On the 19th of January 2022, the karmic nodes of the Moon have changed astrological signs. And this is a big event, even if often overlooked by some astrologers. These karmic nodes are imaginary points created by the Moon’s elliptic rotation around the Earth & spiritual masters have imbued them throughout time with a rich symbolical meaning. Since the summer of 2020, the lunar nodes have been in the signs of Gemini and Sagittarius and now they have entered the signs of Taurus and Scorpio for the next 18 months. The movement of the nodes makes little sense if you consider it according to traditional astrology. How do we energetically progress and move ‘forward’ on a collective level, when the sign of Gemini stands after Taurus and the sign of Sagittarius also comes after Scorpio? Well, this is because the nodes of the Moon, move backwards than the movement of the rest of the astrological planets and asteroids and stars. And why is that? First of all, because they are imaginary points, as I mentioned above, and the second explanation is esoteric: because the nodes bring up to the surface issues stemming from our ancestral past and our collective karma; so they move backwards to illuminate the past. As we process and integrate the dreams and obsessions, visions and moods we feel during each nodal transit, we also progress by coming up with solutions to our present problems.

Usually, the nodes of the Moon show what we are collectively obsessed with (the North Node) and what we will gradually let go of and be less interested in (the South Node). The astrological signs which they are transiting through, show the content of what we will obsessively crave and what we will shed and release in this cycle. So, in the past 18 months we were obsessed with Gemini-ruled themes such as: online communications & aggressive news broadcasts, transferring education into online environments, problems with neighbors and local neighborhood related issues, coming up with rules and regulations over-night, fast & local transport as we saw the growth of many app-operated delivery services which catered to people’s needs during lockdowns, and the growth of small & mostly home-based businesses. While we had to release Sagittarius-related themes such as: big-picture ideas due to blocked growth, travelling, feeling free, acting wild and wining things, feeling optimistic and filled with blind faith that thinks will just work out; we all generally sacrificed a sense of wellbeing for an increasing awareness of how our ‘cabin fever’ produced mental health symptoms.

At a personal level, there has been a spurt of energy towards Gemini people (Sun/Moon/Ascendants) and a vacuuming of energy away from Sagittarian people (Sun/Moon/Ascendants especially). Now that the energy has shifted to Taurus and Scorpio, there is a sense of balance restored in the Gemini/Sagittarius axis. Considering where in your natal chart you have these Mercury/Jupiter-ruled houses, you will feel a re-balancing slowly taking place there, as the Venus/Pluto-ruled houses of your chart are undergoing an energetic refurbishing.

In Vedic astrology the nodal points are known as ‘Rahu’ (NN) and ‘Ketu’ (SN). You’ll often finds these nodal points symbolically depicted as a Dragon that eats its own tail, this image representing the Ouroboros or the Cosmic Snake that according to Greek wisdom and mythology stands for life’s many replenishing cycles of destruction/creation, death/rebirth, beginning/ending, Alpha/Omega. Reflecting on the sings in which the nodes of the Moon enter once every 18 months, is therefore a reflection how we can integrate polar opposites, contradictions and our Solar Light of Consciousness with our Darker, Shadow Self. And this new nodal transit will help us figure out how to create from a place of chaos, as we gradually release control and self-doubt.

So at the moment and up until 13th of July 2023, our current collective obsession will be with everything that falls under the astrological rulership of Taurus. These would be things such as: food, money, stable housing, security, physical comforts, ensuring our basic needs for optimal health (warmth, nourishment, rest, good work, exercise etc.), long-term commitments, independent incomes, lucrative projects and valuing truly valuable things. Taureans (especially the Sun and Mars placements in a chart) conserve their energies since they are a fixed sign, and only operate when they can know with clarity that the actions they undertake will give them a tangible reward. Otherwise, the Taurus rests and eats 🙂 as they lie waiting for a serious and trustworthy opportunity or relationship. Taureans usually know their worth and they maximize it, by the actions they take and the decisions they make. They are slow and fairly predictable, sympathetic and artistic, friendly and simple. They will not complicate life, if life is good & sensible.

Overall, I believe that this transit will be a benefic one, since Taurus is a beautiful, stable, abundant and wealthy energy, as it is naturally ruled by the planet Venus. The darker aspects of Taurus are related to greed and stubbornness, but since we already live in a highly-capitalized, global economic system, we are all already accustomed to the energy of material and financial greed, so it is not a surprising energy. At the same time, I would prefer a dose of stubbornness and determination over and above the Mercurial trickster energy with often unreliable outcomes that we are just recuperating from. But that’s just my preference, feel free to not attach too much value to it.

In general, in the next 18 months, if you have personal planets or asteroids in Taurus you should expect a constant stream of energy activating your natal placements. That part of your chart will keep your attention. This is especially significant if you have your big three (Sun/Moon/Ascendant) in Taurus. Similarly, the house in your chart that is ruled by Taurus (even if there are no planets or asteroids there) will be the one towards which most of the energy will flow until July 2023.

At the opposite end of Taurus, we have Scorpio, ruled by Pluto, the Keeper of the Underworld, the master of the darker and more shadowy aspects of life (death, loss, magic, healing and personal transformation). Scorpio-themed issues such as control, suspicion, revenge, obsessions, lack of worth, problems with money and self-image or lack of trust, will be released and healed. On the more negative side, I do think that the problems of larger corporations, banks and the wealthy 1% will be swept under the rug, and that secrets will proliferate during this transit. The good part about Scorpio energy is that it cuts to the truth of a matter, it values authenticity and power, and abhors deceit and vulnerability. However, we will release this power, gradually into the hands of larger conglomerates (especially technological or logistic-based ones like Amazon, Google, YouTube).

On a personal level, those of us with planets in Scorpio will feel the pressure to let go of relationships that don’t feel right anymore, of jobs that you might not be able to put effort into, of toxic habits and obsessive sexual connections that drained you of your power. The vacuuiming of your energy is part of paying off some karma, and it is ultimately working in your benefit, as new relationships and projects will pour into your life from July 2023. So fear not, brave Scorpions if your ambitious goals do not flourish – you are more or less given a karmic rest from over-exerting your energy in the past, as you heal and recover.

This transit is especially significant since it will conjunct the Pluto in Scorpio placement of a whole generation born between 1983 and 1995, and who are currently in their 30s and 40s and making up the global population of ‘active adults’. An issue with this is that the Pluto in Scorpio generation has a bit of a problem with #adulting, as many of us (myself included) are challenging the status quo in terms of getting married, having children, voting, supporting the economy and the social services system and revering the stability of corporate jobs. We are also reshaping the social world by increasing awareness to gender and sexuality, the occult in all its forms, mental health issues and mass psychological resources. So as the transit of the South Node of the Moon will touch upon Pluto in Scorpio, some of us might find themselves preferring stability over constant change, or commitment over sexual excitement, or maintaining social peace instead of toppling down the government with protests (at least until July 2023).

The other interesting aspect is that Taurean stability will not be as stable as it says on the Venusian-labelled can, since Uranus (the planet of spontaneous events and shocks in awareness) has been transiting through the sign of Taurus since May 2018 (and will continue to do so until 2026). Coupled up with this, is also the increasing pressure that the transit of Saturn in Aquarius will add to these two the Taurus/Scorpio axis. Saturn in Aquarius is about collective change and progress, that comes as a result of seeing what is real around us; how aspects of our social world are just not functioning as well as they could. As the Taurus North Node is about material wealth and the Scorpio South Node is about emotional wealth, we will see in the next 18 months the crisis of identity of the Pluto in Scorpio generation: In a world increasingly aware of the law of manifestation, of a prosperity mindset and our individual super-attractor power, have we used these spiritual gifts to spread deep, genuine and soul-healing love or have we applied such knowledge to our greedy self-interest while worshipping at the Church of Commodified Pleasure? So instead of asking “how can this specific astrological knowledge benefit me?”, maybe we should be thinking of how our innate astrological energy influences the groups around us and the collective at large. Also, there is absolutely nothing wrong with pleasure, this is why we might need to save true, sensual pleasure from today’s hook-up culture, and episodic chatty relationships formed on a social dating app, which last for about 2 hours or less once the physical act was consumed and the condom came off (or in some cases cyber-sex might be replaced by actual, physical sex in the next 18th months). The same can be said of our relationship to food (and the debate between slow cooking and quick, fast options), our money (which is becoming increasingly abstract as a bunch of numbers on our screen) and our integrity (can I be bought? for how much? what parts of me am I selling on the market? and will my actions continue to hurt the environment?).

This Taurus-Scorpio transit is ultimately about a return to our core values as humans and to moral kinds of love (agape, filia, pragma, storge) rather than image-obsessed and sexual types of love (eros, mania, ludus) – forms of love that we mostly lived out in our minds, as the North Node was in Gemini. I believe that the pandemic has brought to the fore of the spiritual collective what really matters in life. And we need to focus on what matters in the next years, as we enter the great technological and energetic warp that will be provided by the Pluto in Aquarius era. As always, I remain vulnerably hopeful.

With Universal Love,

Lexi

What if your biggest challenger in this lifetime is a close family member? Or if you are a powerful witch, then chances are that your mother is one too. And what can you do when you suddenly realize she might’ve energetically worked against you for most of your life? Or that your father is the catalyst to your own personal painful transformation? Get revenge? Become desperate? Give in to despondency? No, the spiritual task at hand is to become stronger than your parent, and like Ouranos who rebelled against savage Saturn, liberate yourself from the oppressive energy of what I call ‘a familiar nemesis‘. I think this topic is timely under the current Saturn transit through the constellation of Aquarius (ruled by Uranus).

Uranian energy in your birth-chart talks about liberation from opprevise forces. It’s a self-started process that happens when you awareness shifts, and when you get an insight that helps you see reality in a completely different light (almost as if someone changed the radio channel and you find yourself listening to a different frequency). The liberation process is not linear and orderly: it involves many back-and-forth steps, wherein your own self-love will be tested as well as you capacity to quickly identify and respond to self-sabotaging patterns. You will doubt and change your mind many times (and this capacity to constantly doubt and think of a different way to approach a situation, is what makes Aquarians such excellent researchers and scientists).

