The Spiritual Social

Tag: pluto

  • Pluto Conjunct the Imum Coeli: Still Waters Run Deep

    Movie still of Jennifer Connelly in “Dark Water”. Image taken from: https://flipscreened.com/2021/02/23/how-dark-water-2005-delivers-whats-lacking-in-relic-2020/

    “ The individual is driven by his personal crises into deep waters which he would usually never have entered if left to his own free will.  The old idealised image of the Ego has to go, and its place is shaken by a perilous insight into the ambiguity and many-sidedness of one’s own nature.” – p.79, E. Neumann, Depth Psychology

    “And it’s inside myself who I must create, someone who will understand” Clarice Lispector, The Passion According to G.H.

    Symbology of the IC/Nadir and Definition

    When Pluto, the planet of Rebirth and Intensity, reaches the Nadir (also known as the Imum Coeli or the root portion of a birth-chart) it begins a soulful and emotional transformation that has the potential to change the relationship of an individual to their environment. Individuals experiencing this transit are becoming increasingly aware that surrounding reality seems to be shaped by what they feel and how much they feel it.

    The Imum Coeli, translated from Latin, literally means ‘the bottom of the sky’. You may encounter some astrologers refer to the IC as the Nadir, another obscure term defined by the Oxford Dictionary as: a) (in astronomy) the point on the celestial sphere directly below an observer; b) the lowest or most unsuccessful point in a situation. In a 2014 article on the reputable website astro.com, Polly Wallace describes the IC as poetry in motion and in the following way: “Definitions of Imum Coeli include the lowest heaven and a literal translation as the undersky. Such evocative phrases conjure up a sense of the IC as a territory in its own right (…) As the undersky, the IC is always hidden. It stands like the portal into a mysterious zone. The realm of the lowest heaven is vast; it encompasses all our past(s), all the detail of our origins and our roots – and all our secrets. It is another world, an inner world, experienced on a level as profound as the deepest darkness of night-time and of winter. Like the earth below our feet, this realm is the fecund darkness where seeds germinate, where roots develop intricate and enduring networks.”

    I guess you can imagine what darkness is unleashed in the life of an individual when the farthest and most intensely contested planet of our solar system meets with the most mysterious and hidden point of the chart. But this darkness is unseen to others, it is private and known only to the person affected. Contrary to other places in the natal chart, the 4th house describes interiors of many different kinds, and what could be more interior to a person than their psychology, their memory and their soul. I am personally becoming more reclusive since this transit has begun. I feel the need to sleep during the day and stay active at night. The soul is awake at night and I feel its power so strongly at the moment. I am so driven to read, write, watch movies and draw – I do these things to understand my drivers and patterns, so I can remake them. I do these things because I love them and they make sense to me. Reality and daily living seems harsh and belligerent, devoid of meaning and I push myself to be in my own ‘bubble’ by wearing noise cancelling headphones. But more on my personal experience with this transit in the middle portion of this article. Let’s get back to the traits of Pluto’s movement conjunct the IC and inevitably on the cusp of the 4th astrological house.

    Unlike Venus, Pluto has no delicate finesse. It acts like a sledgehammer, especially in the debut of a transit, the first months up to a year when it switches signs. The theme of its transit is brought up suddenly – like a punch in the stomach – all of the emotions that have been repressed, overwhelming the psyche of the affected person with memories, patterns, unresolved wounds and chaotic emotions are suddenly out on the table. It takes the next decade to work through them, and as the work is performed a deep, personal transformation occurs. Then at the middle point of a Pluto transit, the rebuilding begins and slowly what was once dark and hopeless turns into light and passionate love. Throughout the entire duration of that Pluto transit, the individual will have to do the deep psychological work of organizing their messy psychic content, discarding what is now dead and useless and continuing to nourish what remains vital and alive inside of them.

    If one can deal with these emotions and work at understanding them, then their immediate reality will begin to mirror their hard-working inner world and a state of attuned harmony is reached after some time. However, if one allows themselves to be drawn into a whirlwind of emotions without comprehending them, if one begins to live more intensely in the past than in the present, becoming complacent in the struggle with the forces of the unconscious, then there is potential here for one’s worst nightmares to materialise and for a mental health condition to completely take over one’s life.

    Either way emotional transformation and confrontations with core, wounded aspects of our largely unconscious Self are necessary for personal growth. Most importantly, the main theme of any transit to the IC is reflecting upon or establishing a sense of personal safety in the world again.

    The sign or constellation that Pluto travels through will also determine the way in which emotions and past memories are unleashed and how the individual will work at integrating them. As this transit happens it will also end up affecting the home, the immediate and private environment of an individual. For most people and in most charts, the IC lies in the 4th house, the house ruled by the Moon and the astrological sign of the celestial Crab, which symbolizes the protective shelter in which we regroup our forces.

    What Others are Saying About this Transit

    To prepare for this article, I read extensively whatever I could find on the topic. First of all, I turned to Steven Forrest’s seminal text “The Book of Pluto” and found this beautiful and psychological interpretation of the meaning of the 4th house:

    “the fourth house is the “House of the Home”. In most modern astrological texts, it is interpreted in more psychological terms, as the house of the inner self, the feelings, one’s deepest archetypal roots (…) Every human who has ever lived possesses a fourth house. Translated, we all to some degree have a need for ‘family’ – a word we must use broadly to mean a set of unquestionably secure social relationships. Loyalty and lifetime commitment are the critical notions here, not blood kinship. Depth, often unspoken depth, may possibly develop in these bonds, but it is less central. Roots, a safe haven, a place to let one’s hair down – these are the crucial concepts (…) To form clan and hearth with other human beings is the ultimate act of trust. Due to your wound, you may turn away from it, taking refuge in your own self-sufficiency (…) “If I really opened up, they’d be too shocked to handle it” – that’s often the belief at the roots of this particular navigational error. Even more fundamentally “There’s something horrible and dirty inside of me” (…) Your navigational error, if you succumb to it, would be to live the life of a ghost, with your fire, intensity, and vision removed from your biographical life while you went through the motions of existence. And, regardless of outward appearances, at the psychological level you would live the life of a heartless, homeless person.

    – p. 79-83

    Some people describe this Pluto-IC transit as the midnight of the Soul. As Lynn Hayes writes: “It shows the psychological legacy from our parents and ancestors that submerges in the unconscious until activated, usually by transit of a planet to that point. This is the point at which we enter the underworld of our own internal psyche, turning inward to meet the essence of who we are in this lifetime.” The Raw Astrologer describes this transit in such a perfect way as Pluto invading your personal space and beginning to chaotically and disturbingly recreate your family life, your home and your sense of security.

    This placement can have a beautiful side-effect and that is coming in touch with the Plutonian imagination which can be vast, intense and mystery-increasing. As Anne Whitaker describes in her account of being born with such a placement, that in her childhood: “My ‘real’ life – eating, sleeping, going to school – was incidental to my inner life which was full of what I felt were the really interesting questions: why are we alive, where do we go after death, do we live on several planes of existence at once, what is happening in other galaxies”. In addition, June from Saturn & Honey writes that this type of Pluto transit is a family curse-breaker: “4th house Pluto means staring the truth of one’s early life or longer-term family history in the eye and choosing not to continue the pattern, committing to change. Let the ways of the past end with you.”

    Over at Little Golden Age blog, and in a short post which contains a good amount of personal experiences with this transit, actuallyjessica writes on surviving Pluto: “I quite literally hope that I survive. I realize that many people don’t ever experience this kind of astrology, so I’m trying to extract the lessons, tear down the old bullshit, transform my powerlessness into wisdom and turn my lump of coal into a shiny diamond. If you, like me, are deep in this Pluto business, I hope you find your way through the darkness to bright new days.”

    Pluto conjunct the IC (the bottom of the sky) means that Pluto is also in opposition to the Midheaven, as Peter Holm from Holm Astrology writes: “when the home and family are being affected in our lives and security wavers, it may be due to demands from the MC, which deals with one’s status, occupation and ambitions (…) The IC and MC, particularly in early life, depict incidents linked to the parents which in turn will affect the child. This parental influence on a child, shifts as we mature. The influence widens in such a way that we are no longer just influenced by the parents that dictate our lives, but we are also now affected by an extended version of the family and our place in the overall structures of life.”

    Finally, for a really comprehensive description of this astrological placement and transit, Astrology by Jo offers a description of the IC as being the one to set the feeling tone of our upbringing and the soul’s inheritance. These deep parts are what are illuminated and transformed by Pluto. One can find their root power under a Pluto conjunct the IC transit, but before the moment of intense breakthrogh comes the pressure-cooker build-up. Let me exemplify with a brief account of the last two years of my life (2024-2025), as Pluto gravitated between 29th degree of Capricorn and the 1st degree of Aquarius and encircled my IC.

    My Personal Experience

    Initially I felt invaded by this energy, and it felt like against my will the structures in my life which I had worked so hard to build, started moving and shifting in dangerous ways. I went from suffering constant auditory pain in my household, to waking up with the bleakest moods I’ve had in my life, to visiting my dad decaying on a hospital bed, to having shouting matches with my mother, and being threatened with violence by neighbours. The upsides of this energy, have been reshaping my career to do a training in Jungian analysis, expanding my social family by adopting two more cats from the street, and realising the meaning that alcohol had in my family’s life and bypassing ‘a need to drink’ by sublimating it into drawing and painting again.

    An image of my natal chart with the transits for November 2025, generated with the help of the free birtchart calculator from https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/#birthchart

    In the final months of Pluto in Capricorn at 29 degrees, I began to obsess over anything related to the home, to protection and to securing the boundaries of my daily living experience. Just shy off my 36th birthday, I bought an apartment in March of 2023 with my lifetime’s savings. What had initially felt like a wish come true, soon turned into a nightmare. I came to realize that while my place was cozy and practical, it was surrounded by problematic individuals and part of an environment which I had considerably underestimated under the spell of my first-time buyer’s excitement. I am not a financially wealthy being, and actually the wound of poverty is the strongest marker in my personal chart (see that Saturn in the 2nd house placement).

    To me, owning a home, even if it was a small flat, was a very important aspect of breaking through ancestral patterns of women being denied the right to property or having money to buy their homes, and thus finding self-empowerment and safety. Dazed as I was by finally finding a place that I was able to afford in crowded and expensive Bucharest, I had not realized I was trying to sleep in a hornets’ nest. And there can be no true safety in such an environment.

    Across the road from my apartment a highway was being finalised and when I moved into the place in March, I had no idea that roadworks would last until the end of November of that year. I lived for months with loud drilling noises, made worse by the fact that the building next to mine also was being enveloped simultaneously as the highway – something damaging happened to my nervous system during that period, the repercussions of which I still have to live with. Over the summer of that year, the neighbourhood turned into hot mulch, and the air was toxic due to the dust in the air.

    Even with the windows closed, the surrounding noises were unquenchable, especially since I was hit with another issue: my next-door neighbour was prostituting herself to the workers in the neighbourhood and would place loud music on her subwoofer, every time they came to see her to drown out her moans. To make matters worse, often these men would knock on my door, as the doors to the flats were so close to each other.

    As summer burned outside, the inside of the building was littered with garbage and we lacked an Intercom, so strangers were freely entering the building to get drunk or high on the staircases. One night I got woken up by the sound of a man snoring loudly as he had fallen drunkenly asleep near my door. And to top it all off, one of my neighbours from two doors down across from mine had frequent psychotic breakdowns in which he would dress as a woman and threaten to jump out the garbage chute or paint the hallways with crayon and other bodily fluids.

