I just realized I wrote a post I forgot to publish and for some reason it made its way back to me as I was sorting out through my drafts. I release it now in the hope that some curious cats might find value in it:

From the outskirts of what has been a painfully slow and difficult period, I report back on the state of ‘ugly restlessness’ that the Venus retrograde in Capricorn (conjunct Pluto, Mars and Mercury) spread in the collective for us. We began 2022 under this energy and so far this year proved to be traumatic. Whenever we have a stellium (*a cluster of planets in the same astrological sign) in the sign of Capricorn, we usually deal with loss, death and disease (much like in 2020 when Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn met in this sign, we were faced with mass deaths created by the Covid-19 pandemic). There is a reason why astrologers throughout time associate the sign of Capricorn with the image of the Grim Reaper and the Devil, and that being that Capricorn takes something away from us, before it can rebuild on a stronger foundation. I also need to say that part of my role as a lightworker is to shed light on difficult aspects of life, dark things and dark experiences, uncomfortable emotions that deserve to be acknowledged and transformed. If you believe that walking the spiritual path is all ‘love and light’ you are mistaken. Actually the more you try to slap on the tag ‘love and light’ without dealing with the darker undercurrents of the human experience, the more you’ll create a psychogenic pressure cooker that will unleash Pandora’s box in your life when you least expect it. To live only in ‘love and light’ is paradoxically to be dominated by your Shadow Self – and remarkably the sooner you come to terms with your human flaws, limitations, obsessions and desires the more you start to infuse your life with the light of truth and creation. What makes living such a fascinating experience is how we pendulate between dark and light and work with the grey areas in life, also known as the infamous ‘it’s complicated’ terrain. In life, we will spend most of our living energy striving towards something, recuperating from something or letting go of something, so we can use our remaining energy to build something new and to maintain what we’ve gathered so far.

The past Venus retrograde which ended this weekend, was a period of 40 days and nights, where feminine energy was externally depleted, and beauty was not obvious but skin-deep. This happened in order to focus on the self-esteem that is built from within. Those of you who were born with a Venus retrograde in your natal chart might be familiar with this energy, as beauty/love/money aspects in your life that require more effort, that are earned by focusing within first and then manifesting without. Whenever an astrological retrograde takes place, reality shifts a bit and we experience optical and visual illusions. During a Venus retrograde you might wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and see all your flaws, only your imperfections and you could feel old, tried and drained. However, as soon as the retrograde is over the same mirror-image changes and you start to feel ‘cute’ again, to think that ‘hey, I do have nice hair or nice eyes’. This is because retrogrades focus the energy within, into that beautiful inner realm that lies beyond the capacity of our visual field but exists nonetheless (like many things in our reality that we like to take for granted due to the inherent limitations of our visual field – case in point, Roentgen radiation).

I think the best representative of this inner beauty/outer beauty Venus retrograde energy is the Norse Goddess of Death and Despair, Hel (pictured above). Half human, half monster, her face depicts the beauty dichotomy and sends us thinking: Who are we when we don’t base our self-esteem on how we look? And would we feel better about ourselves, if we were just living in a state of inner beauty? And would the world around us, people and society, react respectfully to us even if we didn’t spend time crafting our external image?

Let’s talk about how ugly an individual sometimes feels when living in the midst of an energetic burnout. How food seems to lack color, sexual desire disappears, as more space is created in the body for mysterious aches and pains, a perturbed sleeping schedule which might involve waking up several times a night and cold sweats in the morning, pins and needles in the shoulders and neck invading the body right before bedtime. In the midst of burn-out we might not even be aware that it is happening, and it usually takes a disease, an event or a malfunctioning limb to set things into perspective. What brings about a burnout? Excessive stress from work and the effort needed to survive. And what is Capricorn ruling over? Well, the word of work. We have all been on some level traumatized & burnt-out by the depleting energies of Pluto in Capricorn and now on its final degrees, the effort intensifies as we are all collectively pushed into revolt exactly at the moment when we feel we cannot give anymore and we expected some solace (or divine intervention).

This retrograde therefore showed us at a skin deep level (since it was conjunct piercing Pluto), almost at a bone level (Saturn rules over the structures in our life, such as our skeleton), the pains and aches of the economic system we live in that requires us to function and work over-time for meagre salaries that cannot be spent to completely nourish ourselves, our bodies and our souls. In addition, the global capitalist system purports values which are about image-management and self-obsession rather than valuing inner beauty, and even more so it values traits on the job market which fall in line with a masculine energy: competitiveness, confidence, self-marketing, self-promotion, leadership, power, constant movement and change to seek novelty etc. The feminine keeps being under-paid, under-valued and attacked. These commodified values are affecting our relationships, our bodies and our capacity to balance masculine energy with feminine energy, and the past Venus retrograde brought these things so close to home it hurt. It is timely too, not only because Saturn the ruler of Capricorns governs over time, but also because this is the final Venus retrograde before we shift into a new era, the Pluto in Aquarius era. (And what followed after this retrograde ended its Shadow zone, was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent raping and killing of Ukrainian women).

