This week brings us a Full Moon in Aries conjunct Chiron – this lunation is illuminated by Sun in Libra with Venus in Libra under the beams. The Moon-Chiron conjunction in Aries highlights sensitivities around how we see ourselves and the particular trials that we’ve historically identified with, and the ways we’ve designed our character in reaction/response.
Due to there being a moment of illumination occurring around these storylines, it may offer a kind of checkpoint for reassessment or evolution/healing occurring at a new layer.
Mars, ruler of Aries, is currently in Gemini and will square Neptune at the end of the week. This transit has a quality of an infinite choose-your-own-adventure, where any approach or action we take in reality unfurls into a distinct timeline. There can be some necessity here to become more disciplined about not investing energy in thoughts, fantasies, and perspectives that severely diminish us (i.e. have us feeling sorry for ourselves, make it hard to start the day, distract us from living) and alternately investing in pathways that bring us to life and in that way, respect and honor life.
With these factors happening at the same time, the awareness that we have of our sensitivities and unique heroic wounds (our tragic flaw, or that one problematic thing in our lives we have never really been able to figure out) may feel psychologically daunting but the call to adventure is not necessarily to pick at the problem and feel defeated by it, but rather to uncover the next step in the story in a meaningful direction.
There may be a call for balance then, on how we are relating to soberly assessing an issue at hand (taking responsibility, not looking away) versus how we are investing energy in nourishment, wellbeing, creativity, and the rest of life such that we are holistic and not getting tunnel-visioned and myopic.
The symbolism of Venus under the beams suggests that reconciliation is on the way in ways we cannot see yet. I think of peak moments of distress, or the existential anxieties that “it’s never going to work out” or those existential places we literally cannot imagine things getting better, at least in the troubled area of life. For me personally, these are places I find it helpful to turn to prayer and to literally ask Spirit (or whoever you speak to) to show me the way and to help me see.
For those who have less to no resistance to feelings (there’s more permission for them to flow, there’s not a lot of additional emotional reaction to the emotions) – life’s dramas become adventures.
When we do not accept the complexity and imperfection of earthly life, it can seem like such an affront that anything ‘wrong’ is happening.
When there is a fundamental okayness with the reality that life is complex and imperfect, we can utilize the energy that we have to become creative about how we want to live our lives within the challenges that have been presented to us. It might even become fun. (I recognize the blatant kinkiness of that statement so, may be a time to re-recommend Existential Kink by Carolyn Elliot.)
Full Moon in Aries warrior mode. 😂
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 my writing to your inbox and be notified of upcoming educational opportunities and opportunities to work together, sign up for my mailing list here.
Listen to the audio version of this forecast, or keep reading below:
(Top image: Joan of Arc, image source JSTOR)
Here’s our week after a few announcements:
The status of the weekly forecasts – after writing these for seven years (mostly every week) I took a summer off and thought I was maybe done for good with this form of astrological writing and announced that I was. But then I began to miss writing them! My intention had not been to stop astrological writing altogether, but to make more space to innovate or try other things. Taking time away, I’ve gained more perspective about why I write these forecasts and I do see myself continuing to write them while making more space to take weeks off or create other things in place of the forecasts. So I am ✨softly✨ returning to this practice.
October books are open for 90 minute Evolutionary Astrology Fusion readings – these readings are based in the Evolutionary approach which is to uncover a narrative of the soul’s evolution in the chart via Pluto and the lunar nodes. It is an investigation of our deeper, soul-level storyline and what fundamentally compels us, & the gifts and challenges that have arisen from our most deeply rooted desires and patterns.
We have our whole life to work with that material! So I tend to localize the reading to what’s on your heart space now, offering the bigger picture of the natal chart but zooming into what in this deeper soul narrative is being worked with ✨now✨ and what doorways and openings might be here, where you are already situated, what you might be leaving behind, what you might be moving toward.
The fusion readings are about synthesizing this Pluto-based approach with a more eclectic range of techniques and schools of thought – drawing in Hellenistic astrology, an exploration of what Greek myths are highlighted in your chart most prominently via minor asteroids and how that muses through you, and toward the end of the reading we integrate the session with EFT/tapping, personalized visualization, or Akashic channeling, depending on what came up in the collaboration of the reading space.
The beginning of the reading is a conversation, the end is a journey. The prayer/offering is that the space we cultivate together is a meaningful catalyst of self-remembrance, connection to the cosmos, deeper reconciliation with our own essence & the world we find ourselves a part of, and a deepening into the unique opportunity of this lifetime.
