Activate Your Desires: A New Moon Party in Aquarius

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

An Offering of Home
Getting in the bath tonight to receive my New Moon message felt like going home. I haven’t shared news with you in so long. I feel detached and I’ve felt detached from myself and from others, how very Aquarian. But that is not really me. As a late decan Pisces with my ascendant at the very end of Scorpio, this New Moon falls in my fourth house of home and I came home to myself. How do I want to share it with others? I have been cultivating my offerings, waiting for them to bloom in their own time. That time is not now, with snow laying all around. The seeds are still slumbering. But I am showing up with an offering.

A Planetary Party
The Moon and the Sun aren’t the only cosmic objects gathering in Aquarius. You can find Jupiter conjunct Venus there, making out on the couch. Mercury is doing back flips off the arm chair while Saturn sulks in the corner. I’m not sure I’d want to be there.

Welcome Back to High School
Teaching teenagers in rural high schools brings me closer to the underbelly of our society, the one we don’t see on TV. I observe how we are raising the children who will carry the world in the future. I find it terrifying at times. My mind spins. How can I bring something to them, these young people who so often already seem brokien by a system that doesn’t do them justice, that constructs machines around them and then teaches them to consume so that it can consume them? The situation seems dire, and I read and overhear despair from others who teach them and from those who look to the stars. The Aquarian Age has not lived up to the youthful hopes and revolutions of the past.

Activate Your Desires
What can I do? In the bath a message to share came to me: Activate your desires. What does this mean concretely? I shine a light on the dark places I observe and ask my students, directly and indirectly, what do you desire? Most of them do not desire to learn French. They don’t desire to be in school. Today a student I passed in the hall asked me what my problem was. He thought I was staring. Sometimes I feel they don’t want me there, they don’t want to be seen at all, let alone be asked about their desires. What then? I speak to my own desires. Even the small ones deserve my attention - a square of chocolate, a cup of tea. One small, conscious desire equals many large diffuse desires or endless cravings for “other” and “more”. My big desires often rhyme with my fears, so I approach them gingerly and lovingly. I take my time.

The Queen of Wands
Today I drew the Queen of Wands in my daily tarot pull. This card is the card of my Sun’s position and always speaks to me of myself - Water of Fire - all opposite of the Air energies surrounding the moon and most of the rest of the cosmos. The current alignments are rare. I was in a muddle all day with what to do with all the mental energy, but the Queen helped me. In the bath I got it: Activate your desires.

The world is only as you want it to be, as you allow it to be, as you see it and allow it to be seen.

So speak to your desires.

Plant Wisdom
The plants teach me to speak to my desire in the moment, most often my desires, however unbeknownst to me, are formulated at the seed or cellular level to encourage my growth. Ah, the sleeping seeds now getting ready to burst under the snow, teach me that I don’t have far to go to allow the seeds of myself to prepare for the new growing season. How do I want to grow?

And it may seem like we do not have a lot of choice in the matter. I too have felt weighed down by the events of the past year, the illness, death and blindness of our society as we continue to run towards our own demise. And I could get caught up in the blur of whirring cogs in my brain, each planet spinning in air, but I stop myself there.

Maybe no one can tell me what to do. Others don’t have the answer and they can’t show me the path to where I want to go. Maybe I simply need to activate my own desires, and when I think this or write this an energy comes, despite the snow. We are buried for a little while longer I think, and I don’t need the world to conform to me, I simply need to let it flow, let the chaos be the chaos and work itself out.

A Pleiadian Message
The stars gave me this message last month, at the time of the violence in Washington, before Biden’s inauguration. I was listening to star song on my walk down the hill, specifically the Pleiades. It was my homework in a class I am taking with Jocelyn Mercado, Music of the Spheres, to connect with them specifically. As a singer of traditional harmonies and a student of the Middle Ages, celestial song never feels far from my conscience, but deciding to listen to specific constellations has brought me great insight, especially from the stories they carry. The Pleiades said, those sacred sisters, let the chaos flow and settle, work itself out. Another way of saying let go. I think that is what all this Aquarian energy asks of us too. Let it flow, go, all of the mess of the world, and I add, as the Queen of Wands, I’ll activate my desires, as seed children in my womb, and act on them. That’s what I’ll plant at this New Moon, my desires, for the kind of world I want to be in, for the protection and safe growth of the planet and the children.

Your Desires
How are your desires? Would you like to listen in? The plants can help. I offer flower essences, flower essence consultations, tarot readings and astrological conversations on your star chart and your aspirations. I also have a few spots for long term coaching if you’d like to engage with your desires as a creative process of growth with the help of the green world around you. Well, it will be green soon. Make a free appointment to discuss this work with me here.

Stay warm star children! Let me know how you activate your desires!

