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Astro PSA: Light in the Darkness

December 14, 2020 in Astro Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

I stir from my recent blog slumber to herald’s today’s solar eclipse—taking place on the fifth day of Hanukkah, no less. Hanukkah is the Jewish festival of light in the darkness, of right trumping might against all odds. And solar eclipses occur when a new moon blocks out the sun’s light to reveal our personal energy resources. This solar eclipse in particular is on the South Node of Destiny in Sagittarius, which means something momentous is ending to make room for something even bigger. So it is no coincidence—nothing ever is!—that today the Electoral College officially declared Joseph Biden the new president-elect despite the many, many efforts to steal this election from the American people. And that today Sandra Lindsay, a New York ICU nurse, was the first American outside of a trial to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. Because today is an enormous turning point.

We may have felt all year that we were just stumbling blindly but today shows us that a lit path will materialize so long as we have the faith and courage to move forward in the dark. Truly, today is about the essence of miracles—which, really, are the marriage of willingness and will. So tonight hug whomever you can hug—your loved ones if you’re lucky enough to share space with them, your pets, yourself. And then go to bed as early as you like. Because you know what, babies? We have earned our rest. Love and light to all.

Pictured here: Dr. Michelle Chester administering vaccine to Sandra Lindsay. Photo by Scott Heins for the Office of Governor Cuomo, doctored by yours truly.

Waiter, There’s a Sociopath in My Soup

December 7, 2020 in Country Matters, Spirit Matters

I’ve been thinking a lot about psychologist Martha Stout’s book The Sociopath Next Door. It’s useful on many levels, as it demystifies sociopathy and teaches you how to protect yourself from its many garden varieties. Sociopaths are more common and insidious than you’d think. Some are smart, some are not; their defining trait is an utter lack of conscience. But rereading this book during the Endless Unrest That Trump Wrought, I am most struck by Stout’s warnings about sociopathic leaders. Basically, her point is that most people are neither good nor bad so much as impressionable–reactive to larger social mores (lemmings, sure). So if you have a government or culture in which the dominant values are essentially sociopathic, you’re going to see sociopathic behavior embraced as the norm.

“In Western culture,” she writes. “Particularly North America, a lot of social rules are descriptors for sociopathy: a general acceptance of lying as long as you win, an attitude of ‘me first,’ an attitude that what it looks like is more important than what it is. This makes it much easier for a sociopath to be camouflaged in our culture.” Keeping in mind that she wrote this in 2009, it’s scary to see how prescient and lethal–literally–this proved to be. At the end of the day, it’s not Trump who scares me most. It’s the many many many who will thirst for his Kool Aid in the years to come.

How to Be a Calendar Girl

November 27, 2020 in Age Matters, Country Matters, Essays, Etiquette Matters, Ruby Intuition, Spirit Matters

Ever since 2016. we’ve been blaming our increasingly dystopic existence on the year. Remember 2016? Even before Trump was elected, it seemed like everyone was dying and we just kept blaming it on the year rather than a shift in the collective. Since then, it’s been “Screw you, 2017/2018/2019/2020” as if a simple flip of a calendar page would wave a magical wand over the unrest in our lives. As if time itself was Santa Claus.

All in all, the Gregorian calendar year is extremely arbitrary. Why should the new year start on January 1? Why not at the vernal equinox, when the astrological new year begins and when nature rebirths itself? Or in September, when the Jewish new year begins and we all sharpen our pencils for new learning, new endeavors? In my Ruby Intuition practice, I encourage people to behave as if their personal new year begins on their solar return, when the sun is in the exact position of their birth and there’s divine wind on their backs.

But you know what? That divine wind only helps us along our paths if we’re already moving in the right direction. So rather than expecting something external to change our lives—be it a calendar or a new president—we must accept that while we don’t have compete control over anything, we do have agency. The power to respond to circumstances–to decide how to spend time, money, energy. So it’s about staying practical and positive, receptive and proactive—about prayer and putting pressure on elected officials.

My personal new year takes place in the last degree of Capricorn, 19 days after the Gregorian Calendar begins. I’ve always loved that–it’s taken the edge off New Year’s Eve drama, granted me a balsamic period before I roll up my sleeves for my own reboot. The downside is that even when I was small this meant no one had the energy or will to celebrate my birth. January 19 is often the coldest day of the year, and it arrives when everyone is broke and and burnt out after months of holiday season partying. Usually I celebrate the occasion myself with lobster and champagne in the mermaid woods. I’m not complaining.

I mention all this because in 2021 I turn 50 on the day Donald Trump leaves the White House. And while I consider it weirdly childish to blame our problems on a given calendar year, I truly believe that the unprecedented devastation that began in March 2020 will not have a chance to end until this white supremacist reality king has been ousted once and for all. So for the first time since I’ve been alive, every American’s new year will begin the same day that mine does. Such sweet solidarity as I struggle on what recently has been a very painful pilgrim’s path. But you know what? Only if we meet the universe halfway can any of us really turn a page in 2021.

Here’s looking at us, kids.

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