During this new moon, Jupiter in Cancer is conjunct Venus in Leo. Joy is at the forefront. You know when things start to feel stale, but you keep pressing on, even though the spark isn’t there? The magic of your engagement with the world is slowly diminishing, but you’re not sure how to re-ignite yourself. Maybe there’s a lot of self-consciousness, the kind of pressurized self-awareness where every gesture feels awkward and every word sounds weird, even when it’s not. Maybe there’s simply exhaustion, which is understandable. The cosmos has been going through a kind of ill-fitting wormhole, and now as we hit the halfway point of the year, we might look back at the beginning of the year from where we are now, and think, wow, why was I operating the way I was? The energy has really changed, and this middle part of the year, the sweet summer, is more open and optimistic than the earlier part of the year. Earlier, we were trying on different outfits and none of them fit, none of them felt right.

Uranus moving into Gemini, and now Jupiter conjunct Venus, opens up possibilities that just weren’t viable earlier. We were too busy wrestling with our own identity to engage outwardly in a juicy, meaty way. But now, the cosmos is facing us outward instead of inward. Venus in Leo is pushing us to be seen, to be more visible, witnessed in our joy. In two weeks, Jupiter will move into Leo, so use this new moon as a preview of what might soon get amplified for you around being seen in a new way.

Use this Venus/Leo-assisted Gemini new moon to:

• Lift yourself up out of any heavy, cobwebby, out-dated beliefs about yourself. Drop one emotional burden that you’re carrying and see if you survive.

• Look realistically at what you’re taking on in life and whether your attention is too scattered. Time & energy management may be key now.

• Try doing something that feels a little bit more visible that you’re comfortable with and see if it turns out okay. Maybe we all want to see a bit more of each other?

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I am in a Trauma Studies MFT program. That means every semester I have a class that directly discusses forms of trauma, every week. This semester it’s Complex Trauma, which is potentially something everyone experiences along a spectrum, because it refers to ongoing trauma. Damage is done by the traumatic act(s), but the real destruction is done by the fact that it keeps going. So, one could say that bearing witness to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the West Bank, and now Lebanon, is a form of complex trauma. Bearing witness to or being directly affected by ICE raids/LGTBQ oppression/the loss of hard-fought rights such as abortion care and voting access is complex trauma. On top of whatever personal struggles we walk with everyday.

And yes, I am learning how to treat and address and support complex trauma when it shows up in clients, but I realized that I’m not actively counteracting the bummer feeling that thinking about and talking about trauma constantly is creating in me.

So I’ve been working hard at not working so hard and making space for recovery.

Play is one thing that we lose access to when we are struggling. Acknowledging that life is currently highly stressful on multiple fronts means that we can look at what we are missing with all of these stressors. We’re probably missing play. And I’m thinking about how to turn off anxiety without shutting off completely and surrendering to brain rot, which can feel like a nice and easy shortcut, but it’s junk food for your mind and nervous system, and won’t do the trick. And, to be honest, nothing is going to do the trick and make insecurity and fear and anxiety go away completely. But we can manage ourselves a lot better than switching between being activated in a heightened way and shutting off and doomscrolling.

I was playing with clay with some friends, started with one idea, and then a chance turn of the hand took me in a whole different direction.

I plan to glaze these in a metallic silver and use them as napkin rings. False ironwork made from ceramic, because I love trompe l’oeil ceramics (see: my dagger incense holders and dice coasters).

Before this clay play date last Sunday, I cleared my whole day by finishing all my homework early so that I wouldn’t be preoccupied by work lingering in the back of my mind. And it felt great to feel free to go along with wherever the day was gonna take us. I was able to play without feeling guilty, and that guilt-free experience is what was actually helpful. When I look at these future napkin rings, I see the outcome of true release into the play space, with confidence that allowed for relaxed focus and without any time anxiety or feelings of “should”.

Over the past week I’ve also been putting aside time every day to 1. pull a tarot card and write some notes about what it’s saying to me, and 2. write about something that just wants to come out, like an exploration on flies (included below in case you’re interested but no pressure to read!) — just letting it come out and playing (again!) with words and ideas and imagery and feelings. Feeling the pleasure of putting words together, especially in a non-clinical way, since all my papers for school have to use clinical language. I’ve been reading before bed instead of watching TV, even though my TV has been mostly “educational”, meaning I’m binging the show Couples Therapy. I’ve been listening to music instead of podcasts, and of course, as always, limiting my social media usage.

It is, to be honest, a little lonely. For all the good that has come from my mind because of the emptiness, the emptiness is uncomfortable. It’s not a social loneliness, I’ve been social, but it’s the contrast of being alone with your mind after you’ve been cramming it full of other people’s ideas and opinions and productions. I know that the emptiness is fertile and is necessary to connect with my own creativity. But the huge amount of content out there is seductive for a reason. When we work hard, we want to play hard. And play has become its own type of work, its own production. Leisure has become something to accomplish, to consume, to have. Not to do. We can actually do anything we want, with just our own little minds, but it feels so blah in comparison to the flashiness of what’s happening externally. It feels like there is inspiration everywhere, but it’s a different type of inspiration than what comes from inside. When I first moved to LA, when I felt uninspired I would go on hikes, and pretty soon I’d be stopping to write notes down, as a spigot inside opened just from the movement of my body and the influence of the natural elements. Now, I find myself looking, looking, looking at all this stuff that’s on the internet. And it all looks cool and I wanna buy it all and own it all and I find myself just curating instead of inventing. So, it’s very inspiring for interior designing my imaginary mansion with all my imaginary money, but it doesn’t really work to get my own ideas out of my mind, nervous system, emotional field, energy, and into the world in some way.

We all know comparison is the thief of joy, but what creates joy, what is the opposite of comparison? Acceptance, perhaps? Being in the middle of a moment, feeling free to make connections, going to a deeper level every time a connection lights up in the brain, becoming more and more alive though the building blocks of your own thoughts and ideas, accepting the unlimited variation inside each us.

6/6/26 — Flies

When it’s warm out I leave the door open so my dog can sunbathe outside and come inside on his own when he gets too hot. Naturally, flies come in and make their home inside my home. My boyfriend hates them and got a bug zapper so he can destroy them when they buzz around his office while he’s working. The other day there were like 6 flies circling around and I got the zapper but I couldn’t bring myself to kill any of them. They die in like a day anyway, I see their corpses laying on the window sills, close to escape but not quite there. Why should I hasten their demise because the noise they make is annoying? They follow me around and buzz loudly like they’re trying to tell me something. So what it is that they’re trying to say? Are they reminding me that connection between living things is something vital, as they follow me into the bedroom when I’m trying to sleep. I notice that they sleep too, or at least stop circling around and sit still for a while. But why shouldn’t a fly get to sleep too? It makes me think about all the other insects— do the spindly daddy long legs in the corners of my ceilings sleep? Does a caterpillar sleep? Do cockroaches sleep, waking up to their own personal Kafkan horror every morning?

Flies have associations with death and disease, decay and rot. But what makes them annoying is their hyperactivity. I don’t find them gross, in fact I love to draw flies, with their stained glass wings and dark compact bodies. But why do they have to loudly announce their presence, constantly and consistently? The hum of a mosquito is worse, because you know they’re out to get you. A fly doesn’t want to get you, but they’re always hanging around. It’s like they really wanna hang out with me when I’m trying to have alone time. Chattering endlessly, not getting the hint that I’m not feeling social right now.

I’m finding such liberation in transferring my past experience with tarot and energy work into the (postmodern) therapy space because there is constant reinforcement of the power of transformation. For all of its institutional faults, the premise/promise of therapy is that change is possible, permitted, and can be desired and encouraged. In practice, change can be anticipated to have negative repercussions in relationships, to the self and to others. It can feel like it will disrupt things in and around us in ways that feel scary and unknown and therefore taboo. In the meta-space of therapy, or tarot or hypnosis, we can play with change, practice change, and understand what change really means in our lives. We can viscerally experience how changing one’s relationship to life — mentally, emotionally, physiologically, relationally — is not only possible, but something that can be done collaboratively, with permission, with the support of another person, while witnessed, and safely. That it is not something that will disrupt someone else’s peace, hurt someone else’s feelings, prove your wrongness, or any other belief we carry about what changing means for us. Change made from an intentional, considered place is a beautiful thing that honors our natural evolution. We resist change because we are often coming to it from a reactive place, of trying to get away from a feeling or a discomfort. We wrestle with what potential change says about us, our value or our identity. We wrestle with what we will lose when change comes. We wrestle with whether we can step into the change without failing.

