The Spiritual Social

Author: The Spiritual Social

  • Healing Through Chaos: Embracing Pluto’s Intensity

    Still from the movie 99 Moons

    June for me is a month of recovery. A recovery that is necessary in the wake of May’s energy. This is because last month’s energy was something beyond what I had experienced in a long time, and this confession doesn’t come lightly since I was born a Plutonic and I am used to unexpected and strong doses of life’s intensity. Due to my karmic Pluto in Scorpio Rx in the 1st house placement, life had demonstrated to me several times that this is going to be an incarnation of extremes, of symbolic deaths and rebirths, and having to understand some of the deepest emotions. However, sometimes a certain period comes along which simply turns up the Plutonic heat up a notch. Like a square aspect of transiting Pluto in Aquarius to my natal Pluto in Scorpio, during Taurus season, for example…

    For perspective, transiting Pluto in Aquarius is at the moment of my writing this article at 3’19 degrees in my 4th house; my IC (imum coeli or the bottom of the sky), the root of my chart is placed at 1’37 Aquarius. As a factual recap, the month of May of 2025 debuted with selling my small one-room flat and my moving into a 2-bedroom rented apartment in a safer part of Bucharest. A decision I didn’t easily make as I had to let go of the financial security of owning my place, but I gained the physical safety of knowing that at least, in this rental I will no longer be threatened with violent abuse by my neighbours, like I had been in my previous location.

    Escaping into a safer neighbourhood was something coming for two years now and as difficult as it had been to decide on this move, I pushed myself into making it because of self-preservation. The heavy-heartedness, however, came along with me. Just as I was getting accustomed to this new place and thinking it was better that I was somehow closer to my parent’s place and could visit them more often, on the 8th of May my father died.

    In his book ‘Pluto and the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul/ Vol. 1’ Jeffrey Wolf Green describes Pluto’s transit through the 4th house in the following words :

    “…this process will serve as an excellent time to examine the impact of the individual’s early environmental situation as reflected through the parents, and for those who are parents, how they themselves have emotionally responded to their own children, family and spouse (…) It will now be necessary to change or eliminate all forms of emotional dependency and security that are linked to external situations. These dependencies and securities are in some way limiting further growth (…) This evolutionary time frame and experience can be very difficult because many people will feel as if the very foundations of their lives are being threatened and removed. Such an experience must occur so that the individual is more or less left with only his or her self to look at, to examine, and to depend on (…) For some people this process will be enforced through the loss of a job or career, a family member or someone close to them, emotional confrontations of an intense magnitude with family members or even the loss of the individual’s own life.” (p. 322-323).

    Dad was cremated on the 10th of May and I found myself walking back from the Crematorium into a straight line back into the new flat I had just shortly inhabited. I crawled into bed like a slug and rested there for the next hours, feeling numbed out of my mind. I couldn’t cry. My body held on to the pain. It was familiar. It was a family thing to hold onto pain. I was simply being loyal.

    What weighed heavily on my heart was the fact that on the morning of my father’s death, I visited grandpa’s grave – situated near my new place – and I placed a coin on top of it. I offered flowers and asked grandpa (my father’s father) to help my family out. Hours later, around midnight my mother called to tell me that dad had given up the ghost. I immediately thought of grandpa letting me know that he listened to my prayer…although I’m not sure, that was the resolution I had asked for, but I am in no position at this point in my life to have semantic arguments with ghosts. Grandpa helped. And this helping hand from beyond the veil lingers in my heart, as a life mystery left for me to unravel. I am not afraid of ghosts, but I am mortified of living a soulless life. So the problem I had to cope with now was: How do I continue to live on, when all I can feel is just how dead I am on the inside?

    Dad’s departure happened right in-between Romania’s presidential elections, a period of two weeks of tumult as the population was faced with a pro-West candidate and a pro-Russian candidate. To say that the air in Bucharest was electric during those days, was an understatement. As the pressures kept pilling up on me, around the 19th of May – and after the results of the elections proved to be hopeful and progressive rather than medieval and destructive, I realised just how completely chewed up my nervous system had been. My body has started uncontrollably shaking after I took my morning shower and my hands were clenching without the possibility of relaxing them quickly. Only with controlled breathing was I able to physically ‘unclench’ and relax my body in roughly 20 minutes (which felt like an eternity).

    In the final days of May, I was running from one doctor appointment to another to find some treatment for my nervous system’s temporary collapse and I was lucky enough to find the support I needed in a psychiatrist, neurologist and family doctor. The treatment my psychiatrist put me on helped smooth out my over-sensitivity to sounds and helped me feel more relaxed in my body. I somehow knew this wasn’t enough and that I had to do a bit more to get the pain through my body moving and to release it somehow. I started doing yoga and gentle stretches daily, while eating a consistent breakfast of porridge with honey and fruits and making sure I am drinking enough water each day.

    I took at least 10,000 steps, and installed a tracker app on my phone to keep me to it. Each day this tracker would gentle nudge me to ‘get moving’ and then reward me by saying ‘you are getting better’, which felt like the kindest thing I could hear all day and exactly the opposite of how I was feeling. At night I worked, since work keeps me stable and optimistic and then I would watch a movie projected on the blank wall of my bedroom to take my mind off things. I would cry in the most public and inappropriate places, always surrounded by strangers and never near my mother or sister, the last two remaining members of my close family. It’s sad to write this but my relationship to them is not at all close, to say the least. I try, nonetheless.

    In ‘The Book of Pluto: Finding Wisdom in Darkness with Astrology’, astrologer Steven Forrest reflects on what happens to the human psyche once Pluto pays a visit to the root of the root of the birth chart, the IC or Nadir:

    “Psychological insights, bravely won, must penetrate down into core assumptions about yourself, and then be expressed publicly.” (p.263). He goes on to add that with this transit : “Your navigational error, if you succumb to it, would be to live the life of a ghost, with your fire, intensity and vision removed from your biographical life while you went through the motions of existence. And regardlessof outward appearances, at the psychological level you would live the life of a hearthless, homeless person (…) With Pluto in the fourth house, you heal yourself by becoming conscious of your woundedness…for you it starts with realizing the extent to which your ability to find, recognize and claim ‘your people’ has been distorted.” (p. 83)

    Remarkably, the intensity I was doing my best to smooth out or diminish in my waking life, appeared once again projected through the movies that I gravitated towards in that month. One after the other, I saw four movies that were incredibly good but each in their own way, were also intense and haunting.

    First of all, I saw ‘Sex, lies and videotape’ after I listened to antiheroines‘ insightful analysis on YouTube, about the disappearance of horny movies and the important role of emotional intimacy in making films feel erotic. I just loved this movie and if I was previously a fan of James Spader’s and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s chemistry in ‘Secretary‘, the unlikely attraction which existed between him and Andi MacDowell in Stephen Soderbergh’s film was much more subtle and sexy somehow.

    Seeing as I was in a vulnerable state of chaotic sadness, physical pain and nervous irritation, I couldn’t believe that this movie made me feel something tender-hearted again. As if a whole new mindset was available to me, through psychological sensuality.

    Still from the movie ‘Sex, lies and videotapes’

    A couple of days later, the film player I used to watch the film above recommended another European movie called ’99 Moons’. This movie was filmed after the pandemic and had actors I had never seen before, so it was right up my alley. Heavily medicated, still broken-hearted but satisfied that I had completed my day’s work, I sat on my little couch to watch this movie which begins with one of the most random, brutal and unexpected sex scenes I had seen so far. I won’t get into details but I’ll just say it involved: a parking lot, a ski mask, something aggressively oral happening and two consenting adults, one of whom breaks down crying after their intense coupling. And it’s not whom you expect.

    The curious thing is that ’99 Moons’ is a love story and the characters grow on you with so much ease that you feel shattered when you watch the surprising ending to the movie. I loved it because you get to see a completely different gender dynamic between two heterosexual characters, than you get to see in other erotic-themed movies. And the sex scenes are not at all vanilla or missionary, rather the opposite as most of them are female-led and unique but they always add to the story and the sensual intimacy between two people who simply were burning for each other across the years. This movie made me feel like it was worth bringing back to life, a part of me that once felt excited about sex and sexual pleasure…a part I had buried in April of 2021.

    Just some nights into my treatment, and I was now continuously sad but I felt somehow horny as well, like the upper part of the body broke off from my lower region. I had to appreciate however that both systems, although apart, were trying to keep me alive and away from the darker thoughts…those thoughts I had of joining my relatives, of seeing my dad’s dead and peaceful face as flowers were thrown over him, thoughts which sounded a lot like: ‘What’s the fucking point in living anymore? He seems so calm, he no longer feels pain…I wish I could feel that’. The creeping feeling that everything was falling apart around me and I wanted to just stop breathing, so that maybe then the pressure will lift and my body will stop hurting so much in every little corner.

    It felt like Freud’s concepts of how Thanatos nourishes Eros, which I first became aware of in college, it was as if they were finally being integrated skin-deep within my physicality. It was Pluto’s energy creating this cellular revolution through the way in which I was interpreting the events that happened in May of 2025 and the stories I was watching and unsuccessfully trying to escape into. The only thing these movies did was to push back upon myself the duty to live in my body and to continue to live on, no matter how painful the experience of living would get.

    I remembered this feeling. It was kind of how I felt after watching a couple of years ago ‘Normal people’, just that that experience was devoid of the pain of thinking constantly in the background of my mind: “Dad is gone and I’m never going to be able to speak to him, and I knew that the last time I talked to him in January, after I argued with mom, that it would’ve been our last moment together, because I told him this and he just sadly starred at me…he didn’t say anything.”

    A part of me, the child-part felt guilty for abandoning dad, while the rational part of me was aware that it felt like the force of karma worked through me, as I had done to dad what he had done to me when I was small and sick: abandoned me.

    Armed with this sad mix of thoughts, I went to the cinema this time to watch an old Romanian movie with a curious title “Glissando”. A movie about a man obsessed with the portrait of a woman. Halfway through the movie, the plot dissolves into two streams, two alternate realities and the characters simply float into random and beautifully-shot sequences of events in their lives. It is a movie about love, memories and obsessions and it was gorgeous to behold and spoke volumes to me about taking it easy and just riding the wave of feelings produced by all the events of the month of May. I couldn’t control what was happening, but I could control my reactions to all these things. In that at least, I had some power left.

    Still from the movie ‘Glissando’

    I guess that the intensity of May was lived inside of my body between these two extremes of deep sadness – that I was trying my best to run away from – and into erotic creativity – a sensual healing I was hoping to find some sort of solace. It helped that May in Bucharest is incredibly fragrant, as all the roses and jasmine bushes blossom, and the linden trees unleash their aromas while the market boom with cherries and strawberries and honey melons. It gets warmer each night and clothes become looser and thinner and days become longer and slower.