Love,

Amy

A Daisy Crown for the Sun: The Solstice and a New Moon Eclipse in Cancer

A Wild Garden
As I’m writing this, the Moon is still in Cancer, taking me into a cool evening after a hot day. The garden has exploded in a typical Vermont way. Just a few weeks ago I was thinking, won’t it be nice when the leaves are on the trees, and suddenly, everything is green. The ground nut and other vines have strangled the poppies and I’m rescuing peonies from the rain. I’ve let the garden go wild, with just a bit of space cleared around my vegetables patches. I’m watching the three sisters grow, my dream of planting an indigenous garden here a reality. In May, my then very new love and I planted mounds of corn, peas, beans and squash. Since then I’ve been watching all of us reach into an intertwined life; a nice parallel between my green garden and my growing relationship. The pea plants found the corn without any help and now there is a single purple pea flower on one of them. They don’t seem to mind the heat. I think to water, and then see that they are doing fine. I weed the carrots. The lilacs have bloomed and the wild phlox, feeding what seemed like hundreds of swallowtail butterflies. I could take lots of pictures of irises, foxglove and the tangle of blackberry bramble and strawberry and blueberry bush which, in addition to feeding the birds, I hope will give me some fruit. In the morning, the bumblebees roll in the rosa rugosa blooms that grow up the side of the house. I’ve planted sun flowers. I feel thankful for this abundance and my life in my hot little house. I’ve started making sourdough bread.

A practice shot - the actual ceremony was not photographed. Photo by A. Blackhawk

The Summer Solstice
On the day before the Solstice, I went and greeted the Sun as a lover and made a daisy chain crown that I imagined I placed on his head, reflecting on how the flower is like a small sun, a miniature representation of a cosmic force we can only observe in awe. The Sun is reflected in the daisy, yellow center surround by rays of light, the circle which rays out. I made two round solstice loaves, a Sun and a Moon, and on the day of the Solstice, one which we brought to an Abenaki Fire Shooting ceremony which was magical even with masks and social distancing. There, someone shot an arrow into the Sun, and we gathered and talked as people must have done here long before there were lawns and strip malls. It feels good to give back this way to the land. I think it recognizes us, some of our words, songs and actions, and feels relieved that there is still ceremony as the sun moves from the longest day back towards eventual longer nights. At the Solstice, the Earth starts to breath out. I am reminded that blooming is brief and takes the effort of many, but when it is time, blooming is divine. The Sun says, every day is divine. The herbs gather me now - it was traditional to gather yarrow at the Solstice, but here it is not yet blooming - I gather clover and roses. On my walk to greet the Sun, a hawthorn bush peeked at me through the hedge, its blooms already swelling towards berry. The small green apples are hard and seem to blow up a little more everyday. Like the Sun, the daily dawn chorus is also divine. The peepers are done and the birds have the early hours to themselves, greeting the day with a jungle of sounds. When the Sun is up it calms, with only the sounds of the news of the day, warnings or cheers, preparing for heat. The mornings are wet and cool. I go for barefoot garden walks.

Self-representation
As I write these words that describe my green days, I wonder if it is okay that I am not visually documenting my life. I haven’t wanted to. I needed a break from social media. Things were changing for me in the Spring and I needed to rethink how I was representing myself. I needed to consider why my posts weren’t growing my audience in the way I wanted them to and which part of me wanted to be ignored. I decided to take myself out of the game while Venus retrograded in Gemini, leaving the night sky too. Five planets are now retrograde, including Mercury, so a turn to inner work seems appropriate. I have enjoyed the pause and not getting lost in the Instragram scroll. This also coincided with the feeling that other voices needed to be heard more urgently and it felt appropriate to step back a little because of that too. I understand a little better why it is hard for me to show up there, and to show up with my business in general, so I think I will come back with more consciousness around what and how I am sharing, and hopefully less self-sabotage. I was interviewed for a podcast (coming soon!) and I’m going to take a course by the wonderful Sabrina Monarch called Online Presence as Performance Art (!) and Venus moves forward again on Thursday, so hopefully my time away from the scene will allow me to infuse my online presence with a new energy. Maybe I am moving into being more comfortable being seen. This has been the focus of my magic for a while. This New Moon in Cancer has me wondering how I am showing up for myself. Is it with compassion and trust? I want to show up like that for the people in my life as well as in public, but how can I if I don’t show up that way for myself? The Eclipse, and end and a beginning, adds drama to the question of how I’m being seen and how I see myself, while Cancer makes it all more emotional. I’m aware of how my words do or do not adequately represent my inner, watery worlds. I want something new, in any case, and I’m working on it. I’m starting by opening my eyes and ears to myself. The outside world gives me keys to how best to see myself.

