Co Witchcraft Offerings with Michael J. Morris | Blog - Co Witchcraft Offerings

Astrology for Saturday, 11 July 2020:

7/11/2020

Today the Moon ingresses into Aries, igniting drive and direction after several days of wading through the tides of our feelings. The Moon makes a square to Mercury retrograde in Cancer. The square can be a frustrating aspect, and as Mercury begins to station direct, the frustration may stem from a desire to take action when we do not yet fully understand the information with which we have been presented. So many of us are being tasked with making choices and setting plans into motion when the circumstances remain deeply uncertain and everything we need to know in order to act has not been revealed. As the Moon makes a conjunction with its ruler Mars, the call for decisiveness is sharp and direct. Be clear regarding what guides your actions. When the circumstances are uncertain, what does it mean for you to act in alignment with your own integrity? In “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power,” Audre Lorde writes, “But when we begin to live from within outward, in touch with the power of the erotic within ourselves, and allowing that power to inform and illuminate our actions upon the world around us, then we begin to be responsible for ourselves in the deepest sense.” When charged with the responsibility to take action, will you do so in alignment with your deepest sense of inner satisfaction? Finally, the Moon in Aries makes a sextile with Venus in Gemini, suggesting that supportive connections are available if you are bold enough to initiate them.

Astrology for Friday, 10 July 2020:

7/10/2020

Today the Moon in Pisces makes a trine to the Sun in Cancer, bringing illumination and understanding to the currents of our own feelings and the ways in which we respond to the feelings of others. Then the Moon makes a conjunction with Neptune retrograde in Pisces. This can describe overwhelming sensitivity, perhaps being caught in the undertow of memories or projections, perhaps your own, your ancestors’, or from origins unknown. Neptune can obliterate boundaries, and retrograde, this could pull us into histories of feeling, dissolving present and past, who we are now and who we have been. The Moon then moves through sextiles to Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn—all retrograde in Capricorn. There are sources of power and possibility available to us if we are willing to reach back into times and places we thought we had left behind, our personal and collective histories that still require healing. Doing the work of healing in the present is also healing that which came before. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs offered on How to Survive the End of the World Podcast, “I believe that the fact that my ancestors have suffered and that people have been suffering due to systems of oppression for multiple generations, it doesn’t just mean that I have to repeat those experiences—although there is repetition, and there are patterns in the way that that manifests and has manifested in my life. But it also means that when I heal around those things—and when we heal around those things—it reverberates in both directions. I think we often think about the fact that what we do is going to make it better for the future, and yes. And: it also reverberates the other way.” As we do the work of healing across generations, we insist that these patterns of harm stop here. After the deep dissolution of Neptune, Saturn returns us to our edges, lending structure and containment to all that the day has uncovered.

Astrology for Thursday, 9 July 2020:

7/9/2020

Today the Moon in Pisces makes a trine to Mercury retrograde in Cancer. We may not yet know what to say or how to say it, but this aspect invites us to feel more deeply and fully, to review what we have felt that has not yet been articulated. Then the Moon makes a square to Venus in Gemini, a condition of bonification in Hellenistic astrology but also sometimes a challenging aspect. With both in mutable signs, we may feel challenged to change how we feel as we relate to others, pushing through feelings of discomfort or resistance in order to experience the rewards of pursuing another way of being with one another and ourselves. This could involve unlearning patterns of feeling and relating that we reproduce through our behaviors. In Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown writes, “… if we aren’t both careful and creative, we can get stuck in fantasies that don’t mature and politicize with us. We can get caught in fantasies that perpetuate things so counter to our beliefs and values that we feel ashamed of what we want, even as we find ways to get it.” She invites us to ask, “What do you want to be turned on by? Can you even imagine it? Try. Again. Again. Keep trying until you feel something.” It takes courage to imagine that we can feel differently, but when we push through what might feel challenging, we become more available to ourselves and others. Finally, the Moon makes a sextile to Uranus in Taurus, reminding us that opportunities that we could not have predicted become available to us when we dare to deviate from our established patterns, including the habitual behaviors that condition our capacities to feel.

Astrology for Wednesday, 8 July 2020:

7/8/2020

Today Mercury retrograde in Cancer squares Mars in Aries. Conflict may arise and confrontation may be necessary, particularly if actions being taken compromise your sense of safety or well-being. In Hellenistic astrology, this is a condition of maltreatment, with Mars overcoming Mercury. With Mercury already retrograde, we may feel impaired in our ability to speak up and advocate for our own needs or the needs of those who are most vulnerable. But as Audre Lorde writes in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” “We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.” Despite our fear—of retaliation, of being misunderstood—despite feeling silenced, we must learn to come to voice and speak back to our aggressors. The Moon then ingresses into Pisces with reception from Jupiter. Jupiter is not in ideal condition—retrograde and fallen in Capricorn—but will offer whatever support and resources that it can. In Pisces, these resources may move us toward deep sensitivity, abundant compassion, and affirmative responsiveness. What becomes possible if we start from a place of validating and affirming feelings—our own and one another’s?

