Last week I taught a class at the Ruby SF about romantic relationships. Everyone wrote a list of relationship myths that we had picked up along the way. And we shared that list out loud, which was so powerful - just to name so many of the things we are taught about how relationships should go or be or not be, etc. Then I shared some of of what astrology can illuminate in this realm. And someone asked what the relationship is between these myths and people’s birth charts. This is so much of what astrology describes, actually. The presence of certain elements in your chart, especially in the Moon, Venus and Mars placements, has so much to do with the kinds of myths you are prone to believing. But of course it’s not all myths! These placements also indicates what you value, the kinds of relationships you want to have, the ways you want to connect, the ways you want to be appreciated, the ways you demonstrate love to someone else and much more. The purpose of astrology in this realm, as I see it, is to become more accepting of ourselves and others - to recognize that our differences are real, and not as personal as they often seem. Some people don’t want to be monogamous, and it’s not because they have some problems to be worked out. And some people really feel monogamous, and it’s not because they have some problems to be worked out. This is an example of a difference that can be so confusing without a framework like astrology, because it’s easy to imagine that someone is making something up or acting maliciously if they’re acting so different from how we would act. Astrology asks us to imagine what it might be like to have a completely different world view, and developing this imagination muscle is more important than ever, at the moment.
During the class someone also said that they understand that so many of these relationship ideas are myths on an intellectual level, but that they still struggle with bringing that understanding into their lives and bodies in a complete way. This is a beautiful question that requires a lot of living with it, I think. What does it look like to identify a myth in your life that is causing you suffering, and then act according to your best version of the truth right now? To act in a way that doesn’t perpetuate that myth, but instead is in accordance with what you know to be true? Spend time with this question yourself during this Full Moon in Aquarius this week, as we enter Leo season.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - When do you let things not be okay?
Meditation - you don’t have to hold it.
Assignment - So much of the time you feel this pressure to project that you are okay, or confident, or things are going well - and that’s exhausting! You can just drop it, internally. (Maybe even externally too, but start internally). Projecting these things when you don’t actually feel them just disconnects you from people. As a more outward-facing sign, work toward balance by experimenting with not having to hold it yourself, not having to say you’re doing well if you’re not. You can be multiple things at once - you can be confident and insecure, you can be joyful and feel like shit. And the more real you are about this, at least with yourself, the more connected you will be able to feel with others.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - What influences are helping you right now?
Meditation - beneficial influence.
Assignment - What media are you consuming? What books, what news, what social media, what conversations? Let the light of this full moon week illuminate what needs to go, even for a short time. What subtler, quieter influences can you reconnect to right now, that might be nourishing and not get enough stage in your life? Remember that you can experiment for short periods of time, it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Let the full moon itself influence you, with enough space around you to actually feel that influence. Your job is to guard your sphere so that the influences you want can enter.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - How do your joints feel right now? How aware of them are you?
Meditation - attending to your joints.
Assignment - Reconnecting to your joints, remembering that they exist. That they are what ground you, they move your body, they connect the various parts of your body - connection points. How much attention do you give them? What does it feel like to notice them? Which ones feel good and which ones hurt? Give them some attention as you use them this week - especially right now the joints you are using to operate the screen you are look at while you read this. Be tender with them, thank them, for existing and making so much of your life possible.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - How much are you listening to your very quiet inner voice?
Meditation - stillness.
Assignment - There are so many layers of listening, and Cancer really understands this - so tuned into historical listening, familial listening, personal feelings listening. There are more subtle, quieter inner voices, the ones that usually don’t get much stage because they are so quiet, and all of our other input is so loud. Find some time to listen to this quietest of voices this week. Even a few minutes a day, or a few hours one day - devote a portion of your life to hearing this voice at all, asking what it wants. If you can’t attend to it right now, it’s okay, but don’t ignore it - talk to it - tell it that you will get to it when you can!
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - What was happening on the day of your birth?
Meditation - interconnectivity of birth.
Assignment - Every human was born! We have this in common. Take time this week to connect with your actual birth, asking anyone who was around when it happened to tell you about it. Researching what was happening on this day, the day of your birth, when it happened, whenever it was. How does that connect with the themes of your life? How can your individual experience be contextualized by your birth? This Full Moon in Aquarius opposite your Leo Sun is an opportunity to bring into balance the personal and impersonal ways of orienting to life - so how can a broader view and context will likely help you feel better, vaster.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - What can you learn from your neighbor Leo?
Meditation - permission to be big.
Assignment - As we enter Leo season this week, look for Leo energy around you, and ask yourself what might be beneficial to try on, or cultivate, with this energy. Each sign in the zodiac is, in a way, a reaction to the one that comes before it. So Virgo is a reaction to Leo, it tends to be organized and detailed and humble to balance Leo’s drama, big view, and confidence. The good thing is that all of the skills and abilities you have as a Virgo will not go away, as you invite in some warmth of fire this week. Practice cultivating permission to be big, to take up space, to think well of yourself. Imagine! How would a lion’s roar feel in your throat?
LIBRA | September 23-October 23
Question - What if conflict actually connected you to others?
Meditation - reframing conflict.
Assignment - What if you never had to avoid conflict again? What if you could embrace it as a part of nature, like clouds, or rocks, or trees, or the human digestion system? What if it was necessary to relation, to life itself, and therefore you could even be grateful for it at times? Try this on! See what happens! Let yourself take a new approach to it, and just see what happens. Bring as much levity as possible to your life this week. Collect and connect to influences that help you do this.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What is your business, and what is someone else’s?
Meditation - staying in your own business.
Assignment - Give yourself permission to reconnect with your own business this week. Just because you might perceive what is good for someone else or how to help, doesn’t mean you always should! Sometimes conservation of energy is needed. And! We can’t grow for others - each person has to learn their own lessons - this is a law of this planet. The more we live in harmony with this law, the better our relations go, the more connected and helpful we are able to be. Pull back your energy from other people this week and remember what is yours to manage.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - When is your breath labored, when is it easy?
Meditation - breathing easy.
Assignment - Take note of your breath in a daily, and hourly practice this week. So not just a meditation practice, although that is great (!) but just pay attention to it without trying to change it. Take note of the conditions of your life and situation when it feels challenging to breathe, and take note of when and why it might be easy. And then, of course, because we can’t observe something without affecting it, take note of what noticing it does to it. Give yourself a lot of kindness as you go through this noticing process.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When do you say exactly what you want to say?
Meditation - Permission to speak.
Assignment - Give yourself permission to notice what is energizing, and what isn’t. Foods, places, people, media, etc. What drains you? Don’t internalize your own tiredness so much - let yourself draw these connections between what is tiring, your sense of obligation, and people and places in your life. Make a list if you need to. Then see what can be done to alter them. Is there any way you can express what is draining you so that it can be less draining? Is there any way you can do that thing or see that person less? When you give yourself breaks from the things that are draining you, then you really start to learn if it’s actually external or internal. Notice when and where your energy goes and give yourself lots of permission to say the most obvious thing!
