Forecast for Tuesday, August 18th
Leo New Moon

★Oracular Overview—this precious place of pause demands an inner strength…

The tarot card associated with Leo is the card of Strength…

This card represents trust, and the crucial observance to, and acquiescence of, theories of mind over matter; focusing upon and visualizing what you do want to manifest, in trust, rather than coming from a place of fear with what you don’t want. This card, too, emphasizes that this power within yourself, to come from love and to share this love with All That Is is not only a God-given gift, but also a responsibility in this lifetime for you to both honor, and uphold.

This power requires trust or it simply will not possess vitality, and with this power comes a knowing courage, and these work together, collaboratively.

It is vitality alone that gives everything its spark—vitality is the essence of Life itself… vitality, also, is what provides the knowingness felt within, should your mind be quieted and your ego centered to allow your inner psyche to know.

Truly, it takes great strength to trust—and to trust courageously—in this knowingness, and to take what may seem or feel like risks—or, what society and reality, as we’re told it is, deem risky; to listen to the loudening roars of your soul’s delight demands, quite vitally, your trust…

It takes trust and courage to feel deserving of what I refer to as ‘the cosmic red carpet’, which is provided immediately when you’ve surrendered, opened your heart, and consciously chosen to live your authentic life—the life your soul intended.

❝‘I will never doubt again,’ said Buttercup, to which Westley replied, ‘There will never be a need.’❞
——Buttercup & Westley; “The Princess Bride”

It’s likely that the fixed houses in your nativity are experiencing the chaos, even if only underneath it all or within—chaos is chaos—through chaos comes creativity… and naturally, vitality.

Chaos doesn’t describe only confusion and disorder—chaos is simply formlessness, that which existed before matter, before an ordered universe… chaos imagines madness before becoming routine or definable.

We are in this precious place of pause in between states… we are in a place of opportunity.

Try to think of this chaos as a beginning of something, something ideal; try to think of this chaos as your inner spirit, your essence, and your soul, reflected, coming together in uprising against the noise and pain and destructively wasted energies of your wounded ego, and this disruption of sorts—this uprising!—needs to be «honored» and «really experienced» and «truly validated» in order for it to feel less severe… finding even the slightest way in which to honor your own uprising, or supporting an/Other’s, or participating in reality as it is, through a much needed adjustment or a preferred surrender could also serve to appropriately appease these energies.

Ultimately, today’s lunar event is a celestial reminder to you of your strength—it’s God-given, it’s divine, and it’s endlessly supported… all you need to do is remember.

And trust. To trust in this inner knowingness.

To trust from love.

❝I see gold in the air
And promise in our streams
I see love in our hearts
And futures in our dreams…❞
——Jesse Woods; “Gold in the Air” lyrics

Shamanic astrologer Raven Kaldera titles this moon the Sun Child’s Moon—a moon upon which “we concentrate on creativity in any endeavor, and we try to reattain that childlike confidence of the era before we became conscious of the criticisms of others…”¹ again, this type of engaging participation with and through our own inner vulnerabilities, to illuminate our own darknesses in innocence, demands a sense of trust most definitely…

Funny. To think of how seriously we can be in our playfulness… how risky it begins to feel to feel light, lighthearted, and without worry—the absolute thrill of insouciance!

Astrologer Dane Rudhyar says of the degree through which new moon manifests itself—that this degree associates itself with ‘a rainbow after the storm…and the luminescence of dawn’… “linking above and below one’s divine nature, promise, and immortality…” that the symbol of the rainbow “shows us the need to maintain a state of open communication between the Sky and the Earth within our total being—not for the sake of finding an ever-elusive “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow, for this end is never to be reached, but in order to face the totality of our individual selfhood as it is projected in the many-hued dome of our sky-flung consciousness… after every successfully met crisis, the revelation of worth comes to us, and with it comes the promise of success, if only we do our part…”²

