I am a consulting astrologer hailing from Melbourne, Bunurong country. My passion for astrology began as a youngster who was open to the curiosities of coincidence with a deep need to know why people did the things they did. You can read more about me at my website www.druish.com & book a reading in person or via skype.
Traditionally, eclipses have been ominous signs. They remind us of how little control we have. No amount of prayer, ritual or intention can stop the Earth passing between the Sun and the Moon, casting a shadow on our closest neighbour.
As the earth moves betwixt two opposing forces, we edge deeper into the dance that has been unfolding since November 2018 when the Nodes moved into Cancer / Capricorn. #cancercapricornclusterfuck
Since November 2018, we’ve seen a rise in Cancer / Capricorn themes: women in power have destabilised the existing model of authority. Mass migration and the strict policing of borders has highlighted the lands we all stand on; whose land is it and who gets to draw lines all over it, carving out territories that some people can cross in to but not others? More people now have a deeper understanding of ancestral trauma, or at least the term is rolling around looking for its place to land. As corruption rolls over and exposes its underbelly we are left with no choice but to speak truth to power. As borders shift and economies follow, we’re asked what is it we’ve really invested our security into? Failing to acknowledged the Earth as a living, breathing organism has divorced us from having a co-creative relationship it, resulting in unimaginable devastation.
This Full Moon in Cancer is calling us home. It’s highlighting what needs to be let go of while simultaneously drawing us toward our potential. Cancer wants us to come home to planet earth, home to our bodies and personal sovereignty, home to understanding our own ancestry and the lineage of the lands we occupy. We’re being pulled – tugged at from the inside and out – to find this balance.
Capricorn represents that which we’re releasing. As an earth sign it highlights our use and relationship with resources: oil, water, crop, division & ownership, bodies, money. Its governance over large functioning systems highlights just how long we’ve been living under the oppressive rule of patriarchy, capitalism, white supremacy, heteronormativity, and how we’re simultaneously losing the voice of our elders. Capricorn is a cold, dry earth sign, and the cracks are showing. Without Cancer to balance it, Capricorn is in perpetual drought.
Image source: www.ijvcanada.org
Astrology embraces opposites as part of the whole. Nothing is rejected. Capricorn, without its polar opposite Cancer, knows only how to use and control functional parts. Emotions are hailed as weak, uncontrollable and inferior. Most people can recall a time they felt like they had to bury their emotions to go to work. Capricorn steering the capitalistic ship fails to acknowledge that people are not robots, that Indigenous people have ongoing relationships to land, and that women and trans people have bodies that exist outside the law. Cancer reminds us that emotions hold up signposts for things that aren’t working. They lead us toward a more balanced, harmonious existence.
Cancer Full Moon Eclipse, January 10, 2020
Water is not as direct as Earth. It’s pervasive, moving through the cracks and slowly shifting things from the inside out. There’s nothing useless about small steps. There’s no weakness is stopping, acknowledging the ways in which we’ve contributed to this narrative and choosing a different path forward. We’re all welcome home, but what we’re coming home to depends on the choices we make.
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Anyone wanting to understand where the energies are occurring in your own chart, I’m offering a Year Ahead reading, drawing up a month by month personalised map.
If it’s feeling intense right now, it means you’re listening. But you’re also not alone.
If there was only one major transit this year ~ the Saturn Pluto conjunction occurring in January ~ we could say that the start of the year is intense but after it passes you can breathe out and get back to your life. Without wanting to play on already existing fears, it’s important we shift our view from a minor obstacle we can work through – to understanding that January is a precursor for what this year, and the future, holds. Collectively we’ve created an apocalyptic narrative that begins and ends, not one that we have to endure, slowly.
The current systems of power we’re governed by have been reigning supreme for longer than any of us have been alive. They’re not going down without a fight, which is why we’re seeing extreme responses of control, fear mongering and defence, both globally as well as personally.
If Capricorn is good at anything it’s the long-haul. Take stock of where you’re feeling vulnerable, what is potentially threatening your pocket of security in the world, and who and what holds deepest value to you. Solidarity and community connections will be our life blood when these power structures buckle under pressure.
Merry Crisis from Scotty in Marketing – artist unknown.
As Australians are forced to understand the connections between their flawed political system and environmental devastation, the UK & EU are standing on an unsteady brink of change, while the POTUS “unintentionally” just sparked a war with Iran that will affect the entire globe beyond measures we’ve yet seen. Welcome to 2020!
