Here is the second astrology interview, this one with Magnificent Gemini, Marlee Grace. I see Marlee as a beautiful expression of Air + Earth (Gemini, Capricorn, and Virgo, among other things). She is a connector of people and ideas (Gemini!), endlessly curious, and a practical business person (Capricorn), a humble learner and improver/improviser (Virgo), supporting artists with an (earth) space and community (air) for creativity and idea exchange! Visit her on the internet and/or at Center, in Inverness, California.
--
Marlee Grace is an improviser and writer living on the rural coast of California. She works with improvisation as a method for navigating being alive and making work through movement, quilting, writing, and podcasting. Marlee also runs a community space and public studio in Inverness, CA called CENTER.
--
1. When do you experience the most joy?
When I am teaching dance class. It is truly my favorite thing on earth to be improvising in a room with other bodies, to watch people show up to themselves when it's scary and uncomfortable.
2. It seems that a lot of your creative practice includes nurturing other people's work. Is there ever tension between your own creative expression and your nurturing of others' work? If there is tension between these, how do you resolve that tension or bring these two aspects of your work / life into balance?
Wow yes, this is huge for me right now. And it comes up for me in many different waves. Between my creative adivisng clients, CENTER, teaching, writing books : these all in many ways exist to serve others - which IS indeed A PART OF my creative practice.
But I also have MY OWN practice - dancing, writing, collage making, zines, my podcast - and these sometimes definitely feel like they do not get as much attention when I am putting all of my attention into nurturing others' creative endeavors.
The lifting up of others really is the root of my practice though. I tried to remove it from my life and felt lost without the container of a public space and a way to encourage others. But coming out of just opening up a public space which is indeed a BUSINESS I am feeling a lot of the BUT I JUST WANNA BE AN ARTIST.
Can I be? We'll find out. Or, yes, it just take patience and floating and riding the wave and asking for help and turning my gd phone off.
3. Related to that question, what advice do you have for others about balancing community and individuality in an art practice?
I'm really trying to find this answer myself, in this exact moment. In many ways I don't believe in balance. There is no balance, there is really just choice making. I have to choose to put time into my individual art practice. I have to choose to put time into my community space. I have to pause and breathe and think - what needs to get done today/right now. And : what can wait and what would actually feel good. Often times it's my own art practice that feels good, and also hint hint : if I am feeling fulfilled in my individual practice that is the only true way I can be available to my community or self.
4. How do you deal with the (typically Gemini) problem of indecision related to curiosity about everything? Do you experience that problem and if so how do you manage it?
With all things Gemini I really try to see where they are complete gifts. I would much rather be wildly curious then be bored by everything or only have one focus. The managing it results in self-forgiveness. How can I forgive my book writing self when I am hyper-focused on my dance self. How can I tell my business self it's ok to make a collage today. How can I tell my podcast interview self that today I need to finish my accounting for the business. I don't really know HOW to possibly be another way. So I think that's part of the accepting of it all. This is how I am, so instead of fight it how to ease into it.
5. Will you talk about dance and embodiment for a minute? Maybe describe a recent experience of this that was fulfilling? Or anything else that comes to mind here.
As a dancer I think it's an interesting observation that just because I am dancing doesn't inherently mean I am embodied. While many people use dancing as a way to become intuned with their bodies, dancing for me is the same as someone who has a college degree in graphic design, or painting. It is my art practice, my path to composing. So it's interesting that by sharing my dances so publicly it inspires many people to search for their own embodiment practice, even though I might APPEAR to be embodied because my BODY is moving in front of them in real life or a tiny screen, I could be completely floating above my body watching it move.
Alas, when I am truly embodied I am usually in a yin yoga class where we do like 5 poses and have to relax our kidneys. And of course, as someone who has for almost 3 years committed to dancing every single day, it hugely adds to the experience of being an embodied person. But it was my friend Sarah Fontaine who once reminded me I have feet and they are on the ground. I can dance every day and still forget I have feet.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - When are you comfortable not knowing?
Meditation - not knowing.
Assignment - Practice not knowing. "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, in the expert's mind there are few." Suzuki Roshi said this, and you've probably heard it before because it's famous, and also true. Aries, you're the first sign of the zodiac, you are all about beginning things, and you like to be the boss. Beginning things involves not knowing! So you have to talk to your boss-self to remind it that not knowing is the only way it's possible to create something new! Practice noticing when you are not-knowing / uncertain about something, and how it feels in your body. Then practice telling yourself that everything is actually wonderfully fine when you are in not-knowing. That the more comfortable you can be in not-knowing, the better you can be the boss of your mind, which is your most important job.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - When do you forgive yourself?
Meditation - forgiving yourself for everything.
Assignment - This probably won't be practical enough for you but it is much more practical than you might realize. Start or restart a self-forgiveness practice this week. Just a few minutes each day - to give yourself a chance to notice when you are being critical of yourself, and then try out forgiving yourself for any hardness, toward yourself or others.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - When do you practice heart opening?
Meditation - heart opening.
Assignment - Do upward dog, or some other body practice that opens your heart to yourself, to your life, this week. When you feel disconnected from your intuition, your knowing, reconnecting to your body and especially your heart, which is your feeling center that is different from your gut. When you make decisions and move from this place, you will feel better, even if the outcome isn't what you were wanting. Whatever physical movements help your heart center to feel more open (which is different from exposed, I'm not suggesting that), do those. Put your phone or screen down and try it right now, for 10 seconds! Imagine if you did that many times a day for just 10 seconds!
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - When do you let yourself feel it all?
Meditation - Let yourself be fully sensitive.
Assignment - Venus is still in Cancer this week and I bring this up as a boost, to encourage you to just be as sensitive as you feel. What if you were? What if you just let yourself? And didn't worry about what other people were feeling or thinking about it? Or weren't worried if people were saying you were sensitive? What if you were? What if sensitivity was very needed on the planet? What if that was an important role you could play? Let your feelings be information, like a recipe, guiding you back to yourself and what you need.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - When are you tired?
Meditation - body sensations as vital information.
Assignment - Pay attention to when you feel tired this week. What is draining your life force and what is energizing it? Take notes on what you find so you can adjust things based on what you find! Vitality, physical energy is so important for you. When you don't have it, that means something is up in your life. What is caging in this lion of yours? What can set it free?
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - When do you let yourself play?
Meditation - fire.
Assignment - Let fire be your archetype guide this week - fire as inspiration, existence and play for its own sake, not for any sake of productivity. If you have to work, try to find the play within it, the pleasures of it, however small they might be. When you aren't working, give yourself as much time to play as possible. Remember that children don't reckon with complicated justifications for why they should take time off or why their play is productive. They just do what comes to them, for the joy of it, without needing to earn anything.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - When do you let yourself have what you need?
Meditation - gifts to yourself.
Assignment - What are the gifts that you are really wanting in your life? Why don't you have them? What can you give yourself, as a gift, right now? What about later today? What about tomorrow? What about tomorrow night? Keep it on the daily, keep it manageable. What do gifts to yourself have to do with getting what you need? Ask yourself about this relationship.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What is your relationship to your phone?
Meditation - a lightening.
Assignment - Phones these days can be locations where we act out our fixations. What is happening between you and your phone right now? How does it connect to what is happening emotionally for you? What connections can you make between your phone use and your emotional life? How can you gently shift one or two ways you use your phone this week, to better serve your emotional life?