How many spaces are there in life where we can do this mental wrestling while another person reflects that process back to us, so that we can see from the outside where our beliefs and ideas are taking us? I am just starting to see clients in my internship so I know I’m riding a bit of a high with the newness and the excitement of doing the practice after months and months and months of just classes and homework. But I have sat with people in session for about twelve years already. I’ve been a reflector and experienced the joy of reflecting a new but accurate image back to someone, seeing their mental construction of self loosen and bend enough to include something more loving and supportive than who they were an hour earlier would allow.

Change can bring up fears about loss, but underneath that fear of loss may be a different fear. A fear of becoming more of the self, more embodied and full of who you really are, but then what if that true self comes out and is not accepted, or not loved? The discomfort of being small but loved may be more acceptable than the potential pain of being true to self but rejected. Thinking of all the versions of self that are held back inside of each of us for fear of that rejection. How much we stay in versions of ourselves that are not quite right simply for the protection that it offers. It’s safer for that me that is not quite me to face rejection than it is for the me that is really me to. But, what if that true self emerged into love and acceptance?

Visit www.smallspells.com to learn more about my art and practices and the ways to work with me.

There is a full moon in Sagittarius, with the sun sitting opposite in Gemini, conjunct to Uranus, newly wreaking havoc in Gemini. And, while not exactly conjunct, there are some other pairs of planets traveling together: Venus and Jupiter in Cancer, sun and Uranus in Gemini, Mars in Taurus and Chiron in Aries, and Saturn and Neptune in Aries. Additionally, Venus square to Saturn, and Mars is square to Pluto.

The first part of the year has been a big push towards newness, but this full moon feels different. It is not asking us to show up as a new and improved version of ourselves. It is asking us to in fact show up while drawing on experience, wisdom from the past, and full of meaning that we’ve spent years developing for ourselves. This is not a time to reinvent the self, even if you might feel some urge to do that. Gemini is always on the hunt for what is new, fresh, hot and exciting. But if we dive deep into that mode, as the sun colluding with Uranus wants us to, we become untethered and without context. Sometimes the context of our lives feels burdensome and we dream of being able to shed it all and feel light and free. To be swept through life without the work of creating it for ourselves, but just receiving, forever learning new adaptations without the drudge work of processing, integrating and embodying what we adapted to in the past. I see the hope of AI, and maybe the hope of GLP-1s too?, as this dream for a clean, empty way of living, forever in the present moment and surrounded by good intentions and a weightless, uncomplicated universe to support us. However, this is far removed from what living really is, and to pretend to live untethered to and unbothered by history and violence and systems of oppression that intersect with the everyday harms we do to each other, to pretend that the traumas of the past don’t exist, means that we can’t create meaning out of them. Meaning-making is messy work, it requires that we be here and now in the present but also accountable to our pasts. Sagittarius wants to learn from the past, and this is the difference between Gemini and Sagittarius. Gemini stays flitting around in the present moment, being entertained and entertaining, while Sagittarius looks outward, upward, all around to draw the threads together to create a massive foundational map of what it means to be human.

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This new moon in Taurus is right next to Uranus, newly in Gemini, and Mercury, currently in the last degree of Taurus and about to shift into Gemini.

Uranus’s influence on this new moon makes it a highly creative one, and one that is interested in change, but doing it through the body and with beauty. Taurus looks for ease and luxury, invested in the things that make life feel special and worth-while. It’s not change for change’s sake, it’s change to make an upgrade or to make things easier for yourself. To improve your experience of your life, to lift you up a notch into a zone where you feel supported, invested in, and whole. All the Gemini energy can be chaotic and overstimulating, but this new moon is a time to receive validation and encouragement where you can. Stimulation but with attention on sustainability.

Pluto’s movement through Aquarius has changed focus since it went retrograde on the 6th. Something interesting may be shifting in your life around now. Have you felt a shift in how you approach sharing/getting help, have you humbled yourself and through that, gotten what you wanted?

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Doors are opening and doors are closing. This full moon may seal the deal on a door that has been slowly closing, maybe one that you’ve been spending a lot of energy holding open despite the force of it pulling closed on its own.

Another door that has been creaking open, or slamming open and closed with the wind, or even one that you’ve been pushing to open with all your might, can easily and fully open now.

Think about what may need to shift in response, or perhaps what it means for your identity, how you feel about yourself, how you view yourself. Scorpio is deep transformation, it is embodiment of the soul, it is shape-shifting into another skin. What worked in the past may not work now, and what is needed for the future may feel new to you. This is what thresholds are, a transition point between the old way and the new way, between one state of being and another. The threshold of the door separates outside and inside, public and private. The threshold of the fireplace separates safety and destruction. The symbolic thresholds of life phases mark who we once were and who we are becoming. We need to be different on either sides of a threshold, but there are times that the sides blend together, where we sit with the new overlapping the old. This full moon marks a push into the new from the old, and it may require shedding of those old ways of being. Sweeping the threshold to keep the barrier of safety clear, to keep what belongs outside out, and what belongs inside in. The coexistence of this Scorpio full moon with the pagan holiday of Beltane shows us that this shift over the threshold, and the maintenance required for a clean step, comes in the form of a spiral. We don’t clear the threshold once and move forward linearly to a new threshold, we circle back around to our own inner space, it is our personal threshold that needs constant maintenance and acknowledgement. It travels with us through time. When we come to a new opening, it is both new and familiar, as it is a turn around a spiral, returning back to a similar place that is just adjusted slightly. Beltane is a time to celebrate the coming summer, the rebirth and renewal that comes with the spring-summer seasons. The fertility of the land returning in full force. Is it a totally new thing? No, it is the same energy with slight differences, as the environment may be slightly changed since last year. Perhaps it is the spring bloom after a drought winter. The same flowers will grow, but they will be slightly different from those that grow after a wet winter, as they adjust to the change in environment. We do the same, we adjust our bloom to match what the conditions are, what has nurtured us or not, and what is needed or desired from us or not. It is up to each of us to understand what changes are happening in our environments, and then how to adjust to them. It can be a hard process, as it may require grief processing, if conditions are no longer supportive the way they used to be. It may require you to release more than feels safe or comfortable. Only by allowing the doors that are already closing to fully close can we turn our attention to the doors that are already opening. Society tells us that we are only of value at certain times, in certain ways, but we are always valuable at any and all times in our lives. We may just not be looking through the correct doors into the rooms that allow us to embody that value.

There is a full moon in Scorpio on May 1st. The sun is opposite, in Taurus.

Mercury is conjunct Chiron, both in Aries, Mercury in the final degrees, about to shift into Taurus. Mars is conjunct Saturn and Neptune in Aries. Mars is also square Jupiter, and Pluto in Aquarius, about to turn retrograde, is square to the sun and moon. It is also Beltane! This pagan holiday comes between spring and summer, and is the symbolic marriage of god and goddess, creating a fertile time of rebirth and renewal.

This full moon comes in the wake of the Aries stellium and the entry of Uranus into Gemini, accompanied by Venus, which softened the transition a little. Last week, Uranus left homebody Taurus and entered the sign of the messenger, Gemini. How we express ourselves and communicate with others is changing, becoming destabilized.

Uranus is the planet of revolution, and I’ve been thinking about what that means in the context of now, and in the sign of Gemini.

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Some business before getting to the horoscope—I will be in the Bay Area for some upcoming events: Astrology Workshop in San Francisco on April 18th and Magical Marketplace in Oakland on May 3rd. Click the pics for more info! There are still some open spots for Saturday’s Astrology Workshop.

Now onto the horoscope!

