Astrology is an ancient science and it's meant to be embodied, felt and experienced rather than merely used as personality test or a divination device. Rachel Capurso of Aeolian Heart is an expert in the realms of astrology, mythology, philosophy and pop culture. She has the gift of making astrology feel relevant to the current political, sociological and cultural climate.
This innovation allows for a more embodied experience of otherwise very conceptual, mytho-poetic astrological download! We discuss: The Taurus-Scorpio Nodal Axis of Eclipse Season 2021-2022 and the gifts of deeper embodiment that its brought to humanity. The Polarities of the Signs: specifically Capricorn/Cancer synergy.
The Reclamation of Somatics as a new awakening of humankind. The difference between wisdom and knowledge that is experienced vs merely mentally conceived and
SO MUCH MORE Check out Rachel's Patreon and receive weekly astrology forecasts (they are AMAZING!) and get special pricing or free access to her classes, workshops and more! https://www.patreon.com/aeolianheart
https://www.freeyoursoma.com/post/transforming-pain-and-anxiety-into-radiant-happiness-amanda-s-journey-with-hanna-somatics
A: Every day there is a forgetting and every moment there is the possibility of remembering. Remembering who you truly are, awakening to your body, to the inner world and experience of being alive. Here is where you find the beauty, the joy. Here is where you free your Soma. Hello friends! This podcast episode was recorded in November of 2022, so while the astrological information may not be current, it's still very relevant. Rachel is going to go over the last nodal axis of the Eclipse season, specifically the Taurus and Scorpio axis. So as you listen to her describe these things, think back on the last year of your life and how these concepts may apply to what's come up for you, what's been discovered, what's been enhanced and what's been released. Welcome everybody to Free Your Soma podcast. I'm here today with a very special guest, an astrologer who I've been following for many years now. I really love her approach. She's so knowledgeable and I'm excited here today to have her share a little bit about her experience of astrology over the last year with the eclipses that have been going on as well as the embodied experience of astrology that is possible as we start to learn more about how astrology relates to the rhythms of life and the rhythms even within our own bodies. So, welcome today, Rachel.
R: Thank you for being here. Oh, thank you, Amy. It's a pleasure. I'm super excited to talk to you today. Yeah.
A: So you can just give us like a little introduction to you and your approach to astrology for anybody who's new to you or new to astrology here. Okay.
R: That's a really hard question to ask. Like the hardest. A summation of my approach to astrology. Well, first of all, I really write astrology to support artists and healers and it's very important to me to speak to those people because I feel like the path of art and the path of healing is one in the same. Artists and healers are the people that are willing to reach inside themselves, to explore their pain, to explore their past and use it as raw material to create, to mend broken things, to beautify. And so I'm this kind of person and it's really inspiring to me what astrology can do for this kind of person. It's a language of soul. It is something that gives context, metaphor, meaning, mythopoeic resonance to one's life. And so I find that when you're on that path, a creative path or a path of healing, that astrology is extremely helpful. It's very supportive. And in my life, it's been an endless source of inspiration. And so I like to offer that to people through my work. And I like to blend astrology, which is a philosophy of hermeticism. It's a hermetic art. It's one of the three hermetic arts. I like to make it accessible because it is, it's the oldest body of knowledge on the planet, which is something that not everybody knows. It's also the mother of all sciences. So astrology is the first body of knowledge from which everything else that human beings have developed spring from. And I mean everything because the knowledge that we've gained from the stars transformed into math and the ability to create architecture and the entire premise of civilization itself is something that requires or allows for the observation of the sky, you know, being able to sit in one place rather than be nomadic, but to actually settle somewhere and remain still and keep the same observation point and therefore be able to follow what's going on in the heavens century after century. So many things have come from astrology. It's like a seed of all human knowledge. And so it's really vast and it's really inspiring, but it's also kind of intimidating and it can be very arcane and very dusty. And so I really like to make it fresh, relevant, exciting by blending it with art, with pop culture, with poetry, with music, with philosophy, with stuff that I love so that people can find connection to it that is outside of technical jargon. I don't like astrology that's weighed down with so much jargon and so much technical expertise that people feel left out or they feel like lost in the mist. And I remember when I was a very new student of astrology, how frustrating that was for me. Can feel overwhelming. Yes, it can be very overwhelming. So my goal is to support artists and healers by making astrology really smart, really beautiful, but incredibly accessible, not by dumbing it down, but by relating it to things that we already love, already feel, already know. And in that way, I feel like I've really found my path. I found my voice as a writer, at least for this era of my life. And I'm really devoted to this at the moment. It's kind of my, it's my whole world. It's what I do for a living. It's the most important or the central part of my creative work. And it's brought me to places in life. It's given me the opportunity to experience so many adventures. I'm really, really happy with what I do. So that's me as an astrologer. I don't belong to a specific school of thought. And that's the other thing that's really important to remember. Like astrology is a scene, like anything. And so there are always, there's little clubs, little organizations. There's definitely schools of thought, just like any other realm of human knowledge. I do not belong specifically to anyone. I'm an eclectic, syncretic kind of person. So that's where I'm coming from. You know, it's it's high and low. It's ancient and modern. It's a little bit of a blend that to me is just free flowing and natural. But yeah, I'm not an evolutionary astrologer. I'm not a Hellenistic astrologer. I'm not like a strict Jungian. I just read widely, study deeply, and I use whatever feels natural and inspiring to me. So that's where I'm coming from.
A: Oh, that's that's wonderful, because that explains so much about why I've been attracted to your work over the years as someone who is artistic, who is, you know, on the path of a healer, like you've been speaking to me. And so that explains a lot that, you know, that's who you're speaking to, because I'm attracted to that. And so many other people, I'm sure. I also have just loved the way that you have made astrology so accessible and relevant to whatever is actually happening, like within the world, the political climate, you are not afraid to kind of like go there and talk about how astrology relates to our everyday experiences too, which is something I've really loved. I'm in your Patreon, and so I listen to your weekly astrology voicemails. And I just I just love it because it's helping me connect the dots sometimes in what's happening in my individual life with what's happening on a global scale, with what's happening energetically. And that can be so calming when you're in the midst of whatever personal stuff, you know, you think is just you to kind of take a little macro view and go, oh, wait a minute, like there's also a collective thing going on here that I that may be like part of what I'm experiencing, that is part of what I'm experiencing, right? Absolutely. I really love astrology for that purpose. And then, you know, just what you said a few moments ago about the study of astrology is from one point, like you pause and you stop and you observe. Right. I think that is a perfect metaphor for meditation, right? And the stillness that we can create to observe ourselves, to observe the ever changing flow of internal information that is going on all the time and how much wisdom can be gained from that as opposed to just constantly moving from place to place or from thought to thought or feeling to feeling, we can get lost. We can actually not know where we are inside ourselves or in in time and space, right, disorientation. So that was beautiful. I love that you just kind of connected in there. I got very like aware of the meditative nature of astrology as a skill, as like a study, as an art. Yeah. Right. Absolutely.
