Tag Archives: sexuality

The Day of Excess: Birthdays and Planet News

If Your Birthday is April 9
The Day of Excess | Order Your 2019-20 Aries Reading | All Other Signs

Employ your powers of reason and strategy to the utmost. You already have the passion, drive and willingness to work toward your goal. Now you just need to figure out how to get there efficiently and without having to take too many backward steps. A solid plan will be well worth the time and energy spent on careful crafting and double-checking details. Let your enthusiasm serve as fuel, without letting it run away with the process.
— By Amy Elliott

Written in the Planets

Small moves appear to count for a lot right now, particularly in the realms of sex, healing, teaching, being seen for who you are, and holding space for unorthodox relationships, desires and identities. So if you’re feeling tension around any of those topics, how might you express and release that energy just a little? It’s not that you can’t go bigger; it’s that you can probably accomplish more with less effort than you’d expect. The aspect pattern in question is the centaur Pholus (small cause, big effect) in Capricorn making a square to a triple conjunction of Vesta (holding space), Chiron (raising awareness) and Salacia (sex, especially if ‘scandalous’) in Aries.

If you’ve been actively trying to repress and ignore any tension related to one of these topics, how is that working out for you? Is it starting to come out sideways, or to feel even more overwhelming and messier already? Note that with Aries involved (a sign ruled by Mars), it would be wise to consider your anger, too. Do you have a safe place in which to express your anger and frustration (including sexual frustration)? Can you create one — such as shouting out in the woods alone, or asking a very grounded friend (or counselor) with good emotional boundaries to hold non-judgmental space, and to witness you as you rage? (Just remember not to direct your fury at your witness; that’s asking them to process your feelings for you, which is solely your job.)

We don’t have a lot of practice with this in Western culture, especially for men; and ranting on Twitter or Facebook does not count. If anger is not part of the equation for you, creating art, writing, ritual or masturbation could just as easily be part of your process. The idea is to find or create a space in which you can get to the root of whatever’s itching to be let out of the proverbial bottle. It might not turn out to be what you think it is; and that discovery could itself open the way to actual healing.
— By Amanda Painter

The Day of Curiosity: Birthdays and Planet News

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If Your Birthday is March 23
The Day of Curiosity | Pre-order Your 2019-20 Aries Reading | All Other Signs

Get ready to dive deep into the mystery of you, to find information that will point you toward your next phase of personal growth and possibly thorough healing. Note that you will make all the more progress if you can meet any fear or self-judgment with some detachment, which will help keep them from interfering with your ideas and understanding. Approach every new fact with an open mind, and a willingness to learn more, and you’ll probably free up a lot of power within you.
— By Amy Elliott

Written in the Planets

As we head into the final week of Mercury’s current retrograde in Pisces, a couple of aspect patterns are calling for your awareness. The more pressurized one is a square between the Sun, Chiron and Salacia in Aries on one side, and Pholus and Quaoar in Capricorn on the other (exact today and Sunday). There’s a lot of energy here looking for a way out into the world, and that happens through action. Some of it may have been tapped and released by Wednesday’s Full Moon, but it appears there’s still more to go. It’s asking a question: who are you (including sexually) in relation to your family’s behavioral patterns?

Consider for a moment that the identity you came into the world with has been molded and re-directed by your family as you grew up. What might happen if you took steps to reassert who you feel yourself to be at your core? It’s easy to assume that we’ll encounter strict limits to our self-expression if we do. Yet, has it occurred to you that the expectations and seemingly set reactions of family might not be so iron-clad as you thought? Or, at least, that you’re capable of standing in your center regardless? Pholus here is both a reminder of how little it can take to ‘keep us in our place’ and an indication of how little we may need to do to shift family dynamics toward a place where we can stand out for who we are in a more integrated way.