Dragon of the Moon: an Evolutionary Astrology Initiation – coming this February 2023
Previously titled the Evolutionary Astrology Intensive, this course is being offered again under a new name, Dragon of the Moon: an Evolutionary Astrology Initiation. This program is designed to give students a footing in their own astrological intuition and literacy, and we journey specifically into a deeper understanding of Pluto and the lunar nodes, and how to read charts from the perspective of the soul. We learn how to decode the inherent meaning or value in every experience we’ve ever had (as the soul explicitly learns through experience), and with this insight, also gain the power to make new choices and tell new stories. An understanding of Pluto and the nodes in the natal chart leads to a profound meditation on our deepest desires and inclinations in this life, and the personality structures we’ve created to secure those desires. By examining this material in a grounded, mythopoetic, compassionate space (of the program) we get to uncover new ways that we might relate to our deepest motivations in more life-enhancing ways. The natal chart can guide us into discovering how the story we’ve been living as a soul wants to continue. I have found these teachings invaluable as I’ve grown up alongside them and built my life in relationship to them, and I’m honored to share it with the amazing, tight-knit communities that form around this alchemical fire.
From the most recent run of this course, Kristen says: “I am a long time reader of Sabrina Monarch’s astrology writing. Her columns have been so insightful and helpful to me over the years that I think I started to just treat her words like she was receiving transmissions for all of us. Her work always feels alive and resonant and on point. So, recently, after a year where both my parents died and all manner of other loss had been opening up in my life, I decided it was time to throw down and take Sabrina’s Intensive Evolutionary Astrology course. And I am so very glad I did; it was truly transformative. I learned so much about myself, astrology, karma, and the human condition. Delving into Pluto and the nodes has completely shifted my sense of my chart and my life. I now have a more aligned and deepened sense of who I am and what kind of wave I’m riding in this life. The course is structured really well to build from learning planetary qualities to being able to read a chart intuitively on the spot. I’m amazed by how much I learned. In addition, I really liked the other people in the class. The class draws some amazing magical healing folks from across great geographical distances. What a gift! One of the best parts of the class, though, is observing Sabrina’s delineations of people’s charts. She has a way of finding the creative potential in every combination. She never sees anything as static or stuck; she doesn’t frame anything as negative. Everything is framed in terms of how your soul is evolving. Every challenge comes with medicine. It’s such a productive and encouraging framework that it yields what it promises – it helps us evolve, it brings out the best in us. This course provides ample opportunity for self-study, self-discovery, and healing. It helped me bring into view some hidden and atrophied parts of myself and begin aligning them with the parts that are working and in plain sight. I feel like I’ve got a much better sense of who I am at a soul level, and what I’m ultimately called toward in this life. And I made some new friends.”
Here’s our week:
October 5, 2022
Vesta stations direct in 22 Aquarius: 11:13 AM PDT
- Vesta is a priestess archetype of devotion, sacred space, and cultivated/contained fire. Contained fire is different than wildfire in the sense that a contained fire is intentional and bordered. Vesta is about channeling or focusing our passions.
- With Vesta stationing in Aquarius, we might consider how we tend to the massive amount of information represented by this sign. Aquarius relates to the Higher Mind – a deeper personal memory than this lifetime, as well as a collective field of information like the Akashic Records. It also relates to mental trauma and places where we have fractured or split off due to shocking events in the past. Aquarius is both the process of this mental splitting and the process of re-integration.
- Vesta is artful about relating to that which could consume us. She is like a fire dancer, a snake charmer – she understands kundalini. In Aquarius, it is like she is working with electricity and voltage. We may be undergoing illuminations or adjustments around how we relate to trauma, and the variety of aspects of Self that have been split off from our main day-to-day identity and awareness.
- One Aquarius medicine is excitement: following our excitement – listening to the impulses and whispers that bring us more to life. Following our excitement often brings change & often brings us back into contact with aspects of ourselves we’ve left dormant. Continually cultivating excitement and allowing it to escalate is not a lot unlike being a fire dancer or a snake charmer if we realize that authentic excitement (that surprises us) is an encounter with a more electric aspect of life that has the power to deeply confront us as the thread unfolds. Excitement brings us into contact with a deeper range of our own Self (and parts of self that have been sleeping, or out of view). However, to ignore this area of life is to have an unnecessarily dull experience.
- So we may draw upon the wisdom of Vesta here for balance. If we are going to up-level, upgrade, or radically come into contact with a deeper vibrancy within us, how do we make a home for ourselves in the new frequency? After a peak experience, how does it change our approach to everyday life? After a massive, chills-inducing revelation, how does it fertilize our entire life?