Further, Rudhyar associates “the exalting challenge of new opportunities at the threshold of a new cycle… while the rainbow marks the end of the crisis, early dawn indicates the real beginning of the new period of activity… after the “peak experience” in which we touch our “divine” potentialities comes the struggle with everyday problems—but at first the state of deep inner exultation remains within us, we are aglow with its promise… the crisis and the blessings it has brought to us are relatively unusual events; every day has its dawn, which we should meet with a pure heart and a clear mind.”²

❝Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.❞
——Neil Armstrong

Another perspective of this degree suggests that “although great obstacles to recovery often arise, for the moment you need to be reassured by signs of better times coming—this can be difficult to believe at first, it can be hard to trust that the ‘storm’ is not going to swing back around again… reassess the damage done… this is a time for making plans, resolutions, or meditating on any new tasks that are ahead—it seems there is finally a chance for a new beginning—to start over.”³

Further, “things have been sacrificed and there may be a certain emptiness… regardless, you must see the light and move forward again… it is now time to stop operating in the dark—new ideas, new opportunities, new perspectives, new realizations are emerging… don’t dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be.”³

The tarot card of Strength reminds us that we are so much stronger than we give ourselves credit… taking time within each morning to pause in place and honor this very sacred notion, as the sun rises, could benefit you immensely—strengthening your core; strengthening your mind, body, and sprit, collaboratively.

❝The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.❞
——Rebecca Solnit

Ultimately, the energies—within the celestial suggestion of several cosmic happenings and varying combinations of planetary movements—the energies are announcing in an urging, nudging fanfare: to trust, to live with your heart courageously open and your mind unapologetically free and curious, and unencumbered, to see the horizons as fully open and bluer than blue—despite it all.

Despite it all… this is, indeed, the hard part.

Robert A Johnson states, in his book “Owning Your Own Shadow” that “wherever you have a clash of opposites in your being and neither will give way to the other (such as the proverbial burning bush that would not be consumed, and the fire that did not stop), you can be certain that God is present… we dislike this experience intensely and avoid it at any cost; but if we can endure it, the conflict-without-resolution is a direct experience with God.”⁴

Current circumstances have likely rendered you somewhat powerless in varying ways, from quite heavy to even the most subtle… and now it’s time to effectively pause in place for a moment and simply shine… to remember who you are and what you’re capable of, and to honor the light from within.

To experience God. To feel alive. To participate in the illumination of your own enlightenment.

Thoughts are things—very powerful things—and when your heart is open to receive What Could Be the heart and mind connect in right consciousness… and this, my dear friends, is where the magic begins—though, with all peak experiences and paradoxes, pausing in place within this precious space beyond, re-centering and gaining back a sense of balance is crucial.

What happens next is largely within your control, believe it or not—and believing is all mind, mind associates with thoughts, and thoughts are things, yadda yadda… but “if you really want truth, you need to escape the black hole of power and allow yourself to waste a lot of time wandering here and there on the periphery… you need to experiment with unproductive paths, explore dead ends, make space for doubts and boredom, and allow little seeds of insight to slowly grow and blossom.”⁵

This precious place of pause is the periphery…

This peripherally precious place of pause demands an inner strength… to truly see things as they «are» before envisioning how they «could be» can become the most magical moments of all.

❝Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.❞
——George Bernard Shaw

☉☌☾• 8°37’♌︎ at 8:11pm PDT; 9:11pm MDT; 10:11pm CDT; 11:11pm EDT
¹Kaldera, R. “Moon Phase Astrology” Destiny Books; ©2011.
²Rudhyar, D. “An Astrological Mandala” Vintage Books; ©1973.
³Hill, L. “360 Degrees of Wisdom.” A Plume Book; ©2004.
⁴Johnson, R. “Owning Your Own Shadow.” HarperOne; ©1991.
⁵Harari, Y. “21 Lessons for the 21st Century.” Spiegel & Gray; ©2018.

★It’s that time of year again—when we tidy up end-of-the-year goals and begin preparing for the next year’s goals… that’s where I come in—to help you strategize 2021—message me directly to book your reading

★If you’d like my undivided attention for an hour each month via phone or zoom call with personalized astro advice and horoscopic forecasts relevant to you—please drop me a line

❝You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.❞
——Friedrich Nietzsche

Image credit— @cosmiccollage on Instagram