Ever since Whitney Houston died, I’ve been meaning to write about, well, Otis Redding. My love for Otis Redding. I’m a white girl and black music has meant the world to me my whole life. My grandfather played the trumpet. Jazz was his life. When I was a kid and we played 20 Questions in the pool somehow Dizzy Gillespie was always the answer.

I was an adolescent in the ’80s and I remember life before MTV but MTV changed all our lives, the music lovers. I wasn’t a reader. It was music for me all the way (until about age 14 when No One Here Gets Out Alive, the Jim Morrison biography changed my life again).

But back to Otis Redding. I forget how old I was. Maybe 14, 15, 16 and I had just bought a double album compilation “greatest hits” from the Atlantic R & B label and on side one I found Try A Little Tenderness.

It’s hard to convey to young people today life in a less media-saturated world. The stores and malls and Starbucks (not that there were Starbucks!) and tv commercials and EVERYWHERE were not filled with the latest cool stuff or the cool stuff from older years. For example, it never fails to shock me to hear the Velvet Underground when I go into any random store in Brooklyn. I mean, once upon a time… it was secret. The good music was secret.

Otis Redding was never a secret but I remember the first time I heard that song, with headphones on and… I think the ones born a little bit after me got a taste of him from that John Hughes movie (Pretty in Pink?) but for me it was a stereo, a record, a needle, a big black disc, big clunky headphones and probably a day like this one — quiet, but after school. Just me and the music.

So at first I was going to write about the fallen divas, some great women artists who left this world too young.

Otis  died before his Saturn return. Go back and listen to those songs that you have heard a zillion times and pretend it’s the first time if you can. That voice. Gives me chills just to think about it.

Of course I had to look up his chart. Sun conjunct North Node in Virgo in the 6th! I wonder if he ever knew the awesome beauty of his voice. Neptune in his 6th House too. Pluto in his 5th squaring a Taurus Moon. Ah no wonder. The sweetness of his voice is in that aspect. The sweetness of Taurus and the yearning of Moon square Pluto.

Saturn in his 2nd House. Yeah, he probably never knew his strength or his gift despite Aries rising and an Aries Mars in the 1st House. I just took a quick look though. This is by no means a comprehensive analysis!

Jupiter in Gemini in his 3rd: big communications, right? And that Jupiter squared his Virgo stuff but was supported by his Mars and his Pluto and his Venus in Libra in the 7th, a trine.

If he had lived? Maybe he would  have lived long enough to have been as rewarded as we have been blessed by his music. I kinda doubt it though.

Oops – sorry for the gloom! I’ll be back later to cheer y’all up.

xo

It’s the end of the day in the Big City and I wanted to post one more time before closing up shop.

This weekend I’m going to a magic show. A friend of mine, a playwright, is also a magician and he’ll be doing tricks in between the short plays. I’m looking forward to it. Never seen him perform before and it feels like a very Pisces sky thing to do: magic, sleight of hand, the world of illusion, imagination, mystery.

Now the Moon will move into Aries on Thursday night and my friend has an Aries Moon too. The Mercury Mars opposition will be exact in the morning: Pisces to Virgo. Mutable. Which way will the energy go. Will you talk talk talk? Or will you do do do? Maybe you will speak in tongues which seems very Mercury in Pisces, don’t you think? Speak poetically. Speak, well, magically Mercury is how you think. Mars is your energy. And an opposition? Battle or balance.

And once the Moon is in Aries, you know she will conjunct Uranus and she’ll square Pluto and don’t we know what this energy is about already? An emotional highwire act. Fast, intense, car crashy aspect. Or maybe just a clangy rumble underneath your surface. With Aries though, it can end as soon as it starts.

On Saturday, the Sun sextiles Jupiter, a feel good aspect, optimism and the Moon conjuncts Venus. A softer day but a mix of energy: sweet Pisces with sweet Taurus Jupiter plus the Aries conjunction. Feels like, well, a love affair, that first good feeling and excitement, the rush of hormonal thrill.

Sunday is a little darker as the Moon opposes Saturn (ugh) but when she enters Taurus we get a sextile to Neptune and a conjunction to Jupiter. The Moon moves fast so don’t hold on to what she says or what she does.

Are you working for the weekend? Or can you relax? 

xo

Yes I am doing Mini-Moon Readings for the Full Moon in Virgo Virgo Virgo! and I’m adding in Tarot these days too (for those who desire it). 

And for info about my usual, longer readings, look here!

Full of grace on the treadmill. Full of grace.

