As a Full Moon eclipse approaches on May 26 (see last week’s forecast for more meditations on the nature of Eclipse Season), this week Venus trines Saturn, the Sun enters Gemini and squares Jupiter in Pisces, and Saturn will station retrograde at the end of the week in mid-Aquarius.
With the kaleidoscopic influence of Gemini-Pisces squares in the current astrology opening up new fluidity and flux in our perception, and Saturn stationing retrograde which can signify major re-thinking around how we structure or plan our lives – all situated in the wormhole-esque nature of Eclipse Season – this week could involve notable diversions from our preconceived plans. It becomes important to listen, get in tune, and assess our impasses more honestly.
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!
New episode of Magic of the Spheres! I am joined by astrologer and shadow work extraordinaire Maya of @herdarkermaterials to discuss Chiron in Aries (Chiron’s current placement), the original wound of rejection, how Aries/Taurus people can really get 💥😂 (on a sidenote), and Maya’s experience of her natal Chiron and Chiron return. 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.pressfor the text on the cover and helping me design/format the book behind the scenes.
Upcoming Kickstarter: Last year, I asked you to help me crowdfund a year ahead of forecasts and podcast episodes and you helped me raise over 20k! All in all, you helped me reach a salary as an astrologer for the first year of my career. I will be running another Kickstarter again soon. If you enjoy the content I share, please support me in doing it for another year! It will be my seventh year of consistent free content creation coming up.
Here’s our week:
May 19, 2021
Venus in 13 Gemini trine Saturn in 13 Aquarius: 6:58 PM PDT
“Love is the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth… Love is as love does. Love is an act of will — namely, both an intention and an action. Will also implies choice. We do not have to love. We choose to love.” – M. Scott Peck
- When Venus and Saturn come together (see an article I wrote on this archetypal combination here) the effort of love can be highlighted – love as something we actively engage, not just something that happens passively. This can be the responsibility we take for our own opening and vulnerability, as well as the ways we consciously nurture connection in our lives with our choice-making.
- With Venus in Gemini and Saturn in Aquarius, Gemini and Aquarius both being air signs, the efforts of love may come through conversation.
- Some examples: the inner-work to sort through our thoughts and feelings (sometimes tumultuous or confusing ones) to get clear on where we are coming from and what we need to say, and then saying it; learning more skillful forms of communication; the respect that we show ourselves and others when we verbalize our truth and add that into the conversation so we can get on the same page as one another.
- This is a magical time for resonating with others through honest/deliberate communication, though one may also notice that failing to participate honestly can result in feeling disconnected or alienated – like you can hear the music in the room, but you don’t feel connected to it or part of it. Stay open for opportunities to make strong choices that bring you into alignment versus disassociation.
May 20, 2021
Sun enters Gemini: 12:37 PM PDT
- For many, this time of year resonates with the current or remembered experience of the school year ending, transitioning into summer (at least, on the northern hemisphere). Gemini is a mutable sign, and all of the mutable signs bring change – a dissipation of the old energy and a flurry of new activity before anything is concretely initiated (cardinal) and settles into a more solid form (fixed).
- As a mutable air sign, one of the deeper intentions Gemini signifies and invites is that we shake up our routine and conditioned ways of perceiving/thinking about reality. When we are mentally fluid or mentally spontaneous, we gain agency to play with the present moment in ways we might have ordinarily overlooked.
- Running up perhaps with Pisces coming second, Gemini is the main sign I think of when I think of the concept of delight. Gemini is literally delightful – the spirit of curiosity, enchanted with ideas, bubbly, interested, if not sometimes also quite random and absurd, and amused as a result. Delight more easily enters our consciousness when we soften into the relative absurdities of life and the endless mutations of possibility we can generate when we play with ideas, words, sounds, language.
