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 ❤

Want to support my writing? Feel free to buy me a coffee here  https://ko-fi.com/thespiritualsocial to keep these posts flowing 

It’s easy to say I couldn’t put this book down. It’s harder however to deal with its topic: the sudden loss of a loved one. This is why it took me some time to write about my experience of reading it. The book begins with the dramatic account of how the author, Barron Steffen, found out about the unexpected death of his wife. As readers, in the following pages and through a series of insightful flashbacks, we are slowly uncovering how the author began his yogic path and how he met and fell in love with this wife, Seana. It is a profound account of how yoga and meditation can create a safe holding space within yourself during times of extreme sadness. I enjoyed the way in which the book was written, which created almost a cinematographic experience while also imparting knowledge regarding Indian culture, spirituality and mysticism. At certain points in the book the author provides us with some pure nuggets of wisdom:

Neurons were firing in places inside my brain that had never wired together before, and like honey dripping through a net, reconnecting to the other known pathways was a slow process. Moment by moment, my experience was subdividing itself onto sequences of solitary stop-action frames. Each snapshot was an entire world unto itself, never again to be repeated or revisited (…) It was trauma (…) Seana would have said that my reaction was the result of never having asked the unaskable question. In strategic questioning, yet another of her areas of teaching mastery, the unaskable is that question which, if unexamined, can threaten the foundation of the design of life in that realm. The fear of looking sets and avoidance pattern in place that jeopardizes the authenticity and integrity of the path.

p. 12-13

The Yogic text, Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, states that the purpose of meditation is stilling the thought-waves of the mind. Over the years, through daily meditation I had begun to experience myself as free for the first time since I was very young. Cultivating a daily practice, I learned what it meant to watch my thoughts. By slowing the mind down and witnessing my mental patterns, that pause both created and expanded gaps within the flow of my mental activity. In meditation, I would become filled by an innate, ever-present awareness (…)

p. 39-40

And we know how this wisdom was earned – by living through the pain of losing your soulmate and managing to summon the strength to write about this experience. It’s a comforting book even if at times too idealistic. Barron is vulnerable in his account, describing his experiences of shock and grieving, his shortcomings in a previous relationship which gifted him a child and how eventually he began healing and accepting the loss of his wife in a clear and self-aware language.

What struck me the most was how he described the imperfect process of shifting his mindset and understanding that separation from love is only an illusion, a Maya. I think this beautiful and heart-opened approach to storytelling is worth engaging with:

What kind of ending is this for that beautiful soul? It seems utterly incongruous with the way she lived every minute of her life. But following immediately on its heels comes a pronounced feeling of boundless love. It rushes through me with such otherworldly tenderness that all at once I know this is right. I can feel it everywhere in my body, my heart and vibrating in the room too. And with this precipitous understanding comes an acceptance and a clarity that I am supposed to be here. It’s sacred. My breath instinctively deepens and a wave of relaxation and anticipation electrifies me.

p. 153-154

In a nutshell, I recommend this book to anyone dealing with grief and loss, potentially to be read in tandem with the classic account of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’ detailed account of how we can live with loss and allow the process of grief to change us for the better:

Being Death-positive

In tandem with reading this book, I also started watching the videos of Caitlin Doughty on Youtube. Caitlin is a mortician and has a very unique approach to how she speaks about death. What makes her stand out from the crowd is that she has some outrageously funny shorts clips on death. She’s delivering a death positive message in a world that continues to think of death and dead bodies as something taboo. Without discarding the sacred element of how people transition from the 3D to the 5D, she manages to entertain while also informing us. She describes her channel as a place of ‘fear and fun, of existential despair and whimsy’.

I couldn’t help but notice the synchronicity of when she appeared in my consciousness: Caitlin’s work was recommended on my feed while I was reading Steffen’s book about the loss of love and some weeks before the Halloween holiday – a time when overall we tend to consider our relationships to the dead and what lies beyond the veil. So a lot of resources were manifested in my life to get me reflect on death and dying in a completely different way – and this in 2020, the year of social mayhem and the looming fear of death.

Inevitably, and because my mind works in many different associations (like constellations), I was also reminded of two films I enjoy re-watching: Donnie Darko & The Fountain. In the first one, Donnie a clever adolescent with sleep issues is preparing for a very personal ‘end of the world’ tale, some days right before Halloween. Donnie’s dark story is significant because it shows how even if we try to stop Death and play God, ultimately what is meant to be will happen, whether we like it or not. Bending the laws of physics won’t help much.

The same theme of playing God and wanting to stall time to recover our lost loved one, echoes in the gorgeously filmed ‘The Fountain’. In this movie a scientist in mourning tries to use states of higher consciousness and meditation to reconnect with his deceased wife on different realms and across timelines. But acceptance that death is inevitable and precisely this fact is what makes life so precious is central to the main character’s healing process and spiritual development; part of our spiritual awakening process involves learning how to let go and to accept painful endings.

Death and how we cope with it brings up issues of control and letting go, or perfect acceptance and surrender (samadhi) versus the willpower of our human egos to delay death. This is why I’ve enjoyed Steffen’s book, because it is well-written and has helped me reflect more widely on the dissolution of the Ego in the process of coming to the terms with solitude, and the passing over of the person who was meant to help him face the fear of Death. Why else would we socialize and couple? Because it makes us feel safe and protected from death and loneliness. Facing such fears and being able to accept them, get us to prepare for our unavoidable demise; and to my mind, this is the gift of the general process of slowing down that we all collectively are experiencing in 2020. Knowing that life is limited and that there is ‘an expiration date’ – to put it crudely – is making the act of living in the present all the move vivid and intense.

Different Forms of Love and Relating

Baron Steffen considered his wife, his soulmate, which made me reflect on the different types of relationships we might experience in like, and also the ones I am exploring in my spiritual and tarot-based practice as well. So here is a breakdown of the many forms love can take in our everyday interactions as my crew shared with me that they have been experiencing them.