Combing back to the topic of dealing with familiar nemesis, the liberation process can feel emotionally harrowing so you’ll need to learn how to compartmentalize parts of yourself, before the process completes and you will whole again. One of these first steps is becoming aware of the occult underpinnings of your relationship to your parent. Is your parent in some way attracted to the occult? Linked to prayer, religion and spirituality? Do they like to keep secrets, hide things away from you and only reveal parts of such secrets at specific moments (such as your birthday or other family celebrations?). My mother for example always hid what she was doing with the family money (no one in my family had any clue of how much she spent or what she did with our collectively pulled together resources), she also muttered prayers under her breath as she wiped our foreheads (mine and my sisters’) when we felt nauseous or sick. She thought us to cure evil-eye spells but also exerted a considerable amount of control over me and my sibling. One time, in my childhood I recall that my mother braided hair, then cut the braid to give me a shorter haircut which she deemed as ‘more practical for my playtime’ but she kept the braid and sealed it in plastic bag to preserve it. In many stories and dream interpretations, hair represents power, and indeed I always as blessed with a the capacity to grow beautiful and flowing looking hair. Symbolically then, my mother took away my power at a pivotal time when I was learning how to embody my beauty as a young girl. I struggled throughout my puberty with feeling feminine because of any such events where my mother refused to allow me to energetically grow into the woman I always felt I was inside. So, in your own story, notice such strange markers and take down detailed observations as you become aware of something ‘isn’t right here’. On the other hand, studying my parents to some extent helped me train my researcher’s observational skills which eventually earned me my PhD in socio-psychology, so no childhood skill is ever wasted 😉

The second step is to study your birth-chart and that of your mother and father as well. Family synastry – which is not as often mentioned as romantic synastry – can be a powerful tool in helping you heal ingrained family patterns, or deal with ancestral imprinting and maybe break some household curses that have been messing with your bloodline for years (if not centuries). Astrology can indeed be used as a tool for therapeutic healing.

The third step is to understand what a Nemesis is and how they are karmically linked to helping you spiritually evolve in this lifetime, albeit through some difficult lessons which involve betrayal, cruelty, lying, neglect and loss. The words Nemesis comes from Greek mythology, and it is associated with the energy of divine retribution in the shape of the Goddess Nemesis or Rhamnousia, the one who exterminates hubris, or the arrogance of Self before the Gods:

So in a similar vein to the Hindu Goddess Kali (or “She who is death”), the fierce face of the maternal deity Durga, if a human became too arrogant & dared to measure themselves up to the Gods, the Goddess Nemesis would swoop down from Mount Olympus and sever their head, humbling them as the mere mortal that they were. Metaphorically, this means that an encounter with a nemesis is an encounter with a fierce contender/a challenger in our lifetime and that the main spiritual lesson we are learning in that difficult relationship (which can span across years), is how to master our will-power, and to become humble by learning to work with Divine will. A Nemesis intervenes in your life to balance your Ego with your Self, to teach you about self-worth and self-empowerment through conflict, strife & restriction.

As I was researching in preparation for this article I need to mention that I found very few literary works on the spiritual meaning of a nemesis in someone’s life. I found however, mythological and academic descriptions, such as the one proposed by Lucia Corso and Daniela Bonnano who write in the abstract to their 2018 paper that:

“Aristotle defines nemesis (to nemesan = from the verb nemesao) as the emotional reaction of someone with a noble character at unmerited good fortune. That another’s good fortune is a central element of nemesis can also be inferred by the contraposition Aristotle proposed between nemesis and pity, which is pain at undeserved bad fortune”.

From L. Huppes-Cluysenaer, N.M.M.S. Coelho (eds.), Aristotle on Emotions in Law and Politics, Law and Philosophy Library 121, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-66703-4_1

So Aristotle argued that a nemesis is the pain we feel when we witness someone else’s undeserved success and he linked this pain to other feelings such as envy and Schadenfreude (the German term for the experience of pleasure at the humiliation of someone else). Overall, a nemesis as an emotional experience, describes an immediate feeling of injustice and indignation, and I must admit that the idea for this article came to me while I was absorbed in the mad beauty of one of the most original shows I saw on Netflix, the ‘OA’. The shows has us witness the female protagonists’ (Prairie Johnson) emotional story of captivity at the hands of the elusive Dr. Hunter Aloysius Percy (or Hap):

In that captivity she connects so deeply with her feelings, spirituality, the world beyond the veil to such an extent that she heals her eyesight and manages to break free (even if in another dimension). Although these cultural, philosophical and mythological references are interesting I want to write in the following, about my lived experience of meeting another Nemesis at work, the unfamiliar nemesis (so a different Nemesis that my mother, the familiar one, who is karmically linked to me through strong Saturn links in our synastry). I’d like to focus especially on the spiritual awakening that was unleashed when our energies clashed with each other.

Part of my karmic lessons process was to reach a position of power very early on in my academic career. After 5 years of anonymity and study, prolonged work hours and living in relative poverty I landed a position as lecturer for an institution in Oxford, UK. This happened as Jupiter in Scorpio was transiting my first house, ushering in a new spiritual cycle. For a working-class Romanian, non-native English speaker who immigrated to the UK to see if she could pursue higher education, to reach that level was the stuff that dreams were made of. The problem was that I wasn’t aware of how to stand in my power gracefully, how to wield it and honor it, and how to overcome the self-sabotage that was ingrained in my mind through the difficult interactions that I was still healing from my experience at the hands of my first nemesis, my mother. So I made a big mistake: I allowed my prosperity to be infected by pride and I became impatient and snappy with my boss, the person who smoothly ushered me into this new and powerful role. As our relationship began to degrade into a power struggle I realized that our interactions were increasingly bizarre, as if there was a fated quality to them and an irrational and negative obsession that she had with controlling my every move while I did everything possible to subvert her and assert my spiritual superiority. I wonder now if we were each other’s nemeses? But certainly to me she felt like a challenger, a contender who tried to take away from me that very thing she gave & helped me build. At the time, I was furious, caught up in a cat and mouse game with no clear results or clear insights related to why this was happening. I was also introjecting my anger at impending loss, instead of expressing it in a healthy way, so instead of dealing with my feelings I pushed myself harder and harder into work, travelling, publishing and even more than the occasional glass of wine to forget the difficult circumstances in which I placed myself in. Until a Mercury retrograde in Scorpio came about and after a fit of crying in my lonely flat, I picked up the Mary-el tarot deck and started shuffling, spreading and reading tarot cards all over a dark blue carpet that was actually a hand-over from her and lied in the middle of my living-room. I began the practice of pulling out a card a day and no matter how difficult the messages were I decided to take them in my stride. I wasn’t aware at the time that I had just started my healing & liberation process (and interestingly enough my relationship to her started changing for the worst as Uranus switched signs from Aries to Taurus in May of 2018).

The tarot practice helped me reach my intuition which was desperately telling me that I was unhappy at work and that I should consider a change, a change that my rational mind was resisting. The tarot gave me a sense of perspective and by adapting to its daily messages, I started to become emotionally detached from the karmic entanglements I was immersed in. I could finally see the lesson that my boss, my unfamiliar Nemesis, was bringing into my life and I could also my next steps. The only way out of a situation in which my inner light has been contaminated by Ego and hubris, was to undertake a sacrifice – it was the only way I could appease the Nemesis, resolve the karma and align to a more divinely connected and humble path (this was the healing that Neptune in Pisces conjunct my Sun was offering).

So I quit my job and left behind everything I had built in Oxford. And the decision liberated me. It felt like balance was restored. I came back to my home country, I rented a flat, and I felt I could finally rest (I didn’t completely do that, as I finished my first book and found a new job but the path ahead became more clear). Four years down the line, as I reflect back on that time I now fully comprehend the invaluable gift that my unfamiliar Nemesis has given me. Not only placing me on my spiritual path but also helping me become my own boss. I knew that deep down she was a benefic influence in my life, since her Sun is in Aries and conjunct my North Node (destiny) and Jupiter (growth, dharma, good luck) in our synastry chart. So I kept wondering: While all this enmity and vitriol between us? Why is she doing this when I knew about our astrological harmonies? Well because at the time I couldn’t see that what was actually harming me were not her words or actions towards me by my own pride, self-undoing and self-sabotage.

The difficult emotions I experienced in my interactions with my unfamiliar Nemesis brought up a lot of issues I hadn’t finished processing from my relationship with my familiar Nemesis. My mother as well shares some difficult astrological markers with me: her Sun in Gemini lands in my 8th house conjunct my natal Chiron (the Wounded Healer), so I can heal her but she can’t heal me, rather she sheds a light on the darker aspects of my life, like how I felt constantly betrayed by her lack of unconditional love and early childhood neglect. We also share a separating energy, a tough love marker which also portends a teacher-disciple bond: her natal Saturn in Pisces is conjunct my natal Mercury and Sun in Pisces. Growing up all I could remember of my mother was how she was never there to emotionally soothe me, or how she always spoke over me to correct me or shout at me and how I was never good enough for her. Although, as I grew up, more and more people revealed to me what a skewed perception I had of myself based on what I absorbed from my mother’s hatred.

To other people of different ages, races and backgrounds, I was indeed beautiful and intelligent and hard-working and kind – all the things I never was in my mothers’ eyes. But then I understood, that as a Nemesis, she kept me limited and humbled to the point of self-abnegation because this was the emotional karma I had to pay back in my early life (with my Moon conjunct Saturn in the 2nd house of safety and self-worth, I had very little of these qualities in my interactions with my unstable mother). My natal Sagittarius stellium in this 2nd house showed me that the toughest lessons in my life would come from women, especially wild, independent women who used anger as a way to threaten me and fulfilling their Nemesis role in my life. Why do women represent Sagittarius energy in a chart, when the Sagittarius is symbolized by a centaur? This is because Diana/Artemis the Goddess of the Hunt is the Greek mythological protector of the sign of Sagittarius. Although Zeus/Jupiter is considered the natural ruler of the centaur, I noticed as well through my astrological work that the charts of my clients who had a Moon in Sagittarius or a stellium of planets in this wild and freedom-loving sign, portends some significant karmic unpacking regarding their wild feminine selves in relation to their mothers, female bosses, female siblings and female friends.

In spite of everything that I faced in my life, I am grateful that I am able to extract wisdom and write about what has happened. This post is not meant to be a self-absorbed outpouring, but it serves as sharing some of the occult undercurrents that have helped me see my everyday life and my external actions as spiritually linked to a larger and more meaningful plan, in the hopes that you might find comfort in these words if something similar has happened to you. I also wanted to apply the term nemesis to an in-depth case study and to achieve this aim I use what I know best: my own experiences. I would be curious to read some of your own examples, if the descriptions of the familiar & unfamiliar nemeses have resonated with you.

