Forecast

Sun in Aquarius square the nodes: Astrology of 2/9 – 2/15

Mercury and Pluto join up for the third time now that Mercury has stationed direct, and the Sun in Aquarius will square the lunar nodes in Taurus and Scorpio. I think about this week’s transits in the context of the medicine of the transiting North Node in Taurus: that is, getting to know our own essence deeply and moving toward value and away from addiction.

Let’s look at addiction energetically, not from a place of morality – addiction, at a basic level, is binding – it limits freedom in an attempt to feed something. We seek to get the experience we’re addicted to and feel compulsively bound to keep coming back to that place. Even if we are resourced to feed the addiction, it doesn’t feel good or contribute to a sense of self-esteem.

Over time, self-knowledge, self-esteem, and a deeper awareness of our inner reality and inner signals can transition the patterns of addiction.

The North Node in Taurus can open up a deeper interest in true value: what is actually nourishing.

Mercury-Pluto joining up in Capricorn may highlight some of our more addictive or compulsive mental patterns: where we scan for fear or threat because of some somatic wiring, not because it’s our true desire to live in fear.

As someone with Mercury-Pluto natally, I’ve found that I crave information that is alchemical – I love high-impact, brilliant/illuminating books and podcasts that “change my life” and I love information that genuinely gives me life. Understanding this sensation gives me a standard to aspire to and makes me not as vulnerable to going down high-sensation rabbit holes, anxiety loops, or giving my mind ‘junk food’ in the form of imbibing manipulative content or being susceptible to that level of persuasion. The quality of intensity is present in either direction: but the value is drastically different.

Something I’ve learned about addiction over the years is that willpower or control are not ideal methods of curbing it. There’s a deeper need, a deeper thing that wants to be fed, and there’s a journey of discovering what is actually nourishing enough to break the cycle.

The Sun in Aquarius squares the nodes, suggesting our capacity for excitement and electricity is up for deeper integration. Do you know the difference between excitement rooted in addiction, versus true excitement? Are you sensitive to the quiet whisper of inspiration, and love yourself enough to let yourself have it? (Love can be realized as a practice, a verb.)

Something else worth mentioning is that shame and addiction go hand in hand as a cycle. When I’ve wanted to undo an addiction, it’s also been really helpful to stop having shame about the pattern, to become increasingly neutral about it, “there I am, doing that thing again.” The less I fed it with shame, the easier it was to unravel the pattern.

Taurean self-awareness, knowing our own essence and energy, is to know all kinds of different parts of ourselves, spaces we hold acceptance as well as places we really don’t prefer. A deeper Taurean self-esteem allows for the unfolding of humanness, for imperfection. It is not complacency, but rather not making a huge deal (or sensationalizing) that which we don’t really like. In doing that, we decrease our enmeshment to the pattern and create more freedom for change.

And interestingly, one of the reasons we don’t take the time to be with ourselves more deeply is because it can be painful to just BE with ourselves, without numbing or distraction. To work with Taurus is to step into the body, the mess, the viscera, and just really know it.

Taurus is the mystery of internal orientation, the capacity of being rooted in our own agency/power. It is the anchor point in a storm, a mountain surrounded by wind. Do you know this part of you – can you begin a deeper dialogue with it?

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 continue reading below:

Here’s our week after a few announcements!

Astrology reading books open – I am taking a small number of clients and hope to open my books more frequently than I have been. You can purchase a reading with me here (while spots are available).

METEORITE 2022: We begin again March 6, 2022! This is a yearlong advanced course for alumni of the Evolutionary Astrology Intensive (and the previous Meteorite). This group is in service to astrological craft and voice, our mission is to become receptive to downloads and novel insights and to embody them. This is a high level practitioner group for people wanting to strengthen their astrology practice both for their own enrichment and for their participation in the world. By being in community and the unique field that opens up in this group, we’ll spark and accelerate our creativity. The course facilitates each student to produce a project of their own invention within the year program, whether this project is creative, scholarly, or personal.