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - When are you emotionally loud?
Meditation - emotional quietude
Assignment - Take note of when your emotional life is taking up a lot of space. What might be causing this? Is it because you aren't taking time to listen to the emotional, which doesn't come first in language? Do you need to balance your perspective with hearing other people's experiences? Sometimes listening to others, what they think and feel, can infuse your own with more balance.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When is your head in the clouds?
Meditation - visioning new possibilities.
Assignment - Let yourself dream more. Devote some time to it and call it productive, because it is. What dreams do you keep at bay? How does this affect your vitality? What would happen if you let them into the foreground more? How would that affect your vitality?
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - When do you choose a middle way?
Meditation - in the middle!
Assignment - When making decisions this week, choose a gentler option whenever it occurs to you, whenever it is possible. When things seem either-or, when the options seem very few, take note. Reconsider. Choose a less full-on option. See what happens!
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What seems uncouth or distasteful to you?
Meditation - desires.
Assignment - Sometimes Pisces doesn't want to bother with pesky earthly, bodily desires, like eating, or sex, or the mess of embodiment. They often want to live in the idealized dream land of love, or not be bothered with embodiment and its details and slow movement. Choose one thing to embody or embrace about earthly living this week, and do it all the way. Get into the mess of it. Experiment with your real life body. Let it happen, and see what happens.
Full Moon in Sagittarius this week, Tuesday. Gemini and Sagittarius are in a conversation, the Sun and the Moon right now. Full Moons mean the Sun and the Moon are exactly opposite. Oppositions bring similar energy in whatever form they take, whether it’s between people, within one person, or affecting us all as it happens in the sky. Oppositions are about an attraction and a tension. In fact attraction usually involves a tension of some kind! And tension involves attraction! So this Full Moon’s opposition reconnects us to a perennial conversation that Gemini and Sagittarius are having. They are both mutable signs, very changeable. They tend to say everything immediately, and often overshare. Gemini tends toward diversity, breadth over depth, Sagittarius focuses in heavily in any given moment, but can shift to the latest thrilling philosophy when old ones need to retire. Gemini says all ways are the way, Sagittarius says one way is the way. So! What does this mean for us, humans, right now, on planet earth, feeling the influence of the Full Moon. Both of these energies are about communication. What is your communication space looking like right now between you and the people in your life? Where do you fall in the spectrum of these polarities between diversity and single-pointedness and how can you invite more balance?
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - What are the ways you are already complete and full?
Meditation - fullness and completeness.
Assignment - Channel this Full Moon in a Fire Sign energy this week. Write a list of all the things in your life that are working, that are magic, that contribute to your fullness and completeness. Share it with others, with another, with many, in whatever ways feel good. Reconnect to your tendency to inspire and be visionary.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - What do you hold up that you might no longer need to?
Meditation - moving from the corner to the center.
Assignment - You can be such a pillar in your community, in your relationships, even in your own life, making sure you are maintaining (so many things). What might you have been holding up or maintaining that you don’t need to anymore? The way you can tell if you don’t need to hold something anymore is if it is draining you. Look at where your energy is being exhausted and make a list of the small steps you can take this week to expend less energy in holding these things up. Try to make the list smaller and more manageable - baby steps.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What materials / material objects do you want to bring with you into this year? Which ones do you want to let go of?
Meditation - materials as nourishment.
Assignment - Go through your things during this birthday time. Get rid of stuff. Not all the stuff, just the things that are energetically weighing you down. Connect to the objects that are energizing you, that nourish you. Get them in your view, in your daily life. Return back to earth when you float away in thinking, through these objects.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - When do you cultivate your own self-love?
Meditation - reconnecting to your own love.
Assignment - Venus is in Cancer right now - the planet of relationships and love is in your sign! Take this as a cue to cultivate self-love. It can be easy for you to over-nurture others and/or stay in self-protection mode frequently. But a way to bring balance to these tendencies can be to nurture your self. When you do this regularly, you’re actually able to nurture others with more ease and energy. I’m not talking about getting a massage, although that is also great. I’m talking about taking a moment (or many) each day this week to meditate on your own inherent worthiness, that comes whether you ‘accomplish’ anything or not. That is much deeper than what you do or the roles you play in other’s lives. It’s quiet and doesn’t need to involve effort. Just a gentle noticing and breathing into your own sacred body and acknolwedging everything in you that wants to be acknowledged.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - What new opportunities arise when things don’t end up looking like your vision?
Meditation - a new available space.
Assignment - You’re a visionary and sometimes being a fixed fire sign can lead to you getting stuck on your vision! But the nature of manifesting on the physical plane is that things usually don’t match up to the vision. Adjusting to this can be hard for you, but it’s such an important part of deepening your own creativity. This week take note of when you get stuck on something that doesn’t look or go the way you planned, and see what happens in your body. What does this kind of attachment do in your body? What ways can you adjust your original vision to include the ways it actually ended up? What new freedom arises when you can practice this adjusting?!
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - Where and how do you eat?
Meditation - mindful eating.
Assignment - This week, treat your eating as a practice and let it help you connect to your body. What pleasure do you experience when eating? When do you ‘black out’ when eating and why? Let yourself eat what feels good, and take pleasure in each bite. Slow down enough so that you can actually experience the fruits of being an earth sign! What does it feel like to have this sensory sensitivity? How can you embrace that sensitivity and let it help you eat in a way that is nourishing to you? Eat this week, and know that you are eating.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - When do you allow yourself to experience psychic protection?
Meditation - Allowing protection.
Assignment - You tend to want to be ‘nice’ and think well of people which doesn’t actually allow you to accept protection when it is available to you. Literally let yourself be covered by blankets that feel really good to you this week. Consider this permission to accept protection in whatever forms it takes, as it comes. And remind yourself that protection does not mean that you don’t like people or you aren’t nice, it just means that you acknowledge that we are all subject to forces we can’t control. You’re caring for yourself and others by doing this. Let yourself be covered, so that your true self can have some space to fully be and become, without interference.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What is happening with your feet right now?
Meditation - Back to the feet.
Assignment - I’ve probably talked to you about your feet before, and I’ve probably talked to every other sign about them too. We are all in bodies and need this reminder, basically daily. But in particular for you Scorpio, because Jupiter is still in Scorpio for many more months and that’s a great thing but it means there is a lot of activity and new zeal and possibly travel and movement at some point in the year for you. So reconnecting to your feet on a regular basis will help you make grounded decisions as these energies move through you. Get them rubbed, soak them in healing baths, notice them, say hi to them, thank them. Bring your awareness back to them, to the incredible truth that they are your point of contact with the earth for most people, and should therefore be attended to with great care and appreciation.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - What changes do you want to make?
Meditation - write it out.
Assignment - This Full Moon in Sagittarius time is the time to write it out - to give voice to the changes you want to make. Don’t miss this opportunity to name and give voice to the ways you want to be inspired, your spiritual longings. Maybe the phrase spiritual longings makes you uncomfortable and that’s exactly why I use it. On purpose. To provoke you. Don’t wait to say what you want. Use this movement, this opening energy to articulate what you are deeply craving. Let yourself swim in the aliveness of wanting itself, under the light of this moon of yours.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When do you let yourself be as bright as you can?