With universal love,

Lexi

The Moon is the Earth’s biggest and well-known, well-loved satellite. In astrology the energy of the Moon governs over the 7th sign of the zodiac’s constellations – Cancer, the Crab, and represents maternal energy, emotions and protection, the subtle and hidden forces of instinct and the unconscious. In the tarot, the Moon stands for the Major Arcana number 18th which paradoxically governs Piscean energy, even if the card confusingly depicts a crayfish coming out of the water and two dogs howling at the moon. No matter how it is depicted, la Luna is powerful. Its energy and movement affects the tides here our Earth and to our ancestors (who had a mostly agrarian existence) the Moon was a weather and travel guide and a fertility forecaster, as it could synch up with women’s monthly menstrual rhythms before the pill was invented. In addition, the Moon influences cultural & religious production as it exists in thousands of songs, poems, paintings and on countless tumblr walls 🙂 while some Indian marriages are also organized according to the phases of the Moon. I recently finished reading Tamara Driessen’s excellent book “Luna: Harness the Magic of the Moon for Life, Love and Contentment“ and I would like to share with you my interpretation of some of the things Tamara was discussing in her book. I hope these key aspects on how the Moon might influence your energy can serve you all and help you understand your Self in a new light.

Lunar Phases (& your birth)

New Moon

For people born under the energy of a New Moon, it’s perhaps significant to say that this is a self-starter vibration. New Moon natives are usually self-made individuals. If you have this marker in your chart, it’s important to know that you are meant to bring new things into being in your lifetime here on Earth. You could start your own company, come up with a new invention that makes our lives easier, write a tell-all book, or make small adjustments in your life and work that ease everyone’s daily struggles. You have the spirit of a pioneer and you are meant to create situations of fresh energy around you, since you are born with a blank-slate, from a karmic point of view. Your past-life debts are mostly cleared but you need to be mindful how you use your energy and what you will create so as not to open up painful new karmic cycles. When in doubt as to which path to take in life, create something! Your energy is similar to the Ace of Cups card in the tarot, but the cup you were born with might have felt initially empty. This is because you must fill it with all the experiences you will undertake in your lifetime. By the end of this beautiful journey, towards the later part of your life your cup should ‘runeth over’, as the bard said, with everything you have created, lived and experienced.

Waxing Crescent

If you were born under this lunar influence, then you are a person who can summon up incipient energy or put in grassroots efforts to get things of the ground and get them going. You are an awakener and you can use your voice, your emotions, your thoughts, your words and your actions to instigate things around you. For example, you could be a whistle-blower on a company’s or a political campaign’s secrets. You could easily create specific social groups or rally support for a cause. You’re a vibrant and green kind of a person that will always feel like their life is leading them someplace. Your energy is that of the 3 of Wands in the tarot, a Seeker ready to embark on their next adventure. You might also be a ‘sandwich kid’ in your family or an only child, a birth-order situation that gives you the ambition to do something that sets you apart from your relatives or peers.

First Quarter (also called Waxing Moon)

This is a balanced energy, as the Moon looks up in the sky like a perfect slice of mid-parted cake. If you have this energy in your chart then you are a balanced individual, one who is able to weight the pros and cons of any situation and finds an adequate and fair solution. You are a negotiator, a good judge of character and a fair friend. You also like to keep things in a state of equilibrium and you like to drink and eat in moderation or compensate if there was an excess in one area of life by focusing on another part of your life, just to even-out your energy. The downside is that passion might frighten you, since it feels so irrational and a threat to your Temperance (which is the card in the tarot that also represents you the best!).

Waxing Gibbous

This is a beautiful phase of the Moon to be born under. I especially enjoy it since it combines the passionate nature of a Full Moon person with the tempered energy of a first quarter person, as it sits in between the two. A waning gibbous individual is optimistic, full of faith and excited about life. Your energy feels like it always replenishes itself after each setback from unknown forces. You might also easily recover from illnesses. You can quickly dispel the negative energy of evil-eye spells and you were born to break a few cruses. The downside is that you might feel slightly overlooked in life, that people might take you very seriously as they might confuse your enthusiasm for hot air. You might compare yourself to other people and feel that you come up short, so be mindful of turning the pleasure of a game into ruthless competitiveness. You’re an optimistic motivator & 9 of Cups in the tarot!

Full Moon

Wolves were born to praise you, and under your energy most traffic accidents occur! Hello, lunar superstar 🙂 Full Moon individuals are the lunar darlings since they are the ones that benefit the most from the Moon’s energy, as it is at its fullest capacity at their birth. This makes you highly attractive, fertile and abundant. The downside to this blessing is that your life could be marred by unconscious undercurrents of drama if there aren’t more stabilizing energies in your natal chart. No matter what sign your Moon is in, you are heavily influenced by Cancerian sensitivity and Moon-like ebbs and flows in your daily life (consequently the Moon card in the tarot, is the card I’d associate with you too). You might have the tendency to exaggerate but your weaknesses are also your strengths since you could be an excellent performer with such a powerful capacity to feel and to shed a bright light on the collective’s hidden desires and needs. You charm those around you with your feelings even if you can be a bit much.

Waning Gibbous (also called Disseminating)

If you were born under this energy, then we share the same placement 🙂 My intimate experience of living life under a Waning Gibbous energy, is that it feels like coming down from what has been a rough ride or a crazy, party-bender. Your feet land on safer ground now after the lunar roller-coaster ride, and as such you are meant to create stability in your life. Your life has a patient and steady rhythm to it, and you are meant to spend a lot of your time here on Earth resting and recuperating. You can easily be a beacon of hope for other people and can create safe-spaces for others to share their stories and to heal. You are calming and nurturing to others but because your energy is slowly depleting as you were born when the moon was losing its Full Moon shine, you must take time in solitude to replenish. I think the Hermit or the High Priestess cards of the tarot (which signify the Virgo/Pisces axis in astrology) represent this vibration most accurately – studying in privacy then sharing your work with the world and then retreating again is your natural flow, while intuitive discernment is your super-power!

Third Quarter (also called Waning Moon)

If you are born under this energy then it is time to clean up your karmic connections in this incarnation. You will meet many souls which you must say “no” to during your lifetime, as you close up karmic contracts and let the energy between you and them settle down to be released. This is the ‘letting go’ Moon and you might find it strange to spend most of your emotional energy investing in something or someone only to then pass it on or watch it go by, but there is a lot of sweetness and peace coming into your life once the letting go process eventually starts. Like the cooling and refreshing feel of summer rain after a very long and hot day, you are deeply sweet, sensitive and melancholic in the best possible way and your poetic heart knows very well how to purge and release (or is learning at the moment). You will easily bring people together and act as a helper, serving the needs of the collective with your wisdom during your life, and this is why I feel that your tarot card is the 6 of Swords.

Dark Moon (also called Balsamic)

You were born under a very special lunar energy, or better said – under the absence of lunar energy. This is a time of the month when tiredness overwhelms the collective and whatever is planted will not grow. Witches, shamans and spellcasters are usually born with this marker, as well as important cultural figures, who live very rich internal lives which are seemingly devoid of material acquisitions. This is a the kind of energy that, if well-understood and well-harnessed, could help one practice towards becoming a bodhisattva, or an enlightened being walking the Earth to help souls fulfill their destiny while sacrificing their own chances of reaching Nirvana, or heaven. Balsamic lunar people are soothing, nocturnal, mysterious and solitary. They are pensive and withdrawn but they also possess fascinating inner worlds, populated with visions of both darkness and demons and also light and angels. You thread the fine line that separates the material world from the spiritual world and your own existence could feel deeply private and elusive to others. You are a Spirit whisperer & your tarot card is the Death/Rebirth one.

Special Events

Lunar Eclipses

A Lunar eclipse happens when the Earth is placed in between the Sun and the Moon in an almost perfect alignment; so the Earth blocks solar light. This makes a person born on a Lunar eclipse a person that is strongly protected by the Earth’s energies and usually an individual with a Moon sign opposite their Sun sign in their natal astrological chart (for example, you are a Sun in Sagittarius but your Moon is in the opposite sign of Sagittarius on the zodiac wheel, which is Gemini or your Moon is in Taurus but your Sun sign is in Scorpio). An eclipse is an excess of energy because the Moon is super-charged during such a time, so if you are born on the day of an eclipse your energy is heightened – you could have more energy than your peers and you might exhibit certain extra-sensorial abilities (clairaudience – hearing things beyond the visible realm, clairvoyance – seeing in different dimensions, precognition or extreme empathy etc.). Lunar eclipses only happen during a Full Moon so it’s safe to say, you are a powerhouse of passion and energy since you were born when the Moon was at it’s most powerful, although obscured. This means that your biggest challenge in this lifetime will be to navigate your emotions and combine lighter feelings with darker ones. Your strong emotions and super-human intuition will take you on some fun adventures in this lifetime, so I see this energy as that of a charismatic leader and the Emperor card in the tarot.

Solar Eclipses

A Solar eclipse happens when the Moon finds itself in between the Sun and the Earth during its rotation cycle around our globe; so the Moon blocks the Sun’s light. This means that the native is born under the energy of something other-worldly, and under the Moon’s direct guidance. Solar eclipses always happen on New Moons and this means that a person born on such a day has their Sun sign conjunct their Moon sign in their natal astrological chart (so you are a double Taurus, with both your Sun and your Moon signs in Taurus, or a double Pisces with both your Sun and Moon in this Neptune-blessed sign). New Moons are times to slowly grow into something, so you might be a young soul at your first incarnations here on karma loca, or you could feel the impulse to pioneer something on Earth during your lifetime, by appealing to the power of your unconscious mind (since the Moon governs over the hidden parts of the human Self, the unconscious and its dreams). This is a good indications that you might be a natural-born intuitive healer, an introverted soul who is here to do some major studying in this lifetime and this is why I feel that your tarot card is the Magician!

This article is dedicated to a fellow crew member, Andreas. Sorry it took me so long to write this & thank you for the inspiration!

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a God.

– Aristotle

We’ve just wrapped up 2021, which for me personally was my year of self-imposed solitude. Bizarrely, after the collective restrictions to our individuals freedoms, imposed by the spread of the Covid-pandemic in 2020, once the vaccine appeared and the personal freedom to move has been somewhat re-stimulated, I chose to go deeper with-in rather than explore with-out. It felt natural & instinctive to make such a choice, like yawning or stretching. And I don’t regret it at all.

