendly aspect, with some benefits), d) square (tense aspect, frustrating) or e) opposition (with many highs and lows). For example, my natal Mercury is in Pisces and it is in a friendly aspect to my natal Neptune in Capricorn, which adds some structure and pragmatism to my dreamy mental energy. So make sure to check where your Mercury is placed (the sign as well as the house, since the house colors it differently; check also if your Mercury is retrograde, since this adds an extra layer of depth to your mind and communication). If you struggle to understand your natal Mercury or Neptune placements, feel free to get in touch with me for a birth-chart reading by sending me an email at macht.alexandra.georgiana.pfa@gmail.com

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

To be honest, I don’t think I know what self love means. I try and learn about it each day and practice what I hope is self-love. But like a fish struggling to stay on land without breathing, sometimes the meaning of self-love escapes through my fingers and suffers a quick death.

I come from a culture that values modesty in women and pretty much oppresses them, not as harshly as in other cultures, but there are social norms that distort femininity all while socially blaming women for not being patriarchally desirable enough (femininity in this context is seen as just being hot, while anything else associated with it such as grace, wisdom, tenderness and nurturing is usually parodied).

I am trying to find out how to be confident without being arrogant, which is a tricky line to cross mostly because I lacked a personal model of female empowerment while I grew up – except those fashioned by the media and they were usually unidimensional. There were occasional exceptions, like Xena the Princess Warrior 🙂

I think self-love can be tough love sometimes, which is not a very popular opinion. To me, tough love means being honest in your self-reflection, and having patience with yourself and admitting when you realized you made a mistake (not by rationalizing or explaining your mistake, but by accepting the truth: ‘You made a mistake, and I love you anyway’). And I think this also could be followed by ‘Let’s see how we can repair the situation/relationship’. So I guess self-love is about formulating accepting thoughts about your individuality and letting them transform into daily, compassionate actions.

What puts the ‘tough’ in tough love is the fact that from my experience at least, self-love requires effort and work. To practice it, you often have to make difficult decisions. Such as leaving a well-paid, prestigious job because your boss is controlling and toxically obsessed with your every move, or leaving an even better paying job because the city where they sent you for research proved to be dangerous and isolating, or leaving a marriage because he couldn’t stop cheating on you etc. Imagine pushing the person you love away, because he couldn’t understand that you loved him no matter what. It’s taken me a long time to accept these facts of life, and not to feel ashamed for who I am, for whom I loved, and for the difficult decisions I took. Sometimes shit just happens and you simply have to get up off the ground and dust your knees (even if you repeatedly fall).

If you are not openly vulnerable about such aspects people assume you’re OK and that you are strong no matter what. Even as time passes, they might also think that you might be cold, arrogant or that you lack a heart – but that’s not the case, again that is an illusion. Usually, emotional detachment is a result of PTSD, a self-protection strategy that psychologically tends to appear after dealing with diverse social relationships that just kept breaking down. Relational failures can cripple us mentally and emotionally, because one of our core needs according to Abraham Maslow is the need to connect, to socialize, and to share ourselves.

From my experience, people will naturally be more attracted to you once you start to show yourself some love & appreciation. When you understand that you don’t need to be in an unhealthy competition with someone, or that you should bend over backwards to please someone whose always morose, or that you are worth more than that awful job or relationship, or that sometimes you just outgrow certain relationships and places. Not everyone will simply feel inspired by your strength and provide only admiration. Oftentimes, envy sneaks its ugly head into your life. What takes you painstaking time to practice each day, could appear easy from the outside looking in, as if you received a natural gift. For those who do not comprehend the pains and pleasures of self-discipline, self-worth appears as a magical gift, one that someone has been unfairly blessed with; here’s the catch – it is not. Self-love comes about with equal doses of strength and emotional work, much like most real things which are worth something in life.

So there is an amount of self-protection involved once this self-love is awakened. This is because accepting yourself as imperfect or better said as ‘perfectible’, and letting go of that defensive mask we are usually trained to put on in social circumstances, will make others angry. Self-love might not bring you the desired result immediately and even worse, it will trigger toxicity around you; the key is to persist in it (‘You do you’). I noticed that being honest and vulnerable infuriates people who do not have the courage or simply do not want to see themselves as worthy of love, or as good, kind and willing to change, as people who might work on themselves. In this context, when you have to deal with a toxic person (be it a parent, lover or a friend), practicing self-love is easier said than done, as often intrusive and self-harming thoughts show up to self-sabotage you. Following heart-break, your mind can become a bully, blaming you for every decision taken, that is if you repress your pain instead of releasing it.