    Whenever I would leave my home I was equipped with a pocket knife, pepper spray and ready to record any interaction coming my way. I felt like walking through metaphorical ‘trenches’ and distracted my attention by making my indoors look cozy and warm and by taking care of the neighbourhood’s stray cats. By taking care of the vulnerable I was also and indirectly sending out a cry for help: ‘Would someone take care of my vulnerable Self?‘ It took me a while to understand that this elusive someone had to also be me.

    All these interferences and frights made me crave safety in life like never before, but as the planet Saturn resides in my 2nd house, I am deprived of experiencing it in this lifetime, unless I put in hard work to obtain it. Interestingly, just when I thought I had figured out the deeper meaning of the 4th house in astrology, I began reading Wanda Sellar’s book ‘Introduction to Decumbiture‘ and was struck by how often she associated the 4th house with ‘the grave‘. This terrified me at the time, as I imagined my own sudden death, but in turns out that this death took someone else in my family, the parent I was attached to the most, my father. Most of us will have this Pluto to the IC transit happening somewhere in our charts and part of the reason I am writing this article is to help prepare some of you for what may come and how to read the energies that could emerge in your life, disturbing your peace, home life and emotional foundations.

    I eventually (and reluctantly) ended up selling my flat in February 2025. Even writing this sentence is sending me into a slight panic attack, which tells how I continue to be emotionally attached to this idea of a place as a container of my sense of safety. When in reality, these disruptive events that are causing me to move home so frequently are trying to help me cement the understanding that I am actually the home I am looking for, the home I idealise and crave to own or to build. It is inside of myself that this feeling of safety, of belonging in the world, that needs time and nurture to root and sprout, to grow and expand until I end up feeling safe as a state of being. The root of this feeling begins in my past and is reconstituted in the present through my body and my relationships to others, it is with these two aspects that I need to make peace, by relinquishing a sense of guilt, shame and fear and learning to trust more, to be gentler and to flow.

    After I sold the flat, I moved into a rather old-looking apartment, a place in desperate need of new furtnitue and renovation, with big windows and vast amounts of light. I was drawn to that exposing light and didn’t mind the old furniture because to be honest I was so destroyed at the thought of having sold my home that I’ve felt deep down inside that I somehow don’t deserve better. I wrongly believed I had failed at making a home. I sold what was so dear to me. I had given up. I accepted this weird rental with two-beds and linoleum flooring and a kitchen that was tiled in the same style like a sanatorium because I felt sick, frail and somehow self-punishing.

    The strangest thing is that the week that I moved into this intermediate home, this purgatory flat, my father died. Two months later a neighbour died. 4 months later, I realised my landlady was suffering from undiagnosed mental health issues that pushed her to cross my boundaries regularly & months later I moved out in a panicked state, right before Christmas after having an argument with her because she had begun following me. The same week I moved out, I also had sex for the first time after 4 years.

    When the Scorpio man with beautiful blue eyes, whom I had the spend the night with, asked me “Why did you wait so long?” I answered “Because I was waiting to have sex with someone I loved. But in the meantime, I guess I got pragmatic”. On some level it’s not healthy to put off sex for so long as an adult, and a part of me felt that if I had sex maybe my neurotic symptoms will cool off. And they did, temporarily at least.

    Thanatos and Eros, the death drive and the sex drive felt like two large psychological pillars that had marked my existence in the weird limbo-flat in which I stayed for most of 2025. When I moved in, I witnessed the death of my father. When I moved out, I had a night of passionate sex with a stranger. I had ultimately chosen life, and pleasure and sex, which prompted me into a rebirth of some kind. I guess the duality had to be activated inside of me in order to believe again that I am worth more and that I deserve better. I am now renting a one-bedroom apartment which no one knowns the address of and I can’t believe how much I am enjoying this little detail. It’s a place with a dark red wall, just one bed, a place that feels somehow more solid, exceedingly warm and protected, although it is also on the pricier side. I sleep all day and stay awake at night to work in perfect silence. I feel balanced, because somehow, I had managed to jump into a new reality, and had left some of the pain behind. I go to therapy sessions on a weekly basis, analyse my emotions and dreams in a diary and create as often I have energy. Although, I am not sure yet what I am now becoming, I feel somewhat released of the birthing pains and pushed on the path of learning to walk again.

    The Energy of this Transit as Shown in Films

    Because of my recent experiences, I resonated so strongly with a couple of movies which portrayed the psychological transformations of 4 women. Each at a different level of their becoming, the protagonists’ struggle in their homes, mirrored some of my own intense emotions. I also found it remarkably healing to look at stories driven by women, which placed the themes of motherhood, desire, safety, loss and betrayal at the core of their cathartic decisions. And maybe this could serve as some interesting recommendations to understand the deeper meaning of a Pluto in the 4th house transit or natal placement.

    In the following section, I will share my perspective on what the place of the home represented on an emotional and psychological level to the main characters in each of the movies I list below. Interpreting the symbolic meaning of a home is a good exercise in preparing for what is to come. However, understanding something may not inevitably protect you from it, but it will certainly help you feel like you are at least more aware of the wise implications of this energy, so that when it happens you are able to handle it and even – dare I say – enjoy it?

    Similarly, when someone is aware that they are going through for example, a Saturn return then it is easier to handle it on a mental level, as you understand that tests, limits and hardship are inevitable. I find it fascinating how the movies I am drawn towards, as this transit is unfolding, are centered around the theme of rebirth within the space of the home. These movies show me that when other women go through intense emotional experiences (whether blissful or terrifying) their homes change with them, and in some cases are even exorcised by them. It’s also interesting to note that almost all of the movies I have chosen to discuss have female protagonists and in all of them something either creepy or erotic tends to take place (these being core Plutonic themes). In my description of the following movies, I’ll figure-skate around any spoilers in case you haven’t seen these movies, so you may safely continue reading.

    1. Sliver (1993)

    Created in the final stages of the Pluto in Scorpio era, this movie features the magnetic Sharon Stone in such a vulnerable role that at the same time brings an electrifying edge, which only she can perform on screen. Her story begins with moving into a new condo in a weirdly shaped, futuristic building, reminiscent of the intimidating structure in High Rise. She has her reserves about this place (which she should’ve listened to) but is eventually convinced by the estate agent to give it a try. Little does she know that this will be a life-altering decision because not only will she become the fresh target of the building’s covert murderer, but also meet the man of her dreams. Again, the themes of death and sex, Eros and Thanatos are brought to life in this decision to move home.

    The movie finds its thrilling bits in the way it keeps you guessing whether her lover is potentially the killer or not, but what really makes the movie fascinating to watch is the state of being under constant surveillance and seeing how this pressure cooker builds to a quick life-affirming denouement. I have to say that the soundtrack kind of sucks though, taking away from the eerie atmosphere of the movie, but her chemistry with William Baldwin is sizzling. As a sidenote, both of them are Pisces Sun actors, and I think I could write a whole different article on William Baldwin’s penchant for starring in erotic thrillers with awesome Piscean co-stars (see Fair Game for another example).

    2. The Night House (2020)

    It’s clear by now that I’m a big Rebecca Hall fan, but this movie was surprisingly scary and also deeply emotional at the same time. I kind of sweated and cried with her, since the movie centres on a theme which unfortunately was something, I experienced as well in my life: romantic betrayal, then abandonment and the desperate search to understand the truth about the man you once loved. The really scary character in this movie, is this truth, which once brought to life, shatters the foundations of her sense of psychological security.

    3. Dark Water (2005)

    This rather flawed movie is at the same supremely atmospheric and carried for most of it by the ultra-talented Jennifer Connelly, who lights up the screen with her soulful performance. It’s also a supremely damp, soggy and wet film in which the environment is literally suffocated by leaks and spill overs, denoting the repressed emotions of the main protagonist, a single mother who in the wake of a divorce has to start life all over again together with her small daughter. She rents an apartment in a building in desperate need of refurbishment on Roosevelt Island in New York, finds a job and enrols her daughter in a new school. All seems to be rebuilding well, until her bedroom ceiling gets a strange leak that keeps becoming larger and larger with each passing day, and then her daughter befriends a girl who no longer exists. With its emphasis on loss, repressed emotions, ghosts, water, broken bonds, porous walls and the desperate seeking of safety in the figure of a mother, this movie holds such deep and obvious fourth house themes that it should be used as compulsory viewing material in astrology schools.

    4. The Woman in the Window (2021)

    A once stable child psychologist with a family of her own, becomes agoraphobic and obsessed with the aparent murder of her neighbour from across the street – I guess you see how these two things clash, and from the tension of not being physically able to leave her flat the excitement of the film develops as well as the horror. On the surface level this is the plot of a movie that holds no punches in delivering the most gruesome fighting scene I have ever witnessed between a teenager and an adult on a rainy rooftop. but I won’t say more so as not to spoil the plot for you all. You’ll notice early on that the movie draws heavy inspiration from two classic claustrophobic stories that also happen to take place in mythical apartments: Rear Window and Dark Passage, and coincidentially two of my all time favourite films.

    The place of living may not be a home for all, but it matters to us all as a vessel of psychological containment for our fears and worries, or what Jung called the ‘unum vas’, the alchemical vessel which holds matter and distils the soul, as we transform and individuate. The home as a shell, your personal safety coating against the harsh world and the perils of nature, or the home as a container of our psychological changes, the walls recording daily dramas, witnessing the unravelling of our private selves. In the home you are who you are, you rarely bring your Persona in and your Ego doesn’t seek the approval it normally seeks from other people’s public validation. So being ‘at home’ can allow the Self to emerge.

    I always thought that if people were to know my homebody, ‘pyjama Self’ they would probably find it very different than my academic Self. Last year, in 2025, I dared to show others, with the help of my work on the Internet, this fragile, pyjama Self. I didn’t get much validation and approval, but neither did I get offense and rejection. I felt left to inhabit a limbo area of my Self, much like the apartment I was inhabiting. But I did move in a whispered way from exposing this vulnerable Self, to taking it within and protecting it. This is why I feel safest now, in a state of being ‘draped up’, of not existing during the day, but rather meeting and making friends with my nocturnal Self, my night being. My spirit animal is the sensitive and misunderstood bat and I am comfortable with that image, because usually right before a drastic rebirth you are meant to walk inside the darkest of nights for a while.

    Nocturnal little animals
    You keep your mother up
    You watch the town shut down
    You watch the lights go off
    Shutters closing in the bars

    – Daughter, Wish I could cross the sea

    Homes can permit or block the development of us as beings, for example, if you look back at your childhood home (or lack thereof). Homes can also be places to hide what we don’t want others to see, or places within which we hide in order to control the environment around us, to spy on the world that hurt us so much that we can no longer participate in life, like the Woman in the Window portrays so well.

    Homes can be places within which desire plays out like in Sliver, birth may happen, diseases and death can occur, away from the prying eyes of strangers. We allow ourselves to be vunerable, soft, pliable in the home. Moreover, houses can be vessels to our memories, and haunted homes especially so, in that they can become a projection screen for parts of our unconscious mind that we have yet to come in contact with: those infamous skeletons in the closet, those darkened basements that house the unspeakable, those creaky floors, bedroom windows that won’t shut properly and those singing pipes, that threaten to burst when our emotions get the best of us but we bottle them up anyway, like its shown in The Night House and Dark Water.

    What is left ‘un-homed’ is equally important to what the home represents. The space that is left when we outgrow a place and silently move on in life, leaves an energetic imprint. We leave traces of ourselves everywhere we have been and homes are the containers of these past, previous, ghostly selves, that we can no longer fit into. It’s a different way to interpret the sense of ‘horror vacui’ , which appears so frequently around abandoned homes and derelict places. This is why revisiting a location can feel so distabilising or why entering in a new place can also overwhelm us, because we come into contact with what has lived here in the absence, much like Steven Soderbergh shows in his haunting film “Presence”(2024).