In the early part of 2021 I moved into a new flat, in the city center of Bucharest and spent my birthday and all significant holidays by myself. I was alone for Easter, for Halloween, for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. It could’ve been the influence of the astrological transits which I was experiencing (both Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius were transiting my 4th house, which is traditionally the most private and intimate point in a person’s birth-chart). So going within and keeping solo felt like the most normal thing to do under such an energetic influence. I slept a lot, I cried a lot, I journaled, I read, I took many long walks, I listened to music and I prayed. However, I do need to explain that I was placed in a rather privileged position: my business was doing well and it allowed me to live like this, and that for most of my life I had travelled, so the fear of missing out was completely dissolved in my case. I was actually looking forward to standing still for once.

I left my parents’ home and the country I grew up in, when I was 20 years old. And up until the moment I turned 33 in 2020, I did not stop moving. Travelling either for love, work or study, I kept going and exploring and expanding. Blame it on my natal Sagittarian Moon, Saturn and Uranus placements, which I associate with an unconscious thirst for adventure and feeling the pressure to emotionally nourish myself by seeking my own freedom in unexpected global places. When I travelled, I felt alive, vital and dynamic. A fire was burning within me, each time I jumped on a train, bus or plane. It was risky, as many dangers could have come about. I felt like I tempted fate and fate never disappointed me; it sheltered me and showed me the world was beautiful and safe to discover. I felt accepted and loved by an invisible force, as I underwent a lot of karmic tests. The moment I arrived someplace completely new and strange, it was an indescribable feeling which gradually became mildly addicting. I always felt connected to the Divine when I was wandering around the world, whether I was getting a higher degree, learning German, visiting my friends, holidaying in the South of France or conducting research in the USA. And by contrast, as if to test myself but also because I was following the limiting conditions of the Zeitgeist, in 2021 I made the conscious choice to stop moving. I didn’t know at the time that I was searching for the Divine within, when I made the decision to stand still. I just felt tired and in need of deep rest.

As I stopped chasing, adventuring, and escaping from my feelings on some level, all of this experience I had gathered but did not have the time to reflect upon, suddenly washed over me. Like a giant wave I was surfing upon which splashed me down the moment I paused and became aware of it. See the thing is, I was gathering all these life experiences but there was never enough time to process them on an emotional level, and thereby turn knowledge into wisdom. As a consequence, I only had knowledge at hand but I remained emotionally immature, afraid of being alone, thrill-seeking and unaware of my co-dependencies. Deciding to be alone was then a moment of deep courage to face everything I was not dealing with. So I returned home and I decided to grow on a deeper level than before, at a root-level. I am grateful I took this time away from the beautiful distractions of the world and from other people, even though I need to admit it hasn’t been easy. Sitting with my feelings has been difficult in 2021, as well as truly carving out a space to be alone. In this process, I paradoxically discovered that being alone is an illusion.

The more I kept saying ‘no’ the more life kept cropping up at the personal boundaries I had established, by bringing me in touch with people that wanted to give to me, to know me and to enjoy me. So I had to resist and kept affirming my ‘no’s. I just couldn’t give off my energy so freely as I could in the past, because something extraordinary happened during this solitary time: my creativity exploded! I poured all of the energy that I would have otherwise given to other people into my creative work and I started developing my business, The Spiritual Social. I enjoyed this process so much that nothing else appeared to matter, as I allowed myself to exist in the creative flow and imagine, divinate, interpret and make use of all the skills I had acquired throughout my life and silently dismissed as ‘hobbies’. These hobbies were actually my true, authentic Self expressing itself. The more I grew The Spiritual Social, the more it became a mirror, reflecting back to me who I really was. In turn, other beautiful souls noticed this and decided to join this authentic space I created for myself and others, in the process of fully accepting who I was. Again, in a paradoxical stroke of good fortune, the more I went within and focused on being my authentic Self and expressing this creatively, the less alone I found myself to be.

The monotony and silence of a quiet life, stimulate the creative mind.

– Albert Einstein

So what you could take from this post and my shared experience is that: a) major transits to your 4th house will require you to go within, to seek solitude and nurture privacy in your home – you will need to deal with your emotions to make the most of such a transit (whether it is a Saturn, Uranus, Pluto or Jupiter one); b) the more time you spend standing still and feeling your emotions the more you will heal and awaken to your innate creativity, so time alone is never ‘wasted time’; c) you will discover that the more you seek solitude, the more impossible it will become to create it – you awaken to the richness of your inner world and will attract solitude’s counterpart, connection. I assume this happens because once you transformed a core ‘need’ into ‘a desire’ then you have empowered yourself, because a desire can be fulfilled more consciously than a compulsive need.

As this process takes place and you start to sensitize more to the events in your life – because they happen more slowly or less frequently than before. As you allow yourself to be sensitive and intuitive, co-dependencies can be more easily dissolved through attentive self-observation. I believe that slowing down is good for your humane sensitivity and mental health. Solitude is deeply healing for a broken heart and replenishing in terms of your identity, if you forgot who you are and what your purpose in life is. You become empowered in solitude and thereby more magnetic, attractive and authentically pure. I learned in 2021 that there is nothing more irresistible than being your Self, as I spent a lot of time by mySelf. To truly get to know someone/something you need to spend time with it, focusing on it and valuing it. And now, I am excited to witness in 2022 in which direction my Self will grow and how this will bring me closer together to members of my soul family.

With universal love,

Lexi

This article is a spiritual book review, and the line in the title is from a song called ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ by the American rock band Nirvana. Whenever I hear it I think of extreme sensitivity. Imagine cutting yourself on something as light and tender as angel’s hair or as milky soft as baby’s breath. Only an empath would understand, not only what these words mean but also how this experience feels. When I first heard the beautiful cover to this song created by the British rock band Glass Animals – and which drew my attention to these particular lyrics – I had a physical reaction as if my skin was envelopped in silk. Sometimes the most powerful impressions are left by whispers than by loud blows. I usually get these physical sensations when I listen to music and when I am around people. I sometimes feel the unspoken pain of other people around me as I simply sit or stand next to them in the subway or in a car, in various public spaces.

I never thought of myself as an empath and growing up in a rather survivalist and traditionally-patriarchal Romanian culture, I was taught to think that being an empath is ‘weird’ or ‘wrong’. One had to be tough, confident and pragmatic to survive. It is only through my Psychology undergraduate studies that I started to get more familiar with this word and understand what it represents and why it is important. This awareness gradually liberated a part of myself I had kept hidden from others, for fear that I would be rejected. The story of an empath described me, who I felt I was at the core, since I was small.

It also described a collective that was somehow living a secret life in the background of other peoples’ more extroverted or less sensitive, daily experiences. I cannot count the times I heard growing up, that: “You’re too sensitive”, “Why are you so careful?” and “Don’t be so shy” and how many hours I had to spend by myself, in stillness, to regroup, after I came into contact with another person’s energy. For a very long time I thought I was sick and unable to function properly in society, until I understood how other people’s presence, energy and emotions affected me. An empath absorbs impressions from their environment and from other people, and can feel their way through life more often than other people, but empaths are not necessarily emotional sponges as the author to the book I am introducing here, describes:

(…) empaths don’t expose themselves to hidden feelings, as if wading through toxic waste without a hazmat suit. And not every impression received is from the “bleak and hopeless” basket of human emotions (…) I’m not just an observer off to the side because I have my own responses to my life. Joy begets joy, love recognizes love, and pain can have profound depths when united with others’ pain. This is part of the emotional broadband that we empathic people possess and learn to manage. I have learned to lean into these moments and physically express the emotions, if possible through actions like clapping, cheering, or crying (p. 116-117)

Signe wrote a beautiful book about the experiences she has had living as an empath and growing into this role. She illustrates her book with intimate examples of moments when she took on the pain of another person and placed herself in their shoes. Such descriptions felt so familiar to me that I couldn’t help nodding and ‘oohhing’ as I was reading her book. Signe believes that one is not born an empath but that one becomes such and that sensitivity is not sufficient without an awareness of this role in the empath’s life, or as she writes:

From my experience, there’s an evolutionary arc from being an overly sensitive person who tries to survive in their environment by feeling separate, to that of being an engaged and functional empath who witnesses what’s out of balance and honors that connection. Admittedly, the awareness that we’re all connected takes cultivation, and for some, it remains theoretical. For empathic people, however, its application is very much a part of our reality, which is poignantly ironic considering that many of us relish time alone. It’s exactly why we sometimes struggle to feel comfortable in our own skin. The boundary between the external and internal can certainly be hard to define when you’re able to feel so much. It’s also why we continually question if our sensitivities are a blessing or a curse (p. XVII)

I agree with this viewpoint and I think that learning what healthy boundaries are and how and when to establish them in social contexts can help an empath deal slightly better with the sudden flow of random, sensorial information that floods them on the regular.

Although feeling overwhelmed is a constant state that I find myself fighting with – but perhaps it is because I am still young and I have still have a long way to go to truly harness this energy and my role as a ‘feeler’. The interesting thing is that Signe dedicates an entire chapter to this almost untalked about aspect: how age and empathy work together. In her book’s final chapter titled “The Fied of Mystery” the author talks about the aging empath and what happens as one gets older and how the relationship the empath has to their senses changes, also in the light of their many different empathic experiences throughout the years. I thought this was so unique and a perfect way to end this beautiful book!

In spite of the fact that Signe tells the reader that the book was designed to be read slowly, I finished it in two days because the writing flowed so well and the examples offered were immersive. I also felt that a friend was talking to me and I didn’t want to put the book down. Perhaps I’m biased, as the topic spoke to me since I self-identify as an empath and I work in the spiritual and occult area of life, but even if you might not be an empath yourself, maybe you love an empath or work with one and are curious to find out more about their inner worlds.

This book offers such a tender and well-organised glimpse into the empath’s world. Signe divided the larger field of percetion that empath are part of and interact with on a daily basis into: the field of reflection, the field of definition, the field of sensing, the field of experience and the field of mystery. I really enjoyed this categorization because it moves the discussion from dry psychological research on empathy to a more intimately felt glimpe into an empath’s inner world; and it is a very rich world, as you can tell.

I loved this book and I feel that if you were to give it a chance you would too! Each section of the book comes with a list of important guide-posts which contain a summary or questions to help you develop your empathic skills or to identify them. Reading this book felt like I was given a present alongside a tender acknowledgement that how I am matters and that there indeed can be some space carved out in society for highly sensitive individuals to share their experiences, to thrive and to heal others.

