I’ve been meditating on the concept of openness lately and am bringing this lens to this week’s astrology because some of these transits have a heavily contractive quality to them, like this Saturn-Pluto conjunction that has been characterizing 2020, that is getting further activated this week.
Openness is a form of strength – it takes strength to be resilient and to stay open to ourselves and to life instead of shutting down or contracting. (If you don’t have a very clear sense of the difference between openness and contraction, I’ll be discussing it more throughout this forecast.)
Watch a video version of this forecast on YouTube or keep reading below:
Openness is also nuanced. It involves surrendering to the mystery of greater intelligence, whether of Source, or how Source wants to move through us, and the deeper wisdom of the body. In one situation, openness could look like reconciliation, and in yet another openness could be burning a bridge.
If we align ourselves with a deeper value (or you already know what yours are), then life offers us many opportunities to be devoted. Someone whose deeper mission in life is about cultivating thriving relationship might see discord and conflict as an opening for healing and understanding. One who is devoted to truth and honesty may face situations where speaking their truth may create ruptures, and instead of maintaining the status quo or a relationship based on a false self, this person is open to the losses and gains that come from truth-telling.
With several square aspects this week, there can be clashes around conflicting values and agendas, both internally and relationally. See if you can stay open to the ways that these tensions work you. If you notice yourself beginning to contract or want to control the situation (in an attempt to feel better), ask yourself if there is another way.
Sometimes at moments of impasse I like to think of myself in a dream, and wonder how I would engage if it were a dream. For me, that usually translates to seeing vaster possibility and following an inspired impulse, or harmonizing with my environment, like walking through a door that has presented itself.
This week’s astrological tensions can be very contemplative, but may also ask for decisions to be made where the situation is more immediate. Decision closes certain doors and opens others, so it’s important to sense into what matters to you so you can honor that.
Welcome back! Or in case this is your first time here, I’m Sabrina Monarch and I’m a soul-centered astrologer. I love providing perspectives on the opportunities of transits and putting into words what the zeitgeist feels like at this moment in time, to support you on your path & open a dialogue between us and the cosmos. If you would like to receive these weekly forecasts to your inbox and be notified of upcoming educational opportunities, sign up for my mailing list here.
Here’s our week, after a few announcements!
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New episode of Magic of the Spheres! I interviewed Gabriela Rosales @thestylistwitch about fashion magic – we discussed spellcasting and spiritual embodiment through clothes, and beauty and fashion sovereignty. I’ve felt so influenced by this conversation the last few weeks and excited to finally share it!Gabriela is a fashion stylist and glamour witch based in Los Angeles, specializing in the use of one’s wardrobe as the ultimate magickal tool and is a proponent of personal style as a spiritual practice. Being a Venusian-ruled quadruple Taurus, Gabriela’s divine purpose is to empower others through the self-loving ritual of adornment. For her, beauty is not an obligation or a convention, but a way of being. Tune in where you listen to podcasts or on your browser here.
Here’s our week:
October 15, 2020
Sun in 22 Libra square Pluto in 22 Capricorn: 3:15 AM PDT
(Images: Stoker, 2013)
- “Divisive” is a commonly used word to describe our current moment and the astrology that connects to this is the great Saturn-Pluto conjunction of 2020 which continues to be activated in large ways this year. Jupiter in Capricorn blows up and exaggerates the Saturn-Pluto dynamic. Mars, due to its retrograde, is spending an extra long time squaring Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn. And now, we get the Sun in Libra coming in to form a t-square with Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn. The Saturn-Pluto energy is in itself divisive because it relates to profound psychological contraction. It relates to the quality of sensing a threat and creating an extreme solution to separate oneself from that threat, whether that means rejecting a part of ourselves or demonizing and cancelling another person. Just because this is a collective tendency right now, doesn’t mean that you have to play into it as well. But if you do want to opt out, it requires psychological honesty and growth. It requires asking ourselves tougher questions and doing internal work. Read my Saturn-Pluto article by signing up for my mailing list, for more depth context on the astrology of 2020, which contains suggestions for what this internal work looks like.
- This week, consider the balance that you can bring into your life by choosing to stay open instead of contracting. So we’re clear, here are some examples of contraction: rejecting and trying to suppress or destroy a part of yourself (as opposed to truly accepting it first); feeling pain, dullness, deadness in your body when you entertain particular thoughts; gripping or attempting to control a situation so you don’t have to feel the situation.