R: And it is both an observation of the heavens. I mean, there is literally the astronomical side of it. But most importantly, it is an exploration of inner space. So it has everything in common with meditation because when astrology was born and for every millennia after that, until this tiny little bleep in history right now, the relationship between the inner world and the outer world was deeply understood. It wasn't taught to people. It wasn't something that you had to remind people of all the time. There wasn't like a need to constantly have affirmations that thoughts create reality. Everybody knew this. And so the relationship between what you're observing in the natural world and what's going on internally and vice versa was woven together very beautifully, very naturally. I imagine very gracefully. And, you know, human consciousness has evolved. And it appears that a part of the natural evolution of our consciousness has required a period of split or separation between inner and outer spirit and matter. And I can't say for sure whether or not that's good or bad. It certainly had a lot of deleterious effects on the quality of our life. But in alchemy, separation is a natural part of the process. It's necessary. You have to sift and sort and split things apart. You have to divide things to refine and purify whatever it is that you're working with alchemically. And so we can look at the current conditions that we're in where that relationship between inner and outer has been severed. Now there's astronomy and it has no concept of the inner world. There's no relationship between astronomy and dreams or astronomy and one's feelings. There's nothing going on in the imaginal world that has any bearing on what astronomers are doing. That split between spirit and matter that will just, you know, will use a blanket statement to describe it must have some purpose for our evolution. And even though it's uncomfortable, it still represents some kind of growth. It still represents necessary change. And it's obviously not going to stay that way because in alchemy, separation ends with the process of conjunction, which is bringing the two sides that have been torn apart back together. And now they are purified. They are ready to be joined once again. And that union is far stronger and far more stable than it ever could have been before. So that's what's happening to us. You know, and so the interest in astrology that's going on right now, it's just one of the many astrological renaissance is that we find throughout history. An interest in astrology seems to surge whenever there is a significant evolution in the dissemination of information. So any information age, which this is not the first, there's been lots of others, just, you know, different different styles of information age. So the fascination with astrology is something that seems to go along with the desire to or relate and conceptualize and contextualize a tremendous overwhelm when humanity is shifting rapidly, evolving rapidly. And there's so many questions and there's too much information and we don't know how to process it all. Something about this language, which explores inner space, which weaves together the inner and the outer, which has a tremendously ancient well of symbols to draw from that are just timeless. Something about it seems to provide meaning, context, metaphor that really does it threads things back together. It aids the process of conjunction. So whatever has split apart, it seems to start bringing things back together. And that's why I believe astrology is so popular right now. And it's really gone way beyond newspaper horoscopes. The interest in astrology, it's advanced. Like a lot of people want to know a lot more than silly horoscopes. Like the renaissance is here. You know, it's huge. So.
A: Yeah, I'm so glad you brought that up because I mean, my view of astrology at times when I was like a kid or something, those newspaper horoscopes, a lot of people just know their sun sign. But, you know, what really amazes me is that when you start to look at the whole scope of each astrological side and you start to see that as like a map of humanity and that we all have all 12 houses and we all have all these different archetypes within us, that it's it's too simplistic to just say, oh, I'm a cancer or I'm a Leo. And that means this or that because we actually have all of those interacting within each other. And then the other thing here about that that splitting apart, coming back together, we can see that even within the poles of astrology between the axis of one sign to another, like if you would speak to that a little bit, because that was something that I wasn't fully like aware of until the last few years. And studying with you and learning from you is that there's, you know, the opposites, the cancer is opposite the Capricorn and they have different energies that are polar, but they they are still relating to each other. There still can be harmony between them. Yeah.
R: Well, we could just use the most basic natural metaphor, which is electromagnetic poles, anything that's electric, anything that's magnetic has its polar opposite. And that's how it that's how it carries its particular charge, whether it's negative or positive, electric or magnetic, it's working through polarity. That's how nature works. So the zodiac is a circle. And so every single one of the signs does have a dynamic relationship or a dynamic flux or a polarity with its opposing sign. And I think cancer Capricorn is a really great example, because it is within the season of cancer and Capricorn that the sun enters through the solstice. So we have the solstices during those seasons. And this is really important because the zodiac itself is it is a myth of humanity, of course, but what the sun represents symbolically is the soul, you know, the spirit and soul of humanity. And the sun traveling through the solstices is really significant in the mythology of astrology, because it represents how it tells the story, I should say, of how a spirit, which is infinite, boundless, eternal, could end up here on this earthly plane in this material world. How does spirit itself enter into matter? So when we were talking earlier about the split between spirit and matter, it's kind of, you know, it's still trendy today. It's a very scientific, materialist point of view to consider that we are matter and to study that, but they have no concept of spirit. But in the ancient world, the natural belief, the natural cosmology that spanned across the world was that eternal spirit actually was manifested in matter, in the body, in this place that is restricted by time and space and gravity. And so it's finite. And yet it focuses the energy of consciousness. It focuses boundless spirit into a finite life with finite space that it can take up. Actually, finite heights that it can reach, all the limitations and restriction of matter are also a representative of focus. Actually, limiting the amount that you can do provides you with the opportunity to really put a lot of force or a lot of consciousness into whatever it is that you're doing. So precision, precision, exactly. A tremendous amount of concentration, the concentration of energy. So the solstices actually represented the gates where the soul or the spirit of humanity would descend into matter. And that happened at the at the winter solstice. It was believed that a or I should say the the summer solstice. It was believed that a soul would actually descend to the earth and find itself born into a human body. And the story would go that as soon as a spirit manifested into this material plane, it would feel the heaviness. It would feel the gravity. It would feel the pain of restriction. It would remember eternity and it would remember being able to fly. And it would remember all of these things that represented freedom, you know, and it would feel pain and sorrow at being trapped in this material world. And so the natural inclination would therefore be to spend one's life trying to ascend, trying to get back home. And so what this describes is the dynamic between cancer and Capricorn. So cancer was the gateway where an innocent spirit was hovering about in heaven. This is how the ancients wrote about it. So I'm not making this up. It's really true. The gateway of cancer was where a spirit, a disembodied spirit would be in a heavenly place of pleasure, sweetness, joy and contentment and would look down upon the earth and bear witness to its struggles, its dramas, would look at the the lives of human beings and eventually the peace and contentment and joy of the heavenly realm would become kind of boring. And the stories unfolding on the earthly plane, the stories unfolding in the human sphere would become very enticing, kind of the way I think that we get drawn into TV shows or or plays or books, you know, like this. Yeah, dramas like these disembodied souls would become really involved in the dramas and they were said to grow heavy with desire and that heaviness would eventually draw them by gravity down to the earth and they would become manifest in a human body. They would be born. And so kind of like clouds condense and get heavy and rain down. That's sort of the same cycle that the ancient world imagined the human spirits manifestation on this plane. And so the gateway or the solstice, summer solstice, tropic of cancer, which is actually the line of longitude that or latitude that the sun crosses through. The belief was that's how a human body, a human being became born on this earthly plane. But then at the winter solstice, the sun is at the bottom or the nadir. The sun is at its lowest point. The light has become as low and dim. The days have grown as short as they're going to be. And what this represented was a human being recently born on earth, immediate desire to climb back up. Let's get out of here. Like, OK, I'm here. I'm limited. I'm heavy and I can't fly. I'm only so tall and I only have so much time. It's a tremendous burden. And so that tremendous burden would drive the soul who had once been heavy with desire to know what it was like to be human. Now the human soul is looking for paths of ascent as high as we can. Back to heaven. And that happened at the winter solstice, the tropic of Capricorn. So you could see this is actually a great metaphor for the sun's journey in cancer. The sun is high in the sky, as high as it's going to be. And then it starts to descend. It starts to lower and lower and lower until finally it reaches that bottom. And then at the winter solstice, the sun is reborn and slowly, but surely one step at a time, the sun begins to ascend and the days grow longer and longer. It's a struggle, but it happens. And we pull ourselves out of the darkness of winter. We pull ourselves through all the way to the equinox. That's when spring begins. And then back up to the summer solstice. So Capricorn represents the struggle that a spirit feels, an eternal spirit feels trapped within the confines of matter. It's ruled by Saturn, because that's what Saturn represents, is the restrictions of time, space and gravity. And so Capricorn is a sign that is full of tenacity, the desire to fight against gravity, to climb uphill against all odds, to return to heavenly origins. Cancer, on the other hand, is the sign that is so loving and so full of feeling for the human world that it's willing to sacrifice a tremendous amount of comfort to know what it's like to be human and to bring some of that heavenly light down to the earth itself. Because of course, every spirit that descends from this myth's perspective, every spirit that descends is bringing some of the light from its heavenly origins. It's bringing some of the kindness, some of the sweetness. And we can see that in babies when they're born, you know. Yeah. Your love, their pure love, they're all like, they're absolutely perfect, you know, they're perfect from the heavenly origins.
