Alice Sparkly Kat did a similar thing, which I’ve always wanted to do: dissect my own birth chart and share it with the world.

Let me flag one thing before I start. I am 25. I have not experienced my full life story yet. The birth chart is charged with a full life story. This is just what I’ve experienced so far, told through the lens of those experiences. And that is something to keep in mind when you receive a reading: not everything has come alive yet, but you can process it through what you’ve already experienced through life.

Ok, now getting started …

What immediately stands out about my chart is my stellium in Leo. My Sun & Mars are within 0-9 degrees of Leo, my Ascendant, Venus, and Moon are within 20-29 degrees of Leo. So yes, Leo plays a very big role in my life story.

Leo is ruled by the Sun. The Sun illuminates everything. Part of my life story — from being an artist to being an esoteric counsellor — is to shine light on the things I care about. I grew up making films about social justice, eventually becoming a celebrity publicist and film producer, before having my voyage from head to heart and discovering my passion for counselling and one:one service. I’ve always seen it as my job to bring light to what I care about the most.

Light, as many of us understand it, signifies visibility, attention, gold, and power (tropes of Leo). But in the ancient world light was associated with the intellect. The Sun is a different kind of intellect than we know now, because it is connected to the heart. In ancient Egypt for example, the brain was located inside the heart. A lot of my thinking deals with heart issues: forgiveness, compassion, and also just how we can have more fun and be more joyous. I really have grown to appreciate the heart Leo brings to everything it does. It is the big ole butter ball of sunshine melting over all of us everyday.

Mercury, the brain-based function of the mind, is Cancer. It’s in the 12th house.

Growing up queer I exhibited very feminine qualities. I remember hiding my voice. Lowering it, deepening it, into the depths of the 12th house. During what I call for lack of a better term my initiation into my soul at 21-22, the thing I struggled the most with was my voice. My throat chakra felt blocked for months and months and months as I tried to search for new meaning in my life. What restored it was speaking my truth, and in Cancer, that’s all about emotion. The 12th house can be what subconsciously drives us. I was very, very driven by emotional insecurity for the first 20ish years of my life.

Cancer guards over my 12th house where my Sun & Mars in Leo also live. Some people call the 12th house the place of ghosts and grief. I don’t know how it happened, but at a certain point in childhood I felt like I lost my identity. I lost my joy. I felt very empty as a prepubescent teenager. It was like discovering the horror of this world made me never want to face it. What’s interesting is my father who was in recovery during my childhood for similar disillusionment with the world has Sun in the 12th house, but in Taurus. My dad hid out when he felt disillusioned. As a Leo Sun in the 12th, I tried to stand out.

I partook in lots of lies and illusions to help my Sun in the 12th feel more adequate. I bought social media followers, attended sketchy red carpets in LA, and would hide in the lobby when my films used to screen at festivals. I used to self-sabotage through performance and overcompensation. But then that started to really affect my mental health. I moved home, and then 7,000 miles away to Australia (12th house = foreign lands). I feel very content here. My 12th house has taught me how to be myself, by basically stripping away everything I thought I was. That is what makes me a big fan of the 12th, no matter how hard it can be. Every house has a lesson, and the 12th is the lesson that grief is usually a process of finding out the love that we are.

My Moon in Leo is squared by my Saturn in Taurus. I had a very fun but also a very strict mother. I remember survival and security being something that was highly instilled in me (Saturn), and lots of fears around money and having enough resources to succeed (Taurus). My Moon in Leo spent a lot of time creating out of what it perceived as necessity, rather than its own creative joy. This square has been one of my biggest challenges, because it has forced me to learn how to have fun and create (Moon in Leo) without worrying about results (Saturn in Taurus).

My Saturn is in the 10th house. I have always been highly career oriented but recently more career-afraid. “I want to make an impact! But I don’t want that impact to cost me the joy of my fun, Leo moon,” I always think to myself. My Saturn is Taurus. Slowing down, especially in my career, has been like my biggest lesson ever.

Saturn is conjunct Jupiter in Gemini, my favourite placement in my entire chart. I love that I have Jupiter in its detriment because it means that it finds optimism through realism. My life has felt like a series of little lies I’ve told myself, and the joy for me is in unlearning and unpacking those lies to reveal a deeper message I can help others with. My Jupiter is ruled by my highly esoteric Cancer Mercury in the 12th. Astrology is a big part of the way I convey these messages.

My north node is conjunct my Mercury in Cancer in the 12th. I love learning new information so, so much and then immediately sharing it outwards with the world through my Jupiter in Gemini in the 10th house. Truly nothing makes me happier than being in my little Cancer routine (waking up late, maybe meditating or scrolling, going to a cafe, ordering my SAME order, reading a book, and then writing an essay on what I just wrote, all the time) and sharing this joy with others.

Leo is in aversion to Cancer. I constantly question if what I’m doing is what I’m supposed to be doing. Leo wants the spotlight while Cancer wants the comfort of the couch and a good friend. I feel like I’m just now starting to find ways to bring my desire for creative expression (Leo) in harmony with my deeper desire for healing and friendship (Cancer). Community is a huge way I measure my happiness and my purpose, and strong connections with others is how I know I’m doing right by myself.

Neptune & Uranus in Aquarius are in my 6th and 7th house, watching over my Leo stuff. My parents were non-conformists masquerading as suburbanites. Both my parents are highly Aquarian. They were anthropologists and affordable housing workers and landscapers and they were always very skeptical of people in power. I fought a lot with them as a teenager about wanting to be a power-player in the world and them warning me that would never make me happy. Power still makes me very insecure. I either want a lot of it or none of it because my Aquarian upbringing was very unsure of where it stood on power. My parents were middle class, always-usually comfortable, but also fighting with that comfort from many emotional levels of guilt (I think) and anger at where it placed them in society.

My Neptune in Aquarius in the 6th really shows up for me as confusion about labour, and how much I am expected to do to maintain my level of class. I also have confusion around activism and which people I exclude by partaking in it. My Uranus in Aquarius sits right on my descendant. I fall in love with people who want to revolutionise the world together in new and creative ways. I love people who remind me of my parents.

The last aspect of my chart I’ll talk about is my South Node in Capricorn, also in the 6th house. I think I had a lot of guilt around my family being comfortable. I think I thought I needed to really work hard to be entitled to that comfort, for fear of it going away. I measured my security through my pain, in a weird way, and loved the idea of exhausting myself to earn whatever I thought I needed to stay alive. I felt very guilty when I came into consciousness of my privilege.

My north node in cancer in the 12th is this lovely, lazy placement that’s all about letting go. It’s about accepting I am worth rest. It’s about recovering from a lot of this guilt, burn out, and over-working. It is a constant lesson for me that I need do nothing to earn my soul. That life is actually a process of eliminating everything that stands in the way of being unconditionally at peace. What do the prisoner, the monastic, and the hospital patient all have in common (significations of the 12th house)? They have nowhere else to go but now. And it is through now that they find liberation.

I feel naked now. I hope you enjoyed my Astro-peep show. This was really cathartic.

Reach out to me if you want me to read your chart! I’d love it I’d love I’d love it.