Astrologers have been sending up flares for a while about the intensity of 2020’s planetary climate. The current alignment between Saturn and Pluto has, in history, been a precursor to world war and global devastation. As above, so below, this year will mark significant changes in history with regard to politics, power and the use of resources, for better or worse.
Saturn and generational inheritance
The main theme of the year is delivered by Saturn ruled Capricorn: A stern teacher who values discipline over play; A mythology that passes down inferiority to its younger generations, fearful that the new will overthrow the old; A lack of accountability with how power is wielded that results in tighter, stricter measures; The failure to acknowledge vulnerabilities that could provide a far more beneficial model of how to use power than has been inherited.
While these are some of the more challenging Saturnian characteristics that come out under pressure, the unfolding themes are affecting everyone, not just those with Capricorn or Aquarian placements. It’s highlighting what we’ve all inherited and what we’re all being called to work with and through, 2020 and beyond.
Capricorn prides itself on being a leader. With its uncompromising eye on the prize, this earth sign can steamroll across any emotion that threatens to destabilise the firm structures of security it’s built. It knows how to bury inferiority, often presenting with a bold superiority to avoid contact with fear that could potentially undermine it. The problem with this familiar narrative is that it’s the old model, and we’re just beginning to scratch the surface with what we’ve inherited and how we all, in one way or another, uphold these cold, outdated modes of behaviour.
In the past few years, polarising narratives have thrown around insults to shut down those who are here to bring in change. “Snowflake” was once used to describe those who opposed the abolition of slavery in the 1800’s. It’s now used to condemn anyone acknowledging that the systems we’ve inherited hurt us. While there is the issue of entitlement to work through, if the current state of power (capitalism, top down politics, white supremacy, heteronormativity etc) is anything to go by, there are a select few creating the narrative we are fed as fact, and we continue to play along in a complex playground of forced membership.
2020 is a game changer.
If there was only one major transit this year ~ the Saturn Pluto conjunction occurring in January ~ it could be said that the start of the year is intense but after that you can breathe out and get back to your life. Without wanting to play on already existing fears, it’s important to shift our view from a minor obstacle we can work through – to understanding that January is a precursor for what this year, and the future, holds. Collectively we’ve created an apocalyptic narrative that begins and ends, not one that we have to endure, slowly.
If Capricorn is good at anything it’s the long-haul, so take stock of where you’re feeling vulnerable, what is potentially threatening your pocket of security in the world, and who and what holds deepest value to you. Solidarity and community connections will be our life blood when these power structures buckle under pressure.
The unfolding narrative in the 2020 sky highlights power in the wrong hands, exposure of who feeds who in the underbelly of corruption, and a reassessment of our values and how we communicate (let’s see how we function without the internet!). At the end of the year we have a brand new cycle of change emerging. One that will cap off a momentous year with a new direction of power and hope.
The thing with Capricorn and Saturn’s mythology is that it doesn’t hand power over well. For us to step into this new age, that has been emerging for some time, we need to embrace and acknowledge the things that have been buried and kept from view.
We’ve been taught that violence is an overt, obvious event. If we listen to minority groups however, who are often the ones stipulating necessary social changes, we hear how subtleties are often debilitating precursors to the more obvious symptoms. It’s difficult for people to grasp that language itself can be violent. The reaction to gender neutral language, for example, disrupts the heteronormative model, meaning that those who don’t understand have the choice to learn or resist. We’re taught that illness should be visible and something you plough through, as the severity and impact of mental health comes out from isolation.
As we seek to uncover the origins of the world we’ve inherited, we’re confronted with the narrative of Capricorn, “Get on with it. Stop complaining. You need to bury your feelings so that you can work and be productive. You’re too sensitive. You’re a burden on the system.” Acknowledging our vulnerabilities as signposts for change, not as weakness’s that halt production, are personal milestones that impact collective change.
Shifting consciousness from Capricorn to Aquarius
There’s a LOT of talk, especially in white spiritual spaces, of how we’re gearing up toward a consciousness shift. While this is not necessarily untrue (isn’t it a constant?), we can’t go through these monumental changes without our consciousness also shifting.
The exposure of Capricorn’s underbelly comes accompanied by the narrative that those stuck in the ‘old ways’ will be left behind. The issue is that everyone thinks they’re right and Capricorn, as a determined cardinal sign, can get stuck in the “doing” which creates the hierarchy of ahead v’s behind. What Aquarius is ushering in at the end of the year is that we’re all here together; if one of us isn’t free, none of us are.
