The week begins at the end of a lunar cycle, so our energy levels may be lower and more inward before the New Moon approaches. The dark moon time can be regenerative for rest, integration, and unstructured time, where we are able to pave that out or really relax into that.
Venus in Taurus will square Jupiter in Aquarius, each at 29 degrees of their signs respectively, the critical last degree! (There are 30 degrees per sign) This last degree relates to a climactic feeling around the involved archetypes. There is creative friction here around manifestation, with Taurus relating to the physical material realm and Aquarius relating to the downloads we receive from the mind of the Universe – those electrical impulses, the rattling feeling of epiphany.
Later in the week, Mars in Cancer sextiles Uranus in Taurus, suggesting that we can ‘nest’ desired states into our nervous system by choosing feelings at will – a form of play that relates to manifestation. If you’ve studied manifestation (which I plan to also teach more formally someday), you have probably heard that we create with our emotional states, or that we live in a harmonic world of resonance, where like attracts like. We are less free when we are simply reactive to reality, where we bind ourselves impulsively to being in a defensive position with life, as though life is always just happening to us. By having some degree of detachment, and being able to choose feelings on purpose and to engage play states with those frequencies, we actually become creators.
These electrical influences in the current astrology happen in the context of the dark moon – which has a resonance for me around having a really striking dream that pierces and illuminates your consciousness, but you are still in bed, sleeping. The rest state is the fertile ground for the piercing dream. And, our egos may not like the state of not having the energy yet to do anything with the vision. I anticipate there may be some negotiation this week around dropping into the dark, fertile, receptive corners of our being – even noticing where these places exist – and allowing ourselves to be filled here with illumination. To really feel what the ‘seed’ form feels like – the subtle opening of a creative energy within that appears as a longing or an urge.
A lot of our social conditioning is not about this state, that can recognize and be with the subtle subterranean emergence of creativity – we (at least where I write from!) live in a materialistic, hyper-rational culture, so it can be a process to learn how to recognize and trust our intuition, our night-vision, our relationship with respecting and honoring the mystery. This week feels dank and musty with that mystery, and the possibility that we can bring a lantern there – enough light to see something new and liberating, but not enough light to erase and objectify the mystery.
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.
No YouTube version this week: I’m taking a brief YouTube hiatus to focus on a few creative and astrological projects & putting the finishing touches on designing/publishing my novel this month 🥳
I really enjoy making the videos and the new connections I’ve gotten to make with people through YouTube so I look forward to being back.
There will still be forecasts – they will just be text version only for the time being.
Here’s our week after a few announcements!
ENROLLMENT CLOSING SOON, MAY 7!
Study Evolutionary Astrology with me in May 2021 – enrollment is now open and May 7 is the last day to enroll! It’s always an inspiring group of deep thinkers that gather for this class. If you are wanting to learn karmic soul-centered astrology, and go deeper into the astrological craft in both an intuitive and a structured/guided way – and you resonate with these forecasts, you’ll love this course. Learn more, read testimonials, and enroll here. You can also listen to a podcast interview I did on Amelia Quint’s Bad Astrologers about what Evolutionary Astrology is for a feel of this system of astrology and how I approach it.
Apply for need-based scholarship here.
I interviewed Òscar @cielosueloastrology about the fixed stars! In this conversation, we explore the felt quality of the fixed stars and how working with them has a depth or ‘surgical’ quality in Oscar’s consultations, and how the fixed stars sing through artists’ works and how the stars hear our call to connect with them. We discuss a few fixed stars in particular, including the fixed star associated with this podcast – the heliacal rising star of this podcast’s official launch.
Òscar Moisés Díaz (b.1993, Soyapango, El Salvador) is a poet-astrologer, film curator, and artist. They’ve exhibited art in places such as the 10th Central American Biennial, the International Film Festival of El Salvador, the Queens Museum, Museum of Art El Salvador, and a solo exhibit at The Museum of Contemporary Art Costa Rica. They are currently a Curatorial Fellow at the Poetry Project. They are a member of Tierra Narrative and a contributing editor over at Asphalte Magazine. Newest poems in Schlag Magazine. They also run a full-time astrology practice over at cielosueloastrology.com.
Tune in where you listen to podcasts! Or on your browser here.