Today I woke up a brand new Leo. 25 years around the Sun and I am still playing, roaring, and showing off in I would like to think healthy ways. But I woke up in Brisbane, Australia, where the temperatures are frequently below 15 C and the icy cold weather whispers songs of my opposite zodiac, Aquarius. Doing astrology in the Southern Hemisphere is a funny trick. It tricks knowledge with weather, equators, and funny animals. It disembodies rules through riddles and forces you to look to consider a new source of astrological input. The sky itself.

As modern astrologers, we ironically forget that our source is the sky. For most of us, it’s a funny little graphic on astro.com, construed by Greco-Roman knowledges that compress ancient Babylonian lineages of horoscopy into tiny graphs that can be broken down into signs, houses, and planets. For the ancient Babylonians all the way to Indigenous Australians, sky knowledges were not purely knowledge. They were felt experiences. They were dances, ceremonies, and movements that happened in direct connection with the weather and the star constellations outlying them.

In Northern Europe, the Sun and Leo season signified great abundance of crop, light, and leisure. But in parts of Indigenous Australia during the summertime, the Sun was seen as a demon. It was hot, punishing, and relentless. Both experiences of the Sun were felt & observed, as opposed to assumed & systemised through imparted colonial knowledge systems.

In Australia, astrologers are challenged with remembering sky. Sky is not the same here as it is in Iran. Sky has a completely different rhythm, angle, and perspective on the planets. But we need not be astronomers or Western scientists to know exactly how. We have our own lived experiences of the sky to determine for ourselves how we feel. That is the art of astrology: looking at our lived experiences in concert and connection with the patterns of our local environments.

So below I am attempting to put together a little system of my lived experience of each sign, as it happens in concert with the colours, “weathers,” and social constellations of our town Brisbane.

THE SIGNS …. SUNG BY BRISSY SKIES

Aries — this time of year in Brisbane is beautiful, fall-like, and full of many picnics in the park and final swims in the ocean before the Sun takes her final bow to the icy winds of the Antarctic. Aries in the Southern Hemisphere crave beauty. But it is a beauty that is beyond themselves. They seek it in rich community and the people they can be of service towards. Their relationships are the bottom line, and they feel most themselves expressed through community service and social justice. Aries in the Southern Hemisphere want to save people. This is their greatest struggle: letting go of control of other people and letting them learn through their own winters. They are learning to sustain inner harmony while the outer harmony of sky and society is in great flux during this season.

Taurus - it starts getting colder this time of Brisbane, but not too cold that you can’t go out and enjoy your day. Tauruses in the South love to go out as long as they know they can immediately return home afterwards. They are omniverts: craving people everytime they’re alone, and craving alone time everytime they’re with people. They have many moods. They fear hitting the darkness. They can be happy-positive to the point of depressing people around them. Going through their own darkness teaches them to deal with the dance of the change in seasons. It says: darkness will always come but so will morning. Hold on until morning.

Gemini - this is when you start staying in bed longer, noticing the house get cold, and feeling like you need to make big lifestyle shifts to survive the new season. Geminis in the South love comfort and finding ways to stay warm, literally and figuratively. They like to be surrounded by beautiful objects that make them feel safe and protected. They like to spend extra time taking care of themselves and take extra shifts at work so that they can afford more time to take care of themselves. They simply love being and feeling surrounded by warmth. The warmth of friends, a hot cup of tea, or a new book, these people need to feel layered in all the joys of our city.

Cancer - Cancers in the South love going to the gym. Not the literal gym always. They like all sorts of gyms. Places they can work stuff out. They are big-time thinkers, re-workers, and improvers. Have a problem in your life? The Cancer energy of the South will have something really important to tell you at all times about how they worked that out for themselves. They want, deeply, to provide advice because they are seeking this advice for themselves. They are big personalities. They tend to be famous. The moon in Brisbane is ginormous this time of year and everybody always seems to be talking about the moon at this time of year. Cancers in the South get talked about.

Leo - Leos in the South aren’t sure what they want. They are ambivalent people. They go between liking, loving, and hating in a matter of minutes. They need alone time. A lot of it. They can perform for about 5-10 minutes before their social battery begins dying. Leo in the South is one of the most intimate Southern signs. It neeeeeeeds intimacy with self and with others. It is a major introvert: always churning on something deep inside that it wants to share with you that you’re not sure you’re mentally or physically prepared enough to let in. Leos in the South are penetrating.

Virgo - Virgos in the South have an optimistic streak to them. This is the time of year the Sun begins showing itself again, and everything just feels possible and right again. Virgos love a good party. They love to live life care free. They possess this guilt though that they should feel bad for having a good time. They are still the worry warts but it’s a wart on a different region of the body. It’s on the hip. They are worried that if they shake their hips too much they will bump into someone and hurt them and send them to the E.R. While having a good time, Virgos still plot disaster. They are the most interesting kinds of freaks.

Libra - Libras in the South aren’t chill. Libras in the South are active. They are actively seeking a chase, a thrill, a new person, a new club, a new something. Libras in the South do not settle for shit. They are constantly initiating new ideas and new projects and bridging together new networks. They are not typical Libras because they don’t lead with justice or with community at the forefront per se but rather the jist of whatever is exciting them and they could give a damn who doubts or wants to work on it with them. Libras in the South find ways to do it themselves. People just naturally follow.

Scorpio - Scorpios in the South secretly want to be stars. They want to shine brighter than anybody else at work or their friends circle could. They would never tell you this though because that would spoil their humility streak and make you paranoid they are cutting corners to get where they want to go. Scorpios in the South possess private delusions, dreams, and dramas that keep them very, very, very motivated. They don’t sleep and would much prefer to be naturally passed out from all the work they take on. They are opposed to laziness, sex, and pleasure. They want the thrill of being an ascetic to their own dreams. They rejoice in having things taken from them so they can go out and earn them themselves. Scorpios in the South never identify with their sign because they want to be Leos.

Sagittarius - Sagittarius are exhausted in the South. They are just too damn tired to care. They’re Northern-typical Sag-silly: they love jokes, laughing out loud, and just making fun of everything they’ve accomplished. They get things done slowly and with ease, and they choose to laugh at the rest. They complain the entire way. This fuels their humour. This is the most exhausting time of the year in Brisbane due to the heat; it’s impossible not to complain! Sagittarius in the South loves complaining because it’s the only way sometimes to deal with the heat and dealing with hard things it finds funny. Sagittarius loves you when you’re down because it knows how to bring you back up. It rehabilitates you through it’s own exhaustion.

Capricorn - Caps in the South are slow. This time of year not much gets done. You’re too hot to participate and so you lock yourself inside, turn on all the fans, and put on your favourite YouTube channel. Slow does not mean lazy — it means they’re incredibly in touch with timing. They study astrology and metaphysics and philosophy and cooking and baking and basically anything that re-adjusts their expectations of time. They are stressed out by time as much as they are grown by it. They know that slow is the way to go. And when they go slow, they get so much freaking done.

Aquarius - Aquarius thrives in the South. Why? Because it’s a sign that usually hates to be seen but for some reason they just find so much joy in being seen this time of year. Nobody expects it to go out or be anything when it’s 30+ degrees which means Aquarius gets to be everything. It has all the time it wants to work on what it loves and it shares it with the world expecting nobody to look at it which is exactly when everybody looks at it. Aquarians turn into cats when they visit the South. Nobody expects anything from them and yet they give everything in return. These people give so much and they are always very entertaining. They are house cats who are sly in front of humans but sneak off at night to rouse the bugs and the birds and roll around in the dirt with the dingo. They are unpredictable in the daytime, but consistent with the mysteries of the night.