In tense emotional situations, especially subconscious ones, your inner critic can all of a sudden veer from giving you the usual, daily instructions, to shouting at you angrily much like a drill sergeant. When your inner critic becomes an abusive asshole, this means you have internalized the toxicity in your environment and are self-sabotaging your self-love process. As you are pushing your inner peace and stillness to the side, you begin mirroring the voice of an abusive parent or lover; ruminations over negative memories can appear, instead of a healthy focus on the present situation or sheer excitement for the future.

The good aspect in all of this is that the past is behind you, the past is done and closed – no matter what we do, we just can’t go back there, except in our minds – and learning to control our mind in such situations is half the battle won (or so it felt from my own experience). We only have the present, and the excitement of planning for the future (which granted, can often feel overwhelming). So knowing this means that the only ‘enemy’ in the present moment is your mind. Self-love is then quieting your mind, talking kindly and gently with yourself exactly in those moments when, in the past, there was external shouting. I guess the trick is to deceive the expectation, which is created from a negative memory. For example, when I was little and tired, my mother used to stress me even more by shouting at me for making mistakes when I was doing my homework. She couldn’t empathize with me as child, that I needed some rest, that I had to take a break and distract myself with something fun for a while. This was my karma to bear as my mother has a natal Saturn in Pisces and I was born to her as a Sun in Pisces child. But we are meant to also overcome our karma and not just hopelessly give in to it. With self-awareness and year of astrological study, I finally understood our difficult mother-daughter, Saturnian dynamics.

Fun was definitely not the word I would ever use to describe our mother-daughter relationship. And when I was young I didn’t have the awareness to challenge her attitude. I grew in time to the realization that it was also not my responsibility to challenge her. I was 7 and she was supposed to be the adult, the more emotionally mature person. This didn’t happen. And I learned to accept that my mother is simply limited in her emotions, due to a mixture of her own childhood trauma, societal pressures on motherhood and her own personal choice of not seeking help and healing. I do not even criticize her anymore since that activity would only make me angrier. I’m learning to accept now. Her behavior and my own. Because I’m learning to love myself and choose my battles. I seek inner peace so I am forgiving her by understanding her and setting my own boundaries in how I relate to her. I notice what it is that I can control (and I know that I certainly can’t control her, nor would I want to), so I move on without hesitation to do just that. I’m present-focused rather than past-obsessed.

Now, I can give to myself the nurturing I should have received in such moments. For example, when I feel tired, now I rest. And I learned to talk to myself differently: From ‘Go, go go! WTF is wrong with you to be so slow!?’ to ‘Alright my love, stop. You are simply tired. Leave whatever you can’t accomplish today for tomorrow. There is time. Now rest’. Repeating this internal dialogue every time I feel tired, is very healing. Now, I have a new relationship with myself, based on acceptance of my flaws, and love for the fact that I am imperfect yet valuable, worthy of rest and aware that I do my best work actually when I break large tasks into smaller, daily ones and when I respect my sleeping schedule.

Social and cultural norms also gender self-love, to some extent. I noticed that self-love is about not being stuck in over-giving as a woman (and I speak from a perspective in which I identify with my biological sex). As a woman then, you have to receive as well – you are not a machine that loves automatically and produces all the time, no matter how much the patriarchal economic systems love this cheap arrangement. Being willing to let go and trust is often a frightening experience, when you are aware that societal structures in many different regions do not prize, nor do they support vulnerability (and some even actively attack it).

In the eyes of many, what counts instead are displays of power and stoicism, of winning and coming out on top. Bearing this in mind, as a woman then, self-love is simply listening to yourself and understanding your personal power after many tests of powerlessness or of being compared to ideals of power modelled after men. It is also the quiet knowledge that soft power and being soft and vulnerable does add value to life, as a more gentler way of existing in the world, and dare I say even a more eco-friendly one. Imagine if we swap all the guns in the world for home-made pillows or self-care sets, or if we rest more instead of taking pride in how we fight through life and over-work ourselves.

