The 2026 Saturn-Neptune conjunction at 0° Aries, the first of its kind in recorded human history, asks each of us to stand at our own personal World Point: to let dissolve whatever structures in our lives are held together by habit, fear, or illusion, and to discover what, when stripped to the absolute beginning, we are actually being called to build.

You have probably seen more than enough of the dramatic headlines reflecting the chaos surrounding us as a collective, as our worn-out systems collapse and the rot is exposed. There has also been plenty of astrological focus on the collective mundane experience. Yet beyond these themes lies our personal experience and the potential that the current astrology portends. Here is my quick and dirty lowdown on harnessing the energies at play and what they mean for you.

Epoch-changing astrology

Yesterday’s solar eclipse in Aquarius has ramifications that will be with us for the next 2 years as the cycle progresses through to 2028. The cliff notes for the current eclipse energy – something has to go for something better to emerge. Due to Saturn’s rulership of the eclipse, the eclipse energy also plays into the storyline developing with Saturn’s recent ingress into Aries, heralding the epoch-changing conjunction of Saturn and Neptune at 0’ degrees Aries on Friday, 20th February at 16:54 UT.

Epoch-changing astrology? Well, yes! History tells us that when Saturn and Neptune come together, our world changes, dramatic shifts in storylines occur, and history is written in bold. I could write so much about the fascinating narrative of these two coming together in their 36-year cycle, yet time (thank you, Saturn) marches on. If you want to know more about these outer planets’ cycles and historical correlations, check out the brilliant work of Richard Tarnas in his epic book Cosmos and Psyche.

New Frontiers

According to astrologer Richard Nolle’s calculations, the last time that Saturn and Neptune came together in Aries was in the year 555 CE. So it’s rare.

But here’s the thing – no one has ever experienced these two planets coming together at this point of the Zodiac – well, not for at least 6000 to 9000 years! And this conjunction is not at any old random point of the zodiac. It takes place at 0’ degrees Aries, which happens to be the start of the zodiac, a power point of initiation, the World Point of the cardinal axis, and the most sensitive point in the zodiac. It is the degree of the spring equinox with all its creative potential, where the ecliptic meets the equator during the increase of the light, and where, as was told by the ancients, the world was created out of chaos, and spirit meets matter.

Here’s the lineup of the energies in play:-

• Aries, ruled by Mars - the fiery will to action via motivation and initiation.

• 0’ degrees of Aries, the World Point of pure creational potential on the verge of form.

• Neptune, who governs the imaginal realm - the place where our creative potential is sourced directly from the creatrix - the divine feminine, the Great Mother herself.

• Saturn, who governs structure, discipline and the wisdom to ground our creative potential into reality.

Let your creative impulse fly: Let’s build a positive tomorrow.

In Aries, Saturn is in his fall – expect obstacles and delays, and Neptune can bring about illusion or dissolution. Our job is to gather our resources, sort the wheat from the chaff using our hard-earned wisdom, build firm foundations for our visions to develop, engage our discipline and let loose with our dreams, letting our creative flow lead, no matter what life throws at us.

Where and how this potential shows up in your life will depend on which whole sign house Aries occupies in your chart and any natal planets in aspect to it. If you need a copy of your chart, I’ve posted below my quick guide video on how to get your free birth chart. Alternatively, book a consultation with me here to get an in-depth delineation based on your personal needs.

This great coming together of Saturn and Neptune at this point is an opportunity for us to create the life we dream of. To draw down and call upon these energies, enabling us to bring into reality our vision for ourselves and, by so doing, ignite the spark of our collective revisioning to create the beautiful world our hearts know is possible.

How so? Because the collective is made up of individuals, and the more of us that reach for a positive vision of the future, the greater the chance we have of influencing the world around us for the better. There is power in numbers, and together we can change our destiny as humanity by changing ourselves and pursuing our creative dreams. Let your creative impulse fly. Let’s build a positive tomorrow. The gods have our backs!

Grounding in the Sacred

The boundary between form and formlessness; Saturn provides the container, Neptune provides the formless content. Altar work combining both can help us manifest our vision into concrete reality.

I shall be grounding both Saturn’s and Neptune’s help, providing the necessary discipline and structure to capture the creative potential of this moment, via ritual over the coming weekend. Here are some ideas on how you can do this, too.

Place a figurine or image of Saturn and Neptune on your altar (or use the tarot cards suggested below) along with the corresponding offerings:

• Saturn: tarot card – The World; jet, lapis lazuli, onyx, hematite or black opal; patchouli, fern, ivy, comfrey, or any narcotic plant; myrrh, musk or any incense made from roots; black, dark blue or indigo candles; figures or images of any black creature, those that live in holes, snake or toad; anything earthy that comes to mind.

• Neptune: tarot card – The Hanged Man; aquamarine, amethyst, moonstone, labradorite, blue topaz or selenite; water lily, mugwort, valerian, lavender, any water-based or entheogenic plants; jasmine, lotus, ambergris, seaweed or sea salt; sea green, sea blue, aquamarine or silver candles; any creatures or plants of the sea, including hag stones, shells, and coral.

Offer up prayers, hymns, poems, sigils and intentions, gratitude and appreciation – let your imagination and intuition guide you. Your pure heartfelt intention is more important than protocol. And don’t forget to honour and give thanks to the divine feminine - the creative source, in whichever aspect(s) that she resonates for you. Ceres, Sophia, Isis or Brigid come immediately to mind.

I would also suggest meditating on the Two of Wands, the Emperor and the Tower cards; all three are associated with the decan that holds the powerful zodiac point of 0’ degrees Aries.

Personally, I’m feeling extremely excited about being alive for the birthing of our new world, whatever disruptions pave the way. I’m bursting with creative ideas, with dozens of project notes accumulating, despite temporary real-life obstacles to implementation; thanks for slowing me down, Saturn ;-)

Let me know in the comments if you’re feeling the creative impulse and how you’re grounding that, despite any potential delays or obstacles.

Blessed be

Linda 💜

Along with the challenges, there have been great gifts within this diversion, something I will perhaps write more on in the future. Meanwhile my work has been put on hold while I tend to mum and her well-being as she slowly recovers from a broken hip. And while I do get a couple of hours of “me” time in the evening, I am without my usual resources and tools, and indeed mental bandwidth, to keep up with my writing. My hope is that normal service can resume soon dear reader, for there is so much epoch changing astrology, now and in the months ahead, the bow waves already very present in the world and clearly visible. And I’m keen to help bring some meaning and sense making to assist you in navigating these times.

What has kept me sane and able to show up with grace throughout the last month is my connection to spirit, the angelic realm in particular, wisdom texts and practices. The essay below was drafted before my current family challenges. I post it now in lieu of an astrology update, in the hope that it provides a reminder of the resources available to us when faced with challenging times and circumstances. With love & blessings, Linda 💜

Finding Your Centre When Everything Around You Is Falling Apart

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world right now, you’re not alone. The systems we’ve relied upon are showing their cracks—politically, economically and socially. News cycles spin with crisis after crisis. It can feel like we are standing in a tumble dryer while reality rearranges itself around us.

