Lifelike Category Archive

!! OMG Stars: New Moon in Libra, October 2020 !!

» Posted By omg team On Sunday, October 18, 2020 | category: Lifelike | 0 comments

OMG Stars is an astrology column written by queer astrologer Amelia Ehrhardt (@soft_aspects). Every two weeks, on the new and full moons, Amelia interprets the upcoming astrology with a focus on how to navigate current events (astrological and global). Book an appointment with Amelia here.

New Moon in Libra, Friday October 16th
Mercury retrograde in Scorpio, until November 3rd

The golden light of Libra season is one of the ways that I best understand this sign. Where I am now writing this, I’m north of the city in a cabin, the sunset is brilliantly orange on yellow trees: it’s almost offensively pretty. This feels so apt for me for Libra season, a sign I’ve often described as The Carrie Bradshaw of the Zodiac.

On the one hand: Aesthetics! Pretty! Harmony! On the other hand: Indecision! Dependency! Surface level! The beauty of Libra season in this part of the world quickly gives way to Scorpio season death time and I love the way that Libra shows us that the skin between beauty and transformation is always very fragile.

The new moon this past Friday brought the moon into a pattern with the big players of 2020 – Mars, Pluto, Saturn, and Jupiter – meaning feelings (the sun) and our center (the sun) were implicated in the big patterns of the year. The way that patterns of anger, defensiveness, destruction and fear have been playing out throughout this year on the global stage has been reflected in our personal lives since Mars entered Aries in June, and anytime the Sun and the Moon have joined the conversation, these dynamics have increased.

Meanwhile, Mercury stationed retrograde in Scorpio last week. The ways the Internet describes Mercury retrograde are forever a gift to me: Mercury is rollerblading; Mercury is doing the renegade. The urgency of Mercury retrogrades mean that this backwards dance is always so palpable – I think especially lately given that Mercury rules communication and technology (i.e. the Internet) so when it is retrograde and the Internet becomes unreliable it’s particularly stressful.

In the sign of Scorpio, Mercury retrograde will absolutely intensify conversations. Disagreement will be so possible, misunderstanding will feel like a personal affront. As best you can, work to not take disagreements personally, and remember to take everything as a learning opportunity.

Scorpio is here to teach you the depths of possibility, and if you resist it, those depths feel like a cold plunge instead of a cleansing bath.

Find your horoscopes after the jump!

JUMP IN AND READ MORE

!! OMG Stars: Full Moon in Aries, October 2020 !!

» Posted By omg team On Thursday, October 1, 2020 | category: Lifelike | 3 comments

Full Moon in Aries, Thursday October 1st

Mars Retrograde in Aries, through November 14th / Mercury Stations Retrograde in Scorpio, October 13th / Saturn Square Mars, through October 7th / Neptune Sextile Jupiter, through October 27th

Looking at the chart for the full moon, I’m immediately struck by how un-aspected it is: the planets are not particularly speaking to each other, not in relationships where they’re able to see eye to eye, or even see each other at all: they’re just barely even speaking. It isn’t just that there’s conflict, it’s that no one is even willing to come to the room. It’s pretty hard to work through disagreement when people aren’t even willing to talk to each other.

Few things could characterize this full moon in Aries more. Lately when describing the archetypes of Aries to my clients, I’ve been describing this moment in Legally Blonde:

Elle Woods, determined and driven, marching through a crowd shouting the word, “ME!!!!”. This, perhaps even more than the bend and snap, should be one of our major takeaways from this canonical piece of cinema.

But Reese Witherspoonisms aside, that Big Me Energy can really drown out the words of…well, everybody else. All the planets taking their own “ME” moment so elegantly describes the feeling of this moment. So many of my clients and friends are coming to me to talk about really difficult interpersonal dynamics, bad fights, disagreements, or really confusing behavior from friends and lovers. I’m hearing (and also, I will be honest, saying), a lot of things along the lines of “everybody is so angry right now.”

And, hello, Mars retrograde, it’s definitely true. But looking at the chart for this full moon and reflecting on all the planets in their own little bubbles, I thought…ok, it’s not as though we ourselves are exempt from “everybody”. I know I’ve been working through a lot of anger lately too. And while part of me feels inclined to say, it’s Libra season, we need to find connection, etc…this full moon is not particularly conducive to connection. Particularly with the Mercury retrograde coming up, I am much more seeing a message about autonomy.