    And absoring that absence, welcoming the past self into the present, private reality we dispose of, can help us to create that elusive and transient sense of being ‘at home’, like it is so tenderly portrayed in a movie that managed to leave me in cathartic tears, as it deals with healing a father-daughter relationship through art, the poignant Sentimental Value (2025). Please go watch it, it will leave you loving.

    In conclusion, I guess it helps to welcome the past, no matter how painful it has been, and to resist running away from it, as it will show you the way forward in life when you are going through a period of being ‘stuck’.

    Ultimately, I understood that to feel safe in the world, no matter the location or place, is to feel safe embracing that haunted basement, those secret skeletons in the closet and that scary attic that have always been part of me. Like the goddess Hekate, I have to find a way to carry a torch even in the darkest parts of my Underworld, those places I didn’t dare visit while I was young because I was unprepared to take on the burdens of Eros and Thanatos, but that now as an adult are asking me to integrate them with courage and honesty into all aspects of the experience of being alive.

    The spiritual goal toward which the whole nature of man strives is to rescue the light of consciousness…it is the sea to which all rivers went their way.

    – Carl Jung, Collected Works 8

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • Healing Through Chaos: Embracing Pluto’s Intensity

    Still from the movie 99 Moons

    June for me is a month of recovery. A recovery that is necessary in the wake of May’s energy. This is because last month’s energy was something beyond what I had experienced in a long time, and this confession doesn’t come lightly since I was born a Plutonic and I am used to unexpected and strong doses of life’s intensity. Due to my karmic Pluto in Scorpio Rx in the 1st house placement, life had demonstrated to me several times that this is going to be an incarnation of extremes, of symbolic deaths and rebirths, and having to understand some of the deepest emotions. However, sometimes a certain period comes along which simply turns up the Plutonic heat up a notch. Like a square aspect of transiting Pluto in Aquarius to my natal Pluto in Scorpio, during Taurus season, for example…

    For perspective, transiting Pluto in Aquarius is at the moment of my writing this article at 3’19 degrees in my 4th house; my IC (imum coeli or the bottom of the sky), the root of my chart is placed at 1’37 Aquarius. As a factual recap, the month of May of 2025 debuted with selling my small one-room flat and my moving into a 2-bedroom rented apartment in a safer part of Bucharest. A decision I didn’t easily make as I had to let go of the financial security of owning my place, but I gained the physical safety of knowing that at least, in this rental I will no longer be threatened with violent abuse by my neighbours, like I had been in my previous location.

    Escaping into a safer neighbourhood was something coming for two years now and as difficult as it had been to decide on this move, I pushed myself into making it because of self-preservation. The heavy-heartedness, however, came along with me. Just as I was getting accustomed to this new place and thinking it was better that I was somehow closer to my parent’s place and could visit them more often, on the 8th of May my father died.

    In his book ‘Pluto and the Evolutionary Journey of the Soul/ Vol. 1’ Jeffrey Wolf Green describes Pluto’s transit through the 4th house in the following words :

    “…this process will serve as an excellent time to examine the impact of the individual’s early environmental situation as reflected through the parents, and for those who are parents, how they themselves have emotionally responded to their own children, family and spouse (…) It will now be necessary to change or eliminate all forms of emotional dependency and security that are linked to external situations. These dependencies and securities are in some way limiting further growth (…) This evolutionary time frame and experience can be very difficult because many people will feel as if the very foundations of their lives are being threatened and removed. Such an experience must occur so that the individual is more or less left with only his or her self to look at, to examine, and to depend on (…) For some people this process will be enforced through the loss of a job or career, a family member or someone close to them, emotional confrontations of an intense magnitude with family members or even the loss of the individual’s own life.” (p. 322-323).

    Dad was cremated on the 10th of May and I found myself walking back from the Crematorium into a straight line back into the new flat I had just shortly inhabited. I crawled into bed like a slug and rested there for the next hours, feeling numbed out of my mind. I couldn’t cry. My body held on to the pain. It was familiar. It was a family thing to hold onto pain. I was simply being loyal.

    What weighed heavily on my heart was the fact that on the morning of my father’s death, I visited grandpa’s grave – situated near my new place – and I placed a coin on top of it. I offered flowers and asked grandpa (my father’s father) to help my family out. Hours later, around midnight my mother called to tell me that dad had given up the ghost. I immediately thought of grandpa letting me know that he listened to my prayer…although I’m not sure, that was the resolution I had asked for, but I am in no position at this point in my life to have semantic arguments with ghosts. Grandpa helped. And this helping hand from beyond the veil lingers in my heart, as a life mystery left for me to unravel. I am not afraid of ghosts, but I am mortified of living a soulless life. So the problem I had to cope with now was: How do I continue to live on, when all I can feel is just how dead I am on the inside?

    Dad’s departure happened right in-between Romania’s presidential elections, a period of two weeks of tumult as the population was faced with a pro-West candidate and a pro-Russian candidate. To say that the air in Bucharest was electric during those days, was an understatement. As the pressures kept pilling up on me, around the 19th of May – and after the results of the elections proved to be hopeful and progressive rather than medieval and destructive, I realised just how completely chewed up my nervous system had been. My body has started uncontrollably shaking after I took my morning shower and my hands were clenching without the possibility of relaxing them quickly. Only with controlled breathing was I able to physically ‘unclench’ and relax my body in roughly 20 minutes (which felt like an eternity).

    In the final days of May, I was running from one doctor appointment to another to find some treatment for my nervous system’s temporary collapse and I was lucky enough to find the support I needed in a psychiatrist, neurologist and family doctor. The treatment my psychiatrist put me on helped smooth out my over-sensitivity to sounds and helped me feel more relaxed in my body. I somehow knew this wasn’t enough and that I had to do a bit more to get the pain through my body moving and to release it somehow. I started doing yoga and gentle stretches daily, while eating a consistent breakfast of porridge with honey and fruits and making sure I am drinking enough water each day.

    I took at least 10,000 steps, and installed a tracker app on my phone to keep me to it. Each day this tracker would gentle nudge me to ‘get moving’ and then reward me by saying ‘you are getting better’, which felt like the kindest thing I could hear all day and exactly the opposite of how I was feeling. At night I worked, since work keeps me stable and optimistic and then I would watch a movie projected on the blank wall of my bedroom to take my mind off things. I would cry in the most public and inappropriate places, always surrounded by strangers and never near my mother or sister, the last two remaining members of my close family. It’s sad to write this but my relationship to them is not at all close, to say the least. I try, nonetheless.

    In ‘The Book of Pluto: Finding Wisdom in Darkness with Astrology’, astrologer Steven Forrest reflects on what happens to the human psyche once Pluto pays a visit to the root of the root of the birth chart, the IC or Nadir:

    “Psychological insights, bravely won, must penetrate down into core assumptions about yourself, and then be expressed publicly.” (p.263). He goes on to add that with this transit : “Your navigational error, if you succumb to it, would be to live the life of a ghost, with your fire, intensity and vision removed from your biographical life while you went through the motions of existence. And regardlessof outward appearances, at the psychological level you would live the life of a hearthless, homeless person (…) With Pluto in the fourth house, you heal yourself by becoming conscious of your woundedness…for you it starts with realizing the extent to which your ability to find, recognize and claim ‘your people’ has been distorted.” (p. 83)

    Remarkably, the intensity I was doing my best to smooth out or diminish in my waking life, appeared once again projected through the movies that I gravitated towards in that month. One after the other, I saw four movies that were incredibly good but each in their own way, were also intense and haunting.

    First of all, I saw ‘Sex, lies and videotape’ after I listened to antiheroines‘ insightful analysis on YouTube, about the disappearance of horny movies and the important role of emotional intimacy in making films feel erotic. I just loved this movie and if I was previously a fan of James Spader’s and Maggie Gyllenhaal’s chemistry in ‘Secretary‘, the unlikely attraction which existed between him and Andi MacDowell in Stephen Soderbergh’s film was much more subtle and sexy somehow.

    Seeing as I was in a vulnerable state of chaotic sadness, physical pain and nervous irritation, I couldn’t believe that this movie made me feel something tender-hearted again. As if a whole new mindset was available to me, through psychological sensuality.

    Still from the movie ‘Sex, lies and videotapes’

    A couple of days later, the film player I used to watch the film above recommended another European movie called ’99 Moons’. This movie was filmed after the pandemic and had actors I had never seen before, so it was right up my alley. Heavily medicated, still broken-hearted but satisfied that I had completed my day’s work, I sat on my little couch to watch this movie which begins with one of the most random, brutal and unexpected sex scenes I had seen so far. I won’t get into details but I’ll just say it involved: a parking lot, a ski mask, something aggressively oral happening and two consenting adults, one of whom breaks down crying after their intense coupling. And it’s not whom you expect.

    The curious thing is that ’99 Moons’ is a love story and the characters grow on you with so much ease that you feel shattered when you watch the surprising ending to the movie. I loved it because you get to see a completely different gender dynamic between two heterosexual characters, than you get to see in other erotic-themed movies. And the sex scenes are not at all vanilla or missionary, rather the opposite as most of them are female-led and unique but they always add to the story and the sensual intimacy between two people who simply were burning for each other across the years. This movie made me feel like it was worth bringing back to life, a part of me that once felt excited about sex and sexual pleasure…a part I had buried in April of 2021.

    Just some nights into my treatment, and I was now continuously sad but I felt somehow horny as well, like the upper part of the body broke off from my lower region. I had to appreciate however that both systems, although apart, were trying to keep me alive and away from the darker thoughts…those thoughts I had of joining my relatives, of seeing my dad’s dead and peaceful face as flowers were thrown over him, thoughts which sounded a lot like: ‘What’s the fucking point in living anymore? He seems so calm, he no longer feels pain…I wish I could feel that’. The creeping feeling that everything was falling apart around me and I wanted to just stop breathing, so that maybe then the pressure will lift and my body will stop hurting so much in every little corner.

    It felt like Freud’s concepts of how Thanatos nourishes Eros, which I first became aware of in college, it was as if they were finally being integrated skin-deep within my physicality. It was Pluto’s energy creating this cellular revolution through the way in which I was interpreting the events that happened in May of 2025 and the stories I was watching and unsuccessfully trying to escape into. The only thing these movies did was to push back upon myself the duty to live in my body and to continue to live on, no matter how painful the experience of living would get.

    I remembered this feeling. It was kind of how I felt after watching a couple of years ago ‘Normal people’, just that that experience was devoid of the pain of thinking constantly in the background of my mind: “Dad is gone and I’m never going to be able to speak to him, and I knew that the last time I talked to him in January, after I argued with mom, that it would’ve been our last moment together, because I told him this and he just sadly starred at me…he didn’t say anything.”

    A part of me, the child-part felt guilty for abandoning dad, while the rational part of me was aware that it felt like the force of karma worked through me, as I had done to dad what he had done to me when I was small and sick: abandoned me.

    Armed with this sad mix of thoughts, I went to the cinema this time to watch an old Romanian movie with a curious title “Glissando”. A movie about a man obsessed with the portrait of a woman. Halfway through the movie, the plot dissolves into two streams, two alternate realities and the characters simply float into random and beautifully-shot sequences of events in their lives. It is a movie about love, memories and obsessions and it was gorgeous to behold and spoke volumes to me about taking it easy and just riding the wave of feelings produced by all the events of the month of May. I couldn’t control what was happening, but I could control my reactions to all these things. In that at least, I had some power left.

