Dear Madame,

I’m probably going to shock your readers with this statement, but it’s true. I am a shy Leo lass. I account this to my Pisces rising sign and because my Sun is in the 6th house. I have a Libra Moon in the 7th, but have only found this makes me an agreeable collaborator and project lead. In sum, I’m a terrifically hard working artist who really wants the whole world to fall at my feet and marry me — if only I could pry my stiff fingers away from my Wacom!

Lately I’ve been cultivating a deep vein of nostalgia for an old love of mine, a Virgo who brought a lot of yin to my artist’s yang, and just popped up in town again. I’d say he was a lover, but it never got that far in the flesh. I was happy to indulge the fantasy of him, instead; and well, hell, he was a fantastic, acerbically divine muse while we worked together a few years ago.

But now he’s long gone, and though this year has been mega professionally successful, personally I’ve been feeling uncharacteristically and uncomfortably hollow inside throughout much of this Venus retrograde; particularly this past week. I feel that not only have I missed this vital Virgo dreamboat, he will never return to my dock again. Is it too late to get wet?

The Trippin’ Leo Torch-Bearer

Dear Torchy,

I recently saw a video of an amazing invention: an augmented reality sandbox — a three dimensional topographical map space that allows kids to move sand around while colored lights respond in real-time to the children’s constant reshaping of the space. With the scoop of a hand, suddenly the deep blue of a concavity became a bright red mountaintop!

When I read your note, I couldn’t help but think about this video.

My first piece of advice about all nostalgia trips is this: know which map you’re looking at and from what vantage point was it created. Like sand in a child’s hand, the material of our memories gets pushed around so that ponds become plateaus, and mountains more like foothills. The cartography of love’s labors lost is notoriously imprecise and predictably unpredictable.

On the other hand, I think everyone needs an augmented reality sandbox the size of a swimming pool, where we can jump in with our whole selves and throw our total bodies into the effort of rearranging our interior landscapes, including memories. Disagree away, but there’s room in my world for big playful gobs of ‘what if’.

That’s the amazing difference between us and other species (so far as we know now): we can play games all day with probabilities, speculations and just plain guessing. Imagination is fun! Play is practice for life, right?

Obviously at some point we need to stop practicing and do the thing. We need to step out of the sandbox and onto something more like stable ground. Or, yes, risk The Coif and get wet.

Which is the greater problem, then: augmented reality or risk? For you, I gently propose augmented reality is the lesser evil. Who enjoys getting turned down? No one! Certainly not you, the sensitive one who prides herself in making good choices, producing exemplary work, and showing herself to be the gracious and diplomatic better among equals in your little round table of creative quests.

About your Moon, though: Libra is a sign that would rather be in charge of the seating arrangements in life, even as it makes others feel as if they’re the honored guest of the hour. Letting others name the head count can be your secret challenge; you can’t stand the idea of being left out, but forfeiting your control over certain details threatens your innate experience of leadership.

Love can be a trust fall, and in the 7th house, your Moon seeks satisfaction in knowing it can fully trust its own judgment — and that of others. Can you risk The Coif to the messy stakes of the heart, and possibly land in the deep end? Your Libra Moon may need a swim cap.

Perspective for your map: Venus is only half done with Leo, and she doesn’t turn direct until Sept. 7. Before she does, the coming Full Moon in Pisces Aug. 29 will light up your rising sign, followed by a frisky conjunction of Venus and Mars in Leo on Sept. 1. That’s a lot of information and observation coming your way! Use it. Mine it. Push it around in your personal giant sandbox of augmented reality.

As for your Virgo friend, September’s eclipses could shift his sandbox, too. By November, Venus and Mars make their third and final exact conjunction of 2015 — this time in the sign Virgo. Much of this summer’s landscape may be unrecognizable for both of you by then, and that will be an excellent moment to reassess your heart’s coordinates.

Keep glowing,
Madame Z

Most of us are born with two eyes that coordinate with each other to provide an accurate picture of the world. One affliction that interferes with quality of vision is called strabismus, wherein the eyes do not align properly. An extreme example of strabismus is crossed eyes, which cause double vision.

Nearly all of us have had occasion to cross our eyes on purpose in an expression of jest. Involuntary double vision, however, is no joke for those who have to live with it.  

Thankfully, medical science has developed ways to correct most cases of strabismus. It was not always so, however. For most of human history, those beset with double vision had to rely on the ability of the human brain to compensate for dysfunctional eyes.

One way the brain compensates for double vision is by ignoring the input of the deviated eye, but at the cost of depth perception. The result is one form of distortion unconsciously exchanged for another. Given the state of the world at this time, it would be accurate to aver that nearly all of us are vulnerable to (if not clearly burdened with) a metaphorical form strabismus. It’s also fair to say that the times are being reflected in the astrology.

