Whirligig week

I wonder if anyone else is feeling the weird energy this week? It feels somewhat like Mercury retrograde, only more manic — and in some cases, frantic.

I’ve had so many incidents this week where sudden announcements or decisions would spring up only to be overturned very soon after. I’ve been told someone got an award, then learned they didn’t. Or that I had to work with someone, only to find out I might not have to. In some cases, people have said one thing, but meant another. Events have been planned, then cancelled, then reinstated or moved. Things seems to lurch from side to side, and I’m feeling slightly seasick.

The energy is unsettled and people seem to be frazzled and exhausted. Is it the buildup to the intensity of the Scorpio Full Moon? Or the restless Arian Mercury trying to pull away from dogged Saturn? Or Mars seeking to escape the clutches of foggy Neptune?

A way of tapping into the energy more usefully, I’m discovering, is to pause before reacting too quickly. Circumstances may change anyway.

Image: Wheel gymnastics, Wikimedia Commons.

Spiked!

In these trying economic times, my workplace is becoming more and more toxic. So much fear and tension and anxiety about. Not to mention the hostility.

I’m noticing that when some people are threatened, they can throw out spikes from their energy fields, even when their words are officious and polite. The spikes can emanate even from an email — I can virtually feel it bristling.

I received one of those emails this morning and spent half the day dragging the negativity around with me until I was reminded to distinguish what was mine and what wasn’t. Judith Orloff offers some advice on how to separate one’s own emotions from others’, especially if you tend to absorb them like a sponge.

I read a blog post a long time ago (can’t seem to find it now) about the importance of remembering to ask the question: ‘Whose garbage is this and what is it doing in my bag?’ Whose garbage are we carrying around and why do we continue to do so?

In the days before the Taurus new moon, I feel the urge for a psychic spring clean.

Image source: Pufferfish, Wikimedia Commons

Pluto in Capricorn: Changing your relationship to the past

I posted some time ago about how Pluto’s transit into Capricorn seems to be turning our relationship to ageing (Capricorn) inside out (Pluto). It has been well noted that Capricorns seem to get younger as they get older.

This talk by 80s aerobics icon, Jane Fonda, seems to encapsulate that spirit as she enters the ‘third act’ of life. With her Capricorn ascendant and a late Sagittarius Sun (chart from Astrodatabank), Fonda is no stranger to Pluto transits in recent years.

Hostage to emotion

My natal Moon in Capricorn wants to rant.

Every now and then I get sick of being told how closed off to emotion I am, and I accuse all those astrology textbooks describing people with Cap Moons as cold, brittle, harsh, and ambitious as being part of the conspiracy!

Speaking for my own Cap Moon, it frequently feels under siege by more feeling types who privilege the immediacy of their intuition and sensory knowledge over those of us who take longer to get there. It has become politically incorrect to make quick judgements about people who are slow with reading and writing; but it seems perfectly acceptable still to consider people slower to access their emotions as having none.

I’m sick of it.

Just because I don’t always express my emotions clearly doesn’t mean I don’t have them. It doesn’t mean anyone has the right to hurt me by insinuating I’m incomplete, damaged, or worst of all, dishonest. Sometimes it takes me two days before I even realise I’ve been hurt, and then they think I’m crazy for bringing it up two days after the event. I’m sick of it!

Mars rx in Virgo: Re-organize your life

Mars retrograding over my midheaven squaring my 6th house planets is sending me in to radical life-edit mode! This post about how a busy Japanese working mother organizes her kitchen sent me into raptures. I see a spring-clean project on the horizon.

If, like me, you are getting the urge to clean up and clean out — both your physical and psychic spaces — here’s a series from zenhabits called ‘Edit Your Life’ that you might find useful:

Part 1: Commitments
Part 2: Your Rooms
Part 3: Closets and Drawers
Part 4: Your Work Space
Part 5: Your Wardrobe
Part 6: A Media Fast

Venus ingress Pisces: There’s a Kind of Hush

My local radio station has been running a Carpenters retrospective. How Venus in Pisces (conjunct Neptune) is that?!

From Planet Waves:

Venus is exalted in Pisces, combining the personal affection of Venus with the divine compassion of Neptune, modern ruler of Pisces (which will join Venus Feb 3). Because of this combination – love and compassion – Isabel Hickey notes the willingness of this placement to sacrifice for love, to be wounded by love – because only in knowing love can the freedom of the spirit be known.

Breathing between thoughts

Or at least speaking them out loud.

Mars in Virgo is squaring my Gemini stellium at the moment, and will do so three times in the next few months. Mercurial thoughts are racing fast and furious — only I forget that thinking aloud doesn’t always communicate what I’m feeling to others. And thinking my frustrations aloud just makes things worse.

As Mars prepares to retrograde in a few weeks for nearly four months, my note to self is to take a breath between each thought, if not literally, then metaphorically. And stay the quip, the tongue lash, the Martian urge to insist that what I think must ‘count’.

Image: Hieronymus Bosch, The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things (1485) (Wikimedia Commons)