Meditation - lighting fires.
Assignment - Pretend you are a fire sign this week. By that I mean, let yourself meditate and bask in the sphere of the possible, instead of the sphere of the actual, which convinces you with its logic but is not actually actual only. If you know fire signs in the form of humans, ask them about your issues at hand and how they would act. If you don’t, imagine it. This is about taking risks and putting aside your usually very long list of reasons why the risks won’t work. You will never lose this practicality, you don’t have to worry about that. But just for a week you can let yourself imagine more, and know that imagining is very practical on a spiritual level.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - When do you learn from animals about how to be in this world?
Meditation - learning from animals.
Assignment - Observe animals, if you have a pet, observe this being’s behavior closely this week. If you don’t, find places to observe animals and see what you can learn from them. They don’t spend time in their heads, overthinking, as air signs like you can tend to do. They also don’t spend time verbalizing everything, which air signs often do. What can you practice that you see animals practicing. You don’t have to worry about your ability to think or verbalize leaving you, it won’t! You can just try on different ways of approaching life, like sensory perception, moving like water, absorbing, sharing emotionally, without thinking or words. What does that feel like? The key word being ‘feel like’!
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What are you noticing about your energy levels right now?
Meditation - stillness.
Assignment - Moving into this week of the Full Moon in Sagittarius, opposite Sun in Gemini which are both square your sun sign, take careful note of your energy, and give yourself full permission to get back in the water when you need to. Try not to do too much this week! Although it’s likely you’ll have a lot on your plate, try to take breaks whenever you can. Retreat to comfort places as much as you can, as much as you find yourself needing to. It will help you to not expel so much energy this week in order to have steadier energy in the coming month.
We have moved into Gemini season this week! From the earth (Taurus) to the sky (Gemini) - we need both to be nourished as humans. Air - wind - spreading the seeds that Taurus produced. Gemini holds us in connection - identity is experienced through connecting ideas and people. We can learn from this energy, even if we don't have Gemini in our own make-up, just like we learn from the physical seasons.
What is air? You can't see it, but we can't live without it for more than a few moments! It's the precious, underrated medium in which we live, exchange, connect, with other humans and all other life.
I'm teaching classes lately on decision-making, something that can be hard for Gemini and air signs especially, and for all humans as we navigate the onslaught of influences we're subject to on a daily basis. The home base of what I'm teaching in these classes is reconnecting to your own free will. And Gemini can be an energy guide in doing this! You might be surprised to hear this, because Gemini sometimes has a reputation for being all over the place, fickle. But the beauty of this energy is that it sees all sides. It doesn't get caught up in a version of identity that's an illusion of consistency. At its best, Gemini embraces impermanence and the truth that identity has nothing to do with our beliefs, thoughts, or momentary preferences. It lets itself change as quickly as the winds do. If we are paying attention, we see that this constant change is just the truth. And! If it is true that we aren't our thoughts or beliefs, then we can use ideas and beliefs as tools to help us on our path, instead of rigid pillars to cling to, which causes us lots of pain.
So use air energy and Gemini as a metaphor and guide this month to loosen up your own relationship to identity and free will. You don't have to effort in reconnecting to your free will, to your ability to make decisions - in fact efforting is often the thing that disconnects you from your free will! It's simply a matter of remembering that your free will exists, waiting to take you where you need to go. Your job is to relax and listen. That's it. It's very simple.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - When is your energy going out, and when is it coming in?
Meditation - the tides.
Assignment - Conceive of your energy like the tides, and remember that it has a rhythm like any other phenomenon of nature. Aries is fire, typically outward-facing, so consider the balance of when your tide is going out and when it's coming in. What needs to happen to bring this into balance? Sometimes your energy turns into a white out because there's too much going out - especially when you are stressed! Do an energy check on yourself and take note if this is happening. What colors can you bring into your field that allow you to reconnect with the nuance of give and take? You don't have to be the leader all the time (and in fact you can't be anyway)! You don't have to output all the time! Everything will still work beautifully. Bring this tide flow of your energy into balance with simple, gentle, kind noticing.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - When do you embrace ideas?
Meditation - Gemini.
Assignment - Let this shift of season work on you this week. Gemini is about embracing ideas for their own sake, as their own little lives! Let yourself be freed of the weight of practical concerns for a minute. Ask yourself how you would live, what you would do, if practical concerns weren't in your mind. Perhaps this is really different from how you live, or not even imaginable to you. Choose one small thing you can incorporate, one manageable experiment, where you release yourself from the weight of being 'practical' and see what happens. Don't effort, just let it choose you. So much of free will is actually getting out of the way of ourselves!
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What if you just didn't need to be different from how you are?
Meditation - sameness!
Assignment - For your birthday month I encourage you, mutable sign, to not worry so much about changing. Changing is second nature to you! Adaptability comes so easily to you. So what if you just stayed the same for a minute! What if you just let yourself be how you are? It seems easy but that's the point! Reflect this week and month on what you want to stay steady this coming year, more than what you want to change. What was working last year? What was easy? Write about this, reflect on it, so that you don't drift away from it in your constant changing. Root down into what felt easy, what comes to you in the flow. You can be your same self, through all the change. (And don't apologize for being a Gemini. Just let people know the truth about you, then you'll feel much calmer.)
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - When is relaxation on your schedule this coming week?
Meditation - the location where your feet touch the earth.
Assignment - If relaxation is not written into your schedule, get it on the calendar right now. There's new space for calm in your zone, as Uranus moved into Taurus, out of square with your sun, so your job is to take advantage of this, and not put relaxation off. You can be less lit, but you have to take the steps to allow this to happen! Relaxing doesn't have to mean going unconscious, and cultivating this art is a lifetime achievement, especially in the USA, (which shares a Sun sign with you, btw). Translate your emotional plan (which you always have) into a physical plan (sometimes comes a little harder) for caring for yourself this week.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - What is the difference between your free will and self-defense?
Meditation - listening!
Assignment - Sometimes exercising your own free will means just listening. When you're in a defensive mode, you can get confused about what is your free will and what is your reactionary self-defense. When you allow yourself to see the ways that life is already nourishing you, then your generosity to yourself and others flows much freer. This might sound paradoxical - most truths do. The point is, pay attention to the difference between your free will and your self-defense this week, and see what you notice. Discern with your vibrant intuition what is truly in your highest good and what is fulfilling a surface recognition that will ultimately leave you dissatisfied anyway.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - What is true helping?
Meditation - helping yourself is enough this week.
Assignment - You're used to helping, to being helpful, it's a comfortable identity for you. Which is why I challenge you this week to notice the impulse to help, even just one or two times this week, and see what happens if you DON'T HELP. Try to just notice what happens! If this involves another person you feel okay talking to about it later, ask them about the experience after the fact. This is about decoupling your impulse (and at times, habit) to help from your free will. They sometimes go together, but don't have to. The more awareness you bring to this, the easier it will be to actually be helpful, and to actually be calmer.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - When do you lie to yourself?
Meditation - Let it be messy.
Assignment - Let your relationships be messy, let your house be messy, let yourself be with the truths of however your life is. Libra wants harmony so much that sometimes it lies to itself about what is happening. Freedom waits in letting things be as they are, whatever that looks like, in the moment. This doesn't mean that you don't act to change things, it just means you slow it down, pause, let the mess be there for a minute, before acting. So that you can really see what actions might actually clean it up, instead of covering over on the surface and exhausting yourself. When you notice something that makes you uncomfortable this week, any kind of mess, practice letting it be messy for a minute or two, or ten, or a week (!), before acting.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What is the motivation behind your curiosity?