    Still from the movie ‘Glissando’

    I guess that the intensity of May was lived inside of my body between these two extremes of deep sadness – that I was trying my best to run away from – and into erotic creativity – a sensual healing I was hoping to find some sort of solace. It helped that May in Bucharest is incredibly fragrant, as all the roses and jasmine bushes blossom, and the linden trees unleash their aromas while the market boom with cherries and strawberries and honey melons. It gets warmer each night and clothes become looser and thinner and days become longer and slower.

    In the background of this, I was tuning in and out of consciousness repressing feelings of sadness, shame and guilt. I slept throughout the day and was awake at night. Nature was so beautiful while my inner world was at war with itself and this contrast struck me. As if by magic, when I noticed the contradiction, the world around me seem to calm me down.

    The last film I saw was also probably the most difficult to watch, due to the topic. I saw Denis Villeneuve’s “Incendies” on a random whim. I wasn’t even sure how I got to watch it… All I know is that since I moved into this new flat there have been some mysterious Middle-Eastern influences that I am still trying to shake off, which have been haunting me: from finding out that the previous tenants were Arabs, to randomly stumbling upon an Arabian perfume that I couldn’t stop thinking of, to listening to Habibi Spice on YouTube because his soothing voice helped with my nervous system regulation.

    And then Incendies came along and I watched it and my jaw dropped and it helped me release a lot, because I cried my heart out. A week after, as I was walking through one of the largest literature events in Bucharest, Bookfest 2025, I felt drawn to a French-Arab publishing house and then saw the book “Incendies” written by Wajdi Mouawad – full circle moment.

    Still from the movie ‘Incendies’

    There are some other fascinating things about this new place I moved into, such as finding out from my mother that the shopping complex right in front of my window used to be a communist bread store in which my grandma (my father’s mother) used to work in and that it had a kindergarten attached to it, where I had briefly been to as a child. So without consulting anyone and after months of searching, I had unconsciously placed myself in May of 2025 in front of an energetic zone imprinted with memories from the 80s, when I was a toddler, and dad and grandma were alive and bread was rationed and we lived under a different political regime.

    In that moment of realization, I suddenly felt immensely peaceful! I understood that although things aren’t working out as I would like them too, they are working out exactly how the planets are dictating, among which Pluto is the loudest since it has begun the process of changing my soul. I know that if I just stick with the wave of chaotic emotions, memories and symbols, I will eventually get a beautiful and shocking realization as to why things are happening how they are happening. Spirit will deliver meaning and all I need to do is ride the flow of feelings and intuition and pay attention to my environment.

    And when the healing realizations begun and I was feeling a combination of illuminating thoughts and the mood-regulating treatment working, peace returned and my curiosity sparked again. During a particular difficult night, as I was wresting in bed trying not to cry again, I stumbled upon this video which although it sounds cheesy to admit, did a magical spell on my capacity to let go of fighting the intensity and simply giving in to it and accepting it:

    I don’t know why I wrote this post, except that it felt cathartic to do it. I think it’s meant to be some symbolic and blow-by-blow account of how Pluto in Aquarius is influencing my inner world at the moment, as I’m struggling to make sense and interpret this energy. I’m hoping it may help someone at some point in time, who might find themselves in similar circumstances. As tough as a Pluto transit can be, especially in electrifying Aquarius, it can also offer rest, re-education and renewal. I think this article may also be a list of recommendations, because despite the sad which create the backbone of this article, the films & resources are pretty good and you may want to give them a try. Let me know what you uncover.

    With universal love,

    Lexi

  • The Lesser of Two Evils

    Image of Elena Lasconi standing in front of her party’s banner
    (USR – The Union to Save Romania)

    “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

    Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

    The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

    The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

    Are full of passionate intensity.” 

    – The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

    If you feel that you’re in a tight spot and all the oxygen is leaving the room, then you’re not alone. I think we are all beginning to feel the collective sucker-punch of Pluto in Aquarius at the first degree. The purpose of this wave-like sucker punch is to get us to feel rattled within and to use our anger to fight against oppression. However, we may be signing our own executioner’s approval by wanting change so much that we are willing to throw away everything that civil society stands for. In the absence of rules and social norms, a military utopia may come into place: a society led by thugs, controlled by brutes and ruled by martial law. The stakes are high and so is my anxiety. Our drastic desire for social change, the rebellion against the system and the need to bring in the new at all costs (even if this new may be the implementation of neo-fascism) are all hallmarks of an immature Uranian transit (it’s immature because Pluto is currently at the first degrees of the transit, and as it progresses over 10 degrees, it then begins to ripen).

    Personally, I woke up during the preliminary elections’ day, the 24th of November, on a sunny, Sunday morning, eager to get to a voting booth and have my say against the rise of far-right candidates in my country’s elections. I left the voting booth with a heavy heart since I could pick up on the vibe of the people around me who were talking about voting for Marcel Ciolacu. However, waking up on Monday morning felt like waking up to an alternate reality. A reality in which you confusedly find out that a random candidate who very few people knew about and whom the press completely disregarded, made it as a front-runner in the race for the presidency of Romania. His name is Calin Georgescu and he is an ultra-nationalist, independent candidate. The fact that he went under the radar with this surprising win or that he allegedly relied on social media (specifically Tik Tok) to campaign and rally the votes of youth and Romanians who live outside of the country, it not the worst issue.

    As we are all trying to understand exactly who he is, facts are emerging about this man’s political past: he was close to George Simion (a thug in a neatly pressed suit who wants to radicalise Romania) and he is a staunch admirer of Vladimir Putin, to such an extent that he copied some of his photoshoots, trying to pose like him! The optimism I had in the morning when I saw that neither Marcel Ciolacu (the PSD candidate) nor George Simion (the AUR candidate) got ahead in the final round of elections was increasingly tempered. As I was researching more facts about Georgescu, I gradually became livid.

    Calin Georgescu (an Aries Sun) is now up against Elena Lasconi (a Taurus Sun) who represents the USR party, a party whose set of values and motto I don’t particularly agree with but in the wake of these results I feel left with the inevitability of choosing a candidate who will represent the lesser of two evils in this situation. And the situation is dire, not only because of the shocking realisation of the political influence of TikTok, a platform which Calin apparently used to aggressively campaign for himself (an activity which is btw illegal in Romania), but also because there’s an ongoing and brutal war at the doorstep, between our neighbouring country Ukraine and Russia. Because Georgescu has directly said he doesn’t support Ukraine and admires Putin, it would be logical that choosing a candidate who is Pro-NATO should be the careful, collective next step of Romanians. However, I doubt carefulness enters into the mix, as the population is leaning more towards ‘let’s watch it all burn down’.

    Now Lasconi declared that she is pro-EU and pro-NATO and definitively against Putin, and her presidency will guarantee our continued link to the EU and the military support it can provide us in case of a Russian expansion of conflict (not to mention that seeing a Romanian female president shake hands at future press conferences with the male, American president, Donald Trump will be a sight to behold). However, since people seem intent to vote by feeling and the optics of TikTok rather than making an educated choice, it feels like the outcome will be highly uncertain. To be fair, in the current and dysregulated political context, even making an informed decision seems like an impossible task as there is such an abundance of random opinions presented as facts, fake news, manipulated reports and hearsay that it makes the search for anything remotely truthful seem like searching for the Holy Grail.

    There is also the added problem of gender, an issue that continues to divide Romanians and has also divided Americans in their recent elections, as we saw Kamala Harris, a Black woman lose the election to Donald Trump, an aging carrot. While, I don’t believe that neither proponent for the second round of elections in my country is fit to be a good leader or can defend any of mine or my generation’s rights and values, at least I keep thinking that Lasconi will be a mildly progressive choice by virtue of potentially becoming the first female Romanian president (about time we caught up with the Republic of Moldova with this one!). Nonetheless, even if Lasconi pushes Romanian politics into a progressive era by virtue of her gender, she may promote laws and regulations that ban any kind of social progress in terms of family and LGBTQ rights (she actually distanced herself from her own daughter on this matter) and may promote Christian and traditional values which will push us backward.

    While Georgescu, with his intention of isolating Romania from NATO is a perilous choice, Lasconi could look good as an image but actually drag us back into antiquated family values. Nonetheless, Lasconi will maintain political links to the EU and she prioritizes education, and this is why I am leaning to give her my vote in the next round (and the fact that she is a woman is just an added benefit). While Georgescu is a man who pledges the same Christian and traditionalist values as Lasconi, but in addition: has continued ties to the far-right party (AUR); admires two infamous controversial Romanian leaders (Corneliu Zedreanu Colea, a violence-loving ultra-nationalist thug and Ion Antonescu, who infamously took part in the Nazi deportation and obliteration of Romanian jews during World War 2); vows he is a staunch patriot and will defend the country against war but also believes we should look up to the Kremlin; and lastly, believes that a woman’s role is to have babies and not to lead the country. So how is this any form of progress? Are we going to vote “against the system” with an intensity that may lead to our own destruction? Are we ready to slide back into being Russian serfs? My grandmother who narrowly escaped being forced to learn Russian in her primary school years, back in the 40s, may now be rolling in her grave (I should pay a visit just to check on her).

    Image of Calin Georgescu from Mediafax

    I don’t agree with either ultra-Christian and pro-nationalist opinions, as to a large extent I believe individuals can and should govern themselves in lieu of electing a representative to do it for them, especially since no one is able to represent an increasingly diversified population in this day and age. I am and I consider myself an international citizen, not just a ‘Romanian’, because the sum total of all my life’s experiences (lived out in Romania, alongside in Germany, the UK, Sweden and the US) creates who I am today. And many of us seem to forget that in an increasingly globalised world, talking about nationalist agendas or pushing towards separation and division is not only delusional but also against the flow of the current process of growth. History has indeed shown us that during times of massive growth and progress there is another counter-progressive movement which takes place simultaneously: such as how during World War 2 as women were undergoing immense cruelty and hardships, they also gained entry to jobs, they had access to the means of productions and they could wear more dynamic and flexible clothes to a larger extent than they did in the past. As we build the new, we also destroy the old. As a consequence, some sort of precarious and mysterious energetic balance is maintained.

    Keeping all of this in mind (and my poor mind does go through moments in which it feels like it may break) I am wondering which one of them will succeed two weeks from now at the December 8th elections? In this anxiety-provoking interim, my beautiful consolation is as usual, astrology. The language of the stars and the occult, that always keeps on giving. Now to be honest, I am not completely mortified by the prospect of radical change. I know that on a deep spiritual level, what we are witnessing is the effect of Pluto in Aquarius, preparing to pull us back into the deep past before pushing us to rise up and rebel, but the logical & peace-loving part of me is still upset and confused. In the following, I want to see if I can determine the outcome of the Romanian presidential elections by looking at the personal energies of each candidate. For this I turn to their birth-charts to try to understand whom will the odds favour in the end.

    Below you can see the chart of Elena Lasconi born on the 20th of April 1972 in Hateg, Romania. She is a Taurus Sun at 0 degrees, with a Cancer Moon at the 29th anaretic degree and an unknown Ascendant. I was struck by how her Sun and Moon energies, although harmoniously locked into a sextile aspect of friendship and support, are placed at the final and first degrees of the signs they represent! Not only that but what is probably the most fascinating aspect is her North Node in Aquarius at 0 degrees, a destined placement that is at the moment perfectly conjunct transiting Pluto! When Pluto comes calling on the point of your growth in this lifetime, this means that you are being led down the path of a deep mind-body-and-soul transformation. This placement also shows that with the proper support from the collective (Aquarius), Elena is destined (the North Node) to gain great power (Pluto). But it also shows that she is more emotionally more charged up (Moon at the 29th destroying degree), rather than she is able to balance her emotions under the cool light of reason and successful action (Sun at 0 degrees).