The book will be officially released next week (12th October) and will be available to purchase from She Writes Press. Visit the author’s website here: https://www.smhovem.com

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Telepathic communication is a weird one to write about. On one hand, I’ve experienced it so often that it has become something commonplace in my life and on the other hand as soon as I start talking about it, I sound crazy 🙂 But you’ve come to the write place to discuss ‘crazy’. I received a number of requests from you to write about this beautiful phenomenon and I decided to put together some of my astrological knowledge and personal experiences in this post, in the hopes I can inspire and validate your own experiences:

Usually, telepathic abilites are indicated by the following astrological markers in the birth-chart of an individual:

• Sun to 8th House aspects or the Moon in the 8th house
• Chiron, the asteroid of the Wounded Healer, in the 8th house or aspecting to the 8th house
• Strong Sun to Saturn links in the 12th house
• Neptune in the 12th house or aspecting the 12th house
• Being a Cancer, Pisces, Scorpio Sun sign or a Gemini, Libra and Aquarius Sun (especially if placed in the 5th, 11th and 12th houses) – because these are the most intuitive and communication-savy signs.

With all these aspects there is a sense of responsibility and karma (and the potential for deep wounding) but also an unseen way of transmitting your thoughts and feelings to another person. Having other astrological might also work, and I’d be curious to know in the comments sections below how you experience telepathy if you have none of the aspects mentioned above.

Ok, fine Lexi but what is telepathy? I need to know! 🙂 Settle down buttercup and read this definition below from Wiki:

Telepathy (from the Greek τῆλε, tele meaning “distant” and πάθος/-πάθεια, pathos or -patheia meaning “feeling, perception, passion, affliction, experience”) is the purported vicarious transmission of information from one person to another without using any known human sensory channels or physical interaction.

Wikipedia

And if you need some more knowledge bites because you happen to be very knowledge hungry today, I’ll thrown in the ‘telepath’ as well. A person who is able to emit their thoughts to other people without using verbal communication, is a telepath. Here is how the Oxford English Dictionary defines a telepath:

So telepath (ˈtɛlɪpæθ) n., teˈlepathist, an adept in, subject of, or believer in telepathy; ˈtelepath v., (a) trans. to convey or transmit by means of telepathy; (b) intr. to practise telepathy; telepaˈthetic (rare), teleˈpathic adjs., pertaining to, of the nature of, or effected by telepathy; teleˈpathically adv., in a telepathic manner, by means of telepathy; telepathize (ˈtɛlɪpəθaɪz, tɪˈlɛpəθaɪz) v., (a) trans. to communicate with or affect (a person) by telepathy; (b) intr. to practise telepathy; (c) trans., to discern by means of telepathy. rare.

OED

Hunger soothed? Good, let’s move on to some desert.

Telepathy is a skill, which can be awknowledge and trained, much like muscles are trained for sports competitions or voices are trained to hit beautiful notes. The more you do it the better you become at it. The deeper you go the more magical it becomes, as you can transmit not only words and sentences but whole images and scenarios.

It’s important to underline, that telepathy has ceased to be considered ‘witchcraft’ and current sleep researchers are working on thinking how they can train minds to improve this skill, since it can be a valuable ability. It is believed that once the brain reaches the levels of Theta or Delta frequencies, which are naturally produced during meditation, hypnosis, when we relax or when we sleep, then it can emit thoughts which link to a signficant other person’s thoughts, potentially travelling throug the astral realm. For the sceptics among you, here is an article describing how scientific research is increasingly backing up the trend towards our development of extra-sensorial communication abilities: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/scientists-prove-that-telepathic-communication-is-within-reach-180952868/

In the world of divination now, I have two Oracle decks which tackle the subject of telepathy. These are from the Oracle of the Mermaids by Lucy Cavendish and The White Light Oracle by Alana Fairchild. I would like to share with you an abbreviated version of the two texts which accompany these cards, in the hopes that I can inspire you to pursue either the practice of telepathy or to gain clarity over the special ability you might own:

“If you receive this card, you may be one of the people who feel lost when it comes to words, or less open to have conversations as they seem to never express what it is you feel so deeply. You prefer to let your energy shine through and speak for you. Many people are labelled with medical terminology if they are silent, when in fact they are constantly communicating, just in ways that are advanced, subtle, yet ancient. They are open-energied, and communicate effectively and are in harmonious attunement with animals, plants, crystals and song, more so than with conversation, and the jousting competitive turn much of that can take. You may also find yourself connecting telepathically with memories stored in crystals, trees, and sacred sites. You too can connect with your telepathy and true wisdom by connecting with these sacrdc spaces, crystals and trees. Huge bodies of water, like the Pacific, are brimming with energies and memories, and you are one who can read them, one who can speak the language of energy.”

From the Oracle of Mermaids

“The pathway for your spiritual fulfillement and the sacred manifestation of your purpose is not necessarily logical and will evolve organically. The skilfull and unpredictable workings of the Earth Mother are supporting your soul journey unconditionally. Following up on inspired ideas and allowing for unexpected shifts in (this) direction are integral to the manifestation of your soul purpose. Commit to an idea that feels good to your heart. Even if it seems improbable or unattainable, it will manifest successfully.”

From the White Light Oracle

Now what I can add to Lucy’s beautiful text is that Labradorite and Blue Kyanite are the best crystals for facilitating both telepathy and astral projection (the experience of feeling your soul existing your body to travel different realms during sleep – more on this in an upcoming post). Also, by stimulating the Third Eye Chakra (Ajna) you can enter not only deeply meditative states but also send messages across dimensions. And I need to say that we tend to communicate telepathically with people whom we love, we have known for a long time and with our past-life soulmates. It will be harder to use telepathy on someone we have not establish a connection with (either in this lifetime or in our past lives). This is why you should be mindful or having random sex with people since you can easily give them access to your energy, as the connection can be established in a purely sexual way since it doesn’t have to be emotional (although the emotional channel is the strongest telepathic link is linked in telepathy to the functionin of the amygdala and the pituitary gland in our brain).

Another important distinction is that talking to ancestors or the departed is not telepathic communication. If the person is disembodied, that experiences is called ‘channelling’ since you are dealing with spirits and not with the energetic emissions of another lively human brain. Telepathic communication happens at some relative physical distance between two alive human brains which are not using words or sounds to communicate. It can happen between you and your lover over-seas or between you and your mother who is cooking in the room next to you. It can also happen as you fill in the sentences for your child or finish your lover’s sentences, or those of another family member whose ‘normal’ speech capacities are affected. There are various levels and an array of complex experiences and I hope that with this article I wetted your appetite for telepathic explorations.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Inspiration struck me in the shower (as always, since I’m a water sign) and suddenly I felt the urge to write this post in the hopes that you too will feel contaminated by curiousity, and pull up your own chart to see if any of these significant conjunctions appear. As always, my intention is to inspire you to seek your own truth while having fun with astrology. Below are some of the most interesting and tricky-to-interpret combinations which I very often see in the charts of my clients. So this post can serve as a useful reference for those of you who practice astrology:

Saturn conjunct Uranus – This is the energy of an electric storm brewing in the closet. You have the energy of the stern and stoic Repressor (Saturn) combined with the rebellious and inquisitive Maverick (Uranus). So you experience circumstances in life which show you the limits of your goals, love, energy, dreams and desires (or the limits of your wealth and body, if Saturn is placed in more material houses like the 2nd, 6th or 10th). But as soon as you become aware of specific limitations in your life, you suddenly take some form of innovative action to break through that limitation. And you will be successful enough to lead other people towards their own liberation, by teaching them how to overcome such perceived limitations. You are the living embodiment of the Doors’ song ‘Break on Through (to the Other Side)’ This placement also shows a life-long inability to stick to habits and schedules since they will be frequently changed or turned into creative forms of living (so try not to conform or place yourself in a box). If this placement is difficult to hold down a steady routine, the good news is that it also protects you from addictive habits (you’ll just get bored and feel the compulsion to switch things up pretty soon).

Saturn conjunct Jupiter – This is a confusing placement because you carry the energy of restrictions and limitations in the same energy as that of expansion and growth! Saturn is the stern father telling you to come home at 9Pm sharp and not to drive drunk, and Jupiter is the optimistic wingman who tells you one more drink is not gonna hurt and you also have some darts to finish playing with your friends. So you will experience a lot of stops and starts in your life and even the energy of the same day can be divided into ‘hardship in the morning’ and ‘good luck at sundown’ 🙂 It’s a tricky placement to navigate, but it denotes that your greatest achievements in life will come with the greatest hardships. It also shows that if you put in the work things will grow quicker and larger for you than for your peers. An example would be: you fight for an inheritance with your siblings and then you settle legally and get a much larger sum than expected (3rd and 8th house hard aspects to the Moon and Venus). Or you start practicing ballet and you end up being chosen as the leading dancer at a much earlier age than your peers or the job is for a presitigous ballet company (5th and 11th house oppositions to Sun and Mars). This placement can sometimes denote a highly influential granfather, someone who serves as your spiritual teacher.

The Moon conjunct The North Node (or Rahu, in vedic astrology) – This placement indicated emotional chaos. It is a difficult indicator for both sexes, but it is believed to be more difficult for women. When you get the energy of unconscious emotions which can bubble up to the surface in random ways in combination with the Head of the Dragon, that destined point of the Moon which indicated the things we find uncomfortable in this incarnation and yet we feel compelled to follow the path of our destiny, then you get obsessive emotions and a rollecoaster of feelings. This combo shows a person who might feel nothing for a while and then everything all at once, a person who loves you today and hates you tomorrow, or someone who is simply never satisfied with how much love they get so they constantly seek out intense feelings and drama in order to fulfill a deep inner need. Depending on other aspects in the chart (trines to Venus, a high-functioning Jupiter, a well-aspected Sun) the individual can experience some softeness, but it’s important to underline that this conjunction needs to be lived out. There isn’t much to do about this transit since it is this person’s destiny to experience the highs and lows of love, betrayal, depression, joy, envy, lust etc. This marker can sometimes indicate a person that needs to be medicated to function appropriately in society, and a famous example is the chart of the actress Catherine Zeta-Jones, who has this combo in Pisces. She channeled this energy so beautifully in her profession as an actress (Pisces), however she has also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Mars conjunct Venus – You have the God of War and Lust combined with the Goddess of Beauty and Love all wrapped up in your energy core. So you act of love, and love to take action! You are a romantic daredevill and can easily become a womanizer or maneater if working with the lowest vibration of this combo. Also, this means these two opposing forces within yourself are constantly ‘making love’, which grants you an incredibly magnetic power. You don’t have to chase love commitments or sexual encounters, these easily come to you. This is because you ooze desire, fertility and a sexy kind of beauty. People of all ages, sexual orientations, and different walks of life are drawn to you like moths to a flame. However, you can easily manipulate people with the promise of love or sexual satisfaction so be mindful of how you use this power. Depending on the astrological sign of this conjunction you can experience satisfactory benefits (such as when Mars and Venus are conjunct in Taurus or Libra) or this type of conjunction can reveal some hidden sexual or romantic abused (such as when the conjunction is in Virgo or Aquarius – because these two signs are usually energeticaly pure and emotionally detached, and they dislike being dragged into sexual and romantic murkiness), especially if this combo is placed in the 8th, 4th or 12th houses of the chart. Many celebrities have this combo in their charts, such as Lupita Nyong’o and The Rock (Dwayne Johnson).