Astrology for Tuesday, 7 July 2020:

7/7/2020

Today the Moon in Aquarius makes a square to Uranus in Taurus. The push toward revolution is resounding in the air and throughout our bodies. But what does true revolution require? Grace Lee Boggs writes in The Next American Revolution, “… we had to ask ourselves whether there is a fundamental distinction between a rebellion and a revolution. Out of that questioning, we concluded that although a rebellion is a stage in the development of revolution, it falls far short of revolution … rebellions are important because they represent the standing up of the oppressed. Rebellions break the threads that have been holding the system together. They shake up old values so that relations between individuals and groups within society are unlikely ever to be the same again. But rebels see themselves and call on others to see them mainly as victims. They do not see themselves as responsible for reorganizing society, which is what the revolutionary social forces must do in a revolutionary period … Thus, while a rebellion usually begins with the belief on the part of the oppressed that they can change things from the way they are to the way they should be, they usually end by saying, ‘They ought to do this and they ought to do that.’ In other words, because rebellions do not go beyond protesting injustices, they increase the dependency rather than the self-determination of the oppressed.” Rebellion and protest are vital mobilizations of mass energy toward change, refuting the existing organizations of power. But as Boggs writes, revolution requires that we go beyond protesting injustices and do the even more radical work of reorganizing society—rather than deferring that power to those who sit in positions of authority. As we continue to move toward revolution, what does reorganizing society away from exploitation and domination and toward justice and liberation require in your life today?

Astrology for Monday, 6 July 2020:

7/6/2020

Today the Moon makes a conjunction with Saturn retrograde in Capricorn before ingressing into Aquarius. Notice what is slowing down and drawing your attention backwards even as you find your way forwards. As the Moon makes a sextile to Mars in Aries, we can connect to our drive and determination to think in new ways and develop perspectives together that generate more possibilities. Finally, the Moon makes a trine to Venus in Gemini. This aspect supports loving dialogue and stimulating conversations that increase our capacities for understanding complexities that only become appreciable when examined from multiple points of view. There are some things we can only know together. adrienne maree brown writes in Emergent Strategy, “There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it.” With Mercury and Saturn—the rulers of Venus and the Moon—both retrograde and in aversion to their domiciles, cultivating meaningful connections might require questioning our assumptions, considering the ways in which old ways of thinking actually limit what we can perceive, and revising familiar conditioning that is no longer in alignment with the kinds of relationships we want to form.

Astrology for Sunday, 5 July 2020:

7/5/2020

Today the Moon in Capricorn makes a sextile to Neptune retrograde in Pisces, then conjunctions to Jupiter and Pluto—both retrograde in Capricorn. We are dreaming of different worlds, but we are also the worlds that have already been dreamt. We are someone else’s dream. Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes in Dub: Finding Ceremony, “you. basically our dreams were you. our nightmares too. can you imagine what it looked like from here? of course you don’t have to, do you. the space, the colors, at the same time the dullness. we dreamt and we thought it was us, but it was always you. and you dream and think that it’s you, but it’s always us. remember that.” With aspects to three planets moving retrograde, the pull backgrounds may be immense, a tide that cannot be resisted. But as we feel the reverberations of the past rippling through our bodies, don’t stop with recent memory, with familiar institutions, with abuses of power that are so persistent that we don’t know anything else. Keep moving back to those who dreamed of you, who longed for freedom that has not yet arrived. Keep dreaming their dreams, embody their longings, the ancestors who understood survival and freedom beyond white supremacy, beyond colonial imperialism, beyond police and prisons, beyond the policing of genders and the repression of desires. Connect to their power. The same tides of their dreams that carry us back to them will also carry us forward into worlds beyond what we know.

Astrology for Saturday, 4 July 2020:

7/4/2020

Today the Moon ingresses into Capricorn, the sign of its antithesis or detriment. Notice the ways in which your body feels compromised, your feelings ignored, your emotional and physical well-being buried beneath the relentless, grinding demands for productivity and achievement. Scrutinize the systems that marginalize your own embodiment. The Moon makes an opposition to Mercury retrograde in Cancer, an opportunity to review and challenge the entrenched narratives that tell us that some bodies are more worthy of care than other bodies. As the Moon makes a trine to Uranus in Taurus, we are empowered to break away from old habits and established patterns that reproduce the very systems that depend upon our complicity with ongoing exploitation and domination. Finally, just after midnight eastern, the Moon perfects its opposition to the Sun in a penumbral Lunar Eclipse. This will not be the most dramatic eclipse we experience this year, but it may describe a significant culmination or ending in the area of our charts occupied by Capricorn. With the Sun and Moon both in tight aspects to Uranus, we may come to some conclusion through disruption or upheaval, a revolutionary turn toward more authenticity, especially in the places where we feel most alienated from our bodies or our own well-being. In describing the effects of somatic practices on her work in social justice movements, adrienne maree brown writes, “I can already feel the impact in the community of having more organizers who can feel themselves, who have been practicing returning to center and moving toward longing, all of us organizing ourselves around what we long for rather than what we are against.” What if, in this time of systems collapsing, we practice feeling deeply into our bodies and organizing ourselves around the longings we find within?

