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?
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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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
One of the greatest gifts of working with astrology is that it is a tradition that honors the innate complexity of ourselves and our lives. Contrary to the more popular fixations on “sun-sign astrology” that categorize all of us into one of twelve archetypes, the richness of the astrological tradition is that it provides us with a map for examining ourselves in relation to the whole sky—all twelve signs, all the planets, the luminaries, asteroids, and so on—and all of it matters. The particular composition of the sky at the moment of your birth is as unique as you are.
As a queer person, as a genderqueer person, this has opened up so many pathways for my own healing, for recognizing and appreciating all the ways in which I am not simply one of two possibilities (binary gender) or even one of twelve possible archetypes. Rather, studying my birth chart invites me again and again into my own complexity, my own processes of unfolding and becoming. It introduces me to perspectives of myself that I had not yet considered. In doing so, it brings me into relation and connection to more of myself and more possibilities for who I might be(come). And that is not only profoundly liberating, but also healing—to have more and more of myself recognized and affirmed in this ongoing relationship between myself, the Earth, and the sky. This is why I believe astrology can be a practice of healing, a practice of bringing us into connection at a time when many of us feel deeply isolated, separated, and disconnected. The entire system is predicated on the realization that our lives have meaning in relation to the sky, in relation to the movements of the planets above. One of my favorite experiences in consultations with people is introducing them to the opportunity to know themselves in these expansive relationships—with the sky, with time, with this tradition and all those astrologers past and present from whom we receive this wisdom. If you would like support in your own processes of healing or making meaning of your life, I am currently booking consultations for October, November, and December. You can contact me with inquiries or books a session here. |
AuthorMichael J. Morris is a witch, an astrologer, a tarot reader, an artist, a writer, and a teacher. Categories
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