October 6, 2022
Mercury in 26 Virgo trine Pluto retrograde in 26 Capricorn: 8:55 PM PDT
- An awareness of error or dysfunction may be emerging that is psychologically confronting to be with, or we may be realizing more deeply the ways our actions, patterns, and thoughts have created problematic consequences.
- We will want to take care to not be excessive in the ways that we ruminate, regret, or punish.
- These problems likely have solutions. Solving problems is a form of evolution. We may want to cultivate the mental discipline to focus on what we can do to improve the situation, without wasting our energy on the excesses mentioned above (rumination, regret, and punishment).
October 7, 2022
Sun in 14 Libra opposite Chiron retrograde in 14 Aries: 3:48 AM PDT
- This opposition highlights the reality that relationships are a place where we work out material, such as our core wounds, personal vulnerabilities and early attachment stories.
- There is a dimension, alternately, of relationship that is celebration and creation.
- No matter how amazing a relationship it is, it will have its issues, just as every individual has issues.
- One issue that may be arising within this opposition is the way in which we or others are feeling the need to defend themselves. In what way does relating constellate threat. What is at risk? These inquiries may relate to our own softening and the realization that we are bringing more reactivity to the situation than needed. This inquiries may relate to an understanding that sensitivity or boundary is needed, that wasn’t there before.
- These negotiations (Libra) may be based in personal understanding (Aries) and these are dynamic, alive fluctuations in the sense that relationships change our personal concept, and our personal concept changes our relationships – thus re-negotiations can occur at deeper and deeper levels of intimacy.
October 8, 2022
Pluto stations direct in 26 Capricorn: 2:56 PM PDT
- Pluto stations infuse the air with an extra presence of intensity, opera, and drama, as Pluto relates to our deepest attachments and desires and the anguish and turmoil we go through in the reckoning with that dimension of life.
- Pluto also relates to the process of becoming cleaner and more intentional and empowered about how we relate to our desire, the empowerment process we have of realizing our innate magnetism or innate capacities, instead of reaching for our own power outside of us and constellating the various power dynamics that ensue when we identify something SO important and valuable to us as outside of us.
- It is true that we can become more than what we currently are when we bond or merge with something beyond us, and Pluto is also a teacher on how we can create mutually enhancing bonds and relationships as opposed to engaging in extractive or manipulative dynamics.
- Over the years, Pluto stations have taught me to tread lightly and to be introspective. The situation at hand that feels like the source of intensity is often a cypher for something else, something deeper and more unconscious. There is a balance around attending to the reality of any given situation, and piecing apart our own projections onto the situation.
- With Pluto in Capricorn, we may think of the power of time to help us gain clarity on a situation that feels emergent or pressing, and consider if we are relating to Time as though Time is on our side or as though we are fighting it.
- With Pluto in Capricorn, we might also think about our relationship with emotional sobriety and accepting what is, versus the amount of energy we put into resisting what is. It is possible that with accepting certain harder truths, we can become more creative about how to work with the limitations.
- There may also be a theme on the way that excessive doubt weakens us – doubt about our intuition, doubt that things will ever work out, doubt about ourselves and our confidence. Doubt is a shaky energy. It is not the same thing as being realistic. Doubt is a liminal space of not knowing. Doubt does not need to be bypassed, but we might look for the opening to come to a deeper place of trust, even in the face of the unknown. We might limit our investment in the fears that emerge from the orientation of doubt and find a place of steadiness within that can wait out the storm, or the place of steadiness within us that can make a move (internally or externally) in a helpful direction.
October 9, 2022
Full Moon in 16 Aries: 1:55 PM PDT
Venus in Libra is under the beams of the Sun in Libra. The Moon is conjunct Chiron in Aries. Saturn in Aquarius forms a trine to Venus and the Sun in Libra, and a sextile to the Moon in Aries. Consider what houses in your chart are ruled by Libra and Aries for insight.
- Aries is motivated around the pursuit of becoming a full expression of itself, starting from a seed form. The seed knows it will one day become a tree, even as a seed – and so Aries has an enormous appetite for seeing itself realized. The journey to realization is full of challenge, obstacle, and initiations, which Aries is all the more attuned to because of the awareness that one is moving toward some special destiny. If the seed had no idea it would one day become a tree, the road from seed to tree wouldn’t feel so epic and heroic and dramatic – it would just be a series of events that happened to lead to realization. (Or it’s possible, without the desire for a grander life, the call to adventure wouldn’t have been answered.) Aries wants to be freed from the past, and propelled into the promise of victory which is literally encoded at birth.
