Could we be tiny energetic strings inside the body of a superhuman? I am not even sure if ‘human’ is the right word in this context, but as I am diving into the realm of astrophysics I keep being mesmerised by this thought: that potentially our lives might be lived at the tiniest level of matter inside the energetic body of a larger-than-life being. That we are not the center, and not even the beginning of the story of life in the Universe, but rather the tiniest particles in a much bigger energetic pattern. To use a phrase frequently employed by one of my colleagues at Oxford, ‘the mind boggles’. Nonetheless, I love this modest view of our status in relation to the cosmos.

One of the theories that tries to explain what exists at the tiniest level of life, is string theory and to me personally, this seems an exciting and fresh perspective on life. I think here I should stop and allow this guy to explain what string theory is:

So as you could see our organs are made up of molecules, which are made up of atoms, which can be further broken down into neutrons and protons, which also are made up of quarks. Our factual knowledge stops there, but it is theorized that potentially we might be made up of tiny strings of energy at our deepest and tiniest level of matter.

What led me to imagine that we, as human beings, might potentially be these infinitessimal strings of energy inside a cosmic quark, inside a cosmic neutron etc., was seing an image of the largest structure in space: Laniakea, or the supercluster of galaxies which happens to contain our very own Milky Way. So I paired what I learned from our lowest level with our largest level of existence and blew my mind in the process (keep in mind, I’m new to this branch of knowledge). The video below shows you this super-structure and how scientists measured and mapped Laniakea:

When I look at this beautiful image of our home supercluster, I keep seeing the shape of a human heart (the real biological heart and not the heart emoji). It could also be a highly active neural cortex (but I prefer the heart analogy better :D). The neigbouring planets seen from above look like arteries, and the flow of energy between them like the flow of blood, even the fact that these galaxies are pulled into the magnetic force of the Great Attractor, seems to me like this is a snapshot of a gigantic beating heart. And if our supercluster is a gigantic heart, imagine what that makes us? The tiniest specks of matter and energy in this astounding cosmos.

Although there are many different scientifics viewpoints regarding what exists at the largest known level of existence (and at its tiniest), I’d like to run a bit wild with this analogy between us as human strings of energy and the multiverse as a gigantic beating heart inside the ‘body'(?) of an off-the-scale large being. This being could potentially be God, Buddha, or Spirit or the Energy of Life itself, The Universe (whatever you’d prefer to call it). So the old esoteric beliefs that ‘as above, so below’ and that we are genuinely part of God and God is part of us, could potentially be mapped out at the moment by teams of amazingly dedicated and meticulous astro-physicists.

Let me bring it back for a second. Laniakea means ‘immeasurable heaven’ in Hawaiian, a name as apt as it is gorgeous. Again, this analogy of flows of energy and streams of energetically linked to branches, neural connections and the symbols here on Earth that make up our material reality (the brain, the heart, the rivers, trees) led me to think of the Tree of Life, which is a symbol that has followed mankind’s mythology for centuries and it was represented in many different cultures in their own distinct style.

This multi-cultural ancetral knowledge of our foremothers and forefathers (who were better able to observe the sky, centuries ago when polution levels and distracting electricity did not exist), could now be re-interpreted with the help of data gathered by astrophysicists (and thereby reconforming my belief that science in the Age of Information is the primary tool to help us discover what our ancestors intuitively knew from studying Nature for hundreds of years). I am a firm believer that we need both sets of knowledge, the scientific and the spiritual, to understand existence; and I also think that the ways in which we make discoveries are cyclical not just linear. We might not always be standing on the shoulders of Giants, as the saying goes, we could also be returning factually to support their intuitive knowledge. Intuition and reason, combining together in a perfect way.

Let’s return to how our ancestors gained this knowledge of the sky and its energies, which was then represented in mythological stories and deities. Imagine looking up at the sky in the 10th century (randomly chosen age): it must’ve been a gorgeous sight and the Milky Way must’ve been easily visible with the human eye on most nights and from almost all places in the world. Looking up at this gorgeous night sky and being in touch with the surrounding Nature (which was not yet parcelled and organised by the slow advances of capitalism), inspired our ancestors to create myths about the many different realms of existence. The Heavens above and the Realms below, and Trees of Life that represented both spiritual emanations that can exist within ourselves (like the Sefirot) or can represent the realms of the Gods (like Yggdrassil).

To put these ideas into perspective, let’s look at some examples together. Firstly, Hindu mythology depicted the spiritual realm as organised into 7 lokas, the highly flexible worlds of Gods and Goddesses which existed both below and above us:

The Lokas match to some extent the idea of an afterlife, found in Christianity, that there is a redemptive Heaven world and a punishing Hell world. Moreover, Indian mythological knowledge was not the only one to describe different planes of existence. Yggdrasil, The Tree of Life in Norse Mythology, was imagined to consist of 9 worlds:

And finally the 10 Mystical Emanations of the Sephirot (The Energy points of the Inward Tree of Life in the Kabbalah). Some believe these emanations exist within us, and if the human soul can master them, upond death it passes through the spiritual grid of the Sefirot and reaches Angelarium.

This knowledge of multiverses, was nothing new to our pagan ancestors, as you can see above. However, scientists are divided on the topic of whether indeed there is a multiverse, much like our ancestors were divided in their belies regarding the themes and deities which existed in each Loka:

Now it’s interesting how these trees and lokas correspond to some extent with the New Age understanding of reality, as divided between three levels of dimensions, through which human consciousness can evolve. The first of these is the 3D which represents our three-dimensional reality organised according to width, length and depth. Then there is the 4D, which represents the added dimension of time (although some scientists also think they can disprove the concept of time). Lastly, there is the elusive 5D, the level which contains anything above or beyond the two previous dimensions (some would say here is where the 7 lokas above us begin, or where Asgard begins). This realm is strangely called the ‘5’D, almost as if there is a logical ordering or layering of these dimensions, but the 5D describes not only what is above us but also what is below and neighbouring us (the idea of parallel planes of existence).

I would so far as to say that the 5D could be seen as a reservoir which containts The Lokas (in Hindu culture), The Tree of Life, Yggdrasil in Norse mythology or the Sephirot in the Jewish esoteric book of the Kabbalah. But I would think it’s wrong to assume that the 3D is separate from the 4D and 5D – these are not layered and hierarchical dimensions, they are co-mingled dimensions. We can embody 5D energy when we pray and connect to Spirit, and the 3D serves to anchor and measure 5D elements (when we measure and mapp out the Universe or write about spiritual deities etc).

My point is that what many different cultures and religions describe in their own culturally-specific ways, could actually refer to the same discoveries currently made by astro-phisicists. Both spirituality, religion and science are describing energy, its origins, shifts and transformations. And finding out our origins might lead us back to exploring tiny bundles of energetic entanglements.

However, the Universe is not only made up of energy but also matter and gases. Energy seems to be what sheds light and connects all these things together. For example, light is the form through which things are photographed in space, and also the way in which we might someday travel through our galaxy (at the speed of light). This is proved by the fact that galaxies that exist in our space, as the Universe is expanding, remain out of sight from the Hubble telescope if Hubble is not able to capture light. So capturing light waves and frequencies help us map out the cosmos, but spiritually light is also a matter of consciousness and awareness. Light in the cosmos confirms existence and if we think of the warming light of the Sun, it also pertains to how life exists on our own planet and might potentially exist on other planets (which are not yet visible to us).

This post has been an exploratory endeavour. My point is that making these associations is the goal itself of exercising our creative thinking. Through this process of associating different bits of knowledge, we can switch on our creativity. It is not about establishing right from wrong, but about connecting the wisdom of spiritual folklore and mythology with the research that science is able to provide uswith, at this given moment in time. In this way we can play with knowledge and we might be better able to understand ourselves and reality in new and exciting ways, much like the meaning of the Hanged Man card in the Tarot, suspending your disbeliefs for a second, to try to gain a rich, fresh perspective on life. I wrote about the deeper meaning of this card, in a previous post: https://spiritualsocial.wordpress.com/2020/07/18/tarot-saturday-7-the-hanged-man-death/

I hope this post helped shift your perspective a little bit 😉

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

The second Mercury retrograde of this bright new decade is now upon us. It started on the 18th of June and will complete on the 12th of July. This is traditionally not a good sing to do logical, intensely rational work or to commence new deals, new financial endeavours or buy new technological gadgets. This is however, an excellent time to retreat and go on a well-deserved vacay 🙂 or if you must work, try to revise and improve content which is already available to you. You are also blessed if you replace your old mobile phone and laptop or camera equipment with something better (chances are that as soon as this energy comes in, whatever was faulty will break down anyway, so you will be energetically ‘pushed’ towards revising old apps and equipment). When a planet is retrograde we have to work twice as hard to access its energy, which flows better when the planet moves ‘directly’ on the elliptic.

But keep in mind as well that retrograde movements are simply astronomical illusions, so symbolically during a retrograde there will be a lot of ‘rosy glass-eyed’ perspectives and a lot of make-belief bubbling up to the surface. This means that you need to watch out for deception. If an idea sounds too good to be true during this period, it’s usually because it genuinely is so wait and postpone making a decision or signing, until the end of the retrograde. This is why is it good to simply pull back your energy inwards and revise, re-use, re-examine, re-locate, re-pair, re-think, re-consider – basically any verb that involves the particle ‘re’ is favoured during this period of odd-ball energy. If contracts or opportunities from the past re-emerge for one second chance, this is where your energy is best utilized – in discerning whether you can indeed pour your heart and soul into something that ‘got away’ or that you might have forgotten about.

These are more general indications for retrograde periods (whether they involve a Mercury, Venus, Saturn or Neptune retrograde, they all work in the same way: pull back your energy and go within, have patience and relax or enjoy the fruits of the hard work you did when the planetary energy was more forthcoming). However, I want to offer you below some tips on how to manifest with the current Cancer-Gemini planetary combo, since the Mercury retro ‘awakens’ through these two summery signs:

• Apply the rule of two: Gemini represents the Twins, so the best thing to uplift yourself in this period is to ask for help, to collaborate, cooperate, and to address any emotional problems by engaging people in conversations – ones in which you are calmly listening to the other person’s point of view but can also strongly express yours. If you know you have done nothing wrong, do not back down in an argument, just kindly and politely assert yourself. With Cancer energy, it is detrimental for your health if you bottle things up, since Lunar Crabbs have strong retentive abilities.
• Understand that it’s an up and down emotional joy ride: Cancer is the moodiest sign of the Zodiac, and can shift emotionally very quickly from joy to gloominess, just like the swift phases of the Moon. So keep in mind that this period is an emotional rollercoaster where your love of life will be followed by brooding introspection related to some past issue that comes up to your consciousness to be processed.
• When Air meets Water energy, you have sparkling water or a taifun. Air sign Energy is electric, fun, mental, preocuppied, erratic, spontaneously serious. Gemini is flexible Air, so it’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind of duality we are dealing with. This period is brilliant for insights and deep awareness into past issues in your life that are now being made obvious and communicated to all. Your dirty laudnry might be washed, dried and aired for all to see – and remarkably, you will benefit from this public purging.
• Don’t cling to your emotions too tightly, but neither cling to your ideas too much. This will inevitably lead to conflict, since we are being taught how to reconcile oppositions in this period. Even clinging too much to reason can lead to madness in these trying times. Trust me, I grew up in a family with two Geminis and a Libra. I am familiar with how trying to cling too much to reason will make you seem mad. However, giving in too much to your feelings will make you seem like a frustrated teenager. So there is a need to search for the the middle ground. If you experiences a whirlwind of energy, take some brief moments to rest.
• If you are working on something and it doesn’t work, you can a) sulk in frustration or b) shift your attention to another thing that you could be doing. Multi-tasking is a Gemini speciality. If having a conversation with a person bores you or irritates you, then contact a friend whom you love and vent a bit, then resume that initial boring conversation – have both conversations simultaneously or one after the other, to help you balance sides and gain some detachment from the strong feelings you might experience at this time.
• This current energy is showing us that life is both filled with good and evil. That reason and emotions must work together, so you might find yourself unsually tired as the conscious mind wires up to our unconscious emotions. Become aware of the fact that we are both good and evil, and accept yourself with all your flaws and limtiationsd as well as with all your loveable characteristics. Most of us function as messy, colourful in-betweens so embrace ‘the gray’ areas of your life, have fun with ambiguities and the unknown!
• Learn something new! Or write your thoughts and feelings down for some self-help work. With this energy self-therapy is strongly emphasized. If you struggle, engage in a brutally honest conversation with a friend who can help you mature emotionally. This is exactly the right time to intellectualize your emotions. You could end up creating something artistic, elegant and fun with past neuroses 🙂
• Try doing things differently: Geminin rules socialization and the South Node is currently in the sign of freidnship and strong moral beliefs (Sagittarius). So go with the North Node flow and drop some friends and make new ones, if one activity doesn’t work, move to another, if one belief system doesn;t serve, replace it with another. And remain as emotionally detached as you can in this process, because it will make you gain a better awareness of the multiplicity and complexity of life. So if one place drains you of energy make plans to move on or move out.
• Movement, flow, having options, changing your mind are all Air sign activities. Get the advice of a Libra, Gemini or Aquarius during these times as to how are they handling things.
• Whatever you do, never stop being yourself. Remember Saturn in Aquarius is testing us all: How brave are you to keep being yourself in spite of all the limitations I shall place upon you? Commit again and again to what fires you up but at the same time, don’t be afraid to change your mind and say ‘I have outgrown this‘…whatever this might be (people, places or activities you used to love).
• Laugh at life’s ridiculous heaviness during these times of transition. Yes, there are riots; yes, there is economic uncertainly; yes, there are people dying during this pandemic and the health services are in shambles – these are all heavy, serious, dramatic aspects of life. But these things have always been around us. Death and destruction is nothing new to the human race; if anything, we became better at rescuing each other and overcoming conflicts to some extent. People have always have lived and died; some always have had fun and orgasms, as others were undergoing famine and trauma. Life is a big creative mess where dharma and kharma are being perpetrated endlessly. Your good luck is another person’s bad luck (like losing and finding money unexpectedly on the street or discovering a lost engagement ring on a bathroom floor).