A: So as you brought that up, because, you know, as you were talking a moment ago about this limitlessness and then the being confined into matter as the way to actually have focus and precision. This is literally what happens in our nervous systems with babies. So babies, if you watch them start to move, it's like chaotic, right? And what it's not completely chaotic, there's actually hundreds of these nervous system reflexes that baby is performing that is going through. But it is chaotic in the sense that they can't reach over and like touch a specific thing. They can't reach over and put their fingers just to this. They're like all over the place. And what actually goes on in our nervous systems is layers and layers of inhibition, inhibiting the movement, because otherwise it would just be all movement. And you can see this with people who start to go through some kind of neurodegenerative challenge, like they're shaking and things that people with Parkinson's or different neurodegenerative issues start to have is that their movements can become chaotic. Because there's a lack of inhibition. And so this idea of like limitation actually having a purpose to create that precision, to create that focus, to allow us to pick up just this spoon and then skillfully handle it. Right. It's also something that's literally present in our human development of our nervous system. And so this idea of the limitlessness of our nature is so appealing when you feel stuck and yet at the same time, would you want to be everyone everywhere all at once?
R: No, it's really good point actually. A way of looking at the Saturnian influence that I've never thought of before, but that is Saturn's influence, inhibition of neurochemicals so that you can actually gain control, grace, move smoothly, have your hands shake when you are trying to do something that requires fine motor skills. Yes, that's a perfect way to look at Saturn's influence. And one that leads you to really have some respect and feel the wisdom and the love in Saturn's influence as well, because there is a bias that we all have at some level, because most of us feel bitter about the fact that we have to die or grow old, you know, there's a or that we can't fly, whatever it is. There's usually some level of resistance or resentment towards Saturn's influence, gravity, time, space, we all feel like about it at some point. But as you said, the influence of Saturn is also like the reason why we have experienced great joy and pleasure in our life. Saturn's influence is also the one that gives us discipline. And discipline is the reason why we can do anything well, including enunciate our speech, write, play piano, paint. Whatever you're good at that you've actually practiced your skill, and you've had the pleasure of watching your talent become refined into actually like a skill. That's Saturn. So we only enjoy life and we only feel a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment in this life because of the influence of Saturn. When we refuse to work, practice, focus, you know, put in the hours to refine our skills, when we don't do that, we are miserable. You know, that is a universal human experience to feel dissatisfaction, chaos, misery, a lack of connection, a lack of functionality, a lack of, you know, fulfillment. That's what happens when we don't actually work on the things that we are here to work on. And so it is Saturn that gives us that ability. The other thing that's really mystical about Saturn's influence is that when we do focus on something, we break through the limitations and that's the superpower that Saturn hides. This realm does have its rules. We have the laws of physics, time, space, gravity. Like I said, we have all these limitations and yeah, one day we're all going to die. We cannot defy these things. There are set limitations and rules that we have to play by. But in small ways, when we actually do use the power of our mind to focus, concentrate, we bend time. We can break through the limitation of time. We can break through the limitation of gravity, as we all know, because we fly airplanes now. And it took a tremendous amount of mental concentration, focus, and discipline to invent something like the airplane and to actually bring the things that have allowed us to break through these limitations over and over again. So when we read a book, a good book, a good one that we're getting lost in, we are focusing on it. We're concentrating on it. We're giving so much of our focused consciousness to the book that we leave this plane, we chime travel, we go somewhere else. And we all love that feeling because it's a relief. Finally, we can actually be free spirits again. We actually get to go back up to at least taste the infinite eternal realm that we all remember at some level deep down inside. And there's also the quality of when you're really in flow, when you're really just doing your thing and whatever it is, you're not concerned with time. You're not checking your watch. Time just disappears. You're so into what you're doing. And there is something to that time is relative to the way that you are focusing on it and experiencing it. So even though clock time isn't going to change, the quality of your time changes drastically based upon what you're doing. And when you really focus on something, you really discipline yourself, you can get into a zone. And now effortless. And that's the secret of Saturn. He wants us to all get to a place with whatever it is that we are working on where it becomes effortless. And you're not laboring anymore. You're not struggling against gravity. You're not trying to work out the math equations and it's just killing your head. You're not laboring to draw the letter B the right way. I think about that a lot with what you just said with a musical instrument and practice. And there are many hours spent struggling to remember how that shape looks. And you have to do it slowly and you're looking at your hand and it takes this concentration. And then one day you're just playing and it's just flowing from you. And this is exactly what I'm working with my clients and we're doing somatic reprogramming of the way that they move their bodies. They explain to them the exact same thing. Like this is how you refine the way that you move is through practicing movement very slowly. And we work with micro movements. We work with these very tiny little movements and we bring our focus and attention to them. And it is actually just through that focus and attention along with the specific technique like say the specific chord progression that you then create like music that you then create fluid comfortable movement. And so I just love you know and talking with you today about how these things that we can sometimes get caught up in the idea of them being conceptual are actually very physical. They're actually very much like part of our material physical reality rather than just these concepts just these these mental constructs. Do you know what I mean? Like sometimes I think people get into astrology and they see it as just this philosophy or something and they don't necessarily understand like these are universal truths that are part of like our embodied experience of being human. And so with what's been going on I mean last year around this time I was at one of your talks. It was actually in person which was such an unusual thing at the time. But you were talking about the eclipse season that was going on in 2021 and then kind of gave a talk about the this eclipse axis you know while we're talking about polarities. The eclipse axis that was about to come into like humanity's experience over the next year. And we're just about like at that time again where there's this strong polar energy of eclipse season going on. And maybe you can just talk a little bit about how that affects us physically.