    In the background of this, I was tuning in and out of consciousness repressing feelings of sadness, shame and guilt. I slept throughout the day and was awake at night. Nature was so beautiful while my inner world was at war with itself and this contrast struck me. As if by magic, when I noticed the contradiction, the world around me seem to calm me down.

    The last film I saw was also probably the most difficult to watch, due to the topic. I saw Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies” on a random whim. I wasn’t even sure how I got to watch it… All I know is that since I moved into this new flat there have been some mysterious Middle-Eastern influences that I am still trying to shake off, which have been haunting me: from finding out that the previous tenants were Arabs, to randomly stumbling upon an Arabian perfume that I couldn’t stop thinking of, to listening to Habibi Spice on YouTube because his soothing voice helped with my nervous system regulation.

    And then Incendies came along and I watched it and my jaw dropped and it helped me release a lot, because I cried my heart out. A week after, as I was walking through one of the largest literature events in Bucharest, Bookfest 2025, I felt drawn to a French-Arab publishing house and then saw the book “Incendies” written by Wajdi Mouawad – full circle moment.

    Still from the movie ‘Incendies’

    There are some other fascinating things about this new place I moved into, such as finding out from my mother that the shopping complex right in front of my window used to be a communist bread store in which my grandma (my father’s mother) used to work in and that it had a kindergarten attached to it, where I had briefly been to as a child. So without consulting anyone and after months of searching, I had unconsciously placed myself in May of 2025 in front of an energetic zone imprinted with memories from the 80s, when I was a toddler, and dad and grandma were alive and bread was rationed and we lived under a different political regime.

    In that moment of realization, I suddenly felt immensely peaceful! I understood that although things aren’t working out as I would like them too, they are working out exactly how the planets are dictating, among which Pluto is the loudest since it has begun the process of changing my soul. I know that if I just stick with the wave of chaotic emotions, memories and symbols, I will eventually get a beautiful and shocking realization as to why things are happening how they are happening. Spirit will deliver meaning and all I need to do is ride the flow of feelings and intuition and pay attention to my environment.

    And when the healing realizations begun and I was feeling a combination of illuminating thoughts and the mood-regulating treatment working, peace returned and my curiosity sparked again. During a particular difficult night, as I was wresting in bed trying not to cry again, I stumbled upon this video which although it sounds cheesy to admit, did a magical spell on my capacity to let go of fighting the intensity and simply giving in to it and accepting it:

    I don’t know why I wrote this post, except that it felt cathartic to do it. I think it’s meant to be some symbolic and blow-by-blow account of how Pluto in Aquarius is influencing my inner world at the moment, as I’m struggling to make sense and interpret this energy. I’m hoping it may help someone at some point in time, who might find themselves in similar circumstances. As tough as a Pluto transit can be, especially in electrifying Aquarius, it can also offer rest, re-education and renewal. I think this article may also be a list of recommendations, because despite the sad which create the backbone of this article, the films & resources are pretty good and you may want to give them a try. Let me know what you uncover.

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • The Hero/ine

    Let me tenderly start off by clarifying that I fucking adore Gena Marvin! And one thing is the core of my intense love for her, something that runs so thinly in society at large but oozes out of her as easily as she breathes, and that precious soul element is: courage. Gena has heaps of this rare substance called bravery, despite the fact that she appears as a soft contrarian, a vulnerable artist, someone who seems more of a passive masochist than a tough fighter. The martyr quality that emerges from her character is given by the fact that Gena was born a Sun in Pisces. By her birth name Gennadiy Chebotarev, a Russian artist born in one of the most unwelcoming places on Earth, Magadan, a remote city in Siberian Russia, known for its harsh winters, famous prison and strong gender normative culture, Gena is currently living in exile in Paris, France, after a lifetime of quiet resistance.

    The other element of my intense love for her is that she is so creative. Creativity and courage when functioning optimally inside an individual result in the most irresistible charisma. This is the magical stuff of an individual who had to work at it, and unfortunately this work came about through withstanding intense violence and hatred related to her sense of self. Gena was born with a very interesting conjunction in her chart: a trifecta which involves a Saturn in Aries at a later degree conjunct a Jupiter in Aries at an early degree and in the heart of these powerful outer-planets, lies a Moon in Aries, a fire lighting the dark.

    I have started this website writing about the painful karma of being born with a Moon conjunct Saturn so I won’t insist on the subtleties of this placement in this article, (it’s just important to know that Gena carries within a deep maternal wound), but I do want to focus on the loose conjunction between her Saturn and her Jupiter in Aries. This is an astrological aspect which usually denotes a lifetime of having the harshest tests related to one’s identity and then these are shortly followed by the biggest blessings. This punishment and blessing cycle brought on by Saturn and Jupiter, touches her emotionally in a very profound way (because of the presence of the her Moon sandwiched between these significant outer planets).

    Alternatively, you could also see the Saturn-Jupiter astrological aspect as a lifetime of taking on tests and limiting situations in a willing way, and feeling the fear and doing it anyway. The pressure which Saturn stirs in the mix eventually eases into the most surprising growth and self-confidence, courtesy of Jupiter. And with the Moon in Aries left to do the emotional work, self-belief is the resurrection card. Through hardship, a link to the Divine within gets activated, much like in the martyr effect, or the idea that the more persecuted that you are the more your belief in the Divine is strengthened. Such beliefs fit with someone’s astrological energy when they have an abundance of planets and points in Pisces and Aries.

    Here is how Sue Tompkins describes the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction: “Saturn will tend to define, restrict, restrain and add an element of fear to all those things we associate with Jupiter: namely faith, meaning, joy and enthusiasm. Jupiter expands, enlarges and increases the Saturnian principles of order, responsibility, discipline and caution. Jupiter and Saturn together usually yields great persistence, patience and perseverance. Nevertheless, this is perhaps the combination associated with solid material success, and the easy aspects especially seem buffeted in this area of their lives (…) The Jupiter-Saturn individual often craves, and frequently reaches, an influential and executive position in the world.” (Aspects in Astrology, p.227-229)

    ** I’ve generated Gena’s chart based on disparate and incomplete birth-information so the natal map above may not be accurate

    To be fair, the whole collective has been soaked in these astral influences because since 2022, the transiting outer planets Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune together with the North Node and South Node axis have been touching upon the Alpha (Aries) and Omega (Pisces) of the zodiac, the first sign and the last sign of our equatorial constellations. We are all on some level having to let go of a part of our lives we grew attached to, in favour or staring anew and rebuilding everything with courage. Gena knows this process intimately, as her chart portrays such ending and beginning energies which she carries within and from which great creative ideas and potential spark out of. What I love about her is just how determined she is to keep pushing preconceived gender norms and to risk her physical safety as she does so. She inspires me to be less afraid to pursue my own self-expression, during a period in which most of our role-models and heroes are either strangely silent or dead.

    I will admit that writing this article proved challenging. Especially because I can’t help gendering her, even when the whole purpose of her art and self-expression is to go beyond gender. Gena is trying to help us understand how to live outside of gender, in a very physical and practical way. The sumptuously filmed documentary about her life, her art and her resistance (and which inspired me to write this article), a film called Queendom, details the lived aspects of crafting an existence outside of gender and how painful, frightening and exhilarating the whole process is. I highly recommend watching it and if you do, please let me know if you manage to get Sevdaliza’s song ‘Human’ out of your mind. It still haunts me to this day, it’s so powerful.

    I ultimately decided to include the ‘she/her’ pronouns since it appeared to me that in her artistic journey Gena moved from the masculine principle (within which she was born) into the feminine one, but without making her body’s transformation the core aspect of her journey. I see her message as being broader, and while deeply embodied and political, her story transcends the usual narrative of “the person who shifts genders and is oppressed by traditional gender norms in society”. Gena uses her body as a tool to subvert authoritarian politics in society. She advocates for courage and freedom, especially the freedom to dress as you please and to express who you are without fear of violence or being excluded from the benefits that other gender-confirming people enjoy in society. Her protest is not just queer and concerning identity but it is also political, as Gena is actively and dangerously resisting being part of the populist collective that advocates for war and the domination of other countries, much like we are seeing in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war.

    Simply existing in the world, especially as a woman and then as an artist, as a creative force is seen as threatening at the moment in time, as something that needs to be controlled or treated with corrective violence. And this medieval mindset has long expired and has to change. The hopeful silver-lining comes from the strangest of places: the symbolic rumbles and metaphorical earthquakes brough about by Pluto’s transit through Aquarius, which has already begun to create social chaos in order to consistently normalize what has been seen as ‘weird’ or ‘outcast’. Give it a couple of years (and the trine between Uranus in Gemini and Pluto) for the ‘weird’ to find out just how much they belong.

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • Re-Love

    Edvard Munch – Lovers in the Waves (Elskende par i bolger), 1896. See more here: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/edvard-munch

    It’s Spring, and to detract from the heaviness of my previous post here’s a playlist for romantic renewal. Because love, this invisible energy binding us all, continues to matter and to exist. And it can be found inside of you. However, if you’ve been feeling like I have recently, despondent and melancholic, let’s resort to some readily available auditory medicine.