So with this big firey moon, with astrology of misunderstanding all over, I ask you to lean into the good kind of selfishness. Not the parts that prevent future connection, but the parts that make connection possible. Which is not to say that you should cut yourself off and hermit (not unless you want to) – just consider that if it feels like everyone around is being an asshole right now, um, then you might also be, too.

This full moon in Aries is a huge lunation, with Mars and Chiron both alongside in the same sign, and the big Cardinal energy of 2020 still being activated. The new moon in Aries this year took place on March 24th, 2020. New moons are times for setting intentions, and full moons are times for letting go. Think about how you learned to protect yourself around the end of March.How you started getting yourself through this time.

Now that we are six months (but really, at least a decade) older, and wiser into the Pandemic, think of which of those strategies you can release. Suggestions for which area of your life to look into for this release will be written into your rising sign horoscope, but really, whatever it is that you pulled aboard at the end of March that you now feel needs to be discarded, do that first.

As the witches say, full moon blessings, homosexuals.

Find your horoscopes after the jump!

JUMP IN AND READ MORE

!! OMG Stars: New Moon in Virgo, September 2020 !!

» Posted By omg team On Friday, September 18, 2020 | category: Lifelike | 0 comments

The sense of possibility that comes with the start of a new academic year is deeply nostalgic to me. There’s nothing astrological about September that suggests renewal per se, but I can’t help but find the orderly energy of Virgo following the wild energy of Leo to always feel like a reset. With a new moon in the sign, that feeling of renewal begins to make astrological sense to me as we experience the potential collective reset of all things Virgonic.

Virgo is just one part of the Zodiac that is poorly understood. The sign of meticulousness, of detail, of service is often seen as ornery, nitpick, and boring. I personally *love* Virgo and am here to affirm Virgo traits for all my Virgo readers. Virgo will help you move on a dime. Virgo will offer actually useful feedback. Virgo will have remembered to do the thing that you didn’t think needed to get done before you even thought of it. Virgo will pack you a lunch. This sign is helpful.

This new moon, alongside the sun having formed a brief trine to Saturn this week, gives us opportunity to evaluate the ways that we are in service. The ways we help each other. The ways we take on thankless tasks. Saturn in Capricorn has us clinging to old ways of being that Pluto is telling us are time to go: with this new moon in a fellow earth sign, the astrology offers us a gentle push towards seeing that letting go of these structures can actually be helpful.

The long lasting square between Mars and Saturn is highlighting tensions that are butting heads in distinct parts of our lives. Ways that one conflict highlights trauma in another area: the fact that our lives are interwoven. I hope that the changes 2020 has brought to us can be there to show us that it’s unrealistic to leave our personal problems at home (especially when we work from home), or to not let financial troubles bring us down every day. Some people can compartmentalize but many of us cannot, and should not be punished for it.

We are experiencing massive, existential, ambiguous loss and grief right now. Allow yourself to experience it. To experience and grieve the losses and changes that this year has brought to your own life and to the world around you. It is okay to be afraid of what is happening right now. Do not back down from your feelings. Show up for your grief and fear and feelings with your full self. I’m gonna really show my cards here and quote the Bene-Gesserit Litany against Fear:

“I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

As for me, I’m counting down the days til the new Dune movie is released just before the winter solstice.

Find your full horoscopes after the jump!

JUMP IN AND READ MORE

!! OMG Stars: Full Moon in Pisces, September 2020 !!

» Posted By omg team On Wednesday, September 2, 2020 | category: Lifelike | 1 comment

Full Moon in Pisces, 1:22 AM EST, September 2nd 2020
Venus Opposite Pluto, exact on August 29th; Venus opposite Saturn, exact on September 1st; Venus sextile Mercury, exact on September 2nd

Last year before…everything, one of the greatest joys in my life was that I started climbing. Like many weirdo art dykes before me, I made good on my love of gear and camping aesthetics and put on the tiny weird shoes to haul my ass up walls made of plastic. I loved it and I now miss it constantly: I don’t yet feel safe going to a gym again but that way of being in my body, solving problems, is so fun.

An important piece of information in climbing is to always plan how you will climb down something before you climb up.