S: Yeah well okay so eclipses are actually still very mysterious. Science will not admit that there is any significance physically to eclipse season but it is believed by many that eclipses actually shift the electromagnetic energy and therefore it does have a very visceral physical effect. But we don't need to go there necessarily. I don't need to prove or disprove that to talk about why these eclipses are particularly physical. So when I met you last year that was when the axis or the nodal axis had just moved into torus scorpio. And like I said about electromagnetic the eclipses which you know eclipses happen twice a year every year once in a while there might be more than four eclipses once in a while there could be five but most of the time there's four eclipses every year. And what that means is there's a new moon and a full moon that are actually very close to what we call the nodal axis. And so the nodal axis has a positive side which we call the north node and it has a negative side which we call the south node. The positive side or the north node is a place where an influx of energy is coming in a tremendous amount of food if you will is being eaten a tremendous amount of new information celestial energy however you want to look at it a tremendous power surge is coming in the south node being the negative pole is where there's a power out a lot is being released purged whipped away. And so at this particular time when last year November of 2021 and up until July of 23 we have the north node the power surge in the sign of torus which is the fixed earth sign that represents the middle of spring and it represents all things agricultural and fertile and blossoming and beautiful sensual and material the south node the place where the power outage is going on where the purging is going on is in the sign of scorpio which represents the middle of autumn and it represents all of the death and decay and loss that eventually nourishes the soil all of the dead leaves and the rotting corpses all the loss and the death and the rot eventually comes back up in the spring as beautiful roses as may flowers if you will so there is a very real and obvious relationship between this polarity between torus and scorpio because all of us witness this every year everything that dies becomes reborn as new life everything that dies in the middle of autumn becomes reborn as new life in the middle of spring so that is what the polarity of torus and scorpio represents now there is no more physical or visceral sign or sensual sign than torus in the sign of torus human consciousness really evolves to use the senses as its main instrument of intelligence and this is really important to remember because this is your work number one and number two i feel like still i think you were talking about Descartes before we started recording that division between mind and body that is an enlightenment era invention um has really relegated and i guess some threads of christianity did this as well the division between the mind and the body or the spirit in the body has sort of condemned the body to like be considered stupid and less intelligent than the computational mind or the analytical mind but from an astrological perspective the body is the subconscious mind the body is so much wiser than any of us could even fathom in our conscious mind none of us can compute or analyze or conceptualize all of the perception and the wisdom that the body actually contains its ability to touch taste sense feel hear smell all of these things that we do without thinking um all of these processes that are completely unconscious that are completely out of our our mental capacity to control like you know most breathing you know autonomic um most breathing our heartbeat our ability to smell something and associate that scent with a deep well of memory and that deep well of memory brings up all of these emotions and those emotions bring up all of these ideas and all of these ideas can blossom into who knows what art a philosophy a theory uh something to say to your lover that could really deepen your relationship i mean who knows it's tremendous what the body is capable of and so torus recognizes that consciousness first develops intelligence through the five senses the five senses are actually depicted in the symbol of the pentagram and the pentagram is actually a sign of it's a symbol of venus and this is something that is not well known because the inverted pentagram has become this like fearful symbol of satanic practices and i'm not denying that that there is an association between the inverted pentagram and satanic practices but the upright pentagram is a symbol that is associated with venus and it's not just an associated symbol the pentagram is actually the geometric shape that can be found when you connect all of the dots in the rows that venus makes in the heavens over the course of eight years so essentially what i'm saying is that when you follow the transit of venus through the sky and you trace the geometric patterns that she's making throughout eight years she creates a perfectly geometrically a geometrically symmetrical and exquisite rows you can look it up it's called the sacred rows of venus she literally draws this exquisite rose in the sky and then when you connect all of the vertices in the rows it creates a perfect pentagram and so the reason i'm talking about venus is because venus is the ruler of torus.
A: senses yes so and venus the symbol of venus which everyone knows because the symbol of venus is used to represent women now you know like it's the circle on top of the cross so you've seen that you've seen that to represent women it doesn't represent women it represents venus like which is funny but you know whatever modern interpretations but what that symbol means is not woman that symbol means the circle of spirit circle being infinite which once again from the ancient cosmologies it was well understood that each one of us is an eternal spirit so that circle represents your eternal spirit that cross represents the four elements in other words the four elements that make up matter itself so venus the glyph tells you that the influence of venus is that which attracts or magnetizes spirit into matter and how on earth would spirit be attracted to matter it's through the promise of pleasure through the five senses so what torus is really about is the ultimate sensual experience as a spiritual path as mystical revelation as the entire purpose for being here and more heady cerebral people including myself before I really understood this and really allowed this to like work on me um they really don't understand they don't understand this but the purpose of spirit being in a body is to use the five senses to experience pleasure through touch taste through inhaling the beautiful fragrance using all of the senses to create a palette of beauty and to create a unique reason to love life and the body is you know a temple and that temple is sacred and the experiences that are being cultivated within that temple are divine in origin and they are a gift from venus herself so the whole the mysteries of venus are represented by embodiment itself and allowing your sensual experience to be your primary mode of perception your primary mode of intelligence if you will and I know that all of us were conditioned to believe that our primary mode of intelligence is like how fast we can do math um how like wordy we are like how clever we are but no um according to the wisdom of torus and you know the wisdom of astrology if you don't have the somatic or the sensual experience if you're not fully embodied in the sensual experience if you're not using all the senses that you have not everyone has five senses but using all the senses you do have to your utmost ability then you're not intelligent like you're not intelligent you're disembodied disengaged and you're missing out on the whole reason for being here right it's you know and I feel like you know some of the what you're saying and all of this including somatic perspectives on life they're still fairly radical because there's so much conditioning that we have around um yeah living driven by our minds and driven by the mind's desire and thinking of the the body's desires as just kind of inconvenience really you know there's a lot of frustration I mean I lived in chronic tension and pain which is actually what led me to becoming a somatic educator you know in those funny ways that like you know pain and misery can lead to you know enlightenment and purpose right exactly the um the feelings that I used to have about my body was how frustrating and annoying it was that I had muscular tension and pain you know when actually the muscular tension and pain was alerting me to different ways in which I was using my body or treating my body that were damaging my body that were harming me and the pain was actually just feedback and information about what was not in alignment literally in my body like what bones and muscles were not working in um harmony with each other were not actually communicating and that's what the pain was about it wasn't about just punishing me and slowing me down it was about alerting me to something that was not um that was not aligned inside my body and we can still get very caught up and I faced this even in myself and and probably a lot of people are feeling this um in the shift of moving into winter where we don't want to slow down right we want to keep going with some momentum that we've been in and it's so inconvenient that now it's rainy or now it's cold or it's so inconvenient that now like my body wants more sleep because we have this driven part of us our yang mental energy that has been conditioned by the world at large to just go go go and to be productive and to get things done and so I think that um and maybe you can speak to this with that access between between torus and scorpio of that scorpio season of really having to be confronted with death and be confronted with the slowing down of things and maybe a reduction of momentum um because many of us are very uncomfortable with that I know I was really physically uncomfortable with that in my body you know and and not it's super excited about sitting with my pain right and sitting with my discontent
S: oh yeah I mean it's the nobody likes to sit with pain um nobody likes to sit with pain but the aside from external injuries but we could even argue that getting into a lot of external injuries has a psychological or emotional source as well you know like um I've noticed that my I get increasingly clumsy when I'm holding in a lot of anger straight up so there's that but I mean aside from actually like just a catastrophic external injury any pain or tension or disease that's revealing itself in your body has an emotional source it's coming from emotional pain first and foremost and that is what scorpio is about scorpio is fixed water it's dark water it's a place where it's the underworld it's everything that is poisonous putrid toxic and so emotionally it represents what we consider to be our dark emotions now dark emotions are healthy in and of themselves what's unhealthy is when they get swallowed and they go unexpressed and they're not allowed to move so you can feel as much anger as you want even if it's not justified it's okay to feel anger but it has to move through you otherwise it becomes depression and that leads to all kinds of physical health problems uh if you are you know if you are jealous that's okay everybody feels jealousy from time to time but if you cling to it If you pretend it's not there, if you do any number of things to keep it held inside, it becomes toxic. Like as anything does, stagnant water is the metaphor for Scorpio. And it's horrifying. We're all terrified of stagnant water. You know, none of us want to be around it. It smells bad. There's mosquitoes. It's disgusting. You know, it's frightening. And yet that is exactly what happens internally when we either try to pretend that we don't have dark feelings when we do. Or we know that they're there, but we just don't find any outlet for them. We just let them fester. We just let them rot. Now, the beautiful thing about the Scorpio Taurus Eclipses is that because the South note is in Scorpio, it's really opening a lot in people in terms of the dark emotions they've been holding onto, the things they've been repressing, the ugly side of them. And everybody has one. So it's no shame on you if you're listening to this and you're like, oh my God, I'm so bad. No, you're not bad. Everybody has the things inside of them that are festering, that are rotting. And all of us go through dark periods in life where a tremendous amount of pain emerges in response to our experience. It could be that somebody dies and you're grieving. It could be that you're betrayed and you're full of rage and and and wounding, you know, and there's all of our pasts. We all have conditioning and trauma from the past that we haven't known how to let go of. And so the South note is transiting in Scorpio and the eclipse season that involves Scorpio is kind of like breaking the ice or opening or dredging the lake, I think is a really good metaphor dredging the lake for all the dead bodies and car bringing that stuff up to the surface, which is so ugly and scary, but ultimately it's a wonderful thing because it's actually representing movement and clearing and purging. So one of the things that I thought was going to be very important to remember when this eclipse season started is that when the dark ugly emotions start being dredged up. The physical body is going to respond. And so I knew for a fact that there were going to be a lot of strange mysterious health problems, strange mysterious pain, strange mysterious things going on in our physical bodies. But what it represents is not total destruction, nor does it represent you being 10 steps behind where you once were. It actually represents you clearing things that were frozen inside of you and trauma especially I think is best understood as frozen energy frozen consciousness. It's a part of you, you know, in shamanic practices, they, they treat trauma with something called soul retrieval, because their notion is that your soul is actually broken. And there's little splinters of your soul that are scattered here there and everywhere in the underworld, which is the unconscious. And you can also look at it as something that's just trapped it's frozen it's not moving it's not growing, you're not allowed you can't release it. You can't grow from it, you can't do anything with it except relive it over and over just get stuck on a loop. Right.
