As we come down from a Full Moon in the later degrees of Pisces, the Sun ingresses into Libra this week and Mercury will station retrograde in Libra. Mercury stations retrograde while in aspect to Pluto in Capricorn by square, and Jupiter in Aquarius by trine.
Pluto in Capricorn relates to our social inheritance of what is ‘normal’ based on years and years of history – a sense of deep time. The square with Mercury in Libra may be mirrored by us thinking more about WHY we think the way we do – what unconscious ‘rules’ or ways of looking at the world have we inherited from history, from our family, from our own personal history? One significant event in our own lives, for example, could have been traumatizing and also defining, but we get to a place where we are currently willing to really let go of the pain and story we have created around that difficult experience. A deep level of recognition and acceptance around where we’ve come from can make the way for openness to see things another way moving forward. We don’t even have to know how – we can simply wonder, “what would it be like?”
Jupiter in Aquarius relates to our capacity for visionary thought: seeing and feeling into the future. A high potential of Aquarius is true freedom. Freedom can look like a fresh lens: being able to observe and witness the happenings of life and of our inner world from a place of neutrality and choice: getting to choose to change our perspective, choose to entertain a particular channel of consciousness (like bliss or gratitude). It’s harder to have this kind of emotional freedom when we have involuntary responses to stimuli – getting triggered and worked up over something, ruminating, not being able to move on, etc. Thus even our most aspirational, visionary consciousness has to tend to shadows from the underworld and unconscious blockages. It may even be the release of raw energy and reclamation of power that happens when we move stagnant/stuck energy (significantly process deep material) that gives us the juice/energy to increasingly say yes to life and dream bigger.
See how Mercury’s conversation with Pluto in Capricorn may relate more to descent-oriented journeys and shadow work, while Mercury’s conversation with Jupiter in Aquarius relates more to upward-oriented journeys around gaining perspective and engaging peak experience? While very different realms, these spaces of consciousness inevitably talk to each other. Do you prefer or resist one of these energies? What would it look like for them to collaborate more or for you to have the bandwidth to perceive and be moved by both?
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 or podcast (Magic of the Spheres) version of the forecast this week, but I’ll be back soon!
Here’s our week after a few announcements!
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.
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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.
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Here’s our week:
September 22, 2021
Mercury in 24 Libra square Pluto retrograde in 24 Capricorn: 6:11 AM PDT
(Image: Patty Carroll)
- With Mercury in Libra, we seek greater skillfulness in our relationship communication – tact, negotiation, teamwork. The square to Pluto in Capricorn suggests the potential for struggling with how our communication in relationships intersects with our unconscious, shame, or compulsions around control. But this square also suggests a capacity for breakthrough: taking greater levels of responsibility, not coming from a place of blame when approaching relational discord, or being able to (through some tension, possibly) name and pinpoint some deeper dynamics in the service of creating connection and rapport in a more intimate way.
- One tension existing here is that we may possess the language or surface-level understanding of how to be nice and peaceable, and even the self-control to appear this way, but much more turbulent waters are raging below the surface. Should this inner-tension make itself known to you, consider what deeper material is wanting to be processed/alchemized so that it is not having to be perpetually managed and kept below the surface.
- We may have skills in personal transformation such that we can work with our own deep material (as just eluded to) but we have power in relationship and community. Mercury-Pluto reminds me of the psychopomp side of Mercury and the way that we have guides in our lives, human and otherwise, who support our transformation. Our earnestness in our own process also positions us to be wayshowers.
Sun enters Libra: 12:21 PM PDT
(Image: Saving Face, 2004, directed Alice Wu)
- Music and harmony is one of the significations of Libra and it is interesting to note how often Libra Sun individuals or people with strong Libra signatures are literally musicians. If you take a moment to consider the connection between literal music and then what it means to live and engage with life in a musical way (metaphorically speaking) you may peer into some of the deeper Libra mysteries.
- Engaging with ourselves and with life in this musical, harmonic way grants opportunities to literally be in relationship, and thus teamwork. Libra, of any of the signs, knows the power of smoothness/charisma/charm as a vehicle for arriving to a desired destination or influencing events in one’s favor.
- A higher value of Libra is the true art of listening: to harmonize properly, one must also be listening. So when we really tune in with others, we create space to collaborate with a kind of sophistication that is not possible without that degree of receptivity.
- Libra can be fierce about matters of justice and reciprocity. This is also a tuning-in, or a sensitivity toward hearing and listening. What is it like to be generous? Who and what responds and reciprocates? How are we in right relationship to our own generosity, balancing it both with our true inspiration to give and our awareness of when to pull back (when to give space, when to notice a connection is not reciprocal)?
- Libra introduces lessons around relativity and comparison: through relating to different environments, energies, people, etc – we experience different facets of reality, different values, and different reflections within our own being. Comparison can be petty or detrimental (jealousy, covetousness, etc) or a source of profound self-awareness and learning.