Pisces - Pisces in the South struggle to be satisfied. Nothing is really happening and yet everything is about to happen. They feel like they have a lot of freedom but freedom can be imprisoning. They are learning what to do with all their freedom. They have had months to reflect but now what? They toss out old ideas all the time and are always searching for the new. But the new never comes. Pisces people in the South have excellent memories. They remember everything they’ve been through and their memory is essentially to moving them forward. If you’re always searching for the new, chances are you missed something along the way. What was that thing? What are the moments when you catch it and start throwing it around again? Time machines make these people very very content. All of them need some sort of a Time Machine to feel satisfied.

BRISBANE - Brisbane itself is a Libra. It is excitable, always chasing the new, and honestly a bit exclusive to the needs of its people. Brisbane is rapidly advancing. Australia is a Capricorn which means that Brisbane is trying to achieve transcendence over time. It has Utopia in mind but Brisbane will never be Utopia because it is to fresh and full of young zesty energy. Brisbane will never settle. Brisbane will always be a place for the unsettled who come to chase their dreams and learn the true meaning of friendship along the way. That’s because it’s a Libra in the South.

This was a very fun piece to write for my Brisbane-based 25th birthday; I hope it helps you reflect on your very own birthday and what it means under these skies!

Cheers and love,

Ethan

July marks Uranus’ transit into Gemini. That means in some area of life you will feel like you are losing your mind for all the right reasons.

Uranus represents the process of awakening our individuality. It necessitates shaking off any structures or conditions that feel like a limit in self-realisation. Transpersonally or politically, it narrates processes of dissent, liberation, and revolution.

I have noticed a lot of fear mongering around this transit. Uranus in Gemini marks wars and revolutions across multiple political contexts. That doesn’t mean we need to fear war; it means we need to assess how available we are to be used as instruments of peace amidst such chaos.

Uranus in Gemini pressures us to get uncomfortable with other people’s ideas and lived experiences. It forces us to fall to our knees in acknowledgement that our truth was never the whole truth, but a slice of a much bigger experience we can never understand just on our own.

For your own personal experience of Uranus in Gemini, think about where there are stuck thoughts, stale dreams, and areas of life that feel like chewing on hard candy. Think about what would taste better. Think about where you’ve been chewing for too long. Think about where you’ve been too head-y. You’re going to be asked to change here, and it’s for the better. It’s going to lengthen the links between each of us and lead to what Uranus in Gemini wants - a more open, free-thinking, and (by some measure) peaceful world.

(Check Sun/Rising)

GEMINI

For the past seven years your dreams have become more vivid, your fears have become clearer, and you’ve gained more confidence in solitude. Now, you can feel the pressure of whatever you call that non-physical part of you (the soul, the subconscious, the spirit) pushing out of you for a chance to be expressed. Now is less about what you do, and more about who it allows you to be. Something in the mind, the body, the spirit needs to be freed. Freeing ourselves often induces a process of humiliation — which only means returning ourselves to the humus, or the soil, where we become reintegrated with a greater social ecosystem. Life is in this beautiful composting phase for you currently — it may stink, attract flies, and look like a big pile of shit, but it is so much juicier and richer than what you had before.

Reflections:

• What is my favourite book?

• What is my favourite sentence from that book?

• What kind of sentences do I want to write about my life story?

CANCER

We live in a world that constantly stresses the importance of community, meanwhile burning those at the stake we disagree with. You’ve felt this burn recently, somehow — be it the loss of a friendship or a group of collaborators, some sort of disillusionment around who you need to be for others is long overdue. As a Cancer, you’re one to know that the world “out there” isn’t real. It’s the world “in here” that colours everything we see, do, and relate with. Some sort of shift is going to happen “in here”, subtly, over the next seven years. For somebody who values the clarity of an inner pond, you may find the next seven years are more like traversing a giant sea storm. In the 12th house, where Uranus will be spending some time, answers don’t come from the individual. They come from the whispers of everything beyond us, inviting us to see how we’re connected with it all. If you can, open yourself up to a system of relations entirely oblivious to the physical senses — and experience the least loneliness you ever have.

Reflections

• What did I dream about last night?

• Who was in that dream?

• Where did that dream take place?

LEO

For such a seemingly free spirit, you’re actually quite inwardly conservative. You want to know who you are, where you’re going, and who you’re helping at all times. For the past seven years, this has not been clear. You’ve been gambling with different chips, different career paths, different angles … and you’ve felt like a failure. You’re not. You’ve actually just freed up so much space for the bright fieriness that you are to come alive! The next 7 years only continue this process of self-exploration, this time, in relation to community. The question you should be asking is not “who am I and what am I achieving?” But “who am I helping and how are they helping me?” Collaboration will be your medicine. Collaboration, communication are not just about sharing our individual ideas, but making these ideas common. July asks you what you have in common with others, and to make these commons into real places and gatherings. You may be at the centre of everything you do, but you’re learning how to look beyond yourself and recognise all the people you help “keep in orbit” by virtue of being yourself.

Reflections

• Who are the people I look up to?

• Why do I look up to them?

• What kinds of goals or plans do they look towards that keep them happy and busy?

VIRGO

You’re a person who likes to make sense of things with their nose. For the past seven years, you’ve had to learn to develop a sixth sense. Call it your intuition or your faith — you’ve learned that sometimes the only way to move through challenges is to appreciate a lovely sunset or go for a walk alone in the woods. These quiet moments alone have inspired new questions and ponderings about the world and how it works. Likely, this is shifting up your entire mission statement, sense of responsibility, and motive for what you do in the world. During this time, it may be hard for you to surrender to the changes happening to the most public area of your chart, the 10th house. Something within you is dying to change the way you work, where you work, or what work even means to you! Honouring your appetite for curiosity and never-ending learning is essential to shaping a future career and public image that fully honours and embodies you.

Reflections

• What did I want to do when I was 10?

• What did I want to do when I was 20?

• What do I think I’ll want to do when I’m 80?

LIBRA

There’s a tarot card that to me vibrates with where you’re at. In the five of pentacles, two beggars freeze outside of a church. They’re afraid of asking for help because they’re afraid of giving the impression they’re poor. So, they accept the cold rather than the warmth that would be offered to them if only they asked. Something in your life has consumed a lot of your energy and resources lately, leaving you feeling a bit insecure and like running away from it all. The path to healing does not have to happen alone — rather, the path demands at some point that we ask for help so that we become humbled and re-integrated to a broader sense of the community. You may feel an urge to travel, escape, or expand — as important as it is, make sure you do not do it at the expense of human connection, or appearing “weak.” You never could; as an air sign, your mind is too ambitious and strong.

Reflections

• Where do I dream of travelling?

• Why do I have this dream?

• If I didn’t get to go to this place, what do I think I’d be missing out on?

SCORPIO

A wind of relief barrels across your seventh house of intimate relationships as Uranus prepares it’s departure. Over the past seven years, you have been learning how to amplify your authentic voice in relation to those you love. While some strings have been cut, the ones that come from the heart have stayed and taught you the power of authenticity in relationships. A new journey awaits you; a chance to deepen your relations with those you love. Whether that means sticking together for a marriage, a business venture, or buying a new house, your fears around intimacy will be continually taught until you realise the safety in loving another.