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - When do you feel full?
Meditation - Letting yourself be full.
Assignment - Full Moon in Aquarius this week - in your ongoing relationship with Leo as your opposite - and this week that relationship gets magnified again through this Full Moon opposite the Sun as it moves into Leo. Aquarius can be almost emptied out at times, so full of the impersonal, the group. So what does it look like and feel like to be full? To let yourself be full? Like this moon - an offering by nature to encourage you to integrate, to reconcile, these opposites of Aquarius and Leo. Aquarius tends to be the least personal and Leo tends to be the most personal - where is the balance point for you?
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - Who and what do you collaborate with?
Meditation - collaboration.
Assignment - Just wanting you to remember your capacity to collaborate, that you inherently understand how to share life, existence, being, emotion. How your fluidity and sensitivity thrives when you are collaborating, but you have to remember this truth to be able to practice it. Don’t isolate when you get overwhelmed this week, instead make a conscious effort to reach out. In a direct way. Connection is waiting for you, through collaboration with all species, all the time, but you have to reach out, and ask.
Returning to ourselves. To yourself. Over and over, after all the small and large abandonments we are taught, we learn, we unlearn.
This week take note of when you have the impulse to look outside of yourself to understand your life, to feel better, to change your situation. Of course we are deeply connected and dependent on each other! But right now return to yourself and see what it feels like to ask yourself the questions you might want to be asking others.
How long has it been since you were quiet with yourself? If it has been a while don’t waste time judging yourself for this. Just come back to your breath, right now, close your eyes, give yourself a few moments to let whatever is there be there.
Building trust with yourself involves coming back to yourself an infinite amount of times, no matter how long you have been away, or how far.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - What’s your relationship to your environment?
Meditation - place as nourishment.
Assignment - Spend time noticing the place you are in, the places you spend time in this week. How do they sustain your life? On a physical level and also emotionally and spiritually? What is nourishing about where you spend time? How can remembering this ground you and help bring some slowness in?
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - What are simple ways you can integrate more balance?
Meditation - cat and cow pose.
Assignment - The image for you this week is this gentle movement, of cat and cow, pictured in the link if you don’t know it. It’s a physical experience that practices balance, and the more you do it, the more you invite balance in other areas, in your mental, emotional and spiritual state. Use your sensory sensitivity to focus on the body and shifting the stuck places there. When you do this, the rest will follow. It’s simple, but so profound. Let this be your simple and profound job this week.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - How do you mark time?
Meditation - time markers.
Assignment - Marking time can be a cage if you get too obsessed with it, but it can also be so grounding. Keeping track of what you’ve done on a given day, or in an hour, or week, can help ground you and remind you of all the things that are happening in your life. So that when you look to the future and see all of that possibility and curiousity you still have, you don’t feel quite as overwhelmed. Write these things down, what you have done, what you want to do. Write down the ways you understand and feel time in your body, and see if this helps your grounding.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - When do you allow yourself to not feel?
Meditation - differentiation as love
Assignment - Just because you can feel it, doesn’t mean you have to, or you should. Cancer is so absorptive, it’s hard to even slow down the process enough to become fully aware of what is happening. You absorb all the feelings, your own and other people’s, the collective feelings, in a way. The feelings are SO compelling, they pull you with their song. So the more you see this process, and slow down enough to notice what is happening, the more you can choose when and how to absorb. Absorption is your super power, but it takes a lot of discernment to learn what to absorb. This is a lifetime process but this week, try out the mantra - Just because you can feel it, doesn’t mean you have to, or should.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - When do you spend time with the birds?
Meditation - being with the birds.
Assignment - If you don’t feel drawn to birds it can be another life form, but something that connects you to freedom! Remember that this still exists for you, even when you feel weighed down by your daily tasks, work, etc. Freedom is available close by, right here, in a breath or two of remembering that you are divine, you have a right to creatively live your life, and that includes creatively remembering your own freedom and noticing it when it’s present! The more you remember it as it appears right now in your life already, the more you will allow in more future freedom that you are craving. Look to the birds to remind you of the freedom that is right here.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - What is true exercising to you?
Meditation - exercise
Assignment - Exercising your mind, your body, in whatever way feels right to you. Try to let go of the definition of exercising that’s about rules and shoulds, and focus on what type of movement and rigor your body is asking for right now, this week. Do this with your mind too - what types of thinking and activities activate your mind in pleasurable ways? Where does the pleasure of the mind reside? Give yourself permission to reclaim exercise as a vital and freeing experience, not one of inherited obligations to other people’s definitons of ‘fitness’.
LIBRA | September 23-October 23
Question - How often are you aware of what you’re saying?
Meditation - mindful speech
Assignment - Spend time noticing what you say, and when you say it this week. How much of your speech is urgent? How much of it is idle? How much is it to fill the space? How much of it is about other people? How much of it is to soothe others, or yourself? How much of it feels good, in your body, to be speaking?
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - How do you relate to food and eating?
Meditation - food as life!
Assignment - There’s a tendency for you to preoccupied with lots of things other than food, unless you have earth signs in your chart. The water in you wants to engage with emotional intensity or feeling itself, and often food doesn’t fall into that category. It can feel more like a nuisance - so give yourself the gift of attending to it this week, and see how a lot of attention to food and nourishment affects your emotional state. I want you to care for yourself with reverence.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - When is your vision expanding and when is it narrowing?
Meditation - narrowing the focus
Assignment - Let your focus narrow this week, toward what you really want to do. Pull back from that tendency to overdo it and see what happens. Imagine a steady energy washing over you. What would it feel like to apply more sustained effort and less bursts (a fire tendency)? Narrowing your focus can bring clarity and insight into how to apply your efforts more sustainably.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When and how can you connect to plants this week?
Meditation - vital energy
Assignment - Look for these connections to plants, to any phenomena of nature that is comforting to you. It’s great if you can go away to a place where there are more other species than humans per square mile, but if this is not available to you, just look for where and how this is available to you wherever you are. It’s the same as with the breath - plants - as soon as we turn our attention to them, we find life wanting to live everywhere. Affirmations of life. As soon as we turn our attention to our breath, it changes, we see how dynamic it is.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - What changes are taking place in your life right now?
Meditation - winds of change.
Assignment - These winds are always moving through us, around us. When you are feeling overwhelmed by change, write down a list of the major changes that have happened so far in your life that you identify as beneficial. Then write about how you felt at the time about those changes taking place. Are there any that you resisted at first that now you see ended up being good? What do you notice in this process? How can this hindsight vision inform your approach and attitude to the current changes in your life?
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What is on the other side of your fear?
Meditation - embracing fear.