September 23, 2021
Venus in 14 Scorpio opposite Uranus retrograde in 14 Taurus: 2:41 AM PDT
(Image: Patty Caroll)
- Venus squared Saturn last week, highlighting the current Saturn-Uranus square. Her exact contact with Saturn and then Uranus suggests that we encountered some kind of block or tension recently around matters of the heart (such as having intense emotions and not wanting to reveal them) and this tension is further being worked – we may be feeling a little shaken by it (Uranus) – or is coming to some place of liberation, epiphany, freedom (also Uranus).
- From a higher perspective, these jolting upsets in matters of the heart can be openings. Being penetrated by life is actually valuable. How we create intimacy with ourselves in the space of moving through big feelings matters.
Venus in 15 Scorpio trine Pallas Athene retrograde in 15 Pisces: 8:58 PM PDT
(Image: Prinsomnia)
- Athena is a warrior-philosopher goddess and relates to creative intelligence, the capacity to visualize something and manifest it into form – to create from the head. A feminine, fertility principle of the mind. Athena relates to the art of visualization, and in Pisces these could be visualizations that promote healing. In trine to Venus in Scorpio, there may be certain sore spots (or agonies, even) that we can direct healing energy/intention toward. Athena in Pisces may relate to strategies around spiritual development or spiritual healing as well as specific tools/modalities: EFT/tapping, reiki, energy work, mindset work, and the like.
September 25, 2021
Mars in 7 Libra trine Saturn retrograde in 7 Aquarius: 2:50 PM PDT
(Image: @nikolator)
- With Mars in Libra’s capacity for social dissent and Saturn in Aquarius’s architectural understanding of social networks and social paradigms, and the two being in harmonic aspect, there may be some critical challenges to social dynamics that are having some impact during this time, potentially in a way that is well-received, especially if the argument/position is well thought-out or balanced.
- This aspect may relate to some caution or conscientiousness around how we sharpen our swords (i.e. the intellect) and our swords of ideology. It is one thing to get so wrapped up in an ideology that it simply becomes divisive and alienating, from an internal standpoint even. It is another to develop a worldview or a systems awareness that then informs a strategy for creating and providing something of value. There is a difference between picking fights on social media platforms versus social innovators coming up and executing ideas to create more communal wealth, opportunity etc.
- To get to the place of the latter – working with ideas that eventually turn into positive actions – we must also direct the mind to places of inspiration and creativity, and not just about cutting down and negating what we think is wrong. Notions of what is wrong can inspire constructive action, if we complete the loop and think creatively/innovatively as opposed to only antagonistically.
September 26, 2021
Mercury stations retrograde in 25 Libra: 10:10 PM PDT
(Image: Vicente Segrelles)
Mercury will station direct on October 18 in 10 degrees of Libra.
- Mercury in Libra is concerned with thinking in a considerate, dare we say (cause yes it is a keyword, wait for it), balanced, way. This relates to faculty of mind that can judge – consider multiple options, weigh them, and acknowledge preferences and make comparisons. This retrograde may highlight places that we do this mentally: where we are open to multiple perspectives and are assessing, weighing, and assigning value judgements.
- At the moment of this station, Mercury is contacting Pluto in Capricorn by square, and Jupiter in Aquarius by trine. Our deliberations therefore may include encounters with the unconscious and shadow work or places we are compulsive around seeking security (Pluto in Capricorn) as well as idealistic, generous, future visions about what is possible (Jupiter in Aquarius). Notice how each informs the other. If we aspire toward something innovative and futuristic, we have to address what blocks we have to participating. Think of parents for example, who imagine raising their kids better than they were raised, and so they are inevitably confronted with their own childhood wounds. Likewise, as we consider and give space for our shadow and processing deeper material, we free up stagnant energy and may naturally have epiphanies that help us move toward a more imaginative future (Jupiter in Aquarius).
- In short, this Mercury in Libra retrograde may be an invitation to consider both our aspirational, innovative, futuristic side that prefers peak experiences, as well as our investigative, penetrating, shadowy side that prefers descent/death processes.
September 28, 2021
Pallas Athene retrograde in 14 Pisces sextile Uranus retrograde in 14 Taurus: 12:34 AM PDT
- Remember Athena is in conversation with Venus in Scorpio right now as well, who is opposite Uranus in Taurus. So we have a Venus-Uranus-Athena dynamic.
- Uranus in Taurus begs a revolutionized relationship with all things Taurus: money, food, nervous system capacity, sensation, EMBODIMENT, earth, green technology. Even the methodology involved in this revolution can be different, perhaps slower. Lately I’ve been thinking about all the extra jobs that no one wants, because people are questioning how they are willing to participate in labor or the workforce. A major shift in consciousness could be moving away from extraction. Extraction here meaning the way we use and abuse earth and how we use and abuse ourselves to participate in the various social mechanisms borne of an extractive and abusive paradigm. New ways are possible, and it may be a major slowing down and going within to discover this wellspring within and strategize (Athena) how to actually participate in the world in a new paradigm way.
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: Jump Suit, Mirella Petteni, Oslo, Photo by F. C. Gundlach, 1963)
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