The best thing to do is to flow with this energy and don’t push your will-power against it. If you do, it will crush you my dear, and we need your brave heart by our sides. I hope this helped and brought some light and some clarity. Fear not, if this period is difficult, just keep in mind it is only temporary – this too shall pass 😉

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

“Control freaks don’t get laid”, the words of my friend reverberated through our conversation about romance and the hardships of findings true love. The memory of this nugget of street-wisdom popped up recently as I was reflecting on the process of allowing things to happen without controlling the flow in anyway. This is difficult to do, if you have been betrayed several times in your life by your ‘nearest and dearest’. To heal this aspect in my life, I am using astrology and I chose to focus in this post on potentially the most important and yet elusive position in a chart, Neptune. My natal Sun and Mercury in Pisces are the astrological epitomes of ‘going with the flow’, yet weirdly when life gets tough I tend to act like a Virgo to ‘save myself’. Well this is because Pisces is placed at the opposite of the astrological axis it shares with Virgo – this flexible Earth sign which governs the rational mind and who can manifest practical things through hard-work and service to others. So Pisceans can act more like Virgos, and viceversa, Virgos can act a lot like Pisceans, due to this energetic opposition. I explain this strange occurence in the video below :

The trick with oppositions is to understand that both energies co-exist within yourself, and most importantly, you always have free-will to shift flexibly between various forms of energy.

We all have Neptune in our charts, and since 2012 up until 2025, when Neptune began its transit through its own sign of Pisces, this exalted energy flooded the collective unconscious with Neptunian themes: the waters of our hearts (our emotions); our co-dependencies and deep enmeshments to unavailable romantic partners or family members; where is the source of our creativity and inspiration; how to balance our work and sleep/rest patterns; and ultimately our connection to Spirit and its transcendence.

It is known that the hardest thing to do is to write about yourself, or in this case your own astrological placements, since the awareness we can muster up for others, gets blurred as soon as we turn the analytical spotlight inwards. Neptunian energy is not necessarily about going with the flow in life in order to eventually get laid as my friend so bluntly put it, but it is about enhanced sensitivity to the experience of being alive and having a human experience. It is about allowing things totake their natural course and trusting that what you want so badly will become yours, in perfect and divine timing. Neptune and Pisces energy is about having the patience of a saint as you undergo a lot of isolation and emotional turmoil in the meantime; it is not surprising that Pisces is a sign associated with both ‘Christ consciousness’ and ‘victim mentality’, and it includes a lot of martyrs under its natal umbrella. Being Neptunian is notoriously difficult and also misunderstood, due to an extreme form of sensitivity to embodying the human condition, that is powerfullu conveyed in this line from Nirvana’s song ‘Heart-shaped box’:

Cut myself on angel hair and baby’s breath

Kurt Cobain, the author, was a Pisces Sun himself. So while it is easier for me to explain how Saturn, Venus or Mars might play out in someone’s birthchart, I find my own ruling planet, Neptune, to always elude me. This energy is indeed meant to be an elusive one, since Neptune rules the deepest element, Water, and it is a flexible modality. The ruler of Pisces, the Blue Giant on the outskirts of our solar system remains the hardest to understand with the logical mind. Neptune’s energy is best felt.

In more ‘reasonable’ terms, the energy of this planet is associated with themes of psychological engulfment, bigger-than-life transcendental themes such as a higher connection to Spirit, Divine inspiration and creativity, forgiveness and redemption, and where our soul travels after we die. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac, in the Soul’s journey of becoming as it travels through the astrological wheel of the zodiac. As the human Soul moves through the initial 11 signs, it struggles to learn and to acquire an Ego. After all those experiences, which began with Aries and reach their individualising zenith in Aquarius, the Soul reaches the 12th house and it actually begins to dissolve everything it has learned about itself, thereby surrendering to a force higher than itself. While this might seem scary and pointless, keep in mind what a relief it is to no longer have to be tightly in control of your destiny. Also, what we let go of has a tendency to come back to us, and in this way we truly master it.

Neptune teaches us that stagnation creates nightmares so it is better to unleash the human Spirit from the confines of the Ego at times, realising that if you can dream something, you can do it and when it is not manifesting, you need only to let it go and it will spring back to you (if indeed it is meant to stay in your life). This is the flow of Neptunian energy: holding on and then letting go, ebbing and flowing, knowing and then surrendering the knowledge, loving and then letting things be, gathering and then sharing it all. Just like the back-and-forth movements of the sea, like the gentle rocking movements of a baby’s craddle, like the in-and-out dynamics of sex, and the way in which we float in our most incipient form in the amniotic liquid of our mothers’ wombs. Neptune also describes the immovability of the bed-ridden and sick, those that live secluded from the eyes of society, as they undergo treatment.

It is easy to comprehend how this kind of energy is constantly misunderstood in what continues to remain a mostly pragmatic and material-bound world. We acquire and want to hold on, we love and possess, we have an Ego and want to express it, and letting go and letting Spirit take-over is most often understood as a defeat or as a loss. We want to win at all costs, and prove ourselves to be superior in the capitalist competition, so that we earn all resources and all acquire all of life’s pleasures. The irony of this energy, is that in very subtle ways and by letting go of the struggle, of the fight and of winning, Neptunians always end up winning somehow. This is because, when we dissolve the Ego, we have nothing left but our true Self, which is made of love and protected by the light of Spirit. As we show the world our real selves, and we allow ourselves to vulnerably open up and live from the heart, thereby coming back to who we are at our deepest core, the world wants us and rewards us for this courage. We realise that we were always connected to something larger than what we can know through our limited senses, and we experience bliss and satisfaction, thereby being able to manifest anything. As a Neptunian, you are a much-needed and necessary dreamer, a shaman of collective healing through the gifts of imagination.

Scientists uncovered that due to extreme atmospheric pressure and harsh weather conditions, on Uranus and Neptune, it constantly rains with diamonds. When I first encountered this fact, I thought to myself “How fitting!” since Neptunians are usually attracted to all that glitters and are able to bring a lot of glamorous fantasies in the lives of others, especially those who love them. Neptune is considered by astrologers to be the planet of illusion, dreams and creativity, and guards the veil that separates our real tangible reality and the limits of our known universe, from the vast unknown which lies beyond (Neptune is the last ‘planet’ in our solar system, since Pluto was demoted from this ‘position’).

Neptunians are people who have considerable planets in Pisces or prominent Neptune’s in their charts, and are thought to have similar characteristics as the characteristics of the planet: they are impulsive and passionate, yet dreamy, soulful people, who find using words quite difficult and prefer to express their feelings in images, by making music or by communicating their feelings through staring into someone else’s eyes. Neptunians are in essence messy and artistic people. They prefer quiet to loud bustling environments, they need sleep to regenerate, are endearing in their appearance and can seem much too vulnerable for this world. They might also escape reality, through engaging with computer-games, going on retreats, needing time alone to work on their projects, or by using drugs and alcohol to change their state of consciousness; their defining characteristic is that they do not tolerate too much reality so they prefer to escape, either in the higher energy of this escape (study, research, creativity, spiritual pursuits, creating their own family) or the lower energy of escapism (alcohol, drugs, lewd sexuality, dissappearing from people’s lives, chasing danger). Neptunians need to create something or to live for a cause greater than themselves, and if they cannot do so they tend to self-destructively wither away, depriving the world of their otherwordly talent and intuitive gifts.

In this period of study and rest, I’ve been deepening my understanding of Neptune by reading Liz Greene’s book ‘The astrological Neptune and the Quest for Redemption’. This fantastic resource aptly describes Neptunian energy:

Over and over again I have heard people completely unfamiliar with astrology describe their feelings and perceptions at such critical times with images such as drowning, flooding, drifting, dissolving, swamped, inundated, and flowing with the current (…) Their dreams at these junctures also reflect the domain of water: tidal waves, sinking ships, leaking pipes and overflowing toilets, flooded houses and torrential rain. Human beings describe with great precision, although usually unconsciously, the archetypal background of any important life experience. Neptune’s vocabulary is that of water. And water, in the myths of every culture in every epoch, symbolises the primal substance, the source of all creation (…)

From ancient times, it was believed that from water all life springs forth. We do live on a planet that is mostly comprised of water and our bodies are over 70% consisting of water, so it is not surprising that this knowledge was vehemently present in the consciousness of our ancestors. The cultural and spiritual image of the Fish, was from the beginning a highly dual one: the fish is a gift of the sea that can nourish us, but also a monster that can devour us. Ancient myths such as those of sea-mother Tiamat which can also become the sea monster Leviathan, are infused with this dual consciousness. Such stories ended up depicting the dual nature of Pisces as a creature that is pulled into two opposing directions (also metaphorically representing the force of Spirit swimming to the heights of human nature or down to its lowest bodily expressions, the eternal conflict between mind and heart etc.). More pragmatically, this energy exists in our everyday lives according to Liz Green in the following ways:

The way in which we relax into a warm bath at the end of a tiring day reveals more about the healing and nourishing power of water than the intellect can ever apprehend – how water slides deliciously over the skin, how it soothes aching muscles, how it offers the body the seductive sensation of floating without effort (…) We have all begun life in the waters of the womb, and milk is our first food. (…) Intelligent dentists keep tanks of tropical fish in their waiting rooms , because somehow the terror of the anaesthetic and the penetrating drill, for adults as well as children , is mitigated by the hypnotic rhythm of peaceful aquatic existence.

Here is the foundational myth of the goddess Tiamat, the sea-mother who creates and destroys, described in a nutshell:

In addition to this, I also enjoy how there are links established between Neptunian lore and the Moon (the lunar energy which guides my spiritual life and work), beautifully represented in the myth of the the Bakunawa:

Tiamat and Bakunawa underline the themes of ‘devouring love’ another common Neptunian concern  related to the loss of the self due to being emotionally enmeshed in another (and in most Neptunian birthcharts, there is a co-dependent link to a ‘devouring’ mother that wants to ultimately break free from her child).

You might wonder at this point ‘Ok, Lexi but how do all these symbols apply to my own life?’. Well if you are a Neptunian yourself (Pisces Ascendant, Neptune conjunct Ascendant, Pisces Moon, Pisces Sun, stellium of personal planets in Pisces or conjunct Neptune) then here are some small tips on how to work with this energy and not allow it to ‘pull you under’ pychologically:

• Create a sacred space in your home or at work, where there are no distractions, to just listen to your intuition.
• Spiritualize your life – study deities and find one that matches with the vibration of your heart. Worship Spirit and not romantic partners, who are ultimately fallible because they are imperfectly human 🙂
• Reflect on your expectations regarding love and romance – are they realistic or too high-minded? (to protect yourself from harsh disappointments).
• Allow others to learn your value, by not always being available to them or saving them – constantly tending to people can infantilize them, so remove yourself from a situation when it drains you of energy to the point you cannot function, except when helped by external ‘crutches’ (self-soothers or literal medical help).
• Remember that fish can swim high and can swim low; they swim up against a stream and also down with it. By using this metaphor, if you feel stuck in a pattern, understand that it is not the end of the line, but just a cycle which you can change. Move this stagnant energy by doing something different than what you did so far. Air signs are inspirational to you since together you create ‘sparkling’ water 🙂
• Carve out time (preferably every day) to rest, dream, let your mind wander and be alone with your feelings, in order to process them.
• Trust your visions and intuitive hits, and always work towards materializing them (yes, no matter how crazy they seem – you are on to something special).
• Learn to ignore negativity and swim past toxic situations or relations. Don’t be afraid to simply walk away from disrespect. Allow that amazing intuition you naturally dispose of, to feel your way through people’s intentions and motivations. The confusing smoke screen you can create around you at times, is best used to protect yourself from those who want to abuse you or trick you.
• Trust that what is yours will flow to you. You do this by nurturing your connection to the Divine (praying, meditating, yoga).
• Your imagination is literally boundaryless, so take time to bring your ideas into a tangible form. Don’t worry about the details, just create the content – and get a Virgo friend to help you out with finnessing the final product 🙂

Cinematic Neptune & the Visual Pleasure of Escapism

During my Neptunian-themed study time, I intuitively gravitated towards a movie called ‘Enter the void’ . So I watched it for the first time and I was suprised at how much I actually enjoyed it – the free-flowing movements of the camera and the intimate and dazy colours of the cinematography (depicted a world which felt like a protective bubble) made it easier to digest somehow the difficult themes of the movie which touched upon drug-addiction, death, trauma, prostitution, abortion, loss, abandonment. It made me think so much as I was watching it, that this is exactly what a Neptune transit over Pluto feels like: The God of Illusion meeting the God of Death and Transformation.