Karmic Connections are usually connections we established with people from a previous lifetime. These relationships carry with them, energetically speaking, a sense of debt, pain and responsibility. Karmic connections are the most common connections of all. They can be romantic (in which case your lover is a soulmate) but more often they are parental and job-related, due to the energy of being locked in a form of relating that involves paying off a debt. The debt relates to an energetic imbalance: say you offered more and a person took a lot from you; or your were in a pattern of domination and submission with that karmic partner. Well in this lifetime, the scales are usually reversed. If you were the dominant, now you are the submissive, and viceversa. I’m not talking about sex here, but about power dynamics which exist across all relationships and especially the ones we share with our parents who have the most power over us. With karmic connections, there is usually the uncomfortable feeling that at one point the burden has to be dropped, either through separations or repayments (a parent dies, disappears, you don’t speak to them anymore, or you become a parent yourself and make your folks grandparents etc.). Most frequently, karmic partners are our teachers, our friends, our doctors, priests, lawyers, bosses and co-workers. How do you know if you met a karmic partner? By the queasy feeling you get in your gut that somehow this person’s energy will offset you and teach you something (usually you either dislike them or admire them immediately). There is a pattern of ‘I can’t quit you but I feel I must’. In time, these relationships lose the energy they need to carry on.

Soulmate Love is a form of love that you can share with a karmic partner across a couple of lifetimes; there is the high likelihood that you were engaged in romantic connections across all your previous lifetimes with this special person. This is the stuff you see written about in songs, in literature and depicted in great works of art. Soulmate love happens between two people who instantly recognize one another as ‘familiar’, even if they never exchanged a word in the present reality. Usually one look is all it takes to send each other a gesture of acknowledgement. There is a sense of coming home to someone, of feeling relief and joy at finally having met them. You will share many things in common with a soulmate and while your love will be romantic, it is not really devastatingly passionate (see section below for that). Soulmate love is about trust and recognition, stability and the natural order of things. A soulmate is a partner you settle down with and raise children with (once karmic obstacles are removed). Even if the relationships might require some work, you won’t feel depleted of energy like in a karmic connection, but with a soulmate you will experience a sense that your heart is expanding into tranquility and peace; you see yourself growing old with this person, and you feel that everything is going to be alright and that you make a great team in this world, together.

Twin-flames do not happen to all of us in a lifetime. They are unique and rare and most often they come about in people whose lives have been touched by trauma and transformation, and people whose lives have a specific goal to fulfill. Your twin is your mirrored image, in either the body of a man and woman. It is called ‘flame’ because the energy is so intense that when you come together physically there is a sense that you burn from your whole being with emotions. You are driven mad if you are not with them all the time, because you feel as if you are removed from yourself. These connections are tempestuous and passionate love affairs that can destabilize people’s trajectories in life; they are usually brief and memorable. There are obstacles, limits and many impediments that come about to separate you, and paradoxically it is this separation that proves to be the goal of your connection: to create something new for the whole world to benefit from. You are not meant to live with your twin flame but to use the experience of having met him/her and tell the tale of your otherworldly love. Many famous actors, politicians, musicians, artists and writers were involved in twin flame relationships, and it had to be so, because on a spiritual level these people were meant to transmute energy around them for the greater benefit of the collective consciousness. They did so by creating something unique and culturally significant for their time and place; in some cases, even their failures proved to be significant. Examples of famous twin-flame couples are Max Ernst and Leonora Carrington, Marc Antony and Cleopatra, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Yoko Ono and John Lennon.

Dharmic Relationships are blessings that help you progress towards the main purpose of our current existence and beyond; but we might recoil from these blessings, much like we tend to recoil from our own light and divinity 🙂 Dharma is our reward for having cleared karma, and dharmic people are connected to Rahu or the North Node in Western Astrology (that point in our birth-chart that shows what we incarnated here to do and in what area of life we must learn a lot, in order to progress and evolve). The more we pay back our past-life debts and become aware of what these are and that indeed that we are working towards absolving them, the more we move towards our dharma. A dharmic person has qualities we want to own ourselves but are afraid to embody; so we might admire them but also feel uneasy around such a person because they won’t feel familiar but rather odd and foreign. Nonetheless, our dharmics will bring us blessings and teach us all we need to know to step into our destiny. Dharmic relationships are fresh, new soul connections with people we have not met in a past life but they can nonetheless become our karmic, if we reincarnate. They have a fascinating appeal and can sometimes turn obsessive. When our soul first lived on this plane of existence, all of our human connections were dharmic and only through incarnations was karma created to be worked up in a subsequent life-time. Clearing away karma and living within dharmic connections as much as we can, helps us ultimately to fulfil our life purpose with the promise that one day we might reach Nirvana (or paradise, the freedom from incarnating again).

For those interested I made a video on my YouTube channel ‘The Spiritual Social’ which describes these relationships more in-depth:

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

This article is a spiritual book review. This isn’t just a book, it’s a warm hug. While reading it I experienced a soothing sense of mental ease, like I was gently coasting through each page rather than analytically examining it’s content. It reads slowly, but beautifully and it inspires you to seek for light in your surrounding reality.

Darlene Greene, a healer and a teacher, had a vision in 2017 that sparked her to sit down with what she calls The Council of Light. Tuning into the guidance of this group of Light Beings, she decided to become their humble Scribe. So for one year, she wrote daily a chapter of reflections on the nature of light and love. These daily meditations became the material of the present book. She named this experience ‘three hundred and sixty six days of conscious expansion’.

Personally, it seems that Darlene simply connected with Spirit after a moment of spiritual epiphany, so I’m not sure if I would call her guides ‘the council of light’ since this sounds to me a bit political for my spiritual taste (a council reminds me of the United Nations for some reason, and I try to exclude images of politicians when I tune into the spiritual realm). It might feel eery as well to read how the chapters are written from the perspective of these members of the council of light. But aside from this minor aspect, the book’s messages tug at the heart strings because they are empowering and hope-giving.

The best part is that its structure permits you to either read the book in one flow or portion it day by day (much like the author wrote it); or you could be drawn to one specific title such as ‘Trust’ or ‘Creating from Your Wholeness’ and go straight to that specific chapter – you won’t lose the plot, because there isn’t one; the writer’s intention is to uplift you from whichever angle you approach this boks.