Astrology for Friday, 3 July 2020:

7/3/2020

There is only one major aspect today: the Moon in Sagittarius perfects a square to Neptune retrograde in Pisces. Hard aspects to Neptune can create confusion, disorientation, the disruption of clear boundaries, and overwhelming sensitivity. With both planets ruled by Jupiter retrograde and fallen in Capricorn, we may find ourselves drifting into excessive indulgence that is no longer in our best interests. Sara Ahmed writes in Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, “If orientation is about making the strange familiar through the extension of bodies into space, then disorientation occurs when that extension fails. Or we could say that some spaces extend certain bodies and simply do not leave room for others. Now in living a queer life, the act of going home, or going back to the place I was brought up, has a certain disorienting effect … In such moments, when bodies do not extend into space, they might feel ‘out of place’ where they have been given ‘a place.’ Such feelings in turn point to other places, even ones that have yet to be inhabited.” If today you find yourself disoriented or overwhelmed by a feeling of displacement, while this may be challenging, it can also be generative. What other places are your turned toward when you find yourself out of place? If disorientation is a loss of the familiar, what new or strange possibilities now come within reach through this unfamiliar and uncertain orientation? How might you inhabit the world differently because you are no longer oriented to the world in the same way?

Astrology for Thursday, 2 July 2020:

7/2/2020

Today the Moon in Sagittarius makes a trine to Mars in Aries then opposes Venus in Gemini. Sagittarius is a mutable fire sign ruled by Jupiter, currently fallen and retrograde in Capricorn. We may be working to build heat and momentum toward transformation and freedom, but it could feel as if there is not yet enough support for the changes that we are seeking, or that there is delay in seeing the results we seek. The Moon’s trine to Mars in Aries can signal resources for taking charge and moving ahead coming from another part of the sky. We may find the initiative we need to assert ourselves and propel movement in new directions. But this is not without potential conflict. As we charge ahead with sharp momentum, our bonds of unity and solidarity may be stretched to their limits. We may be confronted with real disagreements and contrary perspectives within our relationships. Sara Ahmed writes in Living a Feminist Life: “Relationships can break too; we know this. Have you ever been with someone, someone whom you are trying to love, trying not to give up on, and they say something that you find unbearable? You can hear glass shatter; that point when you realize that what you had is something that cannot be reassembled … things fall apart. Perhaps then feminism is how we pick up the pieces.” Sometimes as we try to move together and create change together, we break apart. Something shatters. Something cannot be reassembled. Perhaps what matters most as we encounter these points of opposition and conflict is how we move toward repair, how we pick up the pieces and make them into another kind of bond.

Astrology for Wednesday, 1 July 2020:

7/1/2020

Today the Moon in Scorpio makes a trine to Neptune retrograde in Pisces. The wellsprings of compassion are deep if we choose to approach ourselves and one another with receptivity and feeling. The Sun in Cancer perfects a sextile with Uranus in Taurus, inviting radically new perspectives and understanding. The Moon then moves through sextiles with Jupiter and Pluto in Capricorn before ingressing into Sagittarius. Can you feel the kind of world in which you long to live? Stoke the fires of those aspirations, but if you do so, be prepared for how such longings will transform you. The Moon makes a sextile to Saturn in Aquarius just before Saturn ingresses retrograde back into Capricorn, where it will remain until December 17. There are lessons that Saturn has been teaching us in Capricorn over the last two years, and now we have the next six months to learn these lessons without returning to old and outworn ways of being—time to listen to the past, to integrate its wisdom, while remaining committed to futures we cannot yet predict. Alexis Pauline Gumbs writes in Dub: Finding Ceremony, “it wasn’t so much that she could predict the future. it was more that she could breathe into the past. open her body to the forgotten. relive it other ways. she could do it any day as if no one had ever died. or since dead as if no one had been lost. or since lost as if the lessons lasted like love or what would have been love, if someone had been waiting with an impossibly open heart. if someone had been still enough to sense it anyway. yes. sense. so she made that her work.” This is our work: to be still enough, to sense with an impossibly open heart, to breathe with the past in order to relive it in other ways.