Venus enters Scorpio, and Mars enters Libra this week. In traditional astrology, Scorpio is ruled by Mars. In traditional and modern, Libra is ruled by Venus. So considering that Mars and Venus are in mutual reception (meaning they are in each other’s signs of rulership), Martian and Venusian themes will be coming together dynamically. One thing to consider is the experience of aversion: how, from a place of our aesthetic standards and values, we feel repelled or even disgusted by something we find ugly, unjust, gross.
However, how we stand in relationship with all of that counts. The world is full of ugliness. And we can hate ourselves and go to bed at night with a cold, charred, blackened heart, but is that really want we desire in our most tender truth? Probably not. At a core level most people really want to say yes to life and experience joy, love, and fulfillment.
While there may be an upward, ascension-oriented, solar part of us that aspires to move toward the light and embody the beautiful and the good, the Sun naturally casts a shadow! If we only tend to the light, the shadow just becomes more full of repressed content. Medicine wheels include all of the seasons, which includes the growth of light in spring and summer and the descent of the light in fall and winter. Each season has value, but we might be preferential (toward either).
Venus and Mars in one another’s celestial palaces may be an opportunity to bring coherence and connection to places we would otherwise split off: bringing fascination, curiosity, and love to untended places within ourselves. It can be easier to wish we were different or life was different – “and THEN I would find pleasure in all of this!” It’s another kind of magical initiation to descend into *what already is* and choose to love it. Not only may some poisons or holding patterns be neutralized from our non-resistance, but we might also discover hidden treasure that was locked behind that wall of aversion that kept us disconnected to our inner-sanctum.
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.
Watch this week’s forecast on YouTube, or keep reading below:
Here’s our week after a few announcements!
INNER WEALTH: Psyche as Treasure – a guided Visualization event
What mysterious palace exists behind our eyes? What wilderness?
Might it never be lost on us that the Psyche is a receiver of images and thoughts, in dream and waking, that seem to come from nowhere or come from roots so deep within us we don’t know where they even began.
Psyche is Inner Cosmos.
A great principle within astrology is “as within, so without” meaning that when we develop internally – psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, the external environment reflects it.But I think this goes a level deeper as well – that we can never exhaust the mysteries of outer space, nor can we exhaust the mysteries of inner space.
Visualization is a practice of inner-gnosis. I came to a more creative relationship with my Psyche when I first decided I wanted to create my own brain chemistry and challenge the prescribed narrative that I had no agency in cultivating my emotional reality on purpose.
So I started to build feelings that started from a place of imagination. I cultivated inner-wealth in the form of thoughts and feelings I chose on purpose. I built more capacity in myself for pleasure and enjoyment, to challenge the capacity I’d already built up for depression. From there, Psyche opened and deepened…
Visualization can be a tactical part of achieving a goal or manifesting something in your life. This is one of the most normative ways we justify “using” the imagination. But what about giving back to the imagination, to Psyche, with the offering of devoted space and time?
Psyche is already a place of riches. Join me September 17 @ 5:00 PM PST for an INNER WEALTH guided inner journey.
.Did you know Psyche as an asteroid is worth 75,000 times our global economy (according to Forbes)? As a reader I find this symbolic – if only we travelled as deep into our inner space as some propose we travelled in physical outer space. It’s heartbreaking to me that mining Psyche at a physical level is probably the go-to paradigmatically more than simply relating with her and creating with her.
We will explore visualization as self-intimacy and dropping into internal, intrinsic worthiness: what does it mean to find our inner-wealth and relate to it in a generous/gifting way? Once we are situated in the inherent wealth of Psyche, we have already arrived and there is just space to create. Sign up here.
The upcoming Evolutionary Astrology Intensive is now open for enrollment! It will be the ninth run of this program 🖤 It is a comprehensive entry (or deepening) into the world of soul-based Plutonic astrology. As I get to see students respond to this material, I’m reminded every time about how Evolutionary Astrology is truly a wisdom tradition. I’ve had the pleasure of developing as a human alongside this material since I was 21, and it’s one of my biggest joys in life to share it and invite others into it. The course consists of pre-recorded content (that you can continue returning to indefinitely) and live sessions weekly to discuss as a group, and five culminating workshop classes.
In the last year or so students of mine have repetitively commented on the field or group dynamic that is created in our spaces. I just follow the lead of my favorite teachers – classes I had where everyone bonded. I watched how they did it, and figured out how to recreate that in my own way – I like my classes to be engaging and world-opening, initiatory experiences and a place to make real friends. I also sincerely think the content shared in this course is profound (the lineage I am a part of is profound itself) and when a group of people come together to attune to that and share how it lands for them, we do weave a beautiful community inevitably.
Enroll here. Apply for scholarship here. Read the testimonials on the course page. Reach out sabrina@monarchastrology.com if you have personal questions about the course that aren’t answered on the course page and we can discuss if this class is right for you.
My debut novel, The Garden of Sleeping Hammers is out and available for purchase!