When Mars went into Virgo, and my 1st House, I joined a gym. At first I walked (on the treadmill). And then I discovered walking at an incline. And then I jogged. And then I jogged at an incline. And then I ran. And now I combine all three – intervals. When I run? I am free.

And I thought of Mars in Virgo, retrograde, today because there’s this moment, there’s this moment when you RUN, when you are running for your life, and that IS how it feels, when *I* am running for my life, there’s this moment when… you realize that the place, the pace, the level, the speed you had originally thought was as good as you could do… you begin to realize that you can do more, so you start to push yourself, and you do more. That’s Mars.

It’s not about the exertion, the point I want to make, although there is that. And it’s not about the endorphins, although there is that.

There is something that happens when you are running and you are pushing yourself, and your body is simultaneously in control and completely relaxed. What I mean is: you are pushing pushing pushing, your arms and legs and heart and head and lungs are working together… but you can let yourself go slack. Let your limbs go slack, loosen them, relax WHILE you are running for your life.

Any athletes here know what I’m talking about. I guess it’s being “in the zone” and I guess it’s “meditation in motion” for me — but today, I think, was the first time I felt it, or maybe I felt it on Monday too. It feels like flying and it’s not that I keep this up the whole time. I don’t. Still doing the intervals but this feeling, this ability is so extraordinary, it’s my joy, and I feel full of grace at these times.  I wish the same for you, however you can find it. I want you to find it.

It’s probably nothing that anyone can see. It’s a feeling. My natal Mars is in Cancer, the sign that can’t stop feeling.

And it made me think of Mars in Virgo retrograde because Mars in Virgo retrograde can’t do the details or the control like Mars direct. It must, for lack of a better phrase, go slack. But it’s still Mars.

I’m telling people these days not to expect results. Or… to expect different results. Review, investigate instead of coming to conclusions because of the retrograde (Saturn too).

But you can pick one part of your life (Virgo rules details) like the treadmill, like sex, or some other Mars activity. Find where Mars is transiting in your chart and pick one thing from those areas of life that that house represents and find your power again, find your Mars.

The Moon and Mercury in Pisces are opposing Mars in Virgo right now so talk — Mercury — to your Mars.

Is Mars in your 1st House now? Talk to your body. Is Mars in your 10th House now? Talk to your family — the 4th House opposes the 10th. You must travel the axis of where transiting Mars is.  Is Mars transiting your 7th? It’s not just them; it’s you too.

Moon opposing Mars, Mercury opposing Mars: tense aspects, sure. But there’s more. There’s always more.

xo

Do you have a Mars story to share?

A couple months ago I met with a local astrologer for a reading.

Hadn’t seen her in years but she was the first astrologer, the only astrologer actually who told me that I had an aptitude for *this* — for astrology. She saw it in my chart.

Flash forward five years (? not sure how long) and now I’m doing readings more and more and met with her to talk about my transits and other stuff and she told me to post testimonials. Good for business, she said.

And not just individual posts but to have a page where folks can read a whole bunch of them. I followed her advice although I’ve fallen behind in adding the individual posts to the official Testimonial page but it’s thanks to her that I organized them at all in the first place because it’s not my nature to say “Hey! Look what I did! Look what I can do!”

I’m a writer, always been a writer, always been intuitive but it wasn’t until recently that it really came together, the writing and the psychic stuff which I had never considered psychic stuff before.  And yet I was always doing this for friends, family… just not making a living at it.

From an email I received today:

I have to tell you, it’s a little spooky how this happens, all of this stuff is there but doesn’t crystallize until you point it out.  I feel all of it: square, inconjunct, trine, sextile & it’s unsettling until you put it together.  

 I’m deeply grateful for your insights and the way you help me make sense of myself.  Like a Sherpa . I didn’t get this much to work with from years of therapy, you should seriously think about charging more.

The money thing is a funny thing. I raised my rates a little in January and don’t want to go higher now. People can always tip if they feel the need And, yeah, all of it helps. And I really do want to keep the short readings affordable. Sometimes what happens is that someone can only afford a $25 Mini-Tarot and then when money gets better they come back for something more in-depth. It plays out different ways.

But I appreciate the sentiment anyway, I do.

xo

Hope you had a simply smashing New Moon!

“I am the happy genius of my household”

–William Carlos Williams

What are you like at home? How’s your Moon aspected?

I talk a lot about my Moon, being a Cancer Sun with an afflicted (Pluto conjunct) Moon.

I was telling someone this morning: my Pluto doesn’t mind the Moon there but the Moon minds! My Virgo Moon wants more peace and order and less Pluto dramarama.