“When we imagine anything, we are playing with images, combining them as they have never been combined before, perhaps not even in nature itself. Out of such playing with images came primitive ritual and the mythologies of early religion. Out of our playing with rocks and herbs and the mystery of fire came early science. Out of our playing with hollow reeds or tightened sinews or the beat of bone on deerskin came early music; musicians still ‘play’ on their pianos or guitars. And out of our playing with words, with their sounds and shapes and rhythms and the images they conjured, came early poetry, so wonderful that in all parts of the world it seemed a kind of magic.” – via Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry by John Frederick Nims and David Mason
May 21, 2021
Sun in 0 Gemini square Jupiter in 0 Pisces: 8:05 AM PDT
(Poem by Adonis, translated from the Arabic by Khaled Mattawa)
- I see Jupiter in aspect to the luminaries (the Sun or Moon) as a kind of distortion, like a whammy bar. Distortion here doesn’t mean unreal, it’s just not particularly sober or dry. You know those moments you have where the impression of a conversation lingers in a kind of psychedelic way, or you find yourself so enchanted or disturbed by a moment that it takes on cinematic quality.
- Part of why I like to play with mindset and creating-your-own-reality teachings is that the thoughts we have literally alter our perspective, like different magical potions we imbibe. If I think mean things about myself and others, life will take on qualities to match the distortion I’ve laid over my reality. With play and practice in perceiving creatively, choosing the perspective, or making a habit of focusing on gratitude or beauty, life actually grows richer in those energies that we’ve chosen to feed with our awareness.
- The caveat is, one must be self-aware of the thoughts that are running through their minds and then be able to track how those thoughts feel in the body. One must also be detached enough to recognize that just because a thought was thought, it is not ultimately real. I can think the cruelest and most critical things about myself, and set in motion depression and anxiety, and just sit in that stew thinking that that is all that there is. Or I can take a step back and examine the thoughts I’m thinking and the kind of world I’m painting in the process, and take steps to create a more supportive/beautiful reality in its stead.
- A main resistance that people have toward creating their own reality is the fear/idea from others or themselves that this is the same thing as putting one’s head in the sand or spiritual bypassing. Life is not so black and white. Every tool requires skill, and the way we depict our reality through mental concepts, language, and narrative is both a tool and a skill, and we have to consider our relationship to this craft and the kinds of opportunities and complexities we are capable of engaging here.
May 22, 2021
Mercury in 22 Gemini square Neptune in 22 Pisces: 7:43 PM PDT
- Sometimes people report that Mercury-Neptune aspects feel like Mercury retrograde. Neptune can definitely blur some edges in places we meant to be more precise or organized. This blurring does open the way for visionary and inspired thinking (thinking beyond normal boundaries), but it may also mean that we find ourselves having to be more deliberate/mindful with the details.
- This is a first quarter square between Mercury and Neptune, suggesting we are at a critical moment where we are needing to locate a thought or idea from the numinous ether and choose it, go for it. For example, in moments of transition (moving house, ends of relationships, etc.) I notice my own capacity to project fear into the unknown – and subsequently have noticed a voltage of empowerment and energy when I decide to choose a thought form like, “Life has shown me blessings I couldn’t have even imagined – and that will only continue to happen in this next phase of my life.”
May 23, 2021
Saturn stations retrograde in 13 Aquarius: 2:19 AM PDT
Saturn will station direct on October 10, 2021.
- Saturn retrogrades occur every year – and while the station itself is noticeable (an infusion of Saturnian energy at the moment of Saturn stationing retrograde) the transit itself can feel a bit more subtle as the few months go on. Saturn retrogrades initiate deeper questions around what we are doing with the bones of our life – our lifestyles, vocations, how we are ‘getting it together’. The transit can have us stepping back and questioning our normal urges to get things done just for the sake of getting it done. A social media influencer, for example, ceases to post every single day just because they think they should, and starts to tune into the value of rest. (I can’t tell you how many social media hiatuses I’ve seen announced around Saturn stationing retrograde.)
- If not explicitly related to our external work in the world, Saturn stationing retrograde can also signify a heightened awareness at the moment of our “should”-consciousness – the boxes we put ourselves in based on rules we have internalized or imagined. We may feel the pressure to become aware of these values, to examine them, and to potentially release or change them if we realize they are not actually true or beneficial.
- If there are “should” places in our consciousness we don’t want to abandon (i.e. we really do think we should do it, but we still feel recalcitrant about it) we might want to consider the value of choosing things fully. When we drag ourselves into making a choice but don’t fully approve of ourselves in the process, we are so much likelier to feel victimized by the choice. If there is something we feel we must do, while we have some wishes we didn’t have to, it would be worth considering how we can take full accountability for our choice.
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 in session but will be offered again, 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: theatre production of Miss Julie, 1983, Théâtre Edouard, Paris, photographed by Daniel Cande)
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