Assignment - Remembering that you have inner wisdom. That you have a vast sense of intuition. That fear can guide us or control us and this is the opportunity we have when it arises. We can use it as information - fear asks us to pay close attention! What is it asking you to pay attention to? What is it asking you to learn more about? You don’t need to go looking for fear, but just take note when it arises and then listen for opportunity within it instead of ignoring or escaping it. Fear drains us so much when we let it run the show by trying to ignore it or escape it.
Here’s an interview with the magical Rachel Khong, for this New Moon in Cancer week! Rachel’s work is an inspiring expression of Cancer (through her focus on food, family, memory, the past, and domestic space / experience), Gemini (through her bringing together of so many people and ideas), and Capricorn (through her astounding work ethic and responsibility), among other things! She's created a work (Capricorn) space that feels cozy and inviting like a home (Cancer), to bring people doing all different kinds of arts and letters (Gemini) activities. Read her books and her writing, and visit the Ruby for classes and/or for co-working.
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Rachel Khong is a writer and novelist living in the Mission, in San Francisco. She is the founder of The Ruby, also located in the Mission, a shared work and gathering space for women of all definitions.
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1. When do you experience the most joy?
When writing is easy, when it feels like magic. Reading a good book, or watching a good movie. Cooking and eating a meal with friends who make me laugh. Being in someone’s garden (I wish I had my own!). When I’ve written or cooked something that I think is good; both the process and the result can be a joy. Maybe that’s the main thing: I like making stuff, or enjoying something that someone else has made.
2. How integrated do your various roles feel? How much does it matter if they are integrated to you?
My roles feel fairly integrated in my body though I know they’re disparate to say out loud. I write fiction and nonfiction; as of January, I’ve also run a small business. I finally feel I’m at a place of just, like, feeling fully myself — doing the things that I want and love to be doing (along with, you know, chores! But I don’t mind chores). In the past I’ve felt unhappy and just off when I was doing too much of one thing; I think often because my sense of worth would be wrapped up in whatever work I was doing. There were years I worked incredibly hard at my magazine job, and though the work itself was satisfying, I was also miserable because I felt I was failing at finishing my novel. At the same time, I’ve also been really unhappy at times in my life when I had nothing to do but write fiction. These days, I get to work on my novel, write the occasional magazine piece, eat and cook food, and do things that I love at The Ruby, like learn how to make or do things, learn things period, talk about books, and even just play mahjong (I shouldn’t say just; mahjong is serious stuff!). Working on The Ruby has been the most interesting puzzle: making this thing for other people that, for me, has been so special and so valuable, too. The Ruby has been a way to bring many of my interests and skills together, a way to engage these different aspects of myself. We are all so many things, at once. It can be frustrating to be seen only as one part of you, or to have your worth feel tied up in a specific output. With The Ruby, I especially want to acknowledge this about us, as humans: we’re multifaceted, and have many interests and needs. I want The Ruby to be a site of integration and also belonging. You are not only the work that you do; you are your interests, you are your sense of humor, you are your generosity, you are so much.
3. Do you relate to the typical Cancer problem of absorbing others' emotions, and if so, how do you manage that?
I do! As I get older I’m managing it better. I think recognizing that you do this is a first step. When I was younger I was so conflict averse I avoided conflicts altogether; I thought that even having an argument with my partner would mean that we were doomed — the relationship would fall apart — which of course wasn’t and isn’t true. I think as a Cancer and a woman and a minority I have done, in life, a lot of second-guessing myself. That problem of taking in what other people feel — not creating space for myself, and not drawing boundaries that need to exist — is so real. The way that I dealt with this tendency when I was younger was by simply retreating or running from problems — being emotionally unavailable, to not get close enough to people to let people’s emotions really impact me. Being detached and cool. Finally, now, I’m learning that really delicate balance of how to be a person in the world. I’ve had to; I’ve been forced to. I am a writer and I have books that strangers read; I’m a business owner and strangers think things about this business. Not all of the things, of course, are positive. But I’ve learned that people can say terrible things, and people can misunderstand you, and not everybody will like you, and that has to be okay. It just has to. I have had to decide not to be absorbent, but not in the way that I used to, of being emotionally unavailable. These days I’m always reminding myself: people will think what they think; I have my work — the work that I love — to do.
4. You support so many people in the food industry (who probably don't call it the 'food industry', but I don't know the official words). Will you talk about your own personal relationship to food, and how it factors into your every day?
Food has always been so personal and fascinating to me. There’s so much history and identity wrapped up in food, at the same time it does this very simple, elemental thing of nourishing us. We need it to stay alive; every person on earth eats. And, honestly, I just love eating. Food is good! I grew up with a mother who worked full-time yet cooked when she could; my diet growing up alternated between junk food and these really amazing Malaysian curries and noodle soups. When I moved to San Francisco, after college, I went to farmers’ markets for the first time and learned how to cook, and that was its own exciting discovery and joy. Probably this goes back to question number one: it brings me happiness to make things, and to eat things that other people have made. You can learn so much from both of those experiences.
I also love that food can be both public (shared with people) and private (a solitary pleasure). Anthony Bourdain was a cancer; so was MFK Fisher. They were both public and private people, and I get it. Food can be public or private, social or not. It can be a way that a private, perhaps on-guard person can exist in the world, get to know other people more intimately — over a shared meal. Food can do a lot of things at once. There’s a book I love called Home Cooking, by Laurie Colwin, and in it she writes, “For the socially timid, the kitchen is the place to be. At least, it is a place to start.” That has always resonated with me.
5. I'm astounded at the various ways you support other artists, especially at The Ruby. What do you want to be asked about that you don't get asked about enough?
I was reflecting on the fact that I sometimes feel squeamish when I get asked about the thing I’m currently writing, or about The Ruby itself as a project. I shift and I stammer and I freak out slightly inside, and I wonder, why is it so uncomfortable for me to talk about the things that I so deeply love and care about? I think part of the reason is that I’m afraid to articulate the projects incorrectly. That, if I start talking about something, it will be incorrectly received, or that something I say will lead to a misunderstanding. That’s a crazy way to think, of course, because I’m in the business of using language to communicate. And yet, misunderstandings and miscommunication are a really central part of the human experience. We communicate only in flawed ways; we do not understand one another perfectly. It’s a heartbreaking reality that I explore in my fiction, and have recently been exploring with The Ruby, too. This question of: Well, how can we connect, despite our various backgrounds, and our various baggage? I’m so interested in that question.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - What is new around you in this moment? What do you not know about, right now?
Meditation - newness is unavoidable.