We’re being forced to acknowledge our own uncomfortable experience of inferiority; none of us know what’s going on and we’ve been fed lies that say having control means you’re in charge. Having control brings its own set of things to worry about; maintaining it, curating the illusion that you’ve got it and often, not sharing it.
What this year asks for is complex.
There’s not one answer and not one solution. What there is though, is a playground full of tests and challenges for releasing that which we’ve outgrown. We’ve been given a set of rules and to survive we have to break them. Conformity will not save us. Not unpacking thoroughly that which we’ve inherited will only slow the process of change.
As the year unfolds and you find yourself, your outlook, your beliefs, your security, your relationship to power all being challenged, the best thing we can all do is look to our neighbour and see how they’re faring. Isolation is one of Capricorn’s defence mechanisms; reach out, stay connected and let the injustices impacting you inform you on how others are being affected, also.
Anyone wanting to understand where the energies are occurring in your own chart, I’m offering a Year Ahead reading, drawing up a month by month personalised map.
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2020 dates to watch out for:
As this year unfolds I will continue unpack each of these transits as they occur.
Jan 10: Lunar eclipse at 20* Cancer / Capricorn. Uranus stations direct.
Jan 12: Saturn Pluto (& Mercury) conjunction at 22* Capricorn
March 19-22/31 : Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, Saturn conjunction in Capricorn
March 29: Jupiter conjunct Pluto at 24* Capricorn
May 13: Venus retrograde 21* Gemini
May 14: Jupiter stations retrograde 27* Capricorn
June 23: Jupiter Rx conjunct Pluto in Capricorn at 24*
June 29: Mars enters 0* Aries
September 9: Mars retrograde at 28* Aries
November 7: Jupiter conjunct Pluto at 22* Capricorn (the same degree as the conjunction in January)
Mercury retrograde is a phenomenon that occurs approximately 3 times per year, every year. Having gained recent popularity due to a surge of interest in spirituality amongst Millennials, it is technically not classified as a “big hitter” in astrology. This most recent retrograde however, was more than just the brilliant eclipse across the Sun. It stirred the generational pot, activating unconscious ties between Boomers, Gen X and Millennials. It triggered both their similarities and disparities, prompting an already existing aggravation into mass protest across the globe, and a surge of memes, articles and analysis online.
There’s been an influx of Yoda memes ever since Jupiter moved into Capricorn, not surprising, really . Yoda is the perfect archetype to show up since we now have 4 planets & a node all getting down to business in Cap…& further shows that you don’t have to ‘believe’ in astrology to be influenced by it 🤷🏼♂️
Saturn, Capricorn’s daddy, represents wisdom & ageing, maturation & growth, & the responsibility weaved within the journey. It stands for nothing less than dedication & hard work…all of which take time. Time. It’s our elder, Saturn, whose been there a million times before reminding us as we transition into a new paradigm that you can’t hurry a good thing.
Being the boundary line of our known world it’s faaaaaar out in the solar system, and often the rewards come from time alone, pushing the limits we’ve imposed on ourselves & shedding the aspects of self we’ve outgrown.
Channel your inner Yoda through the upcoming eclipse season, aiming for any difficulties to be transformed to wisdom you can share with others on the path. I like to read stories about people on their death bed, what they regretted & what they cherish, to get clear with Saturn
Jupiter is in the final stage of its gallop through Sagittarius. It has reached the peak. From this standpoint it can envision the road ahead into Capricorn, equipped with the wisdom gained while travelling through the wide terrain of Sagittarius.
Jupiter is classified as a benefic, enhancing whatever it touches. This past year however, it was sometimes difficult to understand the beneficence when Saturn & Pluto over shadowed everything in cranky Capricorn. Thank f*ck Jupiter was in Sag because it took the edge off some of the tension & allowed us to envision the world we want to create when we reach the other side.
Jupiter has been in Sag since Nov 2018. Reflecting back on what this last year has granted you, where did you have growth & learning, travel & expansion that now allows you to view the world through a broader, more encompassing lens, & how did you access optimism through trying times? All of this can be attributed to Jupiter. Now, as the energy calms, how will you gather up those resources and utilise them in a more practical way?
On Dec 2nd, Jupiter will slow down the pace & trot into Capricorn until Dec 2020. It will be an interesting year, to say the least. Capricorn is not an easy, happy go lucky energy, & with both Saturn & Pluto already there, Jupiter won’t be as effective with lifting the mood as it has been in Sag. It’ll be a year to dig deep & utilise those personal resources on the ground in the day to day grind. We’ll all be challenged to mature our relationship to power & to untangle the voices of fear and limitation that keep us bound.
