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 ❤

This article is a spiritual book review. I recently got the chance to review Debra Silverman’s ‘The Missing Element’. And I need to say how much I loved reading this book! Deborah has been a person I used to learn astrology from a while ago (before astrology became popular on Youtube, in the dawn of the Pluto in Sagittarius era). I remember her witty and theatrical rendition of each of the 12 zodiac signs’ characteristics, and was impressed by how well she captured their essence (both the flaws and the qualities). So being sent her book was a welcomed surprise. In this post, as I’m describing the reasons why I enjoyed reading her book, I also hope to equip you with some inspiring astrological knowledge.

Debra is a famous American astrologer with a background academic education in Psychology (a thing we share in common). She’s been practicing astrology for the past 40 years, and furthermore she is a Gemini Sun – which means that she is a natural at verbal and written, communicative skills. I’m really suprised to see that given her experience, this is her first astrology book! To give you some insight, I’m placing below the editorial description of her book:

In The Missing Element, author Debra Silverman describes human nature in a compassionate and succinct way. We are all made of four basic elements – Water, Air, Earth, and Fire. When we’re in pain, it means these elements are out of balance in our lives. The key is to be able to discern your own personality and understand where you can strengthen the parts of your elemental nature that are out of balance.  But even more important, this book is about waking up the Observer in you, so you can experience the beauty and fullness of who you are far away from judgment. Becoming the Observer inspires your compassion and nurtures your wisdom for all of us. When we aren’t judging ourselves and others we are more loving. And when we are loving we take better care of ourselves and other people and the planet. The Missing Element will help you understand that your life and all its stories were designed by your soul to get your attention right now. It is inviting you to seek the wisdom of the ages to help you grow. By gaining an awareness of unique behavioral tendencies under stress, you will gain an understanding and compassion for yourself and others.

I thought it was interesting how the book focused on how understanding the elemental differences between our personalities (that some are Airy, others are Watery, some more Fiery and other more Earthy) served the purpose of living together with more compassion. The core idea of the book is that an awareness of our innate elemental differences helps us mend ‘broken bridges’ in our personal relationships, where previously there was a lack of understanding, intolerance and division. I think that is such a beautiful and necessary message for the upcoming collective upgrade of the Age of Aquarius. Although, I must admit it is also hard to put into practice such a beautifully ideatic perspective.

For example, I used to live next to some neighbours who would blast me with loud and repetitive music each night (even as I was trying to write this blogpost 🙂 My fiery neighbours don’t fit so well with my watery nature (seeing as I am Pisces Sun). So my need for peace and tranquility clashed with my neighbour’s need for daily disco. It was either a case of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ or the flight response. I chose the latter, as the only way I could solve that conflict was by finally moving out. So on a pragmatic level, some elemental differences are better left as they are (even if they can be mentally understood and processed into more noble nuggets of wisdom – i.e. that perhaps my neighbour found it hard to stil in stillnes and listen to his own thoughts due to some childhood wounding).

But coming back to the book, I love the way the book is structured, especially the sections about the story of each element and how to work with them. As a reader you get a useful list with the characteristics of each element and then also their shadow aspects. Even if you have little time to spare, you can open the book and quickly skimm it for quick facts to use in your coaching/counselling practice (although I would recommend reading the book fully, for sheer enjoyment). There are also condensed chapters on the elemental man and the elemental woman. I thought it was interesting to describe them in such a way, although my Millenial mind kept thinking about how tran-sex individuals might use this book. Maybe in a subsequent edition (and I’m sure there will be many), the book can be enhanced by including an elemental analysis on the gender spectrum.

In conclusion, as a young astrologer and socio-psychologist I find this book to be useful because it helps me link the signs to their element and then connect these to their deep psychological needs. For example, the watery trio of Cancer/Pisces/Scorpio, who have watery natures also have different and specific needs compared to the earthy trio represented by Virgo/Taurus and Capricorn. By understanding the elemental needs of each trio you can then figure out how to love them, work with them, teach or coach them and just relax or have fun with them. This elemental approach to astrology reminds me of the Chinese Zodiac and how each of the 12 animals represented in the Chinese Lunar calendar also come equipped with a specific elemental charge (Earth, Wood, Metal, Fire and Water). The book is also really fun to read, so I would strongly recommend purchasing and enjoying it!

If you’ve made it this far, let me know down in the comments section: What astrology books have you been reading and would recommend?

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

When we think of change, we are often frightened by the perspective ahead. Those who are astrology-savy usually think of Saturn and Pluto and pain or upheaval. We imagine that what will come in our lives will be swift, irreparable and dramatic, in order to get us to change our habits, leave toxic places and people and take those pro-active leaps of faith. And indeed, a Pluto or a Saturn transit with a lot of squares and oppositions to the Sun, Moon or the Ascendant of a person, will feel deeply painful and traumatic. But sometimes change doesn’t always have to come with fragments of drama. Change can sometimes come about as easy as taking your coat off, or realizing something and acting on it without resistance or impediments. Often a change of mind, heart or residency, set us back into alignment with Source energy or Spirit. Leaving a person that you no longer resonate with or a lover you no longer love can feel like a relief, liberating and hopeful. Dropping a job that kept you bound and bored, can also feel like a breath of fresh air has entered your career. Moving from one location to another can renew your life and bring a sense of adventure in your heart. So when you feel the winds of change entering your life, look to your chart to discover whether they are bringing in some painful karmic endings (Satun and Pluto) or helping you let go of what you naturally have outgrown (Jupiter). Even in the midst of a dark knight of the soul, I would encourage you to turn to Jupiter to find your ‘happy place’ since we always carry this energy in our charts, from our birth until our physical demise.

Jupiter is the largest planet in our small solar system, according to NASA. Our South-European ancestors represented this largesse in their Greek pantheon through the image of Zeus, the God who ruled over Gods and who enacted moral order by appealing to wit, chance, a gamble, joy for life, unlimited creative potential and occasionaly his flaming thunder. For a primer on the Jupiter/Zeus’ myth go here: Roman mythology/the Greek God Zeus

Jupiter governs the wildly lucky, optimistic and studious sign of Sagittarius (and before Neptune was discovered it also co-ruled imaginative and dreamy Pisces); it also rules over the 9th house of faith, the higher mind and mentorship. In general, having a Jupiter return means that for aproximately one year, you are blessed with dharmic rewards and abundance (considering the aspects Jupiter is making to your personal planets). But why is Jupiter considered to be such a benefic influence compared to Mars, Saturn and Pluto, who get a bad rep in astrology? Well for one thing, it’s because the planet Jupiter protects Earth from being obliterated by comets. Some astronomers believe that it is the lucky relationship between Jupiter – who blocks incoming and outer-galactic entities because of its sheer mass – and Saturn – whose magnetic pull absorbs the debris of Jupiter’s impacts and arranges them neatly in concentric rings around its axis; these two planets provide us with our saving grace and allow life to flourish unencumbered here on Earth.

On a spiritual level, we are protected by Jupiter since as mortals we are its creations. If in pagan times, Zeus had a pretty earthy and sensual image, in the New Testament’s Christian times he was transformed in a pure source of love and light, and worshipped for many years under the guise of a universal God, who fathered a son called Jesus Christ and in complete purity with the Virgin Mary.

More recently, through the really insightful astrological teachings of Liz Greene and Stephen Arroyo (two of my favourite astrologers and the mentors I initially learned astrology from), the study of the esoteric meaning of the planet Jupiter experienced a revival. We now know that one can become aware of the energy that Jupiter offers a native in his/her chart, by the sign and position that Jupiter individually governs (the astrological sign, and the house it resides in, as well as the aspects it makes to all the other planets in a chart). We can thereby learn to work with this energy to experience and create good luck and prosperity in our lives, on an ongoing basis.