A: And this, I mean, you think of like brain brain patterns, brain structures that occur because of trauma, people get stuck using a very specific route, and the that route is being overused, and that's what being triggered is is having that route in your brain, you know, activated. And then now you're stuck in a response a physical response to your environment that feels totally oppressive. And that coming out of trauma, and coming out of that kind of conditioning that that cycle that loop. Yeah, is part of actually accessing the part of ourselves and the part of our brains that is plastic, and that can actually learn and grow and branch out from that. But when you're in it when you're stuck in it, then it feels very oppressive. Right. It feels like you're just running in a hamster wheel forever and you're getting more and more exhausted, but that that that changing of things that breaking out of that structure of, and then and I'm literally thinking about like the way people's brains adapt from, you know, and again once again these these concepts are very material it's like we can talk about this in neuro physiological terms, and we can talk about it in astrological terms and we can talk about it in in philosophical terms it's amazing right that these things are actually so fundamental. So the getting caught up in that loop, and then breaking out of it there that breaking out is uncomfortable usually that breaking out is sometimes even painful, or difficult, because you're stepping out of what is known and what is safe and what has been working, even if, if it's been a dysfunctional pattern, there's some kind of payoff of feeling safe. There's some kind of payoff of knowing, you know that what's happening is predictable, versus the unknown or the changing of things, which I think the metaphor of draining the lake to pull out the bodies can kind of represent some of that very uncomfortable changing that needs to happen for healing to occur for new water to be circulating right for new brain pathways to be accessed.
R: Exactly 100% it's the ice is melted and flow returns meaning plasticity path of least resistance and the the natural manner of growth that does exist within us you know our life force or essence or spirit or soul whatever you want to look at it through the lens of is a lot like water in that it is always seeking to flow and to to evolve naturally and it's always you know, kind of effortless effort it's always seeking effortless effort. But you know, when we freeze from trauma, and we find pain in our body, this is the work that you do and I think it's so important. It's, it's a gift, even though it sucks and I've had plenty of terrible health problems and so I really understand like I'm not diminutizing anybody's pain, nor the terror and panic and hopelessness that you feel when you're at the bottom of a well because I definitely, I go there just because I know this about the mind body spirit soul matter connection doesn't mean that I don't panic and hate being in pain. But I do recognize that it is my body speaking to me and so a connection's been made which is great because that's not the same thing as total unconsciousness total repression. That's what's truly toxic to be completely unconscious. And to therefore be living very much like a ghost when you are totally unconscious of what is driving you, what is attracting situations into your life over and over, what is keeping you stuck at a certain level in life, whatever it is, it could be money relationships, the kind of friends that you think you deserve or you know you're not thinking at all, the kind of friends that you're keeping company with who are very, you know, maybe abusive to you whatever it is you're stuck in in life, creative blocks, if you're totally unconscious about it. That's a scary life, you're like a ghost, you're living in the past, you're not really relating to anything deeply, you're not really present you can't be when people tell you will be in the present moment when you're living through totally unconscious patterns, you can't be present and you can't do that. And you can't really grow you can't make changes so when pain comes up in the body, as awful as it is it is speaking to you and it's letting you know like, you know, we are actually in dialogue now like let's make this happen, let's get some help, let's get some, some things in our life that will actually move us forward let's do something about it and that's why you know I find any legit healer has a very harrowing story of initiation through illness, like, because that illness is the very thing that initiated them into their path and broke them through to the level of awareness rather than unconsciousness. But you don't have to necessarily become a healer to have an experience like that like your, your pain your tension your sickness is an initiation of some kind it's trying to teach you. You can also read the messages of the body. So deeply like, what is it that's failing and what does that mean. Right. Yeah, it's very important I think it's really interesting, you know, like,
A: yeah, it's interesting also because when we are experiencing pain, like in a certain area of our life. our experiencing pain experiencing pain experiencing pain say you're having a lot of like lower back pain. Yeah, part of what's going on with like now suddenly being very guarding of your back and moving in a certain way to avoid the pain, you know, or being really careful when you get in and out of your car. You're actually not a lot of neuro neural connection to that area. That area is suddenly like lit up with a lot of sensory awareness. You have literally brought more awareness to the space that has pain. And this can be a little strange sometimes like with my clients like if I'll have them sense in, they will often have so much more awareness of an area of their body where there has been pain, and there's much less awareness of another area of their body where there hasn't been pain where there isn't any pain going on. Like say it's your lower back but like I asked you about your shoulders it's like, suddenly you go to sense into your shoulders it's like they don't even exist. And that can be very bizarre, but it's part of like what you said, our bodies bringing our awareness, our attention to this area because there's something going on here that is that that needs to be addressed. Now fascinating thing to and then continuing to relate this to like neuro physiological dynamics is that what's going on in your lower back is related to whatever might be going on in your shoulders that is unconscious still. There's there may be an unconscious pattern, muscular pattern in your shoulders that is in direct relation to what's going on in your upper back. And so sometimes when we focus only on correcting or fixing the thing that is causing us pain and we ignore the other aspects of ourselves and our lives that are also happening. We miss out on a way to address that issue that would actually be maybe the most efficient route. Like say you're so obsessed with like how you're eating, but you're not paying attention to how much you're sleeping. Right, you're trying to, you know, meal plan and do all this take this do with this special diet or that special diet, and you don't necessarily connect that your circadian rhythms and your body rhythms are being impacted by the fact that you're not sleeping very much. Yes, your sleep schedules all over. And so, yes, you're focusing on the digestive system and your food, but not focusing on how much sleep you're getting. If you focused on, you know, connecting with this part that is unconscious this how much you're sleeping it might actually shift and change things that are going on digestibly. Right.