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

So I was reading Bernadette Brady‘s fascinating book but had to stop and give you this article “by popular request” – i.e. you guys DM-img me a couple of days in a row to ask me the same thing over and over again :)) And because I love you, I thought I’d prepare a short post where I feature some of the books that have inspired me, served me and taught throughout the years. These are books on astrology, tarot booklets and some miscelania ones on witchcraft and lucid dreaming. It’s important to keep in mind that one doesn’t need books to practice tarot or astrology, but deeper learning will always make you better, since you’ll train your mind to analyse and interpret clues in birth-charts and the cards (also, you can add brag-value to your work, and occult books are pretty fab in general!)

Astrology

I learned astrology throughout many years (roughly 15 now), from Liz Greene, Donna Cunningham, Stephen Aroyo, Susan Miller, Lada Duncheva, and more recently Pam Gregory and Karni Zor. For all of these authors, I strongly recommend their work and resources: Liz’, Donna’s, Susan’s and Stephen’s are primarily to be found in books or online articles, while Lada, Karni and Pam have their own Youtube channel under the same names. I also recommend the reports of the wonderful and mysterious Mystic Medusa: https://mysticmedusa.com/

Delving into the work of all or just some of these experienced astrologers should set you up nicely for a career in the same field. Donna Cunningham‘s astrological books especially felt cathartic to me when I was reading them. Donna is a Cancer Sun Sign and you can tell how motherly and nurturing the tone of her writing is as she unpacks some difficult to digest astrological discussions of rape and abuse. For someone like myself, who was born with a very strong Pluto and an afflicted Moon in her chart, she made me understand the deeper layer of my astrological placements and find empowerment in them. Her insights also help me see the charts of my clients in a more positive and empowering light rather than as a something pre-destined and doomed.

On the other hand, Stephen Arroyo has a more associative approach to the discussion of astrology. He made me aware of the Eastern philosophical undercurrents and symbols which Western astrology borrows from, and how karma and astrology are combined. Stephen is a Libra Sun Sign, and you can tell this by the deep level of analysis his work comprises – he also helped me understand how to read complexities in a birth-chart and why someone’s Saturn placement can be a blessing when activated by the right transit. I absolutely loved his book ‘Astrology, Karma and Transformation” so much so that I took it with me on a romantic holiday with a boyfriend and we had an argument in the train-ride back home about why I was paying more attention to the book than to him – well…honestly now, I prefer astrology to men 🙂 (a view toppled only by maybe ‘astrological men’ like Stephen). Stephen also wrote a book on Jupiter which I have as an ebook and frequently refer to when I need some clarification on a Jupiter sign (for example I was always intrigued by how Jupiter in Cancer works in the 9th house since that is contradictory energy, but Stephen got me covered).

Now potentially the most well-known and astute astrologer of the ones listed above, is Liz Greene. A Virgo Sun Sign with enciclopedic knowledge of literature, fairy-tales and ancient myths she has a very no-nonsense approach to the study of astrology. She regularly contributes with articles on www.astrodienst.com and I highly recommend her audio-courses on myths and folk-tales in astrology, but I also loved that she is one of the few teachers who comprehensively made me understand my own ruling planet, Neptune. Although mostly known for her acerbic discussion of Saturn and how it distributes karma in our lives, I enjoyed more her book ‘Relating’ which helps one reflect on parent-child dynamics in your own life and generational aspects, as well as love and romance issues.

And speaking of relating, I feel that Debra Silverman‘s book on astrological elements (Fire, Air, Water, Earth) was a fun and useful update to Liz’s work, so these go together like a cup with its saucer (although remind me again who is still using saucers in 2021?!) Also for more details on Debra’s book please read my previous post here.

Speaking of relating, the ever-fascinating subject of astrological romantic and erotic compatibility is well-captured in two entertaining books. I really enjoyed the funny and in-depth, astrological guide to men, provided by the Astro Twins or Tali and Ophira Edut, two Sagittarius Sun lifestyle astrologers from New York who get into such rich detail regarding the romantic expectations women should have with their specific Sun sign lover (it’s all done in good fun, so don’t take it too seriously but the typologies described are sometimes so accurate it hurts).

In addition to the Love Zodiac ‘massive’ book, I remember purchasing some years ago, during one of those procrastination bouts from my PhD, a book that actually gathered interview data with people of a given astrological sign about their sexual experiences and erotic fantasies. All these impressions, collected from real people, give life to Myrna Lamb’s “The Astrology of Great Sex”. From this collection I specifically remember how one Libra woman described making love to her partner, with the windows open during winter time, while watching the snow fall – poetic ❤

Tarot & Miscelanea

With tarot it’s relatively easy because usually each tarot deck comes equipped with a tarot booklet that describes the symbols, the mythology behind the cards and their meanings, in both upright and reversed positions…usually. I found that some decks are richer than others and have some better designed booklets. There are some exceptions, for example the famous Italian company Lo Scarabeo offers some gorgeous tarot decks but also infamously has very brief and cheap-looking accompanying booklets that do not provide much information. The upside is that they leave space for multi-lingual descriptions, so you might be able to read the concise meaning of the cards in your own language.

But I’d like to show you my favourite tarot booklets, which are in my opinion the most complete, since they are clearly based on some scholarship and tarot experience, they are packed with information for both upright and reversed positioned cards, and they are just well made and beautifully illustrated (plus they look like actual books): 1) The Mary El Tarot, 2) The Linestrider’s Tarot, 3) The Dreams of Gaia Tarot and 4) The Mystical Dream Tarot.

And finally the two other books I thought are worth mentioning are like a beginner’s manual on how to get into practical witchcraft and handle your bouts of lucid dreamings (and understand what these might mean). I received both of them as gifts (plus, they make great gifts!) and simply fell in love with the word ‘oenirounautics’ and the candle spells in the witch’s spell book:

That’s all I could think of for the time being, but stay tuned because my ebook occult library harbors 89 books at the moment and I’m slowly (but surely) making my way through them all. Will report back with other gems I’ll find. Enjoy your readings in the meantime and feel free to share your favourites below!

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

If you are finally ready to embrace your occult personality type and are thinking of practicing as a modern witch, below are some things you might want to consider as you embark on this journey of cosmic self-knowledge and self-development:

• Figure out what type of witch you are

What I’d wish I’d known beforehand was the grand variety of witches that are out there! Gone are the days when a witch was a lonely, ostracized woman living on the outskirts of society, in a hut in the forest, with her cats, broom and potions (that is a tired old stereotype in all likelihood).. Nowadays, as our knowledge develops and we kept evolving, so do our occult identities, as we blend spirituality with science and technological advancements.

First there is the color spectrum (and here I refer to the form of witchcraft practiced and the entities invoked in such a practice and not to the skin color of any particular witch). So there are Black/Dark Witches who dabble mostly with curses and hook-spells, invoking creatures of darkness and serving Lucifer. The aim of their work is to control other people, but they can also transmute energy. Mars, Saturn and Pluto-ruled Sun signs such as Scorpio, Capricorn and Aries can practice this form of witch-craft better than other astrological signs, due to how comfortable they are exploring the depths of human darkness. I do not recommend practicing as a Dark Witch if you do not know what you are doing since spiritual possession and cursing your bloodline might accidentally occur.

Their counterparts are White Witches (also known as Light-workers). These are usually people that have experienced a couple of ‘dark nights of the soul’ in their lifetime and have begun their journey into spirituality and the occult due to some traumas. But rather then succumbing to the darkness, White witches have chosen to improve, purify and better themselves. As such White Witches serve Spirit and its Archangels, and usually invoke or summon beings of Light during their rituals. White Witches are aware of the surrounding pain, drama and darkness of reality but they consciously chose to bring light and love into deeply painful situations. They are usually tasked to undo the damage done by Dark Witches and their corresponding sentinels. Any zodiac sing can become a Light-worker.

There are also Green Witches (also known as Earth Angels, the servants of Gaia) who are highly in tune with the bounty of the earth and they know how to respectfully harvest it and to transform it into alternative forms of healing medicine. These are the alternative apothecaries of the occult world, who not only use the bounty of the flora and fauna around but also work to preserve it and sustain it. They are some of my favorites as they have extensive knowledge of botany and zoology, they can harvest herbs, spices, fruits, berries, vegetables and dry them up or create preserves, they ground and process food and also make medicine and healing ointments, they create oils, bake their own bread and plant fresh seeds. They are expert tea-makers and incense-makers, or herb-bundle creators. They are also versed in crystals and use them in their daily energetic practices. Sensual earth signs such as Taurus and Virgo, and wild-loving Sagittarians make the best Green witches.

Then there are Grey Witches who tread the fine line between a Dark and a White witch, and I was lucky to come into contact with one who educated me on this topic and gifted me the ‘Divine Feminine Oracle’ (pictured below). Grey witches serve both the Divine and the Unholy, and they can summon beings of light as well as those who lurk in the shadows. Grey witches feel comfortable working in-between these two realms, and have a strong past-life link to the Oracles of Delphi, the high priestesses who served Apollo and who had the gift of foresight. There is however more work involved if you are thinking this is a good choice for you, so keep in mind the inner dualities you need to contain and the many forms of cleansing that you will require to perform since the amount of work is double to that of a Dark and White Witch. Also, the communities you might be part of might brand you as ‘undecided’ and push you into picking a side – I would suggest resisting and standing your ground, especially if you feel that being a Grey witch is your calling. Mutable Sun signs such as Pisces, Virgo, Gemini and Sagittarius can cope better with duality and are better suited for this type of practice.