At a personal level, Jupiter represents joy, luck, effortless growth and how you attract opportunities. It liberates you in a joyous way, it makes things come to you easier, since it is the energy of the ‘Great Attractor’ or ‘Superattractor’. This planet shows you the best things about your life, and the house it resides in your chart is the place where you can always turn to for constant blessings. Jupiter shows how you grow and what you are here to learn and thrive at. It is believed the from birth until about the age of 7, we are protected by Jupiter – our early and formative years cover us in a coating of fun, adventure and humor that keeps us alive and active, even if we are born in pretty difficult circumstances; this could be one of the reasons why children are so naturally playful, curious and adventurous. Another aspect is that according to Ernst Wilhelm, Jupiter represents the spiritual husband or the ideal man in a woman’s chart (while Mars shows what physical features she will find arrousing in a man). With a Jupiter partner (i.e. the Sun of your husband is the same as your Jupiter sign), a woman experiences abundance and constant growth, while with a Mars partner a woman might be sexually satisfied but she also runs the risk of arguing a lot or suffering at the hands of a man whose Sun sign shares her Mars placement.

I could focus more on the two books above, but I’d rather just leave them here as references, since I know my crew are highly intelligent and self-taught so I encourage you to read them for yourself (here is a brief esoteric summary). What I want to continue with is to give you a glimpse of how I understand them, in the hopes that it can inspire you to develop your own way of thinking about Jupiter’s energy in a birth-chart. Having read and interpreted birth-charts for many years now, I developped a deeply personal way of understanding Jupiter. Below is the gathered intuitive and learned knowledge I have so far about Jupiter as it is manifesting its energy through each zodiac sign:

• Jupiter in Aries – This is Jupiter amped up by militant Mars. So you attract abundance when you relate to others directly, confidently and curtly in your everyday affairs. You can risk coming across as more ‘bossy’ or creatively impatient in how you handle others, because this authentic sense of self will make you very charismatic and popular. You grow when you do rather than when you over-think things. You are asked to embody the role of the leader if you want to gain prosperity in this lifetime. Don’t elaborate too much or use a lot of polite words, but rather show people in creative ways what makes you happy. Fight the need to procrastinate and delay acting on your decisions. Aries is the first sign and represents the primal fire of spirit, virility, action and in some cases even violent self-expression. Take control of nurturing a deep connection to Spirit, and act in tandem with your heart’s impulse regarding what is right and wrong; then watch how you’ll receive amazing and inspiring ideas to create something unique in this life, for others to enjoy. While I don’t encourage you to be violent, it’s essential that you listen to and cultivate your intuition. It’s really important to trust you own feelings rather than to rely on the advice of other people, because if you do you not, will miss out on a lot of abundance in life. Say what you mean and mean what you say, and definitely own your pleasures. Whatever the case, feel free to live your life without asking others for permission. The more risks you take the more prosperity you unlock.

• Jupiter in Taurus – Jupiter meets Earthy Venus! With Taurus energy here, you have luck in the acquisition, conservation and enjoyment of material wealth and financial resources. You are meant to create and experience pleasures of many kinds. People perceive you as a reliable and sensual presence and they naturally like and trust you. Your body could have some curvy features and overall you tend to look healthy, strong and fertile. People instinctively are drawn to you and they like to have you around because you project an earthy and grounded type of confidence. You also calm people’s energies, so be careful because you might attract energetic vampires and chaos addicts who feed on your energy (this might also affect your monetary abundance so I advise setting strong boundaries in your personal life). With a Jupiter in Taurus you can be playful and pull occasional pranks on people. You tend to see the positive side in any unfortunate situation and are very good at knowing the worth of objects and at saving money, or at spending it on things that are genuinely valuable. You are generally perceived as a stable, prosperous and sensually alluring co-worker/business partner, but watch out for over-indulging in your creature comforts or being too stubborn to budge. You easily attract money to you, wherever you go.

• Jupiter in Gemini – With a Mercurian Jupiter, you grow through how you communicate. You might generally like to have two of each (relationships, options and opportunities, for example). You are truly happy when engaged in simple common-sense things and when you chat or use technology, as part of your daily routine. You grow by reading, acquiring and consuming facts, so education in general makes you happy and gives you a feeling of being intellectually rich. One potentially negative aspect with this placement is that you can easily create and enjoy gossip, so watch out for the tendency to spread negative and unverified rumours. You feel the happiest when you are co-operating or partnered-up. In your best days, you are drawn to communicate and engage with others in some fun chit-chat. You like to expand your mental energy to others and might enjoy board-game nights or exchanging facts or watching a game at a local cafe/bar. You just enjoy getting to know a lot of people and connecting with them. When you are sad, the best thing to do is to be together with other people and talk to them. Allow others to teach you things about yourself. You also enjoy discussing partnerships and ideas and you might enjoy dressing in rebellious and anti-Zeitgeist ways. Education and technological gadgets, using the Internet and downloading new apps is also a great way to stay in touch with your loved ones in light and slightly detached ways.

• Jupiter in Cancer – This is abundant energy in the sign ruled by the Moon, so your feelings and unconscious desires can help you manifest new opportunities and good luck. Express yourself, baby! You are naturally filled up with healing and maternal energy, and you can attract the most luck when you nurture people by feeding them, holding them, making them feel safe and relaxed, when you tackle your daily chores with thoughtful and kind communication. The key to your prosperity is flowing with your emotions, and learning to become more aware of your intuition and emotions so you can allow them to guide you to the right people, places and chances for you. You also have a lot of luck in terms of saving up money, having a supportive family life (your own or the one you come from, or at least the relationship with the mother), acquiring property and feeling good in your home. Childhood sweethearts, old-school mentors, nostalgic groups of which you were once part of, your culture and your nation, all give you a sense of hopeful belonging. Cancer is the sign of emotional safety, so turn to your children, the privacy of your home, photo albums and family heirlooms when life becomes difficult. I see you having a house with a lot of books, creative details (such as tarot cards) and spiritual symbols that reflect your soul. Cooking can also be incredibly soothing to you and a happy experience.

• Jupiter in Leo – The Great Attractor meets the Sun! With this placement you attract good luck when you are generous, enthusiastic and optimistic. Leo is the proud Lion type of energy, so the more you express yourself and take the lead in a social situation, the more you will attract good opportunities towards you. You are meant to inspire others, to make them laugh and encourage them to reach their goals. People will see you as a role-model, if you act on these impulses. With this placement you are energized by coming in contact with famous people, by practicing self-care and by focusing on creative self-expression. You are also drawn to/manifesting celebrations and festivities, and you feel the happiest when you celebrate something, especially in your family life. You easily attract well-known people to yourself or hang around with people who have a star-like quality. Leo energy is super creative and energetic, so if you start your own business and one that involves fun, empowering and creative aspects, you will earn a lot of money. The older you get, the larger your social circle will become and the more people you will attract for both business and pleasure. By being fun, loyal and strong you pull in everything you need.

• Jupiter in Virgo – When Jupiter meets Earthy Mercury, this is a true marker of a witch or shaman, because spiritual enlightenment requires daily material and physical dedication and you excel at that! You grow a lot through the information you gather in your everyday life and through analyzing the information and resources received. Jupiter is placed in the Earth-based sign of Virgo, so this means that anything related to curing and treating diseases, medical and plant-based advice and products, anything related to wellbeing and mindfulness are especially attractive to you and make you feel happy and expansive. You like to work towards tangible results, and could work in a profession where you deal with medicine, health and wellbeing and even alternative practices (such as Reiki or Ayurveda practices, the use of crystals, or the best organic markets where to shop from). You attract opportunities when you act from your integrity, work in the service of others, stay clean and well-put together. Being helpful and hard-working rather than critical is your way to prosperity. You actually feel happiest if you can sort or organize something that has to do with careful attention to details, such as: constructing or repairing computers, preparing an education programme, writing and editing, creating clothes and patterns, sorting out your clothes or colour-coding them, managing online comments or creating a website from scratch. You attract good luck when you clean, declutter and organize things, and when you apply logic to make sense of life.

• Jupiter in Libra – Here Jupiter meets Airy Venus. So you are blessed in the realm of love, you are a lover and a refined communicator. You feel the luckiest when you are partenered up in long-term business partnerships or a solid marriage. You enjoy finding out things about your Shadow Self and you use this knowledge to improve relationships, to educate or to create art. You grow through connecting with other people, by learning and communicating with them about your own beliefs and desires. The best way to manifest is to ‘ask and you shall receive’, so let people know of the things you enjoy or the fact that you are undergoing problems, and then see how they help you achieve them. You grow by negotiating your way through life. Libra is a beautiful energy and it is the least solitary sign, so whenever you feel low, reach out to talk to people, ask them for advice or create something beautiful. You are often in love with the idea of love with such a placement and this means that you might marry more than once in your life – but remember that your soul craves adventures rather than stagnation and safety, so feed it new love experiences that will inspire you to create beautiful and innovative art. Playing fair, creating beauty and establishing many different relationships are key to your success.