But otherwise, she’s mad sextiled, all around the chart. And a trine. Gotta love those trines. Even when it’s a (sigh) Saturn trine.

I took a break and am heading back to work now (readings to finish) and I came home and had that line from Williams in my head. It shows up from time to time. Google it. You’ll find the entire poem.

Some say that Moon Pluto is a tyrant at home.

Moon = home.  Pluto = tyrant.

But we can spin it other ways. Pluto also rules holy places, new beginnings (hello New Moon!), life after death…

When Pluto touches your personal planets, especially Sun or Moon, your survival itself brings crisis (to you) but you’re familiar with the phrase “healing crisis,” right?

Are you the happy genius of your household?

xo

It’s gonna be a good day, people. Okay? Good day good day good day. New start new start new start.

Or as Dr. Shepard says on Grey’s Anatomy: it’s a beautiful day to save lives. But let it be your own today.

Pisces rules saviors, remember?

The Moon is in late Aquarius as I write this but the New Moon in Pisces is today.

What seeds will you plant? It’s funny to use the seed metaphor for a water sign. What else can we use? Use your imagination and tell us. Imagination: another Pisces/Neptune keyword.

This day? Let it be whatever you want. Create it. Use your imaginative forces, as Edgar Cayce said, a Pisces.

As for me, I have readings to tend to and then have a spiritual activity in the evening so to speak and will see friends as well. Virgo rules plans and Mars is in Virgo but retrograde so expect plans and routines to not always go according to plan these days. Leave room for, yes, the imaginative forces.

Otherwise, sky-wise:

Neptune is at zero Pisces, Sun is at 2 Pisces, Chiron is at 4 Pisces. The New Moon will be at 2 Pisces. It’s like a long light lounge chair. That’s the image that just came to mind. Can you see it? It’s barely visible but you can lie down on it. Like the chairs of heaven, poolside.

Jupiter sextiles Pisces so there’s our ground, our seeds, the planting fits because this big (Jupiter expands what it touches) earth is supporting.

The 12th House is Pisces natural house and it rules not only worries but witches too. Err on the side of witches is the point I’ve been trying to get across with my Pisces posts.

Do not “self undo” to use the classic phrase associated with the 12th.  Restraint and struggle are not necessary. Solitude may be helpful though. And ritual. And a holy book (Mercury is also in Pisces) like I was talking about yesterday.

But don’t stop with my ideas. Touch your own mind. What is Pisces to you?

Now that my books are out of storage, after some years, I’m reunited with my past and digging around for stuff to share with you. The following is from a little book Teachings of the Christian Mystics. The quote is from Richard of Saint Victor and I’m quoting it because I feel it embodies the depth and passion of the 12th House and Neptune:

The first degree of passionate charity is love that wounds; the second is love that binds. Love rises up to the third degree of passion, where it excludes every other love, but the one, for the sake of the one. The fourth degree of passionate love is that in which nothing at all can satisfy the desire of the passionate soul.

Does this describe your love nature? Got New Moon plans?

xo

Update! My schedule is a little tight today and Wednesday but am still scheduling Mini-Moon Readings (and other readings, including Tarot) this week. Email for more info at moonpluto@gmail.  And if I don’t get back to you right away, it means my phone is acting up (as usual!)

Edgar Cayce said thoughts are things. He also said Mind is the builder. So not only what you say but what you THINK affects you, of course. And others.

New Agey people often talk about “psychic attacks” and “emotional vampires” and stuff like this and I never felt it so keenly until recently and how the more good you do in the world, the more dark can surround you.

A metaphor from my tradition: there’s something called the Yetzer Hara, the “evil inclination” and they often speak of it as something inside you, like a little devil whispering in your ear, but for my purposes here I’m speaking of it as an outside force. Kinda like a Mars transit. You can’t stop it. It comes at you. For better or worse.

I think it’s more important than ever to protect yourself, using strategies, techniques. The internet is full of this stuff, like closing up your chakras for instance before going to crowded places.

It’s daily maintenance that’s the hard part and with my North Node in Pisces in the 6th House being transited by… the Sun, Neptune, Chiron, and the New Moon soon… routines are… Well? Where are they? Look at Einstein’s piles of papers there in the picture. It’s beautiful, ain’t it?

Something I did today which I found helpful is that I used a certain book from my tradition and it comforted me. The old language. The old words. I know some people need to leave the religion of their childhood behind. I dip in and out of mine but I do know that when I enter these books, I feel protected and that actually there is nothing stronger.

I’m bringing this up during Pisces Season because it is a spiritual topic and a confusing or nebulous topic and it can be hard to know what’s yours and what’s from out there.