It might seem like a banal example, but imagine the difference such simple and small changes would make, both to ourselves and to our natural environment, which at the moment is increasingly asking us for nurturing attention.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

I write for a living and sometimes, I get tired. I look at the blank page and don’t know what to tackle next. It seems so pristine and not really in need of my Ego-driven desire to record my thoughts on it. Whenever I face this ‘blank paper wall’, I remember the blunt advice of my professor of critical psychology ‘Go deeper into the unconscious, Alexandra’. I’m not quite sure what he meant by that – I probably should’ve insisted more in class for clear answers. So I devised my own strategies, aware of the fact that therapeutically I need to nurture my inner child when I feel blocked or slow down rather that pressure her; so each time I get frustrated with my work, I play. Several bouts of burn-outs throughout my career brought this point out very clearly: don’t take yourself so seriously or you’ll collapse under the pressure of wanting to control uncertainty; perfection, if it exits, is elusive.

What play means in this context, is that I visit the local academic library to switch up my writing routine. I go to the shelf of a completely different discipline than the one I am active in, and I select books with titles that draw me in. Then I open a book at a random page and place my finger on whichever page I feel guided to. I proceed to read and jot down the sentence that first appears under my finger. It won’t make sense initially why I would copy a sentence about car transistors or remote villages in the Pacific, but I trust my intuition and wait for the big picture that is created once I finish the exercise – it is also fun to discover other writer’ work in this spontaneous way, and writers whose work I wouldn’t normally read.

So, I repeat this process with as many books as I want until I get tired. I then put together all these disparate sentences together in a Word document and read this whole new, randomly-pieced story to gain funny and creative insights. It works e.ve.ry.ti.me! I have fun, it breaks my routine and reminds me why I enjoy reading and writing in the first place: because it’s creative!

To exemplify, below is the story I created today by randomly picking up books with titles I liked from the Philosophy, Arts and Biographies sections of my current university:

• “Doctors also developed idiosyncratic relationships with machines and to technology generally
• It’s the improvisation. With improvisation the great jazz musicians were just sort of …in the moment. They had no idea where they were necessarily going next, sonically.
• It was in the loss of the Manufacturers and Liberal Arts Building, however, that Bancroft found both his “historical mythology” and its political theme
• From this time on the true George Platt Lynes took form. As his finances prospered, so did his debts.
• Imagine being forced from your home by government authorities and incarcerated in the stall of a prize racehorse, simply because of your racial heritage.
• In passages that bear direct consequences for his students, Karpov championed an art that involved a “spatial extension” to entangle the participant, breaking with conventional painting, to an art more actively involved in ritual, magic, and life itself.
• The transition from Piper to the Mythic Being is marked visually. As the artist’s identity dematerializes, he gets darker. In that way, Mythic Being overtakes Piper’s identity.
• The effort to make art revert back into “life”, or to turn every aspect of life into “art”, simply emphasizes the vast gulf that exists between what has conceptual significance for a handful of people and remains business as usual for everyone else.
• For the month that my daughter lay in isolation at UC Medical Center, struggling to stay alive after a bone marrow transplant, I sat with my husband either praying or drawing. When she had recovered enough I asked her to write her feelings into some of the drawings.
• Disproportionately influential to the actual numbers who took acid and wore what could loosely be described as ‘psychedelic’ fashion, whether the decadent proto-hippie bohemian version of London, or the experimental glitter and glitz of the New York underground as typified by Andy Warhol and his entourage, the psychedelic and hippie style of dress ran parallel to the preoccupations of the mainstream sixties’ fashion industry based on the ‘Swinging London’ Mod look.
• It is inconceivable to him that these close ties between art and society might in themselves constitute the equivalent of Western “aesthetics”, albeit in terms different from those in the West.
• Vermilion’s ingredients were sometimes buried in dung-heaps to make golden pigments. So vermillion again bears comparison to the ‘vilest and meanest’, the ‘common’, ‘despised’ and ‘rejected’ Philosophers’ Stone – both we’re ‘amongst the refuse’.
• It seems altogether likely that Cosimo wanted the three paintings, not so much because of his interest in the history of the city as because of the contribution they could make to what we might today call the “Medici image”, the reputation he was creating for his family, partly by means of architecture and works of art.
• The journalist seems to have conflated de Loutherbourg’s faith healing and Hebraic interests; the former did keep him from his painting for a time, but the latter he incorporated into his art.
• Soon Carr’s search took her increasingly into the forest.
• To Albert Wolff, Manet had turned his young sitter into a ‘monster of a human nature’.
• Family, probably the one of Jan Gerritsz – health and hygienic conditions in the 17th century are disastrous.
• This Stone is of a great value if he be the great and fayre, and is equal for his bignes to anye Stone (Diamond and Rubye excepted) but is not so much harder then pearle, and Easley wearers rough/ ther is also another transparent Stone which we call Geratsolis which hath no cullors but a kynde of shining, and if the Sune or summer bright days light we are under it or within it.
• “A seemly obscurantism” is Lowe-Porter’s translation of “eine ehrbare Verfinsterung” (literally, ‘a respectable obscuring’), which is also the title of this whole section, though she prefers ‘Drawing the veil’.
• As far as business is concerned, there are booms and recessions; prosperity rarely lasts indefinitely. That is the nature of human society; that is the way of the world.
• The victory should be treated as a funeral
• An initiation ceremony into the Yoruba religion that I had begun during my fieldwork
• To put it in a nutshell, heart-to-heart communication (xin yin xin) has long been an additional method by which spirit mediums can communicate with the divine in Wannian. It has been employed when spirit mediums are otherwise unable to interpret divine messages or need the deity’s immediate help. In the urban context, by contrast, heart to heart telepathy has gradually replaced vision interpretation as the primary way to communicate with deities.
• First, it sees itself and then grows – only to destroy itself in harmony with the seasons and the cycles of time. But, just as with nature, the very fact that it destroys itself means there will never be a time when it is not about to return to bring a new sense of life back again.
• Not to allow that the boundaries between the different parts of the whole are crossed, is a way to keep the cosmic balance and a task for the goddess Dike to supervise. Not only men, but also heavenly bodies have their dikes, which can be seen again as a balanced distribution of parts within a whole. For instance, in Heraclitus’ B94 the sun must limit itself to shining during the day, respecting the dike of the night
• With Lu’s view of communication, bureaucratic paperwork took on a new significance. Paper work sometimes exasperated him.
• I will make a road in the wilderness, rivers in the dessert – Isaiah
• It is curious how in Guy Debord a lucid awareness of the insufficiency of private life was accompanied by a more or less conscious conviction that there was, in his own existence or in that of his friends, something unique and exemplary, which demanded to be recorded and communicated
• I have noted that Suarez conceives of the voluntary as something essentially willed and subject to the will, whether reflexively in elicited acts, or as the object of a distinct act of will in imperated acts
• What is the preeminence that each horizon claims for itself? We may first point out something it is not. My horizon includes, or contains, the totality I call ‘the world’; or as we have often put it, the totality I call the “world” is internal to THIS, to my horizon. Your horizon includes the totality you call “the world” (…) we do not share the same horizon, but we share the same world.”

On a final note, if you are like me and hate re-reading your work (but nonetheless you have to read it for proof-reading reasons) I can suggest another trick offered to me by a friend: transform the font of your writing in Comic Sans (or some other equally silly font like Magneto or Showcard Gothic). I guarantee this will bring a smile to your face, as you see your ‘very important’ thoughts in an ‘equally important’ font. And you will laugh, laughter being the medicine of our souls and a relaxing way to unclench our busy (academic) minds. I hope these small exercises help you unleash those mythical creative juices.

With universal love (& banter),

Lexi ❤

I’m in a period of stasis. I reached a point where I somehow produce wealth and yet I am not working on the thing for which I have been employed. I am reading a translated version of the words of Lao Tzu and wondering what is happening energetically with me. Last week I quit my job but my boss avoids talking to me and I have to wait 2 weeks before I can leave the country were I was initially sent to do research. In the absence of any advice or support from my mentor, what I do is focus on myself, on my health, my sleep and work, on managing my inner uncertainty. An overwhelming feeling of ‘living in the moment’, followed by a larger ‘this was meant to be’, washes over me at variable moments throughout the day, like the cool waves of the sea. I live in a state of ‘calm turbulence’, I think this is how I would describe this period of my life. I’m in some sort of spiritual transition.