    Just by looking at these placements and I felt slightly uneasy: she is indeed traditional and a nationalist (Cancer Moon), a person who replenishes the most by being at home, in her own land and culture and surrounded by what is familiar to her. Moreover, she is meant to gradually release stubbornness and self-obsession (South Node in Leo) in favour of working in the service of other people (Pluto in Virgo retrograde). She is meant to revolutionize the way she relates to others, although at times she could come across as weird in her speech or too progressive in her applications of the law, and even slightly insane in her personal life (natal Uranus in Libra retrograde; and currently affected by the transiting South Node in Libra!). Lasconi has been criticised by the fact that she doesn’t seem to understand international politics and I see this as a manifestation of having a natal Neptune in Sagittarius retrograde; this placement does make the native feel confused in dealing with global issues, in understanding other cultures and in making sense of international regulations. Nonetheless, Lasconi may also take a spiritual approach in establishing links with other cultures and countries and she is able to bring about increased trust and compassion in her external politics, especially in terms of maritime and naval trade.

    With Lilith in Scorpio, we are dealing here with a wild character in terms of keeping secrets, dealing with issues of sex and sexuality and a person who doesn’t easily trust those closest to her. She may also idealise power, and prefer attaining it to the detriment of prioritizing her family life, or her roles as mother and wife. I like this placement because it shows she was born to be the leader of many and to subsume her Ego in service to the collective with that Leo/Aquarius axis. In a similar vein, we see here a lot of communication karma. Her natal Mercury is in Aries conjunct Chiron, which is not an ideal placement at all as she can be too direct and impolite in her speech. The benefit is that she quickly gets to the point. This placement of Mercury and Chiron also shows that it is painful for her to speak her truth without suffering in some way; and indeed, in political debates, she comes across as feisty and confrontational, often being crudely blunt and it looks as if on some level, this manner of expressing herself is also wounding her.

    Birth-chart of Elena Lasconi, created with https://www.astro.com/horoscope?nho2=2&nhor=1

    In her campaign she didn’t make large promises, preferring to focus on improving schools and public spaces, all while promoting her tagline ‘A Romania for the many, and not just for the few’. And we come now to what is the most fascinating part of her chart and what gives me hope that she will win the second round of elections, her natal stellium in Gemini, involving the planets Saturn, Venus and Mars. This stellium is currently energised in a positive way by the transit of Jupiter in Gemini! This means that she is helped in her personal relationships and in her capacity to earn money (Venus) by the God of Good Luck. Not only that but Jupiter is releasing her from specific karmic restrictions that are connected to her capacity to speak and use technology (natal Saturn in Gemini), while also giving her increased courage and vitality to tackle on hard tasks and overcome her opponents in public debates and verbal competitions (Jupiter transiting natal Mars in Gemini, the sign of communication). Despite her traditionalist, pragmatic and unripe Taurus Sun – unripe because it is placed at the first degree, so she is limited in her capacity to be herself in this lifetime, as she has to learn how to become someone for other people – Venus conjunct Saturn and North Node in Aquarius – and her home-loving, nationalist Moon in Cancer, I am very happy to see a lot of Air placements in her chart. This makes her more flexible than her fiery Aries placement and Taurus Sun would reveal. In addition, being a proponent of the Earth element means that she will take issues related to money and the environment very personally and that she will defend them, and I personally would love to see stricter environmental laws and restrictions to deforestation in place.

    Seeing as she may ascend to the presidency of the country during her Uranus transiting her Sun era, and while also having her Chiron in Aries return (!) I believe that Lasconi will be able to use her personal wound related to her authenticity and personhood and recreate herself in terms of the population she will lead; thereby truly becoming the weird and wonderful, hippie Earth-mamma that her North Node in Aquarius is pushing her to be. I think we can help her in achieving this destiny.

    On the other hand, Lasconi’s opponent, Georgescu was born on the 26th of March 1962 in Bucharest. He is a Sun in Aries (so a natural and slightly belligerent leader) with a Moon in Sagittarius (a placement he shares in common with Trump). He describes himself as a patriot but considering that he has a lunar placement in the least domestic and settled sign of the zodiac, Sagittarius, Georgescu is actually more emotionally attached to travelling, to his connections to foreigners, and to the philosophy and religion of a specific culture rather than to its daily habits, rites and the customs of everyday people; in the same vein as a man who promises commitment just to get you to sleep with him, and then he packs up and leaves, I see here a great potential to be ardently courted during the campaign only to be left abandoned once he reaches the presidency (and guess to whom he is ready to ‘give’ some territory?? c’mon have a naughty go) In addition to such passionate and fiery placements which would indeed position him as born public performer, I am not at all impressed by the large amount of Water I see in his chart. Born with a natal Neptune in Scorpio retrograde and a Chiron, Mars and Mercury stellium in Pisces (currently restricted and karmically bound by the transit of Saturn in Pisces), we are dealing here with a really good secret-keeper and a man whose movements can be very misleading, confusing and stealth. Case in point, how he snuck past those awaiting in line to the presidency and won the first round of the elections.

    Birth-chart of Calin Georgescu, created with https://www.astro.com/horoscope?nho2=2&nhor=1

    A Mars in Pisces is a weak placement for a man involved in leadership in politics, as this makes him quite passive, easily dominated and chameleonic. He runs a good chance of charming his voters only to disappear at the slightest threat from other leaders with stronger placements. He does have Jupiter at 0 degrees in Pisces, loosely conjunct his natal Mars, but with Chiron thrown in the mix, this tells the story of a man who willingly pursues competition but in fuzzy way, only to be disappointed by the result and become emotionally distraught. The transit of Saturn is restricting his Jupiterian aplomb, bringing him with his feet on the ground but it may also reward his zeal and idealistic thinking. It needs to be said, like I mentioned in the previous article on making sense of the results of the American elections that a natal Jupiter in Pisces carries the Archetype of the Saviour, who could end up sinking the ship it tries to rescue the crew from. This is a man who may create political drama just so he can swoop in and save the day, as he needs the hero narrative to feel he is doing his job. But the drama he may create knows little boundaries as it is placed in Pisces, so he may indirectly produce some unexpected collateral damage that would take years to remedy, if at all.

    Now Neptune in Scorpio is a generational marker and it would be unfair to judge him just by that, but to my mind I’ve always had a massive ‘ick’ in relation to this placement of Neptune because (and in its lower vibration) it is connected to the mass proliferation of pornography and the increase of networks of paedophilia. Furthermore, a man born with a Pluto in Virgo conjunct Lilith, could very well go on a witch hunt when he comes into contact with educated, well-organised and financially stable women (much like he is doing at the moment with Lasconi, as he only seems to slander her and refuse to answer direct questions related to his policy at present).

    The core point of tension in their charts is given by their nodal axis. They happen to share a reversed nodal position (much like Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Swift did at one point, even in the same astrological signs). While Lasconi is a North Node in Aquarius/South Node in Leo, Georgescu is a North Node in Leo/South Node in Aquarius. Personally, I dated a South Node in Aquarius and my experience was that he was incredibly emotionally detached from most things in his life but he was a very good communicator, who managed to charm his colleagues and spin such wonderful tales of his own morality while also undergoing a secret double-life as a degenerate. Obviously, not all people born under this placement share this description in common (see the example of Jake Gyllenhaal or Ryan Gosling) and I obviously have some more healing to do and clear up some resentment in my love life. However, there is an inherent weirdness which the native will struggle to cover up, as his destiny is to grow into his Ego, to become a leader, a star and to inspire others through the power of the role-model. He also has Saturn in Aquarius loosely conjunct the South Node, and this means that he is a man who struggled with a lot of limits in his lifetime, especially poverty and a difficult past marred by restrictions. But this placement also shows that his comfort zone is materialism, stoicism and often it can also show cruelty. Keep in mind that he can be less progressive than Lasconi, especially since pressure can make him revert into this cruel and cold comfort zone of having his Saturn conjunct the South Node in Aquarius. By the way, do you know which other famous leader had this Aquarius energy that really put us on the world map? Nicolae Ceausescu 🙂

    While I love independent people, I’m not sure if we want a person who is unaffiliated to a group to lead us. Because frankly we are a group, and we need a team-player. Electing him would mean that a large amount of power will gradually become concentrated in the hands of one person, as he may start to support laws and regulations that benefit him and him only (low-vibrational, Aries Sun behaviour). Judging by his placements he flexibly adapts to winning circumstances, so after he wins, he may surprisingly reveal to all that he was indeed supporting a specific political party all along (Mars in Pisces).

    The whole purpose of creating political parties is to divide the power of representatives and create space for debates in the balanced practice of democracy, but it seems somebody forgot this important reasoning in the current polarizing climate. I don’t know if it’s important to mention that as long as we live in politically unhinged times, it is important to stay aware of the middle-line, and to quote the late and great Johnny Cash ‘to walk the line’; the sooner we realise this, the quicker we can resist manipulation and being pushed into extremes. Metaphorically speaking, we need a calm plan to exist a building on fire and not a charming man who walks solo and promises he will jump into the fire to save us all. History had its share of charmers who reached political success with their passionate speeches, to disastrous effects. So, by choosing him we won’t be sliding smoothly into the future, a future free of the elite group of PSD-PNL boys, but rather we would be sliding back into 1939 Europe.

    Your choices are powerful and they do have consequences. Make your vote count and make sure that it is yours. I have to admit that I was also confused about which candidate to choose, but seeing the astrology it is now clearer to me whom I should vote for. No matter whom you decided to support in the end, the important thing is to show up on the 8th of December now more than ever. On that day, the Moon will be growing (waxing) in the sign of Pisces; it’s the first quarter so a relatively balanced energy, and since Saturn & Neptune will be aspecting the Moon (our collective unconscious), this means that whomever we will choose on the day will be the leader of a number of incoming, karmic lessons for the next cycles. Let’s choose consciously and spiritually.

    With universal light,

    Lexi

  • Making sense

    Painted American Flag is a painting by Duukster fromhttps://pixels.com/featured/painted-american-flag-duukster.html

    In light of recent political events, I feel it’s necessary to focus upon the astrological transits which are influencing them. Mostly because we are gearing up for a number of great outer-planetary transits in 2025 which will change the social landscape for years to come. The transits I will focus on in this article are those of the planets Neptune and Saturn as they are joined by the North Node/South Nodes of the Moon in the signs of Aries and Pisces; but I will also reflect on the previous transits of Jupiter throughout Aries and Pisces between the years of 2022 and 2023, since past Jupiterian aplomb laid the groundwork for the current Saturnian injection of fear into the collective.

    These transits began roughly in the year 2022 and will continue up until 2027, and the two astrological signs from which they draw energy are those which represent the Alpha and the Omega of the zodiac. This is no coincidence but a fated mark representing the building of a different social landscape than the one we have witnessed in the last century. It is evident that we are living in times in which many of our social institutions, core values, ways of relating and defining ourselves are not functioning anymore. You could say that they are ‘plastically transforming’, if this transformation wasn’t so painful for ordinary people just trying to get by.

    Aries and Pisces are the first and the last sign of the zodiac, and in the last years they have been unleashing their energies in our collective unconscious, marking the end of an era and the brisk creation of the next: the first sign of impulsive and creative primal energy (Aries) and the final twelfth sign representing the wise, compassionate elder of the zodiac (Pisces).