So how do we navigate these times with more grace and less fear? As a practising Hellenistic astrologer, I am deeply drawn to the spiritual and philosophical understanding of the ancient world and its deep wisdom. One of these philosophers was the Neoplatonist, Plotinus. Writing during the Crisis of the Third Century (a period of plague, civil war, economic collapse, and invasions), Plotinus understood something profound about how to remain centred during chaos. And his insights, rooted in the spiritual wisdom and philosophy of his time, offer practical guidance to help us navigate the chaos we find ourselves in today.

Plotinus’ view was that while external circumstances change and systems dissolve, there exists a deeper reality – a part of us connected to something eternal and unchanging. We are not talking here about avoiding the real challenges we face or pretending everything is okay. Instead, it’s about finding inner stability that enables us to respond wisely rather than react impulsively.

Understanding What’s Really Happening

The institutions and systems around us are falling apart because they’ve become disconnected from their original purpose. They’ve become rigid structures, defending themselves rather than serving the people and ideals for which they were created.

Plotinus would say these forms have lost their soul—they’re running on empty. And when forms become too rigid or corrupt, they must dissolve so something new can emerge. This is the natural rhythm of how change happens in our world. It’s uncomfortable, sometimes frightening, but not meaningless.

What we’re experiencing is a collective passage through what I’ve called “the birth canal”—a time of necessary constriction and darkness before emergence into new possibilities. We can’t skip this process, but we can navigate it more consciously.

A brief clarification about my approach: While I draw heavily on Plotinus’s wisdom for navigating turbulent times, my own philosophical leaning aligns more closely with his successor Iamblichus when it comes to the material realm. Plotinus viewed matter as the lowest level of reality—almost a dimming or loss of being—and taught that spiritual ascent required turning away from material concerns toward pure contemplation. Iamblichus, by contrast, insisted that the material world is ensouled and encoded with divine powers. Rather than fleeing matter, we can work through it to reach the divine—through ritual, symbol, creative practice, and engagement with beauty in physical form. This is why several of my seven practices emphasise embodied action: creating beauty, serving in the world, and working with symbolic languages like astrology.

I find Iamblichus’s more affirming view of matter both philosophically compelling and practically necessary for our times—we cannot transcend our lived reality. Yet Plotinus’s core insight remains invaluable: that we possess an inner stability connected to something eternal, and that cultivating this connection allows us to navigate outer chaos with wisdom and grace. The two philosophers differ in their metaphysics but converge in their recognition that we are dual citizens—beings who participate in both current and eternal realities.1

Seven Practices for Navigating Turbulent Times

Drawing from Plotinus’s timeless wisdom, here are seven practices that can help you stay grounded, purposeful, and even hopeful during these chaotic times.

1. Create Daily Rituals That Reconnect You With Something Larger

When the outer world feels unstable, establishing regular practices that ground you in something deeper becomes essential. We are not talking about escaping reality - it’s about resourcing yourself so that you can engage with reality from a place of strength rather than depletion.

Plotinus emphasised the importance of what he called “contemplation”—regular time spent turning inward to reconnect with the eternal aspect of ourselves. This might look like:

• Morning stillness: Before checking your phone or news, spend some time in meditation, prayer, or simply sitting quietly with a cup of tea, consciously connecting with your breath and the present moment.

• Time in nature: Walk without your phone (or at least with it turned off), letting the natural world remind you of her rhythms. Notice the seasons continuing their enduring cycles regardless of political chaos.

• Creative practice: Engage with art, music, poetry, or craft work that absorbs you completely. These moments of flow connect you with something beyond your worried thoughts.

• Sacred reading: Spend time with wisdom texts, inspirational writing, or poetry that speaks to your soul rather than your anxiety.

The point isn’t perfection but consistency. Even five minutes daily creates an anchor point, reminding you that there’s more to reality than the news cycle suggests.

2. Distinguish Between What’s Real and What’s Theatre

We’re bombarded with information designed to trigger fear, outrage, and anxiety. While real challenges exist, much of what fills our screens is surface drama—what Plotinus might call “shadows on the cave wall,” effects of deeper causes but not the causes themselves.

This doesn’t mean ignoring current events, but instead developing discernment about what actually matters and what’s manufactured to keep us discombobulated and disempowered.

Practical approaches:

• Limit news consumption: Choose one or two trusted sources and check them once daily rather than scrolling constantly. Your nervous system will thank you.

• Focus on deeper patterns: Rather than getting lost in daily political theatre, look for underlying trends and shifts. What’s actually changing beneath the noise?

• Ask better questions: Instead of “What terrible thing happened today?” ask “What would help me respond wisely to what’s happening?” or “Where is my energy best directed?”

• Notice what you can influence: Distinguish between what you can actually affect (your responses, your local community, your own wellbeing) and what you cannot (global events, other people’s choices, political outcomes).

Plotinus taught that focusing on eternal patterns rather than temporary chaos helps us perceive what’s truly important. The collapsing systems are real, but they’re not the most profound truth about existence.

3. Serve Others From Fullness, Not From Depletion

Many of us feel compelled to help, to make a difference, and to alleviate others’ suffering during difficult times. This impulse comes from a good place—our natural connection to each other and to something larger than ourselves.

But Plotinus understood that service offered from exhaustion or guilt doesn’t sustain us or others. When we give from a state of depletion, we eventually burn out or become resentful. Sustainable service flows from our connection to something abundant and renewing.

How this looks in practice:

• Fill your own cup first: Just as with the aeroplane oxygen mask instruction, ensure your basic needs for rest, nourishment, connection, and spiritual replenishment are met before extending yourself endlessly.

• Serve from your gifts: What comes naturally to you? What energises rather than drains you? Your service is most effective when it aligns with your genuine skills and interests.

• Set boundaries: Saying no to requests that would deplete you isn’t selfish—it preserves your capacity to serve where you’re most needed.

• Notice the difference: Pay attention to how different activities feel in your body. Service from fullness feels energising even when tiring. Service from depletion feels heavy and obligatory.

When you’ve taken time to reconnect with your centre (practice #1), you naturally serve from overflow rather than from a desperate attempt to fix what feels broken. Your presence becomes more helpful because you’re not adding your own panic to the situation.

4. Trust That Intelligence Is Working Through the Chaos

This is perhaps the most challenging practice, especially when things look dire. Plotinus taught that the cosmos is infused with divine intelligence—what he called “Soul”—that guides the unfolding of events even when we can’t perceive the pattern.

We are not talking about passive resignation or blind faith that everything will work out. It’s an active trust that allows us to respond appropriately rather than freeze in fear or react in panic.