Assignment - Use your desire to start new things as a way to get more curious about your moment-to-moment experience. This can be hard for Aries, often easily bored! Without even maybe realizing or calling it that, Aries really thrives in moving from experience to experience, new stimulation. So instead of trying to make this desire go away, I’m suggesting that you use it in a new way - shifting your perspective. Using it to get more curious about how new this very moment is. And that it’s actually a habitual asleepness that makes us think that this moment and all it contains is NOT new. That’s impossible! We cannot possibly know what is coming next, and that is a good thing. That’s your job, as an Aries, in long term sustainability in your life - to use this newness and excitement for the things that might not on the surface look exciting. To see deeply into how vivid the present moment actually is.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - When do you initiate in your life?
Meditation - initiating
Assignment - Experiment with initiating, even if in small ways this week. Take notice of how much you are the initiator or not in your life. How much of the time do you start things, suggest things, begin things? Taurus tends to be good at running things that are already going but can be hesitant to start things because change can feel so jarring. But it’s useful to flex that muscle if you realize that you’ve been not initiating anything.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What is going in and out of your mouth?
Meditation - inspiration and expiration.
Assignment - Tune in to what is going in and out of your mouth. Breath! Food! Water! Connect with your mouth and throat as a location for your mindfulness this week. What is being communicated and what is transpiring through you, at this point. Prepare tea for yourself, using your intuition about what tea feels most nourishing. Use plants in drinkable form to connect to your own body through what you ingest. Drink it slowly. Breathe in between sips. Be the child of this earth that you are, intertwined with the lives of plants.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - When are you most being yourself?
Meditation - being yourself.
Assignment - Being yourself can be hard for Cancer because it’s such a sponge, such a a chameleon, so good at mimicking. This is why Cancers are often good actors, good at language, because they learn through osmosis. But for this reason it’s important that you find ways to clarify your own path, your own emotions, your own free will. Discern what is yours, what is good for you, not anyone else. This is a daily practice, it’s not something you determine once and then set. Use the new moon in Cancer this week as a time to set intentions to return to yourself, your own knowing and way of being. The more you embrace and own these Cancer tendencies, the more easily you can discern what is yours and what is not.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - How often do you think you’re right?
Meditation - pleasurable, freeing uncertainty.
Assignment - The thing is, you are often right, about what is happening with other people and what they should be doing, etc. However, this can cause you a lot of suffering when people don’t do what you think they should. So being right can be quite lonely and painful! In fact it often is! So just because you have a sense of what should be happening with someone else, I invite you to pull your energy back into your own sphere, as the most loving and respectful act you can do FOR ANOTHER PERSON. Because the more you do this, the more you invite people around you to do it. But! We don’t do this action, pulling back out of other people’s business, so that they will change. We do it because this is what we can control, this is our domain, and ultimately what is best for us. The bi-products that we can’t control are wonderful when they happen, but not the point. The point is what thoughts sustain your life, and which ones drain it - look into this.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - What are your perfect pictures today?
Meditation - suffering as essential information.
Assignment - So much of the time you get stuck because you’re in a perfect picture. Your mind created an idea of what perfection looks like, without your consent, and now you’re paralyzed because you or your project isn’t living up to this. This is your suffering! So the task is not to work toward that acheivement of the perfect picture - the task is to use your suffering (anxiety / stress / defeat) as information that lets you know your mind made this perfect picture, and THAT is the thing to expose and get rid of. Let the suffering be a lightbulb that helps you investigate the seed of it, which is always a thought/s about what you are doing that is not right or not enough. The more you look and and handle the perfect picture (as the boss!), the more your self and creation will become what you want it to be.
LIBRA | September 23-October 23
Question - What needs to come out of you?
Meditation - coming out.
Assignment - Let your meditation this week be asking yourself what needs to come out? What needs to be spoken, or expressed, that you are keeping in because you are concerned about how other people will feel about it? How does this concern prevent you from listening to yourself? What would it feel like to release what needs to be released? Make a list of what needs to come out. Live with it for a while, see how it feels to write it first, then experiment with saying it.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What’s the relationship between your emotions and your shoulders?
Meditation - shoulders opening
Assignment - Track the relationship between your emotional life and your body this week. Especially in your shoulders. When do they feel ‘open’ and when do they feel ‘closed’? What does this have to do with your heart center? How can you notice this, with a lot of kindness? Don’t worry about doing anything about what you notice - the noticing is the doing. Just notice, over and over, what is going on in this area of your body and see what your shoulders can tell you.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - Who and what in your life brings you down to earth and holds you to your commitments?
Meditation - coming down to earth.
Assignment - Sagittarius has such a tendency to plan and think big. This talent will never leave you. But what gets missed in that big picture view? You love knowledge and wisdom for its own sake but who and what in your life keeps you connected to the ACTUAL? To the real life manifestation? To what it takes to actually make a change in your life? You are good at knowing how to talk about what needs to change, but what processes, practices, and people can help you, remind you regularly, to come down to earth and execute a plan about how to really make changes? Cultivate those things, give them life and energy and nurturing.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - What does ‘not following through’ open up, or allow you to follow through on?
Meditation - gravity.
Assignment - Letting yourself be tired. Letting yourself be ‘irresponsible’. Letting yourself go. Letting yourself not follow through. Let yourself experience gravity. Let gravity remind you that you are in a body, and the body is subject to rules of the earth, and your job is to not override your body’s information, but to listen to it. This is about getting wiser about what being responsible means. To whom and what are you responsible? How would your life look different if you made decisions from the point of view of what your body needs? Examine what parts of your life feel like they are in conflict with this type of being responsible. Remember gravity, over and over and over, and let your body be held by it.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - What is happening in your stomach and how does this relate to your mental life?
Meditation - digestion.
Assignment - How connected are you to your digestion? How is it functioning lately? Look into this, track it with your attention this week. Notice how it relates to your mental life, and how the two affect each other. Use digestion as a metaphor for helping your mind - let more things be digested! Let more of your mental process be processed, recycled back into the earth, with less analysis. The power and health-giving properties of digestion!
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What ideas about yourself might be outdated?
Meditation - protecting your neck.
Assignment - You can think of your emotional life as fragile, because Pisces can be fragile at times, or just, so tuned into the other world, the emotional and or spirit world that it can be hard to inhabit your body. But you can also think of your vivid emotional life as part of your strength, and your fluidity as exactly the way you wield power in your life. Whatever ideas you’ve picked up along the way about being ‘sensitive’ - look at those in front of you and let them be recycled back into the earth. And! Protect your neck. Some people think of the neck as a psychic door, and also as a site that, when exposed, makes us more prone to sickness. So especially if it’s windy where you live, use a handkerchief or scarf on your neck. This can also be a symbol of owning your emotional and psychic life in a new way. It’s a chance to update your beliefs about yourself.