Another movie I watched this week was Terrence Malick’s ‘To the Wonder’ (2012) which also touched upon Neptunian themes, although this one felt more like Neptune’s transit over Venus 🙂 Again the camera movements where free-flowing, and I think that Malick’s intention was to capture the motion of the human spirit (he is a Sagittarius Sun after all, so he is more concerned with meaning and the human in relation to the surrounding space, than with other more crass material concerns like Noe was, who is a Capricorn Sun). It also felt that women in this movie, were acting like fairies and I couldn’t help but chuckle at some scenes. But the overarching message and what I took from the movie was how do you deal with the experience of having it all and then remaining with nothing because you couldn’t choose. Or with feeling true love but not being able to ground it. Loving someone leads to a deep disappointed if you begin to build a life together solely on passion and disregard the principle of reality. We are shown how co-dependency and surrendering yourself to another human’s will, rather than to Divine will, can lead love to its ultimate demise.

This movie is also interesting, since it deals not only with the slow dissolution of romantic love and man’s inability to choose between two gorgeous women, but it also tackles a priest’s incapacity to feel love despite following his spiritual ‘calling’.

Overall, it seemed to me that the movie shows how if romantic love is not anchored in spirituality, it will dissolve; and that if spiritual love is not also anchored in the physical and pleasurable experiences, it ends up lacking… well ‘body’, and it becomes empty and inauthentic. I found those sequences when the priest travels through poor neighbourhoods, trying to bring solace to people from various walks of life, the most touching parts of the movie, even if his narrative thread was left mysteriously unresolved. I must say that the love story in itself triggered some wounds within me, because I too fell in love with a man who could not choose me, in spite of marrying me. I too was giving love and then felt resentful because I was unwanted.

Other examples of how this energy flows and influences a person, is represented by two women born under a Pisces Sun who ended up becoming famous actresses. People with Neptune on the Sun, Venus or Ascendant film very well in that they are beautifully photogenic, and can easily captivate audiences and make them dream and swoon. Keep in mind that Marylin Monroe, although a Gemini Sun, had Neptune in Leo right on her Ascendant which is why she was so magically magnetic. Neptune also veiled the public and her glamorous on-screen life, from the sordid reality of her personal life.

Analyzing Rachel Weisz’s chart I discovered that she is a quadruple Pisces having Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus in the same sign (and all accentuated by her North Node also in Pisces). Moreover, she also has Mercury square Neptune in Sagittarius, so she is ultra-Neptunian. In addition, Rachel’s co-national, English actress Emily Blunt has less planets than Rachel in Pisces (just Sun and Mars) but a couple of squares to Venus and Mars from Neptune, which make her also highly Neptunian. Both of them travelled far away from home and established long-term relationships to foreign men (in Rachel’s case her first partner, Darren Aronofsky, and in Emily’s case her current husband, ). Travelling far away, working in an area of life governed by illusions (the cinema & film), dealing with powerful emotional waves, are all Neptunian aspects.

Exceptionally, both actresses also have the same Ascendant in Cancer, and to my mind are very good examples of how Neptunian energy can be used in high-vibing, and creative self-affirming ways: to empathise with the emotional experiences of others and then be able to use your chameleonic nature to render it on screen for the visual pleasure of others.

If you are Neptunian yourself, this post was a love letter to you, to help inspire you to not harm yourself because you feel misunderstood in a cold and cruel world, but to accept and understand that you are meant to be ultra-sensitivie, idealistic and weird in order to help us all ascend and transform. By reconciling the innder duality within you, you spark a creative fusion, that once unleashed in the world is like nothing anyone has even seen before. I leave you with Grimes and her bizarre and mesmerising music – she is a Pisces Sun and Scorpio Ascendant Canadian artist, who basically created a new music genre by following the path of her instinctual creative energy:

With universal love,

Lexi ❤ (a fellow Neptunian)

*** This blogpost might trigger some of you, so read only if you are interested in heavy Pluto-based subjects or feel free to skip to the II Part where I discuss body work. I share a lot of my personal experiences, so as you read, please keep in mind I am a human being deciding to be vulnerable in her writing and not a robot. As a lifepath 3, I feel the reponsibility to write about this since it might heal some of you out there and might make you feel less alone – that is my hope ***

Part I – Persephone dynamics

The North Node in Gemini just crossed the boundary of my 8th house, so this post was meant to be. A lot of unconscious energy is resurfacing at the moment in my life, asking to be interpreted and integrated. So as I am resting from providing healing services to others, I was very drawn to a particular book, and that is Donna Cunningham’s sobering and deeply meaningful book ‘Healing Pluto Problems’. After spending a week-long reading it, I ended up seeing my own Pluto placement in a slightly different light. I have a strong Pluto in my natal chart – it is in Scorpio (so exalted, since Pluto rules the sign of Scorpio), it is retrograde (so concentrated and inwardly addressed), it is at an early degree (the 9th) and it is opposite my Mars, the planet that rules action, willpower and sex.

Living with Donna’s words in my mind this past week, made issues from the past spring back into my life almost like a rush of blood to the head. I thought I had some things resolved, but the current Saturn transit over my Immun Coeli (the root of our natal charts, that place of deep emotions and ancestral baggage), brings up some really deep aspects, colouring my present awareness in a completely new light. My Pluto and Mars are placed in the fixed and passionate energies of the Scorpio-Taurus axis. Having Pluto in Scorpio doesn’t make me special – this is a marker of all members of my generation born between 6th November 1983 and 11th November 1995.

However, having my own Mars in Taurus (usually considered a detriment placement of Mars) does highlight matters regarding femininity and masculinity and how I integrate these forces into my own sense of self. I was born under the influence of this opposition, and it certainly dominates other aspects in my chart since my Pluto is so (shudder) visible! (being in the 1st house). This energy brings up strong Pluto-Venus/Persephone issues as ‘the goddess of love is dragged into the underworld of Hades’, and the need to purge and balance ego aspects is expressed in a very obvious image of a Wounded Anima. Donna’s book helped me digg deeper into my complicated and emotionally draining relationship which I share with my father ( a Solar Plutonic himself, with a bright Leo Ascendant hidding a lot of explosive and domineering ways of relating due to his Venus conjunct Pluto in Virgo placements, and which are opposite my Pisces Sun). My father is a selfish man (and if he were to read these words, he would strongly contend any criticism coming his way) and I fought all my love for his love, to be seen, heard, loved and appreciated. This didn’t happen. Even after I published a book about fathers and love and dedicated it to my family. I find my personal Pluto story resonating heavily with this beautiful tarot reading:

But let’s talk a bit more about Mister Pluto and how he plays out when he stations for a lifetime in your first house. Keep in mind this is my personal perspective, and it is the wisdom I could extract from this painful position in my life, so far. As I mentioned, my Pluto is at a powerful degree of completion (the 9th degree). It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that the way in which I have to cleanse my karma in this lifetime is primarily through my body. The first house represents the body and everything that makes it whole – movement, energy, health, expression. It is about the material body, the physicality of your reincarnated soul, but also about your own psychological perception of your body (seomtimes these can be harmonized, and other times these can clash and create inner conflicts).

To top it up, I also have another astrological marker of doom-and-gloom, a Moon conjunct Saturn and Uranus. I wrote about this placement in the very first post on this blog. What these combined astrological influences mean, is that growing up did not feel ‘sweet, cuddly and Disney-like’ to me. To contextualise, I was born during Romania’s bloody transition from communism to capitalism, in a climate were resources such as warm water, electricity and having enough food to eat were depleted. There was anger, frustration, hunger, and a general, oppressive air of secrecy in the society and family group into which I was born. I couldn’t even drink my mother’s milk due to the fact that latching to my mother’s breast was not successfully completed. I was also born with a cold (perhaps due to improper nourishment or the side-effects of the Cernobal radiation from 1986).

Typical to a Plutonic’s life, the first thing I felt after my birth, was a shot of penicilin into my skull (they administer these to the baby’s brain because the cranial tissue at birth is not completely solidified and other parts of the body are not yet well-developped, so the serum travels faster into the bloodstream). Talk about a Plutonic reincarnation, From day one that tired motto ‘What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger’ became a felt-reality for me, and almost sealed me off energetically.

The first problem was that I had a lot of powerful creative energy to express with a Sagitarrius Moon and a lot of squares in my chart (Venus square Mars, Mercury trine Pluto, Moon square Mercury – squares represent the energetic urgency of things needing to manifest in reality, and also re-affirming the 90 degrees and the 999 completion pattern in my chart). Nonetheless, and true to every ‘Phoenix’ moment I have undergone since then – I survived. And in this cold, unwelcoming and controlling environment, I thrived and grew to be a smiling, bright and beaming little kid with a lot of energy to spend. As I grew up, I transformed from the initial ‘sickly and vulnerable baby’ to a ‘magnetic preschooler’. Being as well the first child in an extended family group, relatives flocked to see me, touch me and offer gifts to me. But what they offered always came with a condition, and their subconscious hidden agendas, uncompleted healing and pent-up desires, literally played out over my body (grabbing me, holding me, kissing me, and slapping me). I became the boon of contention and the playground of envious comments and actions in my family, and I was only 4 years old..

An additional fact which became ‘a problem’ was that I was born female in a strongly traditional society, rife with repression and religious superstition – this meant that my energy was considered too masculine and had to be constantly managed and restrained to fit into the traditional ‘obedient and sweet girl mould’. Frequent power struggles ensued with my family members regarding control over my clothes, brushing my hair, cleaning my body, how I spoke etc. I arm-wrestled my way into this lack of self-acceptance at the level of consciousness I had (which was primal at that stage in my life). So I started bitting, swearing and kicking (opposition to Mars) and was made to feel like I was arrogant and evil for defending my physical integrity. Inevitably, these behaviours had negative outcomes: I was punished and feared that mom and dad wouldn’t love me. And indeed, catching on to the fact that I responded with fear to any form of emotional detachment, my parents used ’emotional pull-outs’ to make me obey them. This learned pattern created when I was a toddler, continues to unconsciously sabotage my personal relationships to deeply painful outcomes for both parties. However, I am committed to working through it, and sharing this post is part of this difficult inner work.

It might make some of your think ‘she’s making excuses for herself’, but it is important to remind that Plutonic energy does play out in this way – it is extreme and intense and – up until a certain age when consciousness is developed – this energy has nothing to do with the bearer of the burdens, since he or she is simply the Mirror/ The Seat of Projections/The Black Sheep of the group. As a Plutonic you need to come to terms that you are karmically placed into some twisted, intimate, power dynamics because you are meant to purge and heal them. It is less to do with the person you are, and more to do with your energy you hold, and also it has everything to do with the unconscious dynamics between the group of people that the baby is born into. Unfortunately, my case is just one of many Plutonics, and it is my hope that in writing this, I can help some of you release some of those pent-up feelings, gradually and slowly to protect your first from harming yourself more than anything else. Just keep in mind that you matter, and you will find love and be loved for who you really are.

The ultimate damage that a Plutonic suffers, is when you introject all that external pain, and turn it onto yourself. This brings up self-harm, self-hatred, dogmatic intolerance, sado-masochism, sex and alcohold or drug addictions (depending on where your Plut is placed in your chart and whether Neptune or Saturn or Mars are influencing it). You literally begin a self-destruction process, instead of continuing to resist the hatred and push back with your emotional power. Self-love is the only way forward, but my god is it a struggle to remain loving and positive when you’ve experienced from a small age all the vitriol of human nature. That’s why I have compassion for Scorpio energy, because it’s intimately familiar and I know personally what can hide behind a charming and sexy facade.

With this Pluto placement in the first, I can remember feeling within my bones ever since I was small, a crippling fear – The Grim Reaper, or the Black Hooded Man was always my companion. Fear was actually the defining emotion of my years of growing up. I actually enjoy getting older mostly because to me, this is a slow process of emerging from darkness and powerlesness into a solar independence, into nourishing awareness and powerful inner growth. However, I continue to be dominated by my body and the way I look since it is unavoidable that this energy plays out in my life – people stare and have stared at me since I was born. And unfortantely, the only man’s whose loving attention I craved, is not able to see me from his heart. This meant I that there is a pattern in my life of falling for emotionally unavailable men, because this is the Divine Masculine image I introjected from a young age (a man who is charming but selfish, who is caught up in codependent dynamics with another woman, my mom and cannot give himself fully to me, to understand me and value me).