R: That's a very good point and it really comes from this all really evokes the wisdom of tourists once again, because the the wisdom of tourists operates through all these rhythms and is in tune with them. So total embodiment and you know none of us are perfect. Okay, like, but total embodiment is to be harmonious with all the rhythms, all the ebbs and flows and that is everything from the circadian rhythm that is influenced by the cycle of night and day. To the rhythms of breath moving through your body the rhythm of your heartbeat and of course, rhythm of the seasons my God I mean the resistance that modern technocrats have to just yielding to the fading of the light yielding to the cold outside. And this would not happen or be a problem for somebody who was fully embodied, because they would be just in tune with the seasonal cycle and they would find a way to adjust and shift so that life doesn't become less beautiful or less interesting or less important when there's less light. You just find other ways to manifest your consciousness you find other things to focus on other things to do, essentially. And I feel like that's maybe my favorite thing about astrology is that it teaches you the wisdom of each season. Just spring summer fall winter but the three parts of each season the beginning of spring the middle of spring the end of spring, which fades into the beginning of summer the middle of summer the end of summer. There's a distinct evolutionary purpose of beauty, a wisdom and a meaning to every single time of the year. And you can break it up even further into the new moon the full moon, whether Mercury is direct or retrograde. And so you don't have to be bored, and you don't have to resist the quality of the time that you're living through you don't have to resist the quality of the light, whether you like it hot and bright or you like it soft and dim. You can learn to really be embodied in every season and find the purpose of it, especially in your life, you know, because each one of us has a time of year where we feel our best. That's for damn sure. But, you know, when the sun is dimming in Scorpio season, before the solstice. What do we do we go more within, we explore the richness of the inner world. And, you know, in astrology what follows Scorpio season the season of death, where everything dies and we have to experience so much loss and we explore our dark emotions, all of that which is frightening, as we've discussed. What follows that is Sagittarius season, and even darker time of year, and even darker time of year the sun is less visible in the sky the days are way shorter. And yet Sagittarius season is what we call the holiday season. That's when everybody brings out their sparkly lights. All of the holidays that are celebrated are associated with the solstice. So whether it's Christmas or Hanukkah or anything in between these are all solstice holidays solstice rituals. And that's the promise of the return of the light. But what Sagittarius season teaches us is that, okay, so the light outside is not so bright, we can't rely on the sun to give us new life, it is coming to be winter. But we discover the light within. And, you know, that's traditionally called the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the light within that never fades. And when you realize that when you're in touch with that, you feel like you've survived death, you feel like you can go through anything, you feel amazing. And that's what we call the holiday spirit. Because when that inner light is discovered, the natural inclination is to become cheerful, jovial, generous, and sparkly. You know, everybody wants to cheer everybody up, everybody wants to share and give. And that's what that's what that's what that's what that's classic story of a Christmas Carol where Ebenezer Scrooge goes from a nasty miser to like the most generous man in London. That's because he discovered the Holy Spirit, he discovered the light within.
A: And he had to go through a death process in order to get there in order to see it, to feel it.
R: Exactly. He had to have, he had to die. He literally awakens in a grave, as I recall, like he's like being thrown into his own grave. And it's he's descending into his own grave, which is an open pit of blackness and the earth. It's terrifying, you know, it's super gothic and then he awakens and he's still alive and he's discovered the light within and now he just wants to help everybody he wants to share he wants to live fully he wants to celebrate life. And that's not because the sun has returned and it's not because the light has become warm, and it's not because life has returned yet that doesn't come for many more months. Instead, you're like, No, there's, there's more to consciousness than just what we're experiencing externally there's the inner space. And so that's what death is all about is discovering that there is a is a no death. Honestly, I mean this is according to the great story of astrology the great story of the zodiac tells this story, the season of death is only number eight. So if you think about like any narrative that you follow. The hero dies in chapter eight but there's 12 chapters. What else happens, you know, like the hero, and then is done with it, you know, moves on moves through death. And that's something that really relates to healing itself you know like it is scary. And it doesn't feel good to go through pain and struggle and it's it's really frightening to have your mortality threatened of course like this is as primal as it gets. But whether it's a more subtle metaphoric experience, like you just need to get through that migraine and there will be light at the end of the tunnel. You'll return to good spirits you will find that light within, or it's a literal confrontation with death, there is, we have spirits that are strong enough to handle it. That's the message you know we have something inside of us. That's beyond that. It's beyond the concerns of the material reality which is amazing, but it does not divorce us from our bodies, either. Right.
A: And getting back to what you said a moment ago about like we're not, none of us are perfect and we're all human. The idea that I've been playing with a lot in the last year that's been so transformative for me is this way that I catch myself, shine away from or, or having this animal part of me that you know wants to get away from that still dark water wants to get away from that smell wants to get away from the reflection of death. Right. And that there is another part of me, like a spirit part of me that understands that even that is not wrong. It is not wrong to want to shy away from those things it's perfectly natural as a human being, because there's my animal body that fears pain and death. That's okay for me to fear pain and death to have that response. And at the same time recognize that there's actually nothing wrong with pain and there's actually nothing wrong with death. There's actually nothing wrong with it, even though my human mind would say oh right, or my body would recoil from that smell, right, because I'm my senses are saying don't eat that. You know, don't read that, but to recognize that those judgments stem from an animal fear of death. Yes, to be confronted with that to sit with someone who has a disease and who is dying, you know, or many of us probably not the first place we want to go is an old folks home, right, where you're confronted with that visceral representation of decay, right, and to sit with that and actually say there's nothing wrong here, and this is actually just part of being human. The part of me that's recoiling from this and the disease and the decay and the eventual death of a body is all part of being human and it is all sacred. And that has been such a powerful shift inside me in terms of not judging myself for being human and fearing death and pain, you know and expecting myself to somehow be a God who's not afraid of anything, you know, but just accept that there's that part of me, you know, and then at the same time to open myself to like compassion for myself and for others as we experience pain and suffering as we experience illness and disease, right. And so like release the condemnation that comes with fear of death. Absolutely.
R: I, you know, I'm still, my mom has always been not even like officially as a business like she doesn't have cards or a website but she's my whole life been called on many times and through word of mouth has helped people die, which is just a strange and beautiful gift that my mom has. I don't have that gift, but I have been around her and I've, I've helped her and I've supported her and I've listened to her so I feel like just through my mom's gift, I have gained a tremendous respect for the process of death because my mom just has something that most people don't have. She doesn't want, she's afraid of dying herself to in her own way but not the way that most people are and she has this ability to hold space and be present and and just shine a light for people that are crossing over. And my mom has, she's a Sagittarius so she has a tremendous amount of, she has faith in God and a tremendous belief system that gives her a bridge to cross the unknown that makes her feel strong and sure of herself. And I'm not quite like that but I do. I've been inspired by it for sure. But the other thing that, you know, I was going to say is that the, the fear of death that we have primarily biologically is is perfectly natural you're absolutely right. Culturally, I feel like the fear of death is so it's never been stronger than in our time in place right now, because of the sort of hubris of medical science and the attitude that it takes that's just like it just like denies that it has to submit. It just will not yield to death. It's like incredibly arrogant and aggressive and it's always trying to deny that it has to just submit and let go and you know the things that are done in the name of saving lives can be quite barbaric in my opinion, you know, really, there's some really dark stuff that we do now out of the fear of death that has become so out of control. that we do like really brutal, violent, painful things to people in the name of living their lives.
A: Yeah, even just life support, you know, there's if you don't have anything that says I don't want to be on life support, you're going to be kept on life support. And then also this idea of like kind of putting a price tag on it and saying, well, you could die, or you could live and it will cost this much. It will your insurance company will be billed X amount. A dollar sign on, you know, surviving death. And that's pretty bizarre too.