Reflections:

• When did I last feel imprisoned?

• Who did the imprisoning?

• What did I learn when I got out of prison?

SAGITTARIUS

You’re a person who values hard work. Over the past seven years, your visions of work have been changing in relation to your value systems. You may have uncovered a hole in your heart, a place where people have not been able to enter due to the bandages you place there. During Uranus in Gemini, your work is to expand the value you place on relationships. Your journey through intimacy may start rocky, with lots of reactions and falling outs, all of which must happen if it means the lifetime privilege of getting to speak your truth amongst others. It is this wisdom — from falling down and standing up again in your intimate relationships — that will ultimately draw others to you and make you a safe space for them to open up.

Reflections:

• Who is a friend you trust?

• Why do you trust that friend?

• What does that friend have to say about your current predicament?

CAPRICORN

The past seven years have taught you that your creative self-expression does not need to be kept a secret. In fact, you may have witnessed a ton more appreciation and momentum from taking bold action in your area of creativity, pleasure, and child-like whimsy. The question you’re pondering now isn’t so much what your mission is, but how you can execute it with greatness. As Uranus moves into your 6th house, your relationship with perfectionism is busted open. You are taught the lesson of the sea-goat, which is one foot on the mountain and one foot in the sea. While you’re a master creator, you must maintain connection to your creative source (which is in the metaphoric ocean of your consciousness). This month asks you where you’re getting ahead of yourself to fulfil the land climb without honouring the ocean swim; you are learning to value your own process of imperfection and reach wholeness through the messy process of whatever you do.

Reflections:

• What kinds of creatures live in my inner sea?

• What stories do they have to tell?

• What kind of care do they need to come up on land?

AQUARIUS

Home is one of those things you are learning not to take for granted. Uranus has been surprising this area of your life for the past seven years, giving you multiple roommate twists and turns, voyages to the childhood abode, or upsets with parents and family members. Either way, your inner world feels transformed. You wear a new badge of identity that you feel is important to express out into the world. Home is a giant theme in our world right now — Jupiter in Cancer is proving to us that borders, flags, and oceans are but an illusion of an enormous international home we all share, called earth. Whatever suffering home has given you, I want you to consider how you will use it in pursuit of a more just and beautiful global home. Home may very well fuel the work you do in the world this next month.

Reflections:

• Where do I come from?

• What has happened to where I come from over the last 7 years?

• What creative resources live within me to change the ways this happens where I live now?

PISCES

I’m curious what the last hour was you spent alone. Your horoscope says that your social life, neighbourly life, and sibling life has been very active lately. But this shall settle down soon, and you will finally get some time to make a new home. A new home is just as much outside as it is inside, and it could very well benefit you to empty the inner altar and accept some new adornments from the universe. This is about trusting that you’re never alone, and that your sanctuary is not just made up of people. You have an entire inner ocean you can access with tons of imagination, purpose, and ideas. You’re a community person, but right now your focus may be turned inwards to expand outwards what feels good to you.

Reflections:

• Who was your last imaginary friend?

• What was their name, gender, or age?

• What did that imaginary friend teach you?

ARIES

You’re one to enjoy a challenge, but chances are you’re a bit exhausted from the financial or just general worthiness challenges of Uranus’ transit through the 2nd house. As the planet of misfits and breaking free enters your 3rd house, you are tapping into a whole new group of people that match your creative and innovative energy. Whatever values systems you’ve used to evaluate yourself and “how well you are doing” are being thrown off as you enter a new tribe of freaks and geeks. Your focus for the next seven years is gaining a whole new value system from feeling the aliveness of your soul in relation to other people who match your curiosity and passions. No longer is there need to know yourself as an isolated, productive entity but as a true member of a community.

Reflections:

• What worth do I assign to my memories?

• What memories do I have around worth, value, and money?

• Who do I know that makes a lot of money while having a lot of fun?

TAURUS

Every astrologer will tell you you’ve just gone through a major glow-up: and while that may be true in some respects, you’re now likely left with a huge shift in values. Perhaps you have changed for the better — whether that’s that you’ve taken up a new hobby, skill, or hair do — but now you’re asking how that affects your pre-existing system of values that have informed your entire life up to this point! Your 2nd house is in Gemini, which means you value communication and learning. I feel like for you this isn’t about learning a new skill or anything like that; it’s actually learning to communicate in a completely new way as this new you you’ve become. Whether that’s asking for things more directly, pausing before decisions, or straight up walking away from situations that feel restrictive, your general mode of operation might shock and surprise those closest in your life. Trust that whatever falls away at this time is for the best, and is paving the way towards a more authentic life.

Reflections:

• What is my favourite thing to learn about right now?

• What does it feel like to learn about that thing?

• Who am I when nobody is looking?

Feel a big change is around the corner? That's because the five biggest planets in our solar system enter new signs this year.

I do not believe planets cause events to happen on earth. Rather, I believe they are like hands on a cosmic-size clock. Every moment of our lives is imbued with particular qualities: from the temperature inside, to the sounds outside, to the motions of planets millions of light years away. Like our morning coffee, the planets help us anchor into a sense of time, amidst the vast, timelessness of our ever-expanding universe.

The 2025 planetary ingresses are significant opportunities to deepen our relationship with our ferociously, foaming-at-the-mouth present.

An ingress is when a planet moves into a new sign. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto all move into new signs this year. These cosmic shifts can help us anchor in the terrestrial shifts we see happening around us — environmentally, politically, societally and personally.

Jupiter ingresses Cancer | June 9, 2025-June 30, 2026

Jupiter in Cancer is here to challenge our ideas around self and care. That’s because Cancer has the gift of knowing self is cultivated through systems of care — ancestors, family, community, friends, lovers. Through Cancer we learn that we are not an individual body, but a constellation of bodily lineages. Cancer reveals history to us through waves of emotion, asking us to ride upon them towards the shore of an understanding of the collective unconscious emotional body. In Cancer, it’s like the goal is to universalise the nervous system. It’s not my issue, your issue, but all of Mother Nature’s issue. Jupiter in Cancer is here to shift our philosophies around self-care. It is to get us to consider that care is a collective effort, that the body is our planet, and that no path to change can be illuminated lest we have the basics of care nailed down.

Questions for Jupiter in Cancer:

• What is your relationship with care?

• How do you view collective care?

• Whom or what are you caring for?

Saturn ingresses Aries | May 24, 2025 - April 12, 2028

Saturn is in detriment when it’s Aries. Saturn represents governments, laws, borders, nationalisms, and containment. Saturn can’t contain anything when it’s placed in Aries. Aries is the warrior, the freedom-fighter, the one who smokes outside a gas station. There are no boundaries in Aries, and if any are found, Aries will be sure to knock them down. Saturn in Aries is a wrecking ball to the ways boundaries and bloodshed are construed by our political establishment: it is a request that our loyalty to these brutal and corrupt systems of governance be severed. Saturn in Aries is an anarchistic outburst of primal creative energy in reimagining whom and what deserve confinement, laws, and borders. Is it really immigrants trying to feed their family at home and abroad, or is it billionaires cutting federal spending on healthcare and education? Saturn in Aries is an invitation to draw new boundaries around what behaviour we consider acceptable and unacceptable. Saturn in Aries is for a return to the laws of the heart, not the hand that feeds us (crumbs).

