Archive | Astro Matters

Changing the Things We Cannot Accept

I have been silent here, partly to let others be heard during this week of historic unrest, partly because I have been struggling with a life-threatening kidney infection.

But my heart has been in the streets of my city and country, where protests have been righteously, rigorously practiced even as law enforcement thugs have responded with pepper spray, rubber bullets, tear gas, police cars—anything they could weaponize (even The New York Times). We know light shines only when we turn it on, and I feel deep gratitude and reverence for those who have been doing so–for all who’ve brought their precious soft underbellies into these lethally police and pandemic-addled streets.

As many of you know, yesterday would have been the 27th birthday of Breonna Taylor, the black female EMT who declared joyfully in tweets that 2020 would be her year. 27 is a make-it-or-break-it age —when you begin your Saturn Return and journey into authentic, rewarding adulthood. I have such confidence that this beautiful soul would have done exactly that had she not been murdered in her own home by cops conditioned to plunder every physical, legal, emotional, and moral boundary of a person of color. It is no coincidence that yesterday also was a massive lunar eclipse–in social justice-seeking Sagittarius, no less.

So let this enormous celestial release of energy—for that is what an eclipse truly is— support the release being rightfully demanded in America’s blood-lined streets.

Let the solar return of the soul of Breonna unite with these big big stars. Let righteous light, righteous labor, righteous love burn down the American infrastructures built on the backs of brown and black bodies whose work, let alone humanity, was never honored. And by the light of this bright full moon let something more enduring, encapsulating, and ennobling rise like a phoenix its place.

In every way I can, this middle-aged white woman will practice more reckoning and self-reckoning to resist the injustice built into this broken land. I am grateful to all else who do so. May Breonna’s birthday song ring around the world.

For concrete actions you can take to commemorate Breonna’s life and the fight for justice, here is a list.

The Artist’s Way

As businesses and beaches slowly (and not so slowly) re-open, I’ve been thinking about artists as essential workers.

We’d have lost our minds this spring were it not for movies, TV, books, DJ sets, Zoom dance parties, all sorts of creativity. This tracks, because artists always have been the ones to lead us out of chaos by dancing on the precipice between order and disorder, and combining holy patience with holy impatience. It’s a vital model, for to rise wholly (and holy) from this viral dis-ease–to effect conscious, constructive change–we must reject the 21st century, post-industrial concept of linear time in which every hour, minute, second (and nanosecond) has been scheduled and over scheduled. Instead, we must embrace the lessons of our Covid-19 tesseracts, and continue to rest, to look and listen mindfully, to practice gratitude and economy, and above all: to create.

For art was never meant to be consumed and collected the way capitalism has taught us. Instead, we are each meant to process our unique joy and pain through creative expression—be that baking, sewing, sowing, singing, spreadsheeting, painting, witching, writing, whatever suits us sustainably and beautifully.

To be an artist is to be a spirit worker, social changer, chaos wrangler, and time traveler—and we all must be artists now. This is a key lesson of Venus Retrograde in Gemini. And this is a key lesson of this Wrinkle in Time.

For a reading or ritual to activate your own creativity, book here. Art: High as Fuck, an open-air quarantine creation by Josh Smith, courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery.

Venus in a Wading Pool

Last night I had such an endearing dream that I wanted to download it here–likely for the same reason that it occurred it all.

In it, I bought a small wading pool for my office. (I’m not sure why, though bringing mermaid energy into my intuitive practice is always well-advised.) Before filling the pool up, something made me bend down and peel off one of the decals plastered across its bottom surface. The decal was a kind of sea creature–royal blue, with a spiky spine, four legs and very long tail. Absent-mindedly, I began petting the bit of plastic–cradling it in my palm, really–and without any conscious invocation, it swelled into the third-dimension and then animated entirely. At which point it leapt out of my hand and began scrambling all over the room–nervously, wildly, not unlike a wild bird trapped in an indoor space.

I felt equal parts fascinated and terrified. It was adorable, yes, but also dangerous? A dybbuk of some sort? Finally the blue creature began squirming under my front door, and after a great deal of squeezing and squeaking, managed its escape. I watched with no small relief. But by then Grace had rushed into the room and was clocking the goings-on like they were Game 7 of the Permakitten NBA finals.

“Ma!” she shouted. (In my dreams she can speak, though she rarely deigns to do so.) “I can’t believe you weren’t nicer. I’ve been asking for a decal buddy forever.” At which point decal buddy scrambled back in, and he and Grace began cavorting all over the apartment–the tails of one tiny seasprite and one tiny permakitten joyfully entwined in a barely visible blur.

My big takeaway: The residents of Gracie Rosmansion may be lonelier than I’ve allowed. No doubt there is a tertiary revelation–that my unacknowledged (and thus dangerous) desire for connection can will anything into existence. But there’s something else that has stayed with me all the way through my morning coffee and snuggles with Grace: The unexpected is not always unwelcome. That’s a challenging lesson to absorb. But if I’m to truly find love again–and a love unburdened by the defalcations of yore–I must leave room for what I can’t yet imagine.

A Venus Retrograde dream if ever there were one. Who said the goddess doesn’t have a sense of humor?

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy