Archive | Spirit Matters

Water and Wind, Fire and Father

I love channeling people’s best selves–which is all a soul really is–and I love charting people’s baby and big steps as they sometimes awkwardly, sometimes gracefully move into their true lives. But I’m not especially good at promoting my practice. Instead, I’m an old Jewish-Soux-Scot workhorse who does what needs to be done with as much joy and humor as possible, and somehow those who need me find me.

Today, as is the case most Fridays and Sundays, I had clients, and what amazed me most amazes me on every day of readings: Listening to the wind is all it really takes to help people find their way. This is especially true because it is Candlemas, the midpoint of winter solstice and spring equinox. Today Jesus offered himself to the temple while his beautiful mother Mary renewed herself with divine feminine love. In Celtic tradition, this is also known as Imbolic, Brigid’s festival of the holy well and the sacred flame; in other mythologies, it is the beginning of the end of hibernation. So what am I saying? That showing up is half the miracle. The other is breathing and trusting as you do.

Take my father Bernard Harvey, who celebrates his 76th birthday today. Since retiring from a life of math and science—he belongs to one of this country’s first generations of computer programmers–he’s delved into the world of arts and languages. He’s taught himself Spanish. He’s studied guitar and written his own songs. He’s even formed a punk rock band whose tracks are virulently anti-Trump. Apropos for a Candlemas baby, he’s using his personal winter to emerge from hibernation. With the clever latent magic of the water-bearer, he does not believe but still somehow knows. So do you. Come find me and I’ll show you how.

Solar Returned to the Mermaid Woods

Tomorrow is technically my birthday but astrologically today is my solar return. I always tell my clients: What you do on your birthday sets the tone for your year so only do what feels really really right. On this, my 47th return, I knew, I just knew, that I had to be back in the mermaid woods since I want to be here as much as possible in the upcoming year and all the years after that. So I drove all day to arrive at Provincetown’s Lands End Inn, all soaring ceilings and bold pastel stained glass and Mucha and Erté reproductions and busts of beautiful ladies, with decks and porches overlooking seemingly the whole mermaid world. The building is at the very edge of the continent (hence the name), and I’m wearing one of those lush hotel robes with all the windows open, smelling the salt and wind and wood-burning stoves of the area. I ate very fresh oysters a few hours ago with new friends and now am drinking champagne in a red velvet chair listening to the fire crackle and the wind rustle and the waves crash and am writing to you before I open my book back up. Because that’s how I want my next year to be. The sweet semisolitude of my adulthood, garnished by Venus and the words that somehow always pour through me even when I’m tired, even when I’m sad, even when I’m not sure anyone is there to receive them. Sending my birthday light to each of you because I’m glad we’re all still here.

Love and Capricorn Rising

It’s a new moon in my native sign of Capricorn just a few days before my birthday and it’s all happening within degrees of Capricorn sitting pretty in my natal chart. What does this mean? you astro-laypeople say, not bothering to hide your rolling eyes. It means that I don’t just have good wind on my back. I have a gust–a freaking tornado–pushing me fast and furious in the direction I need to go, and I’m exhilarated. In the last few weeks life has been exhausting but today I woke up and just wanted to write write write and practice better magic than I’ve ever practiced before. Thank Goddess, I say. This aspect is not comfortable but neither is false comfort, which is basically the lesson of that shitty new bed I bought because I was cheaping out. Trust me when I say Capricorn doesn’t brook with such short cuts (and that I’m sending back said shitty bed today). So yeah, this is all about me. But to you I say: ENJOY A NEW MOON IN CAPRICORN WHILE THE SUN IS ALSO IN CAPRICORN. Hell, there are a ton of planets in Capricorn right now, and so this moment is about making it happen, captains, and suffering no fools–not even yourself.

Self-portrait by Cindy Sherman, my astro-twin and a true Cappie queen.

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