“Meteorite is more than a course. It is an initiation into understanding and embodying astrology – not only a symbolic language, but an animate path into your soul’s true essence. The container is simultaneously expansive and electrifying, grounding and challenging. You will build relationships with fellow travelers who are all unified by the sincere desire to live more enchanted, magical lives. And yet, we come together with the understanding that we won’t all end up in the same destination – we take with us what’s most prescient in developing our individual paths. At the end of our first year together, I began to hear my own unique voice as an astrologer and to viscerally feel my path. The hivemind that constellated around Meteorite assisted me in further developing relationships with astrological archetypes and in communicating my knowledge with the communities that I serve.

Throughout, Sabrina held the container with integrity, stamina, and versatility in toggling back and forth between the leader and a community member. I appreciate that Sabrina was able to honor all our diverse perspectives while holding the energetic sacredness of the container.” – Jonathan Koe

Apply here by February 27.

Here’s our week:

February 11, 2022

Mercury in 27 Capricorn conjunct Pluto in 27 Capricorn: 6:04 AM PST

(Image: The Mythic Tarot)

This is the third Mercury-Pluto conjunction since Mercury passed over Pluto before stationing retrograde (December 30, 2021), then again when retrograde (January 28, 2022), and now for the last time direct. Since we’ve been talking about this transit a few times lately, I’ll share a different angle this time –

Mercury-Pluto could correspond with our “reptile brain”, survival brain, the part of us that is wired to defend and protect ourselves from threats.
Mercury-Pluto brings together the messenger & the psychopomp (Mercury) with Hades, god of the underworld (Pluto). Together with this reptile brain association, it could be possible that more of our conscious thoughts of late have revealed hidden recesses of the psyche – such as when we interpret a threat in a situation from a reactive/fearful place and we end up being incorrect and realizing we projected that fear onto the situation.
When this type of content (secret fears and wishes) makes itself known and heard into dialogue, conversation can both become very sticky and leaden with complex/loaded topics – or transformation can occur and care and intimacy can deepen.
A necessary factor in the situation is trust. (Trust is a very Plutonic topic, as is betrayal of trust or self-betrayal.) Mercury-Pluto in Capricorn specifically may be offering lessons around sober discernment when it comes to sharing information.
Mercury-Pluto can constellate as communications that do not match the subtext or undercurrent – i.e. when someone says something, but it doesn’t seem true. Or we hear something coming out of our own mouths and think, maybe I don’t actually mean that. Communications where the superficial layer and the undercurrent match end up having a more magnetic and powerful quality. Where we feel the dissonance can create a room for deeper curiosity and re-alignment.
In terms of trust and boundaries, Mercury-Pluto in Capricorn could bring up reflection on who we actually trust with our deeper or more vulnerable thoughts, privileged information, and the like. I’ve grown to learn that most times I have been burned/betrayed/etc. by someone I had already been able to assess that risk in the situation but overrode that due to other interests: really wanting the connection to work out, seeing the best in them, or even thinking that if I just communicated well enough I would be understood and shown up for in the way I wanted. The list goes on. There was always some kind of hook. For me, becoming more accurate with how I extend or don’t extend trust is tending to my side of the street.
Having right relationship with risk analysis and healthy trust & healthy distrust means being able to trust our own instincts and nervous system – noticing our own signals and knowing how to interpret our animal body. To be in this particular kind of discerning animal power I find requires a purification process.
By purification process, I am not speaking of moral purity – I mean that intuition isn’t clouded by anxiety, or impulse isn’t clouded by traumatized reactivity, or intelligent awareness of danger isn’t clouded by paranoia and a system that is addicted to stress and anxiety. You can see where I’m going here…
The process of mental purification (Mercury-Pluto) means that we learn and adapt skillsets that help us transform our minds and nervous systems. Positive thinking alone is a great practice to build but it takes a lot of discipline if we don’t have our bodies backing that up. Even though Mercury-Pluto is just a passing transit in the sky at the moment, we all could evolve/adapt through having a deeper and more intelligent relationship with our nervous systems. Certainly it is an evolutionary skill that is being *asked for* amid the stressors of living in a fast-paced global age of information!