Lastly, there are the Hybrids of the Age of Information: starseeds, steam-punk witches or priestesses, sentinel cleaners, shadow workers, techno-witches/robo-witches. This latter group combines advancements in technology with occult ancient practices, and they have a hacker’s agenda’s alongside more environmentally aware and eco-feminist goals. Expansive, knowledgeable and independent signs such as Aquarius and Gemini make the best Techno-witches.

These are just some of the types of witches I am currently aware of; there might be more. Feel free to comment below from your experiences and help us all learn.

• Cleaning & cleansing

The second thing to be aware of is that being a witch involves a lot of daily cleaning and cleansing! I never expected to have to clean my body (both inside and out), my living space and my invisible/energetic Self as much as when I chose to finally embody my occult personality type. As a Pisces Sun, I was focused early on in my life on creating space and stillness in my life, on finding spaces where I could be alone and experience my freedom and solitary interests, and I reflected a lot on the spiritual nature of my identity, on my breathing, on meditation and psychological analysis but in order to fully own my white witch identity I realized that the older I got and the more I practiced my craft, I also had to incorporate my Virgo Shadow and to be very attentive to cleanliness. This point was brought home to me after I experienced some bizarre energetic shifts, where I began to feel slimed, tired, and drained for no apparent medical reason at all. But my intuition was guiding me towards sorting out the clutter in my space and I also felt guided to shower my body with salt which at the time to me, looked so pure and different than how I was feeling energetically. As I tended to my bodily and material needs, the energy started returning to me, and thse experiences further solidified my belief than in such a line of work you need to balance spirituality with materiality to flow with ease.

• Notice cues & train your intuition

This month for about a week I had an incessant eye-flicker which did not resolve even after I took my doctor’s prescribed Magnesium supplements. I tried resting more and still no change. Eventually, I realized that this flicker intensified whenever I had to go outside and connect with people who I could feel were ‘unhealed’. So I burned some incense at home and did a chord-cutting ritual, after I had some negative interactions with people in my city’s local administration, and my eye-flicker stopped. Now I never leave the house without obsidian and black tourmaline in my pockets.

On another occasion, I visited an old neighbor and as were talking over coffee and biscuits, but I felt like moments into our conversations her stare was became mildly intrusive and unkind (like her words stopped matching her inner thoughts). After that encounter I started to feel sick in my stomach and I started yawning a lot which are my usually bodily cues that I am under the spell of the evil eye (something my mother taught me to identify and cleanse early on in life). After rubbing my wrist with essential rosemary oil diluted in grapeseed oil and repeating the most powerful prayer I know, I yawned the evil eye away and felt better. Such daily encounters, taught me the value of cleaning the materials around me (including my clothes) and of spiritual cleansing (through prayer, affirmations and incantations). They also helped me become more aware of my intuition and they helped train it.

• Cleanse with the cosmic cycles (New/Full Moons, Retrogrades and Portals)

So now, I clean and bless the space in which I live and work each day. Not only that but I also clean the energy between each tarot reading and after the completion of each birth-chart. Cleaning can be done by sweeping dust and dirt with the traditional broom, or by vacuuming and washing the floors and the materials you use, and it is especially powerful around a Full and New Moon. Cleansing the space can be done through: a) sound (with bells, wind chimes, whistles or Tibetan bowls), b) speech & will power (by chanting, saying affirmations, whispering prayers and intentions, incantations, mantras), c) air & smoke (by burning incense, with candles or by diffusing essential oils, by using an air purifier in the room), c) water (by spraying some rose water, an essential oil mix, some holy water). You will find that the cleaner the spaces the better and calmer the energy around you will become and in turn you will also feel more settled and peaceful.

We feed off each other, as the environment and we are always linked so you should begin to pay attention to your environment and if there is something you feel is not right/doesn’t fit, always honor this intuitive insight and correct accordingly in your practice. For years, I felt weakened during Mercury retrogrades but only this year I decided to actually take time off from work (also this year, I managed to make work-based decisions that allowed me this luxury). Mercury retrogrades are excellent time to study, revise, correct, improve and just go on a holiday. They happen 3 times per year, for roughly 3 weeks each time. It’s a slap in the face of capitalism to take this much time ‘off’ but think about the importance of resting, cultivating your mind, catching up on reading, practicing new rituals and spells and just letting your tarot cards rest for a while. Whenever I return I feel I went up a notch in my spiritual development, so even if you aren’t doing the ‘usual’ service work for individuals, you are working nonetheless and what feels or looks like rest is actually deep, unconscious processing of everything that happened too quickly as Mercury was direct.

Also use the energy of Portals and Eclipses to boost your intentions and help you give up bad habits. Every year the Lion’s Gate Portal in August gives us an opportunity to reset our capacity to shine and implement new goals (think of this as you spiritual birthday and who wouldn’t want to celebrate two birthday a year, the physical and the spiritual one). Again for any of these energetic corridors you’ll want to remember the most important step of your witch-craft: that cleanliness is next to Spirit! As you keep practicing the craft you’ll notice how sensitive you will become to any bit of lingering dirt or grime that could cramp your energy and dim your mood. You’ll also feel how your energetic tendrils are blending with those existent in your environment. So using incense, essential oil sprays, taking iodized salt showers or rose petal baths alongside the usual ways of cleaning your body and your space (with soap, shampoo, commercial cleaning products) are important parts of your spiritual journey.

I need to underline that the material and the spiritual support each other, it is not a case of either/or. A good spiritual practitioner understands and supports things which we have been taught to consider opposites, but especially if you are a Grey witch or a Shadow worker, getting comfortable with the in-between of human experience, with spectrums, scales and gradients of human feeling and identity are essential in fully owning your witch’s role.

• Tools

Most of the guides to witch-craft which I have read start you off with a list of objects you can make you own magical tools. Firstly, you’ll need to source a broom and a knife/dagger. These are the two most important objects in a beginner witch’s kit. The broom is for the first reason stated above, to clean. Cleaning on a spiritual level means transmuting and shifting energy. The image of the witch on a broom, snarling and cursing at the moon is a sexist one propagated by the mostly Christian patriarchy to dissuade women from owning their powers and practice the craft, but the broom was from the beginning merely the symbol of grounding and cleansing and it is essential that you also own one – it can be in any shape or form (a fine feathered cleansing broom, or a more traditional and bigger straw one). Avoid using the vacuum cleaner or roomba if you can, at least around your altar because it could accidentally aspire some of your crystals, runes or flower petals (it could also aspire some tarot cards and unnecessarily bend them). The knife is important in chord-cutting rituals, in scrying, in spell-baking, and to help you unpack and bless new tarot and oracle decks. Other tools include you Book of Shadows, your herb bundles (Palo Santo and Sage), a fumigation shell/receptacle, you lighter and candles, your incense sticks and incense burner, your crystals, your singing bowl/bell/wind chimes, your crystal jewelry and even your magick wand. I like to re-use ice-cream plastic containers and food glass jars, empty wine or cider bottles to keep and store my tools, because in this way it is more eco-friendly.

• Some thoughts on Protection

After you’ve been practicing the craft for a while you’ll see that your spiritual journey will involve confronting less savory aspects of your Self which you are not yet aware of – this means you’ll need to do some Shadow Work. This happens as you manifest some avatars, some contenders and cynics or potentially mentally ill people that will give you some negative feedback. You’ll want to devise some auric protection spells as you walk on this path especially since you’ll go through moments of extreme sensitivity and healing when you will be energetically vulnerable. However, I do need to underline that as long as your connection to Spirit remains fluid and strong, protection spells are not that necessary. It’s just that sometimes a strong Saturn or Pluto transit to your Moon, 12th/4th/8th houses, or a Mars return or even some natal squares and oppositions that get activated in your natal birth-chart, will hinder you capacity to feel connected to the Divine- the delays are usually meant to level you up and indeed you might experience a lot of illusions and imaginary fears during such transits; they are meant to bring up insecurities and anxieties to your consciousness, and grim thoughts about being somehow ‘abandoned’ or ‘punished’ by the Divine, in order for you to face them and dissolve them. It is not the actual case that you are abandoned by the Divine, but an illusion created by one of these malefic aspects or planets. During such transits, keep in mind that each one of them has an expiration date and that you’ll need to either get savvy at using protection rituals or get deeper into your praying, meditation and bodily movement routines to flow with Spirit’s energy again. Lastly, you can also do both, and begin vibrating to a higher frequency altogether. Such periods normally leave you stronger and wiser than how you were previously to such a transit.

Lastly, there are many resources you can use to keep improving, learning and growing. The more you allow your passions and intuition to guide you the better at this craft you will become. Your increasing in sensitivity is a gift, for you will pick up on more subtle energy shifts and you can even protect yourself better from lies or deceit in your environment since you might develop strong physical reactions as your emotions are more finely tuned to your mind. You will be able to pick up some occult skills as well such as astral travel, lucid dreaming, telepathy, clair-audience, clair-voyance, divination or enhance the ones you are naturally gifted with.

Ultimately this is a beautiful journey to be one and we are fortunate that in 2021 we can practice freely in the context of a society that while still rather close-minded to alternative forms of being, is not burning you on a stick or stoning you to death. Change is inevitable and even if slow; it is bringing us into a whole new realm of existence. At the end of the day, I do hope you can bravely listen to your heart and decide to walk on this path!

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

(Your Resident Light-worker/White Witch)

In this post I’d like to talk about a transit that I’m currently experiencing, and which started in 2018. I feel I gathered sufficient personal experience in the last two years, to share with you now, how Uranus transiting my natal Mars feels like and give you some insight on what you can expect. This is not an easy transit and I feel I need to provide some guidance for those of you who are currently undergoing this transit and are wondering ‘What the hell is going on?’ or for those of you who will face this transit as soon as Uranus hits Gemini in 2025 (because being prepared usually softens the blow).

Uranus takes about 84 years to complete its rotation around the Sun, and as it tracks on its orbit it often beams its energy through a particular constellation on the Earth’s ecliptic belt (comprised of the 12 astrological constelations identified by our Spiritual Ancestors). This means that you might not experience Uranus transiting over any of your personal planets in your lifetime, or maybe over all at once (if you have a stellium, for example). Uranus might not conjunct a personal planet but it might make aspects to your personal planets (such as a square, an opposition, a trine or a sextile), urging you on some level to pay attention to the insights it is randomly producing in your life.