Inevitably, I had problems with men I was intimate with, because of this effect but also due to jealousy (my own and the one my presence created around me). I noticed that with Pluto in the first (coated over by my Libra Ascendant), only by entering a room and the mood is somehow set. People either ignore me completely (in my hiding days) or are drawn to me like moths to a flame (in my power days). Some people have always felt the compulsion to touch me, even if they don’t know me. Some find it almost uncontralable that they are pulled towards my body and then they end up resenting it. There is a power play here between people being magnetically drawn to my body and also not being able to control what they want to do to my body (mostly stemming from their own unhealed wounds).

Repeated episodes of random violence, hurt, bruises, scars and inappropirate groping, touching and pointing fingers at me happened to my throughout life. This type of relational dynamics sends me thinking of Marina Abramovic’s intense and boundary-pushing art. Marina is a Sagittarius Sun, so she has the faith and the bravery to pull these performance pieces. In performance piece she puts her naked and still body to any onlooker to do whatever they please to her; she is creating vulnerability and thereby bringing out to the surface the collective Shadow of human nature and how it treats vulnerability. I am also reminded of this Madonna song (another Pluto in the first house bae) :

Pain was omnipresent in my life with this Pluto placement, and I was constantly challenged to overcome it and thrive through it. From frequent medical injections, to controlling physical treatments, to uncomfortable clothing and study benches at school, to feet full of blisters due to awful shoes all the way to frequent assaults in public places. But other energies in my chart such as my Pisces Sun helped me react philosophically to physical pain, and even muster up forgiveness. In the end, it was the introjected emotional pain which proved to be the most damaging, or what Eckhardt Tolle calls ‘the pain body’. As a baby my body was used as ‘a protective shield’ sometimes while other times it was a doctor’s playground, because I was made to believe I was sick early on from mysterious diseases. This ‘disease’ was simply the way in which the world reacted to my Plutonic body, and it was part of the karmic debt that I had to pay forward in this lifetime and work through (Saturn in my second astrological house – normally this is considered the house of money and self-sufficient finances, but since it is ruled by Taurus, it is as well about how the body theme of the first house, sustains itself)

For those of you who share this aspect and might resonate, it’s important to understand that heavy karma plays out with this aspect, and this karma is sexual and masculine if it forms a tight aspects to your Mars. In my case, sexual aspects where always linked to how people related to me. For example, I received emotional detachment and physical punishments from women and a lot of unwanted physical attention from men throughout my life (who most of the time could not help having a physiological ‘heating up’ reaction when they were near me). Plutonic energy is the combustible heat of the atom bomb, so imagine how this feels when your body and the first impression you make on people is that similar to a nuclear diffusion.

It makes you end up fearing people and retreating within yourself, thereby becoming a sealed off, hermetically locked-in Plutonic – you take the pain the world frequently regurgitated upon you and you retreat from society to either: a) self-destruct and self-harm by replaying the hurt which has now infiltrated the Plutonic’s mind or b) rest, heal and Phoenix-ize by pouring massive amounts of love into that hurt and forgiving. It’s your lesson in this lifetime to self-heal and self-love and then when you reach a powerful inner completion and integration, to share this journey with others. I see each beautiful Phoenix moment, when the Scorpio negativity and seclusion is purged and it is transmuted into the idealistic strength of the Eagle, as this card in tarot, the Ace of Cups – the overflowing cup, the holy waters of Spirit:

For Plutonics, love and wealth are inside jobs. You will encounter people who love intensity and mystery and who cannot help but fall in love with you, and people who still need to overcome their shadow and who cannot help but hate you, since their very presence reminds these people of the work they need to do on themselves. Plutonics remind us that nothing is just granted to you, it is earned. This is why Capricorns and Scorpios make such good companions, because these are two of the astrological signs that undergo the most hardships in life and must overcome them, in order to somehow thrive.

As a 1st house Plutonic, in my twenties I received in equal amounts glorious declarations of love and marriage proposals, as much as I received demeaning words and random criticism. It was confusing. Resentment for how I look travelled hand-in-hand with an adoration for how I looked. There wasn’t an in-between 🙂 And this taught me to rely only my own vision of myself – I set my own self-worth bar (I wanted to be financially stable, creative and curvy yet glowing with health). I desgined myself goals for myself to achieve and channel that Plutonic energy into competing only with myself. As I achieved each task I set, my confidence grew from the inside out and not the other way around.

With this placement I experienced everything from men touching themselves next to me as I was travelling in the subway, to assslaps from onlookers when I was walking the corridors of institutional buildings, to men literally stopping by in the street and literally running back to talk to me in various countries in the world, not just at home (“You look familiar!”, “Do you have a boyfriend”, “I just want to buy you drink” etc. – and I’m sharing here only the ‘polite’ things that were communicated to me in these spontaneous exchanges). Some might read these words and think ‘Wow, lucky girl, wish that would happen to me!’ but consider the fear. For a girl growing up with these things constantly happening to her on her way to school, the market, a friend’s house, and then later on for work conferences in foregin cities, these moments felt mortifying. At any time, from any place, as I was walking in public, minding my own business, danger could spring up. I could be demeaned, assaulted, raped, kidnapped and killed. It took following my intuition to survive and assess the pressure and intensity of social situations and their potential for escalating.

So for a very long time, I learned to hide my femininity because it was dangerous to reveal it. I also learned to feel intense emotions but hide these, since emotional spontaneity represented danger – you can imagine how not revealing my emotions, impacted my capacity to establish heart-based intimacy. In addition, as a teenager, I wore clothes that hid my body, almost monk-like skirts and heavy materials – also because the constate fright I felt, made my body very cold which in turned reinforced the idea I was sick with something and I needed medical attention – so the being-poked-and-gropped-medical-examining cycle continued, under the controling and watchful gaze of my mother who thought she was doing the right thing to protect me. For a very long time, I negated my body, I moved in the world with a submissive posture, carrying the hurt visibly in my tissues. In turn my submissive demeanous attracted the attention of people with twisted power complexed. Here I want to take a breather. Breathing in and out helps with the outpouring of memories, it cleanses them of the hurt and helps me extract the lessons.

Happilly, I learned a lot about myself as time passed. I learned to constantly question what was happening to me. I never took things as granted or at face value. As I travelled and worked at become financially independent, I also understood my body’s power to create pleasure, to withstand a lot of physical pain and yet not let it crush my spirit. No matter how demeaning and critical and painful the outward reality was, within me I knew who I was and how I felt, I knew the mountain of strength residing within, I felt the deep warmth and energy that I kept locked in, for fear that others couldn’t handle it. I learned as well that self-harm is not the way to put my life back on track and that toxic self-soothing (mostly through consuming alcohol, another common pattern of handling emotions in my family), was also not a great way to deal with feeling powerless. Mostly because, the muscular atrophy, the dehydrated skin, the irritability of prolonged alcohol intake, are just not worth it, since this behaviour keeps a Plutonic in a place of powerlessness.

So what helped? Aside from realizing my own inner strenght and that I can turn pain into pleasure and negative criticism into positivity, a deep connection to Spirit set me on the right track every time. Knowing that I can put my trust in something higher than other people. Also, exploring regeneration through natural elements: sunlight and walking barefoot on the grass, sports (especially yoga and swimming), reading (dear God! 🙂 is reading powerful for Plutonics to help them heal), learning to rest and take things slowly and methodically (eat the elephant step-by-step, not in a mouthful 🙂 In addition, a daily routine helped since I started working with the energy of Jupiter’s placement in my chart (in the 6th house). Working with and understanding your Jupiter will certainly empower you as a Plutonic, if you need help with staying positive. Also check where your Saturn is. Working with these additional planetary energies, I understood that in order to heal my body and accept its power I had to physically wake-up my muscle memory and heal it in my a daily routine. The polarity of Scorpio is the wellbeing loving and emotionally stable energy of Taurus, and indeed persevering at bodily work throughout the years, but especially during my Saturn Return (age 28-30) also systematically changed my poverty mindset into one of prosperity and abundance. I don’t work out to look good and develop protective muscles, but to heal and to remain positive.

Finally, it is also helped me understand that the brutal ways in which other people relate to vulnerability and feminine beauty do not have to be my own Becoming aware of yourself in all aspects and disentangling yourself for the unconscious power dynamics of your ‘loved ones’, is essential if you want to fulfill your Plutonic rebirth and improve your life. For example, if I loved my gracefulness, my natural subtle way of moving and my soft voice, I had to realize first that I have these qualities, and then to own them and stand in my power, since the opinions of others was always controlling and thereby unreliable. The moment I realised this, was the moment I could allow self-love and light to crack in and transform all the darkness I internalized into my psyche into healing warmth. I am now lucky enough to use my body, my face and presence to convey healing messages to my growing crew ❤ And only for this present fact, it was a trip worth enduring and I hope it justifies the length of this post 🙂 ***

Part II – The Garden of the Body

To heal my Plutonic problems you can look at your astrological counterpart, the Cosmis Bull, Taurus. Taurus represents fixed Earth energy, the stable foundation from which new seeds can grow. Sport connected me to my body and to the ground again. So for the past 4 years, I’ve been practicing yoga at least once a week (sometimes daily). My current work – reading tarot and interpreting astrological birthcharts to heal and inspire others – requires me to engage in this spiritually enhancing bodily work. So before any reading, I do yoga and take a shower to cleanse and allign.

I love Yoga with Adrienne, which was suggested to me by a Taurus friend #nocoincidences. Adrienne, with her Texan soft strength, was the one that really got me into loving this practice, even if I had tried classes before at a local Scottish gym. She peppers her videos with sayins that stay with me throughout the day ‘slow and controlled release’ or ‘be gentle with yourself’ or ‘make space and allow yourself to explore’. These small quotes are soul-patchers to my Pluto energy. After a workout in the privacy of my home, I sometimes cry, I feel relieved, I get angry, and I release fear from my muscles and through my sweat. No matter what emotional outpouring occurs, the mat and the ground support me – it is always there to fall back upon.

There is some sort of alchemical change happening during Yoga: my breathing, my muscles, my mind and my emotions resist fighting each other, and resolve to reconnect. It’s a beautiful thing and no matter how hard it actually is to get on the mat, I always feel happy and greateful at the end of each yoga session. I highly suggest trying yoga if you haven’t so far, and being gentle with yourself at the beginning – you will feel a bit like a mashed potato when you start off, but as you keep showing up on the mat and you keep trying, I promise you’ll learn so much about what you are made of and you will find that you can expand in ways you haven’t dreamt before. The key is the breath or prana, the seat of our life force. Yoga is especially good for your during those days when you really can’t be arsed, paradoxically that’s exacty when you need it the most.

In addition to yoga, I am also discovering in this period several alternative and therapeutical body works. The first one of them is called Rolfing, a method created by the biochemist Dr. Ida P. Rolf which entails realligning tissues and muscles in the body to treat clients from scoliosis and other bodily disorders that keep muscular pain trapped-in. This is not something I can practice on my own, so I look forward to expand my trust and seek professional body work help soon.

Another method that was brought to my consciousness is the Feldenkrais Method developped by Dr. Israeli Moshé , which to be honest I am still learning a lot about, so I won’t go into details now but I’m including this here in case you might feel drawn to explore this further. I’ve also heard that Pilates helps especially to elongate muscles, but since I haven’t tried it I’ll refrain from commenting on it. Of course, there are also botanical and plant-based remedies, again which work with another Taurean-ruled area of life, the senses. There are the Bach flower remedies and the California Flower Remedies, crystals and gemstones therapy, chakra tune-up and self-love reprogramming meditations , working with essential oils , burning incense and praying, or the classical ‘talking cure’ (my favourite therapeutical approach is Carl Rogers’ person-centered therapy). These are all sense-based, practical things you can use to heal your pain-body, and bring light into those emotional wounds.

And finally, I can’t believe I am typing these words, but I recently saw an important documentary about how walking barefoot on the earth (grass, sand, rocks etc.) is healing for the body. Yes, a truth that was self-evident to our village-dwelling ancestors had to be rediscovered by science in the 21st century 🙂 What strange times we are living…they do speak of the current re-awakening to how deeply we are connected to the Earth and how by harming it, we are only harming ourselves. We live in symbiosis with the Earth, we don’t own it.

This focus on the body and learning a lot about the earth’s healing effects on the body is alligned with the current transit of Uranus (the planet which governs knowledge, awareness and spontanoues illumination) through the sign of Taurus (the fixed Earth sign, governed by Venus). This planetary transit started on the 15th of May 2018 and lasts until 26th April 2026.