I feel like since 2026 started, at every significant transit I’ve been saying — this is the real start of the new year, this is when the re-birth starts! And the thing is, while acknowledging that there is much wishful thinking happening in the desire to shift into a different reality, each moment has in fact been pushing us closer to a new chapter. Testing the waters of the new reality and how you might navigate it as a new version of yourself. But I’m gonna say this new moon in Aries is the real new year, the real re-birth of the new you. There are a whopping seven planets in Aries at the time of this new moon! Neptune, Mercury, Mars, and Saturn are tightly clustered together in the early degrees, while Chiron, the moon and the sun are clustered together in the later degrees. Additionally, about a week after this new moon, Uranus is moving out of Taurus into Gemini. More on that at the end.

With such a variety of planets in Aries, there is nowhere to turn but to the self. This accumulation of planets in Aries creates a complex soup to see ourselves through. It’s a wild, destabilizing time, but don’t turn away from this complexity. These are the different ingredients we’re working with:

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There is a Libra full moon on April 1st. Jupiter in Cancer is squaring the sun in Aries and the moon in Libra. A T-square puts pressure on two opposing planets, squeezing them both just enough to learn something. This something is within reach of learning but is still effortful, a bit of a challenge. This is not a luxurious lovely sweet Libra moon, simply dressing up and looking pretty. This is a pressurized Libra moon, pressured by both the independence of the Aries sun and the emotional responsibility of Jupiter in Cancer. How can Libra’s drive for surface harmony manage the additional pressures of ego of the self and of actual caretaking and holding space for others? How do we take care of ourselves and others in a way that is authentic and actual, not performative and general?

In therapy school, we are learning about parental attunement and how it shapes future attachment styles.

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There is a new moon in Pisces on March 18th. Two days later, the sun moves into Aries, Mercury goes direct in Pisces, and it is the Spring Equinox. The new moon is in the last degree of Pisces and is conjunct the Saturn and Neptune conjunction in the first degrees of Aries.

[If you want to know more about how the current astrology impacts you, I offer natal chart readings that always take into account current transits, real life events, and your lived experience. More info and booking at www.smallspells.com]

This is the true end of the Pisces era and the next era is for the hungry ones.

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The Virgo eclipse wants to pull us through a new door, one that relates to our theories of health and sickness as well as our concepts of good and bad, our moral compass. As a doorway that is a wormhole, though, an eclipse doesn’t gently invite us into a chapter the way a full moon does, it drags us kicking and screaming, births us, into a new reality. The lessons to learn are not straightforward or familiar, and that is the point. An eclipse pushes us dramatically onto another loop of the spiral, jumps us from one plane to another. It can be disorienting, twisting us around and losing ourselves until we turn fully around and can meet ourselves again, newly. Even though the sun is in Pisces, the disembodied dreamer, the Virgo moon reminds us that we have a body, that we do have limitations we have to work with, that there is a finite quality to our experience on earth. Limitations of body, time, space, and knowledge. This can lead us into a closed system of diagnosing and treating. With Virgo, we can easily tip into being regimented, relying on doing the right thing as a way to have control. Doing what is right in order to stay protected. But this isn’t her function. On the surface, Virgo moon wants the pat on the head, the forehead kiss of approval. She wants to be the good girl, but this is not her true function.

Virgo is connected to the harvest goddess Demeter, better known as Persephone’s mother, the one who mourned her daughter’s kidnapping to the Underworld. Through these events, the life cycle became forever linked to the death cycle. Demeter stopped caring about fulfilling her duties as the one who regulates and enables the harvest, and this mother’s hunger strike led to Persephone being allowed to return to life for half of the year. There is no health without sickness, there is no gain without loss, sacrifice. But who is sacrificing what? We may think of Virgo like Cinderella, a hidden princess who gracefully completes her domestic chores and communes with nature until her true specialness is finally recognized. The martyr, accepting her fate without complaining, aware that the world is not inherently fair, but still always staying perfect and docile and presentable. Serving her purpose based on what others need from her. Contrast this with Demeter. A raging, grieving mother, responsible for the very lives of all humans as the provider of the harvest, refusing to accept the kidnapping of her daughter. There is no need greater than her own, and she understands her own power as well as her purpose. At its core, the moon is looking for safety, and in Virgo, the knee-jerk reaction to a desire for safety will be to stay small, contained, and fulfilling whatever other people need. Deeper down though, the Virgo moon is much more powerful than that.

The Virgo moon, and maybe she can more easily express this with the energetic push of an eclipse, does not want to be small or merely what other people need from her. Her power is that she actually is what people need, she is incredibly wise and tuned into the cycles that make the world turn. She is Demeter, growing the food that is needed to sustain life. She doesn’t need to morph or adapt herself to fit a picture, she is the picture. The virgin is whole, complete unto herself. This eclipse can be a ripping open at the seams of all beliefs and behaviors that have been created by you to try to feel safe but diminish your own power. A desire for safety is valid, but any patterns or personal systems that require you to disconnect from your own power in order to access safety are now up for review and can be discarded.

There is an astrological shift happening on a larger scale, there are major events happening politically, it feels like the rotten apple is finally being split open to reveal the decay inside, and yet people are still being harmed in large and small ways every day, by abuse of power and destructive systems. Because Virgo wants to help and to serve others, and because the sun, Mercury, Venus, and Mars are all opposite in Pisces, this reality may feel overwhelming right now. There is no giant action of caretaking for the world that you can do right now, but you might feel like you want to. Instead, perhaps we can focus on how Virgo can help us reorient to ourselves in a more helpful way. The shame of not being able to fix things, to save the world, to heal every hurt person, is amplified with the Pisces-Virgo axis. We start to draw things onto our shoulders that are not ours to bear. Or perhaps, as a human being on earth, they are, but we need to stay within our limitations. We can start to un-peel those layers of limitations though. Virgo is our anxious mind, it can feel productive worrying about something, even while not doing anything about it. She feels virtuous having the right values but fears putting herself out there because in addition to her own values she has taken on the burden of all the shame in the world.

Virgo is so hard on herself. Perfectionism is a trap that is so easy to get caught in, revealing that is it not even about being yourself in the best way, but potentially being someone else entirely. Imagine how the winter would feel if she thought she had to be spring. It can be very easy to focus on everything we are doing wrong or not doing at all. There is so much more to how we can experience ourselves, and this eclipse is really shaking up our self-perception now, especially if you are someone who has fixed ideas about your self-image that are tied to underlying currents of emotional safety and acceptance. Virgo can pull us into self-doubt and a need for control, while Pisces opposite wants to take us into blind belief and surrender. What does the middle path of intention and trust in the self look and feel like for you?

This full moon eclipse is meant to rip off the bandaids of techniques you use to feel in control that are actually wastes of your time, too limiting, not right for you, stemming from doubt and insecurity. We tend to lock in to the identities we’re comfortable with, with the story about what we can and can’t do that is familiar. This eclipse wants to blow that open. It wants you to trust yourself and trust the universe, but in new ways that you haven’t done before. This may require an old sense of identity to be shaken off of you, an old costume pulled off, not to expose your nude vulnerability but to show you who you really are when you act, think, believe, feel without fear. If you are worried about things that don’t matter, you are neglecting what does matter. This eclipse may expose that for you. This is not just a question of what are you prioritizing and neglecting. It’s a question of how do your behaviors over time de-validate your own values? Virgo is efficient and purposeful. She is also singular and whole on her own. As we each are. So why do we ever act in ways that betray ourselves?

This eclipse is about bettering ourselves but there is also a lot of rage and frustration around it. Mars is in the first degree of Pisces, squaring Uranus in Taurus. A stifled desire for action with no where to go, strong indignation, reactive impulsivity backed by a self-righteousness that will be proven to be foundation-less. This is a floundering energy, grasping at straws, reckless. With the full moon in Virgo, there will certainly be consequences for any rash action taken, globally or personally. Mars is deeply unfulfilled in Pisces — smothered, its very nature denied. You might feel anger towards people around you, even those you love, and it might be a deep, buried anger that has suddenly found its voice, found new words to place to an old feeling. Feeling affronted, feeling desperate. The entire shape of the world feels wrong but to get to the other side, your anger needs to cross an ocean full of years of discontents, including those belonging to your parents, and their parents, and so on. This is not bearable for one person, and the Virgo eclipse can show you that you don’t have to bear anything alone. She is the guide to the mundane solutions that ease your steps forward. She is not a grand overture, a savior, or a daddy, she is a helper, a prescription. She trusts you to take the steps, to manage the process in the time you have.