• Jupiter in Scorpio – Jupiter meets Pluto, and becomes ‘Dark Jupiter’. So with this placement you grow by establishing bonds of trust and respect with others, through how you intimately relate to others, and how you use your power (and you have a lot of it!). Secret opportunities for earning money, disclosed information and sexual partners arrive to you easily. Scorpio governs over sex, magic, taxes, shared finances and the occult, so you will have many opportunities to gain material goods from close partnerships, especially long-term ones that will teach you a lot about the unconscious behaviors your might have. Relationships have the power to transform your finances. Once the lesson is learned you will purge that relationship and move on to another, to learn even more about your Shadow-self (that place in the unconscious parts of our psyche where we store our fears, our defects, unwanted parts of ourselves and secret desires). You heal so quickly from intimate trauma and can regenerate faster than anyone. The more you transform in life, the more luck you attract and the more prosperity you will create. The dark is actual a place of joy for you (death might fascinate you) and you have an uncommon attraction towards understanding and unpacking the grittier aspects of life. Nobody is more resilient than you are and very few understand your dark sense of humour, but you are loyal to a fault.

• Jupiter in Sagittarius – The exalted placement! Jupiter loves to be at home, in the sign it rules, the lucky, expansive and truth-seeking sign of Sagittarius. You attract and create a sense of freedom wherever you go, and you will enjoy travelling. You are bold, honest, idealistic and a little bit wild. It takes you a while to commit to something because you see the whole world as a wonderful playground, you have faith in a higher forces and feel inspired to pursue lofty goals. Inside of you beats a passionate heart, armed with a healthy doses of daily enthusiasm. What guides this optimism is your direct line to the Divine. Having the God of luck in the exalted sign of Sagittarius, means that you can easily manifest what you think, say and feel. Knowing this, please keep an optimistic mindset and see how your life changes for the better when you turn each challenge in life into a wise lesson. Wake up daily and bless yourself and others by saying beautiful things; you can change your life and luck just by what you choose to enunciate. There is nothing to fear with this placement since any hidden enemies are removed from you – you truly are protected by God. You could also enjoy tantric sex and have many children with this fertile and abundant placement. Commit to happiness and to the emotional transformation of any negativity, on a daily basis and then sit back and enjoy the fruits of your manifestation.

• Jupiter in Capricorn – Jupiter is not very happy when it meets the limits of Saturn; this is why many astrologers consider this as a ‘detriment’ position, because the luck and the blessings of a Jupiter in Capricorn native come about slowly, in time and with effort. So with Capricorn energy here, you grow the most in life when you are building solid material foundations and are achieving tangible results in this lifetime. Arm yourself with patience and determination, and God will continue to bless your goals. However, you must infuse your practical achievements with a sense of spirituality and with a genuine desire to do good and to help others. You can literally bring your dreams into being with this placement, but you also create and receive instant karma, so be careful and check that what you say and do is in alignment with your values (integrity is key). The more spiritual, systematic and profound you are in your everyday work and in how you communicate, then the luckier you will become. You will be very happy when you settle down and have your own family since stability makes you happy. This is because you enjoy watching your hard work grow and to receive rewards for all that hard-work. Your children and home life will be foundational for you in this lifetime because you see them as your legacy. Your family will also teach you important lessons about how to express your emotions and thereby enhance your intuition in your professional life as well. With such a placement, if you follow tradition you will always receive support.

• Jupiter in Aquarius – Jupiter meets Uranus, so anything goes! With this placement you are highly intelligent, even brilliant, and are attracted in equal amounts to the occult and to scientific research. You manifest lucky opportunities through what you say and how you speak, so watch that your words are positive. You grow in this lifetime by acquiring many different forms of knowledge and with the local support of your social group or through technology. You have the capacity to bring together groups of people, to educate large groups of people and also to play the match-maker with your friends. You might feel at times like your identity is merged with that of your group of friends and there might be power struggles involved, but it all works out in your favor. You feel the happiest when you can communicate the knowledge you have gathered, you have the support of your local community groups (especially school friends), and you could speak many different languages as well. God will always find a way to bless you with spontaneous bouts of awareness, so you will always be ahead of anyone else in your life, but these moments of ‘genius’ might also make you alone and misunderstood. Don’t give up on others simply because they function at a lower level of awareness but rather share your generous resources with others and teach others how to become independent thinkers (like you).

• Jupiter in Pisces – Jupiter meets idealistic and dreamy Neptune. Many astrologers think that this placement portends great spiritual wealth because of the self-sacrificing disposition that it gives to its native. A Piscean Jupiter creates a lot of dharma (rewards). So you grow through having a humanitarian goal in mind and working to make your hopes and wishes come through. The more creative and idealistic you are in life, the better. You can help people who struggle with mysterious needs or desires, because you have the capacity to download messages from the Ether. You need a creative outlet for all the inspiration you are receiving on a daily basis. The more giving and self-sacrificing you are, the more luck and support you attract from others. When you let go, opportunities magically come back to you, in a ‘spiritual sling-shot’ effect. With this soft Piscean energy that you project into the world, you are a natural born sweetheart; so share your unconditional love with the world and this love will come find you in mysterious ways and through unexpected gifts, money, resources and benefactors that will float to you when you need them the most. You attract opportunities in life the more open-hearted, idealistic and ready to help others you are. For example, helping the down-trodden, the outcasts, the homeless, people who struggle with spiritual faith, or simply friends who suffer from heart-ache are what bring you a boost of happiness and good luck in life.

If you felt that these descriptions did not resonate with you, it might be that you are not working your Jupiter well or that there might be blocks to your Jupiterian energy (squares, oppositions or interceptions). In addition, looking at the house placement of Jupiter will nuance the meaning in a deeper way.

Jupiter’s Special Significance Through the Astrological Houses

There are some other interesting clues to look for, as you take into account Jupiter’s house placement in a given chart: a 1st and 2nd house Jupiter indicate that many pregnancies are possible/you are highly fertile and that keeping your weight down will be difficult in life // a 3rd and 9th house Jupiter mean that you can learn things really quickly and can distribute them just as well, but you can easily get overwhelmed; in both scenarios you are blessed with the gift of random friendships // an 8th and 12th house Jupiter means that you are very good at bed pleasures and that you can tap into occult and psychic sources of knowledge which you should learn to master rather than be afraid of; you also make money from mysterious and secret sources // a 4th house Jupiter is all about privacy, just as much as a 10th house Jupiter is all about the public status earned through their hard-work // finally, Jupiter loves the 5th house which is the house of play and leisure, as much as it loves the 11th house, the house of hopes and dreams coming true.

As always, I hoped this helped, inspired and served! Let me know your thoughts/experiences/book recommendations in the comments down below.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

I have just met you 2021, and I am in love with you! It was love at first light, as I woke up from my champagne hangover to greet you in full sunlight. Even if it’s strange to experience such a warm winter and it concerns me that we are taking global warming to a whole new level this year, I cannot help loving the warmth and sheer expansion of the light you bring into my life now. As a lightworker, I soak it all in – they say love is simply seeing yourself mirrored in another person’s soul, and in this case we are both filling each other with light. Help illuminate my Shadow this year, so that I can continue to lovingly integrate it into my being.

Your eyes are full of hope and possibility and I want to lose myself in them. You bring with you the promise of health and community and I admire this so much about you. You also need to know that on some level I’m recuperating from the broken shards and fragmented parts that 2020 brought about. I am recovering from a claustrophobic and heavy, almost masochistic-like relationship with my ex, Mr. 2020. We split at the turn of the year and I decided to leave all my fear and self-limiting beliefs in its arms, as I walked away slowly from loss, pain and confusion. Too many walls were erected last year in moments I justified as self-protection, but if I am truly loved and blessed by Spirit than why should I protect myself so much? And from what, exactly? What is the real threat, if not the act of dissociating myself from love?