Meditation - letting the secrets be.
Assignment - Scorpio tends to be curious about the secrets of life, the taboos, the emotional vulnerabilities of others. This week, look into your own curiosity - when does it arise? When does it fade? When does it feel obsessive? When does it feel light? How and when does it control your decision-making? What is the difference between your curiosity and your free will? If you notice that any part of your curiosity is draining you, try on not following all of the threads. See what happens. Take special care of your precious life right now, and give yourself the gift of not having to follow every impulse of your curiosity.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - When do your high standards lead to intolerance or insensitivity?
Meditation - Letting everyone be as they are.
Assignment - You can let go of your ideals for a minute and see what happens when you do. You don't have to worry about maintaining high standards, you just will! This is a capacity of yours that you don't have to try at. But when you do let go of it as an identity, even for a short time, there is new space for perceiving the beauty of what IS happening to arise. For the appreciation of what IS to bloom in you. The more space that's in you, the more room for your true free will to exist, and the less alienation you and others will feel because of those high standards you can sometimes have about how people should be. Anytime you notice a 'should' involved in your thinking this week, look at it, and ask more questions about it.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - What are the laws of nature you are resisting?
Meditation - animal instincts
Assignment - Observe how animals make decisions. What kind of practicality do they exhibit? How can you learn from this? Notice how they don't think about following societal rules, they follow laws of nature. How can you follow their lead and move into alignment with these laws of nature also? Where are your instincts, and when do you listen to them? What happens when you do?
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - When do you feel alienated from your self?
Meditation - an internal home.
Assignment - Encouraging you to spend time doing things that help you return to your internal home this week. Whatever that means to you. Maybe it's breathing, or moving in some physical way, or talking to a friend. Ask yourself what feels like home, and let yourself be guided back to this energetic place as many times as you can. It's a gentle touch, just about asking questions, What feels like home to me? Where is home base in my body? Who in my life and what in my life also gives me this comfort? Prioritize this feeling this week.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What practices, people, or places give you fresh perspective?
Meditation - walk out of the ocean onto land to breathe air.
Assignment - The Sun in Gemini is square your Sun in Pisces this month - a square being an aspect that includes tension or resistance. This is why the meditation is about embracing air! As a life-giving force. Instead of resisting the Gemini season, practice embracing it. This means allowing yourself to flow with new connections and spending time on the surface of the water or even on land so that you can get fresh perspectives! Whatever this means to you - spending time in a way that allows you to breathe fresh new air and maybe even feel a little out of your element, on purpose.
When we get confused and think that we can't take care of ourselves - as in, we can't let nature take care of us - or that somehow taking care of ourselves comes at the expense of others, we suffer.
The new moon in Taurus happens this week - a beautiful invitation for integration of sensory pleasure, for self-care.
Each horoscope here is a weird suggestion of a ritual for your sign, for this week of the New Moon. Adapt accordingly. If these are not for you, I encourage you to make up your own rituals - the New Moon is a good time for this and especially so in the Earth sign of Taurus. Embodiment! This is what we are doing on Planet Earth, so it's never not necessary as a practice. It's never not necessary to remember this.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - How do you visualize your own learning process?
Meditation - walk in circles.
Assignment - For this New Moon, find a meaningful object in your life, and put it on the ground. Take at least three laps walking or moving around this object, as the Moon moves around planet Earth. Ask three questions, and take a lap around the object to receive the answer for each question. Wear something important while you do this.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - What will you do to connect with planet earth this week?
Meditation - PLANET EARTH.
Assignment - Taurus on Taurus on Taurus! New moon of Taurus + + Sun in Taurus + you Taurus! All the Taurus! Embodiment. Pleasure! What can this New Moon mirror for you? What can it show you about yourself? What kind of listening to the Moon do you do? If you don't, maybe now is a good time to start. What can the Moon teach you about living on planet earth? Reconnect to the pleasure of being alive on planet earth this week. Try this out without consuming anything, or changing your circumstance in any way, just whenever you think of it, in your body, exactly the way it is, on planet earth, exactly the way it is, both of you in full permission to exist, together. Touch your forehead to the ground and breathe into your precious lungs. Do this many, many times.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - When do you use the symbol of the twins to your advantage?
Meditation - healing through the imagination.
Assignment - Imagine a duplicate of your body in front of you. Ask this duplicate questions about your health - spiritual and physical. Ask it to show you where the blocks or struggles are. Then gently heal your body duplicate in front of you, with effortless intention, while sitting quietly. You can brush it off, warm it up, cool it off, slide things around, break things up, shift, shake, blow air into, etc. Whatever is needed. Then rotate this duplicate so that it turns around and faces the same way you face, and pull it back into your body, so that the two merge into you, this you, right now, present moment you.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - What do your friends know about you that you might not yet see?
Meditation - inside a garden.
Assignment - Get a friend to go to a garden with you. Sit in the garden cross-legged and hold hands. Close your eyes and read each other. What does your friend see and feel about you in holding your hands? What do you see and feel about them in holding their hands? Read each other and then make promises to each other about how to heal yourselves based on what you see.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - How often do you devote time to nurturing your own sustenance and money?
Meditation - a bowl for offering and receiving.
Assignment - Put a bowl in front of you, one that feels good to you, looks good to you. Put it at your feet, and put a few things in it that feel good to you. Maybe a feather or a stone or a flower. Maybe all of these things. Consider this your collection bowl, and bless it before you set it somewhere visible in your everyday space, so that you can remember it as a symbol for the space you make to receive money and nourishment.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - What do you do with your hands and wrists in one day?
Meditation - hands and wrists.
Assignment - Do a task that you normally do each day, brushing your teeth, cooking, chopping vegetables, writing, or typing, picking up your bag, etc, but at least three times this week ritualize it. Focus as much of your attention as possible on your wrists and hands and notice what life is like for them. Notice what they are doing, and how they are feeling, and how aligned they feel with whatever the task is. Ask them how you can treat them well. Ask them what feels best, how you can nurture them.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - What happens when you give it away?
Meditation - giving what you want to someone else.
Assignment - Get in the kitchen. Make some food that's really elaborate and good - that you want to eat. And ask someone to eat it with you. Before you eat, each say what you want the most, and then let your eating on this special occasion be a way of consuming what you want right then. Don't wait! Make it, share it, give it away, while you also consume it. Don't over think it. Just be willing to let the inexplicable happen more often, and it will.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - When do you let water heal you?
Meditation - water as healer.
Assignment - Soak your feet at least once this week, in a healing foot bath that you make yourself. Let this water, and whatever your intuition tells you to put in it, heal you. The New Moon in Taurus is significant for you because you're always in deep conversation with Taurus whether you want to be or not. So what can this darkness of the New Moon and the stoic, pleasure- and ease-oriented Taurus remind you of right now? Ponder this while your feet are soaking in water, your original home element.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - How can your values energize you?
Meditation - embodying values.
Assignment - Write 5-10 of your values on little slips of paper and put them in a jar that you sleep next to. Set the intention that you want to absorb them during sleep. Keep them there as long as you need to. This is a way of living with your values right now, no matter what happens to you.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When do you touch yourself?