Being seen
As I turned into my garage tonight, I saw a doe and her fawn walking up the road. they stopped to stare and then ran, tails wagging. We saved a baby phoebe; it was flopping on the grass and I placed it gingerly back into its nest. The mother still doesn’t trust me though, every time I go check she flies back and forth peeping at me. I wonder if she knows she owes one of her babies’ lives to me. There are five little birds crowded in there, no wonder one fell. It must be hot. They don’t mind that I come peer at them. They don’t mind being seen. The mice in my house too give me clues to how compassionate I can be to myself. If I can live with them, I can live with my own fragile truths. I can put this out into the world and they become less fragile, more firm. How comfortable are you sharing your magic? I’d love to help you work on your visibility, as I work on mine. Do you want to share more of yourself but wonder how? Make a free appointment with me on my homepage. I’m currently only available Thursday afternoon and on the weekends. Contact me if you need to arrange another time or send me an email describing the kind of work you want to put out into the world and why you struggle to do so. A good flower essence for self-expression is Self Heal. You can buy some here.

Solstice blessings to you all. I hope you feel the wild potential in these painful times. The veils are lifting and shifting. Be kind to yourselves!

Love,

Amy

My wild garden

No Such Thing As Disconnection: The Gemini New Moon and a Message from Valerian

Wild Valierian - From Basilius Besler’s Hortus Eystettensis

A New Moon Harvest
This long weekend, I took a little more time to get my New Moon download than usual. Now it is already Wednesday and the moon is a swelling crescent in the sky. I harvested Valerian on Friday, when the New Moon was exact, and my house is filled with the smell of drying leaves. The root, white and tangled, smelled pungent and ripe like Spring. Some people hate how it smells. I loved it, and loved harvesting it. Let us know over at Flack Family Farm if you would like some! You can also just email me. Valerian is wonderful for sleep and relaxation, perfect for these anxious times. In my last post, I talked about how she helps us see the connections between the dark and the light. This week she teaches us how to heal our disconnection from the Earth.

A particularly beautiful Valerian root - you can order some from me or Flack Family Farm

Venus Retrograde in Gemini
Since Venus retrograded in Gemini, I have been social distancing from social media, contemplating how I want it to serve me instead of feeling like a slave to it, and I feel like as a result it is taking me a little more time to know how to share what I want to share. Venus is in her dark phase, no longer in the night sky, completing her 8-year-long flower dance, and like her, I wanted to delve into the darkness of my own sky, to see what there is behind the veil, and disappear for a while.

A Planetary Download
To get my cosmic insight, I took a bath just as the New Moon was exact. I actually took two baths for this one (baths are my grounding portals of planetary intuition - make an appointment with me to talk about how you can tune in!), one the day before, with salts, and one with my Valerian harvest. What came up for me was the theme of disconnection. Choosing to disconnect from the internet may be a way of coming back to ourselves, to draw ourselves within, and this has been particularly necessary at this time of social distancing. Meanwhile, disconnection is another type of pandemic, one perhaps more damaging to our world than the virus itself. Disconnection could be at the root of its spread. How did we forget, in our race to be more connected, the life-giving connections that sustain us, to the water and land, to the plants and the animals around us? When did we forget the care that is necessary to maintain them?

Disconnection
I believe that disconnection is fundamentally an ecological problem. That is to say, because we are disconnected from the Earth - as humans we experienced at some point in our long history the Earth as hostile to us and survival as a challenge - all other disconnection followed. The patriarchy arose, and we became disconnected from the Earth, from the feminine, outside of us and inside of us as well. We reject parts of ourselves, and disconnect from them. We disconnect from feelings, feel overwhelmed by them, and are no longer able to process them in the body. We disconnect from the body. We don’t want to feel the suffering of the past, in our own lives and in the lives of others. We experience “species loneliness”, which Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses in her book Braiding Sweetgrass. As a society of the industrialized variety, we no longer feel connected to beings outside of our own species. I remember the feeling when I first starting working more intimately with plants that I was never alone. My loneliness disappeared. I was surrounded by an abundance of green friends.

Gemini Energy
Gemini is an energy I am familiar with because my natal moon is in Gemini. I want to learn a lot, I want to do everything. I don’t want to focus. You could call it the attention deficit disorder sign, and though I’ve never been diagnosed with that “disorder”, I do relate to how the brain functions with a multitude of sensory inputs. This Gemini energy can make me feel disconnected, with too many choices, and too many things I want to do. I am curious and a fast learner, but I can get overwhelmed by all there is I want to know. This New Moon was illuminating this energy for me. Mercury is also in Gemini, where it was conjunct Venus last week. My mind rattles with questions. What do I want to do? How will I choose? Why am I doing what I am doing? Disconnection is also a mental energy. We disconnect when we activate our rational faculties, when we analyze, when we ponder. And I wonder, do we have to? Is there another way of thinking that doesn’t disconnect but connects?

A Pandemic
Within the context of our current pandemic, many of us have disconnected from our routines, our daily lives of hustle and bustle. I was already pretty disconnected from this mode of living, and I don’t think I could go back to it, but not everyone can choose to do anything else, and this is part of the problem. Our current workaholic world of disconnection is the norm, a fait accompli, without which the economy and the society it feeds would crumble, or so many believe. What are our options? Throw out your TV? Get off the grid? Go local, local, local, that is what the books I am reading say and have been saying for years (see Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy or David Fleming’s Surviving the Future), and I see the signposts in my immediate surroundings too, in a sign in my small town telling us to stay safe and buy local; in the the way people are leaving free stuff out everywhere instead of having yard sales; in those giving away masks and making sure their neighbors have enough to eat. We need to learn how to grow our own food and eat the food at our doorsteps. We need to help and support each other. These changes are now happening in real time, and that must be how we change the larger paradigm. These are my Gemini thoughts, like so many shivering, shaking leaves.