So I imagined something better for myself this year, I visualized a shower of golden light splashing over me and this instantly manifested when I met you! I woke up soaked in literal sunlight, and as I am writing this post from my white wooden table near the window, the rays of the sun are caressing my hands. It needs to be put into writing so that it turns somehow official 🙂 that I aim to stop resisting love this year, I aim to accept help and support, to get increasingly more comfortable with my vulnerabilities, and to keep integrating unknown aspects of my Self that the Ego has been blocking from my sight. As I was just setting these intentions, I realized my building’s intercom was left on ‘silent’, and that I forgot to answer some emails, that some texts messages were lost – the communication and clarity I was seeking last year has always been there, but I erected walls around other people’s capacity to reach out to me and then wallowed in the sadness imposed by living behind such walls. How silly is that! I have to learn to step out of my own way. And I trust you’ll help me achieve this, good friend.

You also made me suddenly aware of how conflict with others in my life is just an indication of where I am being too self-critical and tough on myself, and that harmony on the outside in my life is an inside job, that of appreciating those things I struggle with internally. I plan to keep listening to my heart, to allow hot showers of awareness to splash over me when I am ready to integrate new truths about myself. In order to do so, I will drop all that self-imposed control and allow the Divine to inspire me, as I adopt the role of a ‘vessel’ of insights. This post is a quick manifestation of exactly this intention and I wrote my love letter in a rapid whimsy. See, it’s already coming into play! The beauty and sheer wonder of this process ❤

And I feel you are meant to help me in this endeavor and the fact that I see this in you, helps me love you, allows me to let my energy flow towards you. These words pour out of my current state of conscious awareness onto the space of this blog, as I make space for your wisdom to pour into me this year, taking me to new heights of spiritual exploration.

You carry within yourself the winds of change as Jupiter (the God of Wisdom, Growth and Luck) & Saturn (the God of Time, Karma and Effort) who are travelling at the moment through the blissfully whimsical and brilliantly erratic constellation of Aquarius, the Water Bearer (ruled by unpredictable Uranus, and representing fixed Air). So I know that you are brining me lessons in higher awareness and that you will continue to show me where I am barely patched up rather than whole and complete. You’ll spark your flashlight and show me what about me needs to be held and loved even deeper (and I am increasingly aware how much this my spiritual responsibility, as it it the responsibility of others in my life).

You will bring me experiences, people and resources that will help me see myself in a new light, so that I can manifest and co-create with Spirit from a fresh point of view, so that I can creatively visualize new things, new experiences and new relationships. You are already filling up my Soul, and if only for this little 1st of January aspect, I am already deeply grateful to you. Thank you for jolting me out of the ‘2020 Beauty Rigor Mortis Sleep’ today, to remind me that true beauty lies in how we intuitively follow the Soul’s journey of growth towards illumination and unconditional love.

I am ready, willing and able to make our young love-at-first-sight into a solid and stable commitment, to work on sustaining our relationship and keep balancing it out. You are worth this much energy from me, at least! This means that from my part, I shall dive deep and bring back treasures from the sea of my emotional history, to uncover hidden parts of myself as I get to know you better, with all the days you are bringing, all the time you are gracing me with and the challenges you will place in my path to help me understand myself better. In preparation, I equip myself now with the support of the loving community I gathered around me last year (my Spiritual Social crew), with knowledge from books and articles and audio-books, with affirmations and my tarot and oracle decks, to focus not on changing what I don’t like about myself but to accept myself more.

I’ll have faith in knowing that I do not need so much protection when I trust fully that the Divine loves me and that Spirits is in-spiring me with its essence. I won’t pressure you with plans and models, high expectations or lofty dreams because I know and trust that you are organically helping me fulfill a deep wish of mine, simply because you love me: and that is to plant my roots on a new spiritual foundation, that of my heart. Because whatever is built on the foundation of the heart, endures when other material or mental things might crumble.

We are souls having a deeply human experience and while I now that you are a New year, I hope to embody your essence and I hope to love you so much, as I practice loving myself more. And may the Light that is generated in this process serve others and inspire them to trust, love and heal themselves more!

With an opened, grateful heart,

Lexi ❤

(…) but I needed that first night to be alone. I needed to be alone so that he could come back. This was the beginning of my year of magical thinking

Didion, p. 33

2020 was a deeply humbling year, because we all had to deal with loss in some form (even if this was just the loss of a former sense of self). It was also a year of unprecedented opportunities. Paradoxically, this year was also the start of a new cycle in the Chinese zodiac wheel, as it represents the energy of the Gold Rat (January 25th 2020 until February 11th 2021). So this might’ve been the most introverted beginning ever, or if you’d like to see it in a different light, it was a reset. As the year progressed from the initial political and economic shocks with which it began, it gradually gave in to an eerie state of survival and anxious in-betweenness, since the Covid-19 pandemic was gaining global proportions.

In lock-down in my own apartment, in a tiny village near Bucharest, I kept thinking of the legacy that Saturn in Capricorn was trying to leave to the world and two books I had read since this transit of Saturn began on 19th December 2017: Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and Ottessa Mosfesh’s My year of rest and relaxation. Both titles are slightly sarcastic since the books tackle difficult subjects such as the death of loved one, and the aftermath of loss, how to cope with living, return to normality and heal. Even if one book is autobiographical (Didion’s) and the other one is a work of fiction (Moshfegh’s), each book in its own way asks: How to go on, when nothing makes sense anymore and life loses it’s emotional meaning?

I find that this question strikes a deep chord within our current reality, when a year-long of imposed restrictions and self-isolation made us all frail, weaker, more sensitive and struggling to get by. It also unlocked within us some new veins of untapped potential, and I have a feeling that 2021 will be about mining the gold of this new sense of self (open, vulnerable, honest and more than just 1% of our current brain’s capacity). Optimism required a lot of effort in 2020 and so did the act of being grateful for life’s simple yet increasingly important moments. As Moshfegh describes in a scene that her unnamed character enacts, something as mundane as taking out the trash became significant as an act of connection:

I took the garbage out into the hallway and threw it down the trash chute. Having a trash chute was one of my favorite things about my building. It made me feel important, like I was participating in the world. My trash mixed with trash of others. The things I touched, touched the things other people had touched. I was contributing. I was connecting.

p. 114-115

What made an impression on me was that Ottessa Moshfegh is a Sun sign in Gemini while Joan Didion is a Sun sign in Sagittarius, or so at least a couple of Internet searches tell me. I think that’s somehow significant since the North and the South Nodes of the Moon are currently in the signs of Gemini and Sagittarius up until January 2022. These signs, opposite on the astrological wheel of the zodiac, represent the axis of truth and its defragmentation, of exchanging information versus amassing it, optimism and pessimism, belief and skepticism, and the constant interplay between the higher mind and the lower mind, between what’s real and what is fake. But these two signs are also the signs of Union (Gemini) and Divinity (Sagittarius), of extracting deep wisdom out of life’s mundane events.

To me personally, the wisdom I could distill from the haphazard events of this year, coagulated into the unshakeable belief that no matter how much we try to control it, life has a way of working things out on its own, without our conscious involvement or approval. In the midst of all this disease and death, solitude and feeling despondent, I also felt protected and helped by the Divine and its angelic currents. This year thought me so much about dissolving my Ego, slowing down, loving myself by accepting who I am (‘warts and all’) and learning to draw protective boundaries in my life.