Uranus in Taurus is all about learning new ways in which we can live more harmoniously on Mama Earth, and to some extent it promotes a healing through the senses approach to any Plutonic problems. Taurus is the opposite sing on the astrological wheel, the sign of robust living, healthy and simple pleasures, amassing wealth and preserving resources. Taurus reminds us that it is equally important how we live and not just to live. Mindfulness (with the accompanying Alexander Technique) is a very Taurean practice, in that it helps heal the body of toxic emotional residue by reminding us to focus on the real, the material, the tangible in front of us. In this model, you can easily silence that tough inner critic, that blames you for the abuse you endured in your life, if you put your hand on the table in front of you and feel it’s material stability, it’s gravitationally-bound security, or if you unlearn a habitual pattern through using your senses. Another example is that you might have developped a protective resting position such as sleeping in a fetal position, because it makes you feel psychologically safe, but in time this position might lead to back pain and cifosis, so body work can help you shift your awareness and thereby your actions and movements (sleeping relaxed and on your back might become an option).

Bringing the discussion from psychology back to the Earth (and interestingly psychology’s most-known figure is ‘Papa Freud’ – as we used to call him during my undergrad studies – and who was a Taurus Sun conjunct Pluto), it’s useful to underline how everything on Earth, due to the law of gravity is pulled towards its volcanic core. Nothing spells Pluto energy like ‘magma’, and nothing is as rich and as fertile symbol of the Taurus energy like the soil: its matter, minerals, muck and the semi-precious elements that create it. I think this is the best way to describe the Scorpio-Taurus axis. The lava and the soil, the Earth’s material evidence and our Human emotional chaos, which both need each other, just like the current of water irrigates the earth and help it grow things. So is water supported on this planet by the gentle craddling of earth. Wow, too many metaphors, I’ll see myself out now :))

This post poured out of me 🙂 I think you can tell by its length. This usually happens when I feel a deep connection to Spirit, inspiring me to share. If you are a Plutonic, I send you a loving and warm embrace. If you just read this, because you are curious or in love with a Plutonic and wish to help them, I hope this brought some insight and clarity. To be clear, this is a story of rebirth, hope and light. Plutonic problems can be healed and overcome. The Scorpio can be transformed into the Eagle with your conscious intent and commitment to absorb light rather than resent its warmth. Once this healing occurs, a world of possibilities, deep emotional fulfillment and compassionate intimacy opens up. I’ll share more of this journey as I progress through it, but for now I send you my light. You are not alone.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

This post is a little bit late, because I’ve been finding it very hard to replenish my energy lately. The quarantine meant that I lost all the opportunities I had to enjoy Spring and take my usual 1-hour walks exploring my city. It’s not the social distancing that hurts me the most during this period, because I am naturally keeping people at a distance (introvert here) but it is the restrictions imposed on my enjoyment of nature. As my Sagittarius exploratory Moon sighs that there are 4 days left until the quarantine is lifted in my region, I am reminded of the deep connection between our bodies, minds and spirit and Mother Earth and that when this link is severed, everyone suffers. Protecting the Earth and Nature is protecting ourselves. Our abuses of Nature, only show how deep we are in a battle with loving ourselves.

Starting from the pit of fear

Saturn entered Aquarius on the 23rd of March and a global health epidemic forced us to retreat indoors and just tolerate not being able to move freely or to travel, to enjoy sports or meet our friends at the local pub or eat at our local restaurants. Aquarius is the sign opposite Leo, so everything related to what the Lion rules over is currently restricted: stage performances, public gatherings, beauty and self-care management, weddings and celebrations, sports arenas and theatre and love (all that kissing, touching, embracing that forms the energy of the human heart).

So instead of going ‘Leo’ on things 🙂 we are all indoors on the Internet and connecting with the help of our Neptune-in-Aquarius-era gadgets (iPhones, smartphones, laptops and tablets) in the best way we can: from a spectrum of ‘I’m loving this introvert spree and I’m creating and keeping hopeful‘ to the final point on the line ‘Doomsday is coming! I’m stressed out with fear and self-medicating‘. Generally, these are uncertain, fearful and isolating times for us all, as the energy is kept in tension by Uranus’s electric and spontaneous transit through the sign of stability, Taurus.

Imagine the most unstable planet in the most stable, Earth-bound sign. This basically means that we are all indoors watching how the global economy receives shock after shock due to the warped decisions of our global leaders who – temporarily removed from their own power plays (Jupiter conjunct Pluto in Capricorn) – must sharply manage a quick-spreading humanitarian crisis with no clear national borders. In addition, we see how Nature fares better when we slow production down. But is human work and productivity so deeply antagonistic to our responsibility to enjoy and also protect the planet? Must we continue to abuse it in order to thrive? Or can we achieve a balance between self-indulgence and self-restraint, not only by mining or using the resources of the planet, but also making sure we can nurture them and be patient with the natural rhythm of its growth? Saturn in Aquarius is hard at play, ensuring that we keep questioning things and these questions are here to stay on our minds until 2023.

Incoming collective & romantic breath of fresh ‘air’ ?

However, quarantine restrictions in most countries are slowly lifting. France is raising theirs tomorrow (11th May), some US states already have and my country follows suit on the 15th of May. Interestingly, on the 13th of May, Saturn is about to get some amped up help from the harmonious energy of their twin Air-sign counterpart, Gemini. If it already had the blessing of the nodal axis switching gears on the 6th of May (we moved from South Node in Capricorn – North Node in Cancer to South Node in Sagittarius and North Node in Gemini) now Saturn receives some additional support in the act of dismantling our social fabric and rebuilding it. In this context of increased Air energy, Venus the planet of beauty and pleasure will move backwards through the sign it has been shining through since the 4th of April – that is the astrological sign of Duality, Miniature Love and Rebel Thinkers or Gemini.

What this basically means is that the spotlight will be on Geminis for a while now, with both the planet of Love retrograding through their sign but also the infamous North Node – the head of the Dragon or Rahu in vedic astrology – which sucks all the energy in this direction, of quick, mental expenditure. So my dear Geminis, if Pluto in Capricorn has been beating you down for a while now (much like poor Libras, Aries and Leos who unfortunately also square the energy of the Deviled Goat) then you can prepare now for a period of sweet bliss when all eyes will be on you!

It is argued among astrologers whether a Venus retrograde is indeed a benefic energy to have in your natal chart. Some say it enhances love, money and beauty matters because it is more concentrated. Others disagree and think it is a period when beauty, money and love issue become temporarily foregrounded but because they usually break down and need corrections. Overall, the advice says that during a Venus retro you should try not to cut your hair, do your nails or make any surgical enhancements to your body. But try saying this to a massively ungroomed population that is just emerging from quarantine. So by all intents and purposes we will all look rather comically during this time, if self-grooming hasn’t been mastered or out-of-home beauty treatments were necessary.

However, the beauty of Air signs is that they love non-conformism and relying on science to redecorate, enhance or change their bodies. So this playful, experimental and wacky energy will seep into the collective thanks to Saturn’s harmonious influence to all this Gemini shabang, but also because Venus’s transit will square Neptune, the energy who permeates any type of boundary. With this tense aspect, and on a darker note, people should be aware that cosmetic treatments might infect them during this period, so my advice would be to self-groom or to put off any treatments until July or August. I know, it’s a lot of waiting we need to do this year, but it’s better than getting Corona, when all you wanted to do was look your best.

On another note, I think this retrograde period which lasts up until 25th June, will bring back a lot of exes, old romantic flings, and some movement forward with that crush you had before quarantine. People will have love on the brain but they will also have to decide between their many options. Be aware that the truth can be easily bent during this time with our Sagittarius South Node leaning away from its search for meaning and truth because of the square to hazy, elusive Neptune. I do see that many people might just want to have some sex – be it non-committal, emotionally detached or just for the sake of doing something to relieve the boredom (and for those that were lucky enough to experience boredom during their quarantines, rather than their financial situation coming apart).

Because Gemini is a dual sign, this retrograde energy plays out in two ways: on mostly a superficial level, ‘players’ (both male and female) might intensify, and some could potentially ‘earn their degrees’ in cheating and lying during this North Node in Gemini phase, as options will considerably multiply for many of us. So when ‘he’ or ‘she’ comes back with the most heartfelt apology and crying in a bouquet of roses that they want you back, make sure you see a copy of the signed divorce papers or vouch to come clean and check each other’s phone history. It might seem excessive, but Saturn in Aquarius wants us to build a solid foundation in personal relationships, one that is built on trust and responsibility. Best approach is to be friends with your ex, before you share a quickie and then regret getting emotionally entangled. Both Aqua and Gemini hate emotional complications, so dear Water and Earth Signs, guard your hearts and take it slowly during this time.

On a more spiritual level, Gemini represents The Lovers card in Tarot, which indicates a divinely guided Union with a kindred spirit, a like-minded soul that can join you on life’s biggest adventure: human intimacy. In relationships we grow the most, we learn the most and our brains develop the most. We come into this world deeply dependent on others for our survival and we learn the best when we socialize (babies need constant interaction to develop facial expressions and proper empathy and mindfulness skills that help them relate – as explained in Sue Gerhardt’s bestselling book ‘Why love matters’ from 2003). But relationships are also challenging emotional landscapes to handle. Not many can and not many do live up to this task. Gemini energy reminds us that infusing a relationship with humour might actually end up saving it. So again, some advice would be to not take yourself too seriously during this time, but take other’s intentions more seriously.

Moreover, a lot of us encountered a number of impediments for years now in genuinly establishing intimacy and being able to be open and vulnerable in personal relationships – this is partly due to Pluto’s transit in the ‘grin and bear it’ sign of Capricorn, the strict father, the stoic provider, who is all about the money and less about the heart. We had to focus on work and money just to make ends meet, and most of us are too tired by now to even muster up the energy to get out of the house, and not to mention to love. Especially, the signs of the heart, Cancer and Leo Suns have been tried a lot and still continue to be – it is a daily struggle for them to just keep being themselves, but there is comfort in knowing that the more Cancerian and Leonic you all remain (if you have these influences), the more resistance and courage you build in us all through the power of the personal example. So continue to do you, and encourage us to speak from our hearts, to stand-up and to argue with ‘the powers that be’ when these become abusive.

But where is the love (and the truth?)

During this ‘special time’ it’s really important to make sure that you get your information from reliable sources. Make sure that you find a reliable source of news or a scientific resource and stick to it (heck, even popularize it, so we can all benefit!). Full disclosure: the only astrology site I trust at the moment is http://www.astrodienst.com. That is the place that I took the ephemerides which I used in this post to pinpoint the exact transits, and I also use these a lot in personal birth-chart readings.

Knowing your info counts in love matters as well – make sure that the information your receive regarding your crush/soulmate/love interest comes from a reliable and well-intended person, and not some trickster out to get you for being ‘an emotional fool’. The Gemini and Saggitarius Nodal Axis is the energy of suprises and of pulling pranks, of testing to see how far will a little lie reach, or how much can gossip ruin somebody’s social reputation. The problem is that small lies tend to become big issues really quickly in the Age of Information.

In this current context, when Saturn in Aquarius is bringing spirituality and science at the forefront of our concerns, as sources to draw inspiration from during uncertain times it’s extra important to know your truth to prevent yourself from ‘falling flat on your face’ and believing others or something that doesn’t exist. Remember that Gemini is all about integrating light and dark, the wise man and the adolescent, masculinity and femininity, mocking others and mocking yourself and its traditional symbol is the sign of theatre: the ‘crying face and smiling face’. You might never know where you stand with so much Gemini energy, but it will be a fun ride that will enable you to develop your thinking.

However, beware of using only your mind. Trusting your gut and following your intuition become primordial in this period, since the responsibility for your choices would rather fall in your hands than in the hands of reckless and clownish social influences. Remember that most world leaders at the moment are Gemini Suns (Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and even the president of my country Klaus Johannis). So if in doubt, turn off the TV and detach from the mass of opinions flying around – choose to rest, retreat and create if you are able to. Use all that beautiful Neptune in Pisces mana to escape and entertain big time dreaming. In addition, this energy is facilitating a direct ‘telephone line’ to the Divine up until 2025, especially since the dreaming will be enhanced by Mars, the planet of action, when it enters Pisces on 14th May. Remarkably, in the Age of Science, some heartfelt praying will do wonders!

One final think I feel the need to mention is that my watershed thoughts on this topic, keep drifting to the following references. First of all, one of sociology’s greatest thinkers was Erving Goffman, a Gemini Sun himself. Inspired by Shakespeare among other things 🙂 he considered the world to be an improvisation, a personal theatre play, where each individual has a predetermined role and a social script to perform. He thought that we live our lives on the front stage (impressing others at work, standing out socially or struggling to do so in various social groups). To do so, we prepare for these public roles during our back stage lives (that intimate world populated with fears, doubts, mistakes and personal mess that is neatly covered up once the individual arrives ‘on stage’). I think Goffman’s thinking when applied to how we currently use social media, can be illuminating. So I would advise to keep this front stage – back stage dichotomy in mind when you lust after people’s glamoursly arranged lives on Instagram, Facebook or Youtube – these lives aren’t as authentic as they seem, but we learned to expect and to demand this daily ‘performance’ as a ravenously consuming public.