Meditation - faith in your own self-healing.
Assignment - Massage your own body this week. Use oil and give yourself a quiet period of time (ideally on Tuesday, the New Moon) to do this. Ask your body the stories it is trying to tell you as you massage it. What are the messages the material of your body is trying to give your spirit? What can your spirit do to respond to these messages? Spend time on the places that call to you that they need healing, and as you massage, remind yourself that your own self-healing is possible.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - Where is your body in relation to other bodies and space?
Meditation - the ten directions.
Assignment - Find a quiet few minutes in your week. Sit in a chair or on a cushion and locate your body. Do this by contemplating, picturing, saying hello to each direction. First North, South, East and West. Then Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest. Then Up and Down. Don't effort, just do this until you feel your energy located in your own body, as you perceive it in relation to the directions. When your energy is present in your body, what do you notice? What do you hear about your next step? Let the answers rise up slowly, from this located place in your body.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What questions do you want to ask your future self?
Meditation - running in a straight line.
Assignment - Move your body, or your imagination, from where you are right now toward whatever horizon is in front of you. If you move ahead of your body, way way out, as far into the future as you can project, what do you see around you? What fruits of the present come to your life in the future? What do you see about your possible future inheritance that can help you alter current painful behaviors? From this future vantage point that you imagine as physical, when you turn around to see yourself, what do you see? What can your future self tell you about how to act? What symbol can you take with you from this visualization to remind you when you come back to the present? Is it a color? Is it an object? Is it a word or words? Bring wisdom back from your future self to your present right now - you can be your own guide.
YALL! This is the first in a series of Existing Together Interviews, that will serve as the introduction to the horoscopes once a month. Each interview features a writer whose birthday is during that month - someone who is an inspiring expression of that sign. Astrology is best understood by seeing it embodied / enacted, so this is another way to learn about the signs. It's a way to include the perspectives of each sign that I couldn't provide myself and it's a union of this horoscope / astrology project with my other life project of interviewing and publishing other people's writing and thinking.
We, you and me, are THE LUCKIEST because Virgie Tovar responded to questions right here. I could not be a bigger fan of what she does. Here's her bio:
Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She is the founder of Babecamp, a 4-week online course designed to help women who are ready to break up with diet culture, and started the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight. She pens a weekly column called Take the Cake. Tovar edited the ground-breaking anthology Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love and Fashion (Seal Press, November 2012) and The Feminist Press will be publishing her forthcoming book of non-fiction, You Have the Right to Remain Fat (August 2018; now available for pre-order <<< www.feministpress.org). Find her online at www.virgietovar.com.
--
Follow her in all the ways, read what she writes, take Babe Camp even if you don't think of yourself as someone who is invested in diet culture, it thoroughly exposes an oppressive sea of thoughts you've inherited that you might not even have known you can cast off! Watch her ted talk, read her prolific online publishing, buy her book!
On an astrology note, Virgie, as I see her, embodies an incredible mix of Taurus, Aries, and Gemini - the embodied, practical, pleasure-seeking earth energy of Taurus, the quick-witted intellectual magic of Gemini and the confidence-spreading tendencies of Aries! Read this interview to see what I mean.
1. Under what conditions do you experience the most joy?
Imagine my thinky face here. Well, the first thing that comes to mind is when I get to have a snowy plover from Andytown. For anyone who lives under a goddamn rock, a snowy plover is (1) a beach bird that is cute and chubby, but (more germane to this question) it is also (2) a drink comprised of espresso, brown sugar and bubbly water and topped with homemade whipped cream. First, I love the, like, Marxist queer worker-centered vibe of Andytown. And that kind of vibe also brings me incredible joy. Like in general, any human-centered, artistic, bohemian place filled with fat people and gay people and feminists who don’t smile and people of color is going to bring me joy. Tiny, ridiculous hats bring me joy. Talking about how liberals are actually not the awesomest people – contrary to popular belief (lulz) - brings me joy (on that note, a friend of mine just introduced to me to the song “Love Me, I’m a Liberal” and everyone should listen to it). Talking loudly about dicks in a café filled with tech bros brings me joy. My feet touching the grass or the sand brings me joy. Also: tiny dogs or any dog in a dog wheelchair, babies waving at people or eating, seashells, finding huge earrings for under $5, the feel of a new pedicure, a stranger’s kiss, gaudy necklaces, tiny dresses covered in flowers, lipstick on coffee mugs, having pie with my lady friends, talking shit, Nutella, the way my legs feel right after I shave them and put oil on them, the way jasmine smells, seeing a new place, buying the last amazing-looking cookie, inscrutable high theory, swimming pools and hot tubs, rose quartz, finding someone the perfect gift, sending postcards, putting on butterscotch scented Prada perfume.
2. Do you ever feel that your personal needs are somehow in tension with larger social justice needs?
In general, no. I’m a huge proponent of adopting an activist/justice practice that nourishes you and my own practice mirrors that. I’m a brown fat woman and so taking care of my needs *is* justice work. If you’re marginalized and/or traumatized taking care of ourselves is sometimes the only justice work we have capacity to do, and that’s more than enough, I think. I will say that sometimes I feel like I’m not challenging my worldview or privilege blind spots enough – and I can’t tell if this is a moment for self-compassion or if I need to push through because this is work that I need to really do.
3. If you do feel this tension, how do you deal with it? What helps? (If not, what advice would you give to people who do feel something like that?)
I encourage people to look beyond traditional modes of activism and see what they already do well and are naturally drawn to. That’s the heart of your justice work – what already makes you thrive. I want to tell this little story about something that inspired the shit out of me the other day. I was in Waterbury, Vermont at the Ben & Jerry’s factory. I went for the ice cream, but I discovered on the tour that they are actually a rad company. They are politically involved with issues like climate change and LGBT rights, they work to create better lives and work practices for people who provide their ingredients (like being conscious about the impact on farmers who source their cocoa powder and hiring low income people who need jobs to make their, like, 30 tons of brownies), and they even mix all their discarded ice cream with manure in order to make clean energy! Their guiding question as a business is: “How can we make the world better with ice cream?” And I mean, this is the power of the human heart, right? Like, two dudes thought this up. To me, this means ANYTHING (even, like, Chubby Hubby) when done with loving intention can be part of our justice work.
4. Describe how you see your "spiritual life." What does that phrase mean to you and what are your favorite expressions or practices of it?
Well, I’m super woo. I talk to plants. I listen to Stevie Nicks. I talk to rocks. I see and hear, like, mystical truths in unexpected places (like when I’m listening to music that has no lyrics). I touch trees because they are obviously full of wisdom. I know that we are all connected – plants, animals, rocks, trees, the ocean, humans, the stars – and made of the same material. I believe the universe naturally moves energy pragmatically and ever toward a universal synchronicity and healing. Lately I have been doing more witchy work than ever before, strengthening my work with stones (my favorites right now are rose quartz, smoky quartz, citrine, and selenite). I keep them near my bed with my flowers and my tiny cactus, Lumpy. I spend a lot of time looking at the sky, the moon in particular. I’m very connected to nature and I’m finding more and more space to see other people – like, really, see them (their hopes, dreams, fears, why they do or say weird things, what I can do to make them feel safe and loved). This is about intuition and trusting your body even when your head doesn’t understand something.
