Hello again from Peru! Last time I wrote you near the eclipse, I was struggling a bit, but I come to you now thoroughly ✨in love✨, earth-tumbled, land-ravished, connected with new family, surrounded by sacred mountains, and ecstatic. I extended my stay cause I couldn’t bring myself to leave just yet. But, it was also time to come back to the internet world more and back to astrological writing, so these are some things about the upcoming astrology that I want to share with you!
The Sun enters Sagittarius November 22 at 12:20 AM PST – just in time for this Jupiter-ruled season and a new moon on November 23, one of the most relevant things I could draw from my travels and current experience to weave into writing here is about prayer and having conversation with the Universe. My experience in Peru has been full of ceremony and plant medicine in profoundly held containers, and it’s been more life-changing than I can really keep up with in writing at the moment.
What I can distill for the moment is how expansive it has been on this trip (and many times in the past) to learn how other people pray and commune with the earth and the Universe – and to enter that prayer field with them. Jupiter relates to teaching and higher knowledge, and we can have *direct* communication with Source – we can be inspired to create our own prayers, rituals, or receive our own visions and insights. However, there are also gateways – opportunities, experiences, teachers, that stand at various thresholds in life.
We also find ourselves stationed at these gateways when we are teachers – officially or unofficially. Many have innate qualities and lead by example. It can be life-affirming to receive reflection and reminders from others of what we’re like and the impact that we have as sometimes we underestimate our own influence.
Jupiter relates to generosity, and generosity of spirit – the generosity to cultivate and share our own essence freely and to thus participate in the dance of nature. Over and over again, I discover we don’t do this alone, but are part of an interconnected fabric (hey, Jupiter is in Pisces right now – the oneness!).
Notice what truly lifts your spirit and this is one way to meet Jupiter. I see us in a continual dance of offering our own service (lifting the others, giving to Life) as well as receiving and seeking support from those who inspire us or those who we recognize as having knowledge that we desire to connect with.
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.
(Top image: detail from a Konsta Punkka photograph)
Here’s our week after a few announcements:
DRAGON OF THE MOON: AN EVOLUTIONARY ASTROLOGY INITIATION – STARTING 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.”
Hungry Ghosts of Paradise – a new audio-novella on Magic of the Spheres podcast. You can find it where you listen to podcasts or more conveniently on this Spotify playlist. It was published in chapters as they were written from April – October 2022, and is an erotic story about tragic love – a work of art to transmute the heaviest things I carried into my Saturn return and wanted to release. The novel was a prayer of soul retrieval and freedom and I believe the prayer was answered – I hope the novel helps other people connect to the depths of their own experience, Eros, and grief as well.
Here’s our week:
November 23, 2022
New Moon in 1 Sagittarius: 2:57 PM PST
- We may be reminded or re-inspired around the importance of making wishes. To have a wish is to desire expansion, and expansion is one of Jupiter and Sagittarius’ major qualities.
- When I think of wishes, I also think of what holds us back from bigger dreams in the first place: limiting beliefs, fears of getting what we want (we think we want it, but our power or fullness still triggers us in some way), or lack of nervous system capacity to hold what we’re calling in.
- When I think of wishes, I think of the trickster quality of the genie, who gives you what you wish, but with a twist (“be careful what you wish for”).
- When I think of wishes, I also think of how we get what we pray for and sometimes there’s a little edge to it – like praying for strength and receiving challenging experiences to facilitate strength training.
- With all this in mind, NOT wishing is not the answer when it comes to a Jupiter-ruled new moon – but rather, perhaps a new orientation to how we wish, what we wish for, or a new call to adventure related to a desire – the willingness to actually be changed and awakened by the wish.
- With Sagittarius, there is less emphasis on “having” the desired thing we wish for, but it’s more about the journey of who we are becoming in moving toward the prayer, desire, or wish. We may very well “have” it in the end, but Sagittarius brings into our awareness the holistic bigger picture and who we become in the adventure is paramount.
- Sagittarius is the glory of the quest: how we seek experiences, teachers, guides, initiations, along the way of a particular quest/desire.
- Specific ceremonial environments can be supportive for encouraging wishing & expanding through moving toward desire. However, if that’s not where we are situated, we can also be in our own prayer space or our own dialogue with the Universe.
- Sagittarius involves the art of talking to the Universe and being able to recognize the way the Universe is talking back. Perhaps it sends us a dream at night, an opportunity, an omen, an inner enthusiasm pointing us in a direction. Remember, we can’t really hear the Universe phoning us back if we didn’t start the conversation to begin with.