The knowledge of this inner current of empathy and love, made me think that we might have all manifested the cocoon-like structure of this year – not the deaths and loss, but the externally-imposed rest and sudden cessation of frantic activity; a lull in the constant pursuit of material gains and status-bound achievements, meant to help us reflect on what we are doing in our lives (and whom are we doing it with). Sometimes sleeping through certain parts of our lives is what it takes to help us appreciate our waking states, but sleep also helps us rest and heal:

Oh, sleep. Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness. I was not a narcoleptic – I never fell asleep when I didn’t want to. I was more of a somniac. A somnophile. I’d always loved sleeping. It was one thing my mother and I had enjoyed doing together when I was a child. She was not the type to sit and watch me draw or read me books or play games or go for long walks in the park or bake brownies. We got along best when we were asleep.

p. 46

I learned how to discard toxic parts of my Ego, in a process that felt in equal parts exhilarating and like I was losing my mind – when Saturn entered Capricorn I was living and teaching in Oxford, UK, employed in a permanent academic position, surrounded by a large group of work colleagues and in a relationship with a Capricorn, whom I had met on an online dating site. Things looked good on the outside but felt difficult and unhappy on the side. I was ridden with inner conflict, competitive and unhappy. By the end of the transit, things drastically changed – I am now living in a small village near Bucharest, with my cat Luna, at peace and hopeful, single by choice and independently managing my work of love ‘The Spiritual Social’, surrounded by the support of my unique crew members. Also, I am now able to deal with the health issues I was previously ignoring, and that my high-profile training certainly enhanced in the last couple of years. I traded public acclaim for doing what I loved, and for once I chose to follow my heart. It’s not the classic Hollywood happy-ending (yet), because I lost the support of my immediate family and group of friends in this process, but I am happy that I stuck true to my heart and bravely chose to follow it.

Acquiring new wisdom about the self does come with a loss, a renunciation of something else. You might call this Universal balance. Losing someone you love to death or some other form of permanent separation is always painful, but the pain can sometimes be delayed or assuaged by holding space for that person, by thinking that somehow through the use of magical thinking that person can be summoned back into your life. This is how Joan Didion begins her account of how she lost her husband and her daughter in the span of the same year, never to see them again. Her book, written in a detached, almost stoic prose, is about trying to make sense of these two loses and find some sort of meaning in life again, understanding how one can live on when the unbearable restructures your life in this unexpected way. As Didion writes:

Life changes fast, life changes in an instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

p. 3

Joan describes here the loss of her emotional support system and the ones she also helped support through her love and mothering. I cannot even begin to imagine what she must have felt. I did not have a chance to mother a child, but I did fell in love once and lost my husband, not to death, but to the more prosaic circumstance of divorce. However these two situations are not comparable, even if both are sad within their own right. I did recognize a very familiar coping mechanism, that helped me as well deal with emotionally overwhelming situations. She’s describing a Tower moment, that dreaded Major Arcana card of the tarot that is nonetheless part and parcel of the process of living and being a feeling and sentient human being: when we love we also run the risk of losing those we love, this is a truth universally acknowledged that our greatest joys in life are also the sum of our vulnerabilities:

Even if I found it hard to identify with Joan’s emotional process, I felt somehow closer to the inner journey of the second book’s main protagonist’ – a young (and unlike myself) rich American woman who begins to deconstruct her identity in a surprisingly non-active way: by sleeping through the pain of having lost her parents (much life myself). As Moshfegh writes through her Sleeping Beauty’s voice:

My hibernation was self-preservational. I thought that it was going to save my life.

p. 7

2020 for me brought about similar circumstances to the ones evoked by Didion and Moshfegh: revisiting the past due to social isolation, feeling as if time leaks backwards rather than forwards, sleeping my way through healing and even though I was lucky enough to not experience the immediate death of anyone I love, just switching on the TV made me shed tears for the people who turned into statistics on the daily news, people who were falling prey to the mysterious Covid-19 infection.

Placing myself in social isolation and heavy quarantine for a year meant I revisited everything I had been through, and there has been a lot to process having consistently travelled in the last 5 years and seeing my marriage fail, my career take off and then spectacularly fail and a completely new sense of self emerging out of this emotional debris. So this transit helped me feel and connect with Spirit, and build on the foundation of my heart rather than that of my mind. I’m a Pisces Sun (in the 5th house of self-expression) and by living more from my heart, rather than being afraid of dealing with my heart and the emotional baggage that was crowding it in, I guess you could say I consciously chose to be myself in 2020, and this is why to me this year has been understated and magnificent.

I understood through a painful process that I don’t need to impress anyone, to chase anything, to ask anyone to love me or to accept me. I am no longer hiding what and whom I love, and the culture from which I came from. My task at the moment is just to keep being me, to keep peeling the outer debris until I reach the core of my authenticity, to control only what I can (my body, my health and energy levels) and then do the best that I can do, creatively. I hope my work continues to touch your hearts, but equally if it doesn’t that ‘s also good. I create because this is who I am and this is the natural state I feel grounded into in the healing chaos of 2020:

Despite 2020 being the year of generalized fear, I feel that we also learned how to cope with this fear through daily effort and with patience. Losing in 2020, was just a way to make room in your life, for the winds of change to sweep in. To me, it was indeed a magical year of becoming awakened, a year of apparent rest and relaxation but also deep inner work and letting go, and one of growing into my new and occult identity and owning it. I look forward now to this shift from the healing chaos of 2020 to the vast unknown that 2021 presents. According to Greek mythology, Chaos was the primordial entity that gave birth to everything in the cosmos, to our ancestors, our lives, our hearts. So who knows what magic we as modern humans can birth next, if we make friends with this unknown and stay connected to both our deep knowing, to technology and to Spirit?

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Who was Baba Dochia?

The playful bringer of Spring, the wise witch who manipulates the weather, and cheekily blesses us either with warm sunlit skies or sudden flukes of snow, Baba Dochia is a mythical female figure that is celebrated each year in March in Romania. Not she is not the equivalent of Baba Yaga, just to clear this up from the start 🙂 although in some regions of Romania she is also known as Baba Marta. While Dochia might not completely be an original Romanian creation – echoes of her revitalizing power are also present in Ukrainian and Bulgarian folklore as well – she does have a very ‘neaoș‘ (meaning authentic in Romanian) or culturally-specific way of being celebrated in Romania.

Each year from the 1st until the 9th of March, it is said that one must choose a day that Baba Dochia blesses. Then according to how the weather plays out during that day, it is said that your year will be under similar conditions. Usually people add up the number of their birth-date to pick the day that represents them. Let’s say you were born on the 01.11.2001, well then your fated March day would be the 6th of March. Then according to how the weather plays out on the 6th of March, you’ll get some foresight on the year ahead. Alternatively, you could simply choose a day. It’s easier though to go by birthdate than by choice, just in case you get a rough-weather day to assuage the guilt of having needlessly interfered with the Fates and your own luck 🙂 Not interfering with what the Divine has pre-ordained is a big theme in my culture.

To make matters even more fun and crowded, celebrating Baba Dochia overlaps with two other events in Romanian culture: a) the 1st of March is the Day of the Mărțișor (or little March), the bringer of Spring when mostly women and children but also increasingly more men wear a special white and red thread of protection either as a brooch or as a bracelet to usher in good luck. It is recommended to discard the tiny double-bound threat at the end of the first week of March by tying it to the branch of a tree; and b) the 8th of March, which represents Women’s Day and during which especially Mothers are celebrated. So condensed in just a bit over a week, are some pretty powerful rebirth and feminine energies that are celebrated by both city and countryside-dwelling Romanians. In some regions, she presides over the first 12 days of March, rather than just 9, but across regions these days are known as ‘Babele’ (or the Old ladies). The reason the numbers vary, is because there are two competing folk tales circulating in the collective knowledge of her origins.

In the first story, Baba Dochia was a beautiful young princess who lived independently and refused to wed, thereby breaking the hearts of a number of suitors. One of them was so smitten with her that he waged a war against her father and ended up defeating Dochia’s dad. When Dochia heard news that this bold young man wanted to claim her, Dochia covered herself in 9 different coats and ran away to hide in the mountains. As she walked she gradually started to shed each of her 9 coats day by day until she reached the top of a mountain and was safe.

In the other story, our Baba Dochia was a mean mother-in-law that treated her daughter-in-law poorly. When her daughter-in-law sought out the help from an Angel to break free from her daily misery, our Baba Dochia was tricked into going to the mountain side to seemingly gather some berries. Because it was very cold outside she put on 12 coats and gradually took them off as she was scrambling to gather berries. When God saw her pushing the hand of fate by searching for berries in the frost It had ordained, God turned our Baba and her sheep into slobs of stone. Apparently, some rock formations in the mountainous region of Ceahlău who look like a person and her flock, stand testimony to this day to Dochia’s material legacy:

Overall, our Baba Dochia is the Empress of Blessings of Chaos. She governs over the tempestuous change of seasons which takes place each year in the middle of the Sun’s transit through the constellation of Pisces, and as the Earth’s rotation around the Sun ushers in the green and warmth of Spring in the Northern hemisphere. I see her as a wise, independent and playful Divine Feminine, who represents the energy of rebirth and new beginnings. She spins the wheel of fortune for you, if you allow her to predict your future, but because she is playful she might trick you into having a mixed-feelings kind of year. Finally, it’s worth mentioning that our Baba Dochia bears a close resemblance to the Roman goddess Demeter (the mother of Kore-Persephone), which while not necessarily a symbol of harvest does embody that strong Earth-bound and maternal vibe:

Who were the Drăgaica & her Sânziene?