One of my favorite things in life is unexpected connections between people, genres, modalities, fields. This space on the edge of any field is my favorite place to be, to discover, and commune with others. I’ve spent years learning / teaching all sorts of things, from food and water systems in California, to rock climbing, to transgressive feminist literature, to basic meditation techniques. I’ve spent years as a legal aid and advocate for people who live in a women’s prison, which is another way of saying I learned about strength from people who truly embody it. I learned about the legislative system on a state level here in California that way, and watched how energy moves and doesn’t move in the capitol building in Sacramento. I learned a lot about the idea of ‘doing something’, and the reality of doing something, and the gap between these two things. I saw the resilience and perseverance and faith demonstrated by people who are doing something, to keep bridging that gap over and over. I’ve been publishing books and editing, creating events for collective listening, to the wind, trees, birds, and humans reading their writing, for 10 years. Through all of this, I’ve been giving astrology readings. Breathing and practicing breathing. Meditating, and seeking the overlaps between all of these fields - the healers who were prison activists, the students who were teachers, the artists who were healers.
I’m sharing all of this to continue to contextualize my offerings and teaching here. When I offer a class on Embracing Your Saturn Return, what are the world views and contexts in which I am sharing what I know? Why am I spending my time doing this, work which seems more personal and/or less political, especially at a time when things feel so horrible politically here in the USA? I assure you it is not less political for me, but instead another facet of essential transformation. I’m invested in being creative about bridging those gaps between what we view as personal work and what we view as ‘doing something’. And bringing ‘personal work’ into realms where that is chronically neglected (often in activist circles, because it’s not deemed important enough). And connecting our political orientation / involvement with our most intimate relations, because that is, in both cases, what is at stake.
I got so inspired last week when I talked with Shewolfe and Beatrix Gravesguard of Witch Radio. Because they are operating at the edge of many disciplines at once, which reminded me of what I love doing the most. I received their healing arts for two hours, meaning, they asked questions and listened with me.
Asking questions is healing arts.
Listening is healing arts.
We are capable of healing ourselves and others, together, today, right now, regardless of what discipline we work in on the daily. Many factors conspire to disconnect us from this truth. The label ‘facilitator’ resonates with me, perhaps more than ‘healer,’ because I think that the healing arts is simply about mirroring this truth, it’s about reminders. I’m asking you to sit down, or better yet lie down, take society’s / capitalism’s / family’s fingers out of your ears and listen to your body and to be brave in seeing what arises, trusting that your own information will lead you to your next step. And when I ask you this, I am also asking myself. Facilitating (healing) is saying hey, REMEMBER THIS THING YOU ALREADY KNOW BUT FORGOT! We underestimate how much we need this, every single day. It makes the difference in being able to continue, when we have access to this reminding.
While on Witch Radio, we only scratched the surface of a topic that is so important to me - a specific facet of the project I’ve referenced that I’m calling HEALING OUR INTERNET LIVES for now. It’s addressing a weight that so many people I know are trudging around with, this pressure to ‘be informed’ by consuming news media. I’m going to break this down more in future posts. For now I leave you with some questions about it.
What does ‘being informed’ mean?
What does it have to do with being a ‘good person’?
Who is informed about what?
What is the correlation between ‘being informed’ and ‘doing something’?
Who is doing the informing?
What might you be informed about if you weren’t consuming news media? In other words what are you choosing to not be informed about by consuming news media?
How do you feel when you are getting ‘informed’?
Where is ‘should’ in all this for you?
Where does the should of ‘being informed’ prevent you from experimenting?
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - What are you mirroring to others, and what are others mirroring to you?
Meditation - yellow - gold.
Assignment - Streaming light. It's all around you and it's warm and you're back lit - all you need to do is turn around. Turn around and mirror this yellow - gold. It's a color of rest and vibrancy. Turn around and face the sun this week. Don’t make it more complicated than that. You are a child of this very earth.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - What places in your body feel stuck?
Meditation - turquoise
Assignment - Imagine your body as a body of water, less solid than perhaps it feels or you imagine it regularly. Imagine the turquoise waters running through, moving out anything that you’re ready to let go of. Sit in the sun this week and imagine the sun reflecting all this brilliant color in your body, this water, flowing, flowing, without effort, as the body of water that you are.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - How do you release unconscious energy?
Meditation - light blue.
Assignment - I want you to yawn a lot this week. Don’t effort at it but just let yourself do it when the need arises, don’t hold back. It’s a way to release unconscious energy. When you release this unconscious energy, bring light blue into your field, letting it hold you, lighten your body, freshen everything. Over and over, yawning and bringing in light blue. Notice the effects. The path to self-love involves a million tiny gentle moves.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - What needs to be recycled during your solar return?
Meditation - dark green.
Assignment - The trees are your ancestors too. Meditate in the forest this week and if you can’t get there imagine you are there. In the deepest green of the oldest forest. Let its wisdom breathe into you, as you inhale. Let it take all of the past and hold it for you. It already is! Anything you need to give back to the earth, let this forest take for you. The forest can recycle this without any extra effort, this is the relationship between trees and humans when we let them do their divine work, and let them live! They recycle the literal air, and recycle on many levels we can’t see. Take yourself to the forest IRL and the forest in your mind. In both places, this relationship is waiting for you.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - What do you already have that you might not see?
Meditation - rich brown.
Assignment - The rich brown of soil, the ever renewing resource of soil! Reconnect with the joy of resourcefulness, of making do with whatever you have right now! Not seeing what you don’t have as a lack, but as a way to bring your perennial creativity back into this moment. Soil is a great symbol for this activity - when humans act as stewards of land, they do a series of small actions to take care of soil, and what they get in return is a huge bounty of sustenance. This is what I am talking about. Look around your life, see what is there that you might not have noticed. Don’t look outside for more. Look for ways to nurture the soil of your life as a demonstration of the trust that you will receive what you need.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - What is bright and alive around you?
Meditation - bright orange.
Assignment - Use the question above this week as your assignment, to ask over and over, everywhere you look. What is bright and alive around you? What is bright and alive within you? What doesn’t need anymore work? What needs simple appreciation to become real? What needs the color and vibrancy only YOU can bring to it? You’re not likely prone to thinking of yourself as bringing color to others, to situations. Use bright orange as a symbol this week in experimenting with what you bring to any situation. Just because your mind tells you a story of inadequacy doesn’t mean that’s the true story. What is bright and alive within you, at this very moment?
LIBRA | September 23-October 23
Question - What is already transforming in you right now?
Meditation - silver.
Assignment - Watch the light change in your life, in the spaces you spend time this week. How ephemeral it is - how deeply you can know this truth in yourself, Libra, because you too are changeable - an air sign. Watch the silvers, chromes, golds, rose golds, all the glimmers of light. Let this simple noticing slow you down, and remind you of your ongoing transformation. Let it be a reminder to trust that nature itself, by nature, transforms, and you are a part of this, inexplicably, inherently, beautifully.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What are you absorbing unconsciously?
Meditation - red clay.