Meanwhile, retrograde Mercury’s two-week conjunction to Neptune is exact tomorrow. Keep tracking your intuition and other subtle senses, but also be sure to check facts. Notice carefully all facets of your environment — the external surroundings, the moods of others (both expressed and unexpressed), and your inner emotional/mental landscape. A disturbance or distraction in one is likely to affect the others. Even though Mercury retrograde in Pisces might not feel as scattered or harsh as some others, the presence of Neptune is a red flag to keep your mind as clear as possible this weekend (and for the next week-plus), and to be extra-careful with things like purchases, commitments and what you may be projecting onto others.
— By Amanda Painter

The Day of Clarity: Birthdays and Planet News

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If Your Birthday is March 21
The Day of Clarity | Pre-order Your 2019-20 Aries Reading | All Other Signs

Remember that integrity is your best friend. You seem to have a good deal of energy focused on you, and may draw various people toward you in the near future. Make sure the relationships you form, of any sort, are healthy and constructive for you and for everyone else involved. That starts with surrounding yourself with honest, compassionate people, who are likely to bring forward your best and brightest qualities.
— By Amy Elliott

Written for the Planets

We’re officially in a new season, and last night’s Libra Full Moon is starting to dissipate. Yet with such a potent setup to start the Sun’s time in Aries, chances are you’re still feeling the reverberations. Continue to give yourself a little delay before replying to any recent communications that might have raised your dander and defenses the last couple days. We’re in “small cause, big effect” territory through the weekend, thanks to the fiery Aries Sun’s impending square to the centaur Pholus in Capricorn. On top of that, Mercury is still very much retrograde in Pisces, and very much conjunct Neptune — indicating potentially imprecise thinking, possible emotional reactivity in communication, and an inability to see clearly the truth of a situation (including the emotional truth).

On top of that, today’s square between Venus in Aquarius and Mars in Taurus could be kicking up some inner tension. That might simply play out as a spike in arousal, including toward someone new. But it could also indicate discord in relationships where there’s hidden or frustrated sexual energy. Venus in Aquarius describes the potential for this to rear up in a friendship where there’s unspoken attraction, rather than with an established lover or someone you’re actively pursuing. Does that Aquarian influence help to cool things off and make it more of an intellectual exercise, or does it just make it weirder? How does that align with what your body’s telling you? If you have the opportunity to express this energy sexually (whether solo or with a partner), it’s possible that taking your time with the sensuality of it while experimenting a little might yield the most satisfying results.
— By Amanda Painter

When Standing Out May Be the Only Real Option

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By Amanda Painter

When everyone around you is wounded and hurting, if you initiate and pursue your own healing it will probably make you stand out. I suspect countless people have had this thought before, but it came to mind as I was thinking about tomorrow’s conjunction of the Sun and Chiron in Aries. I don’t know how many people think of that possibility consciously before starting (for example) a therapy process; even if present unconsciously, however, I imagine it holds some people back.

Nothing Safer; photo by Amanda Painter.

Sun conjunct Chiron occurs at 2:38 pm EDT Friday (18:37:51 UTC).

And although it’s not in the very first degree of Aries, it is in the second degree, which is still Aries Point territory (the nexus of personal and political).

Whatever tomorrow’s astrology describes for you personally, it will likely resonate with issues that are prominent in our collective social environment right now.

This is the first conjunction of the Sun and Chiron in Aries since Chiron left Pisces for good on Feb. 18. As far as I can tell, it is the only conjunction these two bodies will have in the first five degrees of Aries for this particular journey of Chiron in Aries (though next year will come close; that one happens in the sixth degree of Aries).

My guess is that this means this year’s Sun-Chiron conjunction may ring the personal/collective Aries Point bell the loudest — though I don’t know for certain if it works that way. And who knows: maybe we will be able to hear the signal better once we’ve all gotten more used to this energy next year? After all, we’re also adjusting to Uranus in Taurus and wading through Mercury’s retrograde in Pisces, both of which seem to be having a slightly destabilizing effect on many people. Then again, when is there not something in the astrology describing things being off-kilter, or provocative, or confrontational, or energizing in some way?

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Approaching the Capricorn New Moon and Eclipse

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By Amanda Painter

Happy New Year! Even though most people try to set their New Year’s resolutions and intentions by Jan. 1, the astrology this year is clearly indicating a wider window for this process — and for beginning to take active steps in accordance. The major event with this theme is Saturday’s New Moon in Capricorn, which also happens to be a partial solar eclipse.

As we go deeper into this most unusual and challenging phase of history, intelligence is the thing we need the most. That is the theme of the 2019-2020 annual edition of Planet Waves — audio now available for instant access. See more information here. If you’re looking for individual signs, order here.

This New Moon — a conjunction of the Sun and Moon — is exact at 8:28 pm EST on Jan. 5 (1:28:05 UTC Jan. 6). The peak of the partial solar eclipse is about 13 minutes later.