    On a darker note, Aries (ruled by Mars) is also the sign of war, aggression and anihilation due to Ego strengthening, while Pisces (ruled by Neptune) is about delusion, addictions and pendulating between extreme self-abandonement and extremely uplifting spiritual states. Outer planetary transits impact the collective more than any other transits, especially when they are supported by conjunctions to the karmic lunar nodes: two imaginary points on the Moon’s eliptic movement around the Earth, which represent past life karmic energy and show us where we loose collective energy (the South Node) and what we are obsessively drawn towards, where we feel like the energy is never enough and we crave more of it (the North Node). To aid in my analysis I’m hitting the books and getting some support from Jan Spiller, Liz Greene and Stephen Arroyo, three well-known astrologers who have written extensively on the deeper meaning of Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter and the nodes of the Moon.

    The first outer planet to move through these two signs was the Great Benefic, the planet Jupiter. With its natural expansiveness and enthusiasm, Jupiter led the masses into increased radicalisation and heightened religious and nationalist fervour as Jupiter moved through Pisces between 2021 and 2022, and then Jupiter put the legacy of Pisces into action by intensifying global conflicts as it briskly moved through Aries, the sign of War between the 2022 and 2023. I want to allow an experienced astrologer like Stephen Arroyo to describe the energy of Jupiter as it moved from the first through the last sign of the zodiac, so he can help us put things into a larger perspective (which also happens to be the main hustle of Great Jove) :

    Jupiter in Pisces “Keeping one’s feet on the ground may be the hardest challenge for those with this position. They can float away into dreams of personal glory (…) they can be lost in self-agrandissement posing as big-heartedness; or they can indulge themselves in exaggerated, mythologised versions of their lives. In some cases of more ordinary mortals, they can ‘go to pieces’ if their lyfestyle, marriage or job to which they have been devoted, disintegrates resulting in disorientation, escapism and difficulty coping with reality. Self-esteem and confidence for most of these people, however, slowly develops over time as they align themselves with a spiritual, social, or artistic ideal (…) These folks are usually, future-oriented people and almost invariably they have some kind of special imagination, intuitive understanding of life, or breadth of vision that can inspire themselves and others, and which they need to act upon throughout their lives if they are going to feel prosperous and succesful. As Moore and Douglas explain, “success” for those with Jupiter in Pisces has little to do with money and material goods.”

    Jupiter in Aries “This is perhaps the most fearless risk-taker of all Jupiter positions. Inf act, these people usually love risk and challenge; they crave the experience of the new and the unknown, and life quickly becomes boring without such stimulation. In fact, they sometimes live in such a way that more cautious types wonder if they are bent on self-destruction! They are naturally rash and impulsive liking to act quickly and think about it later, if at all. They are frank and honest, but others must be equipped to deal with their directness and bluntness without over-reacting to them emotionally. They don’t usually mean any harm; they are merely thoughtless at times. However, there can be a mean streak with Aries, especially if other planets are there also. And almost invariably, there is substantial competitiveness, which serves them well in their natural entrepreneurial activities. Those with Jupiter in Aries thrive on constant growth towars the new, and they may best express their potential in very independent work situations, such as being self-employed. They do not like to take orders, and in fact they are the epitome of people who can be called ‘head-strong’ (…) Yet, their intuition into the future is often strikingly apt. They invariably know their future direction, although they may impuslively change it with surprising suddeness. So many new ideas and projects occur to them that many are never pursued long; finishing things may be a problem (…) For those with Jupiter in Aries, progress and prosperity depend more on directing and channeling their innate confidence and vision than on developping those capacities. These abilities are already there, but cultivating more faith in that inner initiative and intuitive sense of what ‘I can do’ may be the next step for some individuals.”

    Jupiter’s transit in Aries also debuted the transit of Saturn into Pisces, when it concomitantly worked with it in an uncomfortable semi-sextile in March of 2023. As Saturn began to move through Pisces, it also began to slowly approach the planet Neptune, now almost at the end of it’s years long transit through the sign of its domicile. Mayans adequately predicted the end of an era back in 2012, a year which eerily coincided with Neptune beginning its transit through Pisces. So Saturn is left now to uncomfortably clean up and provide structure to the Neptunian ‘spiritual spills’ in which we have been bathing for more than a decade now. The astrological expert on everything Saturn and Neptune-related is without doubt, Liz Greene, whose profound reflections on both Saturn and Neptune in these two zodiac signs, can help us understand what exactly we have been immersed in:

    Saturn in Pisces “Saturn in the twelfth house, and to a lesser extent in Pisces is difficult from the point of view of the personality because the Saturnian energies, geared initially toward self-protection and defense against the environment, are rendered ineffectual. This may in extreme situations be through hospitalization or imprisonment for a period of time, and the man may learn through his own helplessness how ultimately impotent the personal will is against the forces of his own past which he himself has set in motion. The feeling that one is helpless and must submit to something larger and greater is frequent with this placement of Saturn, although it may occur on a very subjective level. This is a cadent house and refers to states of mind, and Saturn here often generates a vague fear that someone or something, a misty or generalised fate or destiny, is going to destroy him or control him. He may isolate himself and attempt to shield himself from contact with others at the same time that he is weighed down by an oppresive loneliness and sense of powerlessness (…) It is also often the reflection of a fear of confronting external life and a sense of impotence in being able to handle practical affairs (…) Typical Saturnian ambivalence occurs with a twelfth house Saturn too, and there are both a compulsive fascination with and a great fear of losing one’s identity and individuality (…) It is man’s defense mechanism which is necessary for a long time while the unfolding consciousness needs defending; however, when Saturn is found in Pisces or in the twelfth house, the time has come for the scaffolding to be taken down for the inner structure is nearly complete, and stripping this away is initially like stripping off one’s outer skin and exposing the raw and tender area beneath (…) Saturn in water is responsible for a great deal of loneliness and isolation so apparent at the present time. It is of some help for the individual who has Saturn in a watery house or sign to recognise that his potential in terms of inner peace, understanding, and wisdom is as great as his potential for despair if he will only turn inward to the realm of feelings and of the unconscious.”

    Now, starting from 2025, Saturn will temporarily dip into Aries for a couple of months next Spring, form a great conjuction to Neptune (just enough to give us ample material to work with) and then dip back into Pisces next Autumn, for a conclusive final act. It needs to be said, that Saturn doesn’t enjoy being in any of these two signs, since Water and Fire energies are the most resistant to any discipline, structure or grounding that this Earth Papa wants to impose on them; so these transits are uncomfortable and wounding to our personalities and only with great effort can we distill the gold inherent in Saturn’s karmic lessons. But let’s allow Liz to explain it further:

    Saturn in Aries “One of the main qualities which appear to accompany Saturn in Aries or in the first house is a lack of self-assertion of a positive kind. There is often a need to enforce one’s will and to control the immediate environment; but rather than being the spontaneous and self-confident assertion of the individual, this is more of a defensive maneuvre which sometimes attempts to attack first because it is fearful of attack. Sometimes the need for control is expressed in a subtle and indirect way so that situations are manipulated without any real evidence of aggressiveness. This is the characteristic coupling of need and fear which is so often found with Saturn. The natural shyness and stiff awkwardness of Saturn is expressed more obviously with this placement than with any other although the individual often learns during life to cultivate a smooth, cool and polished surface (…) Saturn is considered to be in his fall in Aries, and from this one might deduce that this is a difficult position for him and one which is not easily carried. Possibly the most difficult side of it is the tendency to be cut off from both the flow of outer life and the flow of inner life so that the individual is stranded in a very small and very arid area of his psyche, difficult to reach, and unable to touch the mainspring of purpose and meaning which would enable him to face the outer world with courage (…) This is because a planet in its fall must generally struggle, and it is this struggle which, if carefully tended, yields insight and eventual expansion of the field of consciousness. This is particularly true of Saturn, who when placed in the sign of his fall is often stripped of the courage and confidence – the natural gifts of Aries – which are required to tackle the problems of living head-on. Yet the thing he wants the most is the joy of being free, of being first, of exploring unknwon regions and meeting unknown challenges and revelling in the innate realization that his existence is guarantee enough of his purpose. Saturn in Aries or in the first house tends first to emphasize the fear of powerlessness because it suggests a clinging to the more superficial features of the personality and a consequent loss of contanct with the rich inner person. Eventually this fear can prod the individual into a deeper exploration of what he considers to be his identity.”

    And here is Liz’s primer on Neptune’s energy as it will make an epochal shift next year (if you thought delusions related to wars and conflicts were abundant in the collective, well next yer we may never see the end of them; at the same time issues related to personal identity and who we are as human beings will become the center of our collective concerns as AI and robots will become common-place in society):

    Neptune in Pisces “In the 12th house, Neptune comes home (…) Neptune in the 12th house is a transmitter of the richness, darkness and light of that which came before us. The 12th is the house of pre-birth and therefore also describes the period of the mother’s pregnancy, when we were contained within the uterine waters. As a medium for the archetypal themes of the ancestral collective, Neptune in the 12th is particularly attuned to feelings and images of suffering and redemption (…) It is not surprising that this house is called the house of self-undoing; if we are unconscious of this vast ancestral longing to go home, we may ensure that we are dragged home in spite of ourselves (…) Commitment to a religious or spiritual path may offer consolation to Neptune’s melancholy and world-weariness, and may provide a means of redeeming not only one’s own loneliness but the victims of the past. Neptune in the 12th may shoulder the burden of redeeming family sin and unhapiness, and is particularly prone to identification with the suffering saviour (…) One may become addicted to the creative powers of the psyche, retreating from relationships with the outer world in order to partake of the universal waters of the source. The individual may see himself or herself as a Christ-like figure, come to save the suffering world (…) The line between Neptune in the 12th as visionary, artist and healer, and Neptune in the 12th as addict, invalid or psychotic, is very fluid (…) Neptune’s eternal enemy is also Neptune’s eternal friend, and a little Saturnian realism can go a long way in assisting a 12th house Neptune floundering in deep waters – although too much Saturn may provoke the very flood the individual is seeking to avoid.”

    Neptune in Aries “Neptune in the first house poses an immediate dilemma, for the nature of Neptune is antithetical to the nature of Mars. Where Mars seeks to assert its power over life, Neptune seeks to avoid birth. Where we experience Neptune, we feel helpless abd impotent, for we are in the hands of powers greater than ourselves (…) Neptune in the 1st may secretly feel emasculated and deeply anxious when confronted with choices and challenges that require a definite decision or act of will – particularly if there is any risk of separation or loneliness. Sometimes one adopts instead a strange fatalism, as though life is unreal anyway and therefore not worth struggling with. Eschewing of personal responsibility may undermine efforts to establish a coherent life direction. Both good and ill are “meant to be” (…) Neptune in the 1st often reflects gifts of tact and subtle diplomacy, one navigates rather than shapes the outer world. The needs of others take on the shape of the redeemer; to merge with others in an ecstasy of mutual pleasing is a form of redemption (…) Neptune in the 1st has a reputation in astrological texts for blindness and self-deception (…) Every personal interaction with another individual thus becomes a potential experience of salvation; and clarity, judgement and initiative dissolve as a result. But this destructive extreme of self-effacement can only occur if there is no sense of self to balance Neptune’s longing. If one has one’s own feeligns and values, the need for others will not swallow up the outlines of the identity (…) The challenge of a 1st house Neptune lies not in any intrinsically malevolent property in the planet, but in the task of balancing its chameleon-like inclinations with a healthy dose of self-value and self-preservation. Neptune in the 1st can also be the special gift of the counsellor or healer, because of its unique capacity to enter into the feelings of others. But the individual may become addicted to those who are needy (…) The inner solidity of the personality decides in the end whether the gifts of a 1st house Neptune will lead to the waters of oblivion or the waters of life”.