5. Who or what makes you laugh the most and why?
My friends make me laugh the most – they’re so weird and observant and smart and introspective and vulnerable and witty and real. We talk about our lives and our feelings constantly – like, before we’ve even processed the feeling we’re talking about it (often we’re talking in order to process a feeling) and it’s done with such art even though we’re dealing with really hard stuff. Like my friend whose life advice to me almost always starts with “you’re really being a heterosexual right now” and ends with “what might this situation look like if you were less invested in heternormativity?” Like my single friends who literally can’t meet a normal human to save their lives, I love their stories about dealing with a Tinder date who talks about being attracted to their mom or the humiliation of getting ghosted by someone who hosts a podcast about marijuana or trying to hide a Coffee Meets Bagel alert after just having had the monogamy talk or what happens when someone who has spent an hour bragging about making 6 figures asks them to go dutch on their duck fat croquette sandwiches while in the BiRite checkout line. Just today I was texting with a friend who was telling me that he’s decided not to go on the tenure track market when he finishes his PhD (which is a really hard decision after dedicating so much time to one discipline) and then we started comparing academia to being in an abusive marriage with a rich dude. Or, like, my friend is going through so much right now trying to raise two kids and so the other night we got together at Mission Pie, smoked weed and talked about the people we’d dated who loved our butts. Or the other night my friend came over to help me clean my closet and she always makes up phrases and then tries to popularize them. This month’s is “toking the daffy,” a reference to when your co-worker smokes too much to do his job properly.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - When do you notice your mind obsessing?
Meditation - a field with a slight breeze.
Assignment - What methods do you have for moving your attention to and away from things? Write about these, give them more credit, give them more space. If you feel at a loss for methods to move your attention from something you don't want to focus on, to something you do, seek this out. Ask questions about how others do this. I'm not talking about avoiding, I'm talking about shifting the attention when that is called for. This is important for you to develop.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - When are you overly quiet?
Meditation - getting loud.
Assignment - Are there things you don’t say because they seem obvious to you? Do you assume that people will know you are there because you are physically? The physical is so real to you, sometimes you need to remember that you have to say things for others to know what you are feeling. Take note of when you’re quiet this week, or when you’re assuming that something you’re feeling doesn’t need to be said. Especially if it’s feelings of love, or if it’s things you are struggling with. There’s power in speech, and your verbal expression in particular.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What is the opposite of thinking?
Meditation - just go back to the feet.
Assignment - You keep thinking that thinking will solve it. You keep asking why. It's not that why isn't important, it's just that it's the question we ask first, when we need to be asking it much much later. You don't have to worry about losing your ability to analyze - it will always be with you. So you can hold it so lightly and experiment with other methods at arriving at what is needed. The mind is just so compelling, it sucks you into its proliferation. But you don't have to do this! Your breath and your feet are calling to you to come back home.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - When do you say everything is okay when it’s actually not?
Meditation - permission to include everything.
Assignment - Sometimes you are such a good mimic, and learn so much through absorption that you can psychically pretend yourself out of certain feelings. I’m not suggesting wallowing, I’m just encouraging you to speak the truth this week, to be honest with yourself and others about exactly how you are feeling. The more honest you are, the more any challenging emotions can be freed and released. The less you try to resist seeing your own pain, the more benefit is possible. Be honest about how you are feeling, whatever it is. Speaking the truth is a great way to express your faith that this, too, is passing.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - What images do you regularly consume?
Meditation - input versus output.
Assignment - Look deeper into your image consumption this week, and how that relates to your creativity. What do you filter when it comes to media, photos in your domestic space, art, and other visuals? How intentional are you about this? Consider the relationship between this input, and what you creatively output. Write about this. When do you feel most creative, and least creative, and how does this relate to your media and image consumption? Give yourself the gift of more conscious intention when it comes to this, whatever you decide. Your creative vitality will thank you.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - When do you give yourself a chance to play?
Meditation - playfulness.
Assignment - Put play on your to do list if you have to, but allow time to do it. Notice the use of the word ‘allow’ instead of make, or use. Just simple allowing, not too much effort. Sometimes you can even lose touch with the feeling of play, and this is a very human, essential aspect of life. Less obligation-fulfilling, more play. Purposelessness serves a very important purpose.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - What story would your feet tell if they were narrating your life?
Meditation - moving awareness from the sky to the earth.
Assignment - I mean this question sincerely - what story would your feet tell about your life? What perspective would they bring, what secrets would they reveal? How might they illuminate what you prioritize in a way that you couldn’t in your conscious mind? What might they ask you to change about your life? How do they ask to be taken care of? How do they feel? What shoes are they put in? Have a long conversation with your feet and see what they tell you.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - When do you notice and connect to the in between moments?
Meditation - routines of the body.
Assignment - Let yourself notice your own body more during in between times. Like the times when you are walking from the bed to the bathroom, or work to your car, or from the stove to the sink. The small movements that our actual lives actually consist of. Scorpio can focus on the big dramas, or the aspects of life that feel more intense, but what might you miss if this is always your focus? What big dramas might be taking place in the small movements you make every hour, every minute? What intensity and aliveness and nourishment and simple appreciation might arise when you just look more deeply into your body and what it is doing when it seems like it’s not doing anything?
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - When and how do you listen to your body's messages?
Meditation - your body is full of messages to you.
Assignment - Let yourself be tired, then take a nap. Let yourself be sad, then cry. Let yourself be anxious, then expel energy. Let your body tell you what to do. Any stories that disagree with it - be gentle with them and disagree right back. Key word: allowing.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - What does the flow of money look like to you?
Meditation - the intricacy of a spider's web.
Assignment - Focus on the web of connection this week, and examine stories that deny this web or omit it or brush over it. You don't have to do it all yourself. The less you effort to do it all yourself the more independent you will feel, or the less independence or being taken seriously will matter to you. What is something you can ask for help with, and let yourself receive it? How does this relate to your money flow and how more accepting from others might change your money flow?
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - Where is happening with your home right now?
Meditation - a nest.
Assignment - The moon is moving through Aquarius right now, which brings up questions of domestic space, comfort, safety, your home. What is your literal home, what is your emotional and spiritual home? What level of comfort do you have in these places / spaces? What can you do this week to give yourself more comfort? Take care of the places you inhabit right now, as a way of taking care of yourself.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What would happen if you refused to adjust?
Meditation - a smooth stone.
Assignment - How good a stone feels in the hand, one that is worn down by water. You're so adaptable, sometimes I want to tell you to not adapt. To see what happens if you don't. To let everyone else deal with it. To let it fall around you and see how you feel. To breathe and be smooth like the stone you have washed with adaptability all this time.
Full Moon in Scorpio opposite Sun in Taurus yesterday, and this Moon in Scorpio is conjunct Jupiter in Scorpio today.
The moon - a circle of women, singing around you, rooting for you in the most luminous quiet way.
Jupiter - expansion affects us all when Jupiter is on top of this full Moon, both in those deep Scorpio waters. Jupiter asks us to get BIG, to EMOTE, to receive its inspiration or end up feeling bludgeoned. Our comfort level with expansion has a lot to do with whether we experience this influence as overwhelming or exhilarating.
We can say yes to transformation, to being awake, together, right now. We can just do that.
