Cleaning Filters of Perception: Astrology of 2/8 – 2/15

Mercury forms a conjunction to Pluto this week, on the tail end of a Mercurial-Martian season (Mars retrograde in Gemini and Mercury retrograde, now both planets direct). The Mercury-Mars storyline turned up the heat and showed us places of irritation or reactivity, but now the Mercury-Pluto contact could put a nail in the coffin further & support some transformation/evolution/change to our minds and nervous systems, perhaps in places we’ve felt agitation the last few months but not yet deeper resolution. With Mercury and Pluto in Capricorn, the evolutionary potential could be in the ways we cultivate authorship of our minds. We can feel the gravity of our own thoughts and mental judgements and whether or not they are in service to life. We experience mental transformation when we are able to unhook from our own stories and perspectives and try on something else that has a deeper pulse of resonance, truth, and opening.

This week is also building up to a Venus-Neptune conjunction in Pisces (that will be exact on the 15th, but I’ve written about it at the end of this forecast) which can heighten our most subjective, watery, oceanic, romantic, and sometimes disillusioned feelings about love. Pisces is a double-sided sign, relating to both despair and ecstasy, crisis in faith and total faith, the sense of absence of love and oceanic love. Pisces does however, bend toward love, and the process includes softening the layers and walls that separate us from love. When Venus and Neptune come together, we experience a swirl of heart energy – both the opening to deeper layers of love, and the healing or dissolving of unprocessed or stagnant material that was previously in the way. Seek to be anchored in the deeper prayers of your heart and allow the choppiness of the sea to be initiatory medicine. Depending on what we have currently to process or where we are in terms of celebration, the Venus-Neptune contact can also simply be sublime.

Both Mercury and Venus’ contacts to the outer planets (planets you cannot see with the naked eye) relates to the possibility to clean our filters – of mind (Mercury) and heart (Venus). One can choose to double-down in illusion but distortions are ultimately more difficult to maintain and create a lot of resistance. The pulse or the trajectory is instead evolution, but it’s our choice how we participate. Outer planetary experiences can often challenge and transform the personality, the ‘small’ self that seeks to maintain its own mechanisms – which is why the outer planets also connect so much to spiritual life and practice.

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.

(Top image: Van Gogh detail)

Here’s our week in more detail after a few announcements:

Dragon of the Moon – coming February 23: 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.

Learn more and apply here. Apply soon, as spaces are filling and I get on calls with applicants before we begin on the 23rd!

Astrology books are open

I have a few spaces open in February for Evolutionary Fusion readings. These are 75 minute readings grounded in my specialty Evolutionary Astrology (which resources Pluto and the lunar nodes to get a glimpse into the major themes and life of the soul) & additionally incorporate Hellenistic thought and minor asteroids and Greek myths. The session ends with integration through EFT/tapping (a somatic trauma healing technique), Akashic channeling, or personalized visualization, depending on what came up in the session. These readings have been profound and special to experience & offer. Book here.

New interview on Magic of the Spheres podcast! Over the summer, I noticed astrologer Maeg Keane @maeg.thirdsister was offering Dionysus 5th House readings — which I found completely enchanting in of itself (a god of festivity, revelry, ecstasy, and the house in the chart associated with joy, play, creativity, and pleasure) but also synchronistic for me personally as I’d been connecting deeply with Greek myths this summer, especially the interconnected stories of Ariadne, Dionysus, and Semele. I so appreciate that Maeg created an invitation for so many people to consider their 5th house in new ways, and to also connect with Dionysus. ⁣
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In this episode we discuss the myths and the 5th house, and we expand the theme of pleasure, joy and creativity beyond its most lighthearted associations (“shouldn’t this just be fun?”) and explore it as a deeply transformative and confronting force as well. We only need to think of something like pregnancy and childbirth (as a form of creativity) to gain a metaphor that the creative process works us and has the power to change us. Perhaps having a more expansive view of the spectrum of creative process can remind us that creativity is messy, awakening, connects us to LIFE, is not un-complex, and is healing.⁣

Tune in where you listen to podcasts or on your browser here.

Here’s our week:

February 10, 2023

Mercury in Capricorn conjunct Pluto in Capricorn: 9:15 AM PST

(Image: Gabriel Mayorga)

This was a contact that almost happened in late December, but Mercury turned retrograde in Capricorn a few degrees away from reaching a conjunction to Pluto. For some context, see a recent article I wrote about some themes that emerged from the coinciding direct stations of Mars in Gemini and Mercury in Capricorn.

• Based on the previous retrogrades of Mercury and Mars, there was a theme around sensitive information and information concealment/management. If we add that Mercury never fully touched Pluto before turning retrograde, it was also like a more kind of final transformation or Mercurial ‘death’ was postponed.
• By this I mean — consider many TV series plotlines where the drama is based on some character holding back a truth from another character and working within a web of lies. Eventually, the lie comes out, and the characters have to face some kind of transformation now that the information is exposed. That would be the Mercurial ‘death’ arriving, whereas the lying and the maintenance of the lying is postponing that moment. Death here is not necessarily final, but pivotal/transformative.
• In our lives, this could resemble the TV plotline I mentioned in terms of information being withheld inside of relationships, but it could very well be our internal life and the ways we have been staving off realizations or clarity that has any kind of finality to it.
• Likewise, Mercury-Pluto contacts relate to profound mental/conceptual transformations. It might be that going through the tunnel of ideas or thoughts which feel constricting, rigid, or final in nature (“I’m done”) make way for other ideas or emotions to emerge that we couldn’t have imagined before. Mercury is logical and potentially very linear, but Pluto is a transpersonal planet that relates to unseen/unconscious energetics and undercurrents. There is more than what we can see, and reveals happen incrementally, in process, in time.
• At a downside, this “there is more than what we can see” layer also gives way to paranoia as one of the Mercury-Pluto expressions. So this contact can also relate to ways we develop more mental power such that we have clearer sight — not needing to imagine scandal/lies where there aren’t any, but not necessarily being naive or blindsided either about the complexities of energetic exchange & human interests. This process is intricately connected to becoming more honest with ourselves and checking our own agendas and filters.

