Just a warm welcome to Saturn in Pisces

by with 2 Comments Astrology and meInner lifeSearch for home

I’m having a Saturn transit again!

Do you know how I always talk about astrology as a tool to identify cycles within cycles? Our lives are made of events, emotions, and encounters – all that promoting different opportunities for growth. This is a strong part of my world view which is embedded in my work. 

When I talk about Constructive Astrology, I don’t mean it in a superficial, ‘Pollyanna’ or ‘Toxic Positivity’ way. Its more connected with responses and choices.

For example, many of these cycles might relate to hard lessons in life, or loss and grief. It seems like we somehow inevitably loose something when we grow. Even when you gain something, you’re automatically losing something else. When you become a mother, you lose your ability to only care for yourself (I’m not talking about specific cases, like when someone isn’t able to care for another). When you find your life partner, you lose your single self.

Life is non-negotiable growth.

And astrology can enhance this process by promoting awareness and enlightening choices and responses. 

For instance, I was just now pondering on Saturn’s approach to oppose my natal Sun and Mercury in Virgo. So many things come to mind, including an overwhelming feeling of sadness as I witness my parents getting older – Saturn is transiting my 4th house. Part of this cycle is about reclaiming my place in the world, as an adult. At the same time, it’s about acceptance and surrender. (Pisces)

Life has its cycles – birth, growth, decay, and death. There is absolutely nothing we can do about that, at least not yet (sigh of relief). No matter how much Botox, plastic surgery, and drinks of collagen we buy, the ageing process is inevitable. 

I see it in myself, not only in how comfortable I feel in my role as an expert (Sun in the 10th house), but in some of my new-born wrinkles. I don’t feel so young anymore. And neither are my parents. Or the people I grew up with. Places and customs also have changed tremendously. 

I suddenly seem to understand the feeling people start to have, as elders, almost as if slowly we stop belonging in this world. 

Year after year after year after year, we gradually start our exit. 

Not that I have started it yet, but there is a strange feeling of recognition, almost like a premonition. I foresee my future in my parents’ feelings and changes, with the world also rapidly changing around me, as I watch everything with a sort of nauseous perplexity. 

Me, getting old and obsolete? No, never. My parents? I thought they were eternal! 

Saturn is about the hard truths. 

It has barely shifted to Pisces and I’m already longing for home – I never thought I would want to go back to Brazil or idealise my life there. But something has changed. I miss my flat, my parents and friends that I barely saw the last time I was there. In a Saturnian fashion, I had no time to see them, I was too busy working on my dream life. 

Here it comes, the Piscean flavour again: The dream life. 

This year I have Saturn on my side to help me build it, brick by brick. For every realisation and acceptance of the realities of life, another piece can be solidly placed. This is what I mean about the choices and responses. As I lose my outdated feelings of youth, I start to embrace my reality and create what I really want to see happening. 

I take charge of my life.

I feel sick as I type these words sat on a cold bathroom floor somewhere in Bristol, as I don’t want to wake up my partner. I’d rather not burden him with these thoughts. For now, thanking Saturn, I let him dream.

Musings on the IC, home and heart.

by with 6 Comments Astrology and meInner lifeSearch for home

I received an invitation from the AFAN to give an astrology masterclass in February. I was thrilled to receive it, as even though this moment feels very ungrounded to me (I guess for the last 7 years?!), I am still progressing in my work. Astrology is definitely one of my passions in life.

As I wondered about a potential topic for discussion, I had to check in with myself and ponder on what themes are important to me at this point. (I can only research or talk about something that truly resonates with me in the moment)

Where did I get so far? The IC! I find the IC such an important point in the chart, the most hidden and private, but also where we connect with our soul. And with psychology being the study of the psyche, or the soul, I realised how much this topic really interests me.