The Sânziene (or Ielele, as the forest-dwelling feminine Spirits that appear on Midsummer night) are celebrated each year a few days away from the summer solstice (21st of June), on the night between the 23rd and 24th of June, a time considered the rich and warm middle of summer (this tradition is shared by other cultures such as the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and the English). An interesting aspect is that it was believed that the death of Baba Dochia (on the 9th or 12th of March) helped usher in the birth of the Drăgaica, who would grow until the 24th of June into a beautiful bride, crossing the fields of plenty along with a group of fairies, the Sânziene.

So Sânzienele were a group of fairies or fairy-like maidens, strongly linked to the spirits of the fields and forests and to the season of summer. They were represented in geto-dacic mythology as a string of dancing women holding hands in what is known as a ‘hora’. Some ethnologists believed that they initially worshipped the Sun, while others discuss their allegiance to the Diana/Artemis the Greek/Roman Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt (because in the Ardeal region of Romania, the locals celebrate ‘Sancta Diana’ on this day). The interesting part is that originally this might have been a dual Artemis and Apollo form of pagan worship, since Apollo represents the Sun in Greek mythology and was Artemis’ twin brother, but somewhere along the lines of time the worshipping of Apollo as part of the celebration of midsummer was lost in Romanian folklore.

The energies of these Summer fairies were modelled based on a specific plant that blooms in summer in Romania fields: the Yellow Bedstraw or Ladies’ Bedstraw (Galium verum). Judging by the name of the plant I think you can already guess its role in the magic love rituals that young women would perform in this final week of June. It was said that if a young woman would go to sleep with a bunch of Yellow bedstraw under her pillow, she would dream of her fated beloved. Older women had a more macabre ritual, in that they would throw bunches of yellow bedstraw on the top of their houses and by seeing if the bunches stayed put on the roof or fell down, the position and placement of that fall would tell them when they would die. Similar themes, of elderly death in conjunction with youthful fertility, were explored in the 2019 film ‘Midsommar‘.

So our Drăgaica was imagined as a Beautiful Cosmic Bride, a woman who would be so mesmerizing and full of light, that she would make any man instantly fall in love with her. She is also a metaphor for the sweetness and bounty of summer, and represents a reward, a time to stop and enjoy life, to fall in love and create, since she brings blessings of fertility. Some would view the Drăgaica as the Divine Feminine incarnate, the protagonist and the fairies were her hand-maidens, her light-bearing servers. However, the Drăgaica herself was worshipping another goddess and many thought it was either Artemis or the Greek/Roman goddess Ceres, who governed over the fields and the grains (herself, an avatar of Demeter which we saw earlier was strongly linked to Baba Dochia). If you are wondering by now why so many Greek/Roman references in Romanian folklore, it’s mostly because at origin we are a Latin folk, even if geographically most people would see us as belonging to Slavic cultures, rites and beliefs. We’re a bit of a ‘cocktail’ of all these influences, to paraphrase Shakira 🙂

To add to the already cluttered metaphoric wisdom, the pagan celebration of midsummer and of the Drăgaica and her Sânziene/Iele, coincided with the Christian-Orthodox celebration of Saint John the Baptist (who might’ve replaced the original worship of Apollo). We see here a beautiful theme of blending the Divine Feminine with a Divine Masculine, one that transcends romantic preoccupations and reminds us more of the connection between the land and Spirit, and through the means of the Earth and Water elements. Saint John the Baptist used water as a medium to heal and offer blessings, while the Drăgaica walks barefoot on the earth, spreading her beautiful bounty and helping the crops grow and flourish – this is a strong Empress & King of Cups tarot cards energy:

Ultimately, the pagan image of our beautiful Drăgaica and her fairies inspired other creations such as the image of Ileana Cosânzeana (a Rapunzel-like Princess who is the protagonist in a number of local fairy-tales known as ‘basme’), and then in the writings of one of our most celebrated and well-known writers, Mircea Eliade who wrote a book called ‘Noaptea de Sânziene’ (The Sânziene’s Night):

Keep in my mind this post was written by a socio-psychologist and astrologer and not by an ethnologist. So this is my knowledge so far about these wonderful Romanian folk-tales. I’ll share more with you as I continue to explore my cultural roots in the next two years, since Saturn and Jupiter are just about to cross the threshold into my 4th house (the house traditionally ruled by Cancer which symbolizes our Soul, our emotional roots and cultural heritage). And to keep this conversation flowing, feel free to share in the comments section below: What folk-tales about Divine Feminines, do you enjoy from your own culture?

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Here’s a slightly different but much-requested post: a playlist! Recently on my Youtube channel ‘The Spiritual Social’, I asked you all to take part in a free tarot give-away by commenting on my latest video and mentioning a favourite song that gets you in a sexy/ raunchy/ romantic mood:

I was overwhelmed by how many replies I got. Out of the 463 comments (and counting), I managed to distill a list that comprises a 21 pages (!!) Word doc. So here it is! This is one of the most comprehensive, diverse and fun playlists, I managed to put together based on your responses. The list has everything from Spanish songs, to Bollywood hits, R&B, from Russian & German core to classics like Marvin Gaye and Tom Jones and more recent indie tunes. It’s meant to get you into that sweet baby-making mood – although keep in mind that I’m not responsible for any babies created while listening to this playlist 😀 As a sneak-peek into my tastes, since you all got to share yours, the highlighted songs below are also my favourite mood-setters. Enjoy!

*** YOUR PLAYLIST ***

Doja Cat – Streets

Jhene Aiko – On The Way

BTS – 21st century girl

Michael Jackson – Give into me

Freddie Jackson – Rock Me Tonight

Ali Gatie – It’s You

Two Feet – I’m drowning

The XX – Intro

Kennedy Rd – Falling

Jay Sean – Mars

John Legend – Favorite Place

D’Angelo – untitled (how does it feel)

Akua Naru – Poetry: How Does It Feel?

Luis Enrique – Yo no sé mañana

Teyana Taylor Feat. Kehlani – Morning

Chungha – Dream of You

Rosenfeld – Do it for me

Tu Isaq Mera – Hate Story 3

Ängie – Here for my habits

Neiked – Sexual

Deftones – Change

Asap Rocky – LSD

Bruno Mars – Versace on the Floor

Toni Braxton – You’re Making Me High

Dru Hill – Tell me what you want from me

Mya – My love is like Wo

Sports – Shiggy

BRS Kash – Throat baby

Niall Horan – Slow Hands

Borns – Electric Love

Maroon 5 – Lips On You

Chris Brown ft Drake – No Guidance

The Internet – Hold on

SoMo – Ride

Poetic Lover – Prenons notre temps

Lana Del Rey – Meet me in the pale moonlight

Summer Walker – White Tee

Rosenfeld – I Want To

Kevin Lyttle – Turn Me On

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Henry Lee

Claude Debussy – Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune

Paula Cole – Feelin Love

Case ft. Mary J. Blige & Foxy Brown- Touch Me, Tease Me

Rhye – Open

James Blake – Are you even real?