Questions for Saturn in Aries:

• What is worth protecting?

• What rules are you breaking?

• To what and to whom do you need to say ‘absolutely not’?

Uranus ingresses Gemini | July 7, 2025 - May 2033

Uranus is the planet of panic attacks, technology, and revolution. Where more could revolution be needed than in our collective messaging systems (Gemini)? Gemini is a master storyteller. It can manipulate apostrophe’s, periods, and commas to make the masses feel completely differently about a given subject. Gemini can make anything appear logical. That’s because logic rests on appearances. Logic is a reversed metaphysic, a study of empirical reality as it’s happening to us, rather than a study in how it extends outwards from all that has happened before. Reality has thousands of interpretations within our brains in any given second. How we select out and represent these interpretations can literally molecularly restructure the unfolding of the cosmos. Gemini: there is immense power in words, phrases, periods, and sentence-making. So for what purpose are we using these intellectual superpowers for? Technology and media are only more, and more, and more, and more accessible each day. The question of Uranus in Gemini, is: for what purpose are you using it for?

Questions for Uranus in Gemini:

• What’s your favourite book?

• What’s the power of that book?

• What’s your favourite sentence from that book?

Neptune ingresses Aries | March 30, 2025 - March 2039

Neptune dissolves everything. For the better part of this year, it will be conjunct Saturn, who is obsessed with holding everything together. Neptune in this case confronts us with what we are trying to hold onto. What narratives keep us safe to the point of restricting growth? And further, if we are willing to accept growth, we must also be willing to accept loss. Neptune and Saturn both confront us with what must be lost to carve the entryway to deeper truth. They co-rule the 12th house: that place of endings, sorrows, and imprisonment; but also spiritual enlightenment, new beginnings, and unending faith. Neptune in Aries wants us to be alone with our thoughts. It wants us to be alone with our anger. It wants us to try feeling every emotion as it arises in the body, crashing like a wave, observing it while it lasts. The hole that emerges from the rising and crashing of our emotional waves provides new vision, new perspective on what could be. That’s the job of Neptune: dissolve everything until nothing is left but a total surrender to how the trees, the animals, and the skies see it. Then, decide how you feel.

Questions for Neptune in Aries:

• What’s something you’re willing to lose?

• What are you not willing to lose?

• What is the source of your motivation? Are you willing to let this change?

Pluto in Aquarius | November 19, 2024 - March 8, 2043

You can’t talk about Aquarius without talking about Leo. Leo is that sign of kings, wealth, children, performance, and taking up space. Aquarius is the daughter of the king who grew up with everything and no longer wants anything. Pluto in Aquarius is her journey to individuate away from the kingdom of Leo, and build her own.

Pluto in Aquarius is the Maleficent archetype: exiled from the kingdom for being different, she moves to the top of a mountain and learns witchcraft and assembles an army of esoteric freaks to expose the corruption within the kingdom. I think we have to remember with Pluto in Aquarius some very important words spoken by the Course in Miracles: whatever we defend against, we create. In the Disney villain archetype, we see a reaction against power. We see characters who have undergone disenfranchisement, bullying, and abuse. We see them looking to reclaim their rightful place within society. The consequence of this, is in the process, they, too, take on the characteristics of the corrupt, power-hungry king. That’s why Leo and Aquarius both correspond with justice. Justice means the equalising the social playing field.

As if Leo and Aquarius spoke these words themselves: all of the children of God are special (Leo), and none of the children of God are special (Aquarius). Justice reflects this. It gives us all the opportunity to be ourselves without denying anybody the opportunity to be the same.

Questions for Pluto in Aquarius:

• What makes you special?

• What makes you average?

• Whose someone who’s life you admire? What about it is special? What about it is average?

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Before I finish today’s blog post, I will let you know I am recently finished with school and available for readings all-winter-long. I am curious to read your chart! Coordinate on Instagram at e.b.paisley or email me ethanbrookspaisley@gmail.com so we can set something up.

All of my love,

Ethan

Astrological houses: who are they, and where do they come from?

Ancient horoscopes were constructed from three main concepts: planets, or principles of being; zodiac signs, or styles of being; and houses, or where being is happening.

The houses, much like our childhood homes, condition what’s inside of them. For Hellenistic astrologers, the planets or states of consciousness were more likely to do better under certain ‘housing’ conditions. This led to the idea of planetary joys.

The ‘joys’ give us several of the house significations we have today. If Venus joys in the 5th house, then it describes a place where we step into creative freedom and pleasure. If Mars joys in the 6th house, then it describes a place where we learn to work hard and push through life’s many obstacles.

Out of the 12 houses, only seven have planetary joys, based on the seven traditional planets: 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11, and 12. Summarised below are my interpretations.

1st House | Joy of Mercury

The 1st house describes the native. It describes one’s personality, habits, and general outlook on life. In many ways, it is equivalent to the Sun sign. However, while the Sun sign denotes more of a life purpose, the ascendant sign denotes more of a mundane “what is-ness” about the individual.

Mercury joys in the 1st house because it rules communication, and the personality is a form of communication. Modern astrologers call the 1st house and ascendant the “mask” one wears. In many ways, Mercury is the archetype of the mask, the hermetically sealed envelope, the trickster. Mercury’s function is to to represent what’s going on inside of us, without showing all of us. The first house shows, but does not necessarily tell everything about who we are …

3rd House | Joy of Moon

The 3rd house describes short distance travel, neighbours, friendships, and early education. Have you picked up on why this is a lunar house? The moon travels short distances. It is neighbour and friend to the earth. In natal astrology, it describes one’s emotional structuring and early childhood experiences.

The Moon thrives in the third house because it is emotionally nurtured by all the things it possesses. Like the Moon, we need routine movement, companions, and healthy relationships with our immediate worlds. The third house gives us all these things and in turn, the landscape of the inner world is colored.

The 5th House | Joy of Venus

The 5th house is like the playdate we look forward to after school; the desert after veggies; the prize material of life. Among Hellenistic astrologers, it was the place of kings, prizes, and material abundance. Venus, being a planet that rules the luxuries of life, has the chance to fully come alive in this house. It can also hang out to rot.

Venus rules balance and health, just as much as it rules imbalance and indulgence. The 5th house can just as much signify winning the lottery as growing a gambling addiction. In the 5th house, we are building a conscious relationship to our internal sense pleasure. With the natural ruler Leo, this emphasises the 5th house as a place of internal work. Is this who I am, or is this what I believe I lack and thus need to become?

The 5th house can possess everything that’s beautiful in the world: but sometimes if we’re not looking closely enough, this can make us forget the beauty that is on the inside. This is the challenge of Venus and the 5th house: remembering we’re perfect just as we are, regardless of what prizes or accolades tempt us to forget this.

6th House | Joy of Mars

The 6th house is the place of work, routines, details, agriculture, and pets. These all have to do with day-to-day work, as well as their challenges. Unlike the third house, the 6th house is all the things we need to do on a daily basis but don’t, necessarily, want to do.

At some point or another each day, we all need to take out the trash, kill flies, scrub the toilet, cook, do the dishes, or exercise. In ancient astrology, the 6th house was a place of slaves, as they did this work we likely find ourselves resisting at least semi-regularly.