Forthcoming fiction novel: The Garden of Sleeping Hammers will be coming out late spring of this year! I’ve shared a reading of the first two chapters on a recent Magic of the Spheres episode, which you can listen to here. Thank you to Alex Maune @chthonicbacchae for the cover artwork, and Liina Koivula @local.smoke.press for the text on the cover and helping me design/format the book behind the scenes.
Here’s our week:
May 6, 2021
Venus in 26 Taurus trine Pluto retrograde in 26 Capricorn: 4:41 AM PDT
(Image: José López Vergara)
- Venus was last square Pluto on April 11, on the New Moon in Aries where Venus was also in Aries. Can you remember any significant tensions or developments around Venusian themes that were revealed at that time? (With Venus in general, think love, money, connection, and desire. With Venus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn, think power and control dynamics in how we relate and connect with others, and our ancient subconscious stories about love and money.)
- Now with Venus in Taurus trine Pluto, there may be some more easeful or subtle development that builds upon whatever came to a head during the last New Moon.
- This transit carries an inclination for us to make evolutionary choices in the realm of relationship and receptivity. Connection is the major through-line, whether this is about our connection with other people or our connection to the earth, to the water, to the planets, to commerce and currency, and so on. Without awareness of the transit, the transit already contains a frequency around making impactful choices that later down the road, we would acknowledge as impactful but they just kind of ‘happened’ now. So consider this:
- Knowing who we are, and what we value, and knowing how to read the signals in our deep body, the force of Eros that we are connected to, the truth rippling inside of us — allows us to move toward situations that are meant for us. The path of becoming this connected to ourselves involves the basic trials of self-awareness, learning self-trust, and detangling ourselves from conditioning or addiction – but as we are on the the path of doing this, it unfolds and reveals itself. This may be a moment of important connections and choices that have only been made possible by past efforts to understand who we truly are, and we have the wisdom to say yes to the force of Eros inside of us.
Chiron in 10 Aries sextile lunar North Node in 10 Gemini: 10:33 AM PDT
(Image: Haylee Morice)
- Chiron is at once a pain point or wound, as well as “a guide to the magical quest” as Barbara Hand Clow names one of the chapters in her book on Chiron, The Rainbow Bridge. In the hero’s journey, there is always a reason to set out on the quest — it may be an obvious wound like someone was kidnapped and they must be rescued, or someone has been turned into an animal and they need to find the witch who can break the spell, etc. Sometimes it’s a more subtle yearning, like the desire to be lifted away from the monotony of life and into something more meaningful, in which case a pain point could be boredom or disconnection from life. Whatever the issue at at hand is, something about the current moment feels awry, and the portal into creating changing in our reality comes from embarking upon the quest, which is where Chiron takes us.
- Contrary to some ideas that the South Node of the Moon is something to get away from our evolve out of, the South Node is like an activated memory: something from the past that is being re-lived so that we can remember it! In remembering it, we naturally discover what is meant to be carried into the future and what is to be outgrown. The North Node of the Moon is a future that is emerging, and one we can participate with.
- Chiron trines the South Node in Sagittarius as it sextiles the North Node in Gemini. This suggests that our routinely patterned beliefs about the world and about ourselves set us up to have the same activations and wounds, over and over. It’s almost like always living in the same kind of climate, and only having an experience with tropical reality, or only having an experience with snowy reality. An opportunity at this moment is to allow ourselves to be curious enough to expose ourselves to entirely different or seemingly random perspectives or ideas, outside of our customary reality. It is through novelty that we might access a missing key for the story that we are currently living out.
May 8, 2021
Ceres enters Taurus: 1:51 AM PDT
Venus in 29 Taurus square Jupiter in 29 Aquarius: 6:09 AM PDT
(Image: Jax Sheridan)
- The tension between Taurus and Aquarius can relate to the ways we seek to embody/materialize or bring down to earth (Taurus) our most electric ideas (Aquarius), as well as how we deconstruct or decondition from our traumas (Aquarius) so that they do not become part of the body’s homeostasis (Taurus), or these traumas are part of our body memory until we release them. The other fixed signs help with this process. Scorpio can help with catharsis or intensity that creates the opportunity for release, and Scorpio can also be our allurements that bring us back to our trauma patterns (as we are still entangled) or toward opportunities for wholeness and integration. Leo relates to play and creativity and the way that engaging our creativity naturally confronts us with our deeper material and the opportunity to come back to our center of radiance. (My lecture “Pillars of Creative Mastery: The Grand Fixed Cross of the Zodiac” explores these themes in depth and is available for purchase here.)