- Some examples of openness: sending breath to your different chakra centers and breathing deeply, giving space to allow for full expression of your emotions without trying to control them, grieving, accepting the depth of your desire and the potential discomfort of desire and circulating that juicy openness through your body and your entire life, remaining loving of yourself and others when mistakes are made, listening to the impulses and instincts in your system and letting them be there without trying to control them (you can still decide how/if you act on them).
- Consider that wherever your life is ‘a lot’ of something, a lot of sensation, that it is opening you. You can try to control that opening and contract (not recommended), or you can discover how you re-calibrate and balance with this new, or pressure-filled gravitational pull in your life. Are there certain tools or modalities that empower you?
October 16, 2020
New Moon in 23 Libra: 12:31 PM PDT
(Image: Paolo Roversi)
While this Moon makes tense aspects to Mars in Aries and Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn – the upcoming Full Moon in Scorpio (the peak of this lunar cycle) features the Moon exactly conjunct Uranus in Taurus. Simply put, this puts us on schedule to confront tougher issues or blocks around the New Moon and experience breakthrough or liberation around the full on October 31st.
- The cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn) can bring up crunchiness around how we create agreements and negotiations on relationship based on our identities, the identity of the relationship, and the rules that we have for relating. Ideally these agreements that we create with others create a container for expansiveness and intimacy. Sometimes however, the ways that we create or enforce rules in relationship is more about control or defensiveness than it is about connection – we do this to guard ourselves from getting hurt or to guard ourselves from a loss of dignity.
- However, in a skillful way, the cardinal signs can be quite diplomatic (Libra especially). Have you experienced conflict resolution where each party grew closer, grew spiritually, and felt better for having worked out the disagreement?
- This New Moon, consider any intentions you have about learning how to improve your relationships, which inevitably includes how you yourself process your more turbulent emotions and invite people into your world with your vulnerability as opposed to weaponizing it, for example. Are you skilled at being on people’s teams and inviting them to be on yours? Are you skilled at expressing your desires and needs without making it about control or blame? Do you know how to say yes and no honestly? Are you a good listener? Wherever you are at, these skills can be expanded cyclically. Tune into opportunities to create more beauty and harmony in your life where there is a little pressure.
Taken from my friend and astrologer psychotherapist Lucian Schloss’s Facebook –
“From a systemic point of view, problems are unsuccessful attempts to love, and the love that maintains the problem can be redirected to resolve it. The therapeutic task is, first of all, to find the point at which the client loves. When I have found that point, then I have therapeutic leverage. By helping the client find an appropriate and mature way to love, the problem dissolves, and the same love that maintained the problem solves it.” Page 220
“As a rule, problems are described in such a way as to avoid a solution. That’s why I don’t need to hear all of the description of the problems from people in a group; they’re certainly false. If they had the correct description, they wouldn’t be taking about their problem anymore. The correct description of a problem contains the resolution to the problem.” page 221
Loves Hidden Symmetry: What Makes Love Work in Relationships, Bert Hellinger with Gunthard Weber and Hunter Beaumont, (1998).
October 18, 2020
Sun in 25 Libra square Saturn in 25 Capricorn: 6:58 AM PDT
Venus in 18 Virgo opposite Neptune in 18 Pisces: 7:49 AM PDT
(Images: Helter Skelter, 2012)
Neptune in Pisces has been squaring the lunar nodes in Sagittarius and Gemini for a little while now, and now Venus joins. Some considerations:
- There are two big processes occurring (or needing to occur): one is to spend time alone and potentially in more expansive settings (adventure, outdoors, whatever it is that helps you feel spacious within yourself and like life is full of possibility) to gain perspective and to tune in with what is true, as we find some space away from the buzzing frequency of rapid and constant communication. The other is to take in perspectives of other people and translate our own perspectives, and to discover how to intellectually attune with others so that we can experience mutual understanding. The openness to both of these experiences is truly a balancing act – but watch how each can enhance and inform the other, how our perceptions change.
- Truth changes. Some truths are deeply immutable, but many smaller truths are flexible and shift with time and perspective. This is a time to check in with how flexible we are allowing ourselves to be when it comes to adjusting to, and integrating, new information. Can our use of language, and our communication, accommodate this? Or are we stuck in old stories, without communicating how we’ve changed?
- Venus-Neptune contacts highlight the sublime. With Venus in Virgo, we may encounter the sublime in the details. Explore nuances and textures, and the vast universes inside of small things.
- It may also be important to become aware of places we fall out of love with ourselves and if we can still love those places. Are you compartmentalizing which parts of yourself are good, and which aren’t? When you cast parts of yourself out of your own mythical garden, find your will to love them anyway.