    The following songs from these amazing alternative artists work heavily on your heart chakra to make you feel good and get you…in the mood for love. Adorned to the titles themselves you will also find small snipits of my favourite lyrics from these songs (most of which are also great dance tunes…) :

    1. Niluefer Yanya – Midnight Sun

    “Love is raised by common thieves
    Hiding diamonds up their sleeves
    Always I did it for you
    Never felt so sure
    You’re my best machine
    You’re my midnight sun”

    2. Idles – Grace

    “Give me grace, give me light
    Hold me up as I take flight
    Make me safe, away from harm
    Please caress my swollen heart
    Make me pure”

    3. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club – Echo

    “Maybe you’re a little fire
    You’ve been drowning your own desires
    But every time I see you smile, the heavens move”

    4. Fontaines DC – I love you

    “Well, I love you, imagine a world without you
    It’s only ever you, I only think of you
    And if it’s a blessing, I want it for you
    If I must have a future, I want it with you”

    5. Angus and Julia Stone – Chateau

    “Corner in your converse
    Living on the outskirts
    Trying just to figure it out
    Talking like a deadbeat, I just wanted you to see
    Everything that I could see
    Walking in the night sky, I’m always on your side
    You were really saving me”

    6. Father John Mysty – Screamland

    “Picked me up and drove by the light of the moon
    Four hours to the desert from the drawing room
    This year’s wine tasted suspicious but just enough like love
    God must be with the outcasts ’cause when I call, you come”

    7. HAIM – Summer Girl

    “I need you to understand
    These are the earthquake drills that we ran
    Under the freeway overpasses
    The tears behind your dark sunglasses
    The fears inside your heart as deep as gashes
    Walk beside me, not behind me
    Feel my unconditional love”

    8. Vampire Weekend – Prep-School Gangsters

    “Call me jealous, call me mad, now I’ve got the thing you had
    Somewhere in your family tree, there was someone just like me”

    9. Sharon van Etten – Jupiter 4

    “Touching your face
    How’d it take a long, long time
    To be here

    Turning the wheel on my street
    My heart still skips a beat”

    10. Clairo – White Flag

    “Grown apart and we’re so far gone
    But I’m waving the white flag
    Sending my love back, move on”

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • Supervillains

    Photo of Elon Musk [FILE: Mike Segars/Reuters] taken from: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/9/24/elon-musks-wars-brazil-to-australia-uk-to-us-the-x-owners-many-battles

    A couple of hours just shy off the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump’s second chance at ruling the US, I was looking into the Elon Musk and Asmongold drama, replete with leaked DMs, removed gaming credentials and some direct accusations of Musk being a fake gamer. I found it hilarious and somehow in my weird astrologer’s brain something clicked; something I noticed a while back and I feel the need to unearth in this article and to get deeper into. I vaguely remembered that both Trump and Musk shared a really interesting astrological aspect in common: they both have a Venus conjunct Saturn in their natal charts! Normally, this aspect would portent an individual destiny marred by financial limits, setbacks and struggles, so how come these two men were put in charge with rescuing the economy of one of the biggest country’s in the world and the literal birth-place of capitalism to add to that?

    As the current planetary transits also involve the conjunction between Venus in Pisces conjunct Saturn in Pisces in the month of January 2025, I thought that the synchronicities were too good to miss out on. So, as I lie in bed covered in tissues and sipping from hot tea in a desperate attempt to get rid of a flu that is kicking my ass for a week now, allow me to entertain myself and potentially you as a valued reader with an analysis of the chart of Donald Trump and Elon Musk. It will be a light-hearted analysis, focused mainly on the weird astrological connections between these two goofy, powerful men who have the potential to really mess up world politics in the next 4 years. We truly live through magical times, and magical thinking is required now more than ever to survive…

    In my opinion, Elon Musk is a good example of what stress, power, over-fucking and a poor diet can do to a man’s brain. A man who had the potential to be great, in culturally significant and invention-empowering ways, but who sadly got lost in the hubris of making money for the sake of making money, and acting out in super-sensitive ways if things don’t go his way. These characteristics all feed into the creation of the super-villain, a man who ends up sitting on the wrong side of history due to an unstable character and the misuse of ridiculous financial and political power. And the saddest part is that he could do so much good with this power, as long as he remembers to be grateful for his power and to use it wisely. But attaining wisdom is not really Musk’s destiny..

    Image of the birth-chart of Elon Musk taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/

    His chart shows me that Musk was born with a sensitive Sun in Cancer in the softest house of the zodiac, the 12th house. So, he is a Cancerian who borrows traits from a Piscean (jeez talk about being super sensitive!) Not only that but his Ascendant is in Cancer with Mercury perfectly conjunct it, adding a Geminian vibe to any first impression he makes, and thereby adding to this super brainy persona that he likes to indulge in, but keep in mind that this is just a front as the Ascendant is not who he really is at the core. His core comprises of a Moon in Virgo conjunct the Part of Fortune and Pluto, as Musk, it needs to be remembered is a Gen X-er. Due to all of this more or less conscious Mercurian energy surrounding his lunar placement and his Mercury conjunct the Ascendant, Musk identifies with his thoughts and wants to come across as a youthful, vibrant, funny and smart lad. In reality he is an anxious and obsessed, control-freak who is struggling to keep up with the times. This aspect is further emphasized because Musk was born with a South Node in Leo in the first house, so therefore his comfort zone is being himself and this Self is rather poorly placed in the least modest sign of the zodiac: Leo, the ruler, the playful but belligerent and self-aggrandising big baby of the zodiac.

    This placement puts his growth zone in the opposite sign of Leo, that being Aquarius and to add spice to this, the Universe decided to have Musk’s Mars placement conjunct his North Node too, a fact I immediately attribute to Musk’s obsession with conquering and exploiting the planet Mars (as we know, the North Node is a point of excessive growth and obsession). Furthermore, Musk’s Midheaven is in Aries, a sign ruled by Mars, and another sign of how the public perceives him: as a pioneer, as a brave and bold guy who takes risks and chances, as someone who fucks around a lot and has a lot of children (even if he is trying to intellectualize his lusty appetite by saying he is helping to repopulate the planet; I attribute his high libido and pleasure in procreating to his natal Jupiter in Scorpio conjunct Neptune in Sagittarius in the 5th house, the house of fun and children). As we see that his Midheaven is conjunct Chiron, the Wounded Healer, there is tinge of woundedness and super-sensitivity that makes him come across as a man who is more vulnerable than we would like, a leader who suffers and is not necessarily physically ill but in terms of the fragility of his Ego, since as we know Aries rules the Ego and the Self. Ideally, he would learn from life’s challenges and spread wisdom to the masses, a wisdom that can be deeply healing and inspiring. I mean he does have the power and the platform to do so; however seeing as his internal astrological chemistry contains so much Air (North Node and Mars in Aquarius, Gemini Venus and Saturn, Uranus and Lilith in Libra), he seems to be taking a superficial and technological approach to how he is handling his Chiron and therefore misses the chance for true emotional growth through processing the real pain of feeling less worthy than other men around him.

    As Musk has been experiencing his Chiron return since 2018 and has been having the transit of Jupiter and then the North Node moving across his highly visible 10th house and the Midheaven in the last 3 years, more of this under-utilised and misinterpreted Chirotic energy made itself know to the public. It will be fascinating to see how the public’s perception of Musk (already at a considerable low) will change in the next two years and a half as Saturn and Neptune will enter Aries and begin affecting his professional legacy, as it will bring up some more of his deeply painful Chirotic energy to the surface.

    I think the interesting aspect to Musk is that he tends to make a likeable supervillain, one who can be cool and down with the kids, goofing around, acting nerdy and speaking in boyish and charming ways that put a comic intent on most of his affirmations; affirmations that have the potential to considerably change the course of the stock market. A powerful man who wants to look like the eternal cool teenager, the nerd who outsmarted them all and built a technological empire and is now impregnating the world to preserve the human race. Allegedly 🙂 I attribute all these qualities to what I consider to be the key to his sudden rise to success and maybe even the reason to his future downfall: his Venus in Gemini loosely conjunct Saturn in the 11th house.

    Let’s have a brief look over Donald Trump’s chart now:

    Photo of Donald Trump and image of his birth-chart taken from https://www.astro-seek.com/

    So Trump was born as a Sun in Gemini in the 10th house conjunct the North Node & Uranus, two aspects which make him highly volatile and unpredictable! He has a Moon in Sagittarius conjunct the South Node and Lilith and sitting opposite the Sun, which means that he was born during a Full Moon and he is someone who is lucky with partnerships and needs to be in a stable and long-term connection because he is quite inter-dependent. His Moon sits in the 4th house the place of roots, family, nation – a nationalistic house, so I don’t doubt him when he says he is a patriot. He has an Ascendant in Leo (conjunct Mars in the 12th house & loosely conjunct Pluto, cause he’s a Boomer). The current transit of Jupiter in Gemini is harmoniously helping him with being seen in a positive, funny and helpful light, but this transit is frustrating his Saturn, Venus and Mercury. Nonetheless the current transit of Saturn in Pisces is supporting his inner planets especially that Venus in Cancer conjunct Saturn in Cancer in the 11th house (conjunct Venus almost perfectly and loosely conjunct Mercury). Trump has Neptun conjunct Jupiter in Libra so people born with a Sun in Libra, like his daughter Ivanka, in a weird way make him happy and bring him prestige and good luck. He also has the 7th house in Aquarius and the generation born with the Uranus, Neptune in Aqua combo may idealise him (1998 – 2003).

    But let’s return to his Venus conjunction to Saturn in the shy and sensitive sign of Cancer and compare it to Musk’s Venus conjunction to Saturn in the brainy and speedy sign of Gemini. In her book on Saturn, Liz Green describes Venus-Saturn contacts in synastry as:

    This is the aspect par excellence of emotional rejection, and it is a difficult one to deal with unless it is taken as an opportunity to discover whether any reality lies behind the projections of the relationship. We know that Venus is the chief significator or symbol of affection, love and harmony, and the urge for companionship. As a reflection of the individual’s capacity to relate to others, Venus expresses with charm, grace and ease those qualities which Saturn cannot freely demonstrate. She will also often suggest a sense of taste and refinement in those areas where Saturn finds himself clumsy, inept, inhibited and cramped. Venus is the eternal lover and the eternal youth and this can very naturally upset Saturn, who may have a tendency to react with jealousy, possessiveness, suspicion, and a feeling of unattractiveness or social ineptness. But it seems to be an empiric fact that Venus-Saturn contacts, whether they appear on a natal chart or in the comparison of charts, have the tendency to bring first, great unhappiness of a peculiarly personal kind and second, great opportunity for the establishment of an honest relationship – something which is rarely seen. A relationship may occur out of expediency, out of a need for financial security, or a general loneliness. It may also occur because an additional responsibility such as a child makes it impossible to consider any alternative situation. Some relationships occur under family pressure or for religious or moral reasons. Often Venus-Saturn contacts will be seen in these situations, for the other side of this tie is the duty-over-love side, and it will frequently occur in relation to money. There is frequently a tie of financial obligation involved with Venus-Saturn contacts which binds two people long after the affection has ceased to exist.

    In my experience, I noticed that it was usually people who were single for a very long time who sought my astrological services and had this Venus-Saturn aspect in their chart. Saturn tends to freeze or dry up whatever it sits near to and when it embraces Venus to such a close degree, it tends to dry up a person’s love life and personal love energy; in this context, giving and receiving love tends to be an awkward process, filled with blocks and inhibitions that lead to romantic rejection and disappointment. Both Trump and Musk have this aspect which would explain why they are so weird and gauche with women, benefiting from either the attention of a lot of low-vibrational women and lewd liaisons that end up harming their reputation or coupling with high-vibrational, intelligent and beautiful women who they don’t know how to treat, appreciate and respect, so those connections end up in painful and public separations. Venus-Saturn doesn’t only affect in a negative way the way they love others, but also the love and respect they show themselves which is relatively low in both cases: Musk is known for skipping sleep or sleeping on the floor of his work office in an effort to show how committed he is to his innovative work, while Trump is a big lover of junk food and has shamelessly admitted to this several times. Eating poorly, not getting enough sleep, not valuing the way they look or dress not only changes their brain chemistry for the worse and gets them to declare stupid things in the press but it has ripple consequences on the way in which others perceive them; both Musk and Trump seem to think that only money and power will grant them the respect they would normally achieve by simply taking better care of their bodies and their health and feeling through reality in a more sensual and present way. Paying closer attention to details, slowly, carefully and patiently working through their duties rather than simply winging things all the time and declaring themselves geniuses for how fast and decisive they work, may help them both to improve a lot of ongoing issues in their lives and reduce personal and public dramas.