R: I really do think it comes from a repressive fear like I last year for Scorpio season, I wrote about Braum Stoker's Dracula. And that was a really interesting research project, not only reading the novel, a great novel, but also just learning about the context of his time and why he wrote it. He was the only artist in a family of doctors. So he had all of this like medical knowledge and this, the, the novel itself is like this metaphor for what medical science was kind of doing at the time, which was very interesting. This was the dawning of vaccines and germ theory and other things that were going on. And so like the vampire is a metaphor for a lot of things, including venereal disease, most definitely. I can see that. Exactly. But then you're like, okay, so the repression about sex in the Victorian era, which I think is like it's an easy thing to make fun of from our perspective are lofty perspective in this day and age we look back on the Victorians and we make fun of them. It's a common thing we just make fun of them for being so sexually repressed and so fearful about table legs and, you know, ankles and stuff like that but when you really look at it, the reason why they were so freaked out about sex was because of things like syphilis and, you know, there were really dangerous diseases that were being spread throughout and destroying lives and families and they freaked out for sure, you know, they freaked out and it became the cultural norm to sanitize sexuality as much as possible and it became all twisted up with strange psychological neuroses and, you know, that was the result. But we are like that today, not about sex, we're hyper sex now it's about death, like, very repressed about death. And it's funny because the repression about sex stemmed from the fear of death or the caution about death in the Victorian era but now it's just straight up like so afraid of death. We sanitize it, it's out of sight out of mind. It's something that is so, it's made so distant in the psyche of the average person. This is not how people used to live. People used to live with a much more grounded, much more embodied understanding that like, you know, I'm going to die, everybody's going to die and this was common knowledge. Dead bodies were in living rooms, you know, people held funerals at their homes. There was a lot more. There was such a high mortality rate with, you know, infants, women giving birth, childbirth and I mean it's a sad thing for sure but it also created a completely different relationship to the reality of death and now we've been so protected and guarded and covered so much of that reality is hidden from view and therefore it is repressed and then there's so much of our, I think our, you know, mindset in the western technocratic world that is just like antagonistic towards death it's absolutely in denial of it it does everything in its power to not accept it. And as you said, you know, life support is one of the things that I was talking about. I mean, my husband and I had to, his, my father-in-law died shortly after we got married and he had remarried and so there was a stepmom and she was fully in charge of what happened to him. And he went into a coma and they kept him on machines for over three months at her behest. It was like that was where she was at psychologically because she was unable to handle the pain of just saying goodbye and the doctors were there hustling her straight up hustling her on the different, you know, options that they were going to make a lot of money on. And it was extremely horrific. That's all I could say it was on every level there's like the personal level and then there's the objective level where I was not only seeing this happen to us but I'm also like this is happening to lots of people and this is there's a whole system that's built around this practice this is not a fluke this is not an anomaly this is normal. And it really struck me as ill just from top to bottom just ill, putrid toxic stemming from a completely unhealthy completely neurotic place. There is greed involved but it's more than that it was like it was so many layers of darkness.
A: Exploitation is the word that comes as exploitation of a human's fear of death and, and, and grief process and exploitation of that.
R: Yes, yes. And, and making it the norm to just be like it's normal to deny the reality of death to this level it's normal let's just ignore it let's just not let it happen let's just ignore it. Let's pretend that we have control over this on and on and on and what a terrible experience that was you know it was it was deeply, deeply disturbing and I know that a lot of people go through that and that's the other thing that really broke my heart. Like I said it's not an anomaly and I realized that you know we have no right to talk shit about Victorians and their repression.
A: Yeah, this is sick, you know, going on there's still like in just in a different expression of the same kind of neuroses and then, you know, it's interesting because they put it in, they frame it in such a way, and I'm thinking about a specific situation here of someone I know but they frame it in such a way as if you take them off life support you're killing them versus life support is interrupting this person's natural death process. Right. And they frame it such as we're keeping them alive and you're killing them by choosing to take them off life support. That's what I'm saying framework that is toxic that you're referring to an exploitative because it's actually what we're looking at is a unnatural interference in a natural process. Yes, you take them off life support is to allow the natural process to take place versus interrupt that and create a different reality based on our, you know, I guess you could say human ingenuity.
R: Yes, exactly. And exploiting your right. A frightened old lady who they knew was in charge of everything you know her signature was the signature that had all the power and they knew how to manipulate her. Through this, this fear and revulsion fear and revulsion and denial hubris and denial. And it's, you know, it's one of the things that then came this happened in 2018. And then when the pandemic hit I saw the same kind of fear overtake the mass culture, you know, it was, it was a similar kind of fear that people were being controlled through. And I'm not even trying to go on a tirade about the pandemic it was just my encounter with the hubris of medical science and what it's actually done to the collective psyche, how fragile, we actually are when faced with something as normal and natural as death. And I'm like everyone else. I don't want to die and I don't want my loved ones to die. I'm just as deep feeling as anybody else but the, the toxic psychic state that we have found ourselves in is not it's not sustainable for one like so many of the things we're doing in the modern world. You can't continue to live like this with this level of, you know, unrealistic denial of a fact of reality. So I do think that a lot of that comes from chronic disembodiment chronic disassociation and yeah not having any opportunity in life for digging into the trauma, letting it go letting it be metabolized processed and moving through it so that some kind of unity of mind body and spirit can be found some kind of center in the face of great challenges can be found I really saw like just how bad off our society is during that time and the thing about these eclipses is that they began last November so I really do think that from an astrological perspective, this eclipse cycle is very much about bringing some feeling and embodiment and health back into the collective psyche is not going to work for everybody. It's not going to be something that everybody wants to play along with. We all have free will. Everyone of us can choose to completely ignore and deny any opportunity for growth, you know, we can do that. But the real mood and the real weather pattern of these eclipses, in my opinion, is to melt a lot of that ice to bring up some of the poison, the darkness, the repression, the unconscious patterns, Scorpio, and actually let the body metabolize them process them move through them and return to a state of healthy rhythms and harmony, which is pleasurable to the max and is actually at least from the Venusian perspective the real meaning of life is like being in your body and enjoying the colors. The sounds, the tastes, the feeling of life like that is why we're here in some knowing a very real sense like that's why spirit is focused in matter. And it's not the full picture of life and all of its complexities. It doesn't answer every existential crisis, but really like the foundation of life's purpose is to be infinite spirit eternal spirit that has been condensed into this form for the purpose of being able to perceive things so powerfully through the sensual experience through, you know, so yeah.
A: Much sense and time that in with what you said earlier about Saturn and Saturn's, you know, way of creating that precision or creating limitations so that we can be in flow, right, and not totally lost in the chaos of everything. Right, there are other structures that come into play here, but what could be more pleasurable than dancing in flow, what could be more pleasurable than, you know, listening to or playing music, or doing your art or being in that embodied experience of what brings you joy, right, and that is found in many ways through discipline through inhibition of, you know, choosing to do this with your time over everything else that you could be doing, choosing to sit down and practice your instruments practice your art, you know, do your body practice over everything else that you could be doing, you know, finding that refinement and that distinction. It's really a helpful thing to be walking into this winter environment with been thinking a lot about like Scorpio season, but then also as you mentioned Sagittarius and the way that leads us right into Capricorn season, and this drive you know people making their New Year's resolutions of how they want to change things going forward, you know, so maybe you can speak to that a little bit as we begin to wrap up here with our conversation we've been having.