    At the moment at which I am writing these reflections, Pluto is a mere 24 hours away from definitively switching from Capricorn into Aquarius; this transit will last until 2044 and it will reconfigure our social landscape. To add to this transformation wave, we are collectively feeling the energies of the North Node in Aries (red and male) and the South Node in Libra (blue and female). It’s kind of on the nose how the colours and gender associated with Mars/Aries and Venus/Libra fit so strongly with the two political party which competed against each other during the American elections at the begining of this month; similarly, the upcoming Romanian elections may also lead to a negative surprise, as the old-guard political party PSD, whose logo is covered in red may become the populist darling, thereby sealing the deal on the gradual “Russification” of Romania during Saturn in Aries’ reign (although, I pray that votes will be disparate and PSD won’t get the majority and my fears will resist to manifest; I also pray that Saturn will freeze & limit conflicts at global level).

    Because the North Node represents a point of collective obsession, and its transit usually describes what we become attached to and constantly crave more of, we would understand why Trump’s campaign which it’s fleet red caravans covering the US and it’s sexist but direct rethoric, had more success than Harris’ – people unconsciously wanted Mars-like energy, so that their personal anger would be reflected on stage, in a form of political anger that was mistakenly associated with true power. Here is how astrologer Jan Spiller describes the core traits of the Libra SN/Aries NN axis under whose spell we have been since July of 2023:

    “Aries North Node people have spent so many incarnations supporting the identity of others that in this incarnation they have no sense of who they are. On an energetic level, they are missing the insulation of a sense of identity. When a baby is born, there’s a band in its aura called “identity”, and people in other nodal groups have this. It acts as a shield against the strong energy field of others. Because of it, people can interact intensely without damaging one another (…) In this incarnation, Aries North Node people face the challenge of stregthening their sense of identity. Because they have no preconceived idea of “self”, they are open to discovering what is real and natural within themselves. It’s an innocent process. Their natural impulses validate their identity, and their identity is strengthened through their actions (…) They don’t have enough personal identity left in their “battery” to hold the “charge” for the other person. To be deeply happy in this lifetime, they must focus on developing their own identity and recharging their own battery (…) When they encourage independence and individuality in their relationships – dealing directly with the other person and supporting him or her in being strong and separate – they win, because the other person will give back in the same way, supporting Aries North Node’s independence and individuality (…) For these folks, bein drained and being overly excited are two sides of the same coin: not dealing with what’s actually happening in the moment (…) The balance lies in being consciously aware of others’ energy without being consumed by it. Aries North Nodes need to stay connected to their own power and be in touch with what they can comfortably contribute. The idea is to share their talents freely, to be of service, and to give from the heart without trying to be more – or less – than they actually are.”

    Notice the proliferance of images of ‘birth’ and ‘identity’ in the quotes I shared above. Despite the fact that most of these descriptions are referring to individual circumstances in a person’s chart, they can be extrapolated to explain the current energies we find ourselves navigating through; and the struggle to form identities in the debris of a dying world speaks volumes to what is happening to us, as human beings, on a collective level. As the nodes of the Moon will switch signs on the 11th of January 2025, and as we will move from Aries and into the North Node in Pisces, the collective obsession will turn to spirituality, dissolving, addictions and losing our personal identities in order to recover a feeling of unification; we will long for some sort of connection, with what has previously been separated in the past years, but we may also attach to that which is toxic to us and build up a Stockholm syndrome around it, also because we will long for wholeness, peace and unconditional love and forgiveness. Again, I invite Spiller to describe in her own words how the Virgo SN/Pisces NN axis will manifest in the coming 18 months:

    “The Achilles’ heel Pisces North Node people need to be aware of is their compulsive need for order (“My survival depends of everything being in order according to my view of how life ought to be and how others ought to behave”), and it can lead them into the trap of an unending search for perfection (“If only the people around me were more perfect, I could relax and trust”). But it’s a bottomless pit: Since life and other people are never in a static state of perfect order long enough for Pisces North Nodes to feel secure, their expectations can lead to continual tension and anxiety. Because life – and others – are never ideal enough for them to let go of control, they continually postpone trust and joy. The bottom line involves acepting the universe’s plan is better than their and that things are unfolding properly, regardless of how it seems. The only place they can create “perfect order” is within themselves, by surrendering to a Higher Power and trusting that everything is indeed in order. The irony is that when Pisces North Node people blindly trust the infinite and accept that everything contributes to their greater happiness, they suddenly become aware of the larger picture and begin to sense how things are working to their advantage. Then they can let go of control and be happy (…) They are filled with calm and feel in alignement with ‘the plan’ because the spiritual vision is the energy of perfection they are seeking.”

    In a period in which we may have to bite the hand that feeds so that a new system of feeding that helps all get nourishment can come into place, we may also decide to caress and allow the hand that feeds to even strike us. With both Saturn and Neptune in Aries, we may not be able to see clearly ‘the enemy’ and considering that Chiron, the Wounded Healer is still moving through Aries for the entirety of 2025, we may decide to turn our violence against the enemy within. The hardship of our coming years will stem from the fact that we may be up against forces which we will have no control over, as the changes that will follow are in a large way, fated. Each one of us will feel called to play their part, at the right moment and in order to do so we will have to rely on nothing else but the strength of our faith and the force of our convictions. Living in a world whose material foundations are shacking can be taxing on the nerves so time alone to decompress will become imperative. But at the same time, we may also allow the energy of the unknown to surprise us with what we discover, to create ripples of fun and imaginative exploration, and in this way, the dark path ahead can become illuminated by our everyday, common sense courage.

    We may need to ask ourselves ‘why are we so obsessed with safety?‘ If Pluto in Capricorn broke our souls and spirits and transformed us into pragmatic capitalists so that we could survive, we may need to revise why we do the things we do each day, in order to reclaim control over our minds and souls. At this point in time, we all crave more money but then when we manifest it we just buy shit we don’t need, thereby contributing to the environmental collapse that is defining the current limits of our lived reality. Maybe time spent dreaming, resting, saving up, trusting, fluidly going through life may help both our mental health, and the environment and allows us all to see just how deeply the two are connected.

    Looking at these transits, I have already decided that 2025 will be my year of testing the limits of my solitude. I want to own being a Hermit, to dive into the study of occult scriptures and commit to a disciplined form of mediation and stillness that may help me achieve a state of inner oceanic vastness. And whatever I will find that is meaningful I will share with you all. Who knows? Perhaps once I have made this difficult but empowering decision, life will surprise me in a powerful way by showing me just how connected I am to everything and everyone in the pit of this self-imposed, militant solitude. I look forward to the discovery.

    With universal light, always

    Lexi

  • The Weirdness Within

    Credit: 20th Century Fox Television. Image from: https://fanfare.pub/the-x-files-is-the-best-tv-series-ever-made-e0900e393817

    In a year in which whatever I am building and struggling to maintain seems to be actively dissolving before my own eyes, I find it strangely comforting to spend time each night rewatching the X-Files series. As a child of the 90s, I grew up with episodes of the X-files casually playing on the TV in the background of the many activities that took place in my parent’s over-crowded living room, but I rarely got the chance to sit down and watch the entire series. The collective doom-and-gloom of 2024 made me find comfort in watching two incredibly attractive people debate on the nature of belief and the truth that is out there.

    As I lie in my bed after conflict-heavy days filled with disappointments and rejection, I give my favourite TV characters, FBI agent Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) and agent Fox Mulder (played by David Duchovny) my full and undivided attention and escape into a surreal landscape populated by monsters, aliens and men in black suits. I have now reached episode 16 of season 5 and I am having such a good time, as season 5 is slowly becoming my favourite so far. And because of my astrological training, I can’t help but wonder: What exactly made these two people gravitate towards these specific roles and towards each other? What in their astrology, made them the optimal candidates for the X-files? In this article, I will use my astrological knowledge to unpack these questions and come up with some tentative answers.

    I think this is timely, since the X-files – an American entertainment series created by Libra Sun, Chris Carter – is a show about the occult, the paranormal but most importantly it is about what we believe in and how far are we willing to go to uphold our belief (or lack thereof). On the topic of belief, this an opportune time to unpack it as our collective energies are centred around the loss and limits of faith brought about by the current transit of Saturn & Neptune through the spiritual sign of Pisces.

    I’ll begin by analysing Gillian’s chart since it’s only polite that ladies go first 🙂 And speaking of politeness, we are dealing here with a really fascinating astrological chart, one in which the South Node is in Libra and the North Node is in Aries (conjunct Saturn). Gillian was born to be a star, since her Sun sits in the first house and is perfectly placed in Leo, amplified by a conjunction to dynamic Mars and also conjunct the Ascendant and Mercury. This is a lot of fire in someone personal placements! What fans the oxygen for that fire to burn brightly is her airy Moon is in Aquarius placed in the 7th house and perfectly conjunct the Part of Fortune; so, relationships brought Gillian a lot of good fortune and wealth and she seems to be emotionally attached to her contractual obligations. In addition, the Moon sitting in opposition from the Sun is also letting me know Gillian was born on a Full Moon, which makes her a person who has to have other people around her, someone who thrives by relating to others. Not only that but the politeness-factor is added in her energy by the fact that she was born with a South Node in Libra in the 3rd house (so her comfort zone is that of cool and intelligent communication) and a North Node in Aries conjunct Saturn in the lucky 9th house (making her growth zone, one of faith and philosophical expansion through conflict). Talk about being destined to embody a role in which she is persistently and diligently using science to counteract blind beliefs in the supernatural.

    Image of Gillian Anderson and of her natal chart taken from https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/Gillian_Anderson

    Gillian is most famous for her work in the X-files but she also made a relative comeback later on in her career by embodying the magnetic detective superintendent Stella Gibson and playing alongside Jamie Bell in the British television series, The Fall. Recently she also starred in Sex education and The Crown, in an attempt to rebrand herself as an actress with a slight British accent and pedigree. However, two of her most know roles are portrayals of tough and intelligent femininity, and I attribute this energy not only to her North Node in Aries but the additional Mars energy in her chart conjunct her leadership-prone Leo Sun. An individual with the planet Mars conjunct their Sun can be someone who is naturally charismatic, feisty and prone to aggression to get their way, but when this energy is creatively sublimated, it can appear in battle-weary roles such as being the ‘soldier of light’ who catches bad guys as a daily living, which is exactly what both Dana and Stella are doing. Using her wit, calm explanations and a formal educational training (exactly the 3rd house energy which represents Gillian’s comfort zone), both detectives are able to hunt down evil and stare it in the eyes; in the first role this being alien-evil and in the second man-made evil.

    Nonetheless, I can see from her chart that Gillian has struggled her entire life with understanding who she is and with developing an identity that is not co-dependently linked to other people whom she shares her life with – this is potentially why she is trying to forego her American roots and rebrand herself as a British Tv actress. I think Gillian is attempting this geographical rebrand also because of her age, as she has celebrated her 56th year of life this year. Appearing in European productions seems to be working for her, as European tastes tend to be more accepting of aging femininity than the American media is.