Consider: you’re living through a time of profound transformation. Old systems that no longer serve us are dissolving. This is uncomfortable, but it’s also necessary for something new to emerge. The dissolution itself is part of the intelligence at work.

Cultivating this trust:

• Look for examples in your own life: Remember times when something falling apart eventually led to something better. Your resilience in the face of past difficulties proves that you can navigate uncertainty.

• Observe nature’s wisdom: Trees drop their leaves in autumn, appearing dead, yet spring always returns. Nature demonstrates that death and rebirth are natural cycles, not failures.

• Stay curious: Instead of deciding “this is terrible and will only get worse,” ask “what wants to emerge here?” or “what is this chaos making possible?”

• Connect with others who navigate well: Find people who face difficulties with grace. Their example reminds you it’s possible and will give you strength.

This trust doesn’t mean you ignore problems or fail to take action. It means you act from wisdom rather than fear, from possibility rather than despair.

5. Work With Beauty, Meaning, and the Symbolic

Plotinus wrote that beauty arrests us, stops our worried thinking, and awakens something deeper within us. In difficult times, engaging with beauty and creating meaning isn’t frivolous—it’s essential spiritual work.

When we work with art, myth, astrology, poetry, or any symbolic language, we’re connecting with patterns that exist beyond the chaos of current events. We’re reminding ourselves that human experience has depth and purpose that transcends immediate circumstances.

Ways to engage:

• Create something: Paint, write, garden, cook, craft—any act of creation connects you with the generative force that moves through all life.

• Engage with myth and archetype: Read stories of transformation, study the wisdom traditions, work with astrological insights. These symbolic languages help us understand our experiences as part of larger patterns.

• Seek beauty intentionally: Visit art galleries, listen to music that moves you, watch sunrises, or arrange flowers. Let beauty interrupt your worry.

• Share what you create: Your creative output, your insights, your perspective—these are gifts that help others find meaning too. You don’t need to be a professional artist to offer beauty to the world.

This isn’t escapism. Beauty and meaning-making are the ways the soul speaks, revealing deeper truths that become visible and accessible. In chaotic times, they’re acts of resistance against despair, hopelessness and overwhelm.

6. Remember You’re Living in Two Worlds Simultaneously

You’re an ensouled person in a specific time and place, dealing with practical concerns—bills, health, relationships, the challenges of daily life. This requires attention and appropriate action.

But you’re also connected to something eternal and unchanging—call it soul, spirit, higher self, or simply the awareness that witnesses your experience. This aspect of you remains untouched by the chaos, observing with compassion but not consumed by fear.

Plotinus taught that we have what he called “dual citizenship”—we’re simultaneously mortal and eternal. The mistake is identifying completely with either realm. If we focus only on the eternal, we become disconnected from practical reality and our responsibility to engage. If we focus only on the temporal, we become overwhelmed by circumstances and lose perspective.

Living with dual awareness:

• Check in with both levels: Throughout your day, pause to notice: “What’s my immediate situation requiring?” and “What does my deeper wisdom perceive about this?”

• Hold both truths: “Yes, this …… (fill in the dots) situation is genuinely concerning AND my essential nature remains whole and connected to something larger.”

• Act practically while remembering eternally: Pay your bills, care for your health, and engage with your community—all while maintaining a connection to the part of you that isn’t defined by circumstances.

• Use transitions as reminders: When you walk through doorways, get in your car, or sit down to eat, let these moments serve as reminders to reconnect with your deeper awareness.

This practice keeps you grounded and engaged while preventing the overwhelm that comes from believing temporary chaos is the whole story.

7. Choose Love Over Fear, Again and Again

Here’s perhaps the most practical guidance: in every moment of uncertainty, ask yourself, “What would love do?” This simple question cuts through complexity and reconnects you with your truest nature.

Plotinus taught that everything emerges from what he called “the One”—the ultimate source that is essentially identical with goodness and love. When we act from our connection to this source, we naturally express wisdom, compassion, and appropriate action.

Fear fragments us, making us contract, defend, and separate. Love—understood not as mere emotion but as our fundamental orientation toward wholeness and the good—allows us to remain open, connected, and responsive even under challenging circumstances. Live love as a verb.

Practising the choice:

• Notice when fear is driving: Tension in your body, urgent impulses to act, catastrophic thinking, desire to control outcomes—these signal fear-based consciousness.

• Pause and ask: “What would love do right now?” Sometimes love rests. Sometimes it acts. Sometimes it speaks the truth. Sometimes it listens. There’s no formula, but the question itself shifts your awareness.

• Start small: You don’t need to love your percived enemies or try to change global injustice. Start with choosing loving responses to your own inner critic, to the driver who cut you off, to your child’s tantrum.

• Understand love includes boundaries: Love doesn’t mean tolerating harm or accepting injustice. Sometimes the most loving response is a firm “no” or active resistance to what causes suffering.

Every small choice to act from love rather than fear—to respond rather than react, to trust rather than defend, to create rather than destroy—these align you with the deepest current of reality and contribute to collective transformation.

The Deeper Promise

What Plotinus offers us across nearly two millennia is something we desperately need right now: the assurance that chaos is not meaningless, that our deepest nature remains untouched by turbulence, and that the inner work we’re doing matters profoundly.

The systems falling apart around us have become disconnected from their soul, their original purpose. What emerges after this dissolution has the potential to be more aligned with wisdom, justice, and genuine care—but only if enough of us do the inner work while remaining engaged with practical reality.

You’re not just surviving a difficult time; you’re actively participating in a transformative process that has been building for generations. Every moment you choose presence over panic, every act of service from a place of fullness rather than depletion, and every time you create beauty or meaning amidst chaos—these aren’t small things. They’re how new possibilities are born.

Plotinus lived and taught during the Crisis of the Third Century—a fifty-year period of plague, economic collapse, civil wars, and barbarian invasions that brought the Roman Empire to the brink of destruction. Yet his philosophy not only survived but flourished, offering guidance to countless people across cultures and centuries precisely because it addressed both transcendent truth and practical wisdom for navigating systemic breakdown.

The times ahead may become more chaotic before new forms stabilise. But those who cultivate inner stability while remaining compassionately engaged become sources of light for others—not because they have all the answers, but because they embody the possibility of navigating difficulty with grace, purpose, and love rather than fear.

You already possess everything you need to navigate these times. The practices above simply help you remember and activate what’s already within you—the eternal aspect of yourself that remains connected to wisdom, love, and the creative intelligence moving through all things.

Trust yourself. Trust the process and trust that your presence, centred and compassionate, is precisely what the world needs right now.

On Saturday, December 20th at 01:43 UT, we have the New Moon in Jupiter-ruled, truth-seeking and meaning-making Sagittarius. This announces a reset in your Sagittarius house, unfolding over the next six months. It’s a potent time for setting intentions, goals and plans in this life area—but keep it real for maximum potential.