Mars retrograde in 19 Aries square Jupiter in 19 Capricorn: 10:38 PM PDT
(Image: Jenna Barton)
When Mars stationed retrograde, Mars had already formed squares to Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn. Now retrograde, Mars is repeating these squares for a second (out of three) times. This also officially brings Mars back into crescent phase squares with all of these Capricorn planets, though Mars stationed at a first quarter square to the Capricorn planets originally. Some translation 😉 –
- Many of us are contemplating some bigger plans or moves in life and we are feeling insecure about launching and taking the step. And it may not actually be time to take the step. If you’ve ever made a big decision out of alignment with time, you know how disorienting that felt – versus what it felt like to harmonize with time. This is not to say NOT to birth or launch a thing when it is feeling ripe. The moment of flying from the nest for the first time will most always feel vulnerable and feeling 100% ready isn’t a prerequisite for launch. This is to say that it’s likely that certain projects are incubating right now and the battle isn’t pushing the trigger – it’s exploring more deeply why you’re afraid to push the trigger and experiencing wins in overcoming your fears, and wins in making preparations for your path.
- Our greater achievements in life aren’t really just about us. It is possible to be humbled or overwhelmed by our life’s assignment, and because we have free will, we get to choose whether or not we accept initiations in life and whether we choose to lean into our purpose or to run away from it. There is a process unfolding now around gaining the courage to accept who we are, before we make a bigger move. Exhaust yourself with your planning. Get so exhausted you’re ready to surrender and do the thing.
- Or if you are tempted, get so close to doing the wrong thing (the thing that is not for you but that for whatever reason you think that you want) that you fatefully retreat and get a new lease on your life. I wouldn’t encourage you to veer off your path just for the kicks. It’s just that sometimes we make the appointment (for example or for a figure of speech) only to get such a deep contraction about it or cold feet that we can knowingly turn away and close the door, instead of holding out for a possibility where it wasn’t meant for us.
- Tough calls are part of the hero’s journey. Tune into your dignity and what feels most expansive and true, whether or not it is easy.
- This video about Rebecca Black is coming to mind! Tune into how she made the best out of an adverse event, being forged from a knock in life, and how she contemplating hiding (deleting the Friday music video that unintentionally went viral) but instead felt all this fire in her being and made a different choice.
October 19, 2020
Venus in 19 Virgo trine Jupiter in 19 Capricorn: 12:35 AM PDT
(Image: Annemiek Kessels)
- Tune into pleasures that come from being crafty, thorough, and refined. Venus in Virgo’s artistry is thoughtfulness.
- Specialized skill takes time to cultivate. There is a grace to the practice itself – an esteem that we find in the devotion. The fruits of these practices are also special and rarefied. Honor these planets by engaging in something beautiful and ceremonial – pull some extra stops as an act of service.
Mercury retrograde in 9 Scorpio opposite Uranus retrograde in 9 Taurus: 7:54 PM PDT
(Image: Ira Carter)
This alignment just occurred on October 7 as well, before Mercury was retrograde (Mercury stationed on the 13th, close to this opposition to Uranus).
- This can be a time of surprising ourselves with our own self-honesty and receptivity to that honesty, especially around matters of desire. Mercury is conjunct asteroid Juno, who represents soul contracts – so it may be that the more deeply and intimately we tune in with ourselves, the more we resonate with people we are meant to link up with.
- This can also be a time of breaking up some stagnancy that we have held onto. Stagnancy is a mystery – many of us have the desire to speed up arrival, speed up getting over something or moving past something – and yet, there the block is. Sometimes we simply have to surrender to the timing. Other times, there are opportunities for catharsis in view – usually disguised within the things we feel resistance toward. Check in with yourself about areas of life that you are avoiding, or parts of yourself that you avoid. Would you free up energy if you faced it?
Thank you for meditating on the planets with me this week! If you would like further guidance, I have been increasingly focused on longer-term 1:1 work with my students and clients, in the form of mentorship – helping people form a depth relationship to their natal chart and personal transits over time, to develop themselves, to heal, and to reach their goals, all through the soul-making lens of evolutionary astrology. If you’re interested in working together in that capacity, I am currently accepting new clients. Send me an email at sabrina@monarchastrology.com to start a conversation and set up a free consultation call.
Find me on Instagram @sabrinamonarch and Twitter @Sabrina_monarch, get on my mailing list to stay apprised of all upcoming offerings and events, and I’ll see you next week!
With love,
Sabrina Monarch
(Top image: Ricardo Levins Morales)
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