    Sue Tompkins, reflecting on the Venus-Saturn aspect in the book by the same name, describes this energy as:

    For some reason, it seems that those with Venus-Saturn contacts come into the world feeling unloved. For many, it takes years for the penny to drop that the issue is really self-valuation. Before that realization dawns, Venus-Saturn people tend to believe, though not always consciously, that it is others that don’t care, others that don’t love them. Saturn will always delay the development of whatever planetary principle it touches, and for Venus-Saturn types it takes time for the individual to learn about giving and receiving – and especially giving and receiving with no strings attached (…) these types almost expect rejection and are very sensitive to, nay listen out for, any clues which might herald the fact that the other person’s love has waned. And the constant demand for proof of affection and for the other person to continually define their feelings often does put a considerable strain on the relationships as does the continual saying of ‘I’m sorry’ which is often very much a Venus-Saturn phrase. Venus-Saturn men often find themselves doing all the loving of seemingly cold women. The Venus-Saturn person often attempts to make themselves indispensable to their loved ones and especially ever willing to give of their time or their money and this is how Venus-Saturn controls the relationship. The issue of love and time is often a very big one with Venus-Saturn. You can tell that a Venus-Saturn person cares for you if they are prepared to give you their time and similarly, they use the time-factor as a yardstick of your affection. Lack of time and subsequent denial of affection was often an issue in childhood. Issues of denial of love, control and love, and love and punishment are also pertinent here. At worst the person builds a wall around themselves and wails because nobody loves them. Saturn always give endurance and thus the Venus-Saturn person can describe the one who holds on through thick and thin and through doing so, really does make a relationship work, really does learn to give and take. People with these contacts do better after the initial attraction and illusion has worn off.

    Seeing as Trump is about to begin his second term as president, and his relationship to the USA has ripened, it may very well be that trying again could work in his favour this time. Although this may make sense emotionally, from a logical point of view I still wonder why Americans have given their vote of confidence to a man who went bankrupt thrice in his career and they expect such an individual to rescue their economy? It’s like getting your stylist to take care of your taxes or hiring an illiterate person to read you bed time stories. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind that the president won’t fulfill his duties alone and that there are other powerful men sitting in the shadows and guiding Trump towards making the decisions that need to be taken, and I attribute this love for his flexibility to why he has won the second term in the first place. His Venus-Saturn contact shows that because of inherent father issues and feeling unloved at a deep level, he will continue to bend over backwards to please the men in his life, no matter how outwardly confrontational he may come across when talking to them (don’t be fooled by that Mars in Leo on the Ascendant, who is all roar but no bite). And an example of this is getting Musk to rule alongside him by conferring him the power to organise the Department of Government Efficiency, a right-wing sounding branch of the future Trump administration.

    Voices in the world of journalism say that the bromance between these two Venus-afflicted men will not last long, but my opinion is that as long as they both continue to make decisions that profit them, and continue to raise their assets and investments, then there would be no logical reason for why they should call it quits. In the absence of love, both these men will continue to fill the voids in their hearts with the comforting zing of green dollar bills, and spread similar materialistic values into the society, poisoning it from within. One of the reasons, why we have reached this point may very well be that with their powerful and low-vibrational Venus-Saturn contacts they are simply mirroring the unconscious projections of society at large gone wrong, in these brave two thousand twenties times. As ‘beacons of light’ in a cold, cruel and loveless world, both Trump and Musk blare out from our screens with messages of progress and finding all the comfort you need in making money, because if you think that people won’t love you, the heavy-handed arm of capitalism will always make you believe that at least you are just as worthy as the things that you purchase.

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • It’s gonna get emotional

    Drawing by Ian Moore. Taken from: https://lifehacker.com/health/how-to-cry-more-and-why

    Hello, welcome to 2025 friends! I’m sick with the flu, lying in bed trying to get some rest, but I’m also restless. I have so many ideas that my mind finds it hard to fall into some deep sleep. I keep falling asleep for about an hour and a half and then waking up to do astrological research. This is because I can feel the energy of this year and it will be a pretty glorious one on many levels, both seen and unseen, but especially in terms of the planetary astrological transits we will be collectively experiencing. First of all, we entered the year with a Mars retrograde and will continue in March with a Venus retrograde in its exaltation and superimposed on a Mercury retrograde. Retrogrades are times of realignment but they are also times of sensitivity and emotionality, as logic tends to take a backseat for a while. March will also bring with it eclipse season, another reason-blocking period, so be careful what you schedule for that month as many plans could go awry in the last minute. But before March we have super-hot January, made so by the closeness of Mars retrograde in Cancer to the Earth on the 12th of January, and a mere two days after the nodes of the Moon will have shifted into Virgo and Pisces, changing the themes of our collective desires and obsessions; I am so happy to leave behind the North Node in Aries as masculinity was taken to extremes and armed conflicts and violence and hatred against women has been so intense in the last 18 months. February will be quite lovely and quite slow and sweet, almost as if we are entering a really comforting bumper zone right before we are pushed into the chaotic and flowing action of March. If you want to understand how March will play out just reflect on what went down in your life in the last week of November and first week of December of 2024, as the themes will repeat.

    The highlights of the second month of the year will be the lunar occultation of Saturn in Pisces on February 1st, the Moon at perigee on the 2nd (perigee meaning closest to the Earth), Jupiter going direct in Gemini on the 4th (which is always a lucky day, so mark that in your calendar), and then Mars going direct on the 24th of February. The most beautiful aspects is given by Venus, who plays a star role this year, as she will shine at her brightest in the night sky in between the 10th and 16th of February. Valentine’s Day will be quite special and karmic this year, as Venus is also wrapped up in her closeness to Saturn and Neptune so basically the love you give is the love you will receive; but schedule a lovely trip or getaway, a pampering treatment or make something nice to eat and even share it with others, as Venus in Pisces is altruistic and loves sharing gifts, making donations and giving comforting hugs to those in need.

    I also feel that with the combined efforts of Venus being exalted and remaining in Pisces up until April and with the Moon making so many aspects to Saturn and Mars and literally standing in between them and the Earth during its growing phases, that a wave of softness is coming over the collective, marking for a hopeful closure to the violence, hatred, selfishness and restlessness that has marked the previous years. The Moon will also occult Antares, several times in Winter and Spring of 2025, and it being the brightest star in the constellation of Scorpio, you can expect some intense and deep feelings to rise up to the surface of our lives. The best way to harness their energy is to put them into creative work, because this is the year when individual, creative and imaginative efforts done solo will sky-rocket your career if you put a lot of heart into them and you dare to do something different and to challenge people’s habits. The collective mood will be quite dark, grunge and modest but also incredibly sexy and romantic at the same time (like a 90s rock music video playing on MTV late at night). This is also because Lilith, the Wild Feminine will also switch signs from Libra and into Scorpio on the 28th of March.

    As the rings of Saturn will be at their thinnest that they have been in 14 years and as the Earth is closest to the Sun this year (in combination with the Sun’s barely decreasing solar maximum from last year’s peak), we will begin to experience less restrictions and become more emotional. Expect some epic warm showers this spring and summer as well. In addition, there may be more public outpourings of emotion involving music, dancing, peak religious and spiritual experiences and chants of free love. The social situation of the poor, the environmentally afflicted, the outcasts will continue to feel tense or blocked by the clutches of the past up until the end of March, when Neptune will enter Aries, and then momentum will begin building up as Saturn will enter Aries on the 26th of May. Slightly edgy but also pretty fun, June will be tense up until July swoops in and brings with it the movement of Uranus from Taurus and into Gemini. This will be a sky lit up with Fire and Air signs energy, after so many years of Earth and Water signs dominating the sky! You could call the summer, a period of a return of reason and illumination. Ideas will flow to us with more ease and communication will be prioritized above action. At the same time, the best Water energies which will remain will be the romantic and heartfelt dance that Jupiter in its Cancerian exaltation will make with the North Node in Pisces (finally released in the summer from the clutches of Saturn!). July will certainly be an excellent month to launch artistic projects, get married, fall in love or procreate. The downside will be that as Saturn and Neptune will be in a loose square to Jupiter in Cancer there may be issues of homeland security, displaced homes and mass migration that will have to be dealt with.

    The friendly energies between Uranus in Gemini, Pluto in Aquarius, Saturn and Neptune in Aries will light up our July and August, ushering in a completely different mood of courage, action, intensified speech and passionate commitments. The energies will calm down and fall back into the moody darkness towards Autumn, as September will come with its retrogrades and eclipses, pulling us one final time into a past we will slowly start saying goodbye to. Seeing as we have so many planets in two highly emotional and impulsive signs (Pisces and Aries), and that the Moon and Venus are doing a lot of work this year, as Saturn will also be in an uncomfortable Martian energy and Neptune in a weird semi-sextile to its domicile placement, this year will be emotional in both the worse manifestations of this word and its highest. Personally, it may seem weird but I’m looking forward to feel more freely and to cry again, as Saturn in Pisces has ‘iced’ me out in recent years and it was so hard for me to release toxins through crying. Crying brings relief to the body; it cleanses the eyes and disburdens the soul. Asking for forgiveness can also repair relationships that were once broken and filled with enmity. All these beautiful manifestations of Piscean energy, softened as they are by Venus in the first part of the year, means that we can fix and repair what we destroyed because of pride and ego in previous months. A softly assertive approach will get you the desired results rather than a fearful or strongly aggressive approach. As the saying goes you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. Saturn in Aries will get us to face our fears of each other and ram our heads into the unknown with confidence and a sense of adventure, while the North Node in Pisces will bring about some softness, some sweetness and a spiritual approach to the outcomes of each individual act of killing fear. It’s truly the year in which we can embody that old saying ‘make love and not war’, as long as we stay true to our hearts.