The overall impression is that this string of daily impressions, realizations and meditations brings you closer to a mysterious sense of presence, inner warmth and grateful stillness. For example, the author eases you into the book in a calm and open-hearted way, when she writes:

I have not met you, but I know you. I see you. Thank you for your courage to be All of you. Thank you for answering the call of your heart’s mission.

p. 4

You feel like she is your friend or counsellor, guiding you towards a mysterious mission. That mission is to become authentic and realise that you are part of the fabric of the Divine:

For most, it is in one cataclysmic moment at death that you get the confirmation that who you have been all along is a divine expression of Source in form. You are a being of light in light. You see that all the moments of your life are for the purpose of experiencing yourself as Love. You see the beautiful journeys woven by humanity, as each in their perfect way sift and sort through the happenings of life in search of themselves.

p. 19

No you are not losing your mind, you are simply finding your heart again. Indeed, the experience of reading the book felt very Neptunian. It was soft and dreamy but also hazy and ilusory. I had to go back several times and re-read the beginning because some details escaped me. When I found myself on page 50, I seemed to have lost the thread for a while as to what was the purpose of the book and again felt like sliding back to the beginning. The boundaries eluded me for a while, but I think this is what Darlene intended, as she writes:

When you trust there is more, you can look beyond what you already know. The space to see newly is created. As you let go of reflexive thought and action, there is an opening for more to enter the situation. Reflexive action and thinking is typically connected to a rigid belief system that is a default way of thinking. Breathe possibility into the situation and step back to watch the events, as an observer. Be curious. Do you feel the space open around you?

p. 28

But maybe it’s just me and my unconscious, acting up on me at the moment because I’m in a period of deep healing. In part, I consciously placed myself in this and in another part, the current events of 2020 have more or less ‘naturally’ placed me in – the experience of being still and processing everything I have lived so far. There are also some astrological transits that are guiding my healing process in this period. I have a strong Uranus transit in my 7th house, the house of the Shadow Self. My Uranus is currently zapping the powerful energy of Pluto in Scorpio in my first house and is also conjuncting my natal Mars.

The 7th house is the house of love, long-term contracts and commitments, the Other and our Shadow Self. In addition the current North Node in Gemini is transiting over my natal Chiron in Gemini in the 8th house. The 8th house is the house of power and intimacy, of trust and transformation, and Chiron here talks about sexual wounds, but most prodfoundly wounds regarding the pain of uniting with a counterpart, of trusting your soulmate deeply only to be deceived (Gemini is the trickster of the Zodiac).

Overall, these are two pretty ‘ouch’ transits to have on their own, not to mention combined, but I trust that everything is happening for my benefit and for the benefit of those I connect with. So in this period which involves a lot of release, emotional purging and careful self-analysis, this beautiful book arrived, like a light on a boat during a stormy night at sea.

As a lot of unconscious processing and reprograming is naturally taking place within me at the moment, and I am conscisouly embodying more of my lightworker role here on Earth, isn’t it beautiful when you receive books such as this one, that usher in a new wave of light into conscious awareness?

So I feel that this book came to me at exactly the right time, and sometimes as impatient and impulsive as I can be, I cannot help to be humbled by the accuracy and significance of things happening in Divine timing. Spirit never fails us.

And this is not only my private experience. While doing some research on the book’s background I found another blogger, The Wellbeing Blogger, who also considers that the book arrived in Divine timing and that indeed it is a book that can not be easily digested by everyone, in one sitting. This is because the daily messages that Darlene so helpfully channeled for her readers, need some re-reading and some time to process. I think they work to reprogram your mind in a deep way that touches upon the unconscious.

It is journey I would say, much like the one Darlene has been on since 2017, when inspired by the memory of her father and grandfather and the events that took place in that year, she decided to allow this book to pour out of her. I have to say I enjoy very much when other writers channel and share the personal details of their inspiration, because in a sense it inspires me as a writer and spiritual seeker as well. This is the reason why I sprinkled images of light & lightmasters from my oracle decks, to guide you further along on this light journey. As Darlene writes:

You will discover the language of your soul as you embrace your divinity (p.21)

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Let’s begin with the end, because that’s where all the light and the hope lie. The end-purpose of a dark night of the soul is personal transformation. This is how you come out of it; you emerge out into the light with a fresh realization of who you are and what you are made of. This end-goal is the spiritual reason why the night suddenly enshrouds you and why the circumstances of your life, all of a sudden start to shape-shift around you. Believe it or not, it is all actually happening for you, to usher in your new awareness and to peel back another layer of who you thought you were. You are being prepared to embark on a different life-path and you cannot take the same people, experiences and habits along with you. That’s where all the sorrow emerges from, in the difficulty of letting things go.

How Do You Know You are Going Through a Dark Night of the Soul?

A dark period is not just a depresssion or feeling low and uninspired. It is a period in your life that touches upon all other aspects: it affects your capacity to love, relate and establish intimacy with someone, your capacity to value your self-worth and advance in your work, and it affects your health and wellbeing and your relationships to your family members. A deep transformation is happening in your life, which is changing the way you understand yourself and your surrounding reality. So things will be in flux, shifting and uncertain in this transitional phase, and its important to understand right from the beginning that a dark night of the soul is a transitional phase (this is not your entire life). Some days will be still and heavy, other times there will be an overwhelming amount of emotions and new insights to process. It might feel scary if you are a person that is emotionally attached to certainty and stability. However, as you go about facing the dark, there is usually one area of your life that remains stable and continues to offer you blessings. My advice is to hang on to that and remain as much as possible grateful for that anchor (for me, it was the love and support of my friends that got me through it).

So it’s important to understand that having low moods and feeling uninspired, being bored and feeling stuck, or having a constant string of romantic failures and not feeling like you can keep up healthy habits, are not symptoms of a dark night of the soul. Meeting ‘the dark’ requires a traumatic episode. Let’s break down its stages, so we can understand how this process takes place.

The Stages

• First, a shocking piece of news filters through: usually someone dies, someone wants to separate, you get a difficult disease, you lose an important opportunity in your career, you find out something crushing about your parents, you are about to become evicted…
• Second, is an internal response, or your reaction to it: an angry outburst, jealousy and vengefulness, despair, screaming, crying, numbness, denial, passing out, fear and panic. This is how the trauma is aknowledged.
• Third, some swift readjustments are happening: usually moving out, relocating, isolating yourself, securing your finances, or emptying your savings account, cutting connections with those around you, deleting accounts and phone numbers, burning relational bridges and saying things that hurt or harm back. It’s a Saturn-ruled influence, so things feel like an amputation, like a cut-off, and an icy silence comes to settle in.
• Fourth, you are now in the realm of the darkness. Once the action and shocks are dying down, you now find yourself faced with the fact that it’s done; the trauma cannot be undone. And now you have to deal with your own body, company, feelings and thoughts. How you handle yourself is important because it will show if you want to move on with life, and how that might happen. I’m reminded of this gem of a song:

Or for those of you that love the written word, I’m reminded of these two heart-wrenching novels about loss:

I’m placing these references here for you, because culture provides a lot of solace during a dark night of the soul. This usually comes to you in the fifth phase, that of stilness, when the mind has processed some of your emotions and is able to read and process information. You might read stories that resonate so powerfully with your dark experience, and thereby you might feel less alone, less frustrated and more at peace, knowing that your difficult experience is shared, and is part of the entire beautiful canopy of human experience.