A dear friend from Bangalore, whom I never met in person yet I feel a connection to, shared a book with me about Tantra and absolute love, over the holidays. I finally managed to read it and it felt like I had a tiny awakening. I also noticed in the postscriptum that the French author who wrote it, Daniel Odier was also working as an academic when he read the work of Lao Tzu and decided to leave his job and move to France to teach tantra.

I am wondering if it is actually true, that once you begin your spiritual journey, all your material needs are being met in almost magical ways. Of course, you don’t get an Ali Baba cave of riches all of a sudden at your doorstep, but you get just enough to keep you nurtured and healthy. You get what you need, as you relinquish what you want…or thought you wanted.

I try to live still anchored in the present, but when I spend most of my days alone, with no clear goal to fulfill and inevitably waiting to leave a place that feels alien to me, I keep wondering if I am going through a spiritual awakening or if I am merely losing my mind? In the absence of an answer, I rest. And as I rest, the answers come to me.

For two years now I’ve been in the process of commiting my time and energy to a lot of work, seeing it through and then merely leaving it behind me, while neglecting my personal relationships on this path for success. I thought that once I will become ‘established’, the right and supportive relationships will follow. I was wrong.

I quit a prestigious teaching job in the UK and a researcher position that had me travel between Sweden and the US. During these job transitions, I returned home to Bucharest and got floods of awareness that helped me grow by leaps and bounds. I am maturing at such speed and yet I also have the feeling that I might be self-sabotaging my chances of success in life. Where does the truth lie? Am I following my intuition or am I simply not comfortable with positions of power? Am I escaping the constraints of rational-bureaucratic work in favor of the spiritual path, or am I lazy and afraid of commitment?

From the outside looking in, my decisions surely must look bonkers. But from the inside-out I keep feeling that this is not the kind of work I felt I could do in this world when I initially began studying humanistic sciences. The younger version of me wanted to help people, to work in their service, while figuring out who I am. But the work I ended up doing alienated me from the very things I initially set out to achieve. The paradox is that working as a socio-psychologist keeps pushing me in isolation from the social. Unsurprisingly, I ended up supporting academic egos and projecting a false sense of self, repressing who I truly am.

In this soul-searching context, when I read this line from Lao Tzu, I felt woken up:

‘proud of wealth and renown

you bring your own ruin.

just do what you do, and then leave:

such is the way of Heaven’

So is leaving this job, my way of following the Way (Tao)? Of being immersed in this beautiful philosophy of just being or is this a sign that I am shooting myself in the leg, metaphorically speaking? I could analyze the situation to death, but I prefer to let it be as I continue to exist temporarily in this state of nothingness, wondering how to fill my time while I wait for my flight back to Europe. It’s like waiting for Godot, but the international version. Helpfully, Lao Tzu has an answer for this dilemma as well :

‘presence gives things their value,
but absence makes them work’

So by letting go of this job, I might increase my self-worth, huh? In addition, and contravening the protestant work ethic that dominates so much of Western economic thinking, Lao Tzu writes:

‘When you never strive, you never go wrong’

&

‘things rare and expensive make people lose their way’

This feels true to my experience so far; all this movement between jobs and countries made me realize how futile the quest for material success is and how easily I can live without a lot of material things. Minimalism is somehow spiritually supportive, so I’m starting to understand the stoics and the ascetics. I’m also learning the rhythm and value of things, people and places because I am engaged in a state of constant comparison. The more I compare things to each other however, the more I realize how similar they all are.

So am I becoming more aware of when to act and when not to act, while making a lot of blunders on the way? I am reminded of the principles of karma and dharma. Karma as action and its consequences and dharma as doctrine but also the principle of receptivity. As I write about stasis for my book and learn about Kashmir Shaivism and the philosophy of nonduality, I try to think of how action and inaction are blended in reality in how individuals perceive and experience them. I also try to reconcile this awareness of my personal power, my growing inner world and being emotionally open and vulnerable, by stimulating and healing my heart chakra to accept life and intimacy, after loss and trauma.

On this path, I feel I am embodying both sides of the Divine Feminine archetype described in Odier’s book: one being Kali, the terrifying and destructive feminine force, and the other Devi, the balanced and harmonious feminine energy (two slightly more imaginative interpretations of the Western clichés of the Madonna and the Whore) :

With all these mysteries in mind, I feel that I am at the beginning of an interesting string of life events.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