    I believe all of these changes (her move to a different continent, her switch in roles and confident and more relaxed demeanour as she is aging, her switching from television to theatre) are due to the ripening of her Saturn in Aries placement which is nearing her return placement in the upcoming cycle between 2025 and 2027. Saturn in a fire sign (especially in a retrograde placement) offers a concentrated karma around the aspect of personal identity. This means that most of life’s challenges come a lack of confidence and from other people judging your personality and the actions you are undertaking to build your lived experience of life. Gillian’s chart thus tells the story of woman who had to do some deep inner work to detach herself from how other people perceived her. She had to put in hard work into crafting a healthy sense of confidence and an enduring self-image by taking creative risks and launching herself into a variety of life’s experiences (most of which were highly visible public performances).

    As a sidenote, another interesting case-study born with this placement is Hailey Baldwin, who lived in the shadow of the famous Baldwin family and then the shadow of her husband, Justin Bieber, before she became known for her brand and clean girl aesthetic (which took years to build). Similarly, Gillian had to learn who she is and what her identity and personal brand are, after years of playing either demure ladies (see her character in The House of Mirth) or tough detectives. Not to mention that the signature fiery red hair of her character, Dana Scully, is a combined expression of her North Node in Aries destiny and her Sun conjunct Mars and the Ascendant in passionate Leo. But with Saturn in Aries thrown in the mix, this passionate fire is restrained and slowly released in time, and after many challenges. What’s beautiful to see is how this inner fire is gently supported by her intellectual, weird and spontaneously wonderful Moon placement in Aquarius or the OG alien of the zodiac.

    Now before I dive into what having a Moon in Aquarius could mean for an individual, I need to present the astrological facts for David Duchovny’s chart, as he shares some astounding similarities with Gillian, and most of what I will describe for Gillian applies to David as well. David was born a Sun in Leo, with a Moon in Aquarius and a South Node in Pisces/North Node in Virgo conjunct Pluto. Unfortunately, his Ascendant is unknown as his birth time is missing. Already, I guess you could tell how astrologically twin-like David and Gillian are: both are Leo Suns with Aquarian Moons, both are born under a Full Moon, so it is no wonder that they met and worked as counterparts, both being the masculine and feminine voice of a similar soulful experience. Unlike Gillian, David’s destined path in this lifetime is one in which he has to become pragmatically comfortable with increasing darkness (North Node conjunct Pluto), and more precisely his very own darkness, in order to take control of his energy and purify himself at a soul level (North Node in Virgo) from the messy, emotional and religious-bound experiences he brought with him from past lives (South Node in Pisces). The extent to which he was personally able to fulfill this destiny remains debatable since his quarrels with the producers of the X-Files over money and his appetite for risque sexual encounters are infamous and may have garnered him a role in the controversial series ‘Californication’, in which he plays a celebrity and sex addict (a role which has mirrored his own personal struggles).

    Image of David Duchovny and of his natal chart taken from https://www.astrotheme.com/astrology/David_Duchovny

    Different to Gillian, David has a domicile Saturn in the strong sign of Capricorn and a domicile Jupiter in the blessed sign of Sagittarius and both are retrograde placements which makes them more powerful. But the organic balance given by these fortunate astrological placements is upset by the stellium that David has in his chart, a cluster of planets surrounding the signs of Leo and Virgo. A stellium can intensify a person’s energy and their life experiences, bringing an all-or-nothing type of vibe about any small activity they undertake. With David we see a Sun in Leo conjunct beautiful Venus and unpredictable Uranus, usually markers which make someone an ‘on-again/off-again’ type of lover who you simply cannot get enough of because he is so warm and fun (Venus in Leo), but can also be lazy and self-obsessed (Pluto in Virgo conjunct the North Node). Moreover, the South Node in Pisces guarantees that unless David has a creative or spiritual outlet for his emotional energy, he may lose himself in meaningless sexual and addictive practices or religious confusion. It is endearing to see how he has sublimated this energy in Fox Mulder’s character, a man obsessed with his belief who will go to great lengths to prove an emotional truth which he constantly struggles to support due to a lack of evidence.

    Related to this karmic placement, I can also see that his ex-wife, actress Tea Leoni was indeed a soulmate for him, as her Sun in Pisces conjuncts his South Node in Pisces, letting me know that they are familiar with each other from another life and married in this lifetime in order to finish some unprocessed karma. And it’s fascinating as well how I, as a Pisces Sun am carefully re-watching the series during a Saturn conjunct Neptune in Pisces transit which touches upon David’s South Node/North Node energy. Not only that but starting from 2025, both Gillian and David will be having some significant transits as Gillian will be experiencing her Saturn return in Aries and from David will undergo his reverse nodal return, as from January 2025 the North Node of the Moon will enter Pisces and the South Node will enter Virgo. Therefore, I may update this article according to the news that may appear about them in the next few years.

    I always tend to write in tangents and sub-notes, and that’s because I was born with a Uranus in Sagittarius in the 3rd house and my mind can put forth some interesting and yet fragmented thoughts. To make things clearer, I want to come back in this paragraph to the Moon in Aquarius placement and to link this back to the title of this article, the weirdness within. As we all collectively sit on the cusp of the age of Aquarius, ushered in as it is by the transit of Pluto, it is essential that we study everything Aquarius-related so we can better know how to navigate a form of energy that is by nature, unpredictable, chaotic and spontaneous. And these are exactly the words that may be used to describe both Gillian and David in their private lives. It’s hard for us, the fans and spectators, to discern how these people are in their intimate lives but that’s why I love astrology so much – in the blink of an eye, simply by looking at data, you can create a profile of an individual’s inner landscape (much like criminal profilers and psychologists do in their daily work).

    A Moon in Aquarius is a paradoxical placement since it is shows affection and attachment by being actually really detached; people born with this placement are light-hearted and funny, cool as cucumbers and erratic in how they show their emotions. One day they love you ardently, the next day they have to leave you to track mountains because maintaining intimacy at a deeper level actually frightens them. They tend to fall in love with friends and co-workers, and those type of social relationships which usually come with some in-built boundaries. Lunar Aquarians are drawn to the unusual, to the spooky and mad aspects of life. There is nothing sexier to an Aquarius Moon than knowing all the emotional and intimate rules that govern relationships and then having fun mischievously breaking them. At times, Aquarian Moons can be superficial and cold as ice, to the same degree as a Capricorn Moon, but this is what makes them honest people with a great knack for intelligent debates. In some exceptional cases and if poorly aspected, an Aquarius Moon can also indicate the gradual disintegration of a person into madness or lead one to emotional extremes. Here is how one of my favourite astrologers (and expert in all things lunatic) Donna Cunningham describes this hard-to-define lunar placement in her book ‘Moon Signs’:

    “Ordinary folks with this Moon are likely to be anything but ordinary, with unusual ideas and predilections that set them apart from people around them. Diehard modernists, they are likely to be the first to adopt a new idea, trend, fad or gadget. Naturally the minute the fad becomes popular they’re likely to reject it and move on to the next avant-garde trend. Many are rebels who like to shake you up with outrageous behaviour (…) The airiest of air signs, Aquarian Moons are put off by emotions, preferring to detach from them – if you insist on doing what they consider overreacting. They try, even harder than Gemini Moons, to be rational and talk or reason feelings away. So, cut off they may seem emotional at times, and they can wind up doing very odd, impulsive things suddenly when repressed emotions build up to the bursting point. They may break up a relationship, quit a job or hop a plane, all seemingly out of the clear blue sky (…) Many born under this Moon feel the only security is total freedom and independence. Relying on others makes them vulnerable to being left again, so they may not be prepared to settle down.”

    My argument is that this electrifying and weird Aquarian energy is precisely why Gillian and David are so good at playing the roles of detectives Scully and Mulder. Their inborn Aquarian zest for life and weirdness helped them engage with such roles to an extent that felt authentic and believable. Moreover, this energy is also what makes them investigate the paranormal and the extra-terrestrial; they can empathise with being outsiders, with feeling as if they don’t belong into the socially acceptable moulds of society. If you too share this lunar placement with them and find it hard to emotional regulate or to find emotional stability and meaning in a life that seems to have trouble finding fitting you in, you may want to re-orient your energy towards investigating the paranormal, or creating sci-fi, and using your natural cool and spontaneous energy to research the mysterious unknown and open people’s minds in this process. You were born to break emotional patterns, much like Gillian and David in their roles as Scully and Mulder are in love with each other without necessarily portraying a traditionally, romantic type of relationship.

    And speaking of romance, I want to tackle the most fun part of their astrological energy, that being their synastry aspects (or aspects of compatibility). I can only imagine what went down between the two of them on the set of the X-files, seeing as they are mirror images of each other from an astrological point of view. Interestingly enough, Gillian’s Mars in Leo touches upon David’s Venus in Leo, which is an aspect that brings instant sexual attraction but it is the woman’s masculine energy which chases the man’s feminine energy. This aspect usually exists in a synastry chart in which the woman more or less romantically and sexually pursues the man. However, Gillian’s Venus in Virgo sits in a square to David’s Mars in Gemini revealing some tensions and frustrations between the two of them that were often hard to overcome (even if both Virgo and Gemini are ruled by Mercury and carry the same intelligence and nervousness stamps to their vibration).

    Furthermore, Gillian’s cluster of planets of in Virgo (her Venus, Jupiter, Pluto and Uranus) activate David’s destined path in this lifetime, in a somewhat uncomfortable and irritating process. I have no doubt that if something physical happened between them behind the scenes, that Gillian was the one which initiated it and that David gradually become more annoyed and irascible in this situation, as he may have felt himself controlled or emasculated (also because her Mars is conjunct his Sun). I also think that David may have bothered Gillian’s inner peace with his emotional messiness as his South Node in Pisces (his comfort zone) sat in opposition to the orderly ways in which Gillian extracted fun and pleasure from her work and the wealth she was creating. He may have thought that she was too much and too aggressive with him while she couldn’t deal with his messy and obsessive sense of wounded self-involvement. If like me, you paid close attention to how the relationship between Mulder and Scully evolves in the series, you may have seen some of this energy ‘leaking out’ in their acting in rather fraught interactions (especially at the height of the show’s popularity in seasons 4 and 5).

    Finally, I wanted to add a distinct way in which we may look at their relationship, as spiritual counterparts and creative co-workers. In the spiritual community the term ‘twin flames’ exists to describe an intense relationship between two individuals who are the mirror images of each other but they are locked in differently gendered bodies; as these individuals come together the fire between the two of them burns so brightly that it cannot sustain a normal, romantic connection for too long. So, what usually happens is that twin flames meet and work on a big project together which changes the collective for the better, and then they go their own separate ways. Oftentimes they continue to maintain a deep connection even if they are not physically close to each other (almost like a red thread of energy linking them). From an occult and spiritual perspective and backed up by the astrological knowledge of their charts, I can say that Gillian and David are a very good representation of a twin-flame connection, as they both were magnetically drawn the content of the X-files series (activating their weird and wonderful Aquarian Moons) and they came together to influence the ‘Millennial’ collective. And finally, it’s important to underline that at the heart of the series, as well as within the astral energies of the two protagonists lies the constant dialogue between faith (Leo energy) and science (Aquarius energy), exploring the unknown with intuition and instinct and figuring it out with facts and experimentation, who we are as humans here on Earth (Leo) and whether we are part of a larger cosmic order (Aquarius). Therefore, it will be fascinating to see how the transit of Pluto in Aquarius for the next two decades will affect us, the two actors’ lives and the creative legacy of Mulder and Scully and the mysterious X-Files.

    To wrap up this discussion, I will leave you with a funny insight into my little life. I recently deleted my online dating profile in which I had advertised myself with one simple sentence: “Just a Scully looking for her Mulder”. Because in the end, aren’t we all just looking for a special weirdo who can help us compliment the weirdness within?

    With universal love,

    Lexi