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • Thank you

    The year is almost over and it’s been a very difficult one for me on an emotional level. My mental health has severely fluctuated following from a diagnosis with extreme anxiety and paroxysmic crises at the beginning of the year – for which I had to take medication for 3 months – to the news of my father’s bone cancer. I struggled to really do my work and enjoy creating like I used to, as I was overwhelmed by negative feelings and depression. My misophonia which began in 2023 when I moved into my new apartment that was besieged by loud noises and construction work for months on end, accentuated to the point where I could only exist if I wore headphones at all times throughout the day to feel calm and balanced. After 3 months I also ended my therapy and relationship to my therapist because I found out she was swindling me for money and kept saying ‘let’s be friends’ throughout our session, when I actually needed a trained professional to help me make sense of the deep pain I was feeling. I decided to take my healing into my own hands and go to the gym, take herbal supplements of Magnesium and Valerian and try to get a corporate job, to have a steady income at least and pay off my taxes. The plan was hard to sustain as I often struggled to work in the hectic corporate environments where people would play music or speak loudly over each other and trigger my misophonia. I tried 5 jobs and failed at all of them for various reasons but looking back the reasons where all me, and the pain I was experiencing and that I couldn’t control.

    As August came by and with it came extreme heat, I kind of gave up on everything and spent most of my days sleeping, going to the cinema or drinking beer to cool off, since film tickets and beer where under 5 euros and I was on a budget. Looking back on that period which contained the majestic Lion’s Gate Portal energy, I can clearly say I was a mess and felt horrible and I argued with my mom, but I kept it all to myself, like I always do, not wanting to bother anyone. I preferred showing my crew images with me at the local community pool than discussing openly my deep despair. From time to time, I would return to the tarot but all of these attempts I had at trying to ‘live normally’ while feeling like I was slowly dying inside gradually built up and made me just want to give up on tarot as well. An opportunity for another job came by in September (and I need to say just how grateful I am that Spirit kept offering second, third and fourth chances for work this year, to the point that I feel my eyes tearing up as I am writing this) and I took it. I needed the income and I thought that the job was interesting, only to discover a month into the job that the income I agreed upon when I signed the job contract was not reflected in my pay check and the stress from having been lied to and taken advantage of (yet again) just got to me and amplified my misophonia. I was working for the largest corporation in the world and I got pennies in return and I felt sick to the bone and decided to liberate myself. although with a heavy heart as I seemed to have been stacking up so many failures.

    One fated and beautiful moment during this job was when a person started talking to me in the lady’s bathroom about how she knew about The Spiritual Social and how much it helped her in the past. I thanked her but felt like I was slowly burying my work into oblivion, and she wanted me to know that I shouldn’t give up and told me to keep going and to take our meeting as a sign. We hugged and I guess she doesn’t know just how much that encounter meant to me and how it was part of the decision to keep working and uploading and posting again. That was the beautiful pearl hidden inside this harsh year: that occasionally, Spirit would send me a benefactor, a friend, a gentle life-line, a sign of a hopeful kind that reminded me to keep rolling with the punches and to not give up on everything.

    The last two months of 2024 have been quiet and slow but they have also been productive. I started writing articles here again, I became a Hermit and mostly spend time indoors, creating and I cannot say at all that I am not enjoying it! I am aware that it will take some time and perseverance to get back to the level of light, love and inspired dedication that I was at in 2021, but I had better astrological transits back then and less neurological damage. A part of me still wishes that none of this would have happened and that my dad would still be healthy and going to the cinema with mom, that my sister would still be talking to me, that my channel would unproblematically grow, that my income wouldn’t have halved itself and I that I would feel safe and happy in my new apartment, but I guess these things just had to happen. My recurrent breakdown this year was in some way fated. I’m usually very strong, so it was hard for me to make sense of what was going on. I still can’t say with clarity I have the answers…other than Pluto is on my IC and it feels…..like a cinema of inner horrors that wash over me like the waves of a sullen, forgotten sea.

    As I gradually gave up on things, I pulled into myself for some peace and safety and as a consequence I pushed some people away – not because I had problems with them, but because it hurt me if someone wanted to get closer to me, as I felt I couldn’t reciprocate in a loving and enthusiastic way. The merest sign of kindness, love and support I would receive would get me to sob uncontrollably and I would feel like my skin was burning; and I usually cry alone, I struggle to cry in front of other people and it takes a big hit to get me to do that. I think this is because in a year in which I needed the most to cry and to release the pain, I just couldn’t do it, something inside of me just froze off. It was a dry, emotionally heavy and anxious year. And yet I am still here, I made it through and I recommitted to my spiritual work because I am aware that no psychiatrist or medication can do me good for too long, especially when I can’t trust my therapist. I need to be brave to continue to live and to create. What I need is yoga, meaningful work through tarot and astrology and exploring my environment. What I need is friends, to paint, to walk, to drink water, to keep to a clean diet and to be of use to others, helping them within boundaries so that I can heal my heart as well in this process. What I need is to go to sleep surrounded by my three cats, my little family of survivors.

    On this final note, the highlight of my year has been meeting and adopting Noa, my little family’s tomcat. I met him in the Bellu cemetery, as I was having my lunch during my work break and suddenly about 8 cats were surrounding me begging for some crumbs; one of the cats was on the outside of the circle and all the other ones where pushing him and he didn’t seem able to fight them off as he was too weakened. When I saw this, I felt like he wouldn’t survive for much longer and he was such a beautiful cat underneath all that grime, so after I went back inside the corporate building I was working in and quit, I came out and took him in my arms and ordered an Uber to get us home so I could wash him. One woman who was doing the graveyard cleaning, started shouting at me and saying obscenities like “I should search for men and get fucked instead of caring for these awful cats” and after an exchange of tough replies I realised she is dead inside and that life was brutal to her and that I wouldn’t win this argument. I left her screaming and got inside the car and I started crying because Noa was almost asleep in my arms and he opposed no resistance. When the driver saw this, he switched the radio channel to one that played ‘In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleep’s tonight’ just to make us feel better after I told him I just adopted Noa and was verbally abused for it. He got us home safe and I gave him a generous tip. We were now a family of 4.

    Since I moved into the new apartment, I seem to be adopting a new cat each year, and while this has always been my dream (to adopt and nurture animals who have been neglected or mistreated and to honour Artemis, the Goddess presiding over my Sagittarius stellium), I am conscious of the fact that I am going to need a bigger place and maybe also a patch of grass to keep doing this work. My dream now is to purchase a small farmland somewhere in the centre of Romania, in the country-side and to plant vegetables and herbs and to raise chickens and ducks while I grow my cats and dogs’ family. And another dream would be to solidify my training as a psychologist by becoming a Jungian analyst; because the corporate world is not the right environment for me and I seem to be struggling to make an income from just tarot and astrology, since the pandemic ended. For this I will need time and money and will attempt in the next year to redirect these efforts by doing two jobs at the same time (I worked in a similar rhythm when I was writing my PhD and I think I still have it in me, to do it from next year). As Saturn will conjunct my Sun together with Neptune and the North Node in Pisces for my 38th birthday, I feel it is time to put in the hard work that will hopefully help me manifest a dream or to. I just hope that Romania remains a free country, in the sense that it will stay in the EU and that we won’t be politically wreaked by a right-wing, extremist president. In the absence of these things, it would be impossible for me to buy a farm or train as an analyst, as I will need to flee the country.

    But that’s just a bad dream for the time being and there is still so much hope that after some restrictions we can live in prosperity once more. I cling to such hopes, dearly. In the meantime, let’s come back to the present and to my thanking you from the bottom of my heart for still being here! I appreciate you so much and I find it humbling that you all find meaning in my work and words. If you are a follower to this blog, thank you especially and I promise you there will be a lot of cool articles coming up. I just felt like unburdening my heart in this post, so that I may leave some of the emotional baggage in 2024, where it belongs. I’m sorry to everyone I pushed away this year, and I hope that if by some weird twist of faith you will read this post, you will understand why I acted in this way. I just didn’t have the right words at the time being, as I was overwhelmed by emotions. Let’s see that 2025 will inspire better coping strategies in the minds of those of us dealing with grief and pain. For the time being, from me, Noa, Luna and Sol, we wish you a happy, safe and pleasant entry into the New Year and a happy New Moon in Capricorn!

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • Romantic Realist

    This post is more of a playlist than anything else. To remind myself and others that love is still possible and that it can be found in the irregularities, mistakes and issues of everyday life. One of the least sentimental and most romantic rock bands, whose music stood the test of time, has been the American band The National. I used to religiously listen to them in high-school, specifically their brilliantly undertstated album ‘Alligator’. Then I got the pleasure of seeing them live in the Netherlands at the Lowlands festival and in special gig at Edinburgh’s Queen Hall, which I was fortunate enough to live in close proximity to, at that time.

    And because ysterday, I drank some champagne for Christmas and Youtube randomly started playing ‘Quiet light’ in the background, just as the clock turned to midnight, I thought I’d put together a top 10 of my favourite love songs from The National with some lyrics that stand out to me. So courtesy of singer Matt Berninger (an Aquarius Sun) and the band, here are the songs I most listen to when I want to feel loved and hopeful:

    1. Brainy : You know I keep your fingerprints in a pink folder in the middle of my table / You’re the tall kingdom I surround / Think I better follow you around / You might need me more than you think you will / Come home in the car you love, brainy brainy brainy
    2. Conversation 16 : I’ll try to be more romantic / I wanna believe in everything you believe / I was less than amazing / Do not know what all the troubles are for / I fall asleep in your branches / You’re the only thing I ever want anymore
    3. Val Jester : Build a fire for Val Jester / Build a room for your love / Take your time when you tell her / How she lives in your blood
    4. Quiet Light : But I’m learning to lie here in the quiet light / While I watch the sky go from black to grey/ Learning how not to die inside a little every time / I think about you and wonder if you are awake
    5. Start a War : Whatever went away, I’ll get it over now / I’ll get money, I’ll get funny again / Walk away now and you’re gonna start a war
    6. Terrible Love : It’s a terrible love and I’m walkin’ with spiders / It’s a terrible love and I’m walkin’ in / This quiet company
    7. The system only dreams in total darkness : Maybe I listen more than you think / And I can tell that somebody sold you / We said we’d never let anyone in / We said we’d only die of lonely secrets
    8. I need my girl : I am good, I am grounded / Davy says that I look taller / But I can’t get my head around it / I keep feeling smaller and smaller
    9. City middle : You said “I think I’m like Tennessee Williams” / I wait for the click, I wait, but it doesn’t kick in / I think I’m like Tennessee Williams / I wait for the click, I wait, but it doesn’t kick in
    10. About Today : Hey, are you awake? / Yeah, I’m right here / Well can I ask you /About today? /How close am I / To losing you?