The New Moon is applying to a square with Neptune (dreams, dissolution and illusions) while separating from a square to Saturn (boundaries and limits). Venus is also applying to a square with Saturn, exact on the 20th, and to Neptune, exact on the 29th. Mercury follows suit, forming squares to Saturn on the 29th and Neptune on January 1st. Boundaries, limits, and the dissolving of illusions may feature heavily over this holiday period.

The New Moon sits within the bound of Mars (severing and initiatory action) and the decan of Saturn, creating friction as our starting point—expanding the potential for Saturn’s limits. Yet it’s ruled by the great benefic Jupiter, who is retrograde in his exaltation of Cancer and within his own bound and the Moon’s decan, softening any potential harshness from malefics Mars and Saturn. Jupiter, the ruler of this new moon, is separating from a flowing trine with Saturn—neither overly restrictive nor expansive.

Let’s look at the nature of a square to better understand these aspects. Squares challenge us through constraints. Yet here we have a deeply spiritualised Neptune and Saturn within Jupiter’s mystical sign of Pisces—responsibilities or capacity that may limit our goals, yes, but also spiritual depth to draw upon.

Seeding the new despite obstacles brings growth with meaning—very Jupiter! This is where Mars cuts through and Saturn provides the necessary limits. Initiation meets delay or obstruction, which can equal frustration. Or it meets Neptune’s illusiveness and dissolution. Perhaps the incoming 3i Atlas energies (see below) will simply make any long-term plans or goals obsolete as our reality shifts in unexpected ways? The astrology certainly fits.

Neptune sits in the bound of Saturn and decan of Mars; Saturn is in both the decan and bound of Mars—reinforcing themes of cutting through illusion to reach bedrock truth.

Any new moon intentions or goals will need to include courage, discipline, structure and a reality check. Plan for some obstacles and delays, remembering that Jupiter, who has your back, wins through in the end, and you won’t be disappointed.

A lovely flowing trine between Venus in Sagittarius and Chiron in Aries brings the potential for relational healing without too much effort during the solstice and new moon period, if we focus on that outcome.

At the same time, Jupiter squares Chiron, an aspect that offers the chance to integrate healthy self-assertion with emotional wisdom. Jupiter’s benefic nature in his exaltation suggests that healing is possible—we can learn to be warriors for our own well-being while remaining open-hearted. The wound becomes the teacher, showing us that genuine care includes self-advocacy.

Mercury squaring the Nodes suggests incoming messages that bring challenge or changes to our destiny. I’m aligning this one as a possible signature of 3i Atlas outcomes (see below).

Winter Solstice

The winter solstice occurs when Earth’s axial tilt positions one hemisphere at its maximum distance from the sun, resulting in the shortest day and longest night of the year. In the Northern Hemisphere, this happens around December 21st. Astronomically this marks the beginning of winter, though many ancient traditions recognise it as midwinter—the very heart of the dark season—which is reflected in its pagan name, Midwinter or Yule.

At this time, the Sun appears to remain at the same place for approximately three days at noon and is said to “stand still”—which is where we get the meaning of Solstice, derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still).

From this point forward, the days gradually lengthen as the sun’s path across the sky begins its slow climb higher. Astrologically, the winter solstice coincides with the Sun’s entry into Capricorn, a cardinal earth sign associated with ambition, structure, and perseverance. This moment has been celebrated across cultures for millennia as a turning point—a symbolic death and rebirth of the sun. Many traditions view it as a time of introspection, renewal, and the triumph of light over darkness, as it represents the promise that warmth and vitality will gradually return. Ancient monuments like Stonehenge and Newgrange were precisely aligned to mark this celestial event, underscoring its profound significance to human civilisation.

With all the squares forming and separating, it’s not a great time for action, but with the solstice and Sagittarian new moon, it’s the perfect time for envisioning and intention setting while allowing matters no longer aligned to dissolve.

3i Atlas: An Interstellar Visitor

Adding to this potent mix, on the day before our new moon, we have our newest interstellar visitor to our solar system, 3i Atlas, making its closest pass to Earth. Interestingly, it has been suggested that this object hailed from the direction of the Galactic Centre, and the new moon is close to this degree. While we don’t know much about this object, its trajectory and timing has been rather synchronous and continues to be so. It’s almost as if it purposefully made a pit stop on the far side of the Sun to take on energy - it was blasted by a huge coronal mass ejection - with a resulting dispersing of these same energies upon Earth at a symbolic death and rebirth moment (the incoming new moon and solstice).

We live in epochal times, and we are definitely in new territory with the arrival of 3i Atlas and its potential outcomes. What it all means, we cannot tell, but those who have been channelling this entity believe this is good news indeed. The overall message appears to be that it is here to wake us up with the love energy of the heart as it flies past, dispensing its new energetic frequencies to us and our local planets via Light codes. Let us hope so—humanity could do with some!

Moving Forward

This forthcoming week, leading up to the new moon and winter solstice, represents the darkest phase of the lunar cycle together with the darkest phase of the solar cycle—a time for rest, reset and inner work of release; quintessential bear retreats to cave time rather than the busyness the holiday season prep might normally produce. At the same time, we are being advised to expect massive downloads and energetic imprinting from 3i Atlas, which calls for grounding and integration.

My hope is that you can find some time for respite, some grounding in nature to hold the incoming energies healthily, and the opportunity to release the outworn while envisioning what is alive for you as we move into a new year and potentially exciting new beginnings. Despite the constraints and dissolution this new moon presents, remember that Jupiter’s benevolent hand guides us towards growth, meaning, and ultimately, truth. The light is about to return, perhaps in more ways than we can imagine.

Do let me know in the comments if and how your feeling the incoming energies and downloads.

Wishing you New Moon, Solstice and Yule Blessings on your journery 🙏💜

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Have you ever noticed that LOVE spelt backwards is EVOL - the root of the word evolution?

This is not simple wordplay. It reveals something profound and points to an ancient philosophy: love is the force driving all evolution, from our personal growth to the cosmos itself.

Recently, I’ve been exploring how this philosophy might connect to three different types of cosmic movement, each operating at different speeds, all working together in a beautiful dance of consciousness evolving.

The Three Motions of Love: A Cosmic Dance

Imagine three dancers, each moving at their own pace, yet perfectly synchronised:

1. The Slowest Dance: Divine Evolution (Cosmic Time)

The ancients understood something we’re only now remembering: the divine experiences itself through us. Every joy you feel, every challenge you overcome, every moment of love or insight, isn’t just a personal experience. They’re how ultimate consciousness knows itself, grows, and evolves.

The stars themselves are slowly moving, being born and dying across billions of years, as the cosmos slowly evolves. This happens so slowly we can barely perceive it - like watching a mountain grow - yet it’s intimately connected to everything we do. Our collective experiences feed into the divine’s own unfolding. The slow movement of the cosmos is, I propose, the physical manifestation of this divine unfolding.