My IC is in Aquarius, I have long noticed a strong resonance with the detachment and coolness of Aquarians as a sort of homecoming to me. Leave me alone and I feel at home with you…or sometimes sharing a sort of silent presence, togetherness and spaciousness combined. There is something about the cool friendliness of Aquarius and its quiet acceptance that I find most nurturing. The odd and weird is familiar and nourishing to me. Friends are family. (I guess this also resonates with my Moon in the 11th and in the Aquarian decan! Whatever is truly important, it will be repeated in the astrology chart over and over again).

But what about the IC? The place of soul making and rest, where we go back to recharge. The place also where we come from, where our roots are. The beginning and the end – like the ouroboros. The IC is where we eat our own tale as well, the promise of completion. Where we come from and where we are heading to at the same time.

Apparently, according to astrowiki, Hellenistic astrologers considered the IC ‘the home of the underworld’. This invokes such powerful imagery for me. Our ancestral line is below us in the IC, and at the same time, what sustains us is down there too.

Polly Wallace wrote that ‘The IC, the undersky, is reflected by invisible roots that are vital for stability and nourishment. The MC, the middle of the heavens, flourishes out into a visible canopy that reaches for the sky.’ I have natal Sun and Mercury in the 10th house, the house related to the MC, and I have been on a mission, for most of my life, to try and reach for the sky. It has been quite a recent realisation, as Saturn transits my IC (and my progressed moon also makes its way through the natal 4th house) that without having a solid foundation and connection with a sense of home in here (pointing at my chest) not much can come to fruition.

I then wonder about the phrase ‘home is where the heart is’ – I noticed myself coming across that so many times since Pluto transited my natal moon and I started my journey searching for home. Since I left my home in London back in 2015 I haven’t been able to truly settle anywhere for long enough. Anxious feelings always get the best of me and moving has become the rule…no bond can be developed long enough or a sense of belonging somewhere. Then I wonder, is home really where the heart is? Because I sure struggle to connect with ‘invisible roots that are vital for stability and nourishment’ in the constant disruptive pattern I find myself in.

Astrologer Dawn Bodrogi (if you haven’t checked her blog yet, is one of my favourites!) said: ‘the IC contains the consciousness roots of the psyche which must be mined by the MC in order for there to be a creative flow between ‘in here’ and ‘out there’. We can only create with the material within us, and the IC is representative of that material.’  So according to her, we do need to be in touch with our IC in order to have something to offer, in order to have a sense of collective role.

Another engaging, inspiring and profound account of the IC was written by astrologer Anne Whitaker, particularly on how having an outer planet transit to your IC might manifest as deep change within and without as well.

I have experienced Uranus transiting my IC in 1998-1999 and I remember that around that time my mother found a new boyfriend – her and my dad tried to stay together for many years in a very passionate but turbulent relationship full of betrayal and jealousy and feelings. That was a shift, and although she kept this new relationship a secret from my father, things were never the same again. (those years were also when she began to go out clubbing – I believe that was part of my mother’s midlife crisis).

After that, Neptune crossed my IC in 2003 when I was 18 years old. That was the year I entered university to study History, became a sort of adult (at least that was how I was feeling back then, little did I know!) But also, and specially, this is the year that my brother moved to London with his Austrian girlfriend at the time. A year earlier he had gone to Australia to learn English and, up to that point in 2003, I was still thinking that he would be back eventually and life would keep on as it always was. So that was definitely a huge change for me, suddenly I became a sort of ‘single child’ for the following five years, until I moved to London myself and joined my brother in the international life. Home was never the same after those two transits, that’s for sure.

But something else has been gained, and for me, being of such tender age when that happened, it was also about being initiated into adulthood somehow. Realising that things can change in profound and irreversible ways was part of my experience – home, which used to always seem so unchangeable and secure, was transformed for good as I grew in awareness. I was never going to be the same either.

Perhaps our sense of self is very much buried in the IC, intertwined with it. And if, astrologically, home is where the IC is, then the heart must be somewhere around there too…