The moon - a circle of women, singing around you, rooting for you in the most luminous quiet way.
The earth asking you to let it take your weight, asking you to remember gravity.
When does your body expand, when does it contract? What conditions correspond with this? What do you notice about your life and mood as the moon moves through its cycles?
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - When and how do you honor your past experiences?
Meditation - saying thank you to transformations.
Assignment - Uranus is leaving Aries mid-May and heading into Taurus! It will be back briefly in the fall but the movement is happening. At some point in the past seven years (probably many times) you've had a visit to your Sun of Uranus, and this means major changes, transformation, sudden shifts, etc. It means all sorts of things. And usually we are very aware of these intense changes as they are happening but tend to forget them pretty quickly when we move through them. So the cue for this week is (as always with Aries) slowing down, and while you slow down this time, look to the past. Look into what has happened for you in this cycle of Uranus being in your sign, and what has happened in your life. What can you thank nature for? What have you learned? What do you want to take with you?
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - How do you stay grounded through sudden changes?
Meditation - allowing gravity to support you, no matter what.
Assignment - Uranus is moving into Taurus for the next 7 years or so, starting mid-May. So at some point during this time, it's likely changes will occur for you, often feeling sudden. There is no need to stress about this. Instead, you can invite, in a conscious way, the winds of change to meet your life in a manageable way. You can ask nature to share all of the tools you need for these changes. You can ask for perspective and awareness and poise and love during the unending 'transit' that is actual life. You don't have to dig our heels in and resist change, although that can be a Taurus tendency. You can open to all that life has to bring, and use your innate connection to the earth and gravity to keep you connected, through anything.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - When do you put your body in restful shapes?
Meditation - child's pose.
Assignment - Do child's pose this week. It's likely you'll get sick of me telling you to do these kinds of things, but I can't help it. Gemini calls out to me, telling me to recycle the message to you to rest, to power down more. As often as possible, child's pose this week, or whatever your restful equivalent is.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - What's your relationship to shore?
Meditation - the rejuvenation of the shore / land.
Assignment - You've been on a boat, maybe your whole life, maybe just the past while, and it's time to step onto land for a minute at least, to get some nourishing foods and press your feet into the earth. You don't have to worry so much about carrying all of the past. It is always there, you don't need to try. You can turn your back to it from time to time, just like the ocean, and replenish, and then turn around again and it will still be there! Notice where your attention is this week, and keep gently putting it back toward your own nourishment.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - When do you consciously generate your own heat?
Meditation - body movements!
Assignment - I'm picturing you doing push-ups this week. Or swinging your arms, or breathing exercises. Something that involves you generating your own heat. Especially if you are feeling depleted. But even if you are not. Building a reservoir for the future - making your own fire to be warmed by in future times when you might not have as much energy to generate it. When you have impulses to do weird things like this, especially body movements, don't hold back so much. Embrace it. This is life asking you to let it move through you!
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - When do you pull back your awareness of time?
Meditation - the long, forgiving arc of time.
Assignment - Patience is almost always a helpful virtue for you to cultivate. You're so good at working hard but when do you allow time to work for you, and by time I mean nature - they are so connected. They want to help you. Time and Nature want you to let them help you move all the things through, like a sponge in the ocean. Practice turning your attention away from daily time this week. Maybe this means not knowing what time it is for as long a chunk as you can pull off. Or meditating on a longer arc of time, as long as you can imagine. (Contemplating geology helps.) What does this do to your perspective, how does it re-position what you are consumed with in the moment?
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - What materials are you surrounded by?
Meditation - materials as living.
Assignment - Your material life, what materials are in your home, in your clothes, in your car, surrounding you. Which ones bring you life, which ones feel dead? How does this affect your vitality? Which ones can you introduce and or minimize? Get textures and physical textures into your field that positively affect your body and well-being this week. Give yourself this gift which will help you feel full of more of your own inherent effervescence.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What activity feels the most gentle to you?
Meditation - drinking tea.
Assignment - Practice acts that involve no problem solving, no becoming, this week. Drinking tea is one idea, but whatever feels like drinking tea to you. And by that I mean, things that you do that are not to get through, not an activity built for completion, but an activity built for pleasure. For existence itself. What feels like this to you? It's so important that you do this, because when you do, you say yes to life. Especially with the Full Moon in your sun sign! Gentle, very gentle acts of simply being.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - When was the last time you called a spiritual guide in?
Meditation - calling in the heavens.
Assignment - Use your humor, your playfulness, to call in a guide. Maybe this means calling someone who helps you breathe easier on the actual phone. Maybe this means praying to nature or life itself for help. This isn't selfish, this is actually the reciprocity that the earth asks us, over and over, to participate in. Maybe this is calling the plants and life forms around you silently and saying, I see you, Thank you for contributing to my well-being. It feels good to do this. Remember you don't have to do it all by yourself, in fact you actually can't anyway, so you'll be able to relax much easier when you stop fighting this truth, and get your spiritual guides on the phone.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When do you let your emotions guide you?
Meditation - water as teacher to help you find your emotional life.
Assignment - Find the best water and drink it, drink so much. Each sip, remember that you're nourished, that life, in the form of this water, is trying to give you everything you need, and your job is simply to remember what you already have. This water. Every day, every hour, drink a sip of water, let this be everything you need to do, and everything you need.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - When do you feel safe enough to be open?
Meditation - dancing.
Assignment - I picture you doing cartwheels this week. Your body extended, in all directions, because you feel safe enough to be open. Write down past experiences where you felt safe enough to be open. What were common elements of those experiences? What can you bring into this moment, with what you have right now, that can help you feel safe enough to be open? Write about these things and breathe and do your electric dance, internally or externally, and hesitate less.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What structures support your emotional connections?
Meditation - density as a buoy.
Assignment - The amazing thing about concrete is that even though it seems so solid it's still porous! It still absorbs water. I say this to remind you that you can be boundaried in a very beautiful, functional, structural way, and still stay open and permeable! The structures of your life only help you be more free to move and let all the feeling and falling move right through you. Who helps remind you of structures and/or serves as a structural element in your life? What can you learn from them about adopting supportive structures? Continue to remain open to how structure can help you. Listen when others are trying to offer this wisdom to you. It won't be your first impulse, it might be a bit counter-intuitive, but it will help so much.
We move from the initiatory energy of Aries, the beginning of the zodiac, the flint that starts the fire, into the earth (wood) that keeps the vision going. Taurus is an earth sign, the most slow-moving, steady energy of the zodiac. Trees, roots, work, orienting, chores, chopping wood and carrying water.
How can we use this energy as a metaphor and a guide - a blueprint for an approach to life right now? We could think of it as one way of Nature asking us to enter the flow of change and try on this energy. If you have planets in Taurus this way of being might be familiar to you and take the shape of digging your heels into the earth, resisting change and newness.
The daily heart. The steady, daily energy of Taurus can remind us of our daily hearts. Especially in remembering that we need connection to the divine, the unnameable, EVERY DAY. And not just that but it needs to come through the physical, through the tangible, through the everyday itself. When we don’t get this, we lose the heart part of life, and if we lose this, then the chores become emptied out, just reinforcing our place as a cog in the capitalist wheel. What are our work, our efforts, our earth embodiment and manifestations - what ways are we living as earth bodies on this actual earth? These are the questions Taurus can help us access - what is your daily heart and what does it need right now? How can you nurture it. When we live our lives in the everyday while we notice what is alive, what is divine, not waiting for some imagined future, we claim the power of a daily heart.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - What about beginning again even when you’re doing the same thing?