Timescale: Infinity

2. The Steady Rhythm: Our Daily Framework (Earth’s Rotation)

Earth spins on its axis every 24 hours, creating day and night, sunrise and sunset. This steady, reliable rhythm provides the stable framework for all life on our planet. It’s like the stage upon which the drama of our lives unfolds - constant, dependable, divine order made manifest.

Timescale: 24 hours

3. The Dynamic Dance: Our Personal Experience (Planetary Movements)

The planets move through the sky at different speeds - the Moon changing signs every 2-3 days, the Sun monthly, while Saturn takes roughly 29 years to complete its cycle around the whole zodiac of twelve signs. These movements mirror the rhythm and cycles of our experiences, reflecting the challenges and opportunities unfolding in our lives. This is where we feel change, growth, and transformation happening - our evolution.

Timescale: Days to decades

The Beautiful Ancient Philosophy: We Are How the Divine Knows Itself

The ancient philosophers knew this truth: we aren’t separate from the divine, looking up at it from afar. We are the divine looking at itself through infinite perspectives, learning, growing, becoming more through each of our unique experiences.

When you overcome heartbreak, the universe discovers more resilience through you. When you create something beautiful from pain, consciousness itself learns more about the alchemy of transformation. When you find courage in the face of fear, divine awareness experiences more of what it means to be brave.

How you respond to those experiences - how you grow, love, and evolve - feeds back into ultimate consciousness itself - a consciousness we are all an integral part of - contributing to its evolution.

The Three Motions of Love: A Theory

My thesis is that the three motions of love, as I outlined above, are the physical manifestation of this ancient philosophy. This places astrology firmly in the role of a divinatory practice in the true sense of the word - to know the divine - and is why I consider astrology to be a spiritual practice.

As above, so below. As below, so above.

What This Means for Your Life

Every challenge you face isn’t random. It’s part of a cosmic pattern that astrology can help us read - an invitation from the cosmos for consciousness to unfold a little more, to discover something new about itself through your unique experience.

The divine is experiencing what it’s like to be you, right now, in this moment. Your struggles matter. Your growth matters. Your love matters - not just to you, but to the evolution of all consciousness. You are an integral part of all that is, a cosmos alive with meaning and inherent purpose.

The Spiral Home

This journey isn’t a straight line. It’s a spiral. You’ll revisit the same lessons, the same themes, but each time from a different perspective and vantage point, gained from the wisdom of your experiences.

The word “evolution” comes from the Latin evolvere, “to unroll”, like unrolling a scroll to reveal what was already written there but hidden from view.

Your spiritual evolution is the gradual revelation of what you already are: love itself, a unique expression of divine consciousness, temporarily having forgotten so you could experience the joy of remembering.

And through that remembering - through your journey of unfolding - ultimate consciousness evolves too.

Love Is Evolution, Spelt Backwards

Simply put, love and evolution are the same thing. We’re actually how the divine, as us, knows and evolves itself.

Understanding this profound truth transforms everything. Every moment becomes a sacred gift, every challenge a chance for growth, every relationship a mirror reflecting our divine selves, and every experience an invitation to fully awaken and embrace our true potential.

We’re all part of this incredible cosmic dance, evolving through matter back to the love that’s our source, our path, and our ultimate destination. Divinity is experiencing itself through us, becoming through our unique journey home to love.

So, what would love look like today, through you, as you?

This is a simplified introduction to a framework I’ve been developing that synthesises ancient Hermetic and Platonic philosophy with modern understandings of consciousness and evolution. This framework, which I have called “The Three Motions of Love”, is rooted within the divinatory lens of astrology. If you’re interested in the deeper philosophical and astrological foundations, I’ll be publishing the full hypothesis soon - subscribe and stay tuned!

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🎁Two Quirky Gift Ideas for Your Loved Ones💝

Astrology Consultation Gift Vouchers now in Store - £75

An unusual and useful gift of an astrology consultation may be just the thing for your loved one. The minimum one-hour appointment, held online, can focus on any life area or question of concern and is recorded for the client to revisit time and again.

What others are saying….

Linda looked into my birth chart and what will be coming up for the year ahead both opportunities and challenges. I found the whole experience fascinating, and it was clear that a lot of time and preparation had gone into the work on my chart before we met to discuss its content. It was great to have a truly unique experience and Linda kindly recorded the consultation so I can refer back to it at a later date. I would highly recommend a consultation with Linda if you are looking for a truly bespoke service. Lisa S, UK.

Linda was very good, she explained things in a simple and understandable manner without loosing the depth or complexity of the subject. I was very pleased and came out of the consultation having learned alot about my chart and myself. Valentina B, UK

Buy Now

Astro Magic: Awakening Your Cosmic Blueprint Workshop Bundle - £25

Perfect for complete beginners seeking a solid foundation in understanding the birth chart - your cosmic blueprint. Using the traditional whole-house system favoured by ancient astrologers, this workshop reveals astrology as a profound spiritual practice—your personal map for living in harmony with cosmic rhythms.

What others are saying….

This workshop provided a strong foundation for understanding the first piece of the astrology puzzle. She was engaging and I truly felt I was there with her. VDP, USA

Linda is an absolute authority in the field of Astrology with a talent for teaching the subject clearly and with passion. LPS, Warks, UK

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Thursday’s Gemini Full Moon is a supermoon, which means that the moon is much closer to Earth than usual, increasing its potency. Here’s hoping that the skies will be clear so that we can all enjoy a super big and bright illumination as Lady Moon lights up the night.

Full Moons illuminate or reveal - they are an accumulation point, the blooming of whatever was seeded at the last New Moon in the sign in which the Full Moon occurs. Our last Gemini New Moon was on 27th May, 2025. Check back on what was seeding for you at this time to understand what is coming to fruition - journal entries, messages and social media can help your recall.

If you have a copy of your birth chart, you will know which house Gemini occupies in your chart and therefore which subject areas this Full Moon will be highlighting (see diagram below). My video at the end of this piece explains how to get a free copy of your birth chart if you haven’t got a copy to hand. Having your birth chart allows you to really personalise my astrology updates through understanding the house and thereby subject areas that are being activated in your chart.

A Mercury-ruled Full Moon

This Full Moon is ruled by magical Mercury, the messenger, trickster and all-around mental magician of the airy masculine sign of Gemini, the Twins. We naturally think of Mercury as being about communication, and yet he is so much more than this. See my previous post linked below to learn more about this magical deity.

Gemini Full Moon Potential

Like all full moons, the Moon in Gemini (intelligence) opposes the Sun in fiery Sagittarius (wisdom). Oppositions bring push-me-pull-me energy, and with these two signs, there’s tension between different ways of knowing. The Sun and Moon also represent the challenge between ego and emotion, assertion and empathy—masculine and feminine, yin and yang. Thankfully, the masculine Sun carries Sagittarius’s wisdom while the feminine Moon holds Gemini’s intelligence, offering the possibility of balancing these polarities. There is a need though to be mindful of indecisiveness or paralysis that oppositions can bring—awareness helps you harness the available energy towards meaningful action.