Mars thrives here because Mars represents our short-term challenges, responses, aggression, and stamina for life. The 6th house requires stamina. Even though the tasks of the 6th house move fast, when we spend time here, those taxes we spend one hour on usually ends up feeling like an eternity. That is the 6th house to me: agonising over every slow-moving minute on the clock while we rush through our daily list of chores and to do’s.

9th House | Joy of Sun

The 9th house represents our quest for something greater, spiritual illumination, philosophy, and religion. It is joyed in by the Sun because the Sun actually used to represent prophets, priests, and monks. Think about it: the Sun has to do with authority, and back then, authority was not celebrities or secular politicians. They were the most religious and spiritually-forward among us.

The Sun illuminates things, and the 9th house is a pocket of illumination within the chart. When planets transit here, I often notice myself and others having breakthroughs, once-in-a-lifetime experiences, downloads, and prophesies. The 9th house can also be long-distance travel. I’m not sure why this is given the Sun moved more frequently than the fast-traveling moon from a geocentric perspective, but perhaps it is because while the sun was out longer-distance travel was able to be accomplished. That’s the 9th house: where time opens up for us to discover more, become more, learn more.

11th House | Joy of Jupiter

The 11th House represents friends, achievements, wealth, and destiny. Jupiter joys in this house, perhaps because these are the promises of following our dreams. Jupiter is about having a dream and following through on it. In the 11th house, we follow through on things, forming legacies, estates, and achievements in tandem with others.

In modern astrology, Uranus and Aquarius are seen as the natural rulers of the 11th house (based on numerical equivalency). In this context, friends, achievements, and wealth come about as a result of breaking free and birthing new ideas (Aquarian archetype). In my experience of the 11th house, this is true. Sometimes we need a suppressed Aquarian experience to break out of us and show us a more genuine dream or goal that aligns with collective thriving. Jupiter of course works here too, because it’s the dream that comes after the de-conditioning and breaking free. It is the insight we have that changes everything for us, and thus for collective legacy.

12th House | Joy of Saturn

Traditionally, the 12th house is the place of sorrows, secrets, and hidden enemies. That’s because Saturn, the slow malefic, rejoices here.

Unlike Mars which represents short-term challenges, Saturn represents long-term challenges. Saturn is signified this way because it is the final visible planet, forming a boundary with the rest of the known universe. In the Hellenistic era, it was perceived as the prison guard of our solar system, maintaining the limitations of their cosmology, that which concealed the great beyond from human perception.

In the 12th house, we are confronted with the limitations of human experience, as if we are sitting on the outer rings of Saturn, looking towards the great unknown, wondering what lies beyond.

In the ancient world, spending time in the 12th house meant spending time in prisons, mental asylums, and isolated places where one had time to ponder these cosmic-sized questions. Today, we have a lot more time to wonder these things and to pursue our wonderings about them. The 12th house can also be foreign lands, monasteries, institutions, or anywhere we are permitted to absolve ourselves from social obligations and discover the timeless truths that underlie them. Of course, spending time with these questions, or in the places that facilitate them, can cause a lot of suffering. Why am I not more than what I am? Why am I even here? Why does this world need me? The 12th house and Saturn are also the places where suffering finally gets to be heard, and thus, worked through.

In modern astrology, the 12th house has the natural rulership of Neptune. Neptune, as an outer planet and ruler of the transcendent sign Pisces, makes a lot of sense to me in the 12th: Saturn is like a wooden ship of consciousness that breaks down, and Neptune is the water leak that makes it sink to the seafloor. In the 12th house, Saturn and Neptune work together. Saturn gives 12th house people the “suppression” and the “rigidity” that Neptune needs to break down our perceptions, and wash us out to sea. Only on the open sea can we perceive the true meaning of the 12th house.

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For students of astrology, do the joys make sense to you? Do you agree with them, or do you prefer modern rulership (house: sign significations)? Why or why not?

Until next time!

Ethan

Pluto stationed Aquarius on Tuesday, November 19th. For the past 20 years, Pluto has been in Capricorn. Capricorn preserves the precious: precious metals, precious estates, precious billionaires. Aquarius lives in the ruins of the precious and makes belief through the precarious. The precarious is an invitation to play, to protest, and to make-believe new worlds in the ruins of the old.

Precariousness is not an invitation to romanticise the past. Any attempt to do so will result in depression and inertia. Neither is it an invitation to romanticise the future: for utopian futures are just illusions of the past without precarity.

Aquarius is ruled by super-serious Saturn and ultra-avant-garde Uranus, meaning it shifts between extreme visions of utopian certainty and fearful precarity. In the gaps between such extremes, play is awakened. Life is not all precarity, nor is it all certainty. It is actually a mix of the two facilitated by the imagination. And without leaning into the duality of the imagination, it’s as if we stay siloed by its extremities and cut off from play.

It seems down the political aisle, one side is all about certainty and the other side is all about precarity. Donald Trump has fully leaned into certainty to a degree that ignores precarity. The left aisle is fully leaned into fatalistic precarity, filled with assumptions about a dark world with no hope, no holiness in sight. The left hates the right for being too hopeful; the right hates the left for its seriousness. 

And yet both of these extremes, from absolute faith to devastating fears, are formed in response to an ever-growing, precarious world. Play is not supposed to deny nor surrender to the seriousness of precarity, but rather, oxygenate it with new resilience and energy.

My funniest moments often occur at my lowest points. It is these moments that redirect the trajectory of my pain. Joy does not numb, but rather renews pain; pain does not detract, but rather increases our capacities for play. Leaning into play loosens the imagination and helps us strategise new games to systematise in our world I’m calling the precarious sandbox. 

Ruins of an old world fill the sandbox, and only play will teach us how to work them into new structures for joy and liberation. Aquarius cannot stay forever shouting outside the sandbox about how much it wishes the past could be resurrected (Saturn rulership). Rather, it has to step into the sandbox and get dirty and crafty with worldly remains and repurpose them into something novel (Uranus rulership). 

Aquarius’ pal, Leo, can teach us how to do this. Leo is a sign that commands respect. Respect will not come from clinging to the past, a vision of utopia, or a meagre protest sign. Respect will come from whole-heartedly demonstrating our creativity, out loud and proud. Leo is the sign of play. Only through play – which is the act of pretending, make-believing, and faith-acting – can something new be born. 

Pluto in Aquarius, with its polarity point in Leo, is about learning how to enjoy our precarious world in new ways.

It is about acknowledging there is nothing to recover, only many-things to repurpose.

It is about acknowledging there is nothing to expand towards, rather just awkward gaps between an old world and a precarious present that host our humour, our tears, and our communities.

It is about looking at the ruin through radically new lenses, taking joy in the sandcastles we build from crushed cement blocks, or the theatres we build in the backs of broken-down escalades.

It is about discovering a world of beauty in a world that everybody tells you is no longer beautiful.

It is about un-making the world great again, and understanding it for what it always was: countless ideas dancing across lines of uncertainty.

It is about making new connections between these lines through play, inspiring new ways to love, live, and enjoy the ever-devolving and ever-evolving present of what is and always will be. 

Uranus reveals the authenticity looking to emerge from anxiety.

What is anxiety? To me, it’s the belief we are fundamentally alone. 

Uranus, Aquarius, and the 11th House archetype have the scar of loneliness. Why? Because it takes a lot of courage to break free from the confines of Capricorn. Saturn and Capricorn is the status quo. Uranus and Aquarius are everything that lies outside the status quo. 