Janelle Monáe – Primetime

Vox Rea – Dose Me Up

Rihanna – Kiss it better

Banks – Gimme

Dexta Daps – Naked

Janelle Monáe – Don’t Judge Me

FKA Twigs – Lights On

Ken The Man – He Be Like

Meddy – Slowly

Marvin Gaye – Sexual healing

Anima!- Heartflow

Jennifer Paige – Crush

Mac Demarco – My Kind of Woman

Giveon – Garden Kisses

Sebastian Mikael – Made for me

Larry Lovestein – Love Affair

Danzig – She rides

Lloyd – Caramel

Sabrina Claudio – Orion’s Belt

Mild Orange – Some Feeling

Fiona Apple – Slow Like Honey

Ellie Goulding – Love me like you do

Maroon 5 – Animals

Britney Spears – Criminal

BTS – House of cards

Rendezvous at Two – Play with me

New City – Dirty Secrets

Samantha Fox – Touch Me

Don Toliver – No Idea

Cigarettes after sex – Sweet / Apocalypse

Shania Twain – You’re still the one

Anderson Paak – Winner’s Circle

Anitta ft J Balvin – Downtown

Rihanna – Only Girl (In the World)

The Weekend – Earned it

FKA Tigs – Two Weeks

Beyonce – Rocket

Abra – Fruit

Enrique – Ring my bells

Mazy Star – Fade Into You

Rihanna – Kiss it better

Mario – Pretty Mouth Magic

Nine Inch Nails – Closer

Zubi – Sugar.

JP Cooper – Too Close

Tito & tarantula – After Dark

Arctic Monkeys – Do I Wanna Know

Ariana Grande – God is a Woman

Halsey – Not afraid anymore

Ayelle – Mind and Body

Sabrina Claudio – Problem with You

Dive Deep – Andrew Belle

Montell Jordan – Get It On Tonite

Aventura – Noche de Sexo

Loreena Mckennitt – The mystic’s dream

Emir Taha – Huyu Suyu

Teddy Swims – Let me love you

Hozier – Talk

Banks – Waiting Game

Alt-j – Every Other Freckle

Usher – tell me

Tove lo – Habits (remix)

Rihanna – Consideration

Shakira – Loca

Seal – Kiss of a rose

Van Morrison – Crazy Love

Lick Twist and Julius Jones Jr – High Bun

Dizzy Fae – Love on You

Leon – Different Planet

Kevin Lyttle – Turn Me On

Sigur Ros – Untitled 2 (Fyrsta)

Cigarettes After Sex – Heavenly

Mariah Carey – Touch My Body

The weekend – True Colors

Nine Inch Nails – Sunspots

Darren Hayes – Insatiable

Beyonce – Naughty Girl

Rei Brown – Hold Me

Satica – Honey Whiskey

Ariana Grande – Love Me Harder

Rihanna – Yeah I said it

Oik e bin – pedaco de mim

Justin bieber – ETA

Kelly Rowland – Motivation

Clams Casino – I’m God

Dreamville – Got me

Tua – Liniker

Still Corners – Sad Movies

Miguel – Teach me

Interpol – Obstacle 1

Turn off the lights ( Teddy Pendergrass)

Movement – 5:57

Austin P. McKenzie – Crazy Beautiful

The Isley Brothers – Between the Sheets

Chloe x halle – Ungodly Hour

Langdon Fig – Falling in love at the coffe shop

Warhaus – The good lie

Oscar And The Wolf feat. Tsar B – Back to Black

Allan Rayman – Never Any No Good

Camelphat – for a feeling

Usher – Peace Sign

The Isley Brothers – Make Me Say It Again

Muse – Blackout

Jacquees – Superstar

CSS – Let’s Make Love and Listen to Death From Above

Quincy Jones – Body Heat

Bésame Mamá – Poncho Sanchez

Marvin Gaye – Let’s get it on

Garbage – Crush

Depeche Mode – World in My Eyes

Pedro Capó – Tu Fanático

Jessie Ware – What’s your pleasure

James Bay – Wild Love

Lana Del Rey and The Weekend – Lust for Life

ZAYN – Pillowtalk

Alicia Keys ft. Maxwell – Fire We Make

H.E.R – Comfortable

Beyonce – Haunted

Desire – Under your Spell

KINA – Can we kiss forever

Alicia Keys ft Sampha – 3-hour Drive

Bob Marley & Lauryn Hill – Turn Your Lights Down Low

Jace Everett – Bad Things

Selena Gomez – Fetish

Daniel Caesar – Get You

Jimi Hendrix – Anything

TLC – Red light special

Ed Sheeran, Bruno Mars, and Chris Stapleton – Blow

Usher – Hey Daddy

Doja Cat – Downtown

Ari Lennox – Chocolate Pomegranate

Enigma – Mea Culpa

Luke Evans – The first time ever I saw your face

Mario – Music for Love

Syd – Body

Persona 5 – Beneath The Mask (Instrumental)

Lana Del Rey – Burning Desire

SG Lewis – No less

Dead Can Dance – ACT II: The Invocation

Portishead – All Mine

Nine inch nails – Sanctified

Massive Attack – Angel

Rihanna – Skin

Chris Isaak / The Weekend – Wicked Game

Blue Moon – Sha Na Na

Mint Condition – Pretty brown eyes

Meg Myers – Desire

Tray Songz – Inside, Pt. 2

Ghostly kisses – Empty note

Usher – Nice and slow

Francesca Beghe – There’s Something About Your Touch

Portishead – Wandering star

Floetry – Say yes

Glory Box – Portishead

Luke Bryan – Strip it down

Marvin Gaye – I want you

Russ featuring BIA – Best on earth

Billie Eilish – Bad Guy

Nostalghia – God be you

Janet Jackson’s – Any time, any place

Hailee Stanfield – Capital Letters

Jessica Rabbit – Why don’t you do right

Marilyn Monroe – Diamonds are a girl’s best friend

Victoria Monet – Jaguar

SiR feat Masego – Ohh nah nah

Jessica Domingo – Island

Jeff Buckley – Everybody here wants you

Foo Fighters – Everlong (acoustic)

Kylie Minogue – Slow

Zayn – Pillowtalk

Tame Impala – Mind Mischief

Two Feet – Go Fuck Yourself

Oooh All Night Long by Erykah Badu

The Maris – Bop it up!

Billy fury – Wondrous Place

John Ireland – I like

Keith Sweat – Nobody

Solomon Burke ~ cry to me

Sabrina Claudio – All To You

Tenelle – All I want is you

Jodeci – Forever my Lady

Erykah badu – Orange moon

The Neighbourhood – Softcore

АИГЕЛ – You’re Born // AIGEL

Luis Fonsi – Despacito

Ciara ft. Ludacris – Ride

Summer Walker – Girls Need Love

Aaj phir tumpe pyar aya hai

Tom Jones – Sex Bomb

Ariana Grande – 34+35

Fkj & Masego – Tadow

Normani – Motivation

Julia Michaels – Heaven

Beyonce – Drunk in Love

Allie X – Downtown

Big Black Delta – Capsize

Cardi B – WAP

Bazzi – Cartier

P!nk – Oh My God

Lana del rey – Cherry

Alina Baraz and Khalid – Electric

Black Eyed Peas, Ozuna, J. Rey Soul – Mamacita

Carla Morrison – Disfruto

Khai – Do you go up?

Ciara – Dancing like we’re making love

Prince – Do Me Baby

Taylor Swift – Love Story

Rammstein – Führe mich

Silk – Meeting in my bedroom

Bridge – Make me

Hozier/ Sofia Karlberg – Take me to church

Isak Danielson – Power

Bruno Mars – Gorilla

Joy – Lick

Middle of The Night – Elley Duhe

Snoh Alegra – Woah

Sza – Love Galore

The Scorpions – Rock you like a hurricane

Rotimi -In my bed

Kehlani – Water

Chavela Vargas – Tu me acostumbraste

Asianh – Drip

Buju Banton ft Beres Hammond – A little more time

Marques Houston – Naked

Free Nationals ft. Daniel Caesar – Beauty and Essex

Madonna – Deeper and deeper

Dada ft Sandy Rivera – Lollipop

Benny benssai – Satisfaction!