But with Mercury in Pisces now heading to oppose Mars retrograde in Virgo? It’s a balance of the practical technique and routine of Mars in Virgo vs. the holy words of a Mercury in Pisces. You need both. And that’s what this Mercury/Mars opposition is to me: a holy book.

Do you have one? Can you get one? Maybe you’ll write one. 

So for Pisces Season, consider adding in a new ritual, a new spiritual, that you want, that you think you may need, that you feel may protect you from the yetzer hara, outside or inside… because during Pisces Season our boundaries are paper thin.

Pisces rules poetry so here’s another haiku of longing from the same anthology I mentioned earlier, edited by poet Robert Hass:

First day of spring–

I keep thinking about

the end of autumn.

xo

Update! My schedule is a little tight on Tuesday but am still scheduling Mini-Moon Readings (and other readings, including Tarot) this week. Email for more info at moonpluto@gmail.  And if I don’t get back to you right away, it means my phone is acting up (as usual!)

So in honor of Pisces Season…

Even in Kyoto–

hearing the cukoo’s cry–

I long for Kyoto.

That’s haiku from Basho but translated by Robert Hass (who was a teacher of mine once upon a time).

Very Pisces, don’t you think? 

xo

My schedule is a little tight on Tuesday but am still scheduling Mini-Moon Readings (and other readings, including Tarot) this week. Email for more info at moonpluto@gmail.  And if I don’t get back to you right away, it means my phone is acting up (as usual!)

I walked home in the glorious sunshine. We’ve had a lot of gloomy weather lately in the Big City.

Well, it is winter, my Cancer Sun/Aries Moon friend reminds me, and he’s right. I’m grateful though – for this body that can walk or run or roll up and down the Big City streets if need be. I wasn’t born here but have lived here long enough for it to have toughened me.

And as I was walking home I started thinking about tomorrow’s New Moon and how in love I am with Rex Bill’s famous Rulership Book, a must have for any astrology lover. And I love the way it’s organized – in lists, by planet, sign, house.

This is how I know that Pisces rules, among other things, chaos and veils, not just escapism and drunks.

And when you read the book systematically or just by dipping around, the connections become clear, if they aren’t already clear to you — that 12th House keywords, for example, have more than a little in common with Pisces and Neptune keywords. That’s how astrology works. You jump. You leap.

Lorca has a word “duende” — a word I learned in a graduate school seminar when I was studying poetry. I associate it with making a “poetic leap.” Think of it this way: the rational mind is limited. Pisces/Neptune/the 12th House is not limited.

And here, this beautiful quote from Lorca: The duende is not in the throat. It climbs up inside you, from the soles of the feet. 

Aha! Another Pisces keyword: feet!

The New Moon in Pisces compels you to leap: Pisces rules poets, poetry, poems.

You know why I always tell you to find stuff in your chart? Because that’s how I learned astrology. I was in a class for a few years and week after week our teacher would do just that. He would draw a huge wheel and pinpoint the transits and then use student’s charts as examples.

If you can find all this Pisces (Sun, Moon, Mercury) in your chart you can find where you may be confused at this time. Chaotic at this time. Veiled at this time. Escaping at this time. Or desiring to escape. Or you may just want to go shoe shopping. In either case, extra sensitivity is a given.

How do you protect yourself? Or find your way out? 

The fascinating thing is that Pisces rules not only confinement but escape.

The solution is inside the supposed problem. You may be in a prison (another Pisces keyword) but Neptune rules expansion, rules what is limitless.

So do that. Find your Pisces and KNOW, BELIEVE that THERE is a place (in your chart, in your life) where you can grow and — this is the important part — grow safely.

PS That is Lorca in the picture above, a Pisces Rising (according to Astrotheme).

xo

Yes I am doing Mini-Moon Readings for the New Moon in Pisces and I’m adding in Tarot these days too (for those who desire it). Guess I’m in a Tarot mood lately

And for info about my usual, longer readings, look here!

I’ve had a crazy morning. Odd because I woke up in a good mood. Received some disturbing emails and now trying to get on with my day. There’s much to be done and a full day ahead and I’m working on my unshakeability. Be the tree. Hell, it’s not Taurus Season but I remember writing about noticing the stretchmarks on the back of my legs and feeling that they looked like tree branches. The New Moon is tomorrow in Pisces and with so many planets in Pisces at the moment, some grounding is a good idea.

Does this much water suit you?

Jupiter in Taurus sextiles Pisces so put your faith in… your faith.

xo

PS I know it’s kind of a sad skinny tree but I’m in a hurry this morning and look: she’s still standing.