In some mystery cults, queer men were worshiped as expressions of the Ouranian Aphrodite. The Ouranian Aphrodite was not about heterosexual love, which required two counterparts to produce a whole. Ouranian Aphrodite was about homosexual, even asexual, love, in which creation descended from the whole person. Ouranian Aphrodite related to Ouranus, who created Gaia or earth. Without any partnership or godly influence, he did this out of his pure imagination. He birthed himself from himself. 

Uranus is about pure imagination. It is about how we complete ourselves. Is it possible to complete ourselves without others? It takes a shit load of courage to embrace our Uranus placements. Uranus and Aquarius oppose Leo and the Sun. Uranus is literally about going out and creating our very own solar system. 

Capricorn and Cancer are about inhabiting the womb of social protection. Leo and Aquarius are about breaking out of the net of social protection and defining the individual. We all go through this anxiety of having to birth ourselves, which is an intrinsically queer act, as it requires a reproduction of the imprint embedded in our true selves.

Uranus represents the essential self. It is what is being looked at to be birthed. It is who we are when we completely leave behind conditioning. It’s what “living in our own solar system” looks like. Uranus sheds anxiety and fear when it realises there are probably millions of solar systems - millions of individuals - millions of points of view – that coexist without resistance across our universe. Instead of trying to keep the order of what’s here, it births it’s own solar energy and finds a way to do it independently. 

In breaking free from sameness, we line up with our difference, and we return to sameness. That’s what happens later in Neptune and Pisces. Anything that helped us individuate gets re-aggregated to the whole. Anything that was special in Uranus gets distilled back into the whole, entire, absolute cosmos with Neptune. Virgo/Mercury and Leo/Sun does a similar thing. Leo/Sun finds a way of running it’s solar system, and Virgo/Mercury says “here are all the people, plants, animals, and people you’re going to have to tend to in order to sustain that system.” Leo and Aquarius individuate and create definition; Virgo and Pisces re-aggregate, distribute, and refine definition within the whole. 

Am I aware it is the end of August? Yes. I haven’t had time for free writing because I am trying to improve my academic writing and simultaneously being hypercritical towards my free writing. Oh well. It’s Mercury Retrograde anyways.

I’ll treat today’s horoscope as more of a reflection on the past month than anything. Except, there are still valid points about the future I’ll be making. We are in the middle of some hefty transits.

Jupiter & Mars recently met up in Gemini where our mental energy could have been experiencing some real exhausting and expanding cycles. They formed a hard square to Saturn in Pisces, signifying a shift in where our mental energy is being focused. Mercury, the planet of the left-brain, is retrograding through Leo and was in Virgo previously. This asks us to refine our creative calling and approaches in radical ways. Uranus is squaring Mercury, challenging us to think bigger and more outside-the-box.

Stressed? Excited? Questioning your mental capacities and limits? Improving the mind shows up as a major theme right now. The best solution is to take things one bite at a time. Although, this is hard, because when Gemini is stimulated by Mars, there’s potentially a ton of drive to learn and overload oneself with stimuli.

Let’s go sign by sign. As always, check your Rising, Sun and Moon (in that order) to get a sense of where you are on the cosmic spectrum right now.

GEMINI

Remember, a career is just an extension of who you are. As many career opportunities or social roles there are to fulfil, the fundamental matter is who you are bringing into all of those spaces. Lucky for you, Jupiter and Mars are giving you a chance to drastically improve your self-concept. This invokes a necessary selfishness. Selfishness is about uninterrupted instincts. Children are selfish because they are instinctive. Where do your instincts take you and not take you? Where are you letting your social obligations limit your instincts? How can you merge the two? Herein lies your creative calling.

CANCER

Is there true objectivity? Or is there only our ability to be super self-reflexive about our own perceptions of the truth? Truth and justice are a necessary entanglement. The truth we choose is about giving justice to ourselves, and is what we think will provide justice to others. What truth have you chosen and where are the shadows of injustice it has created? Both towards yourself and towards another. Confusion is a symptom of becoming your own person. It is a necessary step before we step into our next illusion of truth and rattle it off to find another one. Confusion moves us forward, backward, and into the present.

LEO

Intimacy is a big theme for you, right now. There are so many people to collaborate with! Touch! Feel! Play with! Where and why is collaboration so scary for you? What are you afraid of people seeing? What is it about people that attracts you and repulses you? Ultimately, this is a question about the attraction and repulsion of your own dreams. What are you dreaming of for yourself? Is it selfish to dream? Is dreaming supposed to be a selfless act? Grounding yourself in the presence of another who will listen to your existential dramas is likely to snap you back into your true purpose, which is just to be you. You’re a dream, existing, in the eyes of someone out there, helping them find their way home.

VIRGO

Has this been a winning year for you, or what? Maybe it hasn’t. It will all depend on all the other elements of your chart. But right now’s transits show an upgrade in how people treat you and receive you. This is ultimately about gaining more confidence within yourself. I’ve always been confused how confidence means privacy and pride all at the same time. Perhaps part of gaining confidence is learning what about ourselves we wish to conceal, and reveal. Are you revealing too much? Concealing too much? Being in the public eye is necessarily a construction of other peoples thoughts and our thoughts about other people. You get to be the architect, but then you must let people inhabit whatever you build. Whatever you build is whatever you choose to share and not share.

LIBRA

Why hide your philosophies about life when we’re all figuring out? Being a student does not mean being a slave. I get so confused why I get nervous in my uni classes. I have to remind myself the professor knows more than me about some stuff, but I know more about other stuff. Anything we’re going through is something we’re seeing through. What philosophies have you conditioned yourself to see through? Which of these doesn’t make sense? Where are you made to feel like a slave, when you know you are actually meant to be a public servant? Where can you go to receive more than one truth? Where are you safe to be your own mind?

SCORPIO

What does action mean to you? Is it about running from death, or running into it? Right now could be a moment of being faced with your own mortality. If you were going to die in a week, what would you create, do, or say? Let yourself sit with the disturbing, horny, exciting fantasies this generates. See where they symbolically reveal dreams and desires that have been repressed. Repression is necessary in a global world, in a giant town square. Find small groups you can be a freak in and experience the ecstasy of life-death in. This is a time to do as you please. This is a time to take off the suit and explore your nakedness.

SAGITTARIUS

People often say what makes a home is our community. I think communities come together out of necessity, rather than desire. Seriously. Who wants to deal with other peoples complex emotions, demands, and judgments? What is a necessity for you right now? It could be all the way down to survival, to the desire to become spiritually enlightened. Whatever you feel is a necessity is where you will find your community. Whatever connects you to yourself is what will connect you to others.

CAPRICORN

Work is a distortion of human curiosity. We don’t want to work, per se. We want to discover. What do you want to discover? How can you discover this through your work? For example, a lot of actors work jobs as waiters so they can osmose new characters and dialects. How can your work be a strategic move in expanding your deeper curiosities? Work doesn’t have to be your job, either. Work is the daily experience of trying to play out all of our desires with a fixed number of hours of daylight. What’s your relationship with daylight? What is the daylight revealing to you? What does this become at nighttime?