As you do, you enter the sixth and most beautiful phase, that of pure healing. This is how you know you are out of the woods and into the bright clear light: you feel lighter, rested and you see reality more colourful again. You understand, you accept and you surrender. You feel that you are not alone. That in a world so vibrant and populated, you can never be fully alone. And you begin to treasure your solitude, stillness and silence, because it is truly was a gift…one meant to help you level up in life and get more in touch with your soul, albeit through some painful purging first. The wisdom found in other people’s stories and in how they overcame their personal misfortunes, can be like a cooling balm to your tired heart, and you ‘enter the light’ again by reaching out to others.

What is So Dark About This ‘Night’ Compared to Others?

The main reason this night is so dark – to play upon the metaphor a little bit – is that you feel dark. You will feel that food is tasteless, your actions are worthless, you barely have energy to get up and shower or get dressed. You usually crave to be alone, left to your own devices and to sleep due to the inner planet of exhaustion you might feel in the after-math of the trauma. Emotions will rule you for a while, they will overcome you in the oddest moments of the day – they do not have a map, just a mission and that is to wash over you. So let them.

I am trying to write this as broadly as I can, but each dark night is coloured differently depending of the extent, intensity and purpose of the trauma. A person that was raped for years will undergo a different period of healing than one who suffered the sudden end of a long-term commitment. These are both forms of deep and human pain, but no pain is the same, even if the trauma might be similar. The healing will take place very differently. In one case the body will become the center where wounds needs to heal and love, self-acceptance and tenderness will have to be re-learned; while in the other case disfunctional relating patters will need to be replaced by new ways of communicating, trusting and emotionally opening up. But this is again just putting it broadly, because each person’s character will create a unique healing experience and a way of coping with such a dark passage.

How Does Tarot Play Into It?

You tend to turn to the occult during such dark periods. Because you are hyper-sensitive as well, you might also discover some hidden extra-sensorial capacities or you start to notice things you were not able to when you were…happier. So tarot decks might gravitate towards you through some friends that might dabble in the art, or recommend you a good reader, maybe some will gift you a deck or you might just be drawn to purchasing one yourself during one of those days when you are pretty much zombiying around, trying to numb the pain in a bookstore or coffee shop.

Tarot-wise, dark nights of the soul are governed by the following tarot cards: The Tower (the beginning – something unexpected that pushes you in the dark // or you begin with a gradual icing of personal relationships, love, respect, admiration and income, and you might endure a couple of Tower moments throughout); The Hermit (the middle part – going within, retreating from society and learning; mastering your self through the lens of self-analysis) and The Hanged Man (the middle as well – everything is halted, and you are placed in an uncomfortable period of watching and waiting in your life in order to shift your awareness); and finally The Death (the end – feeling intensify and rise up to wash over you, if you let them they will heal you; if you run from them, you will gradually be destroyed by your own repressed emotions). Death means a rebirth in this context; hopefully you have undergone a pyshological rebirth and you emerge out into the light, transformed and improved. Keep in mind this is about your soul, and not necessarily about your appearance, although it might suffer changes as your mind increases its awareness.

In addition, like a pair of watchful guardians, The High Priestess and the Hierophant are the Major Arcana who watch over you as you walk through this dark night of your Soul. Turn to them for solace – place them on your desktop or as a wallpaper to your phone, or get a tarot deck and place the cards next to your bedside. These two energies remind you, that in order to overcome the darkness you must take the path of self-analysis and learning, to observe and understand the lessons inherent in your misfortunes, to allow your light to blend with your darkness.

Paradoxically, such tough periods are blessings in disguise because they offer you the opportunity to blend your contradictions, to meet your Shadow Self (the 7th house in astrology and any planets or asteroids you might have there) and integrate it into your Solar Consciousness (the sign and house of your Sun Sign). So that you no longer walk around giving off confusing signals to others, so that you are aware of your blindspots and are able to master your emotions, instead of letting them rule you and continue to create karma in your lifepath.

How Does Astrology Play Into It?

Dark nights of the soul usually place you on your dharmic path, so it helps if you know your North Node placement and truly study it. Your North Node (by sing and house placement) is like a lighthouse beacon during this dark period because it shows you what you are growing into.

Furthermore, these periods are marked astrologically by Saturn and Pluto transits – especially on your Moon, and secondarily on your Sun and Ascendant, but to my mind nothing hurts like a rought transit to the Moon (just as nothing is more soothing like having Venus or Jupiter stationing conjunct there for a while). So make sure you know your chart well and prepare for the worst when these planets hit your Moon, your Sun or your Venus (you can’t know with a 100% accuracy what will happen, but you can be forwarned that it won’t be easy, and this preparation calms the mind and the spirit). It helps as well to know the length of the transit.

Saturn transiting your Moon ices everything out – you might feel emotionless, cold and detached like never before in your life. Or you might feel highly emotional but you will not be able to express this to others, or to replenish your need for affection (people might react strictly to your emotional outbursts, to set those limits around your heart). So as with everything Saturn ruled, you must arm yourself with a lot of patience. Think of how patient you can be and then train yourself to be double as patient – Saturn requires effort, and around your heart, it demands your emotional effort. The good part about Saturn is that you can feel it happening a while before the transit hits exact conjunct. Saturn is predictable, it offers you the time and the stillness to create a plan and commit to following it daily. If you endure, you get rewards: a loyal partner who reciprocates your feelings, a ground of friends that have your back, a job with a traditional insitution that gives you social prestige, the materialization of your dream etc.