This week’s astrology is like pushing through to climb a difficult precipice and getting to the top only to realize there’s no way down except to jump. The year has gotten steadily harder and harder, and we’ve pushed our way through all that can be pushed through. But in order to get ourselves out of this precarious position we’re in, we need to take a risk and experience the fear of letting go. The fall (both the season and the action) itself will be the scary part, but being at the top and realizing that we need to let go is an image that makes my palms sweat.

This full moon in Pisces brings out the feelings. Brings out not just your feelings, not just my feelings, but everyone’s feelings. It’s a beautiful lunation, and one that stirs our capacity for empathy, but is also one that is alongside some complex astrology.

Venus in Cancer, a planet about comfort currently in a sign that’s baby, is being absolutely pummeled this week by Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn, who have been the hallmark planets of 2020 destroying any structures in our world that might have once felt comfortable. The little tidbit of support I can offer is that Mercury in Virgo is forming a helpful little sextile to Venus this week, giving us the opportunity to really talk through any feelings that come up out of the full moon. If an opportunity for an important conversation that can build resolve emerges, take it, because the next couple of months won’t be the time.

September and October see some truly awful astrology in this very bad year. 2021 is not a pretty picture either. But here we are, unsure if it can get any worse, but in a moment that cannot be maintained as such. We have climbed a wall of avoidance and we all need to decide to let go of an unsupportive structure in order to plunge into newness.

We don’t know what’s at the end of this fall yet: it might be a hard landing but it might be a cool deep body of water. Either way we can’t stay where we are.

Find your full sun and rising sign horoscope after the jump!

JUMP IN AND READ MORE

!! OMG Stars: New Moon in Leo, August 2020 !!

» Posted By omg team On Thursday, August 20, 2020 | category: Lifelike | 0 comments

New Moon in Leo, 22:37 August 18, EST

I always find the end of summer, when Leo season transitions into Virgo, to be a difficult time. I start to crave some regularity again after a few months of hanging out. My teen feelings about wanting to go back to school come up. This year, after six months of this confusing March-into-Summer-Break energy, my desire for schedule and something reliable is especially noticeable.

With that said, I don’t think reliability is in the cards at the moment. There is a very strong square between both Mars and Saturn, and Mars and Pluto; squares are struggles but they’re also an opportunity for resolve. I’ve been thinking so much lately about how conflict can be caring, and that by engaging in disagreement we have the opportunity to move forwards.

Avoiding conflict does little to help a tense situation. And with Mars in Aries, conflict cannot be avoided. Saturn square Mars can bring ego conflicts, bitterness, and a tendency to suppress anger – but with Mars in explosive Aries, it’s hard to see how that suppressed anger will not wind up everywhere. Pluto squaring Mars, on the other hand, is a more overtly dangerous transit: we see more of that toxic ego energy under Pluto-Mars squares, and a sense that everyone is on their own personal power trip.

With this new moon in Leo, sign of our self-expression and output, I think this is a moment to renew our commitment to ourselves while being aware of how our self-care impacts those around us. While Mars is being squared by Saturn and Pluto it’s also in a flowing trine to the sun and moon, so our expression, will, and vulnerability are receiving some support. I suspect the hardest thing to do right now is to listen. But with this combative astrology, it’s extra important to try to do so. If we’re going to get out of this astrology and into the more positive transits of later 2021, we need to do it with honesty and perspective.

I was side-swept by some New Moon Feelings this time around, and as a result, these horoscopes are coming out a little later than the lunation. Use them to work with this lunation moving forwards in the context of this garbage fire astrological moment.

Find your full sun and rising sign horoscope after the jump!

JUMP IN AND READ MORE

!! OMG Stars: Full Moon in Aquarius, August 2020 !!

» Posted By omg team On Tuesday, August 4, 2020 | category: Lifelike | 1 comment

Full moon in Aquarius, August 3rd, 2020

There’s a really excellent German word, “Verschlimmbessern”, which is a combination of the words for “to make worse” and “to make better”, and whose use translates to “while in the process of trying to make something better, you have made it worse.” 2020 is starting to feel that way to me. Like when you’re moving around your house trying to be really quiet so as not to wake a fussy toddler, and you are so nervous about being quiet that you drop something down a staircase that just keeps bumping and crashing down the stairs. So now you have the stress of having failed at being quiet, and the stress of the screaming toddler.