There is so much happening this week! On the 17th, there is a new moon in Aquarius. This new moon is also a solar eclipse, which will be followed by a lunar eclipse in Virgo in March. Also on the 17th, the Lunar New Year begins, shifting from the year of the Wood Snake to the year of the Fire Horse. On the 20th, Saturn and Neptune meet in an exact conjunction in the first degree of Aries. There is so much newness this week, a lot of re-birth into a new awakening, and it is not without its stressors. Next week, on the 26th, Mercury goes retrograde in Pisces, a tugging us back into the previous time’s way of being, which in Pisces has been an obscuring of physical reality in favor of belief and faith, a wishful approach. We may have to reconcile undeniable truths this week, as well as our desire for existing within a fantasy that is unsupported by facts and therefore cannot be the blueprint for moving forward. There may be grief here, a mourning of the magical thinking that you used to trust in.

Moving from Pisces into Aries, as Saturn and Neptune have been gradually doing over the past year, means moving from delusion to reality, and from hope and faith, abstract feeling, into action. It is the beginning of a new cycle, and while we can still use our old tools from the previous one, we will need to expand our reach and find new tools to succeed in this new level of reality. Moving from Snake to Horse is also a transition from introversion to externalized action. Aries, and action, doesn’t have to exclude introspection or ephemeral feeling, but it does require a pivot. Emotions no longer make up the bubble we live in, now they need to work as fuel for action. Existing mostly inside your head or in the abstract landscape of online existence isn’t going to work anymore. It isn’t going to feel right, and it won’t move you forward. The environment has changed and what is supported is different than it used to be. The Aquarius new moon is a guide here, for a new playbook that can meet this moment. We can’t manifest a new reality using only our energy, and we can’t keep doing the same things we used to, we do need to discover a new approach.

Aquarius is a sign of radical change, of decentralization, of utopian shared collectivism. It can feel on the surface like something wants to be taken from us and given to others, but this is not really it. Remember that Aquarius is the water-bearer, which has symbolic correlation with the Star card in the Tarot. It is about giving and sharing, but this kind of sharing does not take from you, it grows you bigger and brighter. It is a collectivism that you benefit from too. It is the opposite of withholding or hoarding. It is giving freely, not because you have accumulated so much that you can give some to me, but because the definitions of what is yours and what is mine have changed. This is a revolution in thinking, a reorganization of mental constructs around wealth, borders, property, access. The old ways of revolution, which don’t succeed, still rely on the old hierarchical constructs, making small adjustments here and there but maintaining the status quo. Aquarius has big ideas that come through in small everyday gestures that gently promote this reorganization. Aquarius genuinely wants what is best for others at the same intensity and emotional investment as it wants the best for itself, and this can be hard to understand, because in order to be sustainable with this egalitarian approach to community, Aquarius appears to not care. It is not performative about its beliefs, because they are organic, not learned behaviors. It is not dramatic or overt.

This is not New Year, New You, this is allowing the You that was always there to assert itself within the web of humanity, without self-critique and self-judgement. The bookend to this eclipse will be in Virgo, who tends towards self-critique and self-judgement, so you can save those feelings to sort out then. For now, use the Aquarius new moon to do a new type of dreaming, more akin to world-building. This is sci-fi imagining of a new landscape of possibility, not the esoteric grasping for what always slips out of reach.

Aquarius takes emotions and places them into a context of being and doing where they are natural and just a part of things. Emotions are not special, because to Aquarius, nothing is more special than anything else. Everything is special, nothing is special; being special is simply not a concern. This can read as detached, but when we are thinking about the whole of living beings that make up the world, this viewpoint can be read as full of acceptance, allowance, a different kind of support than we are used to. Many of us want to feel special in some way, but when it comes down to it, does our feeling special require that others are not special in their way, to themselves? This is amplified on the global stage, to a ridiculous extreme that fascism does so well. In order for one group to feel good about themselves, another has to be denigrated, denied their humanity, gotten rid of. The other becomes a threat to one’s own specialness, but if it is so easily threatened by the existence of another, how can it truly be specialness? The very action of fascism negates the premise of superiority. White people who can’t stand the excellence of Black people or immigrants, Zionists who can’t stand the excellence of Palestinians, men who can’t stand the excellence of women, they all prove the fragility of their superiority complexes just through this inability to co-exist.

Someone who feels good about themselves while standing next to someone very different from themselves, who also feels good about themselves, is at peace with their sense of self. Aquarius, the most mature air sign, does not need anything from anyone else. That does not mean that with Aquarius we don’t want, or feel, or desire. It just means that our existence is bound to others only through connectivity, not through hierarchies of access. We participate together, but we don’t require things of each other. We breathe the same air and therefore we hope that there are some common goals to protect that air we share, but I do not need to take your air, and you do not need to take my air.

As the middle child of three girls, I know the desire to feel special at the expense of others, but this was only because I felt at the mercy of an inherent hierarchy, and I believed that there were limits to the care available to me, mostly because I was not empowered to create my own care. Culturally, we are deep into a dark spiral of grasping for ways to feel more special than others, even without fascism pushing us there. Despite small jumps forward in the recent past, appearance and all of its signifiers of wealth and status is back in the forefront of culture. Women are being terrorized by media, again, to fit specific molds of smallness and control. Men are also terrorized by this, but are afforded more power along with their submission to control. People of color are literally being terrorized in their homes and streets and workplaces. Rage is hard to manage in the waters of Pisces, but with Aries and the Fire Horse, it finds its way. The fact that Aquarius is leading the way of this shift into fire feels like a message. We can use the values of Aquarius to guide our fire on its forward momentum: exercising hopeful imagination, accessing previously unknown solutions, joining together in equitable community. Simply allowing people to live their lives, staying in our own lanes, opening access to all and detaching from our needs that are based in fear. Putting in right effort, focusing on what is present and around us, dissolving blocks for ourselves and others.

I think of Aquarius energy as the links of a chain. Each link is important, as the chain will fall apart if just one breaks, but no link is more important than another. And what makes the chain work, to hold things close and to create security, is all the links being strong and functional in their own right while also joining together.

I did a collective Tarot reading for all of us, to prep for next week’s major astrological events, which include a new moon, that is also an eclipse, in Aquarius and the Lunar New Year, bringing in the year of the Fire Horse, mere days before the Saturn and Neptune conjunction in Aries!! And what did the guides have to say about how to prepare for all of this? They said to be softer, to find strength in sensitivity, and to rise up the feminine, which is to say the unstructured and seemingly chaotic, which is really just flexible and complex. We are being influenced to flatten ourselves, to fit the wilderness into a box, to be presentable, but as the Queen of Cups, we know better than to give ourselves away like that. Relational power is something they (the money and power bros) don’t understand but we know it is the real power. The past, oh the past, we had it so good, things were just flowing, and now we are so restricted, things are so hard so we are so hard on ourselves. But, what if that ease in the past was not totally authentic, totally real? Maybe what we are feeling now is not so much pessimism as it is simply a more holistic and honest picture. The lessons we have learned are how to fit in, how to freeze frame, how to depend on our tools more than ourselves, because the tools are steady and dependable while we are wild animals who change our minds and grow old and die and are reborn every day. But, the lesson to learn is how to be that chaotic changing creature who feels into dreams and expects the walls to adjust to her whims, not to dampen her whimsy for the walls that are becoming more and more rigid and stuck and immoveable. We forgot how to move ourselves too: so a helpful influence is certainly ego death and the threshold to spiritual enlightenment, moving ourselves out of our own ways in order to regain the ability to move ourselves and our world at will. And the action to take, it’s really joining those things we think are outside of the mundane, our joy, pleasure, leisure, imagination, to our spiritual health. And back again to becoming the bridge between, the channel, the doorway, the filter between worlds. And back again to action, to joyous action, to pleasure that on the surface appears chaotic, ah but we know from the beginning, from her majesty the Queens of Hearts, that what appears to be chaotic has internal order, has organic order, has spiritual order, and just because the money bros don’t understand it doesn’t mean that we deny it. We play as a form of prayer, we assert the wilderness inside us, we don’t hold ourselves freeze-frame still because that is a little taste of death and we only die in dreams in order to be reborn each day. This is the real new year, this is the organic, land-and-sky-based new year. It’s a year full of fire, and staying soft in the flames is the new way.