Pluto is a different energetic serving all-together. It has the unexpected qualities of Uranus and the painful effort of Saturn. So a Pluto moment comes with intensity and it is usually unexpected. it does involve a build-up of energy, so watch for areas of life where you have been repressing energy as these are the areas a Pluto transit will blow up and force you to deal with. Keep in mind that low-vibrating Pluto energy rules over domination, abuse, deep sexual trauma, hostage-like situations, and the world of crime in general. The only way to deal with it, is to surrender, and allow it to transform you. As you do so you gain power and are able to ‘fight’ back energetically. A Moon-Pluto transit wants you to welcome the intensity and to have the courage to see it through until its ends.

The great part about Pluto energy is that it consumes itself in time, since it does not have lasting power (not like Saturn, that helps you build something timeless). However, Pluto energy works on you like the debris of an atomic reaction, which means it continues to mutate your DNA and offer you symptoms, even if the initial traumatic episode was brief and short-lived.

Pluto brings in your life themes of enmeshment with others, trust, power and powerlesness, sexual and emotional pain, obsession and how you cope with it, having to let go fo things you want with your entire being, or letting your guard down enough to welcome powerful new feelings into your life. Pluto marks deaths, births, losses of all kinds – it’s pretty brutal, and doesn’t understand tenderness, but once the transit passes and once you’ve been pushed into some really interesting extremes, you won’t be the same person again. Another good thing about Pluto is that it cleans you; like a Vulture, it eats the bits of meat left on a corpse, leaving only the clean white bones. So you can build the life you really want on the new foundations of your soul.

In every tough transit there is hope and light, but you might need to get comfortable loving and valuing some pretty difficult aspects of life. Such an undertaking requires strength, flexibility and emotional maturity. Don’t worry, since these are the life-long gifts granted to you, once you emerge from a dark night of your soul.

Black, As a Survival Compass

Whatever happens to you, it’s important to never give in to despair or self-loathing. This is the point where instead of navigating the dark, you allow it to infiltrate you, and you end up becoming dark instead of just surviving it.

Black is an interesting non-colour. It has so many different meanings. In dreams it means famine, sin, mourning. In the Western part of the world, black is an elegant office colour. While, Romanians predominantly wear it at funerals. It’s the preferred colour of some subcultures as well, and some people wear black because it looks slimming. Black is the colour of the unconscious, mystery, change and protection. It resonates with indifference, gloom, death, darkness, obscurity and secrecy. The really beautiful scientific aspect is that black attracts light.

This is why in summer it is better to wear white since white reflects light, rather than attract it like black does. Metaphorically speaking, the dark, this surrounding black in your life, is therefore attracting more light towards you. Like a Supermassive Black Whole, the super-attraction power of the dark is phenomenally increased, as it expands and pulls into it the light of many galaxies, so are you, going through the dark only to attract more light in your life.

Ways to cope

A) Create a totem

A totem is an object imbued with personal meaning – it is better if you create it from scratch, just as Native American tribes would take a tree and carve out of it an ancestral pillar adorned with animal spirits. You can also receive a meaningful object or buy one made out of a natural materials and connect on a deeper level to it, by carrying it around with you or sleeping with this object next to you. Your totem has the power to hold your good intent and to remind you of it, during those days when you reach that ‘what’s the point’ limit. A totem is a symbol of hope and partnership, reminding you that you are not alone in this. What got me through my own dark journey in 2013 – a year I only remember in parts, because I spent most of it crying, sleeping and working, as I was waiting for my divorce to come in – was wearing a ring with a dark stone in it.

I can’t explain why but this ring helped me relive the memory of my grandma teaching me how to pray to my guardian angel when I was 4 years old. That moment of safety and purity, when I was small and taken care of and my grandma taught me how not to fear a thunderstorm by counting the distance of each thunder-strike and how I would always be able to pray to my guardian angel and stay protected.

The ring gave me the feeling that even if I was liquifying with emotion, there was something material there to catch me. I looked at it and it made me feel safe and protected. The memories of my grandma, who was a religious and traditional woman, also gave me a lot of comfort. I was aware that even if I’m not naturally a religious or traditional person, for a while, as I was going through this period where everything felt hopeless in my life, memories of candle-lit Orthodoz churches, flower wreaths and people cracking eggs for Easter, somehow gave me the safety I needed. My marriage broke down while I was in a foreign land, which added to my sense of isolation and feeling disconnected from everyone around me, but that small ring, bridged the distance from Scotland to Romania while I was healing.

B) The emotional pain is your healing

As your heart is hurting, it is also trying to remain open. There is this strange contradiction you will experience where things that have wounded you (the words, the acts, and even the non-acts – the indifference, the lack, the disregard) are trying to close your heart, but your heart resists and stubbornly fights to stay open. So you will feel a see-saw, an internal conflict, that can sometimes make you feel like you might have a bi-polar disorder. Understand that those sleepless nights, cold sweats, that fear that grips you unexpectedly when you try to relax, that inescapable victim mentality, and those waves of emotion washing over your body and your mind at irregular intervals (day or night), are all part of your healing.

Whenever the fear grips, remind yourself that fear is an illusion and not your reality, it is triggered by your past and not by your present circumstances and it is just coming up for you to acknowledge that you are afraid, to be aware of this and then to let it go. During my own dark night, I used to say to myself that ‘It came with the night, it goes with the night now’ to send daily fears away and replace them with calm.

Try as much as possible not to medicate the pain or the fear; just allow it to happen to you. Medicating the fear just delays it, and it also delays the chance for you to learn how to master your emotions. Yes, grasping such moments will feel and look weird, but this is why solitude is so important during a dark period, so you can cry on your food stained T-shirt and look a mess without having others judge you or be worried sick about you. If you try to numb the fear down with alcohol, cigarettes, random sex and drugs, they will only work temporarily just like medication – these toxic coping strategies will give you life-long and expensive addictions, and will not remove the fear but rather amplify it because you are not dealing with it, and are merely repressing it or ignoring the problem at hand. You are meant to grow more into your whole self, rather than succumb to the night aspect of the journey.

C) Believe without a doubt that you are loved and guided by a Higher Force

This is the hardest thing to do and the simultaneously it’s the most beautiful. In the worst period of your life, where you feel you walk alone or that no one cares, and everyone is either against you or gone away, if you want to continue to live you will start to feel a presence around you. But it must come from your clear intent, that you want to go on. When this realization happens and you ask the Divine for help, you start to notice patterns and synchronicities around you.