A bath with Valerian

A Bath With Valerian
In my second bath, with Valerian, I asked the spirit of the plant about disconnection. It showed me a bed. There is nothing you need to do to feel connection in this time of separation, it said, except for to allow yourself to pass through the veil, to sleep, to feel your connection to everything that is outside of yourself, to feel connected to the non-human realms. Perhaps this is the ideal time to do so, to acknowledge all that surrounds us, in the dream time and in the forest, in the park and down the street, in the square of grass (for more on this listen to this recent David Abrams essay on the Emergence podcast).

Heart Thinking
Later I felt into the fact that often my feelings of frustration, of longing, of separation, come from my feeling of disconnection. In other words, I wouldn’t feel frustrated if I felt connected and remembered that I am always connected. What kind of thinking allows me to remember this? I feel this when my thinking is not just mental but heart-centered. Some say the heart thinks too, some argue only the brain thinks, but whatever science decides, I know that my understanding grows along with my capacity to use both in my daily life. My feeling of connection is only as expansive as the size of my own heart.

An Expansive Heart
Lately my heart has been expanding. Venus’ dance has brought to me a unique experience of love and balance, and that is what I am seeding with this New Moon, balance between the heart and the brain, the masculine and the feminine. I am reminded of how potently the world can reflect our own cycles of healing and growth, and that we are not separate from the Earth. She is always reminding us.

As long as we see the earth as something other than ourselves, we forget that Gaia herself is conscious and intelligent, carrying the instructions we need for restoration and healing, for creating a human presence here on earth in service to all life. - Chameli Ardagh

How do you get connected when you feel disconnection? Write to me, I’d love to know! I’m observing, loving and releasing doubts about my purpose and self-worth and moving beyond the idea of disconnection in my head and my heart, thanks to the flowers.

If you’d like to discover how flower essences might help you do the same, make an appointment with me here. With a flower essence consultation, you will receive your own personal essence, but you can also browse my flower essences and their beautiful messages here.

During this cycle the plants helped me understand that as we live sometimes in duality, we may find ways of embracing our polarities and those around us or in others. For another good read on the separation that currently surrounds us, and how to transmute it, see Charles Eisenstein’s latest article, “The Conspiracy Myth”.

I had lots of reading and listening suggestions for you this week! Maybe that is also because I am spending less time thinking of what to share on social media. The internet is a magical place when it comes to in-depth and inspiring content. I hope you enjoy them.

Would you like to discover how the flowers might help you on your own creative projects? Make a free appointment with me here to talk to you about it creative coaching with me and the flowers. I only have a few more weeks of an open calendar before I begin some temporary summer work, so book an appointment with me now. Here’s a testimonial from a satisfied writer I am coaching:

Imagine if you had your own personal guide to help nurture your creativity, build your resilience, pursue your passions, and address the challenges standing between you and your goals? As a creative coach, Amy is unlike anyone you've ever met. She combines ancient wisdom with cutting-edge practices. She distills her deep connection with nature into a tonic for the human soul. She has an extraordinary intuition for what we need to hear, how we should learn, who we can call on, and where we can go. 

Guided meditations with Amy have breathed new life into my creative process, and she has helped me to remove obstacles in my daily life that were impeding my progress. Her gentle suggestions, practical guidance, and astonishing insights have changed not just my creative output, but the way I approach my life. Amy's respect for her clients' dignity, privacy, and trust is a reflection of her grace, humility, and values. 

If you find yourself at a crossroads, at a stop sign, in a dark tunnel, or on a long and winding road, Amy will light your path -- and help you go farther than you could imagine going alone. 

- Amanda in Geneva, Switzerland

That’s all for now I think. I can’t wait to see what this cycle will bring for you and for me. With green love,

Amy

Zero Gravity: Lessons for the New Moon and Mercury Retrograde in Pisces

A New Moon in Pisces with Mercury retrograde in that sign, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so slowed down. I’m swimming in the unconscious and sleeping a lot, embracing my darkness, taking a trip on the self-love underground. I’m listening to the water drip and the clocks tick. Something is coming but it is still incubating. I’m watching for its slow emergence.

I’m taking care of four cats and a dog, noticing how animals are naturally slow. Cats sit and stare, becoming agitated when they think a meal is coming. The dog rests until it is time to come rouse me and go for a walk. I like letting their rhythms rule mine for the weekend. I’ve put my agenda on hold.

In the house I’m taking care of, there is a zero gravity setting on the bed I am sleeping in. I’ve been putting myself there to write down dreams, to rest. It feels so relaxing, and very Piscean!