- An emotional reveal that may be occurring with this Full Moon is that of our impatience to arrive, our impatience to win or to secure a victory – whatever that looks like for us, especially related to the house topics that Aries rules in our own natal charts.
- There may be a call for a different orientation – such as having faith that our healing or personal realization is happening, even when we can’t recognize it.
- Symbolically, Venus in the beams of the Sun represents something good or reconciliatory that we can’t see yet (it is behind the scenes). This Sun is casting full light on the Moon conjunct Chiron, where we are very much feeling or very aware of our own wounds and pain points. It is like a moment of feeling separate from what we’re working toward, not being able to imagine or see the results we are so intuitively drawn to.
- Aries is often a call to courage, and here it is a call to keep moving toward the promise of realization even if we experience lapses in trust that it is going to work out. There may be a real medicine in pursuing alignment & not being attached to outcome.
- “One day, we’ll look back on this moment and laugh at how it was all part of the story….”
October 10, 2022
Venus in 14 Libra opposite Chiron retrograde in 14 Aries: 6:15 AM PDT
Mercury enters Libra: 4:50 PM PDT
- Mercury, now direct, re-enters Libra. We leave behind the pragmatic, organized, detail-oriented placement of Mercury in Virgo and enter a Mercury placement that is more concerned with aesthetic and beauty, such as having a beautiful perspective or cultivating romantic thought. There may also be concern around having “fair” analysis of a situation, taking into account various or contradicting factors and making a judgement.
October 11, 2022
Sun in 18 Libra trine Saturn retrograde in 18 Aquarius: 6:06 PM PDT
- We may want to consider the ways we compartmentalize our vision or sight, that have the effect of drawing the curtains in a room full of plants, denying those plants nutrients. When our vision becomes stifling because we are choosing to look at something (negative perhaps) and ignore the cultivation of life.
- On the other hand, we can consider where we can restore balance in our lives by intentionally casting light of awareness on something life-enhancing. Where is our attention fruitful now, and how can that attention restore harmony to our overall life, mood, wellbeing?
- This is not to promote ignoring what needs to be tended to, but rather to acknowledge that cutting ourselves off from all light in myopic awareness of “what is wrong” can lead to imbalances, whereas tending to and magnifying the good and the beautiful (intentionally finding it) can produce momentum.
Mars in 23 Gemini square Neptune retrograde in 23 Pisces: 10:46 PM
I’ve written about this significant transit as part of the upcoming Mars retrograde, in this article you can read here (or watch the video).
- This transit speaks to a profound (infinite!) number of possibilities in reality. Gemini is a shapeshifter and can approach reality from an infinite number of angles.
- From a spiritual perspective, we look at Neptune as Source, the Source from which all things come and return to. Source has the capacity to animate a variety of realities and timelines, real and fantastical. We go to see a film and watch a fantasy and story before our eyes, and then the film ends. So too we also have experiences and dreams which come into form and leave form, we have days which begin and end – everything essentially, is animated for a time and then returns to the Source.
- It is often said that all spiritual paths lead to the same end, the same home, the same place of realization – like a mountain peak. However, we could also consider the concept of one ocean, many shores (coined I believe by philosopher Jorge Ferrer). This is to say the same Source animates all possibilities, but the path we take will lead us to a variety of shores or experiences within the reality.
- With the Mars-Neptune square, there are infinite possibilities (even within the frame of limitations, there are infinite ways to relate) and we are at some risk of draining our vital energy by entertaining streams of possibility which are related to our fear and anxiety. On the other hand, we can be quite creative and inspired about working with streams of possibility that animate and enchant our lives in meaningful directions.
- It is important to consider the nature of boundary-less-ness at the moment in the way that it might feel real and compelling to entertain a particular stream of thought/action, but it is just one of many possible realities. If we are more liable to be carried away right now, we can be intentional about what we are choosing to get carried away with – how we really wish to be living our lives.
Thank you for meditating on the transits with me! If you would like further guidance, I have been increasingly focused on longer-term experiences in the form of Dragon of the Moon: an Evolutionary Astrology Initiation and my higher level course METEORITE for alumni – 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. Dragon of the Moon is currently open for applications and METEORITE 2022 is currently in session.
Find me on Instagram @sabrinamonarch, get on my mailing list to stay apprised of all upcoming offerings and events, and I’ll see you again soon!
(Please be mindful of scams on instagram. I will not solicit you in your DMs for readings, and any accounts with variations of spelling/punctuation of my actual profile (@sabrinamonarch) are impersonation scams.)
With love,
Sabrina Monarch
No Comments