I had many moments when moving on just felt pointeless. Going through a divorce at age 27, trying at another relationship and seeing it dissolve at the age of 30 due to addiction and mental health problems, letting go of a life-time post as a university teacher at age 32, and then letting go again of another prestigious career post, very recently to come home and complete my healing. There were moments when I doubted my sanity, my capacity to feel and be human, and moments when I was afraid of what I could manifest with the power of my negative thinking. But one thing was confirmed to me over and over again, that somehow I was held and supported by an unseen force. And that thought kept me going.

Although it wasn’t only the thought, but also the daily ‘lucky’ evidence: when I had just a couple of pounds in my pocket and had to choose between buying a bus fare or something to eat, I found a 5 pound banknote on the ground; when I was crying myself to sleep every night, my friend unexpectedly wrote me and asked me to come to the South of France for a weekend in the sun; when I struggled to work two jobs and study as well, I had to give up on one job and I suddenly got some tax return money back to help me through the financial readjustment; when I didn’t know how to pay for my PhD, a scolarship opportunity came in, and many more.

People gave me their time, their energy, their kisses and hugs, their money, their food, their clothers and objects – there was always something there to keep me going, even if something as normal as a sunny day. And for those moments I would always be grateful because such small moments taught me to trust in the unknown and to have faith that somehow, things will work out – my Ego didn’t need to know everything. It was all going to be revealed as I continued to live, breathe and take care of myself.

D) Stick to a routine or practice a healthy habit

For me, work was grounding during my dark night of the soul. Having a schedule and knowing that no matter how awful I was feeling, I had a pot of coffee in the morning and I needed to get up and go to work was soothing and stabilizing. Of course, work wasn’t amazing during that period – it pretty much was darker than my own life, since I was nursing an old lady with advanced multiple sclerosis who would occasionally ask me to kill her to relieve her of her pain. I constantly needed to remind her that life is worth living (as I was reminding myself of the same thing). But this situation set things into perspective. It helped me be grateful for my body like I never was before, it helped me want to take care of it and of my own health.

I know it’s bizare to hear this from a Pisces Sun, but material things actually worked to keep me emotionally and mentally stable during the dark passage: a cup of coffee in the morning, going to work, receiving a paycheck, going to bed in my Orange bedroom, looking at my ring, remembering my grandma. Find your routine or small daily thing that can help you cope, and make that your emotional anchor for a while.

E) Ask for help

While I was working, I was also studying to become a child and adolescent psychologist. I was part of one of the most prestigious universities in Europe and initially I felt embarrased to ask for help. But one day I walked into my supervisor’s office and told her I couldn’t cope anymore – the homesickness, the heart-sickness, the pressure to do well in my research, the exhaustion from work. She suggested the help of the university’s counselling services and I was afraid of the financial expense and of emotionally opening up in front of some stranger, who wouldn’t even speak my own language.

But I bit that bullet and went one day, and chose not to listent to what everyone was telling me, that it takes ages to get into counselling. Indeed, I had to wait two weeks for an appointment, but then got into 6 free counselling sessions, because I explained my situation to the secretary and she suggested a bursary option that was available.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because I want to drive home the point that unless you ask for it, you will not receive help. You might not even know the help that is available to you. The path is carved before you as you speak and open up about your problems, and remarkably then something beautiful happens – the suppport arrives, the options are there, the money, the goods, the space to talk, the extra blanket, the companionship, the friendliness. Plato would call it filia or brotherly love, which was one octave lower than agape, or soulful love, unconditional positive regard towards another human being. These types of love have to do with ensuring we survive and that we eventually make it out of our individual dark nights of the soul.

F) Pay it forward

This comes after. Once you make it out of this dark path, and you reach out into the light again, and you feel healed, whole and renewed, I’m here to let you know that nothing will compare to the deep intimacy you can now establish with other people around you. Even more so, you will experience gratefulness more quickly, and in many random moments of the day. Everything will feel like you are ‘on drugs’ (you won’t need the real stuff), and it will be a bit more intense, a bit more colourful and more alive. You escaped something soul crushing and regained your belief in the beauty of living, in yourself and in the Divine and this knowledged will feel exhilarating. So don’t give up before the good part ❤

From that moment onwards, as you grow through life you will be able to hear someone else’s personal story and not just simply say ‘Oh yeah, I can think that was hard for you’ but you’ll be able to have a physical and emotional reaction to that person’s story because it will feel like your own. You are now able to understand what being abandoned, abused, divorced, downtrodden and poor feels like and you will empathise with others.

And helping others in your situation will feel like a blessing in itself – it will give you an oxytocin-boost and a feeling of power (so try not to let it get to your head) and it will remind you that initially it was this vulnerability that got you to this place. I discovered I was a lightworker because I was able to survive and thrive after each dark night of my soul. Without the darkness, I wouldn’t have been able to wake up to my own inner light.

In conclusion..

Do not fear the dark. It is here to help spiritualize a life that is lived too much in the rational, a life that is emotionally-detached and clouded by a defensive Ego. Allow tough experiences to change you, work on you and bless you. When you will look back, you will indeed be suprised by how far you’ve come and how different you and your existence will feel like. The point of life is to live it and experience things.

Even if the journey is painful, it is worth sticking through it and commiting to seeing it through until the end. We grow in life through both pain and pleasure, and such periods unfortunately bring with it some considerable pain. Remember that old saying ‘What doesn’t kill you, makes your stronger’? it could’ve been uttered by someone who survived a dark night of the soul and lived to tell the story.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

In this post I aim to share with you some ideas for spells you can do yourself, as a form of release-work or cleansing of past, toxic energy – this is what I mean by ‘auto-spellcraft’, ways in which you can bless your life to make it more abundant and wholesome by transmuting energy.

Because I work with the energies of the lunar cycle, I offer below a spell you can do on a New Moon and one you can enact on a Full Moon. I used this spells in the past and continue to do so when the circumstances require. If you are uncomfortable with the word ‘spell’ just remember that a spell is simply an intention that unconsciously guides your actions through the power of your unconscious minds and conscious speech. So spell or no spell, you are magical just because you exist and are alive! But in case you reach a bend in the road and you hit an especially rough patch on this journey called ‘life’, below are some practical tips that can see you through.