Keeping this in mind, what are the lessons that the Venus retrograde in Capricorn conjunct Pluto, solidified for us, after 14 years of Saturnian collective stoicism, effort and darkness:

• That forceful, faster and emotionless might not be the best course of action forward. Sooner or later something or someone will crack under the pressure. And it might be your mind or your body.
• Honour feminine energy & take time to rest, because no matter how much the neo-patriarchal system of social relationships – which we still find ourselves living in – disdains it, people who rest are indeed more productive. People who rest have the power to fight back.
• Build something slowly and carefully over time to reduce the cost and shock of something just randomly dissolving in front of you when you least expect it, due to a fault in the foundation: this can be metaphorically applied to your workplace, your health, or your marriage. Although, a spontaneous invasion or a terrorist group could easily destroy all that you built, so try to not get too attached to objects.
• Don’t blindly follow tradition just for tradition’s sake. Transform it until you feel it has a deeper meaning for you and then you can ‘obey’ it because it resonates with your soul and not with what somebody else tells you to obey.
• If a relationship doesn’t work, let it die. If a person will not change, let them go. If your money is depleting, slow down the roll of spending and conserve it.
• You can live well with less.
• Your addictions are not you, they are the inner demons you didn’t take time to slay. And the side-effect of the daily personal hustle needed to maintain neo-capitalism.
• Love, creativity, peacefulness, integrity, faith, feeling good – they all matter. Not everything that is tangible and marketable has intrinsic value. Some things are just unquantifiable, eternal and intangible.
• The survival mantras of “I am strong” & “I can do this”, which characterized the first part of this Pluto in Capricorn transit, have now become “I approve of myself” and “I accept myself”, under the decade-long influence of Neptune in Pisces. And this summer, in 2022, as Jupiter enters Aries, they will become ‘I have no fear’ & “I had enough”.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

It is a difficult experience for me to write about this book mostly because its topic invites you to be still and meditative. I found myself taking breaks after each chapter and falling into a state of peaceful transcendence, where I felt calm and connected to something immaterial. It’s rare that I have such an experience with a book. And in partly this experience is created because of the many useful prompts, questions and practical exercises that the author offers the reader. Diane Dreher (a Psychology Today contributor whose work has been featured in USA Today, Entrepreneur, Redbook, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and Science of Mind, among others) begins her soothing ‘The Tao of Inner Peace’ by describing how :

Peace, Lao Tzu realized, is an inside job. Only when we find peace within ourselves can we see more clearly, act more effectively, cooperating with the energies within and around us to build a more peaceful world.

– page xiv, in the Introduction to the Tao of Inner Peace

Later on in the book – in a chapter where the reader is invited to consider how to manage the flow of chi (life force) in one’s body through breathing – Diane further explains the practice of inner peace as detachment:

Detachment doesn’t mean turning a cold shoulder to the world. Far from it. It means transcending ego, caring without getting caught up in day to day commotion. Watching life’s changing panorama with patience, acceptance, and good humor

– page 17 from The Tao of Inner Peace

In clear, unadorned language the author reaches to the core of some simple but often neglected truths. Similarly, I thought of these words written by one of favorite spiritual teachers, Alana Fairchild, from her oracle book ‘The White Light Oracle‘, where the yogini’s role is clarified in relation to the practice of inner peace:

“In numerous spiritual traditions of the East, such as those from Nepal, Tibet and India, the yogini is a female, spiritual adept, a practitioner of deep yoga that awakens a powerful connection with one’s real inner being. The yogini holds space for healing and enlightenment, moving through obstacles and challenges with wisdom, patience, commitment and often great joy.

– pages 97-97 from Alana Fairchild’s The White Light Oracle Guidebook, Blue Angel Publishing

Indeed, it takes practice to become an ‘everyday yogini’ as oftentimes people will try to get us out of a state of inner peace and provoke us into battle/arguments/drama. But it is nonetheless important to continue to practice this role, if we would like to create more peace on Earth.

The author, Diane Dreher describes how her spiritual journey began with both an interest in Chinese brush paintings but also with a disappointment, a fall from the Garden of Paradise, like it usually happens for most of us placed on the spiritual path. In an interview, she talks about how her college boyfriend rejected her for wanting to pursue both a relationship with him and her own professional interests. When we encounter a person who limits our personal growth in some way and wants to make us subservient to their Ego, we meet the point where we understand that the Divinity in us is not respected. This painful ‘trigger’ moment & the decision we take to respect ourselves in that moment might push us onto a solitary path of deep introspection but it also connects us to our inner Self, and ultimately it helps us live a life that feels good on the inside. I think that finding inner peace is a life-long process and whenever we meet a spiritual teacher who can tenderly help us along the way, then this is a highly fortunate encounter. Diane Dreher is such a person and the way she adapted the teaching of Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching (the Book of the Way) to modern concerns about respecting and healing the Self, is a blessing. I hope you’ll enjoy this powerfully unassuming book as much as I have.

‘The Tao of Inner Peace’ is published Penguin Random House: https://www.dianedreher.com/index.htm

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

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 ❤