I think many of us are struggling to know how to engage with our society in a more collectivist way, after having been conditioned to be self-focused and personally ambitious for most of our lives. While there are important shifts to make in behavior, habits and lifestyle, there are also profound shifts in worldview that can happen. Duality is a huge teacher here. How can we learn how to be centered in the self in a way that provides space for the autonomous experience of others, finding our center while also allowing others to exist in theirs? How can we ground into our values, ethics, beliefs, while also making space for others to ground into their own values, ethics and beliefs, with trust that their values won’t harm ours, and vice versa? And if this is a goal, how can we engage in activism, in opposition, and remain in this mode of granting permission to others to have their own life experiences as they see fit? And to get even more abstract about it, how to communicate opposition to a worldview that seeks to control others while remaining in the mode of not having the desire to control others? What does opposition ask of us, and how can we oppose others without becoming like them? If we’re talking about space, making space for our own values and making space for the values of others, then take up that space. Perhaps not with just your opposition to what you oppose, but with the advocacy for what you desire. There is opportunity for a huge cultural pivot this year, but it can’t come out of merely opposition. If you look at the activists who have consistently taken up productive space throughout time and history, they work from a clear picture of what they want, not just the picture of what they don’t want. They work from desire, hope, empowerment, a vision of a new world. Leo can be a teacher here. Leo arrives on the Zodiac scene once basic human needs are met, after the self-actualization of Aries, the environmental and material comfort of Taurus, the communication ability of Gemini, and the sense of belonging and home of Cancer. After all these, we can open up into free play, into desire, creativity, experimentation, pleasure.

Choices made from a Leo place, from a Leo moon, come from desire and not fear. Play, not need. We might not think this is an appropriate place for activism, but the sign opposite, Aquarius, tells us that it is. Aquarius is a sign of independence that is also about interdependence. It’s about dreaming up a new future that is bold in its desire to uplift everyone. It is able to imagine what is not there, and currently, what is not there a society that affords everyone the same chance at the basic needs mentioned above: self-actualization, environmental comforts, ability to communicate, and move, freely, and a sense of belonging. So, there are certainly connected threads between play, imagination and creativity, and the needs of people in this moment. The Aquarius eclipse later this month may explode this open further for you, creating new doorways into alternate realities that allow you to make big changes for yourself and for others.

Venus and Mars, the planets that inform our sensibilities, preferences, and internal fires, are both with the sun in Aquarius, so they are directed towards communal participation. However, the Leo moon opposite is bringing up its own points about self-motivation and desires around the needs of the individual. In our society, the individual and the collective are often positioned as being in opposition, where one cannot thrive unless the other one dies. The Western view of communism is that the self has to be sacrificed for the sake of the group. In the Western view of capitalism, the group is what is sacrificed for sake of the individual. The spiritual view, the theory of the inner intuitive self that we all carry, is that both can co-exist in a balanced way, in fact, that they should be balanced in co-existence. What is the point of the individual without the collective surrounding it? What is the point of the collective without the individuals who create it? How could one possibly exist without the other, and why should one die so that the other can live? Opposites are not one or the other, they are ends of a single polarity.

Venus and Mercury are particularly close together in Aquarius during this full moon, so we are also feeling an influence on our words, communication styles, and how we articulate how we are feeling. Your expressiveness may feel amplified, like you have more courage to expand how you express yourself, to be more loose and free with yourself. Perhaps you’re feeling more like a channel for the collective consciousness, perhaps feeling less self-conscious or precious about what your words say about you, and more inclined to just let things flow for the benefit of everyone, or for no one, just for the enjoyment of the process of articulating what is held inside. This could be an opportunity to experiment with how you communicate, flexing different muscles than usual, even playing around with different role play with your self. Leo moon, with its boldness and fearlessness of performing the self, encourages the freedom of Aquarius. This is a good time to gain confidence by practicing being confident. A good time to shed imposter feelings, through de-centering your own self-conscious worry. Perhaps we’re all pretending to be who we are, figuring it out as we go along, and perhaps this is a good thing, because it allows us to be flexible, to pivot, to adjust accordingly based on new ideas and new understandings. What would it mean if people locked into who they were, achieved total mastery of themselves within the world (which is impossible)? It would mean they stopped growing, stopped learning and responding and evolving. It would be they stopped being in relationship to the world with all its moving parts, because the world is inevitably, constantly changing. Not already knowing how to respond means you’re alive, and it means a chance to discover how you want to respond in a new way.

This month is a pivotal point in a larger shift, a month of tension between dualities of being. We are doing work of both building and dissolving. What will be built and what will be dissolved is up to us, individually and communally. We are leading up to the Saturn-Neptune conjunction in Aries on February 20th, so there is a sense of building to a climax this month. We have been feeling the shifts for a while now. Neptune has moved into Aries already, on January 26th, and Saturn will move into Aries on February 14th, but they had both visited Aries before turning retrograde in Pisces for a last visit. The previous dips into Aries happened May-September 2025 for Saturn and March-October 2025 for Neptune. They are both now fully moving into Aries for good, Saturn for a few years and Neptune for over a decade.

This shift is a big one, and along with the beginning of eclipse season, this time may feel destabilized and destabilizing. Lunar new year, and the start of the year of the fire horse, falls on the day of the next eclipse. The beginning of this month, starting with this Leo full moon, is about getting yourself ready for the big shifts that are coming up later in the month, which have been building up. Imagine yourself in the threshold of a new doorway. What do you want to be on the other side of that door, and what needs to be shed in order to meet that vision, to match that vision? How can you move past simple binaries in order to hold duality instead? What old beliefs can be let go of to make space for new visions? What view of the self only serves to keep you limited, and how can you connected an idea of your limitless self to the limitless of others, liberating not just yourself but those around you?

There is a cluster of planets conjunct in Capricorn, including the sun, moon, Mercury and Mars, all putting pressure on us the way Saturn’s ruler likes to. Venus and Pluto are nearby in Aquarius, not really helping to alleviate pressure because Venus and Pluto both deal in relational and transformative energies, and in Aquarius, influencing the moon in Capricorn, they might be holding you up to unrealistic ideals, wishes and even manipulations. These manipulations may be coming from yourself and they may be conceptual, things you tell yourself about what you should be doing, how you should be perfect, and internalizing how you affect other people, in ways that may not benefit you, but benefit the other person. Venus next to Pluto, whispering in each other’s ears about your value, your worth, your beauty, your attractiveness to other people. Aquarius dreams about the ideal, the higher self, the concept of being that may not always be possible with the actual doing of being. With Capricorn so close by, and the partnership of the sun and moon in cahoots together, applying pressure, tightening the screws, and with it being still so close to the new year, it is easy to feel like you should be doing more. That you have failed to transform into the New You of the New Year, and that others can see your failure and are disappointed. Capricorn and Saturn have a close connection, and they can take the form of the disappointed parent, who isn’t mad, just disappointed that you didn’t do better. The intuitive nature of Capricorn, of the Sea-goat, can turn on you: you should have known better.

However, the light in the darkness, the antidote, is Jupiter in Cancer opposite this cluster of judgement. Thankfully we have the planet of expansion, the big guy Jupiter doing this heavy lifting, but it will also be up to us, to take the gifts that Jupiter is trying to support us with. These gifts are Cancer things. These Cancer gifts are feelings-based, self-protective, and carry strength in vulnerability. The biggest gift is unconditional acceptance. Capricorn moon can make us feel like there are a lot of conditions around getting what we need right now. And if these conditions are not met, we lose out on what we need to feel secure, safe, loved. And many of these conditions may not be getting met in a very general way now — have you noticed that most of the current administrations policy changes are around meeting less of our needs, less of the conditions we need to feel safe and secure? And the way these policies are framed are that we would be getting what we need if we had only behaved properly, stayed in line, submitted to authority, been the right skin color, not been so radical, etc. The stage that we are doing the plays of our lives on sets the tone for how our individual plays are acted out. Recognize that we are on a purposefully unstable stage, and give yourself grace for not performing at your peak. You’re just trying to keep your balance.