New Moon Ritual

Get a piece of Rose Quartz (it can be shaped however you wish), and on the New Moon take your stone and hold it to your heart. This is best to do when you are laying down and you be relaxed and focused. I want you to visualize the person that broke your heart (it can be a lover, parent, friend etc.) and focus on sending the energy of the rose quartz around yourself and going into your body. Say out load ” I forgive _______ his or her name____and myself for all the hurt and pain that was caused. This pain I release and no longer allow it into myself and around my space.” You have to say this with a strong intention or it will not be helpful. Visualize the rose quartz colored light around you whenever a thought of that person comes into your mind. Sleep with this charged quartz by your bed until the Moon becomes full (a 2-weeks period). At the full moon bathe the stone in the moonlight, and if you feel that you still are in pain, you can repeat this proces for as long as needed.

Let the magic in this spell

Clear the space in which I dwell

(Useful affirmation while saging and smudging your home)

Full Moon Ritual

Chord cutting ritual to cleanse your energy of someone else’s: On the eve of a Full Moon, light a white or golden candle and say the following words “I cancel any and all contracts, agreements, bindings, documents, alliances, allegiances, written, verbal and non-verbal commitments with any and all persons, places and beings who are not an energetic match with me and my life purpose. Thank you Holy Spirit, it is done!”

Mantra creating ritual: Get a musical instrument ( a tibetan bowl, a triangle, some wind chimes, a glockenspiel, a harp, a flute etc.) or a large glass on whose rim you can create a melodious sound by running your finger around the top of the glass. Strike or play your instrument once, and as you allow the musical reverberations of your instrument to fill the room, light up a red or pink candle and write down your new mantra for the current lunar cycle. For example, mine was:

I am loved

I am blessed

I am protected

I fear nothing

And I am connected to everything

Everything works for my growth

Design a seal (a protective symbol, usually inked in a different colour than the text of the mantra – I prefer silver or gold pens or acrylic paint), that is specific to you underneath the mantra and then place this piece of paper somewhere you can see it daily (on the fridge door, near your desk or laptop, on your nightstand etc.); keep it until the New Moon, then tear it apart and create a new one.

Chording and Unchording

This is a strings of rituals you can add to your spiritual practice whenever you feel that you are depleted of energy and despite keeping a daily healthy routine and taking other pragmatic precautionary measures. This is especially helpful for those working in the energy healing professions or those who work in the service industry and deal with a lot of people on a daily basis. Cleaning your aura and energetic field should become a daily habit like brushing your hair and your teeth. Chords appear all the time, since we are beings of energy, not only matter.

If you suddenly feel sleepy, sick, you have a headache and feel drained for no apparent reason, it could be that people have chorded you and you need to sever these energetic ties and reclaim your power back. Chords can be thin and transitory (in cases of meeting strangers and dealing with envy, evil eye, bad intent or simply someone reaching their energy out to you), or more strong and thick (in cases of having children or having sex with someone, especially someone you love). Here is a beautifully written article by Chloe Rain, which goes in-depth on the topic of chords: https://exploredeeply.com/live-your-purpose/how-to-clear-energetic-cords

I gathered here some video resources to help you, especially if you are a beginner at this unchording spiritual practice. The first video, I discovered recently and offers a really interesting perspective on how you can work with a chord’s energy, rather than cutting it (I’m personally still training my ability to over-power someone else’s energy, so not sure if this might work if you are a beginner at energy healing work, but it never hurts to practice):

The second video from Astrolada.com, was one of the first ones I tried and was surprised it actually worked. In my case it took 3 lunar & menstrual cycles to cut the chord, since it was a really thick energetic chord I had with my ex-husband. I loved him so much but following our divorce, my energy never returned while he was out dating other women and enjoying himself. So I took matters into my own hands and decided to sever the emotional and energetic bond. It took a couple of sessions because we had been together a total of 6 years so the chord was deep and strong, but I gradually started feeling my energy coming back into me and felt powerful and rejuvenated once again:

Keep in mind that cutting a chord with someone you deeply loved (whether a parent or a lover) is a painful process. I had sweaty dreams, hot flashes, I threw up a couple of times and frequently cried during the 3 lunar cycles. Some episodes where more intense than others. But at the end a sense of relief overtook me. I was able to get back into my work-out routine, I finished my work reponsibilities on time, and even took on a second form of employment. I felt more optimistic and was able to let go.

At the moment, I love to do these 2 healing meditations since I opened myself up energetically to do tarot readings for my crew. These also work if you are travelling a lot and are exploring a new place and connecting with new people and their energies:

As always, I hope this post helped broaden your perspective and taught you something useful and protective. Feel free to reach out in the comments with your own rituals, so we can learn from each other.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

…In my humble opinion, they don’t exist. Let me explain.

I was born on a cusp, apparently the one tenderly referred to as the cusp of ‘rebirth’, which is cosily tucked in between the visionary sign of Pisces and the energetic sign of Aries. For reference, here is a list with all the other special names attributed to each cusp’s energy:

I came in this world in the 80s’ on Friday the 20th of March (some hours before midnight and right the spring quinox, under a Gibbous Moon in Sagittarius). For a long time I felt frustrated with this placement. Not only because I felt confused by the Water and Fire combo (Don’t they extinguish each other?) but also because I thought that I am somehow cursed to be a ‘cusper’ or an ‘in-betweener’. I felt compelled to spend time reading both horoscopes for Aries and Pisces and never understood how to blend the often contradictory advice I received (in my past, I was highly uncomfortable with contradictions and complexity in life). Needless to say, the frustration made me take matters into my own hands and I did my own research (Pluto in Scorpio here, holler!). Also, keep in mind I am describing here Western astrology and Western charts (Vedic charts have a logic of their own; see here:https://www.vaultoftheheavens.com/).

So I learned that technically, the Sun’s energy is measured in the astrological chart with the help of astrological degrees. These degrees clearly divide each astrological house, much like a month is divided by days so as to better organise our earthly time. According to this analogy, a calendar day is roughly the equivalent of an astrological degree. Returning to the example I know best (my own), I was born with my Sun at 29′ degrees Pisces. It is a bit paradoxical to say ‘my Sun’ since I was born close to 9 o’clock at night, although we all know that even if it’s night here on Earth the cosmos still filters the energy through. I do feel closer to my lunar energy. It is also underlined by many famous astrologers such as Liz Greene and Stephen Aroyo, that women in general tend to identify more with their Moon and Venus sign, and men generally feel more like their Sun and Mars signs, due to socialization and gender-norm priming, received early on in childhood.