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • The Birth-chart of Santa Claus

    Norman Rockwell shows Santa Claus changing his itinerary depending on whether children were good – or extra good (1939). Photograph: Apic/Getty Images

    It’s been a while since I wrote a light-hearted post and seeing as Christmas is just around the corner, I thought I would indulge a deep curiosity of mine and take you on a fun, astrological trip as well: What exactly is Santa’s zodiac sign? And could I track down his birth-date, time and place? And once cast, what planets would I find in this famous, jolly man’s chart? Let’s investigate 🙂 I begin my search at the source, more precisely the website santaclaus.com. If you use the search bar to look for Santa’s birthday you get redirected to a page in which you are being told the fun fact of the day: that Santa’s birthday is the 15th of March. Wow, that was easy – Santa is a Pisces Sun, just like me, whoopie! Ok, but a true investigator looks for more facts before drawing a conclusion. So I do a similar search on the website that is in charge of Santa’s yearly correspondence and the Santaverse, called elfontheshelf.com and am being given the same result. Double match! But this is suspicious, why are we not given any other details about Santa’s birth? Just the fact that this date is thrown around on the websites concerned with Santa’s lore is not enough to convince me that it is the truth of the matter.

    So I take a different approach and I run quick searches for Santa Claus on Wikipedia and Britannica in order to dive a bit deeper into the history behind Santa’s life and the circumstances of his birth. Results show me that the name Claus could be the short form of Nicholaus and that celebrating Santa Claus’ arrival on Christmas Eve was an extension of the celebration of Saint Nicholas’ name day, which takes place on the 6th of December, a mere couple of days before the Winter Solstice or Christmas (21st-25th of December). I always thought it was weird how we celebrated as children both Saint Nicholaus and then also Santa Claus at a short distance one from the other, and how they both had links to gift-giving and the moral reprimand of being a good enough child to earn gifts. Armed with flashback of my childhood, I remained intrigued and continued searching.

    As I was searching I pondered that the moral and generous qualities of Saint Nicholas would fit well with a Sagittarius Sun birthday, making him ruled by Jupiter, the Great Benefic, an energy of generosity, optimism, growth and excess. But I found this Wikipedia explanation as to why, Saint Nicholas gradually become associated with the image of Santa Claus and attributed the habit of giving gifts to children:

    “During the Middle Ages, often on the evening before his name day of 6 December, children were bestowed gifts in his honour. This date was earlier than the original day of gifts for the children, which moved in the course of the Reformation and its opposition to the veneration of saints in many countries on 24 and 25 December. The custom of gifting to children at Christmas was propagated by Martin Luther as an alternative to the previous very popular gift custom on St. Nicholas, to focus the interest of the children to Christ instead of the veneration of saints. Martin Luther first suggested the Christkind as the bringer of gifts. But Nicholas remained popular as gifts bearer for the people.[8][9]“

    Interesting. And in this context, I am slightly perplexed as to why Santa Claus is officially described as celebrating his birthday on March 15th? Why not make it 6th of December then? Traditionally it would make some sense as both Sagittarius and Pisces used to share the same planetary ruler before the discovery of Neptune during the Autumnal Equinox of 1846; both zodiac signs were ruled by Jupiter, or Great Jove, but this shared ruler hypothesis isn’t enough to help me make sense of why these two dates are competing for Saint Nicholas’ birthday. I am nosy and somewhat dissatisfied with this facile association, so I click on the Saint Nicholas wikipedia page and I am sent to this promising lead:

    Saint Nicholas of Myra[a] (traditionally 15 March 270 – 6 December 343),[3][4][b] also known as Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greek descent from the maritime city of Patara in Anatolia (in modern-day Antalya Province, Turkey) during the time of the Roman Empire.[7][8] 

    Amazing! Now I have something to work with. It seems that Nicholas of Myra was a bishop born during the time of the Roman Empire, on the 15th of March in what is now modern-day Kaş in Antalya, a region of Turkey. After a lifetime of service to Christianity, he died at the age of 73 on the 6th of December, a day which became associated with his name, as after his death he entered the Christian canon and became sanctified. But because of the Christian reformation that took place during the Middle Ages, Nicholas’ celebration became associated with Christmas and the act of giving gifts to children. In a nutshell: he was born in March and he died in December, this is why we have these two dates!

    Ok, all of these aspects to the side, let’s cast a chart for the date of 15th of March 270 BC for the region of Patara/modern day Kaş in Antalya, Turkey. I first check the coordinates of the ancient city of Patara to the ones generated in the location provided by the birth data entry generator for the town of Kaş, and they are almost perfect aligned. However, I encounter another obstacle in that the calculator follows the Gregorian calendar and seems to stop generating charts before the year of 1582 AD. I could adjust this date by adding the particle ‘jul’ next to the year, so I do exactly that. Seeing how difficult it was to find his birth-day and the exact location of his birth, I’m giving up on the idea of there being a recorded actual time of his birth, so we’ll have to let go of knowing Santa’s Ascendant (for the time being). The final input data I have resembles a magic formula at this point, but it allows me to cast his chart and I get this image below:

    Fig. A – The birth chart of Santa Claus with his birth-place included

    Oh my God! A look inside Santa Claus’ chart, which is probably the best Christmas gift ever 🙂 I’ll take a short break from my excitement and let you know that there is another method for checking the planetary positions in the sky for the given date (15th March 270 BC) and that is to track down the ephemeris generated by astro.com for that specific year and look up the month of March of that year. It took me a while to track down such a specific ephemeris but following this link opens up a vault of astrological knowledge from before our Christian era. After searching for the year, the month and the day, I generated this screenshot:

    Fig. B – The position of the planets in the sky generated by the astro.com ephemeris for the year 270 BC

    As you can see from the images above, we now have two charts packed with astrological data pertaining to Santa’s birth. Fig. A is the more correct one, as it includes Santa’s birth-place which is not something that was used in the creation of the ephemeris in Fig. B. We can use the second chart just to compare the accuracy of the outer-planetary transits, a couple of his personal planets (excluding the Moon’s position which is strongly tied to the birth-place) and the position of the nodes of the Moon and Lilith as a significant asteroid (data on Chiron is sadly not available). Remarkably we see the same pattern: Santa was born with a Pluto in Scorpio (just like Millennials!), a Uranus in Gemini (a transit which is coming up in 2025), a Saturn in Leo, a Jupiter in Gemini conjunct Lilith (he would’ve experienced his Jupiter return, this year in 2024!) and a North Node in Cancer/South Node in Capricorn conjunct Neptune in Cancer (talk about a destiny of being associated with nurturing children, wow!). Needless to say, my mind is blown…

    Let’s take a closer look at the first figure and Santa’s personal placements. So, he was born as an altruistic and spiritual Pisces Sun, with a Moon in Gemini – which would make him a bit of a sceptic and trickster, if his Moon would not be in a conjunction to Jupiter, granting him a generous and faithful heart and access to expansive and loving emotions. Not only that but his lunar energy is also conjunct an unripe Mars in Gemini at the 0 degrees and Uranus, who is operating very well in the friendly and child-like energy of Gemini, thereby ensuring that Santa’s generous optimism is delivered to people, in surprising and unexpected ways. Gemini is also the sign of toys and toy-making, puppets and pulling strings, and we see how Santa literally has the spontaneous gift-giving of toys to little ones tattooed in his chart!

    That good and bad dichotomy is also present in his chart, as both Pisces and Gemini are flexible Water and Air signs, who often pendulate between being moral and immoral, kind and mischievous, honourable and treacherous; simply put they can be walking-talking contradictions. The other part of his chart which speaks about his destined connection to children is his Neptune in Cancer (a motherly and family-oriented sign) sitting in conjunction to his North Node in Cancer (a point of growth in life that is connected to feelings, artistry, sensitivity and nurturance). I can see that it wasn’t easy for Santa to walk the path of being generous and loving, since his comfort zone is one of frugality, stoicism, hardship and financial discipline (South Node in Capricorn). Santa could’ve been quite miserly before he became well-known for his generous distribution of gifts across the Globe, and it was told that he was born in a wealthy family of Greek Christians who sadly died during an epidemic. This prompted young Nicholas to give his riches to the poor and conduct others acts of kindness such as helping the three daughters of a devout merchant get married even in the absence of dowries and then resurrecting three children, who had been murdered and pickled in brine by a butcher planning to sell them as pork during a famine. We see how money and death (South Node in Capricorn) are linked to losing his family, helping women and children (North Node in Cancer) and how these themes are intertwined into his legacy and destiny.

    I also find it interesting how Santa was years ahead of his peers in his behaviour and altruism for the plight of women and children. He was born with a Venus in Aquarius conjunct Mercury, which makes him a unique individual, with a piercing intelligence and a capacity to notice and reflect upon the state of society. He was also weird and aloof, with a propensity for scientific discoveries rather than casual chit-chat and heartfelt declarations of love. Santa was solution-oriented and forward-thinking and he had more friendships than passionate love affairs or romantic pleasures. This latter character trait is highlighted by the fact that his Venus in Aquarius is opposed by Saturn in Leo, which made him struggle to make wealth and hold on to it, and it also made him purify his relationships of Ego and basic desires, because most of his desires remained unfulfilled or frustrated (such as falling in love, getting married or having children, desires we all have but which remained for Santa limited or blocked).

    Seeing as he struggled to have a family of his own, little remained left for solitary Santa but to offer his life to the service of God and to sublimate his unfulfilled family desires by offering gifts to children and performing acts of kindness to help struggling families. With so much Air in his chart (4 planets in Gemini and 2 in Aquarius), Santa Claus was truly a man, light-years ahead of his time and I guess he became enlightened early on in his life and struggled to fit in and cope with the muck and mire of the human condition. He needed to intellectualize his experiences in order to move past them, and Santa did have his share of traumatic memories: he experienced famine, an epidemic, the loss of his family and he was beaten and robbed and yet he chose to do good and to protect those who were vulnerable. Because of his choices and his faith, he left behind a legacy of compassion that far exceeds the act of giving gifts to children around the Winter Solstice (although that in itself is a worthy thing to be remembered by). I can honestly say, I am seeing Santa in a completely different light now, one which goes beyond the ruby-cheeked fellow notoriously popularised by 1950’s American Coca Cola ads. Armed with this precious new knowledge about his chart, here is a beautiful visual history of Santa Claus to help you doze off to, on Christmas eve.