Arctic monkeys – Knee socks

Ang Laga De – Goliyon Ki Raasleela Ram-leela

Marian Hill – One Time

Black Atlass – Kinda Like It

xxxx Love you crew! You’re all amazingly creative and unique, smutty sweethearts xxxx

Lexi ❤

This article is a spiritual book review. I wish I could say I loved this book. Instead as I was cascading down its easy-to-read content, I was thinking most of the time that ‘this is a pretty superficial text’. I must admit the best thing about the book were the list of affirmations that would accompany some chapters and the honesty displayed by the author. But I cringed when some ideas were supported by sentences such as ‘through my work with thousands of people‘, repeated ad-nauseam to gain the reader’s trust. Without disrespecting the author, I would have liked to see more practical advice on the socio-emotional components of self-love or some practical strategies that go beyond mere descriptions. It’s a pity, because the author clearly lived through some tough life experiences but to me these were not sufficiently illustrated for the benefit of a reader who truly is searching for some answers to the questions: ‘How can I accept myself more? What does self-love truly mean? How can I suffer less?‘ Nonetheless, I would say that I agree with the overall message of the book and there were some good portions where I found myself nodding to some of the ideas presented, like the quote below:

(…) we undoubtedly struggle; sometimes we struggle deeply and it’s painful. But with the struggle and the pain always come the beauty, peace and magic of living our most liberated and joyful life. The struggle and pain actually become worth it because we finally respect ourselves for the courage and strength we found to live an authentic life. We get to experience the powerful loving truth and natural intelligence that are inherent to our deepest nature. In essence, we get to be free, and one could say that our soul gets to fly.

p.32

The benefit of reading this book, is that it made me reflect on some of the things I’ve experientially learned about self-love. It’s sad that we don’t get taught more explicitly by our parents, in schools and in our local community what it means to truly love yourself and thereby love others; most of us just make-it-up-as-we-go-along, and this is why self-love is a deeply personal experience most of the time. In addition and in what continues to be a patriarchal world, we see more discussions in the media about power, politics, money, war and violence than about proper self-care, self-soothing strategies, anxiety-diminishing practices, anger-management techniques, how to repair and resolve relationships, healing and recuperation from trauma or PTSD. Emotions make people more uncomfortable than a bloodshed or a drone-attack.

Emotions are considered ‘depressing’ and are usually relegated to the realm of health and wellbeing which is often ridiculed as being ‘too soft’ or ‘feminine’. This narrative simply has to change. As a person who works in this ‘soft field’, I’m happy to say the work one can do here is the most meaningful form of work available, and I’m also happy to see how this field – which encompasses everything from humanistic sciences, psychology and psychotherapy, to astrology, tarot reading and channeling – persists. It does so because as people we need emotional knowledge to help us feel whole and healthy human beings again. I’d like to share below some of my reflections on the thorny subjects of self-love and suffering in life:

1. Self-love is about setting boundaries

What does it mean to set boundaries in personal relationships? It’s as simple as saying ‘No’ but it is more difficult to put into practice than you’d think. Speaking from my own standpoint as a woman, I learned that as women we are taught from a young age how to people-please and be gentile and sweet, rather than allowing ourselves to be who we are. So saying ‘Yes’ even when we’d like to say ‘No’ is avoided at all costs because we see that people react strangely to us when we do the opposite; being shunned from our social groups or triggered into the fear of rejection or abandonment. Moreover, the fear of violence gets us often to compromise our self-worth and self-respect by accepting a lot of bullshit in life. This issue is even more complex if you grew up in a traditional family and culture, where women are considered to be ‘naturally subservient’ to men. So setting boundaries, especially as a woman and saying ‘No’ requires courage. It can be difficult as well for men to say ‘no’, especially if they want to be part of a group. For men, being seen as ‘manly’ is important, so often sensitive men end up adopting toxic behaviors to be considered manly enough and to belong to a group. It is important to state that ‘not feeling’ is self-hatred; it is a dissociation from the Self and not a staggering act of courage and prowess which deserves medals and awards. Saying ‘No’, ‘walking away’ is hard, and deciding to remain sensitive and vulnerable are acts of courage and empowerment.

Often setting boundaries hurts because we must say ‘No’ to the people we love. This causes us great pain and suffering. So while I agree with Bauer that indeed you don’t need to suffer, sometimes the act of loving yourself enough to finally say ‘No’ to a narcissistic parent or an abusive partner, will inevitably bring you into this space of suffering. We usually leave such awful situations to preserve what remains from our emotional health; so these moments are reasons to give yourself a hug and not moments to drown in self-loathing and guilt (although that can initially happen). Suffering in this case reminds you that you are still alive and kicking and have feelings, and you left the abuse because you believe in better, in life and in love.

In time the suffering will subside and will leave space in the soul for deep wisdom and inner strength, but the suffering still occurs since a relationship we were emotionally plugged into, suddenly crashed and burned. My point is that setting boundaries takes guts and suffering is often inevitable in this process, so please don’t feel ashamed for the fact that you are hurting. Once we accept that suffering is part of the human condition and part of our learning and self-love homework here on Earth, it makes for a less painful ride. Accept this fact, but certainly resist dwelling in it. Which brings me to my next point…

2. Self-love is about daily self-care

Another reason why self-love is difficult to sustain is that it is work, because it requires our daily energy and focus. From my experience, ways in which you can love and respect yourself daily are doing those things that are good for you even if they might be ‘fun’ or ‘amazing’; these action are: drinking water, eating nutritious and fresh food, getting enough sleep (or being kind with yourself when you can’t get enough rest – like after a study-binge, important deadline or when raising a baby), establishing boundaries between work and rest, doing something that makes you happy (whether this is doing work that makes you happy, taking care of your family or a pet you love, or noticing the beauty in the small everyday details that make life well… livable). The recipe for a healthy and loving daily self-care practice is individual and unique to your situation, so it can vary. Mine includes petting my cat, reading, praying and using tarot. I encourage you to create your own but keep in mind that there are times in life, especially periods of change and transition when this routine will be interrupted or turned on its head by circumstances.

There will be moments when the loss of a loved person, a job, a place of living, a project you loved etc. will cause you pain and you will need to heal and recuperate – self-love in that context is adapting to a new routine, and shifting gears to include releasing emotions, cleansing, more rest and keeping the company of only trusted and close friends as part of your day, for example. My point is that periods of suffering and pain should be factored into an eventful and meaningful life; it is not a sign a failure that you are suffering or have lost something or someone; it is a sign that you are an organism that feels and that your soul is experiencing many different things on its path to understanding what it means to be alive and how to process karma.

3. Self-love is about paying attention to your intuition

Your intuition is your super-power. It is a priceless tool that helps you navigate a world of unspoken signs. It can help you make important decisions, tells you whether you should act or rest, helps you wait for it or launch it, gets you to understand people’s hidden intentions and helps you pay attention to small details which can ultimately save your life. Your intuition (when noticed and listened to) can make your life easier, safer and a bit magical. Once you start paying attention to signs and synchronicities and you start noticing your inner guiding voice, it can become a little bit addictive 🙂 Think of a time when you felt like you should grab your umbrella even if the weather was fine and the forecast predicted no showers that day. And suddenly in the middle of the day an unexpected storm starts drenching everyone else around you and you randomly brought that umbrella along – that was a sign you paid attention to your intuition and acted on it. Or say you are at a party and an attractive and polite person keeps complimenting you but they feel insistent. All of a sudden as if confirming your gut feeling, this person gives you a look that scares you. Deciding to follow your intuition and going home with someone else after the party, could save you from imminent danger.

I think that your intuition should complement your logical mind. Other times, it takes a front seat, when things don’t add up logically-speaking: like hearing a person say some things and feeling in your gut that they mean something else, for example. Our intuition is very useful during big transitions in life: such as when you have a child or when you lose a person. In such periods of transition, which also happen to be highly emotional, using your inner capacity to feel and allow a feeling to guide you is as precious as figuring out practical coping strategies. And if you don’t trust my advice regarding the benefits of having an intuitive mind-set, just ask a fellow Water sign (Pisces/Scorpio/Cancer) how they live their lives, because intuition is their default modus operandi. Also if you want to learn more, I made a video on my You Tube channel about this topic:

In a previous post on this blog, I acknowledged that I did not understand what self-love was. Now some months later, I can see that acknowledging my ignorance in this area of life was enough to start me on a beautiful journey of understanding on a deeper level what self-love truly means. I found out that I knew what self-love was on some level, but I was too much in my head to realize this. It took 2020 and the special social conditions of the current pandemic, to finally have the breathing space to integrate all the lessons life has taught me this far and allow myself to feel this self-love.

In a similar vein, I hope this post helped and inspired you in some way, and if you made it this far into the article I’d like to thank you for reading it. Please feel free to share your experiences of self-love in the comments below.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

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