The sheer volume of information coming at you is enough to cross your eyes all by itself. Astrology’s corollary to information (and your mind, among other things) is fast-moving Mercury.

Then, factor in the probability that a large volume of data you receive is intentionally slanted in spite of any claim to be (for example) “fair and balanced.” Finally, layer on the studied and tested manipulative psychology employed by the political, entertainment and advertising industries, and it’s a wonder you can function as well as you do.

One way you and most of the rest of us remain functional in the midst of media onslaught is to be selective about exposure to information. Shutting out, avoiding and otherwise ignoring that which conflicts with or distresses your point of view, however, has its own problems. Even new evidence, when admitted, is commonly interpreted to confirm what you already believe (a tendency known as ‘confirmation bias’).

Confirmation bias is an occupational hazard for astrologers. In an effort to overcome personal prejudice, astrologers often defer to and rely on traditional forms of interpretation. Even then, astrology can at times present a confusing picture, which, ironically, is often an accurate representation of what’s actually going on.

One could make a case for now being one of those times. Tellingly, one of the planets most emblematic of these times is Neptune in the sign it rules — Pisces.

Neptune is not to be underestimated. As the great Robert Hand put it, Neptune correlates with what is “confusing and unclear” at least as often as it corresponds to “extremely beautiful and ideal influences.” Up until about five years ago, when Neptune entered Pisces for the first time in a century and a half, nobody (nor their parents, nor even their grandparents) had any experience of living through an era of Neptune implicitly being amplified in Pisces.

Indeed, the world is still influenced by both the distorted thinking (Confederate flag and such) and inspiration (Thoreau and his contemporaries) which originated the last time Neptune passed through Pisces — basically from 1849 to 1862. Additionally, Neptune, along with complex and nuanced Chiron, is currently retrograde in Pisces, symbolically adding to the potential for confusion.

Further contributing to the potential for confusion is Saturn, astrology’s lord of order. Saturn is in a transitional year, spending most of 2015 slowly oscillating over the cusp separating two very different signs: Scorpio and Sagittarius. Even though Saturn is no longer retrograde, it is still in the same degree of Scorpio it occupied on July 4, indicative of little (if any) progress in bringing any semblance of order to your life or the world as a whole.

Finally, Uranus (which a normally circumspect Robert Hand recently referred to as “a crazy planet”) is also retrograde in Aries. At the same time, the ruler of Aries (Mars) is actually moving faster than Venus, which hardly ever happens.

Fortunately, just as medical science has its remedies for strabismus, astrology has its antidote for confusing times: patience. Everything in the sky and on the zodiac is constantly moving. As a result, no one state of affairs holds forever. And just as it is above, so it reliably is below.

In our current case, the dominant role of slow moving planets (Saturn, Uranus and Neptune especially) in fast-moving times implies that you need to be more patient than perhaps at any time in your life. The good news is that a light is visible at the end of our proverbial tunnel. Next month, Saturn will settle into Sagittarius for a long run of more than two years. After September, the eclipses of 2015 will be over, and by mid-October all the Mercury retrogrades for the year will be behind us.

Indeed, things might actually get a little boring later this year. Once you are able to see things more clearly, the stark nature of a less distorted reality might seem somehow less interesting. So, make the best of confusing times while you have them. Allow for your probable double vision to contribute to your creativity and stimulate your imagination while you still can, just so long as you are aware that seeing and believing are not what they used to be.

Offered In Service                   

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

By Sarah Taylor

There were two things that I noticed initially with the three cards in this week’s reading.

First, there are two major arcana cards enclosing a minor: there is a point of presence in the everyday of the larger soul themes (the majors) that underpin your life and which need minors such as this to make themselves known tangibly to you.

The Hermit, Two of Swords, The Lovers from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.

Second, the two swords at the top of the picture in the Two of Swords indicates a kind of exchange or reciprocity between the two majors — perhaps a conversation, a working out, or working through at the mental level. Some breathing space is opening up. A negotiation is at hand.

These two majors are both associated with the personal end of the 22-card scale that ranges from card 0 to card XXI. What does this mean? In the same way that the zodiac signs travel along a continuum from the outward-focused, self-defining “I am” of Aries to the transpersonal, collective unconscious of Pisces, so the majors move from the zero-point field of The Fool, to the birth of consciousness, to its manifestation in human form — and finally to the experience that that human moves through as it becomes increasingly aware of its place in the interconnectedness of all things.

Here, in this reading, things are on the more personal end of the scale. This is immediately about you, and your experiences with and as yourself, and with another or others. It is self-centred, self-defining. You are working something out in your world, and it holds in it the tension and potential alliance of two contrasted ideas that are, at heart, connected.