- While alignments between Venus and Jupiter are typically pleasant and relate to things like romantic dinners, shopping, luxury, grand displays of affection, meaningful opportunities, feast and celebration, and things of this nature — a tension present here with Venus in Taurus square Jupiter in Aquarius could be the frictions we have around receiving the good things in life based on our trauma.
- Consider this: sometimes we get to experience pure, unabashed pleasure states or joyful states, and other times being in this state brings in a lot of unresolved inner-pain that sees we finally have the bandwidth/receptivity to be with it or alchemize it. Or simply witness it and move with it. We get emotional when a kind of partnership we’ve always dreamed of arrives, or a large sum of money arrives in our bank account and now we have to deal with having! It’s not really a problem on the surface – it’s the content from the deep psyche that comes up that is troubling, and also an internal confrontation that could result in greater receptivity and opening if we allow it.
- One way that energy moves is through emotion – actually feeling and being with emotions fully can be a form of integration. With this transit, emotions can be stirred and revealed through sensations in the body (Taurus) and epiphanies or illuminating insights (Jupiter).
Mercury in 7 Gemini square Vesta in 7 Virgo: 2:22 PM PDT
Venus enters Gemini: 7:01 PM PDT
Venus will stay in Gemini until June 2, 2021.
- Venus in Gemini can seem light on the surface – chatty, witty, charming, perceptive. Gemini is far more mysterious than a lot of people realize, however – there is a certain mental openness and speed that literally opens up new realms or wormholes, and Gemini is associated with the magician. I think what is misleading about Venus in Gemini is how on the surface it seems so lighthearted and breezy, but that’s only one aspect of some infinitely-sided gemstone here. Something that really speaks to the heart of Venus in Gemini is the capacity to adapt to the subtleties of the moment.
- So in relationship or connection with others, there are infinite layers of what is happening at any given moment. There is the reality of connection – those moments of alignment or presence together – and there are the places of disconnection. There are the things that are left unsaid that can go any which way – be a pleasant undertone that is shared and known, or be a skeleton festering in the closet somewhere. Venus in Gemini relates to how we create connection by naming what is happening in all of its multifaceted dimensionality – which can ask that we both feel everything and are detached enough to see it and name it as an observer. That is magical in of itself.
- It is joked that Gemini abhors boredom over anything else – but the deeper reason for this is that Gemini is so quick, and readily can adapt to new information where others might short-circuit! Gemini rather prefers to be mirrored or twinned by someone who can keep up. When Venus is in Gemini, it can be an opportunity to allow ourselves to relate to the changing winds of the moment and our connection with the moment, as opposed to rigidly adhering to an agenda that puts us out of touch with what is actually happening in the chaos of the now moment.
- This transit can also emphasize the way that communication is a major pathway through which love and connection flows. Venus in Gemini can be about translating the heart, so we create bridges where things would otherwise be left to conjecture and interpretation.
May 10, 2021
Mercury in 10 Gemini conjunct lunar North Node in 10 Gemini: 1:35 PM PDT
- Invite to feel into the energetics of conversation and the way that having a variety of conversations can reveal what themes are “in the air”. When we are listening, even “small talk” conveys cosmic messages. As an astrologer, I often feel the transits speak through the individual conversations I have or the things I read people posting on social media. As someone who likes a lot of alone time and quiet, I also go through phases of tuning out external influence and just being. When I come back to social moments, I’m often amazed by how the Universe speaks through all these different beings/channels and how delightful everything can be if we are inclined to hear it as music.
Mercury in 11 Gemini sextile Chiron in 11 Aries: 7:31 PM PDT
- We have to know when urgency serves us. Fear-based urgency can be tricky. Instinct is different. And there is also the kind of urgency that is the willingness to surf the inspiration of a current moment by acting on it, instead of doing it later when the inspiration passes. The only way we learn how to understand this ocean is by being with it as a practice – noticing how you act on ideas and the quality of the experience you have catching those waves, until we gain better discernment about which waves to catch and when.
May 11, 2021
New Moon in 21 Taurus: 12:00 PM PDT
(Image: Julie Bell)
This lunation trines Pluto in Capricorn and is sextile Pallas Athena and Neptune in Pisces. The lunation is also conjunct Black Moon Lilith in Taurus.