Assignment - Clay in it is not so absorbant, its boundaries make it beautiful. You can use this color this week as a symbol for reminding yourself that you don’t have to absorb everyone else’s feelings, and in fact, the way you will be effective in what you are trying to do is to not unconsciously absorb others’ feelings. Bringing in the loving boundary of right place. What is yours and what is anothers’? This is one of our essential jobs as humans, to discern this. Reconnect with your capacity to do this, experiment with new methods, try it out. You don’t have to worry about losing your emotional connection with others, in fact the more you discern what is yours and what is another’s, the more you will feel - and be - emotionally connected.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - What is bruised and what is healing?
Meditation - dark purple.
Assignment - What is bruised, and what is alive, like blood. How these two things can be the same color, can come from the same place, but feel so different. Where is your life most alive? Go toward this experience this week. Aliveness, and the sensation of being in your life, alive, doesn't always feel pleasant! It doesn’t always correspond with your philosophy of life! Just notice what is happening without being so certain that you know how it should go. Let all of the color of your life be present. Rest in that, even if it includes a lot of movement that you don't seem to be orchestrating. You weren't in the first place! But the more you notice this truth the more you allow joy into your life, no matter what the circumstances are.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When and how are you aware of your subtle body?
Meditation - light pink.
Assignment - Bring your attention out from your earthy body toward your more external layers, the space about 8-10 inches surrounding your body. Notice what is happening on this level, all around you. Notice what permeates, what doesn't. Notice what is there that you don't want to be, and what is missing that you want to be there. Use light pink to move things around, bring in what's been missing, with a kind and playful touch. If this is vague and feels hard, effort less, let your eyes blur more on it, meditate with light pink, let it seep in and around and see what happens.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - Where do you nurture and cultivate your rebellion spirit in your body?
Meditation - magenta.
Assignment - Call in the practices, people and influences that remind you that your individual experience is key in the context of the movement, the group. Call in the bright colors to rub up against, to cloak you in new waves, new ideas! You're good at this, you like this, but sometimes you get stuck and fixed, so your job is to use color and freeing influences to bring in the newness, not let yourself sink into rigidity out of what you imagine to be comfort.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - When do you let things be messy?
Meditation - spring green.
Assignment - Let all the things mix and flow this week, let all the new life in the garden come up for a while before you try to weed things out. Use your ability to flow and move fluidly to let a bit more chaos happen before you try to clean up. What is lost when cleaning up? What is gained by letting all the new life that wants to be there, just be for a while, and decide later what needs to go. Abundance of solstice right now, swim in it, with your cousin Cancer.
This week includes the Full Moon of Capricorn. Capricorn is a sign of judgment, of discernment - which is what makes it so good at getting things done! We need judgment, discernment, actually, to move through life. Whether we recognize it or not, at every moment we are making a judgment about what to spend our time doing.
Capricorn can be distant and matter-of-fact, but it can also be devoted, deeply loving in the most tangible, manifest way. Harness this energy of taking action on your intentions this week. Capricorn is good at following the rules, but really at its best when it remembers that we must be very conscious of the rules we are following, to determine if they are good for us, instead of just unconsciously inherited.
I invite you, as a part of a new project HEALING OUR INTERNET LIVES, to notice your own judgments about yours and others’ technology use this week. What judgments drain you and separate you from others in this realm? How can you transform judgment into discernment, and focus on doing what is best for you, and trust that other people are capable of doing what is best for them? How can you take action once you discern what is best for you in this realm of phone and computer use? Give yourself a very simple, attainable assignment. For example, instead of limiting or restricting your phone use, bring mindfulness to the phone use itself. Is it possible to be present while scrolling? What would your presence do to your scrolling? What if you wrote down a judgment or thought for each instagram post you looked at during one scrolling session? What if you narrated your thoughts and anxieties to a friend while checking your email or while online banking? Take note of what happens.
It's a matter of slowing down. The Full Moon in Capricorn invites us to take methodical steps toward the life that we want. Slow down your thinking so you can become more aware of it, which allows you to take steps toward transformation.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - When is your identity called into question and how does this contribute to anxiety?
Meditation - permission for privacy
Assignment - You're often in a push pull with wanting to be noticed and not wanting to. The more conscious you can get with where you are wanting recognition, the more likely you will be able to receive a fulfilling type of recognition. Look into how social media and your phone use plays into this relationship with your identity, and the subsequent anxiety. Just notice with as much compassion as you can muster for yourself, and the actions that need to be taken from there will become clear.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - When do you use the sky to understand your next step?
Meditation - light blue
Assignment - Look up this week when making decisions, and see what wisdom is available above you. Look up as much as you can and see what happens to your posture, your decisions, your vision, your jaw. What happens to your jaw when you look up more?
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What sounds does light make?
Meditation - the sound of light
Assignment - Use the act of listening, the physical act, what processes take place in your body if you are able to hear, as a way to come back into your body this week. I ask this question what sounds does light make because it doesn't make sense. It asks your brain to do something different. This is an invitation to let your rational brain take a back seat more often this week, and let a more intuitive type of curiosity take over. What happens when you let it, what happens when you think without thinking?
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - Where is the heat in your life?
Meditation - red.
Assignment - Your solar return, your birthday, a time to ask yourself about what ignites you. What is warm and open in your life, what is closed / cold? Make a list with two columns this week, titled warm and cold, and see what you find. Are there things on the warm/open list that you can cultivate more of? What is needed in this moment, in this week? What is needed in this next year of your life?
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - When and how do you consider your life from afar?
Meditation - pull back your lens
Assignment - Write about your life in the third person this week. See what happens when you try to describe your life and your experience this way, as if from the outside. Leo is one of the most personal signs in the zodiac, so it can be helpful to look out past your immediate experience, to try on a less personal lens. Another way to do this is to ask others about their perspective on your life and how they see you and your path.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - When do you let yourself ask for more, a lot even?
Meditation - permission to ask for things
Assignment - Ask for three things you need or want from others this week. Literally anything. If it feels to hard to start with this, write the things down first. See what you notice. Are there things you haven’t asked for that you just assumed people would say no to? Ask for more and see what happens.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - When do you let something bigger than you decide?
Meditation - vastness.
Assignment - Experiment with chance operations this week, especially if you are having trouble making decisions. Use a coin, or tarot, or any other kind of divination tool or chance operation to aid in your decisions and see how that goes. The point is that your mental process is overrated in your decision-making - we usually give it more emphasis than it actually has in how our lives go. Give things up to chance more and see how your idea of ‘chance’ might change.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - When do you consciously let yourself go deep with another?
Meditation - the deep, dark, beautiful waters.
Assignment - Let yourself go deep with someone this week. Nourish your ability to see to the depths, to be comfortable with the struggle, to thrive in transformative contexts. Relate to someone else in this way, someone who supports this depth in you. Maybe it’s talking to them, maybe it’s having sex, maybe it’s lying on the ground outside next to them, touching or not touching. Give yourself this nourishment. If a person, another human, doesn’t feel available to you in this way, find an animal or plant, a being that is living, to commune with in this way.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - When does your changeability sabatoge your long term participation?