Astrological degrees are the tiny black bars you see on charts. They neatly delineate each house, and are helpeful because they are the hidden keys to grasping your energy:

I also discovered that there is also something called ‘dodecatemoria’, where you subdivide each astrological house into the 12 astrological sings, but I don’t want to shock your mind with too much at once (for those who need a mind-blow, here it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodecatemoria).

Degrees are important, not only because they are mathematically precise and help us clarify the exact position of the planets as they were energetically beaming through one of the 12 constelations at our birth, but also because each degree – in a given astrological sign – carries its own mystical energy and symbolism. Especially the first (0′), the middle (15′) and the final degree (29′, also called the anaretic degree), are especially significant. Here is a resource that better explains why this is so: https://www.astro.com/astrology/aa_article190801_e.htm

To understand how degrees influence a chart, let’s use an example. So, I am not a cusper but a Sun sign in Pisces, placed at the anaretic degree of 29′ Pisces. This degree signifies completion, and it means that I am meant to wrap up a karmic cycle with the goals I pursue in this life. In order to transmute my karma into dharma, these goals need to vibe high according to the ideal traits of Pisces: imagination, faith, fertility, unconditional love and forgiveness. In addition, I don’t just have a Venus in Aquarius, but my Venus is placed at 20′ Aquarius, which is described as:

“Active, observant, and optimistic character endowed with the capacity to turn obstacles into assets. Childhood is clouded by financial setbacks underwent by the parents. For professional purposes, one travels abroad and amasses valuable knowledge which one puts into practice in one’s country. Success and decent wealth can be achieved in all careers requiring movement.”

And indeed, I travelled for study and am now living in my home country applying in my work what I learned abroad. You can see how exploring the symbolism of the significant degrees of your chart, gives you extra-insight into your personality and life-patterns. Keep in mind that some degrees have negative interpretations, but this only reinforces the necessity of understanding your chart as the whole and lovely pie of you! Degrees colour a personal chart in unique ways, and in my case they end up explaining ‘why no too Pisces are alike’ (even Piscean twins could have different Ascendants, due to their different birth-times which shifts their houses and degree placements).

How do I know the meaning of each degree in my chart? I used this free degree calculator from Astrotheme: https://www.astrotheme.com/the_360_symbolic_degrees.php

Let use another example, applied to a transit rather than a natal chart. I had a crew member order a chart + a transit report back in April (for those of you who do not know, I call my Youtube subscribers ‘my crew’; and for my services please check the under the ‘Healing Services’ tab of this website). She was wondering why if Saturn reached the sign of Aquarius in 2020, her Saturn return would take place in 2022! I was intrigued but felt that this might be degree-related (and I also had a hunch about a potential interception – more on this in another post). So I created her chart and indeed, she had her natal Saturn in Aquarius placed at the 28th degree. This explained why her return would happen in the final part of Saturn’s transit in Aquarius, as it will ‘return’ to the exact degree where it was when she was born.

Saturn also retrogrades each year, so the time delay was justified by the retro movements as well. In order for a planetary return to be complete, the planet needs to station exactly on the degree of the sign you were initially born under. That’s when something pivotal happens in your life. However energy is fickle, as we know it from personal experiences. This means that in general people feel the energy of the planet for a while before something materializes into their environment, when the planet hits that exact degree. In this sense, inner change can indeed manifest itself on the outside in some concrete action or conversation. Astrology is a wonderful to help you come to terms with why things happen in your life the way that they do!

Let’s return to the degrees. There are usually 30/31 days in a month, but some months, such as February have 28 to 29 days (if it’s a leap year). So astrologers established a consensus that each astrological house has 30 degrees (to make up for months that have less days and to balance the charts out). This means that we have 365 days in a year and 360 symbolic degrees in a chart. There are an additional 5 days that seem to be left in limbo, because the best I can explain it, the Earth’s rotation around the Sun is slightly curbed, since in certain periods it is closer to the Sun and in other periods it’s eliptic spans a bit wider.

In terms of cusps, I also learned that because of these precise degrees, the Sun cannot exist at two degrees at the same time. So a person can be born either at 29 degrees Libra or at 0 degrees Scorpio. Initially when someone creates their own chart and looks at it, it might seem like your Sun is covering both houses, or is dangerously close to the border between two signs (say it looks like you could be a Gemini Sun or a Cancer Sun), but if you zoom into your chart (and if your chart is professionally endowed with degrees) then you get to the bottom of this mystery.

However, there is a catch to this. It’s not as easy as simply knowing the exact degree. Cosmic energy is tricky to parcel and contain in our earthly 24 hours. So solar energy can sometimes spillover or affect us long after something literally took place. It moves us and shakes us in its own rhythms and as it interacts with us, we also leave an energetic imprint on it. So even if you are born say as a 29th degree Sagittarius Sun, you might behave at times under the energy of a Capricorn Sun. You might flinch between the extreme optimism and wild, expansive energy of a Sagittarius and the restraint and serious approach of a Capricorn.

Take for example, one of my favourite actresses, the fantastic Jane Fonda. She was born under a 29th degree Sagittarius Sun on Winter Solstice. She is lively and energetic but also self-composed and capable of great (physical) efforts, because not only could she flinch at times in the more grounded energy of Capricorn, but her Ascendant is placed there as well – so she does vibe more earthly than fiery.

Ultimately, it’s up to you whether you choose to be Cusp-proud or are more like me and prefer the precise degree identity. I can say that understanding that I am a ’29th degreer’ coloured my whole perspective on life. I am born in the final sign of the final degree (heavy Omega energy) and I do feel this is my last incarnation (apparently, I’m an old soul with 9 previous lives). So my chart is showing what a fortune teller saw as well, that my current incarnation (my 10th) is about that final ‘glorious’ goodbye before I jump into another dimension.

I love astrology and life (no matter how difficult it has been to navigate it), and I seem to grow into loving it day by day even more. There is so much of everything in our tiny yet beautifully rich planet. I hope that wherever you find yourself in the world at the moment, that you love life too and that you found this post helpful in some way.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