AQUARIUS

I always remind my artistic friends that creativity as we have come to know it is inherently Europeanised. Writing has only been around for 1,500 years. Painting and sculpting, maybe 2,500. Cave-etching, okay, way longer. But most self-expression used to take place verbally. It has become the norm of modernity to equate “creativity” with “material creativity.” I often find I’m the most creative with the least amount of resources. Why else do we have bodies? Hands? Feet? Larynxes? How can the body, the thing you were literally born with, become your art? How can you let what you have sustain your legacy? What perspective informs your “needs”, and what is it that you actually need? You actually need nothing. You already have everything.

PISCES

If your personal life truly feels unbearable, then redefine your personal life. Your personal life, in my opinion, is everything nobody else can see. Your personal life is your secrets, your wishes, your inner battles. Which of these do you just keep for yourself, and which of these do you tend to overshare? Right now, I encourage you to experiment with keeping secrets. Laziness is about preserving our energy levels. Secret-keeping is also about preserving our energy levels. If everything has to be explained, there is a constant guilt that is demanding that of us. When we keep things to ourself, we preserve our sovereignty. We reject the guilt that tells us we must be free-loving, open, and constantly authentic. Sometimes what’s most authentic, or simply right for you, is having nothing to say.

ARIES

Isn’t it a sick joke that we want connection, but everybody is built to see things differently, which makes it difficult asf to connect? How do you hold space for ambiguity in social circles? It’s hard when everyone seems to have a contrasting opinion. Imagine everyone in their underwear, shitting on the toilet, or experiencing death anxiety. Remember that what makes us love each other isn’t necessarily love itself, but deep fear. In this respect, everyone is trying to preserve themselves. They love you only until it begins to threaten them with death. The way to hold onto these people is remind them, you’re scared, too. Through admitting our fears to each other, we welcome the space for love to flourish. Like Brene Brown says, nothing courageous (love-powered) can happen without deep vulnerability and honesty. When in doubt, try to reframe the situation as everyone trying to negotiate vulnerability and fear to access love.

TAURUS

Wanting depends on perceiving lack. What’s hard is there is lack. There is so much lack! There are only so many hours we can make it without food, without sleep, without daylight. We can’t help but want amidst all these limitations. The human experience is a journey of learning to work within those limits. There’s a great quote from A Course in Miracles that our curriculum cannot be chosen, we can only choose how we engage with it. To me, that means whatever is being dropped at your feet is what you can deal with or ignore. It will never vanish. It will still be there, and you can either smudge your foot in it, or pick it up and throw it in the trash. What must you deal with before you dream? And how is what you’re dealing with the unfolding of the dream itself?

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This month’s horoscope writing turned into a lot more questions than answers. Hopefully these questions help prompt introspection and make you feel less crazy. The Mercury/Uranus/Mars/Jupiter/Saturn mashup is not a peachy flight through the mind. It is full of turbulence, but also excitement and anticipation. It is not the destination, but the bumpy journey, that makes arriving in ourselves so gratifying.

Is astrology a science? Not according to modern science. Is astrology an art? Maybe. Well what exactly is it?! The simple answer is: mythology.

Mythology makes the seemingly personal impersonal. Mythology transcends pathology, identity, and individual experience. Mythology says there are greater unconscious forces at play in our human experience. The Babylonians, Greeks and Romans called them Gods. But they also called them planets. This is where get astrology from.

Perhaps it’s because we live in a scientific world where the planets are studied more than drama, that we choose to worship them and not the Gods. But they’re the same thing. Gods and planets both represent the impersonal forces of psyche that affect us all: Sun (ego), Moon (subconscious), Mercury (speech and communication), and so on.

Astrology has a reputation for being tied to the yoga-industrial complex, stroking the egos of new age salespeople like Gwyneth Paltrow, and keeping alive this self-centred illusion that the universe literally revolves around you and me. Astrology, like any concept, can be used for a myriad of purposes. Our world is dominated by a me consciousness, and so astrology is mainly used for that. But it can also be used for spiritual purposes: that is, the unification of the isolated human ego with a broader sense of collective consciousness.

Astrology & the gods do something for us psychotherapy, in my experience, can’t. They contextualise our individual pain in a philosophical, archetypal, and cosmological context that make us feel more connected to ourselves and each other.

I don’t think it always helps humans to just know what their brain chemistry looks like and what traumas made them that way. I think what matters even more to humans is that they feel they belong. Astrology & the gods help us feel we belong.

I am also not one to discredit that astrology may indeed carry scientific implications we have not yet uncovered. This idea that discovering science & discovering spiritual meaning are isolated pursuits is false, by all accounts. Science grew out of religion, to understand the meaning embedded in our universe. Just as there are significant meanings we find in human consciousness, does that not suggest that all other forms of consciousness share a similar predisposition to universal meaning? Does our experience of Eros/Venus (falling in love) not also affect plants, animals, and the cosmos themselves? Does our experience of Prometheus/Uranus (breaking free of something) not affect all forms of life? Does our experience of Hermes/Mercury (articulating ourselves through form) not take shape everywhere we look?

This idea that the universe lacks agency is a fairly new development for humanity. For thousands of years, humans evolved in partnership with nature, deriving their mythologies from the patterns of the seasons and the cosmos. In a world of constant distraction, it is quite ambitious to assert we in the 21st century see reality better than ancient or pre-ancient peoples. If anything, they were closer to it than any of us will ever be in our lifetimes.

Mythology & astrology are sacred records of human-nature relations. They are a marriage certificate between the conscious realms of man and the cosmos. They maintain the mystical bridge in consciousness that exists between you, me, and the natural world.

Mythology, astrology, religion, and psychotherapy are all aimed at doing the exact same thing. That is, binding (or re-integrating) man to his world. The root religio-, after all, means to bind.

As a 19 year old, I felt like an island amidst a great sea of misunderstanding. It felt like everybody but me had it figured out. When I picked up my first tarot deck and began spending more time in metaphysical book shops, the circuits of my brain began to fire off. I wasn’t looking for a fortune to be delivered. I was looking to be reminded of the fortune and destiny we all share: that is, life as a hodgepodge of archetypes, experiences, and spaces within consciousness that are at the end of the day, impersonal and shared through us all.

By making the lives we live impersonal through myth or astrology, life is no longer ours to live. Life begins to live through us. It is no longer Ethan’s problem to deal with: it is one of the Gods or planets expressing itself through me, and I can simply become a conduit for that life experience to reshape my perspective.

Astrology can achieve what most people feel it fails at: that is, de-centring the individual ego from it’s own life boat, and submerging it in the sea of broader human experience. That is what mythology does. That is what many religions have done.

Astrology is a relevant mythology of our times because it can do exactly that. It can accelerate the individuation process. The individuation process ends with one re-emerging in the collective as a more greatly realised component of it. That is one of the ways astrology can be used today, and has been used throughout time.

Every generation is part of a story unfolding out of the ethers of space and time. Every individual in that generation needs to know their place in that story, in order to help tell it. Astrology connects the individual story to the broader story of our times. Mythology, drama, ballet, music, and film do that for us as well.

Astrology, however, is different in the sense that it has it’s finger on a pulse neither religion, science, or the arts do: that is, one of the ensouled universe. It intuits that all forms of life, including the cosmos, have a consciousness. And within that consciousness, they carry a purpose, a meaning, and a soul. Astrology arguably harbours a fundamental pulse that has existed at the centre of human society since the dawn of time: that is, to uncover the hidden meanings embedded in the divine organisation of our universe.