Finally, I’ll leave you with these two songs which resonate so much with the current energy (and also both of the lead singers of these two bands are Gemini Sun signs, Matt Belamy from Muse & Dave Bayley from Glass Animals)

To recap:

Venus retrograding in Gemini: 13th May – 25th May

South Node in Sagittarius & North Node in Gemini: 6th May 2020 – 19th January 2022

Mercury in Gemini retrogrades in Cancer: 18th June – 12th July

Saturn is in Aquarius until 7th March 2023

Pluto stays in Capricorn until 24th March 2023 (and after a retrograde it officially leaves on the 21st January 2024)

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

I’m reading an academic book called ‘Affect and Emotion’ alongside watching a show called Altered Carbon on Netflix. The connecting point between these two things is a focus on the body, emotions and conscience. In the movie the main character’s body becomes the focus of the story – a man called Takeshi, an ex-military guy, loses his original body only to have it replace with another (a ‘sleeve’). He also receives his consciousness back, which is encrypted into some sort of microchip and this is how he is able to exist in a different body, after his death.

Takeshi’s new body is also the body of a tough guy, an army-trained detective, Alpha male and hypermasculine, and conventionally sexy. However, his new sleeve is problematic since it is that of a typical white hegemonic male, because Takeshi’s body and face were originally of Japanese-Slavic descent. One way to interpret this could be a reflection on post-colonial appropriation. How whiteness and all that it represents dominates other ethnicities in our collective unconscious, and this becomes problematic since politically we seem to be focused so much on borders between people and nations, in a general revival of nationalism.

What I liked about the show was Joel Kinnaman’s ironic and mellowed performance of his Alpha male role. For examples, an interesting stylistic choice is to have Takeshi wear a pink Unicorn child’s backpack as he goes around performing toxic, hypermasculinity by shooting aggressors. In a sense, I assume this detail tries to mock the image of the Alpha Male or in a sense humanize him, by showing his attachment to ‘kitsch’, a remnant of the wounded and traumatized little boy narrative that the viewer gets glimpses of as Takeshi has flashbacks from his violent childhood (once again, Freud seems dully appeased in yet another Hollywood script).

What makes it more puzzling is that not only has his consciousness been transferred but also his intense emotions associated with a past traumatic event (losing the woman he was attached to, who also trained him into combat techniques and was together with him in his past life and as part of a military resistance against the process of re-sleeving people). In a sarcastic twist of faith, Takeshi ends up physically living out the same thing he was fighting against in his previous life: re-sleeving and priviledge (even if a veiled one, in which he seems to be more a prized slave rather than a dominant White male).

I think the show was trying to counter-weight the post-colonial argument, by portraying Kinnaman as a slave to another White rich man (this time a British, London-born man) who threatens periodically to terminate him if he doesn’t help him solve the mystery of his own murder. Interestingly, this White rich guy, chose a hypermasculine blonde male to solve the crime for reasons not so well clarified; it is almost as if Takeshi’s overwhelming physical prowess – the guy is literally ‘dripping muscles’ – does not always equate his mental capacity for analysis and puzzle-piecing.

Even if he is good at neatly ordering holograms, as we are shown how in one scene Takeshi leans back into a chair and conducts some ‘criminal detective research’, he does neglect leading clues and ends up being captured and tortured by some evil Russian-accented guys (in American movies the villains always must have either a British or a Russian accent, so not much creative imagination there).

Continuing with Wetherell, she unpicks the trajectory of how affect has been understood and studied across various domains: cultural, anthropological, sociological, philosophical, hystorical (in parts) and psychological. She is proposing an understanding of affect as affective practice, and tries to consider how discourse completes and organizes affect through the body:

Massumi’s affect is pre-individual and pre-personal in all senses. Bodies affecting bodies comes to include all of social and material life. For these scholars of affect, ‘body’ is generalised away beyond the animate obvious. A body can be a rock, a capitalist exchange relation, a cat, a philosophy, a psychotherapy group, a social movement – any whole, that is, which is composed of parts where those parts are related together in ways that can be characterised in terms of their motion, speed and rest (Baugh, 2005, p. 30; Colebrook, 2006). The subject–object distinction is irrelevant, therefore, in the analysis of affected bodies, as is any distinction between inside consciousness and outside. Affect is a post-personal force exceeding the human (p.59, Wetherell)

However in Altered Carbon bodies are easy commodities, some of them are low value and interchangeable while others are best things money can buy, they are classed and thus organized hierarchically in terms of their usefulness, age and beauty and also enhanced to produce certain hormones or substances (perfected or engineered through ‘upgrades’ and ‘downgrades’, the privately owned expensive models or the state-provided reusable ones taken from dead people).

From another perspective, and in Takeshi’s case if emotions are influenced by consciousness and they in turn permeate it, BUT at the same time these reside in a specific body, what happens when you remove the consciousness of a person and place it into a new body? I would imagine that emotive memories might still remain but they would be reordered by the individual through the experience of being in a new body, as this creates ‘fresh’ affects (distinctive to that body). Say if you switch from a frail to a muscular tough body, or from being a man to being a woman, surely the ways in which you take in the world shift slightly, not only because of your experience of being in the world has changed but also because of how other react to you (so physiological but also socially constructed). Wetherell adds: “(…) both films and politics engage through rollercoasters of affect: identification, investment, disgust, cynicism and immersion.” (p.59)

Affect in relation to time and especially of taking ones time to register experiences, could be expressed physically through meditation. This also encourages towards paying attention to bodily movements and I believe also to affect or the control over negative affect especially through stilness (indirectly through the body), but I disagree with the last sentence, since Eastern thought attributes a lot of value to what happens non-consciously as a portal into enhanced awareness and a more comprehensive processing of the mind through its constant connection with the environment:

Paying attention strongly amplifies the patterns of activation, and is correlated with the experience of consciousness. It is likely then that much of what goes on non-consciously, and the kind of phenomena revealed by priming experiments, can be made conscious given enough time, information and context. In addition, it seems likely too that much of what occurs non-consciously is perhaps simply too weak, habitual and/or unimportant to mobilise the resources for more complex processing in the particular moment (p.65)

Looking at affect and emotions is important because it reminds us that we live in bodies and in a sense, activity and non-activity pass through the body or the body brings them into being. A still body could be resting but ultimately if it’s alive it has to move to prevent muscular atrophy. Being alive and bodying therefore pushes us constantly in an imperative to move. And taking action, at least in my understanding is connected to the process of emotionaly moving along. As Wetherell adds “Affect is always ‘turned on’ and ‘simmering’, moving along, since social action is continually embodied” (p. 12). Pluto in Capricorn is all about tangible and material results, and what could be more tangible than our body, perhaps the only thing in this lifetime that we can truly ‘own’. However, Altered Carbon reminds us that even this material attachment can be temporary and superficial.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

The current transit of Jupiter in Capricorn meeting Saturn in Aquarius at the end of this month (March 2020) will bring to surface the repression of our collective willpower by traditional institutions. No matter how you began 2020, it is clear that this is a bizarre and atypical beginning of this new decade (consider the corona virus lockdowns, urging us on some level to slow down and go within). This is because the fabric of our social reality is preparing for a drastic change, or the dawn of the infamous Age of Aquarius, which astrologers, shamans and tarot readers have predicted for ages. In line with this, a string of shamans, witches, warlocks, lightworkers, starseeds, astrologers and tarot readers are appearing world-wide and it is my opinion that they will gradually replace churches and temples or other traditional places of collective devotion, representing new forms of spiritual leadership. They will also bring with them a wave of advertising scams, fraudulent identity thefts and a string of confusing information which will be dispersed with the help of the Internet.

2020 is without a doubt the year of ‘The Shift’: a massive collective transformation in our values & behaviors, and the way in which we understand our roles here on Earth, especially our gender and its connection to the Divine/Spirit/God. This isn’t only my opinion but that of more experienced astrologers as well, such as Pam Gregory, a British & fellow Piscean whose work I admire and who advocates for similar ideas. This year is an energetic minefield because it brings with it – among the usual three Mercury retrogrades – also a Venus Retrograde in Gemini (the sign of Union) awaiting us this Summer, and a Mars Retrograde in Aries (the sign of Courage) peppering our Autumn period. Both the bubbly air-sign in which Venus will be and the passionate fire-sing Mars will be, are squared by Jupiter and Pluto and the only good news is that they will be divinely supported by Saturn in Aquarius (for the most part). What all this celestial energy means is that this summer we will collectively enter a period of necessary redefinition in our relationships. A lot of us have abandoned play and love in favor of work (and in some cases over-work) just to keep on surviving or to attain higher status and wealth. This work-obsession is linked to a rise in sarcasm and emotional stoicism or toughness, that blocked us from nurturing ourselves and others (just consider the media obsessions with ‘work-life balance’ which in reality is a work-life imbalance).

It’s the first week of March as I’m writing this. Amidst the threat of the corona virus, we are having the energetic influence of three major planets, those being Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto (the rulers of karma and fate), all gathered in the sign of limits, repression, effort and hard-earned rewards, Capricorn. Moreover, Mars also joined the gang in February. Feel free to interpret Capricorn energy as you wish, but one thing is certain with this Sun sign – it is not a fun sign, and it is not at all about expansion but rather its opposite, limitation. Capricorn wants concrete and tangible results – it is not concerned with emotions but with work and effort. So there is a collective obsession at the moment with what we can touch and see, with what is practical and tangible – however, this makes us neglect our spirituality, our souls, our need to be loved and to love. Ruled by Saturn, Capricorn energy also separates.

Moreover, these 4 planets are joined by the South Node, one of the lunar nodes that represent excretion, letting go, and energy loss. This means that the more we cling to tradition, to how things were done for centuries we might get an immediate sense of comfort and stability, but we will also gradually feel depleted of energy. We go out to shop in a frenzy and then we come home to a house full of objects and no emotional warmth. We might also experience depression, heaviness and isolation, so turning to comfort-behaviors such as using drugs and alcohol might give the illusion that things will be alright and we are in love with unseen forces, but the reality is gloomy when we wake up hungover and cold (Neptune is in Pisces at the moment until 2025, and it is helping us deceive ourselves very easily).

Ironically, all this Saturnian, paternalistic energy is simply meant to remind us that what we need is true nurturing; that we lack love and understanding in our personal connections and that we are not better off just working and focusing on money to the expense of our feelings. To solve this issue, we have to blend masculine with feminine energy. And feminine energy is the path forward, to my mind. To use a cliché, the future is female, and by this I mean that what are traditionally considered ‘feminine traits’ will be an increasingly sought out forms of communication and used as a spiritual currency (exemplified in telepathy, precognition, astro-travel, clair-audience and clair-sentience etc, and potentially harvested in the future to control and mould reality for specific goals).

I think that spirituality & science will eventually blend, as people will understand that reason and emotions must work together for us to access new frequencies and to expand our consciousness. On another level, we are preparing to transcend the gender divide, just as collectively we will integrate our Divine Masculine with our Divine Feminine energy to make a spiritual leap forward in our progress as humankind on Earth. I also think our connection to Nature shall be merged with technological improvements and discoveries; it is not a case of polarizing them or rejecting one above another, since this will only lead to states of conflict. Until then we continue to love within the patriarchal social system, which is a conditional and limited way of loving. However, the rules of Saturn, of the land, of governing, and of the patriarchy are increasingly dismantled. So even if institutions seem to have garnered more and more power in recent years, they are actually like a super-nova, shining brightest right before it implodes.

With Pluto in Capricorn, politically and financially there is no middle-ground: we have the rich and the poor, the powerful and the vulnerable (we saw this since 2011 with the dramatic decrease of the middle-class in some of the wealthiest countries in the world). Globally, we are witnessing a desperate fight for the far-right to gain political control, and we see the corruption of democracy in the wake of ‘fake news’ fiascos. People are allowed to practice democracy only by means of manipulated votes; their elected representatives, instead of supporting the interests of many and helping society progress by tackling the string of environmental, economic and social problems at hand, mostly spend their political mandates engaged in power struggles which polarize them even further. With Saturn in Aquarius, the so-called ‘underdogs’ might experience a slow rise in power and new leaders might emerge from the poor and oppressed masses which genuinely might represent the interests of many (similar to spiritual leaders such as Martin Luther King and Gandhi), but it will be a battle of power and it will require effort (at least until Jupiter catches ground and stations in Aquarius in 2021). Such leaders might have it tough at the beginning of their career, but they shall foreground the general political mess and further underline the incapacity to lead of present, corrupt politicians. So I think that new political alternatives will gradually appear from this Spring.