- This New Moon speaks to me of Earth mysteries – spending time outside if possible, connecting with and building relationship to the more-than-human world. Being with plants and herbs and developing a sensitivity with our relationship to them also, as an option for anyone in a cityscape.
- This New Moon culminates to a Full Moon eclipse on May 26, and Jupiter will have entered Pisces by then! Eclipses tend to bring change, heightened periods of flux or wormhole-esque energy where certain influences enter or exit our lives.
- For consideration for the upcoming May 26 eclipse – my favorite way to be with eclipses is to “eclipse within” and go into meditation. My Evolutionary Astrology Intensive came to me during an eclipse in 2017, and my recent move to Portland also was a vision I had on an eclipse. What is consistently important for me with eclipses though is truth – like what is truly moving through me and my body, and trusting that. Even if it means I change my life. Eclipses are good for that – but not for forcing anything!
- So for the stage set with this current New Moon in Taurus, it seems like a moment to drop into embodied truth – being with ourselves, our sensuality, our rest, and our connection to Earth as an extension of our own body, our terrestrial nature. How do we make space within ourselves to be receptive to life? When we are receptive, when we can be with the mystery of cycles, we make room to give life – to feel a seed of an idea or an inspiration and to be able to tend to it.
Mars in 11 Cancer square Chiron in 11 Aries: 4:54 PM PDT
- A possible energetic with Mars in Cancer can be this sense of itching on the inside – inner frustration that casts a whole mood. It can be so uncomfortable that we look for comfort, but there is a difference between soothing and real transformation. We can simply manage the discomfort, or we can be moved to alchemize it. Soothing isn’t wrong, if that is where we are at – but if we are at that phase we might just consider being open for new tools and potentially seeking them out. From personal experience, I can say I’ve recognized when I’m soothing and have just had to accept in those moments that that was where I was at – but I kept my eyes for something more transformative, and it always eventually arrived.
- This transit may mark a turning point of learning a successful way to soothe (to manage) and/or a deeper threshold of addressing the underlying issue as opposed to managing the symptom.
Mars in 11 Cancer sextile Uranus in 11 Taurus: 7:47 PM PDT
- This alignment could relate to some meaningful care that we give to stuck/stagnant or untended parts of ourselves. In my early twenties I worked a lot more with fantasy than I do now – but I would get into visualization/fantasy states, imagining what I wanted in my life, and I would be with and take care of the parts of myself who didn’t trust that those things could actually materialize, or who were so beset with grief, fear, abandonment, etc. that they couldn’t let these things in. I think I do this less these days because the things I wanted came to me and now I’m working with a lot more material in tangible form. But, when I’m at the edge of my capacity to receive, I remember that these more abstract visualization states gave me the virtual realities (Uranus) to open up my receptivity (Uranus in Taurus). It took courage to feel everything (Mars in Cancer). This can be done with re-writing painful memories (and giving yourself the feelings of that alternate reality) and imagining desired futures, alike. The point isn’t disassociation from this reality – it’s allowing fantasy images to open us to our own vulnerability. It is also about emotional freedom – realizing we can create our own emotional states at will and we don’t have to be locked into a reactive relationship with reality and the things that happened or the things that we fear will happen, especially anything we verbalize as “happening TO me”.
- There is creative power in feeling things on purpose and having those experiences in the body – you know that imagining abstract scenarios, fear-based or positive fantasy-oriented ones alike create sensation in your body. When we play with this intentionally, we can actually ‘nest’ desired futures in our nervous system in a similar way that you would design a home for a living experience you’d like. See if you can really take the time to bring yourself into a visualization state at rest, or a play state in action, where you engage the energy you wish to embody and feel it as though is happening now. As you work through any stagnancies and blocks at the fantasy/play level, the reflections you receive from reality will also shift to resonate with the new levels of freedom you have uncovered inside of yourself to feel what you wish to feel.
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 experiences in the form of the Evolutionary Astrology Intensive, higher level courses for alumni, and 1:1 mentorship – helping people form a depth relationship to their natal chart and personal transits over time, to develop themselves, to be in their power, and to reach their goals, all through the soul-making lens of evolutionary astrology. I would love to support you in building your relationship with astrology. The intensive is currently open for enrollment, and I am soon to take on new coaching clients.
Find me on Instagram @sabrinamonarch, 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: Ugachi Takako. Also shoutout to Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, where I got most of this week’s images.)
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