A new moon is a new beginning. I’m planting the seed of myself, deep down under the Earth. My sun is in Pisces, so I’m already naturally in these slow, deep waters, but this moon feels epically so. I’m tracking my dreams, both those that come when I’m sleeping and those I make with my eyes open. I practice, like the cats, keeping my eyes half closed, to see the space in between the sleeping and the waking, the way reality comes together like two eye-lids, half closed.

Animal Emotions

Animals are naturally emotive in an uncomplicated way so spending time with them can help us be too. One cat likes to sit on my gloves on the table. Another sits on my chest while I knit. Another curls up in a box to hide while another one wants to play. All of them are in and out of emotional states rapidly and gracefully. They hiss, then cuddle. I blink my eyes at them.

Emotional Awareness

This season is asking us to become more aware of our emotions, and more patient with them as well. Mercury retrograde can make us feel stuck with them, but I’ve noticed that as I breath, listen to music, talk a walk, they flow. Maybe the flow is a bit slow, it’s still icy out there, but they do flow. Like icicles gathering then disappearing. Sometimes they are like reverse icicles growing up from the ground, coming from some deep space I don’t even know, reaching for the light, bringing me back to situations I thought I’d already said goodbye to, but in the dark they appear again so that I can let them go.

Dream Work

Neptune is also in Pisces, so I’d like to take a moment to talk about dream work. I’ve learned so much by simply writing down my dreams every morning. If I don’t remember them, I write down that I don’t remember them. The dreams get clearer with this practice, though there are still times when they are cloudy. When I write them down and talk about them with friends, I can get perspective on my life. I can take symbolic action on them. This is a way of showing myself that I am listening to myself. Synchronicities start to arise. I know which paths to follow, instinctively. My intuition gets stronger. Tracking dreams is a way to commit to a fruitful dialogue with yourself. It doesn’t always have to be profound. Taking action on a dream can be calling up a friend, buying a book, eating a certain meal.

As a Pisces, sometimes my dreams seem more real than reality, so I can go deep with them. I can dream in a dream. I can dream in a dream when I’m awake too. Right now the Piscean waters are so deep that I can get perspective. I can be miles below myself or miles above. I like playing with these distances. They are not getting me anywhere, but I know that such explorations will help me feel more here, in the moment, in my dream time actuality. Zero gravity.

Zero Gravity

What are the ways we can be zero gravity with ourselves? We can go there with our bodies by feeling how supported we are in our environment, even if we don’t have a zero gravity bed. Any moment has zero gravity potential. I’m resting into the way things are. I feel safe and held.

Datura

I did a flower essence attunement today, with an essence I made in the Fall, a beautiful, dark and strong flower spirit, Datura. When I made her she communicated with me her rage at not being seen. I felt immediate recognition of this feeling in myself. What are the parts of yourself that feel this rage at not being recognized or acknowledged?

Today her message was more gentle, but still had to do with finding constructive expression for this rage. I remembered all the ways my purest essence was silenced as a child, and all the ways I silenced myself.

A white trumpet at the top of my spine
a back bend in time
reaching back to meet myself
I am whole unto myself
a circle in time
I have clarity in all situations
clarity of vision
I see myself as I truly am
unabashed, unashamed
I own my experiences
I come back to myself,
again, again, again.

What a beautiful message to be gifted on this New Moon.

Let me know if you would like this essence, part of a line of shadow work essences I am developing. They aren’t up in my shop yet, so just drop me a line.

If you would like to explore working with me to learn how to connect to plants, get your own messages from the flowers and improve your relationship with your truest self, make a free appointment with me here.

Love and blessings unfolding in deep waters,

Amy

Goats in the Tree: Slowing to Eclipse and Surrendering to Capricorn in 2020

The Tree Climbing Goats of Morocco

Since the Winter Solstice, I’ve been going slower and slower, surrendering to this time of the year and to the demands of my body. On one side of the December 25th New Moon and Solar Eclipse, I fell on the ice and sprained my wrist. On the other, I got a cold, caught from my wonderful, visiting nieces and nephews. I felt depleted, underground, depressed. I lost sight of my purpose and felt pain. I couldn’t write, I couldn’t do much of anything. I had to surrender. What did I surrender to?

First I surrendered to the New Moon in Capricorn. Capricorn energy is a goat scampering up a huge mountain, from the depths to the heights he strives, but the going is tough and he doesn’t have much room on the ledges he chooses to pause on. During a climb, there is always that part of it where you have to surrender to the fact that you are climbing. I read that it wasn’t a good New Moon for making intentions and for manifestation and I felt this too; it was better to observe. So that is what I did.