One notable feature of this event is that it occurs right at the midpoint of Capricorn; and, incidentally, very close to the midpoint of the current positions of Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn (those planets are about three-and-a-half to five-and-a-half degrees on either side). This looks like some real “engine of change” astrology based on that proximity alone; I’m also wondering if it carries some foreshadowing or early echoes of the 2020 Saturn-Pluto conjunction.

From what I’ve read about Saturn-Pluto conjunctions, I suspect one message of this New Moon and eclipse is to begin really focusing your energies: on your highest priorities, or perhaps on anything that seems to be restricted. As in, if something in your life feels narrowed or limited, what is your attention being trained on? What does it mean to be very thorough within certain parameters, as opposed to trying to ‘do it all’ in a more dispersed fashion?

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Shining a Light on Pluto

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By Amanda Painter

I recently ran across a Planet Waves article from a few years ago that described Pluto in Capricorn as wanting us to address the deepest subject matter of where ‘systems’ — such as family, religion, government, the legal system, and so on — pack all of their values into us, and then we end up with all that as ‘baggage’ that we have to sort through. Ten years into Pluto’s journey through Capricorn, I think it’s safe to say that was a pretty accurate description. Pretty much daily at this point we’re confronting events and experiences that center on these issues, and which ask us to take the conversations ever deeper.

Trail to Vernal Falls, Yosemite; photo by Amanda Painter.

At the top of the list, of course, are the ways the systems mentioned reinforce values around race, sex and the misuse of power in regard to each.

Those topics, in turn, are closely related to our attitudes toward the natural environment (and our place in it), economic mobility, the use of emerging technologies, approaches to and accessibility of health care… I could go on and on. But I suspect few would disagree that, at least in the U.S., race and sex (or sexual violence) are the two hottest of the hot-button issues in our polarized cultural dialogue.

Pluto in Capricorn is insisting that we dig into these areas as deeply as we can, and sort out what in there is entirely personal, and what is really collective. Yet I have to wonder: given the very large number of people who have direct personal experiences and even trauma involving one or both of those topics, is it truly possible to differentiate personal from collective?

I’m not 100% sure. Though I suspect that tomorrow’s square to Pluto by the Libra Sun could hold some hints. The sign Libra speaks of one-to-one relationships (among other things); with the Sun there, we get an emphasis on how we express ourselves in relation to others directly. As in, how we are in relation to one other specific person at a time.

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Mars in Sagittarius — and a Few Other Adjustments

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By Amanda Painter

You know that feeling when you’ve been incredibly busy, or very focused on a project, and then those activities wind down but you feel momentarily adrift, or not sure where to channel your energy next? But then, almost as soon as you’ve thought that, the next thing comes along to keep your energy level up and engaged?

Photo by Amanda Painter.

That might be one way to think of Mars entering Sagittarius tomorrow, just six days after centaur planet Pholus left that sign. Mars leaves Scorpio, a sign it rules, and brings its fiery energy to fiery Sagittarius at 7:56 am EST on Friday (12:56 UTC).

The influence of Pholus in Sagg was something we kind of got used to for many years. In terms of the ‘runaway reaction’ Pholus signifies, we’ve witnessed it in the way the world seems to be spinning out of control. Long before Trump as president, before Uranus made its signature aspects to Pluto and Eris, we had Pholus adding some rocket fuel to life — in a segment of the zodiac that can already feel a little ‘out there’.

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Regeneration, Healing and the Scorpio New Moon

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By Amanda Painter

There is plenty else going on in the world besides the calling out of sexual harassment and assault that needs our attention and energy. Yet, this is a huge topic at the moment — for good reason, given how much pain it has caused to so many people. If you’re finding yourself constantly triggered and exhausted, know that you are not alone, and it’s okay to take care of yourself and to seek help.

In the moment before regeneration; photo by Amanda Painter.

With a New Moon in Scorpio on Saturday, exact at 6:42 am EST (11:42 UTC), it seems the cosmos is asking us to consider where we go from here.

Hopefully the current spotlight on the lopsided sexual power dynamic has gotten you thinking — I mean really thinking — about the many layers of this issue in our culture; about how we got here and what your own role has been; and, perhaps most importantly, how to move forward into healing individually and collectively.

That’s a lot to take on. You might find that you can handle some facets of the conversation but not others. Or you might find yourself at one end of the healing process (for example, just beginning to identify how you’ve been hurt, or how you’ve hurt others), and it might seem impossible to envision getting to a place where you’ll feel better and can stand more fully in your life.

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