    With universal light,

    Lexi

  • Light a Fire

    Zach Alan , The Ritual. Taken from https://www.diyphotography.net/photographer-created-fantastic-light-painting-fire/

    Today marks the Winter Solstice, or Yule as the pagans call it. The longest night of the year, and just tuning into any news channel, it certainly seems so from a political and social point of view. I woke up at 7 am in the morning because my phone’s battery died and the affirmations, I was listening to in order to reprogram my mind to maintain a more positive outlook, had stopped. The morning looked exceedingly grey, with a thick coating of clouds ominously looming over the district in Bucharest under which I live. I say ‘under’ because lately everything has been feeling somehow above me, on top of me, gently crushing me into a haunting sense of submission. And I’m not in the habit of submitting. As I opened my eyes, slightly irritated that my dream had to end, there was just silence in the room, accompanied by my breathing and the sounds of my upstairs neighbours heavy, intermittent and always difficult-to-predict knocking. To counter-act the sense of dread I was feeling, I got up to recharge my phone, I pressed play on my laptop so it could unleash some soft, jazz music and moved around and woke my trio of cats who gradually made a little barrage of cuddly fur around my ankles. Making some coffee then opening up this blank page I felt like I should write something empowering and useful about the energy of the Winter Solstice. Needless to add, but I was struggling in this task. I feel like I owe it to my crew, my online community to inspire them to feel better, and yet I myself feel low on energy and uninspired to celebrate anything. My body seems to be in shutdown mode for a few weeks now and it just wants to sleep and disappear into dreams. The fact that I wake up to a reality in which everything seems unstable, dark and hopeless doesn’t help.

    Against this lethargy, I try to resuscitate my body with long walks, warm and bitter cups of coffee, sweet homemade jam and affirmations, and I have some success in this endeavour, although in some moments the heaviness which I perceive in my environment is so palpable that it just overwhelms any efforts to combat it with hope and light-heartedness; like a juggernaut of despair and darkness, the Zeitgeist haunts me and moves steadily without any persuasion to do otherwise. I normally enjoy my solitude as I find a lot of space to create and time to listen to my inner voice, but the heaviness surrounding my heart is blocking me from being creative at present. So the silence and solitude in which I find myself feels hard to endure, rather than nourishing and calming, like it used to feel. I keep thinking whom to ask for help, what powerful force can I align with, in order to generate more light and to find purpose and hope? Whom do I turn to when my inner light is barely a candle-light fire, and needs some spiritual…gasoline, in order to burn brighter? I figure that if people usually have disappointed me with their lack of courage and consistency in my life, then what exists in the world beyond the veil, may be the answer I am searching. During trying time, we may ask the gods for help with lighting up our inner fire; and our ancestors will most likely, respond to us in a positive way if we turn to them for help.

    The deities associated with Yule are commonly known as light-bringers and Earth-nurturers, such as the Japanese, Amaterasu – Goddess of the Sun & Heaven or the Greek Demetra – Goddess of the Harvest & Seasons or the Nordic Baldur – God of Light, Beauty and Purity. But seeing as the Sun is tethering in between the constellations of Sagittarius and Capricorn around the time of Yule, and as these are Fire and Earth astrological signs, other heavy and rather darker deities are also invited to the holiday table, deities such as Hades – the Greek Lord of Death and the Underworld or Papa Legba – the Voodoo Gatekeeper of the Spirit World or Hel – the Norse Goddess of Death and the Frozen Underworld. Perhaps the most interesting Goddess is Persephone (also known as Cora to the ancient Romans), as she represents a mediator between ground and underground. In December she is presumed to nestle under the Earth, joining her husband Hades in their wintery nest, as her mother Demeter has frozen the ground and blocked the growth of vegetation until her daughter safely returns to her from her dark, romantic journey. It is only with intense prayer and adequate rituals that one may awaken Persephone from her sepulchral slumber and one must do with care, as when you awaken the Goddess of the Underworld you also bring with her the cobwebs and dark mysteries of the world she currently inhabits. If, however the task is achieved, she is one of the most powerful ally you can summon to help you manifest spell-work in December, the type of spell-work that may help you balance your mental health.

    Illustration of Goddess Persephone by Gleiver Prieto

    This is because around Yule, it is assumed that a powerful energetic portal opens up and in this way, any spells, affirmations, intensions, sigils and magic artefacts can be more easily manifested and charged with magic; especially, if you dedicate any of these magic-infusing rituals to a specific deity. In her book, The Goddess in the Shadow, Allycia Rye describes how by using flower petals, dark chocolate, 4 green candles, pomegranate seeds and sweet-smelling salts for a herb bath, you can devise a simple ritual to invoke Persephone, the mediator between earth and under-earth around Yule-tide:

    Persephone’s ritual should be done during the full moon (…) To begin this ritual, you must make an offering to Persephone asking her for her wise counsel. Once the moon has risen, find a path of garden. It’s best if it has flowers with blossoms or vegetables, but any path of growing things can do. Take your offering of the dark chocolate and the pomegranate seeds with you. Sit among the growing plants. Feel their joy. Envision Persephone coming back to Earth from the Underworld. Feel the happiness of that welcome from the world around you. Place the offerings among the plants. Meditate on the reason why you think Persephone’s guidance could be so important to you. Meditate on each issue separately. And then with humility, ask Persephone to guide you through her wisdom. Sit for some time longer, clearing your mind into calmness. Once you’ve finished your mediation, go in and run a warm bath. Put the Epsom salts, herbs and flower petals in the water. Light the green candles, put one at each corner of the bathtub. Turn on nature music. Now step into the bath and relax completely, body, mind and soul. Let the healing powers of the herbal bath attend to your wounds inside and out. In the days and weeks following, watch for repeated images or sightings of bats or butterflies, or any of Persephone’s other symbols (…) In the night, before going to sleep you might say a version of this: Beloved Goddess Persephone, the night has come, the moon is risen, the sun is asleep, and it is time for rest. I humbly ask you to protect me. Keep me safe and surrounded by love, until the sun returns.”

    If going around your neighbourhood in search of available gardens isn’t really your cup of tea on cold December days, you may want to try these low-effort recipes that soothe the stomach lining and may help you mark the Winter solstice with a special memory. In A Tea Witch’s Grimoire: Magickal Recipes for your Tea Time, S. M. Harlow offers the following concoction:

    To bond with the Spirit of Light, here is a wishful tea ritual. Set the space with a sparkling white altar cloth with three blue and three white candles. Use a purified glass bowl to hold your herbs and a teakettle for the water. If you truly wish to follow the old ways, it is said that the first full moon after Yule is considered to be the most powerful moon of the whole year. If you wish, you may do this ritual then. Blend: 1 teaspoon black tea; 2 tablespoon dried apricot bits; 2 tablespoons dried figs, 1 dash nutmeg, 1 stick cinnamon, 1 vanilla bean. As you blend each herb within your cleansed bowl, imbue the mix with your energy and intentions. Bring the cinnamon stick and whole vanilla bean together and visually bind them towards yourself with a long white string to create a wishing wand. Light the white and the blue candles and place them surrounding your bowl to empower the blend. Add a tablespoon of the blend to an infuser (or double the amount for a pot of tea) and surround the pot with clear quartz or emeralds. Heat your water to 205 degrees. Cover the tea with water and hold your hands over the brew. Focus your intent on what you wish for the season, filled with harmony and abundance. Brew for 5 to 6 minutes. Leave the wishing wand within your vessel. Add milk and sweeten with honey if you wish and use the want to stir clockwise to activate the spell. Just before serving, recite this blessing: As the winter cold rushes in, and we are put to rest, may our dreams find their reality, and our wishes blessed. The Sun shall bring them into the light, to await our warm awakening, and there we shall find our wishes calling.

    And in terms of cooking something delicious and memorable, in Festive: Recipes for Advent, authors Julia Stix and Eva Fischer recommend the following dish to warm up the longest and potentially coldest night of the year:

    Ingredients: 60 g stale bread, 2 eggs, salt, pepper, 250 ml milk, 1 small onion, 170 g butter, some parsley, 800 g mushrooms, 2 shallots, 200 ml cream, 50 g grated parmesan, olive oil.

    Mushroom Ragout with Bread dumplings – Finely dice the bread roll. Transfer to a bowl. Whisk the eggs and salt to taste with the milk. Pour the mixture over the bread. Finely chop the onion. Melt the butter in a frying pan over medium heat and sweat the onion until softened. Add the onion to the bread mixture and combine well. Leave to rest for 1 hour. Shape the mixture into a thick sausage and wrap tightly in a wet cloth napkin or clean tea towel. Tie the roll securely with twine. Bring a saucepan of salted water to the boil, add the wrapped roll and simmer gently for 40 minutes. For the mushroom ragout, carefully clean the mushrooms. Cut any small mushrooms in half and slice any larger ones. Peel and finely dice the shallots. Heat the oil in a frying pan. Add the shallots and sweat until translucent. Add the mushrooms and fry over high heat, stirring continuously, until beginning to soften. Reduce the heat to low. Pour in the cream and simmer, uncovered for 10 minutes. Add the parmesan just before the end of the cooking time. Season with salt and pepper. Rinse the parsley, pat dry and finely chop the leaves. Stir into the ragout. remove the dumpling roll from the saucepan and drain well. Unwrap and cut the roll unto thick slices. Drizzle with the melted butter, sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve with the mushroom ragout.

    Illustration of Mushroom Ragout with Bread dumplings by Julia Stix

    And finally, if you require the presence of a specific animal spirit during these dark days to give you courage and help you feel protected, then call upon the Wolf Spirit. Described by Cecilia Lattari in her book Herbana Witch as “solitary yet part of the pack, the wolf knows how to be both a leader and a follower, but his spirit always remains intact. In fairy tales, he often embodies mystery, the unknown or the sacred. Because he is linked to initiation, the wolf presides over winter, which is an initiation for us to spring into rebirth”. It could be that the current low mood in which I find myself is just a marker of the seasonal affective disorder induced by winter time and the low light in the environment. Perhaps invoking a deity, taking a herb bath, cooking a comforting meal, matching with a spirit animal and brewing tea with a magical touch may help soothe a tired soul, but nothing truly lights a fire inside like contact with another human being. The sad reality and the reason for my present sorrow is the fact that it has been so painful to connect with other people in the past year, as most people are tired, irritated, angry and desperate. It is also notoriously difficult to make friends or trust other people, the older you grow. Exchanging energy with others this year felt like a game of passing on the pain, from my heart to yours. This is why, it often felt easier to retreat from the social world and rest within solitude; to not bother and to remain somewhat calm in a storm of unpredictability and chance. Within this storm, I found that pets offered the most reliable presence and this is why my pet family was among some of the few things that grew this year.