Enter Jupiter in Cancer. So, you’re on a stage that keeps trying to throw you off. What you thought was land, what should be land, is actually a sea in a storm. On top of this, we have external pressures of relationships (while everyone is struggling), work (while everyone is struggling) and health (while everyone is struggling), and internal pressures around who we personally want to be and who we actually are. Can we meet all of these pressures right now? Possibly not. Many people are dealing with the existential echo of the beginning of last year, with the fires in LA, the dread of the beginning of the current administration, as well as the ongoing genocide in Gaza and the West Bank, currently overshadowed by the ICE destruction currently sweeping through neighborhoods. Can you be your best self with all this going on? Probably not. Do you require more support while all this is going on? Probably.

When we are under pressure, we tend to want to apply more pressure. We feel like we can fix a problem through more attention, more work, more laser-focus into the problem. But, if astrology, with all of its concepts of opposites, is meant to guide us, then what if the solution is not held within the problem, but outside of the problem, opposing the problem? We feel this in a full moon, when the sun and moon are opposite, and we can see more clearly what is working and what isn’t based on observing the tension between the opposing energies. In a new moon, we usually have more of a single-focus, as the sun and moon sit together in the same sign, and the oppositional pull is not there. However, in each sign sits the implication of its opposing pair. The signs are informed by their mirror sign across the Zodiac wheel. We are ourselves are informed by duality. So to seek understanding without including duality cuts out a large portion of what could be useful wisdom. To seek a solution by going deeper into the problem cuts out the space where the solution might be hiding. Looking deeper through the lens of the issue but ignoring what is behind your back, what is outside that lens, leaves out a lot of information about the holistic nature of the problem/solution coin. In this new moon, Jupiter in Cancer, the strongman bodybuilder of the Zodiac, is holding all of the space of the solution to our Capricorn cluster of pressure, which may be a problem right now, depending on how stable and organized around your emotions you feel. If I were to guess, or extrapolate from my own experience, you are feeling neither stable nor organized. Our solution, even while we feel unstable and disorganized, is to resist the punishing, judgmental, rigid pressure around us and inside of us, and to surrender into tenderness towards ourselves and others.

Vulnerability is hard for people, for various reasons. Resistance to vulnerability, which is itself a product of vulnerability and therefore also vulnerability, can look like other things, like aggression, like anger, like fear, like ambition, like self-righteousness. It can be hard to not respond to resistance to vulnerability in someone else with your own resistance to your own vulnerability. Shields popping up from everyone in turn as each of us starts to feel weak and unsupported, and so we try to defend ourselves. Everything we feel is felt and expressed interpersonally, with others, but also intrapersonally, within ourselves. So we shield against ourselves too. The forward momentum of Capricorn is stopped in its tracks when we block ourselves, and this is why we need balance between both sides of a Zodiac pair. Capricorn works better when it has on its side the Cancer mastery of emotional acceptance and strength in vulnerability. Cancer works better when it has on its side the Capricorn mastery of structure and foundational groundedness. Cancer needs to feel that its roots are connected to something real, and Capricorn needs to feel that its purpose is emotionally sound. They work together. They also can trip each other up when we don’t do the intentional work of understanding and embodying the duality of the two.

At this new moon, we may feel tested around finding our strength in vulnerability. Real world situations of this are tricky: in relationships and even with ourselves, we don’t know how to proceed as we navigate finding our footing within our fear and insecurity. We may tip further into rigidity when flexibility is being asked for. We may fall deeper into our own traps of beliefs and defense-mechanisms and conditional expectations. The solution lies far away from those things in the embrace of Jupiter in Cancer, bringing us more acceptance, offering us more grace and more space to figure things out.

I am doing my own version of a Jupiter in Cancer supportive activity here. Today’s horoscope post is free, while usually they are not. I wanted to share this one openly in the hopes that it will reach more people who may be future subscribers. Or perhaps this free one will tempt you to upgrade your free subscription to paid so you can read all of the usually paywalled horoscope posts. I know that people are strapped for cash; this subscription is only $6/month ($5 if you pay annually). Who are you supporting with your subscription? I am a writer, artist, healing arts practitioner, and future therapist, who is committed to all of the ideals of the radical left, which read to me as just basic human rights for everyone in a healthy society. I strive to give unconditional support (in the therapy world this is called “unconditional positive regard”) to everyone, but especially those who have historically had their opportunities for personal growth limited by external power dynamics. Personally, I struggle with the tension between offering healing support and supporting myself financially, and this tends to leave me in a financially precarious state, often. However. My writings are not just researched, they come from my own personal self-awareness and from an intuitive connection that broadens my viewpoint from the personal to the universal. I try to offer a perspective that I myself seek to find in the world, and often don’t. My horoscopes are not by the book or informed by pop psychology. Every two weeks I wrestle with what’s going in the world, in my own life and my own psyche, and what solutions, that I myself am also looking for, could possibly be on offer by the universe, wisdom from the new or full moon. My hope is that by the time you reach the end of each essay, your struggles and heartaches feel seen, but your strength, resiliency and magical connection to yourself and to the world has also been seen, encouraged, and celebrated.

Outside of these essays, I offer one-on-one Tarot readings, Astrology chart readings, hypnosis sessions, and Reiki. Find out more information at smallspells.com!

The moon is in Cancer and the sun is opposite in Capricorn, conjunct Venus and Mars. Mercury is also in Capricorn. Jupiter is retrograde in Cancer, square to a newly direct Chiron in Aries. Saturn and Neptune are conjunct in Pisces.

Venus and Mars are conjunct the sun in Capricorn and therefore the full moon is opposite both Venus and Mars. This gives a conflicted feeling to this full moon time. Venus and Mars together form an emotional whole, as they are two sides of a coin as related to emotions and relationships (you complete me!). Venus is soft and receptive, while Mars is assertive and giving. Having both of these in balance within ourselves makes us healthy in relationships, regardless of our gender or partners or other types of roles. However, the moon, the planet of our emotions, and Cancer’s ruling planet, is opposite these two relational planets. Aspects of relationships that fall outside of our ideals may feel more aggravating with this moon, or we may feel more triggered by the dissonance between our emotional reality and the reality around us. Personal responsibility and obligation to others can be at odds with each other and felt more strongly at this time. Obligation to others should not negate our responsibility to the self, but we often neglect our needs for the sake of the larger narrative. There is an affirmation for this full moon at the end of the horoscope, meant to support you around acknowledgement and validation of your needs even when your family or relationships stories don’t make space for them.

Cancer is overwhelming, complex and contradictory, and can be heavy with the weight of lineage. The threads of lineage that flow out from each of us can be supportive but they can also pull us down into the undertow of other people’s paths. Our family members’ and ancestors’ life experiences teach us wisdom but we may also feel the connection to their pain and their hurt. Because these connections come from the past, we have less clarity about how to respond and the usual responses may not work. Cause and effect, linear consequences, and logic don’t apply as much. We need to have a more intuitive and flexible, even subconscious, response. Capricorn on the other hand is more in the moment, focused on the future. It responds with a confidence that Cancer can’t match, with a lack of self-doubt that Cancer can’t access due to its strong attunement to emotions. Emotions are ever-changing and in flux and can pull Cancer into the undertow more easily. The stories we spin to understand our feelings can bring us into confusion more than clarity, because the feelings and the stories cloud our logic.

An example is wanting to be accepted by others, by our loved ones and family members, or our communities, but not being accepting of those others or of the self in times when we don’t get that external validation. Because this full moon comes after the holidays when many people see extended family, or when adult children interact with their parents, we may wallow in unmet needs or resentments. We may be looking for acceptance, looking for the unconditional love we feel we missed out on, but at the same time not offering acceptance and unconditional love to those who disappointed us. And not offering acceptance and unconditional love to ourselves in our disappointment. How can we expect something to be offered from others that we are incapable of offering? How can we judge someone else for limitations that we share?

A good way to think about the full moon is to think about what the moon needs and what the sun needs, and how you might be able to fulfill both those needs. What might have to be compromised and what might be an unexpected combination of a solution. Cancer moon wants a sense of belonging and acceptance, flexibility to feel emotions freely, and permission to caretake for others and for the self. Capricorn sun wants to advance on its path, to find a sense of security, and to be productive and accomplished. For some of us, these needs intersect in the same arena, but for many of us, these needs contradict each others. Perhaps we find fulfillment of our success at work, but feel out of place in our families. Or perhaps we find peace in our relationships but can’t seem to move forward and advance our careers. Perhaps a lot of these contradictions are just beliefs and conditioning that may not be true or real, but they still serve to map out our actions for us.