Outer planets are those considered to lie beyond what we can normally spot with our eyes from Earth. So our personal planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn (with the honorable exception of the Sun, which is a star), while the outer planets are Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. Whenever an outer-planet switches astrological signs there is usually an important fated or karmic mass change taking place in the collective. These transits usually mark generations, and they reshape the fabric of our social world and how we perceive it and relate to it. For example, when Pluto switched from Sagittarius to Capricorn in 2008 there was the Lehman Brothers financial crash which had ripple economic effects on the whole globe, or when Neptune shifted from Aquarius to Pisces in 2012 a 10-metre long tsunami affected a nuclear power plant in Japan. Now when an outer planet conjuncts a personal planet, this normally is a high-order activation which means that fated events will take place in that house of your chart where the planet is transiting. So I would suggest sutdying the deeper meaning of that house well to get ready to integrate this energy in your life with more awareness. I’ll be using my personal example for analysis because it is what I know best.

As Uranus is transiting closer to my natal Mars, it is activating my personal will-power and courage in the 7th house (the house traditionally ruled by lovely Libra, that place in our chart were we co-operate, relate, communicate, love, get married or sign long-term contracts). As you can imagine having Mars in this house is not the best placement since it foretells frequent arguments and conflicts with lovers and business partners. In addition, having Uranus transiting this house, it means I cannot ignore how anger plays a really important role in my love life and in how I handle parternships. This is because on a soul level, the 7th house is the house of repressed emotions, our unconscious self, or our Shadow Self (that blindspot within ourself that shows what Others see about us that we are not so aware of).

Uranus brings in a certain chaotic energy in a particular house of you chart and tends to electrify any personal planets. So ever since this transit started I kept being confronted with problematic people who are mirroring back to myself my own shortcomings, so that I may work through integrating my Shadow side by becoming aware of my flaws, my limitations, my love patterns and the boundaries of my Self in relation to Other people. The goal is loving myself more, reclaiming my self-respect and functioning in relationships on a higher, more mature level. I have also been energised to act differently than I had in the past, and I am experiencing moments of either excited and constant energy or low peaks in my energy when I procrastinate, feel weak and tired. This is because Uranus gives lightning-bolts of mental awareness which are then slowly processed on an emotional level. That processing slows us down on the surface level, but inwardly we are levelling up to higher states of consciousness. If it sounds scary, stay with me – I promise you it is worth going through this strange and random process of dismantling a previous version of your Self that just wasn’t helping you find peace and be happy in the world.

Bye, bye Stagnation! Hello, Untamable Energy

Uranus has been in Aries for the majority of the Pluto in Capricorn era, creating a number of Cardinal Cross moments and tense squares to Pluto. That was a historical period, which one astrologer whom I love and admire, Mystic Medusa, called ‘The Zap Zone’ – a time of great social upheavals around the world and military rebellious insurgencies. Then in 2018 Uranus switched signs into the Earth-bound and Venusian sign of Taurus, and for a while there was a sense of increased stability – one which was broken in 2020 when Saturn entered for a short while in Aquarius and thereby creating another tense energetic aspect of forced growth (and which astrologers call ‘a square’). We are now in an environment where work and the stability or the prosperity it brought is being reconfigured, where there is a sense of financial and environmental chaos that is also affecting our relationships to our stable sense of self and our health and bodies (all of these areas are ruled by sturdy and fertile Taurus). The material realm is currently reconfigured by making us face our own vulnerability to fast-mutating viruses and living in a quickly shifting new weather and environmental climate (and whether we enjoy the ‘ride’ or not, we are given the opportunity to use our minds to find solutions).

The first period of Saturn in Aquarius squaring Uranus in Taurus saw the beginning of lockdowns in the world. I personally was more creative than I have ever been and growing my You Tube channel ‘The Spiritual Social’, momentarily kept me from experiencing deep fear and disillusionment. This is because I have a natal Venus in Aquarius and a natal Mars in Taurus (so the transiting heavenly square activated the natal Yin-Yang square I have in my natal chart, or better said the energy I carry within me since birth). Any squares which are activated in our charts produce a lot of energy which must be processed externally in creative and innovative ways. But the second time Saturn dipped into Aquarius and joined Jupiter as well during the great conjunction on last year’s Winter Solstice (21st December), I felt as if my entire stability was crumbling beneath my feet and I had to come up quickly with an overwhelming amount of solutions. Below are some of the core traits that I personally witnessed with Uranus activating a natal Mars placement:

1. When Uranus hits your Mars placement (it doesn’t even need to be conjunct but just in the same house), I would suggest making it easier on yourself and prepare to let go of what you thought your schedule was. Your daily habits will inevitably change as you will go through erratic energy levels. One moment you have the strength and courage of a legion, the next you need 4 cups of coffee just to roll out of bed. It’s a ‘bender’ kind of energy, where you receive jolts of action, followed by moments of pasivity where you cannot do much but rest. Give these moments a clever name such as ‘my powering up stage’, ‘I’m juicing myself up’, ‘filling in my batteries’ or ‘re-loading’, just to help you cope and to make you feel like you are not just sitting around being lazy, but are actually gathering your energy for the next part of the learning curve, and keep in mind that Uranus will keep you up on that steeo learning curve like you’re on a rollercoaster ride, until it leaves that house!
2. Figure out how long the transit lasts. The current transit of Uranus in Taurus began on the 16th of May 2018 and will end on the 27th of April 2026. You can easily check the dates of the planets by consulting an Astrodienst ephemeris (basically a map of the sky in a given year). Knowing how long something lasts, can help you plan, organise and prepare. If it’s a good transit then you can decide to enjoy the ride, but it’s a difficult transit, being aware of its expiration date can help you overcome it.
3. Another thing that helps is figuring out which aspects it makes to other houses or planets in your chart. I am aware that this transit is activating a really difficult square in my chart (Venus square Mars) so I prefer to remain single as I integrate a lot of unconscious aggression back into my system. Most astrologers call this aspect ‘the domestic violence marker’ and because I am aware of this potential I control it by actively owning my anger, acknowleging it and training myself not to react on it (although there are days when I somehow ‘get it’ and others when I fail at it and can lash out). As this process unfolds what I discovered is that I am brimming with creativity and I feel inspired to produce a lot of things (clips, services, articles etc.). By knowing that the higher vibration of Mars is profound creativity and intuition, I set daily intentions to be guided in this direction rather than in the lower-energies of violence and conflict.

Erratic and Episodic Love

If you are Venusian (i.e with planets in Libra and Taurus), this transit might not be a ‘joy ride’ since you’ll find it hard to plan or to stick to a plan, and make it look elegant and poised. And this is also because Uranus is re-organizing you at a primal level, as Mars rules over our instincts. In general, Uranus teaches emotional detachment because it wants you to pay attention to the new insights it will bless you with. But in order to help you change your energetic pattern or relationship to your basic instincts, it first has to show you where you are wrong and are mis-using your energy. And that is the humbling part of the ride, the uncomfortable trigger that pushes you to change something. I had so many moments of saying ‘Enough!’ to people, places, routines and my own inner critic, since this transit started; and in this way I empowered myself. At the same time I burned some bridges, so I am in the process on understanding how I can form relationships with this new sense of self-respect now.

As you will begin to analyze your life from a brand new light, it helps if sit down from time to time in stillness to integrate the messy emotions that overwhelm your clear insights in this period (similar to the period when Uranus transits over your Moon, in which case your emotions are key to accessing higher states of consciousness).

So with Uranus on your Mars – which represents your willpower and life-force, your energy and creativity, your charisma and courage – you will enter a period of time when you will either have little to almost no energy for days and then followed by a massive downpouring of energy that keeps you up for a potential period of 72 hours straight. Uranus’s electricity will affect your willpower and energy in fantastically unpredictable ways, making you feel messy and disorganized. I would suggest not trying to control this energy by rigidly keeping it within a 9 to 5 because it won’t work – it will backfire on you and eventually might even get you fired from a conventional job with strictly delimited and stable parameters. Uranus wants you to get out of any comfort zones you might have willingly or unwillingly placed yourself into, so you can ‘think big’ and grow into your authenticity.

What is it that you’ve always love doing? When Uranus hits your Mars and unleashes your primal drive in small and shocking spurts, then you will be faced with the inevitability of following your heart. The only way to ‘control’ this energy is by deciding to commit to following your own path, going solo or doing your thing for a while and as you are doing so, accept the social disapproval or backlash which might ensue in your social circle. After all, Uranian energy wants you to rebel against the status quo and defragment old patterns of your thinking (usually inherited from your parents, cultural and religious backgrounds). So you might as well give into this energy and allow it to creatively lead you down previously untrodden new pathways in life.

Genius Shocks

Basically, when Uranus travels over your Mars it creates a power dynamo, so you’re better off letting it roll than holding it tightly in your palms and risk being burned by its sheer intensity. I have a South Node in Libra and the major defects with this placement are a tendency to people-please and be indecisive – well, at the moment Uranus is not allowing me to do either of these things. Every time I fall into that comfort pattern a conflict ensues that teaches me to step into my own power and reclaim my energy. At times I also experience these briefly humorous moments when it’s almost as if the Divine steps in to remove something or someone from my life that was harming me. The best thing about this transit is that you are unconsciously pushed into action to deal with things that you previously disliked but somehow tolerated.

Uranus unleashes the cool warrior within. In this way, Uranus liberates you – it shows you that you must take action now, because that job or that relationship has become intolerable and tomorrow is not guaranteed. To be honest a part of me is slightly dreading the moment when Uranus will hit 16 degrees and will exactly conjunct my Mars, just by judging how this transit went so far. But my case is more difficult because I am having this transit opposite my Pluto in Scorpio in the first house and squared by my Venus in the 4th house ( which is also under Saturn’s clutch for the next 2 years)….so it’s not exactly a smooth walk in the park. Some of you have this transit with a lot of trines, and some of you have this aspect natally. However, the higher the number of the degree the riper the energy of a sign and the slower the pace of the karmic lessons which are delivered at a more manageable pace. I’m not sure what the future brings, but I can say that once Uranus will hit 29 degress Taurus in 2026 the environmental and financial landscape of the collective will be a brave new world…and maybe by then these random bouts of energy will subside and I can get on with my love life in a more consistent manner 🙂 The best part however, will be looking back on all the creative outputs I brought into being during this transit and how freer I will feel on an energetic level. And this is the gift that Uranus leaves you with: the levelling up on a lifetime!

With universal love,

Lexi ❤