February 11, 2023

Mercury enters Aquarius: 3:22 AM PST

Mercury will stay in Aquarius until March 2.

• This is one of my personal favorite Mercury transits because Mercury can be such a channel in Aquarius. Aquarius is fixed air, relating to different ‘radio stations’ and frequencies, entire matrices that can be tapped into. 
• At a higher mystical dimension, this kind of tapping into something that is already structurally complete (though still possible to change) is like channeling a whole story as though it already existed and the author is just uncovering it, or a sculptor liberating a complete face from a slab of stone – the face was already there, but covered by the stone.
• We say Aquarius is “ahead of it’s time” and so tapping into something that is already structurally complete is also like tapping into our higher self who is already more advanced that we are currently, but somehow we defy normal conception of space and time to reach an awareness or be struck by that inspiration that belongs to that futuristic version of self.
• We might casually notice we are more open to inspiration or electric ideas while Mercury is in this air sign, but we can also amplify/participate by playing with the ways we channel, tune in, become antennae of something beyond ourselves.

Mars in 13 Gemini sextile Chiron in 13 Aries: 10:03 AM PST

• At a very basic level, this transit could relate to a sensitivity around taking things personally. Mars in Gemini is provocative information and Chiron in Aries relates to a wound around feeling personally rejected.
• The evolution is perhaps in how we respond to this phenomenon. There may be types of feedback or even insults that we receive that don’t tend to bother us because they point to places inside of ourselves we have already accepted. However, where we do actually feel insulted/rejected/wounded is an active site of healing or potential for integration.
• Neutrally, Mars in Gemini can also help to shift the frame – to pay attention to something else. This could be a way to avoid pain or it could be a way to get some fresh air and be energized by changing the mood. We might feel into if sitting with the discomfort of holding our focus (rather than splitting it) can help us move through a process versus if getting some distance/space helps us shake off the attachment to our limiting perspective.

~and in the wings~

February 15, 2023

I’m Feb 15 because we’ll be feeling this building influence throughout the week also –

Venus in 24 Pisces conjunct Neptune in 24 Pisces: 4:25 AM PST

(Poem brought to me through my friend and collaborator Arakai’s IG story.)

• Venus conjunct Neptune in Pisces can be a deeply healing transit, washing away or eroding away the crusted layers over our hearts and our capacity to love ourselves, others, and life. That process can be tender and also challenge our attachments to our limiting or painful patterns and narratives. There can also be beautiful, unitive, celebratory moments of feeling truly moved and connected.
• Since the Sun and Saturn will also be conjunct at the same time in Aquarius (exacting the next day), that appears as another indication of our “walls” being illuminated, such as our barriers to love. And this might be our challenge: where we believe in having boundaries and where those boundaries feel appropriate/loving versus where those boundaries are separating us from love.
• Venus in Pisces and Venus-Neptune can both go to the extreme of boundary-less-ness, heightening our romanticism and also our love delusions. The simultaneous Sun-Saturn influence may be offering support for re-channeling the pure energy of our love into places that are more resonant or better serve the integrity of the life we are seeking to create.
• An example: perhaps we have an overwhelming wave of love for an ex that we have no contact with. It was a tumultuous relationship, potentially toxic/unhealthy/trauma bond. But there was still love, even if in a less mature or realized form. It could be healing to allow ourselves to feel that love and own it, but allow it to not be so attached to the image or form of the particular ex, but to allow the realization of that love’s presence to move through our present life, for us to open to where we are now.
• An example: you are currently pining over someone who is unavailable – such as they are in a monogamous relationship, they have a major addiction issue, they only give you crumbs, etc. Yet, the fantasy and aura of the relationship still compels you greatly. What would it be like to claim the fantasy and the eros but allow it to soften from the attachment to that person as the granter of it, and to follow that thread of your own feelings to a place you can actualize something in reality?
• These examples include love as a wispy, immaterial experience – an aura – a fantasy — a dimension of love that does exist, but not always necessarily paired with material realization. Venus-Neptune can also be the process of holding that level of enchantment within functional or resonant relationships, such as the more tantric or mystical dimension of our intimate connections. But Venus-Neptune wispy fantasies can be granted to relationships that don’t have a solid foundation, even someone you make eyes with in passing and never see again but the moment impresses itself on your very soul for years after the fact. There is a process of learning how to open to and receive those glamorous sensations and experiences without necessarily attaching undue or ultimate meaning onto them or energetically gripping them. There is also a process of bringing that magical energy into harmony with our ‘real’ lives and relationships.

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