Meditation - every moment is a beginning, and an end.
Assignment - Look to Taurus as the sign that follows yours, after your birthday. Each sign is said to be a response / reaction to the one before it. Which is why there can be tension between these signs next to each other but also much to learn. Taurus can teach you about: roots, your feet, peace and pleasure at slowness instead of frustration! Study Tauruses this week. What do you notice about them? What does it feel like to imagine their perspective? What does it feel like to try to get this in your body?
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - What patterns and habits do you want to invite in during your birth month?
Meditation - the sun returning to you.
Assignment - Reclaim your birthday as a moment not to be missed - as a celebration of the present as the seed of all past and future time. This is when the sun comes back to the place it was at the moment you were born - this is a time not to be missed out on. Nothing big needs to happen but don’t let it go by without some reflection on what you are doing. And what you are not doing. And your mortality and how this can be awakening, not depressing. What can the passing of time awaken you to? Give yourself the gift of time this week, to not miss the celebration of your existence.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What is beyond your conceptualizing of everything?
Meditation - sand as physical time.
Assignment - A step toward earth in the form of air - the space between sand. Sand as all the particles of stone which used to be a wall. A canyon. A volcano. These earth energies as worn and changed by air and water. I want you to put down your thinking and connecting and scrolling for 4 minutes each day. Just put it down and let go of connecting anything to anything else, including yourself. Be a grain of sand. See what it feels like. 4 minutes. Sand. All of time contained in each element, each moment. Let yourself let go of the burden of logic for a moment. Arrive already.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - What are your assumptions about what information you need to take in?
Meditation - a still lake surface.
Assignment - Give yourself permission to limit your intake of media, and of information in general. There’s a lake, and you’re standing next to it, and you get to decide if and when you dive into it. It’s still and beautiful and full of life. Remember that you can go in, and you can also come out. This is so important - differentiating! You do not have to receive information without meaning to. It just involves intention, and giving yourself permission to not receive it. This is not about blocking out or turning away. It’s just about discerning. When you are discerning, you’re much more effective because what is yours is clear, and you feel so much better.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - When do you notice the season and what does that noticing do for you?
Meditation - spring green.
Assignment - There’s a flow of the brightest neon green, all the greens actually, just flowing through your field, especially around your heart. Don’t miss spring (or fall) because you are getting stuff done. I repeat: don’t miss the magic of the change of season! You’re a fixed sign so the change can be hard, but if you get into the dynamic color of it, the movement as evidence of life, you will love it. And it really is all about love for you, dramatic brimming spring green love. Ground your not missing of this season in at least one hour this week when you go outside and appreciate whatever evidence of life in transition is available.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - When do you give yourself permission to be a troublemaker?
Meditation - rules are made to be broken.
Assignment - If you’re wondering if your perspective is skewed toward always thinking you need to improve more than you do - it is. And when you realize this, don’t go up in your body toward your brain and more thinking - move down, toward less thinking and more feeling. Not emotional feeling but physical. As the most mentally-focused earth sign, you need reminders to bring your busy mind back down to earth. Put your mind in your feet. Then ask it questions about what to do next. Your feet are better at listening to the earth than your mind, your feet are much closer to the earth. Nothing needs to be fixed, it’s just a matter of changing the order - instead of thinking first and then perceiving, perceive with your feet and then see what thoughts arise. Another way of saying this would be: let yourself break your own rules this week. It’s imperative to your breathing in the long term.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - When is your curiosity real and when is it fake?
Meditation - turquoise.
Assignment - There’s a softness that arises when you are asking questions, when you are in a space of not knowing. And this softness is like water, because when you’re uncertain you can move in all sorts of directions, in any direction that is necessary, and that is real power. The turquoise arises for you as a guide this week - the soft coolness of the color and the power of its stone hardness. It’s sort of like water, slowed down enough to appear as a color. Remember it’s not the answers to the questions that matter, or we don’t want to get too sucked into finding the answers - and Libra likes to know! It’s the magic of the stance - the position itself - in which asking questions places us, that is true power.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - Where can you go for perspective?
Meditation - a view with a horizon line.
Assignment - This week your figure appears at a wild cold beach, standing in the wind. The wind doesn’t bother you in this dream, because you understand the very human and very natural experience of roughness. Textural roughness, emotional roughness, human roughness. You are comfortable in intensity. Standing in the wind, looking magnificent, letting your hair be anywhere, letting your clothes be a mess. In this dream, do you sink your feet into the sand further? Do you lean back and sit down? Do you lie on your back, not caring that you’ll get sandy? What is the body position which will be most conducive to you connecting to your own true knowing? How does your body connect to the horizons you look at? Find the body position that allows you to feel most open, and from this place, let your knowing about your next move come in.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - What are you dreaming lately?
Meditation - soft and light and bouncing.
Assignment - Color keeps arising for you, this week it’s pink. The soft, the light, as in light in relation to gravity, asking this color about how to be soft and light and bounce. You can be so loud / big in your approach (not necessarily volume). So this color is a guide for an approach that’s not a direct opposite (quiet / small) but instead just less subject to gravity. What would a soft and light and bouncing approach look like for you? What would that do to your thoughts especially? What would it do to waht you do with your hands? If you don’t understand, if the lack of rationality here is frustrating, just roll your eyes (in a pink and light and bouncing way) and move on. I’m not talking to your brain.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - How consciously are you choosing ‘rationality’?
Meditation - color as life.
Assignment - So much of the time you can’t see the ways your ‘practical’ thinking forecloses on possibility. Let yourself perceive as if your vision is a bit blurred, so that you can see the colors - the emotional and spiritual landscape - instead of getting so sucked into the content of the physical. Often for Capricorn the problem is seeing with too much rational clarity. It’s too wed to rationality. Make a list of five things you would be doing if you weren’t being ‘practical’ and then make a promise to yourself that you’ll do at least one of them this week.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - What is your relationship to time?
Meditation - stone as congealed time
Assignment - Hold stones this week. Contemplate geologic time. Geology is congealed time. Consider this in relation to the timeframe of your own body. How do they relate? What kind of time is beyond your scope of awareness? How might it change your life to include geologic time, the time of stones, the time of rock walls, of land plates? What would this kind of time, as a thought experiment, do to your daily life, your daily decisions? Contemplate this, and then ask your intuition to give you a daily practice to perceive time through in a new way this week.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - Where is your intuition located in your body?
Meditation - the relationship between feeling and seeing.
Assignment - Sometimes you rely on your intuition so much that your intuition itself gets fatigued. Sometimes you need to experiment with moving your awareness up in your body, from feeling to seeing, as a way to practice not having all of the feeling run through your body. What are the practices that help you still perceive with your intuition but not rely on it to do all of your work? This is where earth energy can be a helpful guide for you. Setting up rhythms, a regular schedule (of something! At least one thing per day!) which you can rely on to do every day, instead of having to access your intuition to make every decision. That is a lot of energy for the body to run. Earth rhythms and plans can be helpful because they are grounding. We set them using our intuition as if setting up a system, and then let them run.