In the meantime, ordinary people, like you and me, are left on-the-outside-looking-in, engaged in these survival-power struggles, and we are left to find creative ways to stoically manage our lives. The good part in all of this mess, is that we now have a spiritual, postcolonial and feminist awareness which is increasing each year in different parts of the world. People self-educate and have more discussions and debates than ever; we also have social media and the Internet, which allow people to speak up in spite of this ongoing institutional control. Despite having groups censured and denied the right to speak, we (as in the many) will only be kept under this pressure cauldron until Jupiter enters Aquarius next year. As Jupiter will join Saturn in Aquarius next year, the collective will finally get to breathe a general sigh of relief, and witness or participate in building new social foundations in the wake of Pluto’s ‘destruction’ of our trust in current governing powers.

On this background, the increasing rise of tarot readers, astrologers, shamans, doulas, counsellors, personal development trainers and life coaches is not something to fear but something to celebrate. More and more people are quitting their 9 to 5s to follow spiritually-based work. I find it beautiful that we are spiritually-led to work in service to others; to work by healing and revitalizing the tired hearts and souls of many, engaged for so long in corporate production, in the constant rat-race of capitalism (I might sound like a communist here, but we do have very few alternative economic systems in the world at the moment, so social cooperatives might be the future). Something has to give. A shift in the collective is bubbling up to the surface preparing us for the landscape over-haul of 2023-2024, when Pluto in Aquarius will enter and slowly begin the transformation of our communities, our connection to technology, our increasing dependence on machines but also – and this is the part that I find most significant – our link to the divine and to the energies of our solar system. This is because Uranus, the planetary ruler of Aquarius governs over astrology and the occult. It is also representing the Star energy in tarot, so there is renewed hope for mankind after living for so long in the Deviled Goat’s energy (aka Capricorn).

On a social and psychological level, people are increasingly becoming more aware of the chakras, third eye awakenings, manifestation abilities, capacities to co-create with Spirit, the different dimensions of existence, indigo children, how energy travels and can be manipulated or transformed etc. If you smirk at these things, this is just a reminder that this ‘trend’ is not about to stop – it might even evolve as our technological and scientific discoveries shall blend with our heightened awareness and developing intuition to produce new forms of mass, spiritual power (and pre-empting the Pluto in Pisces era). This blending could lead to ‘ghost in the shell/machine’ types of relationships. It will be interesting to witness how things will develop and I am certainly excited about the future, even if I remain cautious regarding the shadow side of the Pluto in Aquarius era (for example, low-Leo energy such as massive Ego trips or the wide-distribution of robotic sex-slave).

My hope is that within this newly emerging social landscape, and with the help of spirituality, many people will find the ‘God within’ (to quote Rilke) and will likely start to ‘see feelingly’ (as Shakespeare said), rather than completely cool-off their emotions to emulate our robotic counterparts or ‘alienate’ themselves from other people. And that’s were ‘we’ come in, the spiritual ‘freaks’, the new leaders that are able to use our skills and abilities to help people connect with their life purpose and with their hearts. What I mean by the word ‘leader’ in this context is certainly not domination, but guidance; spiritual leaders are those whom we meet, only when we are ready for them; just like that the old-fashioned saying ‘When the student is ready, the master appears’. These new spiritual leaders are the daughters and sons of the witches that could not be maimed and killed during Europe’s Dark Ages, the ones that survived the Inquisition, famines and the Plague, countless wars and oppressive political regimes, and lived on to empower others in the present. Our ancestors guide us to speak up and express ourselves, to embrace who we are and to heal; thereby we have a duty to remain connected to Spirit and to help others remain profoundly human in the midst of this massive shift.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Hello Saturns in Aquarius (December 2020 – March 2023) & Saturns in Pisces (March 2023 – February 2026)! These are the two main constellations that Saturn will influence in the next 6 years, so I thought a field-guide would be useful. People with these placements will be hit by this heavy energy first. However, the lists I compiled in this post apply to any other Saturn placements (and even to Saturn’s second return around the age of 55-57) because the questions are framed in such a way to help you do the inner work required whenever Saturn returns to your natal degree. In this post I won’t insist on what a Saturn return is, but for ease of reference I created this clip:

Returning now to the lists, I created these because Saturn wants you to reflect on pragmatic and tangible goals. The first list is a set of questions to ask yourself when you are experiencing a difficult situation caused by Saturn’s pressure. These questions can serve as a ‘touchstone’ to remind you that there is work to be done, that this will be a process throughout the transit (from beginning to middle to end), and that there are solutions to the challenges that you are experiencing. Use this list both for Saturn’s transit through a house and for Saturn’s transiting aspects to natal planets. So one way to deal pragmatically with this energy, is to ask yourself the following questions:

1. What can I learn from this experience?
2. How can I develop more maturity in this area of my life or this part of myself?
3. What do I need to be responsible for? How can I accept more responsibility in this area of my life?
4. How do I honestly feel about developing this area? Do I have resistance?
5. Am I judging people who are expressing qualities that I am learning to develop during this transit?
6. Am I willing to do the necessary work to develop these parts of myself?
7. Am I taking myself seriously? (Or am I just insisting that others do?)
8. The last time I experienced a similar Saturnian transit (7, 14, 21, or 28 years ago), what did I experience and, importantly, now that I have another chance, what can I do differently? (this applies to moments when Saturn was squaring or sitting opposite from your Sun)

It’s important to write you questions down and by using a pen and paper in order to activate the mind-brain connection (however, feel free to use a laptop as well if you find that words are pouring out of you faster). If you find it difficult to consider these questions, below is a simplified list of actions that I used during my own Saturn return period and which might be useful to you:

• put your trust in someone and something

• synthetize your knowledge into something that transcends limitations

• travel, explore, be open to immerse yourself in knowledge just for knowledge’s sake

• don’t be ashamed for liking different & odd philosophies
• don’t reject parts of yourself, embrace as much as you are aware of

• be ready to begin loving yourself and valuing tangible results: money, stability and objects; be also ready to share these with others (law of attraction)

• know the house where your natal Saturn is placed in your birth-chart, since this is the area of life where the energy will be played out (mine was the 2nd, and the test was – Can I make money? Can I find a job I love that pays me well enough? Can I know my true worth?)

I think you noticed that the key here is to examine your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about the area of life (or the astrological house) within which your Saturn is residing. It’s important to consider not only the astrological sign your Saturn is in and any aspects that your Saturn is making to other planets and asteroids, but also the house in which it resides, because that will color your Saturn return in a different light than that of your generational peers. If your Saturn is in Aquarius in the 8th house, then Scorpionic themes of betrayal, sexuality, power and healing will emerge for you and you’ll need to use your mental power and communication (Aquarius) to overcome these challenges. If your Saturn is in Pisces in the 10th house (ruled by Capricorn) then issues of authority, leaderships, professionalism and career responsibility will emerge for you during your Saturn return and you might need to use your faith and imagination (Pisces) to live up to public, 10th house expectations.

For example, my Saturn is placed in my second house which is traditionally the house of Taurus. My Saturn return brought up a lot of Taurean themes in my life which are related to my struggle with pleasure, work, self-worth and earning my income independently. During the 2 years and a half that the return lasted, I had to un-learn negative beliefs about money and acquiring material goods. On a spiritual level, I had to amp up my self-worth through a disciplined, daily routine and by exercising. The optimism and vitality I earned during this transit didn’t happen over night but came incrementally by observing each day how my mind was expanding through study – I was finishing my PhD – and how my body was becoming fitter through sports. It was the work that brought me the joy, confidence and pleasure. So I had to reflect on these aspects during my Saturn return and to consider where to make an investment of my energy (whether romantic, spiritual, economic or educational). I chose to focus on myself and my PhD and to go for a really well-paid post and see if I get in. So I had to develop a good relationship with money and the material world, but also practice making calculated risks, so I exercised my natal Sagittarius energy (risk) in the house of Taurus (carefulness at work and with money). I was a relatively poor student working towards my PhD when the transit began and a full-time lecturer with a nice salary and a good pension plan by the time the transit ended. I was employed in a permanent position at an institution in the UK, even though I was an immigrant without a British passport. So in a way you could say I proved my worth as a foreigner (Sagittarius). Some things I had to consider during this period: If I wanted to make more money, I needed to ask myself how I felt about money? Did I value it? How did I treat it? Was I unappreciative? Did I complain about it, so it didn’t want to come near me? Is money my friend? Or a pain in the back? Did I think I deserved to have nice things? Was I willing to put in the hard work to achieve my dreams? What were my values? And was I living my life in accordance to them? Did I see myself as valuable as worthy? etc. During my Saturn return I developed as well a spiritual approach to money and realized that I should spend money or give it only to those causes, things and people I love and appreciate. I developed more gratitude and made my financial energy flow more easily by understanding the process of equitable give-and-take (law of prosperity).

In general, Saturn returns are about taking responsibility and ownership. They are periods of maturation, wherein we forcefully have to grow up. You will need to choose what you want to tangibly achieve at this time and this limitation could feel quite painful if you previously enjoyed just exploring your options and possibilities. Your commitment will manifest into a prestigious job, getting married, having a baby or purchasing your first home, getting a degree or a travelling challenge or opening up your own business. So, to ace this transit focus on who you are and what you can bring to the world in practical and material ways. Again, you can ask yourself:

What do I deserve?

Why do I deserve it?

Why do you deserve it more than somebody else ?

What can I bring to the table?

What are my gifts and my talents?

How can I use them to get what I want in an ethical way?

Build your foundations on that. Let go of what you used to hold onto in your twenties (for 1st time returners) or forties (for 2nd Saturn returners) – build up from what you are good at, work with what you have in front of you or around you at the moment, and you will be able to add on more, in time. Let go of the things that have created your life this far, if they are not of quality. What’s not meant to last and what does not fit on your lifepath, will be removed from your life even if you try to desperately hold on to it. The most important reflection during this period, is to think about who you are inside and to build a solid foundation within. For those of you that have been highly responsible until your Saturn return, a change might be needed to help you gain more material stability or some financial rewards are due during your return. For those expecting changes or undergoing them, then don’t be afraid to try something new. The trick here is to let go of a constant need for external security and to create a bit of chaos of your own. This is because until you know exactly what you’re looking for, your reality is not going to feel good. So in this process you might need to drop a significant relationship, or a marriage, to commit to something else or to take on a new responsibility.

Keep this word in mind ‘responsibility’ because Saturn wants you to be accountable for things if they go wrong – you can repair things, you can let them fall by the wayside and move one; you now have some solid decisions to make and your character will be revealed in these choices. I recommend to make them in accordance with your values and not with what others want, because at the end of the day you are the one that has to go to sleep with your conscience.

Remember as well, that you don’t get strength of character by being ruthless, you get it by really knowing yourself. Saturn’s pressures might tempt you to lash out and hurt others, but such actions will not improve your circumstances. Also and highly important, you will feel how during this period things are naturally slowing down, your body is also showing the first signs of old age (initial first gray hairs and wrinkles, tiredness, severe hangovers etc.). So use the extra time to learn about who you really are, not who everyone else wants you to be, and learn to create a daily self-care regime, with periods of rest followed by periods of activity. Calmly and maturely figure things out, because when you find your centre, everything around you won’t seem as crazy and chaotic. The biggest reward is that at the end of a successful Saturn return, you know who you are and you’ll receive a tangible reward for all the effort you put into your maturation. In time, all the trials and tribulations will make sense and with the benefit of hindsight you’ll see just how far you’ve grown. And also remember that transits will continue to happen, as the lessons of other planetary transits will become gradually more important. Your Saturn is important but not the end all and be all. The Universe gives us ample time to correct our course and grow in life, so be kind to yourself in the process.

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Should women chase men romantically and sexually with the same intensity that men are allowed to (and in most cases expected to)? Why is it that female sexual obsession is still sickly romanticized and taboo? Is it because it tends to emasculate men? And is it really emasculation of manhood or simply the contravening of a toxic and patriarchal form of masculinity, one that is expected to dominate and control sexuality? Would nurturing, progressive men appreciate being desired and sought? Usually women who seek their own pleasure and end up emasculating men are called Jezebels, Jolenes or Liliths, all fantasy-interpretations of our collective fears of female empowerment and its unbridled limits.

Let me tentatively reflect on these questions in this post, by focusing on two film representations of feminine desire that to my mind depict Lilith-like romantic obsessions: Isabelle Adjani playing Adele Hugo in The Story of Adele H (1975) a movie by François Truffaut, and Maria Bonnevie as Dina, in I am Dina (2002) directed by Ole Bornedal. I enjoyed watching these movies but they also feel provocative and as I wondered about what made them so intense, this article was born.