If we find ourselves in the midst of conflicting beliefs and contradictory needs, how can we use this full moon to its full potential? It would be best if during the full moon we could easily shake off old beliefs that don’t serve us and embrace new ones that do, but our task for this full moon may simply be acknowledging, recognizing, noticing, even just feeling. Feeling the contradictions and the conflicts. For many of us, this full moon in Cancer is coming after a time of family get-togethers, where a lot of these old dynamics normally in the shadows come into full light. We may slip from our current incarnations into the old skins of our youth, embodying the inner child in all her helplessness and hopelessness. These conflicts of self are important to feel, observe and mark. They show us the gaps between who we were and who we are, and the places where we can work on telling the world around us how to make space for all of it. Mars and Venus with the sun amplifies the personal will and desire that may not be acceptable alongside whatever form of you belongs in your family or your relationships. Whatever shape you made yourself into to fit the available space of your family — if it’s not the true shape of you, you may feel it now, in the hangover time after the holidays.

The following is a Cancer moon affirmation, as it sits full of its wants and its needs in the face of a stoic Capricorn sun. Acknowledging what we actually need may make us feel like a Cancer baby crying for more while the world of industry and achievement revolves around us, ignoring us and our emotional wounds, succeeding while we are incapable. Our wounds make us feel so much shame, but also determine so much of our actions. How can we sit with the contradiction of this: we have to accept something we don’t like and cannot change in the past, in order to lessen the shame which opens up space to make change for the future. Crying for unconditional love in the face of conditional expectations, from others or from ourselves, can feel paralyzing. It can feel dumb, silly, inappropriate, childish. But finding out what your needs are so that you can get those needs met is not immature, it is profoundly mature.

It is okay for me to have a different hierarchy of needs than my family of origin. I can still give myself what I need to be productive and successful in a way that feels right to me. They may have given me all that they are able to, and if that is not enough for me, their limitations or their differences in priorities don’t have to limit me. It may be a harder road, but I can make my own path based on my own needs. Not being given what I need does not mean that what I need is wrong or impossible to access. Having to ask for something instead of being handed it automatically does not devalue what I need. It does not work to neglect giving myself what I need or to pretend that I can make do with less than what I need. I need more than what I was offered by others, and that’s okay. I can make giving myself what I need an important part of a good routine for myself. It doesn’t move me forward to pretend that I don’t need what I need. It is also okay if I am still figuring out what I need. Unconditional means no strings attached. It means support regardless of anything else, regardless of success or failure. It may be unfamiliar to me, but I can enjoy figuring out how to offer myself unconditional support. I no longer need to pretend, or adjust myself, or mask that I have my needs. My needs are tools that help me achieve what I want to achieve. These tools are not one-size-fits-all, they are unique to me. No tool is too much to ask for: even if I can’t access the tools I need yet, or the resources I need yet, I can still accept that I want that tool that is just out of reach. I don’t need to pretend that I don’t want something just because it is out of my reach. I can give myself permission to reach for it, knowing that it will help me on my path. In order to achieve, I have to first allow. My desires, wants, and needs are helpful guideposts on my journey forward, and it is okay if they are different from those of my family of origin and it is okay if they transcend what was previously on offer. My needs expanding beyond what’s available is a sign of growth.

Thinking about the end of the year as a new start, rather than January. . . or the precursor to the new start, so we are not overwhelmed in January when so much is getting going again. This new moon comes a couple of days before the Winter Solstice. The solstice is the shortest day of the year, which sounds depressing, but it also marks the waxing of the day, the same way that the smallest new moon, one we can barely see, marks growth towards the full moon. How do these movement feel to you? We often get ourselves stuck in moments of darkness, locking down a momentary void into something that will last forever, when really these moments of darkness imply incoming movement, the growth that is coming after the fallow. Tuning into cycles rather than linear endpoints is what the basis of astrology is, as well as the basis of natural worship, witchcraft, and fully being in your human experience. Doesn’t it feel better to see yourself, perhaps on the darkest day of the year, as being in the threshold of an expanding light, an opening door, a longer day?

Nothing ends. Nothing stops. Things pause, or become still for a moment, or catch their breath. We are always moving, waxing and waning, never stopping. The shortest day of the year is a good time to do meditation or yoga, to tune into everything that is blossoming inside of you even in darkness. To feel the churning of thought, emotion, feeling, energy inside of you, and recognize its existence no matter what is happening around you. To feel yourself going, moving forward even in stillness. The breath continues, the body speaks to itself, the messages are sending inside of us, even in the dark.

Sagittarius new moon knows all of this, and understands the power of the self to be a light in the darkness. To know how to find the light even when it is not clear, to create the path forward using the wisdom of the past. To pull light from out of the darkness. Sagittarius is the Hermit, the wizard who creates new realities by synthesizing the past with the future, using the self as the conduit. Sagittarius is movement, travel, experiencing the self in new environments that challenge and stimulate and provoke growth. Darkness, solitude, stillness: these are not things to fear or to avoid, but things to welcome in so that you can experience yourself more fully. We can’t see everything that is held within us without placing ourselves into new positions or allowing new desires; basically, without change. We can’t know ourselves fully without change. The Winter Solstice is a time to pivot where we are getting our knowledge from. It may come less from outside of us, because there may be less movement happening around us, but this allows us to see the movement within.

Mercury, Venus and Mars are all hovering around the sun and moon. We are in big picture mode with the sun, moon, Mercury and Venus all in Sagittarius, but Mars is in Capricorn, focused more on the steps to take, not the big concept. The new moon’s square to Saturn and Neptune can create disillusionment, like reality and our wishes are crashing up against each other, and neither one can easily be achieved. We are not in work mode, but we are not in relaxed mode either. We are caught in-between, as this time of year is so relational and interpersonal. We are beholden to others and we are not able to fully commit ourselves to our own desires without considering those who we’re connected to, for better or worse.

This can be a tough time of the year for people. A couple of days after the Sagittarius new moon, we enter Capricorn season, and this is where we will spend the holidays and how we enter the new year. Not with the inner light of the eternal wisdom of Sagittarius, but with the responsibility and obligation of Capricorn. It can be difficult to find grounding, as so much is being re-surfaced and forced into conversation, especially around family dynamics. When I first moved to LA, I felt so much relief, as Christmas day was just like any other day, with the sun shining and green trees. It didn’t feel like the pressure-cooker of the holiday season in New York City, with so much darkness and cold and parties and shopping and family obligations and travel and deadlines. However, internally, the end of the year can still bring up pressure and stress, and feelings of inadequacy and failure. Sagittarius is a forever optimist, and we can harness that during this new moon, but can we also carry it into Capricorn season? Our next full moon in January is in Cancer: will we wait until then to take care of ourselves or can we start now, when we really need it?

You know what you need for support. You may have to uncover this information as it hides beneath layers of other needs, but you can find it. The layers can include the needs of others, the needs we thought we had but were really the needs of others, or even a barrier layer, a locked gate, where we find that we haven’t given ourselves permission to even have needs in the first place. The charm of Sagittarius is that it is concerned with both the knowledge that comes from within and the knowledge that comes from without. It doesn’t rely solely on the inner experience, or solely on the external, but it knows how to synthesize them together to create meaning. We are constantly looking for an either/or answer. We can go so deep into ourselves that we stop listening to our environments, or we can rely so much on the perspective of others even when it contradicts ourselves, because we want a clear answer, and we think that clarity is an either/or thing. One or the other, not both, not overlapped, not in conversation. Capricorn is rigid like this, it can lead us to make conclusions based on “facts,” instead of allow us to be flexible and ever-changing. When this intersects with the end of a year/beginning of a new year, and perhaps lots of family time, you may feel yourself sliding back into old identities that are limited and inaccurate. You may punish yourself for perceived failures, or draw lines between “facts” that ignore the potential for growth. Instead! Use this time now to establish a new approach, using Sagittarius’s fearlessness and boldness.