Katerina is twenty-one when meets a spy twice her age who offers to teach her anything she wants to know about spycraft and magic. This apprenticeship plunges her into an unconventional romance and a heightened state of psychic awareness. Her new identity inspires complete strangers, who are sure Katerina is destined for fame, but scares those who know the old Katerina. Katerina’s family believes she’s mentally ill and forces antipsychotic, antidepressant and mood-stabilizing medications upon her at the advice of a psychiatrist. The novel follows her struggle to maintain the heightened state of awareness and aliveness that she suddenly feels after years of depression, in the face of her family and friends urging her to come back down. What happens when a massive opportunity for personal growth is seen by others as a dangerous mistake? In the hope that she might be able to return to an extraordinary life, but with no guarantee, Katerina has no other choice than to use her recent spy training to play the game, and to get an up-close, inside look at the state of mental health in mainstream America.
Order paperback // Order hardcover
Here’s our week:
September 10, 2021
Venus enters Scorpio: 1:39 PM PDT
Venus will stay in Scorpio until October 7.
(Image: Still from Lady Gaga music video Bad Romance)
- Venus in Scorpio can bring a mood shift in the Venusian realm of our lives, that being self-image and self-esteem, relationship, pleasure, aesthetic, (to name a few). In the tone of Scorpio, the mood can become more macabre, obsessive, ‘intense’, dark, mysterious, compulsive. Here are a few ideas/considerations-
- As the planet of harmony/beauty touches on the realm of the shadow and our most intense inner-drives, there may be untended parts of ourselves that are grabbing our attention. This is naturally what occurs when anything is suppressed – it just comes out in a different way. Facing it becomes a route to empowerment and reclamation, instead of continually trying to dodge the inevitable surfacing of the thing as it shows up in sneakier ways or in our triggers.
- We might relate to our more tumultuous conflicts – the things in our life we feel repelled by or at odds with – by considering what hooks/attachments we have to them at a subconscious level. That allows us to do deeper work/magic. Consider the difference between altering yourself (in your words and behavior, at the most superficial level) to please people whose opinions you are scared of, versus neutralizing the hook within you that cares what they think about you in the first place.
- Sometimes self-awareness, epiphany, revelation – that comes from honest reflection – is enough to ‘neutralize a hook’. But it may also be part of a greater practice of being committed to our deeper truth, not abandoning ourselves, and tending to ourselves in a way that resources us with the strength/resilience/fulfillment to be able to walk away from our most stubborn holding-patterns, not even by force but just because it is the most natural thing to do.
- Venus in Scorpio can also highlight our need for passion and catharsis – that maybe instead of keeping things ‘nice’ we want to really get into our animal body and be wild. By relating with our edgier side expressively (dance, a ritual of exaggerating the emotion, tantrum, etc.) we give it space to move and we get to discover what our soul was telling us through the intense visitor of that emotion.
September 14, 2021
Sun in 21 Virgo opposite Neptune retrograde in 21 Pisces: 2:21 AM PDT
Mars enters Libra: 5:14 PM PDT
Mars will stay in Libra until October 30.
- Mars in Libra is value-driven. Mars relates to our will, sense of direction, impulse, how we assert ourselves. Libra is a sign of harmonics, aesthetic, and relates to our values – what we think is beautiful and just. When Mars is in Libra, our vitality or sense of direction is connected to how we are in alignment with our value system. If we are unsure of our priorities, we can be prone to feeling indecisive or aimless. So then the challenge then becomes about becoming clear about what truly matters to us.
- I have seen individuals with this placement possess incredible clarity and capacity to live a value-led life. I’ve seen this take precedence over being ‘nice’ or being a people-pleaser – and while these individuals are often charming and charismatic, it’s not due to playing the same game as everyone else – it’s that they are fiercely in touch with their values and perhaps even consistent about it in such a way that comes off like a code of honor. This is only after cutting through the need to be agreeable for the sake of being agreeable. Mars in Libra can bring value through conflict, through being aware of the consensus in the room but only agreeing if that is true, and feeling free to dissent if that is true.
- Experientially, Mars transit through Libra may reveal our values to us in the places where our aversion/disagreement is cropping up. In some cases it may be relevant to simply be oppositional – to be ‘against’ something, to pose a different perspective. But often there is a creative thrust a layer beneath that: to tune into the frequency of what IS being valued, and embody that, or bring that knowledge to the conversation.
- While this kind of deliberation and care slows Mars’ typical roll, might that not be called for? As with any skill, one becomes more adept with time and practice. The Mars in Libra game involves navigating conflict or complex situations from a value-led place with awareness of cause and effect and the greater social ecosystem and relational dynamics at play. it involves balancing our own sovereignty and truth with our desire for connection, and being willing to let conflict or disagreement BE the connection since in reality, people’s value systems can clash. Might this tension create innovation in how we approach our relationships and our personal sense of direction?
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 now open for enrollment, and I am to take on new coaching clients again in the future.
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: Lowell Nesbitt)
No Comments