I spent a lot of time while growing up, watching tons of movies and avidly reading books, and it is there that I learned a lot about male-female relationships. Sure, you could argue that these are not real depictions of gender relationships but they do touch upon core concerns that the collective has with certain gendered topics. Only later, once I actually started dating and having sex, did I realize how removed from reality where these Hollywood portrayals of ‘cardboard’ masculinity and femininity. I met men of different cultures and interestingly in many situations I was placed in the role of the confident chaser. Then as I continued to watch European movies, I encountered two that resonated so deeply with some of the female romantic and sexual power I often had mirrored in my own life (although in my life it was less epic and it never reached obsession, as I easily tire of relating, preferring to return to my cozy solitude). These fantastic portrayals of female madness and intensity stuck with me for a long time, not necessarily due to the fact that I support madness in any shape or form, but that when you are a passionate woman yourself it is refreshing to finally witness the passion of other women unleashed onto the screen with such a devil-may-care attitude.

One thing I found delightful was how aware these two female characters are of their madness, and how they owned it and questioned it, even as they allowed their strong feelings to overcome them. There is a sense of freedom in acting on intense emotions in life, although the consequences in both cases are disastrous. Dina for example lets us know that “Kindness isn’t exactly what I’m best known for” and her story ends on a memorable cliffhanger. Adele, on the other hand feels that she is descending into a completely distorted version of reality, but compared to the domestic alternatives she was offered (limited in that century for women), she relishes in this intense and made-up love story that keeps her emotionally bound to the emotionally unavailable, social butterfly represented by a young English officer called Lieutenant Pinson.

When I was younger and I saw these movies I instantly loved not only how they seemed to take feelings to such an extreme (which I identified with) but also the freedom that these women enjoyed – these were women who travelled freely, were beautiful but not confined by decorum, managed their own money, and challenged men. Dina especially also sleeps with whomever she pleases and even rejects her husband’s advances on her wedding day (in a really funny scene played together with Gerard Depardieu). Dina also owns her own property and marries an older man, has a child with another (a stable boy) but falls in love with a third man, a Russian revolutionary poet. The melodrama increases the more you watch this film, which is why it is so mesmerizing. Decisions made impulsively, driven by instinct and emotion, one would say…almost like living as freely as a man, sacrificing consequences for the pleasure of the moment. Call me strange but I’ve always associated women with reason and calculation and men with impulse and pride, but maybe it’s just my Eastern-European upbringing. So it’s refreshing to see an unleashing of emotion, instinct, desire and emotion onto the screen which is led by women.

In astrology, one asteroid in particular carries this mark of instinctive female chaos, of deeply sexual magnetism paired with wounding and suffering and that is Lilith (asteroid number 1181). Astronomically, she lies in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars, but mythologically Lilith was the Bible’s first woman, forgotten by (patriarchal) history because she refused to cater to Adam’s spousal needs and preferred to roam through the desert copulating with wild beasts than to serve her man. In lieu of her depravity, Adam had Eve created for him, a much gentler and docile version of the primordial woman. Some writers argued that Lilith became Lucifer’s counter-part, having in common with him the fact that they both led gilded lives in Heaven but their Divine disobedience angered God who banished them into the Shadows. Lilith is associated with infanticide, emasculation, intense erotic dreams, and romantic ruin. But more recently feminist thinkers have rescued her from the crypt of mostly male-dominant historical writings to usher her as a heroine of contemporary female empowerment and independence. Is Lilith a Demon? Or a Feminist Liberator? I like her myth and what she now represents, but am also cautious when working with Lilith’s energy and invoking her or dedicating rituals to her, mostly because her wild energy is hard to negotiate with. It’s fascinating at the same time to see how much Lilith lives in the roles of Adele and Dina as they are acted out on the screen.

Psychologically, one could interpret these two women’s actions and behaviours as unconsciouly searching for the displaced father figure within themselves, as struggling to reconcile with their animus and thereby they are locked into intense desire dynamics with the men in their lives. Dina desires her father’s love and approval, which she had been denied in her childhood due to accidental matricide, while Adele seeks the aproval and love of an emotionally unavailable modern-day version of the player.

For me personally, my attraction to them would be the opposite: reconciling with my anima, by accepting the image of the mother. But what is the anima actually? This term was coined by Carl Gustav Jung, one of the founding fathers of psychotherapy (and Freud’s colleague), who considered it to be something similar to a universal symbol, that resides in our collective unconscious, or what he called ‘an archetype’. Anima is together with the Animus, part of the ways in which we magnetically gender certain aspects of our life – when we say ‘Mother Earth’ and ‘Father Sky’ etc. Here’s in a nutshell what he was referring to:

Ok, so how can Jung’s psychology lesson can be adapted to practical experience? I’ll illustrate by using my own experience since it’s the one I know best and it’s something I can share in this space. I grew up with a mother I perceived as cold, stressed and erratic, a mother who exerted power and negativity rather than warm, nurturing mothering. I therefore took in from an early age, an anima that reflected these characteristics. In in my life, I feel drawn to tough & powerful women on some level, because unconsciously I grew up experiencing the love of a tough, powerful mother who was emotionally withholding and dangerously envious of me. Not coincidentally, I find myself continuing on this path of working mostly with female bosses, in relationships of authority, with whom I constantly have to negotiate my boundaries, control levels of envy, and clear out toxicity through how I speak with them. By encountering and working through these karmic relationships, I discover my inner strength and develop spiritually as I heal my relationship to the distorted feminine within (and indirectly, I heal my relationship to my mother).

The myth of Snow White applies very well in this case, just that in this situation the step-mother is actually my birth-mother. When I became aware of this sad truth, it hurt a lot to acknowledge it – that the person who is supposed to nurture you and care for you was keeping me in a state of low energy, bound and controlled, and even made me sick quite often, so she could feel good about herself. As I grew older, I see these patterns very clearly and I can emotionally detach from them and to accept them. I now observe rather than react and feel pity rather than anger. And why? Well it’s because I’m learning to love myself, in spite of all the hatred, envy and vitriol I keep having thrown my way. I’m learning on my spiritual journey how to alchemize the vitriol inherent in toxic relationships into the golden clarity of wisdom.

Nonetheless, I keep the hope that one day, I’ll encounter my soul tribe and not have to lead this battle alone. Each challenge helps me grow stronger in the awareness that I am worthy and valuable and unique. Healing in my case takes the form of writing and analysis much like for Adele, while for other characters such as Dina, healing her connection to the ‘wounded feminine archetype’ and surpassing the guilt of having killed her mother, took the form of playing the cello, using music as a way to make herself whole again. Having said this, an interesting exercise would be to check if your own natal Lilith placement is compatible with your mother’s own Lilith natal placement, and this can be easily achieved by exploring a synastry chart.

Being truly feminine does not need to feel like giving into false modesty and learned helplessness (two practices I actively try to control in my own behavior, even if they are so deeply ingrained in feminine socialization practices), and I enjoy these movies because they remind me of these things (also, they feature very good-looking actors, so it’s a pleasure to watch them). I guess my experience is one example of many that show that change is possible, even one that occurs at a deep, psychological level.

In connection to the two characters above & Lilith as a female Archetype, the current Star Wars series also spoke volumes on a soul level regarding how we perceive female empowerment, as shown in Rey’s character. I was so happy to see how female power shown here through courage, healing and mirroring others’ destruction to themselves, was exemplified in the Rise of Skywalker. Symbolically Rey Skywalker was also costumed in white throughout the whole movie, which to me represents her role as Lightworker. So could we envision female power as something pragmatic, brave and not necessarily soaked in darkness? Do followers of Eve always have to be docile & obedient in order to be the good ‘gals’?

I mean Rey is not only spiritually linked to a dark male character (Kilo Ren), but she foregoes her weapon, a lightsaber, for the power of her spirit. By training her mind, her intuition and her body as she telepathically connects to her opposite (in what felt like a deep twin flame reference), Rey manages to turn Kilo Ren back into Ben through her perseverance and conviction of ‘killing him with kindness’. She also takes Leia as her Jedi mentor and not Obi Wan Kenobi or Yoda (two previous male representations – although, to be honest, I’m still not sure what gender Yoda is), and she heals the serpent-monster in the desert cave through touch rather than chopping its head off by displaying violence. Rey also cares more about her friends and her life-path goals, rather than her love life and in some way, this is how she is different than Adele or Dina. I enjoyed the ending to the George Lucas-created saga, because of how it shifted female representation in a blockbuster.

I enjoy working through my past and childhood wounds with the help of movies and literature, and perhaps this post might inspire you to see associations as well between silver-screen projections and themes that are taking place in your own life. It’s almost like a form of self-therapy, which I think increases self-love (and the more loving we are with ourselves the better our reality becomes and the more our relationships improve). My only regret is that there aren’t more movies I could include in this post – if you know of others, please recommend some (and also let me know why do you think they are unique representations of femininity on film).

With universal love,

Lexi ❤

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

A Mercury retrograde is an excellent 3-weeks period for going on a vacation or taking a couple of days off from work, for visualizing and creating art or music, for doing deep healing, resting, reflecting and re-evaluating. This is because the rational mind is temporarily submerged in a state of creative moratorium, so it is best to not push for logical explanations where there are few to be found. Check where your Mercury is placed in your birth-chart, which house it is in and if there are any neighboring planets or asteroids there, or get in touch with me for a birth-chart reading by sending me an email at macht.alexandra.georgiana.pfa@gmail.com.

Your Mercury placement can affect your energy differently according to the placements: whether it is your body and the social opportunities you attract (your Ascendant), your goals in life and your vitality (the Sun), your unconscious patterns and ways of nurturing yourself (the Moon), communication and processing speed (Mercury return), your relationships and sense of self-worth (Venus), your sexuality and desires (Mars), your structures and boundaries (Saturn), your connection to spirit and the divine (Neptune), your capacity to heal and transform (Pluto), your individuality and sense of freedom (Uranus), or your sense of growth and luck (Jupiter). Make sure you also read this article I wrote which describes each of the 12 Mercury placements: https://spiritualsocial.wordpress.com/2020/02/09/502/

During a Mercury retrograde it is also an excellent time to do some healing cleanses, some energetic replenishments and some chakra balancing tune-ups. Here is one I swear by:

In addition, I keep updating my list of tips and tricks to stave off negative energy & one thing I learned recently is that rose oil and rose essence are excellent against negative entities. This information floated in the ether for a while now but it was this current Mercury retrograde that really made me pay attention. You can use roses in your home either as potted plants or freshly cut flowers (but make sure to throw them away as soon as you see the first signs of withering, because otherwise dead flowers are harsh energy for your home’s Chi & can attract bad luck). Another way to use them is that you could burn some rose-scented incense sticks or use essential rose oil in your bubble bath and even in your tea (I’m currently passionate about a brand of Romanian black tea scented with Jasmine and roses). Alternatively, and for a deeply sensual sleep, sprinkle some rose oil drops on your bed sheets as you can sniff their essence as you slowly drift to sleep. I also like to put some rose oil in my hair, for a more naturally perfumed experience. If oil is too much for you, you might want to try a rose-water mist for your body or to cleanse your witchy work-space before you divinate. And you can even use rose water in cooking, here is a beautiful recipe: https://mynameisyeh.com/mynameisyeh/2017/5/saffron-cardamom-and-rosewater-tiramisu

For centuries roses have been associated with femininity and love, the fulfillment of one’s own deeply intimate wishes. Which makes me think that perhaps there is a link between ‘being in our feelings’ and getting in touch with feminine energy and protecting ourselves from toxicity, negativity and low vibrating relationships. It is femininity that protects and not the male savior complex…hmmm. It’s a highly romantic retrograde because Mercury is in the emotional and poetic sign of Pisces, so I guess roses of all kinds come to mind 🙂

And just to complement this romantic and dreamy energy of the current Mercury retrograde in Pisces with the focus on rose essences, I offer below a list of some of the songs I consider to have deeply healing messages, songs that spark emotions within and can help guide you into a different world for a while. I’ve collected these songs throughout the years and they have helped me get through some very dark times, times when getting up and going about my life was nearly impossible, when letting go and moving on proved more difficult than I thought. My heart was broken only to be renewed again by the healing and universal power of music. I hope these songs serve you & remind you that in spite of everything, life is beautiful.

You can return to this healing playlist every time you want to get into your feelings, during this deeply spiritual Mercury Retrograde in Pisces and beyond:

Jeff Buckley – Hallelujah

The National – Val Jester

The Antlers – Kettering

Doris Day – Dream a little dream of me

Nils Frahm – Promises

Massive Attack – Protection

Fka Twigs – Cellophane

Warpaint – Baby

A Silver Mt Zion – 13 Angels Standing Guard Round the Side of your Bed

Lamb – Gabriel

Ólafur Arnalds ft. Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir – Particles

Bon Iver – Skinny Love

The Everly Brothers – All I have to do is dream

Radiohead – The Pyramid Song

Rihanna feat Mikky Ekko – Stay

Glass Animals – Cocoa Hooves

Madonna – Take a bow

Cat Power – I found a reason

My Bloody Valentine – Sometimes (best with headphones)

Tindersticks – Dick’s Slow Song

The XX – Our song

Bush – Letting the cables sleep

With universal love,

Lexi ❤