Uphill, downhill. I trudged and drove up and down, back and forth between my house and the house where my family was gathered. As happens when family is about, I had to see and surrender to the things in my life that I don’t like. If I am a goat, it means I don’t mind going where it is hard for others to go. I’m climbing towards the sun even when it is dark. I’m climbing out of the cave, off of the page. Restrictions. I think this was all good practice for the year to come. It will be a year filled with this Capricorn energy. We’ll have to adapt as best we can as Saturn conjuncts Pluto in Capricorn. Right now, as I write, Jupiter is there conjunct Mercury. The Sun is moving through it towards Saturn and Pluto which are almost conjunct. I don’t know how anyone can imagine moving quickly. I can barely move at all, what with all these goats trying to climb and so little room. I’m left laughing though, with that image in my mind of the goats that climb the tree. Maybe that is a better image of the year for me. The tree the goats like to climb is an Argan tree, which grows in Morocco and produces one of my favorite oils. It whispers to me of abundance in aridity and longevity; it’s known for keeping the skin youthful. I’ll keep that message with me.

I’ve been thinking about what an eclipse is. In expressions, to eclipse something means to leave it behind, in the dust, to make it disappear. Literally an eclipse means that darkness, the moon, covers the light, the sun, leaving a halo before moving on and revealing the light to us again. This ring of fire exists because of the darkness, reminding us of the sun and how it will come again. On this side of the Solstice, though we are still deep in Winter, I know that the buds on the empty trees are already getting ready, beginning to swell, light yellow on the horizon amidst the grey. But first there is more to let go of, and often an eclipse will help release things we have been unwilling to release.

With letting go we find restrictions too. Sometimes I feel bound by the things I want to keep. Yet what is hardest to let go of? I realized this season that, ironically, what is hardest to let go of is what I don’t like about myself. These parts are hardest to let go of because I haven’t owned them yet, I don’t even want to see them. How can I accept these parts of the real me that I don’t like? I found that just being with them, instead of fighting with myself about them, or thinking about how I could change them, made them fit to my skin, and though itchy at first like a wool suit, I found I could adjust to them and then slough them off, letting them drop in the fire, like the thoughts that come unbidden in the morning, reminding me of my failures or shortcomings. I could befriend them. I could even feel happy and content with them. I could enjoy my family gatherings with a cold. I could be with people and not have to do anything. My hurt wrist prevented me from overdoing, trying to please, or even doing the minimum to help. I had to sit back and surrender to the restrictions of my injury. It wasn’t so bad actually. Everyone helped me and no one complained. I even got to be a little bit princess-y. So though I felt down, I also felt held in the dark, thankful for sleep and rest. These days I wake up in the mornings thrilled to be in my warm bed, with no thoughts at all in my head. I’ve taken the time to do nothing.

So as we move into 2020, it’s heavy there on the South Node, with all those goats in the tree. Maybe that’s you and me. Maybe the smartest thing to do is not to move at all, for we might fall and I don’t think I can catch you. But if we balance, if we let things be, we might get through, and hear the wind in the trees, and what the essence of the tree is telling us to do. I’m starting to get an idea. Are you?

If you want to talk about the cosmic energies, and the ones the plants might be whispering about to you, make an appointment with me here. I’m currently accepting new creatives who would like to deepen their creative practice by honing their Earth connection with the plants for three or six month online, one-on-one programs. What would it be like to work with me? Make an appointment for a free consultation to find out!

The Full Moon in Taurus and White Pine: Sensual and Bare

This morning’s Full Moon in Taurus held beautiful energy, and this evening I finished the article I have been writing for the last few weeks. I got so absorbed in it, in my notes and books, in ideas I’ve been thinking about for a long time, that I couldn’t focus on anything else. It was hard to get my ideas out, and hard to share. All of my insecurities came up. I missed my New Moon post, and I can’t even find my notes of what I wanted to share with you. But today I managed finish my that overdue article, right with the Full Moon. Full Moons are about completion, so this felt right, and Mercury was transiting the Sun, giving my ideas words and my words power. Did you bring something to completion? How do you handle those tasks that make you feel most vulnerable and bare?

It is very cold, dark and snowy out, and I’m sitting in my little house tending the fire. This morning I did ritual to honor the Full Moon, with a focus on pleasure, since that is what Taurus likes. While meditating with the Moon, the words sensual and bare came to me, and that fit well. With Scorpio season, things fall away, the trees get bare and I feel I come into the skeleton of myself. I become aware of things I don’t usually see, as if I’m lifting veils. The veils are thin, and I think about death. The leaves have fallen and the trees are naked. The once full forests are transparent. Now the snow is there, a layer, but a clear cover, a layer that reveals. A layer to interpret. Integumentum. I am bare to myself. What veils have lifted on your vision of yourself?

I have remembered these last few weeks that, though I don’t currently work at a university, I am a scholar. I love languages and learning. I love the struggle to find the right words. I love to spend time with books. I love to learn and I love to share learning. I feel a burning to follow this, to persist, as other women in the past have, as my grandmothers and great grandmothers couldn’t. I have been especially aware lately that I am doing it for them. Listening in, I hear them proud of me and I do carry their devotion with me. I do it for them. I’m not sure where it is leading to, and for the moment I don’t get paid for it, but the world needs more heart-centered scholars and I will continue to do it as I can. I think the challenge of it is also something that is positive for me. Though it was a struggle to face the ways that I don’t feel good enough to do that work, it was good to see my struggles clearly these last weeks and to push through, to decide, everyday, this is the work I have to do. This is the work I want to do, though it isn’t as easy as other things I could do. It felt potent, like being in a cauldron. I stirred myself.