On the left, you are The Hermit: solitary, reflective, sitting in your hermitage in the act of sifting through and transforming your inner darkness. The Hermit is The Magician who has understood that true magic depends upon the connection to one’s own core wisdom — the inner fire that burns and which itself is a product of the great mystery. The Hermit is The Magician, humbled. He understands his divinity, and life has also granted him the ability to experience his humanness; he is the meeting point of both. It is The Hermit’s inner work that then leads to the shift and change that comes with The Wheel of Fortune.

And yet, on the right, you are also The Lovers: experienced through togetherness, the reflection of a counterpart, sleeping in coupledom as you look into the mirror and are offered the choice: What do I choose to see?

Is my certainty about what I’m looking at simply a statement about what I know about myself rather than the person in front of me? Who am I, really? Who are you?

The Lovers is an interesting card to me because so many tend to associate it immediately with romance and romantic love. This is apropos, because so many of us tend to associate intimate relationship pretty immediately with romance and romantic love. We get swept up in the mirror of our own falling in love with ourselves, and perhaps brush over an opportunity to sit with what we don’t know about that other person. When we embrace that opportunity, in that moment we are also letting go of the certainty that we actually know ourselves.

Can we be as comfortable with mystery in the seductive coupling of The Lovers as The Hermit learns to be in a solitude that rarely offers up such easy answers? It all comes full circle for me when I remember that in the Thoth Tarot deck, it is The Hermit who presides over the marriage of the two figures in The Lovers. The connection between the cards is a strong one, and here the connection is brought forward again by the Two of Swords.

We are knowable; we are unknowable. We are individuals; we are connected, incontrovertibly, to our core, to each other, to everything. We can hold our own; we can hold another.

This is a dialogue between the states of independence, dependence, and interdependence. Give that dialogue some wiggle room to take place — even if it is simply the possibility of dialogue — and something quite magnificent can happen: the world expands, movement is invited in. There are peace, co-operation, and the formation of some kind of alliance between two aspects of your experience that are now prepared and able to talk to each other.

Here, you can clear a lot. Remember what it has been like to connect inwardly, and remember the sense of what you found in that connection. Now, you can use it beyond the front door of your hermitage, in the most practical of ways and in your relationships with others. Keep the lines of communication open — first with yourself. The rest will follow.

Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Hermit (Virgo), Two of Swords (Moon in Libra), The Lovers (Gemini)

If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.

By Amanda Moreno

I’ve spent the past few weeks seeing more clients than normal. It’s felt like the perfect medicine for my heart during a season that has felt far more Virgoan than Leonine to me. Because of that fact, and because my nose has been to the grindstone between continued diet overhauls and keeping up with increased client work in addition to my normal work load, I am making myself sit down and reflect a bit on what inspires me, in order to tap into that Leo heart energy.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

During this Venus Retrograde period I’ve begun to open myself up to whatever vision for my life resonates the most with my soul’s intentions for me. I’ve been getting indications that my path might be changing directions or might be somehow different from what I’ve been planning on and working towards.

As I enter my fourth week on a strict diet — and my fourth week of total, uncaffeinated sobriety — I’ve noticed that little ‘visions’ are coming more easily. The dreamtime has cranked up. Throw all of it together and I figured…why not just put it out there to the universe that I’m open to receiving a vision for where I should be heading next. I’m open to something different if I can catch a whiff of what it is. Or better yet, clear-cut, straightforward, well communicated specific directions.

In the mean time, I am enjoying the opportunity to throw myself into the work that I love — and my-oh-my, how I do in fact love it.

So, what inspires me? I realize, without a moment’s hesitation, that what inspires me are the people I’m blessed to work with in an astrological/tarot workshop or regression session. I am so inspired by people who have the courage to show up and ask questions and listen. I’m inspired by their willingness to share their stories and by how much I learn about my craft, about the human psyche’s incredible and innate tendency towards healing. I learn a ton about myself in the process as well.

Time and again I am floored by the resilience of the people who reach out for soul work and the validation and insight it provides. Resilience comes in many forms and is displayed in many ways. Sometimes the simple act of just surviving this life is a heroic measure, and is perhaps one act that should be acknowledged more often.

At the end of each session, I feel elated and celebratory; not just because interacting in this way with people is such a blessing, but because it reminds me there are people in the world working to bring awareness to their lives; people who dig into their shadows, and to try and make a difference, even if just at a very personal level. It gives me hope and it suffuses me with so much gratitude.

So, what is it that makes you feel inspired? And while I’m at it, I’m going to incorporate a thread I recently saw on the book of faces — in the interest of Leo season: what is something you’re proud of? Go on, toot your own horn here if you want to. Tell us about it. Let’s celebrate the fires of the heart for a minute or two!