Write yourself a note from this 29* Sagittarius vantage point that you can rely on through the coming year. If you offer Capricorn a tool it’ll learn how to use it…so give yourself your best.
November 11 marks the midway point of this Mercury retrograde in Scorpio cycle.
Today the Sun, the great illuminator, takes Mercury under its wing and protects it. Shielded by blazing light, all of Mercury’s qualities, all of the back tracking and digging, all that has been unearthed in the first part of this Retrograde cycle pause for a moments grace. This day holds the potential for razor sharp clarity, if only fleeting. From this point onwards Mercury is moving away from the Sun toward the deepest degree of the retrograde cycle where it will stop and move forward again. We have 9 days remaining to clear up, realign and sort out what Mercury has brought our attention to.
Mercury CAZIMI 18* Scorpio, 11/11/2019
Mercury Rx in Scorpio Horoscopes
Each of us has Mercury kicking up dust somewhere in our charts. Whatever house Mercury is currently passing through will indicate where our attention is being drawn and what issues we’re being dragged down into the Underworld to deal with. This is not the only cycle coming to an end, and it’s not the only way in which we’re being asked to let go. But like any detailed work that needs to get done, it will sit there glaring at us until we do it.
This is an excerpt from the Mercury Retrograde Scorpio Season detox being updated through out the 2019 Rx cycle. Read the full article with Horoscopes for each sign here and follow the links below for ongoing updates.
Mercury retrograde in Scorpio 11/11/2019.
Source: NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory
Anyone else feel like they finally understand what it’s like to be a Scorpio 24/7? This Mercury retrograde in Scorpio (leading us toward the Pluto-Saturn conjunction in January😳) is Scorpio Season on full blast! Whoooooweeee!
Scorpio Season Mercury retrograde 2019
The effects might not be visible on the periphery, but so much is stirring inside, below the surface.
It’s not ‘normal’ for us to be existing with constant grief, over stimulation & anxiety, & no one is spared right now. Mercury retrograde cycles are great opportunities for us to go off line, spending less time in the loop of scrolling & more time listening to what’s asking for our attention.
Mercury rules communication, & listening is just as valid as output. Listen to your body, chew your food, watch your breathing & trust those who love you that can see your blind spots. Boundaries are there for self care!
This Rx cycle began with Mercury & Venus conjoined, bonded deep in it, having both travelled through most of Scorpio’s terrain together. While Venus has since moved on to greener, more abundant Sagittarian pastures, Mercury will remain in Scorpio for the duration of this Rx. Not crossing any borders into another signs terrain, the energy is contained…for the most part.
The forces that propell Scorpio, fuelling its intensity, desires and no-bullshit death stare honesty are derived from Mars; forceful and brash in its quest with the potential of being passionately barbaric, Mars spearheads whatever it desires. Whether it’s food, another lover or bloody revenge, it attacks with piercing exactness whatever sign it’s in.
Until Nov 18th however, Mars is stuck at a dinner party (in Libra), schmoozing and boozing, forced to be cordial & polite. It’s an uncomfortable place for Mars to be, but it takes the compliments in its stride, charming the pants off new and old enemies: kill them with kindness is the current battle strategy. If anything challenging or provoking arises, Mars has no sword, no army & no defence but to smile & find places of common ground, which is hella frustrating for Mercury on the front lines.
When Mercury calls, distressed and overwhelmed with feelings from the unease of Scopionic waters, Mars doesn’t receive because there’s no service. Mercury is hurtling backwards (retrograde) down into the Underworld with no one at the wheel!
Mercury Rx cycles often throw us for a loop. It’s so close & personal. The cracks that have formed from pressure over time are exposed in relationships & connections, in deals & agreements. Collectively, we are on the streets screaming for our lives, for justice, while peace talks go on behind closed doors, disconnected from the conversation on the ground.
Mercury is feeling the tender rawness of being cut off, exiled & not being heard. What could be worse for the planet of communication than sending & no one receiving? It’s reduced to tears of frustration at the injustice of it all.
If your thoughts are leading you to dead ends, if you’re sending & the other person is not receiving….that’s unfortunately what this time is about. These initial first days of the cycle are the worst in that there’s so much to adjust to. Mercury has literally done a 180 & it’s discombobulating AF.
Mercury will go forward again but for now we’re retracing our steps, gathering information & feeling the depths of our pains & losses while not ignoring the intensity that is contained in the stories. Old narratives arise indicating where we are still healing & where we need to take care to protect open wounds.
In the coming days I’ll unpack each rising sign so we can see where exactly our energy is being called back to.