February 14, 2022

Mercury enters Aquarius: 1:53 PM PST

Mercury originally stationed retrograde in Aquarius, went back into Capricorn, and is back in Aquarius again.

February 15, 2022

Sun in 27 Aquarius square the lunar nodes in 27 Scorpio (south) and 27 Taurus (north): 1:08 PM PST

(Image: Stefan Blaser)

This is building up to a full moon (February 16) where the Sun and Moon will form a grand fixed cross with the lunar nodes. If you haven’t already tuned in, I have a body of work going on the fixed signs (a talk here) and several recent transmissions on them on Magic of the Spheres podcast. I’m fascinated by the fixed signs because they hold so much energy – blockage/stagnation/trauma/resistance as well as power, creativity, abundance, genius. I find these signs hold challenges around the tendency toward stagnation as well as the codes for profound investment of lifeforce energy, mutually-enhancing exchanges of power, living free from addiction, clearing blockages around wealth and becoming fully receptive and available to financial reciprocity for the offering of one’s passions, living in right relationship with the erotic, and more.

Exploring the world-dismantling and world-building qualities of the fixed signs in practice will be one of the themes for this year’s METEORITE beginning in March.

For the Sun square the nodes, here are some thoughts:

There may be a sense that our unique expression feels particularly ‘up’ as something we are reflecting on or feeling challenged by. The Sun square the nodes suggests that inherently – that our radiant essence (Sun) is seeking deeper integration with our ego structures and emotional attachments (the lunar nodes). This challenge is felt in the way that people want to come out with their medicine/offering but fear the backlash from family members or community, or someone wants to be more true to themselves in their expression but they simply feel stuck/frozen or overloaded at a nervous system level when they move toward that kind of visibility.
There can be a tendency to get a little too blown-out or overboard about the mental stories around why we are not ‘allowed’ to be who we are. Insight and perspective ideally could be enlivening, or necessarily sobering, helpful, a guide around alignment. “Insight” and “perspective” that colludes with the untended and non-alchemized fear or stress that lives in our body — not as much.
We all have forms of expression or ways of being that are easeful in our nervous systems, and forms of expression and ways of being that feel intense, get our heart rates up, or have us actually feel like we’re dying. If we are simply beholden to this feedback of what feels okay, we may lack versatility or bandwidth for responding to life in creative ways that aren’t just our set range of responses we’ve become egoically attached to and comfortable with in our nervous systems.
It becomes evolutionary to admit what is “in range” for us – what we are capable of without feeling overwhelmed/flooded – and then to take steps to expand that range, without blasting way past the range and burning ourselves out.
When it comes to expression, I’ll give a few personal examples of expanding range. One was I used to be so physically anxious after sending out these emails and had to go through a whole nervous system activation around feeling safe letting my work come through me, instead of me getting in the way of it. Now, sending these emails is not highly sensational (triggering lots of body responses) for me, but the practice of showing up consistently helped me re-condition my nervous system around this act of public broadcasting.
Another is that after experiencing some traumas around heartbreak, I lost a lot of confidence and struggled for some years around meeting people. There was a lot of unraveling that had to occur, but eventually one of the initiations it came down to was making eye contact with people that I specifically wanted to connect with (instead of being afraid to look at them) and having conversations, instead of moving through the world more guarded and unavailable. At a visceral level, moving through the world guarded and unavailable was very easy for me but expressing interest when something felt on the line (fear of rejection, fear of not being good enough, pretty enough, etc) was highly sensational and a growth edge for me.
There are ways that just being a PERSON and EXISTING feels excruciating – not because it is inherently – but because we just feel ridiculous about who we are or not in full approval of it. The Sun in Aquarius integrating into the nodes in Taurus and Scorpio means developing the sturdiness in our bodies to be who we are (expanding into the sensations) and owning the power of who we are – the power of being the unique creature that we are. We can have so many stories about why we’re not good enough or other people are better, and start to feel so disempowered and victimized by our very existence. Taking greater ownership of the narrative we have about ourselves can be a way that we step back into the ‘throne’ of our personhood instead of exiling ourselves from that seat.

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 and will be offered again and I am taking applications for METEORITE 2022 here.

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