So now that we are bare, let us be sensual. The life of the mind can feel so separate from the body, but I think I am also here to bring them back together. The time of that separation is coming to an end. I can be in my mind in an embodied way. I can be embodied and use my mind. Medieval people were more whole and connected, though they talked about the split and in many ways orchestrated it for us down the line. One of the things I love in medieval literature is how, in metaphor, writers combine the body and the mind. Augustine explains how it is that a tongue can be a pen, how many languages can make a single truth that you carry in your heart. I feel inspired by the way medieval people wrote about being human. I want to do that too. We are not body and mind, but whole organisms, universes even, complex and beautiful. So the mind can be sensual and the body can be intellectual, and we can mix it all up, as we do.

My plant work lately has been working with the White Pine that fell behind my house, almost on my house. Each day I drink a tea of the needles and pungent branch ends and meditate on its lessons. I have been doing this for a week so far, and the messages have been about clarity and joy, support and safety. I put pine needles in my bath salts and in vinegar and I will make an oil, and the tree, split, stares at me from behind the house, covered in snow, wanting me to use it, an immense and abundant gift. I will go to stand by it and see, when the snow stops, what else it has to say to me. I will continue this journey with it. White Pine has been on my mind since earlier this year when I learned it was a tree sacred to the Abenaki who have lived longest on this land in Vermont. I wonder at the silence of the woods here, so wild and strange, and used to another type of human. I would like to be more of that type of human that it wants me to be. I will keep listening to see what that could be. Looking for a picture of White Pine, I just found this blog of someone sharing local native people’s land based wisdom. I think that’s another gift from White Pine.

It comes to me that White Pine is sensual and bare, standing there, giving me life. And I realize again what good models our plant friends are, if only we could follow in their stead. How giving they are, and supportive, and protective, and strong. I think, it is enough to learn from them. I feel connected to my ancestors in this way too. I know that my Scottish grandmothers read the land and heard the land and knew the ways to use the plants for health and wisdom. Sometimes I feel that I am only following in their footsteps too. Then I remember that the trees told me they are our ancestors too. So I am following in footsteps of footsteps. This feels good, and I feel less alone, and I can do the work I came here to do, whatever this is in the moment.

As you become bare to yourself, what do you see that you came here to do? Would you like more plant guidance? Book a free exploratory session with me and we can talk about the work we could do and what they might be wanting to say to you. Do you have a book to write or art to make or a song to sing? I am sure you do. I can help you establish the discipline to do it, through ritual and connection to your cycles and those of the Earth. I am taking on new clients for this deep soul work with the plants at this time, so don’t hesitate to ask me about it! I’d love to talk to you. You can schedule a time on my website under creative coaching.

My next projects feel many and varied. I have more writing promises to finish, my Patreon page to update, and a free gift for my patrons and for you coming soon! A Concise Guide to Plant Communication. We can practice while the roots are sleeping under white and the wind is blowing.

Blessings to you on this Beaver Moon and may we not be intimidated by all the work we were called here to do. My love to you.

March New Moon and Mercury Retrograde in Pisces: Back Pain, A Bad Tooth and 8 Piscean Self-Care Practices

Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi

My neck and back have been hurting for days and I have been working on my past. The backs of our bodies: this is where we carry our past so it can be useful, if there is pain there, to look at the memories or weight from that past that you are carrying. It can be heavy and I like to use EFT tapping to release it. This time I realize I am still carrying, among other things, an old story of childhood pain which has resulted in a very basic feeling of not liking myself. I purge it again. I know this is a very common human feeling so I wanted to address it here. I wonder how we learn it.

How Did We Get Here?

From the point of view of a river or a plant, it is completely ridiculous to not like yourself. For animals, it also makes no sense; it is counter-intuitive to survival. How could a deer not like itself? It's in the moment, being a deer. A dog could perhaps appear to not like itself, but I think they just learn it from us. We are animals: how did we lose touch with our survival instinct and come to hate ourselves? There are probably many books on this, and I've probably read and forgotten some of them, but I would like to know, how did we make a world in which we are so sick with dislike for ourselves that we are destroying the very planet we live on? How did we get here?