Sagittarius embraces change and is self-reliant, but also in tune with and invested in the world around it. This is a good thing to get centered in now, before we move into the end of the year busyness around getting things done on a surface or physical level. This type of busyness doesn’t nurture the meaning or the value attached to the task, because there isn’t time or energy to do so. So then we might fall into the early January full moon in Cancer burnt out and in need of repair, instead of feeling steady and strong. Search out and cultivate the meaning behind the action. This may take more time, so simultaneously work on keeping yourself out of time traps like consuming media or numbing out. Sagittarius keeps itself busy, how could it not, as enamored of the world as it is. When it feels like things are too much, pull back and simplify so that you can maintain your attention on what is truly important to you. Capricorn season may feel like we’re climbing the mountain, but Sagittarius uses its personal energy to soar up and over it, effortlessly.

This full moon is already not a very stable one due to Gemini’s association with movement, messages, fluctuations and mood swings and cognitive dissonance. But adding to this swirl of brain activity is the movement of global planets Saturn and Neptune. Saturn turned direct in Pisces about a week ago, and Neptune will turn direct in Pisces in about a week. Both planets resume their journey forward in Aries again, to continue their travels together through the sign of the self. Saturn and Neptune together in Aries is quite a ride. They will have a direct conjunction in February of 2026 (you’ll know all of these crucial dates if you get my 2026 Astrology Calendar!). These two planets are walking together through our lives but they have very different motivations and styles. I will say, they are both slow in their own way: Saturn is deliberate while Neptune meanders. An important distinction between the two though, is that Saturn plans while Neptune dreams. Saturn deals in the realistic while Neptune plays in the fantasy.

A Gemini moon suspends us in the possibilities, rather than in the actualities. And that is the tension of Saturn and Neptune’s current journey as well. I have to make the connection to politics, as usual: powers that be are pushing, pushing, pushing policies based on theory and ideology, not what is actually needed. They are trying to make their fantasies a reality. What is your fantasy about how you want your world to function, and how can you push that? Everything happening now is ideology-based (and financial, but isn’t money an ideology as well? Especially when it is abstracted to numbers on a screen and astronomical qualities that have no relation to reality). Whether immigration crackdowns, genocides, AI, it’s all being sourced from ideologies of separation based on race, religion, value rather than actual need or desire. It feels almost taboo to assert that our systems should work to support the basic needs of humanity, or at least not as sexy as world domination or a bodiless dystopian future. We are in the thick of it right now with this Gemini moon. Gemini at its worst is capricious, untethered, uncaring. Unconnected to reality because there are too many connections to unreality getting in the way. Gemini can be stimulating and fun and new and feel like a breath of fresh air in a stale room. But Gemini can be ungrounded, and depending on your astrological makeup, this moon may feel ungrounded.

A Gemini full moon in winter always feels weird, because Gemini is so spring-like, so active and outgoing. Instead, we might find ourselves buckling down, because of winter weather, family obligations, end of year workloads. This time is simultaneously stressful and lively, we are anticipating celebration but also worrying about wrapping up the year. Which is actually appropriate for Gemini, as it is about changing moods and our different faces. It may be good practice at this time to remain dancing on the surface like Gemini, not taking anything in too deeply because emotions can be heightened around this time of year. Allowing things to move and pass around you without wounding or worrying you.

A full moon also nudges us to let go of out-of-date attachments, and with Gemini it could be inaccurate beliefs, old cognitive structures that may not even belong to you. Gemini is the fleet-footed messenger. It is not the sage wizard of Sagittarius. It is entirely possible that we got the wrong message at some point in our pasts. Did we take that message and tuck it deep into a pocket and make it our own? Did we build a life and an identity on some messages that weren’t meant to be building blocks, but were just unthoughtful passing remarks, meant to breeze by and get lost in the wind? Gemini gives itself freedom to pick and choose, to change its mind. It loosens the binds of cognition. It is tempted by chaos, and will sometimes choose chaos just for the freedom. How can we best use this loosening of structure, this playfulness around responsibility, in a way that rejuvenates us at a time when we need it most? This time of year can be dark, and it can pull our attention to everything left unfinished or unachieved. But Gemini is the playground of the mind. Of course there are unhealthy ways to act in the playground of the mind, as mentioned earlier. We don’t want to drag everyone down with us as we toy with the rules of nature and agreed-upon ethics. But in our own minds, as related to our personal self-understanding, perhaps there are ways we can give ourselves space in that inner laboratory to experiment or find more flexibility where there previously was not. Gemini can hold many ideas at once. We will have a Sagittarius new moon in two weeks, and this multi-tasking may not be the best avenue to take then. But for now, look for the dance that emerges in the busyness, the flow that might be building.

Gemini is great for: Releasing perfectionism. Creating excitement about otherwise boring life things, just by engaging in a slightly different way. Taking the pressure off. Experimenting, especially with thought. Taking your imagination seriously. Moving ideas around like puzzle pieces. Giving yourself permission to be in different moods without explanation or reason, as long as you take accountability for any consequences. Seeing those consequences as a dance, not as conflict. Entertaining yourself. Trusting your creative intuition.

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Ways to work with me:

I am currently in graduate school to become a licensed therapist, so all healing arts sessions with me benefit from this growing base of knowledge :-)

I am based in LA, but offer sessions over Zoom, to anywhere in the world.

Tarot Readings can range from a 15-minute check-in on a question to an hour-long exploration of the energies of your life at this moment and the guidance on how to best move forward.

Astrology Readings explore your natal chart, looking at natural strengths and points of struggle, and discovering how to best incorporate all parts of your chart into a game plan for your best life.

Hypnosis Sessions help to overcome blocks, rebuild inner connection, and support changes and shifts in thinking and feeling. Using guided visual imagery, we collaboratively work together on reframing aspects of yourself that feel unsupportive or unsupported and establish emotional shifts that change how you approach your life. Theses can be truly transformational sessions. Whether you want to quit a bad habit or feel more comfortable in your being, these sessions can give you the boost you need to create change for yourself.

I also offer Reiki energy healing sessions! These sessions offer relaxation and calm down your nervous systems. Like a massage for your energy. In person only.

Hand-poke Tattoos are not necessarily part of the healing arts realm, but I do offer a different type of experience from tattoo shops. With me, conversation and a calming energy are a big part of the session. I tattoo my own illustration work, as well as occasional custom designs. Also in person only, obviously.

More information about all of my services can be found on my website.

WWW.SMALLSPELLS.COM

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I also make products, including ceramics, t-shirts, books and of course my Small Spells tarot deck, which is now celebrating its 10th year birthday! I have a shop on my website, and my goods can also be found in independent shops all over. You can sign up for my free email newsletter if you want to stay informed on events, sales, new products, etc.

Every fall I make an astrology calendar for the following year. This calendar includes all the important transits, like retrogrades, new and full moons, eclipses, aspects between outer planets, etc. Each month has a corresponding drawing that captures the feeling of the month. 2026 is available now.

If you are in LA, I will be a part of a holiday popup happening Sunday December 7th at Flowers Finest in Eagle Rock, along with my friends and colleagues Liana Jegers and Waste Vase, who both make beautiful wares. I will have new ceramics as well as some of my other goods.

Thanks for reading — as our worlds of interaction become more and more fractured, we each have to reach out more and more, as uncomfortable as it is to self-promote. But it’s totally worth it every time I’m able to connect with people like you, and use my gifts and intentions to help your in own connection to your gifts and intentions.

WWW.SMALLSPELLS.COM

There is a full moon in Taurus on November 5th. The moon is in Taurus and the sun is opposite in Scorpio. We are processing, we are embodying, we are in the in-between, we are feeling in the midst of transition. Taurus is at one with its environment, but Scorpio rubs up against its surroundings in an uncomfortable way, like wearing an itchy wool sweater that’s a size too small. It’ll never feel right and so the wearing of it has to just settle into some kind of existential angst that can still somehow be functional. Taurus wants to revel in the garden of sensuality, not just to function but to thrive, to immerse into the experience of being like sinking into a perfectly warm bath. A full moon means the sun and moon are opposite, which means we have to look at the gulf between the two. We are not in one or the other, we are in the tension between the two. At a new moon where the sun and moon are joined, we have a clear mission, we are in alignment and we are single-minded. At a full moon, we are caught in the space between two very different experiences and we have to resolve ourselves even while we are caught in the dichotomy.

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