What makes this full moon particularly significant is that both the Sun and Moon are squaring the Nodes (sensitive points) at 13° Pisces/Virgo, creating a Grand Cross—a complete cross pattern where two oppositions square each other. This is a powerful configuration, bringing tension from all four directions with no easy release point.

The mutable quality of this Grand Cross (formed across Gemini, Sagittarius, Pisces, and Virgo) offers some flexibility and adaptability, but it can also scatter our focus and create restlessness. Of all the Grand Cross configurations, those in mutable signs are the most fluid, allowing us to adjust and respond to changing circumstances. However, this same flexibility can make it challenging to maintain clarity and direction when pulled in multiple directions simultaneously. The involvement of the nodes, adds a karmic dimension, a sense of fate or destiny, to this lunation, marking it as a significant turning point rather than an ordinary full moon.

The Grand Cross demands we hold the complexity of multiple truths simultaneously: the nodal axis brings our collective karmic journey into sharp focus, with the Virgo-Pisces path of practical service meeting spiritual surrender, discernment meeting faith, while the Gemini-Sagittarius opposition wrestles with the tension between information and meaning, facts and belief.

In summary, we have:

• The tension of the full moon opposition

• The karmic/fated quality of nodal involvement

• The mutable quality of adaptability but also scattered focus

• The pressure from all four directions that Grand Crosses bring

This is a pivotal moment for emotional clarity and conscious choice. With the Grand Cross amplifying the full moon’s energy, this lunar phase asks us to use our emotional intelligence to make genuine shifts in our lives and in service to those around us. The mutable quality allows us to adapt and flow, but we must be conscious not to scatter ourselves across too many directions at once.

Mercury Triggers the Grand Water Trine

Following the full moon, between the 6th and 7th of December, Mercury in Scorpio activates for the final time the flowing energies of the grand water trine with Jupiter in Cancer and Saturn in Pisces. This brings transformational ideas and penetrating insights into the storylines that have been developing around matters of security, nourishment, and emotional belonging (Jupiter in Cancer) and compassionate responsibility, spiritual maturity, and surrender (Saturn in Pisces).

Mercury in Scorpio digs deep, unearthing truths that have been hidden beneath the surface. As it completes this final conversation with Jupiter and Saturn in the grand water trine, there’s an opportunity for profound emotional and psychological integration. The trine aspect—120 degrees between planets—represents effortless flow and harmonious support, allowing these energies to work together naturally. In the water element, this flow moves through feeling, intuition, and soul-level knowing.

The Kite Configuration

With the Moon at 27° Cancer and Neptune at 29° Pisces, both forming sextiles to Uranus at 28° Taurus, we have a kite configuration built upon the grand water trine. The sextile—a 60-degree aspect—brings opportunity and ease, like an open door inviting productive collaboration between planetary energies. It’s gentler than a trine but requires some conscious participation to activate its potential.

In this kite, Uranus in Taurus serves as the focal point, receiving supportive sextiles from both the Moon and Neptune while opposing Mercury. This configuration channels the emotional and spiritual wisdom of the grand water trine into breakthrough moments around material security, embodied values, and radical shifts in how we resource ourselves. The Moon sextile Uranus opens us to intuitive flashes about our emotional needs, while Neptune sextile Uranus dissolves old structures that no longer serve our spiritual evolution.

The opposition between Mercury and Uranus creates dynamic tension—the push needed to move beyond comfortable waters into new territory. Mercury’s psychological depth in Scorpio challenges Uranus to revolutionise our relationship with stability from the inside out.

Important Update

The recent Mercury retrograde had me reviewing how I deliver value to you, dear reader, while managing my new responsibilities. For the last few months, I have been spending the majority of the week looking after my elderly mother, which includes a 300-mile round trip, necessitating staying over. While I don’t begrudge this new turn of events, it does mean I have far less time and energy for my own work in the world.

After much soul searching, I have decided to simplify and streamline my output by concentrating on my writing, astrology consultations and spiritual mentoring services, and removing the need to upkeep a flashy website and store.

I have transferred my products and services over to my Buy Me A Coffee site, where you will now find my shop as well as a donation page. You will also find a gallery page for my art, though the uploading remains a work in progress with a sales function yet to be included. Meanwhile, if you would like to purchase a print or original of my artwork, please DM me.

Due to my additional responsibilities, I have also cut back on my availability for consultations to two days per week - Sundays and Mondays. If these days are not suitable for you, please do get in touch, as I’m sure that we can schedule an alternative with enough notice.

With all these changes, I have aimed to ensure that I continue to deliver great content and service while also allowing me some much-needed downtime. How is your work-life balance?

🎁Two Quirky Gift Ideas for Your Loved Ones💝

Astrology Consultation Gift Vouchers now in Store - £75

An unusual and useful gift of an astrology consultation may be just the thing for your loved one. The minimum one-hour appointment, held online, can focus on any life area or question of concern and is recorded for the client to revisit time and again.

What others are saying….

Linda looked into my birth chart and what will be coming up for the year ahead both opportunities and challenges. I found the whole experience fascinating, and it was clear that a lot of time and preparation had gone into the work on my chart before we met to discuss its content. It was great to have a truly unique experience and Linda kindly recorded the consultation so I can refer back to it at a later date. I would highly recommend a consultation with Linda if you are looking for a truly bespoke service. Lisa S, UK.

Linda was very good, she explained things in a simple and understandable manner without loosing the depth or complexity of the subject. I was very pleased and came out of the consultation having learned alot about my chart and myself. Valentina B, UK

Buy Now

Astro Magic: Awakening Your Cosmic Blueprint Workshop Bundle - £25

Perfect for complete beginners seeking a solid foundation in understanding the birth chart - your cosmic blueprint. Using the traditional whole-house system favoured by ancient astrologers, this workshop reveals astrology as a profound spiritual practice—your personal map for living in harmony with cosmic rhythms.

What others are saying….

This workshop provided a strong foundation for understanding the first piece of the astrology puzzle. She was engaging and I truly felt I was there with her. VDP, USA

Linda is an absolute authority in the field of Astrology with a talent for teaching the subject clearly and with passion. LPS, Warks, UK

Buy Now

And yet - somehow plugging into my ancestral memories of times long past, when we celebrated this threshold moment, honoured and ritualised its profound meaning - I had looked forward to starting my periods as a day of celebration, a coming of age, my entry into womanhood.

Alas, that was not to be. The emotional trauma born from my mother’s reaction to an event that I had looked forward to with both trepidation and real excitement was horribly wounding. Instead of kind, loving support, guidance and practical help, what I got was a barrage of negativity, an abandonment of any empathy or motherly care, with a terse and exasperated “I haven’t got anything for you to use, you will just have to tear up a sheet and use that”.