R: Well, I actually, I firmly believe that January 1 is the worst time you could make a resolution that you expect to stick to. It's a nice idea. But really, the energy is low talk about rhythms let's just think about this for a second. We go through so much to get through the end of the year to have the holidays, you know, and like, let it doesn't matter if you celebrate the soul stares or Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever, there's just this rush and this excitement and this kind of explosion at the end of December. And what is required after that much effort, especially at that time of year when the light is growing dim and we have less energy to work with. We need to rest. We need to really pause we need to take a nice long pause before we resolve to do something and start running around the block mile after mile going like I'm going to do it this time you know, I really feel like the best way to use January 1. The first is to rest and not rest like flop out like contemplate pause listen reflect pause listen. The journey through Capricorn is very heavy. It's weighed down by a tremendous amount of gravity. There is a sense of ambition that is planted in Capricorn. But in terms of implementing that ambition. It's not a great time so if you're of a mind to make New Year's resolutions because that's just like something you've been doing your whole life you like to audition. I would highly recommend that you write down your ambition and implement it maybe at Chinese New Year which is like the new moon and Aquarius in either late January or February like give yourself a pause arrest some contemplation because the influence of Saturn, the Capricorn season. It's quiet. It's dark. It's wintery. It's extremely contemplative. And I feel like it requires the discipline of meditation. So one of the things that it relieves us of is going like, what do I need to resolve to do what do I need to do to be better instead of coming at January 1 all exhausted and frayed. And expecting yourself to perform the role of a winner who just like gets up on January 1 and goes on a three mile hike and is going to do it every day for 2023. Like instead of doing that to yourself. Use January 1 to contemplate what you might want to you know what your ambitions are. And you can even have maybe several and you're not sure and you could use Capricorn season to meditate on those things ruminate on those things chew on those things. Carve a lot of space for contemplation meditation and understand that you're bearing the weight of a tremendous amount of gravity. You're bearing the weight of that dark time of the year. You're bearing the weight of a new year trying to be born. And of course this upcoming year we're going to have Mercury retrograde and Mars retrograde. That's a terrible time to make resolutions that you're going to stick to. So especially for 23 wait until the new moon and Aquarius to actually start implementing your resolutions or your plans. And even then take it easy because it's winter.
A: Well yeah you know it's funny because last year or earlier this year I remember listening to you probably on one of your voicemails but it could have been somewhere else talking about Aries season kind of actually being the astrological new year. And that makes sense because I feel like what you're describing with people running into January 1st like trails blazing like they're running into it with Aries energy when it's actually Saturn energy which is like long form which is like put in the time right today tasks and the time and the discipline to reap the reward later on. Right. Right. So that makes a whole lot of sense what you're saying about waiting and thinking about those ambitions as long form and not something that you do tomorrow and then try to do really.
R: Exactly. Think about yourself at the foot of a mountain. And whatever you want to imagine is at the peak of that mountain. That is your ambition. You could see the peak but you are not going to get to the peak of that mountain. Starting on January 1st. You're not going to get there on January 2nd or January 10th. The peak of that mountain is a long term plan. It is something that's going to require patience. Perseverance and a tremendous amount of tenacity. And so and strategy you know like that is the mind of Capricorn it's strategic it perseveres one foot in front of the other. It has its eye on the peak. But it's not something that you need to rush or exhaust yourself doing and you know what I've learned just about neurochemistry like you know the way that human beings operate in terms of important projects or creative projects being finished or great celebrations coming to fruition or a victory coming to fruition. You know we have this dopamine build up and the dopamine build up it finally explodes in fireworks when we win or we get to the finish line or we complete something or we have the baby whatever it may be. But that's followed by just like with having a baby that's followed by a little bit of a postpartum depression. And that is completely natural. There's nothing wrong with that the day after Christmas is a little sad you know it's not it's not it's not Christmas that's for damn sure it's not the same. And that's because there's nothing to look forward to you're not wrapping presents anymore you've already seen the people that you wanted to give these things to the whole thing you've been building up to experience has been experienced just behind you know. You cannot physically neurologically you can't just pump the dopamine again it you have to pause you have to wait you have to wait for that to build up again and it's really important to honor that because when we don't that's when like actual serious depression can kick in like chemical imbalances and things like that can really kick in when we're just pushing ourselves to as you said earlier. Go go go even though it's winter. Go go go even though you just finished that and you actually need to take a rest. That's how we work you know there's ebb and flow. There is rhythms to everything and one thing about being embodied one thing about Torian wisdom. Torians people born with their son and tourists are significant planets and tourists. They do know how to rest. They do know the power of leisure and pleasure. They also work really hard they are willing to cultivate things to labor. They are willing to push themselves very hard but Torian wisdom never works and works and works and works there's always that like rhythm between work and pleasure so at the end of the year we need to rest and that includes January 1st and this year we want to wait till at least mid January when Mars stations direct. Otherwise anything that you set your mind to do your ambitions I mean your resolutions I should say they're just not going to happen and then what happens is that you feel bad about yourself and then you think that you can't do anything. You don't trust yourself to pull through and you really start the year off on the wrong foot so everybody needs to chill at the end. And the beginning of next year the January 1st is not the new year. That's it's the new year on the Roman calendar but it's not the new year spring is. I think we all know why. Because life is new the earth is there's sunlight again it's getting warm. Active energies are rushing and so what you want to do in winter. Is listen more contemplate more. Enjoy the stillness enjoy the silence. It's just as profound it's just as active in its own way as well there's a tremendous amount of activity. That goes into contemplation there's a tremendous amount of activity that we can definitely identify as our dream life. You know imagining the future dreaming of things and really sorting out what it is that we truly desire like this is really subtle internal work and it requires peace and quiet. It requires winter so that's what winter is for everybody.
A: Yeah, they say one third of your life you are asleep and there have been yogis and gurus and people that I've heard lament that as if it's some kind of terrible thing and that you should sleep less. But I think it's so powerful to be in that yin state you know if you can just imagine your your sleeping body in your bed for you know seven to 10 hours a night however some people sleep you know such a time of regeneration that's so necessary for our bodies. Yeah, have that profound respect for for that part that yin part of our process.
R: Yeah, exactly and your your daydreams to you know from the hermetic perspective once again just bringing it full circle. The things that you're dreaming of in the day and the night. The images that you're holding of what you want to create how you feel about the people in your life. Those images that you're holding are the seeds of all manifestation. That's how we create reality, if you will. And we're not all powerful. We are a part of creation. We're not creating everything but the way that we feel about things and the images that we're creating the way that we're dreaming in the day. We can't control our dreams at night but the way that we dream in the day and the way that we allow our imagination to shape our inner world does become reflected in the external experience so it's like winter is our time to really get in there and like start tinkering around and maybe maybe updating some of the programs you know because if you're still daydreaming the way that you did five 10 years ago, your life's going to be boring and just because you're like you're different now you know you need. Yeah. Yeah, that's what winter is for.
A: Absolutely I love I've loved just getting more clear on these relationships between inner and outer world and the way that astrology really is this language that you can speak about anything with. I've always thought of it as a language that you know once you kind of understand the, you know, the 12 signs and you understand kind of some of the relationship between them. You start seeing it and everything which is what's so powerful about your work is the way that you blend it and the way that you apply it to modern pop culture to the relevant political things that are happening. And a lot of what we did in this conversation today is like apply the lens of astrology to even like the way that our inner workings of our neuro physiology works and I just love that I think it's so amazing.
R: Oh, my God. Well, I love what you do to Amy and it's such a pleasure knowing you I'm glad that we actually met in person last year. And I'm very, very happy to be able to inspire you and support you in any way that I can with my work because I think what you're doing is essential and important as well so thank you for doing what you do.
A: Yeah, awesome. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you want to check out more about Rachel Aeolian Hart, I highly recommend the Patreon her Patreon is amazing it's only $8 a month and she just gives you such incredible value for that the weekly voicemails alone are worth way more than that. So definitely check out her Patreon if you're interested in learning more about her incredible work and the way that you can use astrology to enhance your life to enhance your healing and your growth practice internally and externally. So thank you for joining me here today and we'll talk to you again soon I hope.
R: Yes, for sure. My pleasure. Take care. You've been listening to the
A: free your Soma podcast to find out more information about today's guest check the show notes and to find out more information about me Amy to Kaya and the radiance program visit www.freeyoursoma .com
コメント