Meditation - the long game.
Assignment - Take stock of what parts of your life include the long term - what relationships have sustained your life over time? Are they with people, with philosophies, with sports, with a creative practice? How do you benefit when you commit, and what is lost when you abandon something? Is there a way you can include more of the long game thinking into your life, and how would that help you?
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - Where do you find faith?
Meditation - emerald green.
Assignment - Ask yourself and nature for more space this week for listening to your own faith. Use the full moon blast of light to let yourself open more to faith. Your own specific and strange version of faith, de-coupled from all the problematic history of that word, letting it be your own magic, shapeshifting, nourishing beam, that you attend to every single day. Imagine! It’s right here, waiting for you, always. Give yourself permission to call this practical.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - Where does your mind go when trying to meet your own needs? When do you try to meet your own needs or even know what they are?
Meditation - you as a part of the whole
Assignment - Notice, again and again, when your mind goes out to meeting other people’s needs, or the group’s needs, and the effects of this in your life. It’s not bad, it’s so often wonderful. But if you think of your own needs and desires as a nuisance, it’s actually not attending to the group, because you too, are a part of the group. Return to your personal experience as a way to understand your next moves. And remember that this is not at the expense of others, it’s in service to you both.
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What feels unrequited for you?
Meditation - gratefulness
Assignment - Pisces can get lost in fantasy, in desire for another world, another person, another escape. What can you see what is requited in your life already? What exists in the here and now, in your body, in your home, in your relationships, in your work, in your surroundings, that is giving back to you. Find this right now, and cherish it, honor it.
This week it’s the SUMMER SOLSTICE, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, where I’m writing this from. In the Southern Hemisphere it’s the WINTER SOLSTICE, so basically this thing is happening everywhere, in some form. The thing I mean is that here it’s the point in the year when there is the most light and the least dark, the most day and the least night, and in the south it is the least light and the most dark, the least day and the least night. Since December 21, 2017, each day in this hemisphere has been getting longer, meaning this hemisphere has been tilting toward the Sun, and the day of the solstice is when this tilt is at its maximum. The yin and yang of this phenomena! The incredible symmetry and comfort of this routine of rotation! The truth is the movement is happening all the time, toward and away from the light of the Sun, but these moments where it shifts are powerful metaphors, and powerful real experiences that take place in all life on earth, regardless of our awareness of it. This movement takes place in our bodies, our bodies and all of life perceive this movement. So we can use our minds to take note of this, to reconnect with our own wisdom about what the seasons mean, what the light and dark mean, and how we can use this wisdom to help ourselves live in alignment with the way things are.
What has happened in the last six months for you? What do you want and need in the coming six months? How can you use this natural law to help plan in a new way for the next six months? The time of the Winter Solstice in December is often one of overwhelm and too much holiday obligation, a lot of work output, etc, when we need to be resting and restoring. So how can you harness the energy of summer right now to build in some rest when winter comes?
What can you appreciate about the offerings of the light, of the illumination of this time? How does your appreciation shape your life?
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - What is lighting your energy fire lately?
Meditation - letting yourself be on fire.
Assignment - Let yourself follow what gives you energy! Let yourself fully be an Aries this week. Let this light bath bathe you, let yourself be. Find a time to be outside, to be with the sun. If the sun isn’t available, still, be outside for a bit of time. Remember you are an animal, you are alive, you are a person, you are subject to the seasons, and this is a very good thing.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - What foods are you eating as we enter summer and how are they serving your body?
Meditation - food rituals.
Assignment - Bring food and ritual together this week. In whatever way feels good to you. Eat food that is important to you with someone important to you. Mark the Solstice, the season, with nourishing your body. Let it be simple and easy and alive and good.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - What are your movement patterns?
Meditation - stillness while moving.
Assignment - Pay close attention to the happenings this week, the Solstice itself, and then the Sun moving from Gemini to Cancer. Do you notice any sensations or sensitivities that arise in this passing? I don’t necessarily expect you to, but it’s beneficial to hone this kind of intuitive attention, which gets you out of your thinking mind and into your emotional and spiritual awareness. Breathing and moving, and attuning to the stillness that exists within these.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - What has happened for you during the last five birthdays?
Meditation - moving around the sun!
Assignment - Reflect on your past birthdays this week, and remember what happened, how they felt, what your expectations for them were, what you did and what people wanted you to do. Let this reflection help you make conscious decisions about what you want to do this year! It can be a time of reflection and renewal, if you let yourself do what you want, give yourself permission. But you have to express it!
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - Are you doing enough summer activities?
Meditation - Summer / Sun / Vitality.
Assignment - You were born of the Sun, ruled by the Sun. You don’t have to be in the sun if it doesn’t feel good to you but you need to make sure you are attending to the season in your own way. That you are making room for play and creativity and nonproductive time. Remember being a kid and how summer seemed so long? You can make it long again by doing things that don’t involve knowing what time it is, even for a few hours this week. Turn off your phone and your time machines and do pointless, creative things.
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - When are you outside for sunrise or sunset?
Meditation - earth rhythms
Assignment - Get outside for sunrise or sunset or both this week. This doesn’t have to be outside in a fancy way. It can be outside on your stoop, walking on the sidewalk, sitting on a bench. Don’t look at your phone. Don’t talk to others. If you are with someone, ask them if they will be quiet with you for 10 minutes. Just to exist, outside, during this special week where there is a lot of light. During this special, everyday moment of the sunrise or sunset. Drink it. Give your thinking mind a break. Experience: this is the opportunity of summer.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - When do you let yourself dance?
Meditation - dancing.
Assignment - Dancing is a medium that can be so nourishing for air signs, bringing together the breath and the body. And especially for Libras, who understand the principle of balance so well! I’m not talking about the metaphor of dancing here, although that is good too, but I’m talking about literal dance. Even if it’s in private - getting your blood circulating, energetically matching the season will help your system regulate if you’re feeling depleted, or even if you’re not.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What do you already know heals you?
Meditation - healing remedies.
Assignment - What ritual, remedy, food, drink, heals you, that you already know about, and can re-introduce into your life this week. Perhaps it’s something you used to know but forgot. Maybe it’s a tea, maybe it’s an iced tea. Maybe it’s getting in water, observing something that gives you visual pleasure, letting yourself work your own magic. Ask yourself about what needs to be healed and let yourself heal in the simplest, most pleasurable way.
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - What music enlivens you?
Meditation - music for spirit
Assignment - GIve yourself music this week, listen with intention. Let it do the work of connecting you to source, whatever that means to you. Choose the music that brings you to a place of ease with yourself. Consciously note that you are feeding yourself with this nourishment as you do it. Let music breathe new life into your life.
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - Who in your life supports your permission to express?