Self-Hate As A Coping Mechanism

A coping mechanism. A kind of protection. When you are small, you cannot control your surroundings and many of our surroundings are not conducive to supporting the life of something small. When I was born, I had three siblings and two parents, all of whom were more or less going about their life. I was an element within, an object of this family scenario. I was not born ready to step off and lean into my life once I had learned safely how to walk. I was picked up, put down, and since our rhythms as a society are off, often the rhythms we impose on children are off. I remember it feeling awful. So we are born but some of us, upon arrival, don't want to be here, which turns into not wanting to be alive which of course then we have to repress because you are not supposed to be alive and not want to be alive, so maybe the self-hate is a kind of coping mechanism, a form of self-protection in this world that we only half want to be in. Maybe we can't bear this feeling of not really wanting to be alive unless we justify it by hating ourselves. I wish we acted more like our animal selves.

It Is Time To Dig Down Into It

I think my back pain might actually be an infection in an old root canal I need to see to. The story of that tooth: once almost twenty years ago I got a cavity and I consulted a dentist I didn't know very well who filled it with a composite filling. A few years later, when I was in a diner, I bit into a piece of plastic in my coleslaw and the composite filling fell out and I had to get a root canal. I guess these things happen, but I think the cavity was probably too big to have been filled with composite. Anyways, bad dentist or not, the root canal itself was a terrible experience. I asked for a gold crown to be placed on top of it, to make it a little less terrible and have some gold in my mouth. This tooth has been bothering me for a while but I haven't paid attention to it and so the alive-dead tooth may be harboring an infection. I think this may be causing my neck to be stiff, which is a lot like how my alive-dead being in the world doesn't allow me to move about in my life easily. So it is time to dig down into it, or perhaps remove the tooth. My bad tooth is a good symbol for the parts of my past that are heavy and I need to let go of. Or it's like my self-loathing. I thought I needed a gold crown to be worth something.

I Go Back To The Stars And Think

How can one remove the tooth of ones' dislike for oneself? I'm not sure the metaphor works. I go back to the stars and think, this is just a time of falling away. This new moon in Pisces introduced us to the end of times as we float along in a haze. Well, it made me disoriented anyways, but maybe because I'm a Pisces and a Neptunian-Uranian, a Lemurian and a Pleiadian (look those last two up for some very strange youtube transmissions that always resonate with me). I'm actually not sure where I'm from but you can probably be glad you are not as confused about it as I am. It's not even the new moon anymore and I'm a week late with my new moon blog. Well, I've been dealing with this back pain, and other things. For one, Mercury just went retrograde in Pisces and Mercury is really confused in Pisces. He wanders around and just wants to lie down, a bit like I've been doing, staring at the stars and talking to plants.

Don’t Reject Yourself

Self-rejection. I once had a dance teacher who would say, as we danced, don't reject yourself. I couldn't even tell you how she knew I was doing it. It must have been in my movements. I always felt like she was reading some secret part of me that not even I could see. But as soon as she said it, I knew it was true, I was rejecting myself. Sometimes now I catch myself and tell myself not to do it.

Self-Care For People Who Don’t Really Like Themselves

So here are my 8 suggested self-care practices, especially good for the current astrological climate, from the heart of a true piscean, for people who, half the time, don't really like themselves:

1. Feel the comfort and support which is continually offered to your body by gravity. Feel how your back rests on the bed. Feel how your feet are held by the ground.

2. Take a bath. Take baths. Bless the water as it blesses you. If you feel bad about using too much water, think of the water you are blessing going back out into the world to bring transformation and healing. When you let the water out, stay in the bath and imagine you are letting go of whatever you want to let go of. Feel how nice and heavy with gravity you are afterwards.

3. Go slow. Walk slow. Eat slow. Move as little as you want to.

4. Go see your counselors, healers, therapists, doctors and dentists. You may need some help learning how to like yourself. With any luck, the person you go see may like him or herself a bit more than you like you. This will help you learn how to do it.

5. Don't send that message. You know the one. There have been two of them for me in the last 24 hours. Block the person or just sit tight with your opinions until you feel less reactive about the offenses that have been done to you, now and in the past. Other people often don't help you like yourself (unless they are one of the helpers listed in #4, but even then), especially when you lash out at them.

6. Actually, spend as little amount of time in front of screens as possible. This will also allow you to avoid having to deal with #5.

7. Make a list of your desires. Make a list of your fears. Notice how, most of the time, they cancel each other out. Contemplate that for a while. Take the time to write it all out.

8. Talk a walk, preferably near water. This will help you feel peaceful and composed even though you would rather be a fish swimming in the depths, waiting for spring. Content yourself with imagining that you are a fish.

Also Waiting For Spring

I think we are all a bit like fish at this time anyways, so the last one shouldn't be so hard. This means I'll have extra company as I go about my pre and post birthday days, in various moods, also waiting for spring.

I'm taking Hibiscus flower essence, for Faith (everything is going just as it should) and Sandalwood, for Grounded Spirituality, and Self-Heal, for my stiff neck and for Mercury retrograde. I'm also taking lots of vitamins and using these amazing new plant message oracle cards that I love. Remember, the plants only know how to love themselves, because doing anything else is just insanity.

Take care my fellow fish! I hope you find your joy in this sometimes disorienting sea.

Much love,

Amy

(Originally posted March 11, 2019