My mother promptly went back to her Valium haloed bed and retreated under the covers. I was left bereft, confused and deflated. I no longer blame my mother (thank you, Grandmother Ayahuasca); she had her own demons she was desperately trying to numb, lacking the ability to respond in any other way.

The wounding around my life experience with periods probably resulted in an escalating trend towards physical pain and embarrassment around my monthly “curse”, as it became known to me. Although I regret it now, a full hysterectomy in my early forties, due to various complications, seemed the sensible thing to do and a relief. The aftereffects, though, have left me feeling a gaping raw hole where my womb and uterus used to live - it is as though my very womanhood has been torn from me. And in a real physical sense, that is true, a part of me has been. I sometimes wonder how things would have turned out if I had started my emotional healing journey before this monumental decision, a journey which may, possibly, have negated the need for such drastic surgery.

Then, recently, something unexpected happened while scrolling YouTube Shorts. A very young man (I’m guessing around seventeen, possibly younger) cosplaying a woman suffering from period pain sparked a volcanic rage in me. A rage I would go on to express through the cathartic painting below, entitled “Real Women Bleed”.

So why talk about this publicly and risk an avalanche of slurs and cancellation by simply stating a biological fact? Because, having reached elderhood, I no longer feel held back from being able to express and speak out about my art and the deep places from which it emerges. It is my truth, it comes from my actual lived experience, and I refuse to be silenced by those who would seek to hijack my battle-worn womanhood.

Crucially, this painting speaks to the importance of something we have lost in modern culture to our detriment. For it is my firm belief that by honouring and ritualising the profound event of menarche in young women’s lives, we can prevent unnecessary embarrassment and possible trauma, helping them to enjoy a healthy connection with their natural bodies. I feel that the loss of ritual continues to have a deeply negative effect on our lives, and it’s something I am increasingly passionate about resurrecting.

One has to wonder at how emotionally healthier our children and society at large would be if we were to better honour life’s natural milestones with reverence and ritual. Is it not time to do so?

This Grand Water Trine, involving Jupiter in Cancer, Saturn/Neptune in Pisces, and the Scorpio New Moon with Mercury’s combustion, creates one of the most graceful yet intense configurations of the year—smooth flowing water meeting alchemical fire, death meeting rebirth, endings meeting beginnings. These are not isolated events but interconnected movements in the cosmic dance that has been unfolding throughout 2025 and far beyond.

Through the lens of Hellenistic astrology—the ancient tradition that views planetary movements as both material world markers and spiritual invitations—we find a map for navigating this liminal season with wisdom, grace, and intentionality.

The New Moon in Scorpio with Mercury Combustion: November 20th

On November 20th at 6:47 UT, the Sun and Moon unite at 28 degrees 11 minutes of Scorpio, creating the darkest lunation of the zodiacal year. This moment when the Moon rests in the very heart of the Sun represents a sacred reset point, a cosmic seed moment where intention meets potential.

What makes this New Moon exceptional is that Mercury is cazimi, positioned at 28 degrees 27 minutes of Scorpio, and exactly cojoins the Sun approximately three hours after the lunation perfects. This creates a powerful triple conjunction: Sun, Moon, and Mercury all within one degree at the heart of Scorpio.

Mercury Combustion: Death, Dissolution, and Rebirth

When a planet comes within approximately 17 minutes of the Sun’s exact degree, it enters the state of cazimi—literally “in the heart” of the Sun. But this is not a comfortable place. The planet is said to be combust, burned up, consumed by the Sun’s overwhelming fire, rendered invisible in the sky.

Combustion is a process of death and dissolution. The planet loses its separate identity, its visible presence, its independent voice. It is overwhelmed, destroyed, and alchemically dissolved in solar fire. For Mercury—planet of thought, communication, and perception—combustion in Scorpio represents:

- The death of old mental patterns and ways of thinking

- Dissolution of false narratives we’ve been telling ourselves

- Burning away of superficial understanding to reach the core truth

- Ego death in the realm of ideas and perception

- The invisible becoming visible —truths hidden in darkness brought to light through fire

Mercury cazimi at a Scorpio New Moon is profoundly alchemical. Scorpio governs the processes of death, putrefaction, and regeneration. Mercury entering the Sun’s heart in this sign is like the alchemical “nigredo” —the blackening, the death phase, the necessary decomposition before new life can emerge.

But combustion is not merely destruction—it is transformation through annihilation. What burns away is the dross, the false, the no-longer-needed. What emerges on the other side, phoenix-like, when Mercury eventually separates from the Sun and becomes visible again as the morning star, is Mercury reborn, transformed, carrying new knowledge acquired through the death journey.

At this New Moon, Mercury is being granted passage through the underworld. He is burning in Scorpio’s transformative fires, dying to old ways of knowing, and will be reborn with penetrating insight that can only come through dissolution and reformation.

Working with Mercury’s Combustion

This is not a time for business-as-usual thinking in matters concerning your natal Scorpio and Mercury houses. Mercury combust in Scorpio at the New Moon asks for:

Surrender of mental certainty: Allow your fixed ideas to burn. What you thought you knew may need to die completely before a more accurate understanding can emerge.

Psychological excavation: With Mercury invisible/combust, truth emerges not through rational analysis but through descent into the unconscious, dreams, shadow work, and allowing buried material to surface.

Alchemical dissolution: Let old stories, beliefs, and mental frameworks dissolve in the heart of the sun. Trust that what needs to survive the fire will survive; what burns away needed to go.

Threshold wisdom: Mercury at the Sun’s heart is between death and rebirth, between the old mind and the new mind. This liminal space, though uncomfortable, is where genuine transformation occurs.

Trust the invisible process: You may not immediately understand what’s happening. Mercury combust means the process is happening in darkness, in the invisible realms. Trust it anyway.

The hours around the New Moon and Mercury’s exact cazimi represent a window of extraordinary potency—the Moon’s reset meeting Mercury’s death-rebirth in Scorpio’s alchemical waters. Pay attention to dreams, sudden realisations, and what surfaces from the depths during this time. These are messages from the underworld, truths that can only be known through the death journey.

What wants to die in your thinking? What false understanding is burning away? What will Mercury reveal on the other side of this fire that could not be known before?

Jupiter Stations Retrograde in Cancer: November 11th

At the New Moon, Jupiter, the great benefic, the planet of expansion, wisdom, and faith, is retrograde at 25 degrees of Cancer. This is particularly significant because Cancer is Jupiter’s sign of exaltation, the zodiacal placement where the planet expresses its most refined and elevated qualities.

In Hellenistic astrology, exaltation represents a planet operating at its highest virtue. Jupiter in Cancer embodies wisdom expressed through emotional intelligence, growth rooted in care and nurturing, and abundance that flows from genuine connection rather than mere accumulation. This is Jupiter as the wise elder who knows that true prosperity includes emotional wealth, family bonds, and the capacity to provide shelter and nourishment—both literal and metaphorical.