Meditation - free to express.
Assignment - Take stock of who supports your freedom of expression. Not based on who thinks they do, but who you FEEL does this. Give yourself time and space this week to be with people who support this permission for you. If those people are not in your vicinity, find them in books, in film, in other forms. These people can also be trees. Notice what happens when you are in this company, and notice what happens when you are not. Act accordingly.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - What is lightning doing when it is not striking?
Meditation - doing nothing.
Assignment - Aquarius you can be like lightning, your energy is electric. It’s easy for you to get buzzed up in some way. So this strange question, what is lightning doing when it is not striking? What does rest look like, what does lightning do when it chills out? It’s kind of like a zen koan, but I mean it as a way to contemplate your own energetic makeup, notice when you feel buzzed, and what helps you discharge. What might doing nothing look like to you? What contributes to your calm?
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What is slippery in your life and in your consciousness?
Meditation - gliding.
Assignment - Fish are slippery on land but gliding in the water. When you try to hold onto something, even / especially when it’s a dream verson of something, a fantasy or false idea of someone, it can feel so slippery and impossible to hold. But when you let it be in its element, be real, be itself, it glides. This is true for ideas of yourself as well. I say this because it’s easy for you to idealize. So practice letting things be as they are, even / especially others when you notice that they don’t match up to your fantasy of them! Look for the moments when you are wanting to believe some fantasy about others and the evidence you are receiving is contrary to this. It doesn’t mean they aren’t still amazing, it just means that you were carrying a delusion that you can notice and let slip away. Your relationships will feel better because of it.
New Moon in Gemini.
The Sun and Moon overlap this week.
Communication,
learning,
mental exchange.
What questions are you asking?
Breathing,
breathing,
air,
alive.
What if there were no decisions?
What if you already thought everything that needed to be thought?
Then what would you do?
Breathing,
breathing,
air,
alive.
ARIES | March 21-April 19
Question - What identities would you feel freer without?
Meditation - your own heart.
Assignment - When you stop worrying about how other people perceive you, a new space arrives for you to perceive your own heart. Worrying about how other people perceive you is very closely tied to concepts of identity. It can be hard to stop worrying about how other people perceive you. Most people still worry even though they recognize it’s a source of suffering for them. Instead of efforting to stop doing this, spend ten minutes at least three times this week focusing on your own heart and how it feels! What its qualities are! What you would like to cultivate within it! How it feels to focus on it instead of the identities others lay on you.
TAURUS | April 20-May 20
Question - Where is the soil you can touch?
Meditation - back to earth.
Assignment - Put your hands in soil again this week. Do this as many times as possible. Activate your sensory and bodily experience more than your mental experience. If it’s not soil you are touching, touch another living material and be with it. You don’t need to think about it.
GEMINI | May 21-June 20
Question - When and how do you let your mental circulation rest?
Meditation - drawing the curtains.
Assignment - Connecting with the New Moon energy in your sign, take a few times this week to draw the curtains, to power down the mental stimulation, to reflect this darkening of the sky. What is illuminated when the Moon isn’t shining? All the other stars! When you take time to listen to the sound of the darkness, new insights will emerge. But you need to prioritize this or it will pass without you noticing.
CANCER | June 21-July 22
Question - When do you feel anxiety?
Meditation - bringing the inner to the surface.
Assignment - Notice your anxiety this week. Under what conditions does it arise? When do you notice it leaves, or maybe, when does your attention turn away from it? So much of healing is seeing, you don’t have to do something other than notice, in the kindest way possible, notice yourself and what is happening with you.
LEO | July 23-August 22
Question - What can you stop taking personally?
Meditation - freedom of dispassion.
Assignment - What experiences or relationship situations can you stop taking personally? How would it feel if you didn’t take it personally? What space might it open up? You might feel a bit out of practice when you try this. But notice something that stings for you this week, something that causes you to bristle or be hurt or angry, and imagine putting a little bit of distance between it and you. If you were looking at it from far away, what would you see that you can’t see right now? If you look at it from far into the future, what wisdom could your future self offer your present self? Give yourself time to imagine a new way this week,
VIRGO | August 23-September 22
Question - When do you make decisions from your heart or belly?
Meditation - from the head to the heart.
Assignment - Experiment with moving your decision-making down from your head, forehead, brain, and more into your heart and low belly. If this makes no sense to you don’t worry, just try it anyway. See what happens when you practice this. The Virgo mind gets easily stuck in logic loops, analysis. When you notice this happening move your awareness down as much as you can. Notice whatever resistance arises to this. Then move your awareness down again, and again.
LIBRA | September 23-October 22
Question - What do you need to say right now?
Meditation - Permission to speak.
Assignment - Exactly as you are. Just to speak it. To let it exist, whatever it is you need to say, like a tree exists, or a cloud. It doesn’t have to change anything, but you still need to speak it. This is a human need. It doesn’t matter if others are upset. Think of it as one of your important jobs while living in earth school.
SCORPIO | October 23-November 21
Question - What fruits are you harvesting now?
Meditation - fruit trees.
Assignment - Reflect on your life this week, the efforts you have made so far. Spend time noticing, writing down, telling others, about the fruits of your efforts. What benefits are you now reaping based on the past? Where do you want to put your efforts now for future fruits?
SAGITTARIUS | November 22-December 21
Question - What is your relationship with the mothering principle lately?
Meditation - mothers, mothering.
Assignment - In this New Moon time, look at your relationship with mothers in your life. Reflect on the ways that you mother, the ways that others mother you, the mothering principle. Is anything out of balance here? Are there any ways you need to acknowledge your mother, yourself as a mother, what is not being mothered? What intentions can you set that could help bring balance here?
CAPRICORN | December 22-January 19
Question - When do you say no?
Meditation - no thank you.
Assignment - No thank you, I won’t be considering that rule in my decision-making this week. No thank you, I won’t be subject to the constant feeling of not-enoughness. No thank you. I will breathe, and give myself time to be with my breathing, the only involuntary body process that we can make voluntary. I will sit in a garden for 20 minutes, at least once this week, and look around, at all the life that surrounds me.
AQUARIUS | January 20 to February 18
Question - What is the relationship between your body and mind agility?
Meditation - fluid.
Assignment - Stretch your body this week, maybe in ways you don’t usually. When you do stretch, connect this body agility to a mental agility, encouraging your mind to operate in a fluid and flexible way. This is so that you don’t get too rigid in mind or body. Reconnect with your archetype image of being a water carrier. What qualities do you need to be a water carrier? What qualities have you been neglecting that can be brought back into balance?
PISCES | February 19 to March 20
Question - What kind of silence feels calming to you?
Meditation - silence.
Assignment - Find a way to be with silence, in whatever way feels the best to you. Find a kind of quiet or silence that activates your curiosity, so that you can be patient enough to actually experience it. See what you discover when you experience this quiet.