    I think that perhaps, in spite of the challenges of being alive during such chaotic times of deep social unrest, it may still be worth being here for each other and finding the light within our selves, that inner spark that helps switch other people on to the reality that they too harbour a fire within, a fire that will need tending to and a bit of discipline to stoke into a flaming warmth. Only if we continue to do these little things for each other, if we continue to remind each other of the fire within, will be able to make the best of the surrounding darkness. And this responsibility will become even greater as Saturn and Neptune will slowly move next year from a Water sign (Pisces) into the first sign of the zodiac, the protector of the primordial fire, Aries. Inevitable there will be limits to our inner fire but also a cessation of conflict and aggression across the world. Knowing this, why not become a little, local Prometheus and steal fire from your sources of inspiration, from prayers to the gods? The once this is accomplished give this fire back, place it where it belongs: into the heart of people. So that we may find the energy and drive to be confident enough to implement a creative, rich and sensory world, one in which we will enjoy waking up into.

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • A Year in Movies

    Mariora Sterian in a movie still of Who is calling me (1979)

    I saw this Saturday a unique screening of ‘Lonesome’ (1928) at the Romanian Picturehouse and since Neptune turned direct two days ago, I wanted to write about how its highest manifestatons in reality (artistic creations, such as movies) have influenced me this year. I also am writing this, out of a selfish need, to keep track and to maintain a somewhat personal inventory of my recent past. Two of the simple pleasures I allowed myself this year have been going to the cinema to watch movies and drinking tap beer/coffee in nice pubs and gardens in Bucharest. These were two cheap ways to get out of the house and enjoy being ‘social’, while also keeping to myself, because as much as I wanted to be surrounded by people I also needed a lot of personal space to just ‘be’, and to process some difficult feelings: the sadness of witnessing my father’s health decaying, the personal dissapointment of being rejected in all of my romantic connections, the heart-break of not being able to do what I love as the very low demand for my business’ services prompted me to take on a string of unsuccessful corporate jobs, the anxiety of the economy flailing and the fear of dying alone. To escape from all of these real failures and pressures, I took my tired soul to the cinema to occassionaly revitalize it. Life felt more manageable if I temporarily surrendered it to glamourous people, projected on a large, intimidating screen.

    As a consequence of this, I saw many movies, as many as I could afford. I went to the cinema whenever I got a chance to see something new, interesting or worthy of being seen on the big screen. There were some notable flops (I saw Past Lives, The Crow and Kinds of Kindness and they pissed me off and I just left the cinema, which is something I don’t usually do with levity). Surprisingly, I also saw two musicals and loved them: the gorgeous Swing Time (1936) and the colourful The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) (and I am not a musical person). So in the following, I want to write about those movie experiences which I remember, those I enjoyed or that at least rattled me in some way and have given me some food for thought.

    Barbara Kent & Glenn Tryon in a beach movie still from Lonesome (1928)

    The first movie I saw, was in the first week of January of this year. I was intuitively lead towards the cinema, after I had a couple of days of existential dread and couldn’t stop crying. Because I work from home, I needed to get out of my house and do something social, so I went to a lovely cafe, called La Luz, which happens to be conveniently placed near the Romanian Picturehouse. After a large and comforting coffee, I dragged my melancholy to the cinema and cured it by witnessing Cary Grant (a Capricorn Sun), my favourite vintage Hollywood star, drive planes into snowy mountains in Only Angels Have Wings (1939) At the opposite end of the cinematic spectrum I experienced, there is the memory of a calm and warm November evening, when I saw at the Elvira Popescu Cinema the silent film The Polish Dancer / Bestia (1917) with Polish actress Pola Negri (another Capricorn Sun), an event which included a live music band and was delightful! In between these two events, came a flurry of other movies.

    One weird experience which stuck with me for a while was watching Burt Lancaster in The Swimmer (1968), an outwardly sunny and yet psychologically bleak movie about loss. Solaris (1972) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) come to mind as well, two movies which look incredible in the cinema and kind of strange on my laptop’s screen. The poetry, spiritual struggle and sadness of Solaris just hits differently when you see it on the wide screen, it seems to gather appropriate cosmic proportions. Then came Anouk Aimee’s ridiculous beauty in Lola (1961) bringing some liveliness to an otherwise superficial and forgetable movie experience. Then there was a surprisingly heartfelt and endearing movie called Slow (2023) with a unique topic: a dancer and a sign language interpreter meet and fall in love, only to discover that one of them is asexual and they have to find creative ways of being intimate together, ways that go beyond the sexual. It was fascinating and well-played and it made me feel cozy inside.

    There was also Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024), which was strangely released in September instead of November in the cinemas in Bucharest, making me feel like Halloween came early this year (and despite criticism, I actually had a lot of fun watching it). On a gloomy and rainy April day, I saw Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) a goofy film by disgraced director Woody Allen. And during the summer, I absolutely loved Queendom (2023), a stylish and heartfelt documentary about the young life of LGBTQ artist and activist Jenna Marvin, who risked persecution from the Russian regime for her bold expression of her personality (I fell in love with Jenna’s courage and will write a separate article on her upcoming Saturn return in Aries in 2025, which promises to be majestic on a creative level).

    Another movie that stayed with me and left me speechless with its silent, organised and blatant horror has been The Zone of Interest (2023), a movie that is so important in the current political climate in which we continue to witness the rise of far-right groups across the world. Uniquely, I saw two documentaries about the lives of notable women who created art under oppresive regimes (and to which I will dedicate a separate article): one about the poet Nina Cassian called The Distance between Me and Myself (2018) and the other about the Czech photographer Libuse Jarcovjakova called I’m Not Everything I Want to Be (2024). In the same vein, 2024 has been a great year for my cinematic education about old Romanian films. I had the good luck of seing a number of movies from female directors created during the communist regime. I really liked A light on the 10th floor/O lumina la etajul 10 (1984) a movie by Malvina Ursianu, about a woman who comes out from prison and is given an apartment in a newly-built block of flats in Bucharest; although free, she can’t rest because she feels constantly surveilled and it is only through her relationships with the common people around her that she regains her emotional stability.

    Donatas Banionis in a movie still of Solaris (1972)

    I really enjoyed seeing how Bucharest looked like in those archival images and how the blocks we take for granted today (and belittle so much), looked like back then, when they were considered luxury accommodation. It was a humbling moment of appreciation for me, as I bought my flat back in 2023 in a building created back in 1966 and I felt awkwardly conscious about it. By the same director, I also saw Gioconda fara suras / The Monalisa without a smile (1969) and I liked the cinematography of it and the freedom and social status of the main character, a female engineer with a complicated love life. I literally didn’t see any movie like it, and many movies back in that era created in a similar Nouvelle Vauge style, were geared towards the many adventures of male characters. It felt empowering to see this meditative and stylish film, especially since none of these movies directed by communist female directors were ever showcased on our Tvs (instead we got the usual diet of Miscellaneous Brigade/BD films, Liceeni/ The Graduates (1986) and Sergiu Nicolaescu films, repeated ad nauseam).

    I also really liked a movie directed by Letitia Popa called Who is calling me / Cine ma striga (1979), about a topic you don’t get to see in a lot of other movies, a young woman accussed of prostitution who gets sent to a reform camp on the outskirts of a communist city. She’s operating heavy machinery on the construction site while trying to fit in with all the other workers, getting her ambitious room-mate to like her and keeping the romantic attentions of men at bay, and all throughout it she looks like an angel. It again teleported me into a world that my parents grew up in, a world I fortunately don’t get to experience myself. I also saw a movie called Diminetile unui baiat cuminte / The mornings of a good boy (1967) but although I thought the father-son conflict was compelling, it seemed to work like a forced and communist version of Rebel without a cause (1955), and I didn’t like it very much.

    Portrait of Dorina Lazar in character for her role in Angela keeps moving forward / Angela merge mai departe (1982)

    The highlight for me has been a movie called Angela keeps moving forward / Angela merge mai departe (1982), which I actually went twice to see, just so I could gain courage. I thought that if Dorina Lazar’s taxi-driving, rum drinking, tough woman character can find love in the sparse and grim communist landscape, then so will I one day; as long as (and just like the title says) I keep moving forward and let go of looking back in anger. July has been a really eventful month for me as I was not only very busy with work but I also saw the most movies since I needed a cool place to escape the city’s scorching heat. I saw beautiful classics like Spellbound (1945), Roman Holiday (1953) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) and the weird and funny Wild at Heart (1990). I saw the obscure These Three (1936) which I kind of enjoyed (it was also my very first Merle Oberon movie!), and the brilliant M – Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931). I was completely floored by Bette Davis’ performances All about Eve (1950) and Jezebel (1938) and sadly underwhelmed by the self-destructive, precious beauty of Margareta Paslaru in Un film cu o fata fermecatoare / A movie with a charming girl (1966).

    Furthermore, movies marked most of the holidays for me this year: I spent Valentine’s Day eating cherry chocolates and watching Antoine and Antoinette (1947) create a confusing, romantic storm in their lives and then I spent Halloween in a packed cinema watching a special screening of Late Night with the Devil (2023). All in all, I think I spent 2024 not really being here, but someplace else.

    After writing all of this, I kind of have the feeling that I got some sort of disparate cinematic education this year, something which in my heart, I had always wanted to achieve. I feel like the transit of Saturn in Pisces increased my cinema-going discipline and heightened my obsession with old movies, vintage films and bygone eras, who for aproximately 2 hours at a time, gave me a brief reprieve from a world which stubbornly kept reminding me, how little I am welcomed and how little I fit in. Perhaps, that’s were the Neptune magic lies: I’ll help you forget who you are by pushing you to escape into the stories of other people, so you may finally find yourself as you will inevitably separate from them once the movies end. Just like astrologer Liz Green writes in her seminal book, Neptune and the Quest for Redemption (2000) :

    This protean power to identify with the psyche of the other, and to effortlesly become that which the other secretly longs for, is one of the greatest artistic and therapeutic gifts of the Neptunian temperament. But if an essential core of integrity and self-honesty is lacking (…) then the gift becomes a great danger (p.118)

    After all 2024, was a year of moving images for me, the original meaning of the word ‘film’; moving images which told human stories, and from these stories my inner child was learning what to keep and what to let go of, especially as some of these moving images impacted my memory and helped it dive deep in order to bring out some old fragments from the past which I needed to re-analyse. By transit, Neptune (almost perfectly conjunct my Sun) made me into a memory diver and by keeping me in a dark fog throughout this year, by obscuring my Ego and my sense of personal value and power, Neptune had therefore allowed me the freedom to just exit, beyond the limitations of who I thought I was. It was strangely difficult to be held in such uncertainty, and still am as the fog hasn’t completely lifeted now that Neptune turned direct. But slowly, as Saturn will shift from Pisces and into Aries in 2025, the time will come to start embodying this new version of the Self created out of the debris of Neptune’s cleansing escapism. And that will mark the time of a real psychological re-birth in my life, one which I am looking forward to. But for the time being ‘ssshhhh, the movie is starting’…

    With universal love,

    Lexi