The screaming toddler in the case of 2020 is Mars in Aries. Here to stay until January 2021, this Mars placement is loud, irritable, and not particularly clear about its desires. At the same time, Mars in Aries is not playing well with others. This toddler is starting shit at daycare. This toddler does not listen to authority figures. This toddler definitely is giving the adults a challenging time.

But like toddlers, the astrology of 2020 is grumpy because it reflects collective transition. Toddlers get particularly clingy and angry when they’re learning something, or in a growth spurt. I’m hoping that all of us are in a growth spurt that is just presently manifesting as a really fucking irritable moment.

The full moon in Aquarius, I hope, will offer us some little hint of what kinds of changes we can expect in December and onwards when Saturn and Jupiter move into Aquarius. My hope for all my readers is that this full moon allows you to bring closure to some kind of cycle that has been troubling you, whether a minor day-to-day one or a major thematic of your life.

There is enough anger brewing with the upcoming Mars-Saturn square that will be with us starting on the 4th until October 25th of this year. There are enough neuroses with the T-square to Uranus present today, or the T-square to Mars that ran all through last week into today. Many astrologers have written about these transits so I’ll spare the details other than to say: if it feels like anger, defensiveness, unpredictable behaviour have been everywhere, rest assured that this is described in the astrology.

You can try to lay low while we pass through this astrology, readers, or you can open up about what’s going on for you. You can cut people off or you can let them in. Letting them in will take vulnerability and courage, but we will need each other around to parent the collective inner toddler that is Mars in Aries. This is one transit that will take a village.

JUMP IN AND READ MORE

!! OMG Stars: Second New Moon in Cancer !!

» Posted By omg team On Tuesday, July 21, 2020 | category: Lifelike | 1 comment

I talked the last lunation up quite a lot when writing my last horoscopes, before even realizing that this new moon was a real big one too. Happening late in Cancer on Monday, July 20th, this is the second new moon in Cancer in a row and takes place opposite Saturn, Pluto, and Jupiter in Capricorn (with an exact opposition to Saturn). I’ll spare you any additional didactics on the subject of Capricorn or the Cancer-Capricorn axis (my last two lunation posts will give you a lot about that), and get straight into some of the significance: from where I’m sitting, 2020 has been all about the Cancer-Capricorn axis.

New moons – new beginnings, the time for planting and intention setting – typically pass through one sign at time, but this Cancer new moon brings us back to the last Cancer new moon which occurred this past June 20th. That time around I was writing about Cancer’s natural opposition to Capricorn, but this time around the opposition is particularly strong with the new moon’s (and sun’s) exact position 180 degrees away from Capricorn’s ruling planet of Saturn, in Capricorn.

I’m thinking of this as a second shot at a new start, and one that with Saturn’s discerning glare asks us if whatever we started last time really has been working out for us. Saturn moving over points in our charts is often asking us how well something’s going, and with Saturn retrograde we have a bit more time to answer those questions. Whatever intentions you tried to put forward under the June new moon, consider that the June new moon was a dress rehearsal for today’s big show.

I’ve been reflecting that Astrology is not determinate, but descriptive, and interpretive. Just as I am seeing descriptions of our collective being and feelings (sun and moon) taking up characteristics of care (Cancer) and opposing the toxicity of society’s structures that have been built to serve financial rather than interpersonal needs (Saturn retrograde in Capricorn), I feel that Conservative or Right-Wing Astrologers (they’re out there) could interpret this moment oppositionally. It’s clear many see this moment as being about Americans standing up for traditional American family values and trying to squash dangerous protests against the status quo. Astrology is like that: without quality or leaning, offering a neutral description of the energies we face that it’s up to us to interpret.

With that said, I am held by the perspectives of others in this field at seeing space for hope, revolution, freedom, and rights. There’s no two ways about the pain and fear of this moment, Astrologically or otherwise, but this optimistic Sagittarius (and relatively new Astrologer) needs to pay attention to the ways that change *is* happening, and that the present action will continue until we are all free.

Find your sun and rising sign horoscopes after the jump!

JUMP IN AND READ MORE

!! OMG, don't miss these !!

1 2 NEXT