November 24, 2022
Mercury in 12 Sagittarius trine Chiron in 12 Aries: 10:46 PM PST
See below.
November 25, 2022
Venus in 12 Sagittarius trine Chiron in 12 Aries: 4:51 PM PST
(Image: War & Peace, BBC 2016)
Venus and Mercury are traveling together in Sagittarius, approaching an opposition to Mars retrograde in Gemini. Within a day, they each trine Chiron in Aries. Some thoughts:
- Venus and Mercury come together for beautiful language, song/music, harmonious and connected communication, and things along these lines that you may imagine. In Sagittarius, there is especially a quality of expansion and flowery, extra-verbose or extra-flirtatious language.
- What might it mean for this joyful couple, Mercury & Venus, to trine an asteroid related to wounding and core wounding (as well as the initiations that are connected to these wounds)?
- We might find relief or even transformation of a given situation through beautiful language or song. Contemporarily/historically, through forces of colonization and separation from nature (a wound of separation – Chiron in Aries no?), many people are disconnected from singing and dancing which are original pathways to health, joy, connection. I speak from experience as someone who did not grow up singing and dancing except in musical theater which was personally painful for me – and I spent many years feeling stiff and not having access to those forms of expression. As I’ve reconnected with them, they feel activating, enlivening, and connect me to something that feels truly natural and primal within me.
- Mercury and Venus in Sagittarius speak to the craft or language of joy, levity, expansion, expression – and trining Chiron, there is something about how our pain is given voice & alchemized through voice (and by voice, I mean it in a very broad sense – spoken, written, sung, danced, etc).
- Beyond pain and wounding, there is also the healing of joy, encounters with beauty, or heart-opening experiences themselves that can be activating at this time. It may be important to point our attention toward frequencies like celebration or gratitude, and through our intention and attention, expand those very frequencies.
November 28, 2022
Mars retrograde in 19 Gemini trine Saturn in 19 Aquarius: 9:59 AM PST
- At an elemental level, Mars and Saturn represent extreme conditions – Mars being hot and dry, Saturn being cold and dry. While both were stationing retrograde when I was in Portland, there were fires and the air was thick with smoke/debris and people I spoke to in town confirmed a similar experience of drinking so much water but still feeling thirsty no matter how much they drank.
- So consider where the elements feel harsh right now – if not literally in an environmental sense, or literally in the body (like dry skin), more energetically – like our internal, emotional landscape feeling dry or extreme, or feeling like everything’s all work and stress and the body and no play or pleasure.
- Sometimes these dry or extreme conditions are symptomatic of larger, chronic patterns or ways we are living our lives – like the person who over and over again chooses to be “responsible” in a particular way but has a harder time playing or resting. We might have rationalizations or excuses for why, and it may feel hard to change these habits or conditions, but at the time we may be more aware at a systems-level (Aquarius) of these patterns and their consequences. We also have agency to change them.
- We can have agency to bring more moisture/water into the situation, where that would nourish something brittle, dried, or burnt out.
- Alternately, this may be a time to kick into gear greater levels of discipline and capacity to delay gratification where we have been experiencing the consequences of excess (i.e. eating whatever we want based on whatever we crave or tastes good, but now our body is having adverse reactions — or we’ve been avoiding doing something hard like having a necessary and honest conversation, and it’s time to take responsibility and face the situation at hand soberly).
November 29, 2022
Mercury in 19 Sagittarius sextile Saturn in 19 Aquarius: 8:17 PM PST
(Mercury and Venus are still traveling close together, but the Venus sextile to Saturn will be exact Dec 1. We will consider Mercury and Venus as a pair together here anyway).
- In traditional astrology, Mercury is considered to be weakened in Sagittarius (it’s hard for broad-minded Sagittarius to pin down details, for example). It’s often said that Mercury’s debilitations are less debilitating than other planets due to Mercury’s inherent adaptable nature. Mercury in a sign it has difficulty in ends up relating to other gifts (like psychic sight, poetics, intuition) as well as imaginative thinking and imaginative problem-solving.
- Saturn is strong in Aquarius – it’s domicile (at home) and in an element that Saturn prefers (air and fire, over water and earth). Saturn has incredible gifts of architecture, design, oversight, here.
- So, there may be a subtle dynamic to tap into this week around having resources at a pragmatic, structural level (Saturn in Aquarius) to support more imaginative or visionary thinking and ideas (Mercury in Sagittarius). This could be about moves we are making in life externally, or even about how we are moving energy in the body (like a breathwork practice that supports us more deeply at a physical level to go into a visionary state, or a yoga kriya that supports a particular organ, etc).
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
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