When Jupiter is retrograde in his exaltation, the invitation is inward rather than outward. Instead of expanding our horizons externally, we’re asked to deepen the roots of our wisdom, to consolidate our gains, and to ensure that our growth is authentic and sustainable. This retrograde period, lasting until March 2026, offers time to ask crucial questions:

- Is my vision for growth aligned with my emotional truth?

- Have I been expanding in ways that truly nourish my soul, or simply in ways that look impressive?

- Where have I overextended my resources, time, or energy in ways that lack real substance?

- What does abundance actually mean to me, beyond material accumulation?

Jupiter retrograde in Cancer also relates to themes of ancestry, lineage, and the wisdom traditions we’ve inherited. What ancestral knowledge needs to be recovered and integrated? What patterns inherited from family systems need conscious examination? Where can you access the deep well of wisdom that flows through your lineage?

This retrograde period, while being a withdrawal of Jupiter’s beneficence, is also a refining of it. By the time Jupiter stations direct in March, we’ll have a clearer, more grounded understanding of what genuine growth and authentic prosperity look like in relation to our natal Cancer and Jupiter house topics.

Saturn Stations Direct in Pisces: The Final Pass

One of the significant events of late November is Saturn’s direct station in Pisces around November 27-28. This is particularly important because it represents Saturn’s FINAL station in Pisces before the planet moves into Aries in February 2026, concluding a transit that began in March 2023.

Saturn in Pisces has been a paradoxical transit—the planet of form, structure, and boundaries moving through the sign of formlessness, dissolution, and boundlessness. Yet this apparent contradiction has yielded profound teachings about the structure of spirituality, the discipline of compassion, and the necessity of boundaries even within the realm of infinite possibility.

In Hellenistic astrology, Saturn is the greater malefic, but malefic doesn’t mean evil; it means challenging, restrictive, and reality-testing - things we don’t necessarily like, hence malefic! Saturn brings us face to face with limits, consequences, and the need for responsibility. In Pisces, these lessons have manifested in the spiritual and emotional realm and are connected to your Pisces house topics in some manner:

- What structures support your spiritual practice versus what spiritual bypassing have you engaged in?

- Where have you needed to set boundaries around your empathy to avoid compassion fatigue?

- How have you learned to give practical form to your dreams and visions?

- What illusions has Saturn stripped away to reveal deeper truths?

This final direct station brings clarity and resolution. Pay close attention to insights, realisations, or concrete developments that emerge around this time—they represent the culmination of lessons Saturn in Pisces has been teaching since early 2023. These are the teachings you’re meant to integrate and carry forward as Saturn prepares to enter the initiatory fire of Aries.

Many people have experienced Saturn in Pisces as a period of spiritual maturation, in which naive idealism gave way to grounded faith, unstructured spiritual seeking became disciplined practice, and the capacity to hold both divine mystery and earthly responsibility deepened.

As Saturn stations direct, there’s often a sense of completion, a final exam passed, a lesson finally learned. Honour what you’ve built and what you’ve learned. The next chapter begins soon.

The Grand Water Trine: A Sacred Geometry of Flow

Perhaps the most remarkable feature of November 2025 is the formation of a Grand Water Trine —one of the most harmonious and powerful configurations in all of astrology - exact on November 16th. This is not a single aspect but a complete triangular circuit connecting all three water signs in perfect 120-degree harmony (you can clearly see the trine in the chart image above as a large triangle).

The Grand Water Trine involves:

- Jupiter at 25°01’ Cancer (exalted, retrograde)

- Saturn at 25°12’ Pisces (retrograde at the New Moon, in incredibly tight trine to Jupiter - only 11 minutes of arc!)

- Neptune at 29°29’ Pisces (retrograde at the anaretic degree - the very last degree before Aries)

- New Moon/Mercury combust at 28° Scorpio (completing the water triangle through death and rebirth)

The Jupiter-Saturn trine at 25 degrees is remarkably precise, creating an exceptionally stable foundation for the entire configuration. Meanwhile, Neptune at the 29th degree of Pisces—the anaretic or critical degree—sits at the very threshold between Pisces and Aries, between the dissolution of the old and the initiation of the new. This is Neptune at maximum Piscean intensity, on the verge of a monumental sign change which occurs on 26th January 2026.

The Uranus Opposition: Lightning Strikes Water

Adding dramatic tension and breakthrough potential to this flowing water configuration is Uranus retrograde at 29° Taurus, creating:

- Opposition to the New Moon/Mercury combust in Scorpio: Sudden revelations, unexpected disruptions, liberation from old patterns—lightning strikes accelerating the death-rebirth process

- Sextile to Saturn and Neptune in Pisces: Supportive, flowing connection that helps stabilise Uranian breakthroughs

This creates a powerful dynamic pattern where the smooth flow of the Grand Water Trine is electrified by Uranus. The opposition brings sudden awareness, shocking truths, and revolutionary insights into the deep psychological work of the Scorpio New Moon. But because Uranus is also sextiling Saturn and Neptune, these lightning-bolt revelations can be integrated and grounded rather than merely disruptive.

An opposition represents maximum awareness and tension between two polarities. Scorpio (fixed water, psychological depth, hidden truths) opposes Taurus (fixed earth, material security, embodied stability). Uranus in Taurus has been revolutionising our relationship with resources, values, and the physical world since 2018. His opposition to the Scorpio New Moon with Mercury combust demands we face how sudden changes in material circumstances or values are forcing psychological transformation—and how old ways of thinking (Mercury burning) are being shattered by breakthrough awareness (Uranus).

Understanding the Grand Trine

In Hellenistic astrology, a Grand Trine forms when three or more planets occupy signs of the same element, creating an equilateral triangle in the zodiacal wheel. This configuration represents a self-sustaining flow of elemental energy —a closed circuit in which planetary energies support and amplify one another without friction or resistance.

The trine aspect (120 degrees) is inherently benefic—it’s the aspect of ease, grace, and natural talent. When three or more trines connect to form a Grand Trine, the result is exponentially harmonious. Energy flows freely between all three points, creating what ancient astrologers might have called a “celestial blessing” or “divine favour.”

With the water element specifically, we’re engaging with the realm of:

- Emotion and feeling as forms of intelligence

- Intuition and psychic sensitivity

- Memory and the unconscious mind

- Empathy and emotional connection

- Dissolution of rigid boundaries

- Healing and cleansing

- Ancestral and collective memory

- Spiritual communion

A Grand Water Trine creates conditions where these dimensions of experience become extraordinarily accessible, flowing, and transformative.

The Three Water Signs: Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces

Each sign of the triangle represents a different expression of water’s nature:

Jupiter at 25°01’ Cancer (Cardinal Water): This is the initiating impulse of emotion, the active care and nurturing that begins the cycle. Cancer waters are maternal, protective, creating a safe container for growth. Jupiter exalted here represents wisdom expressed through emotional intelligence, faith supported by care, and growth rooted in authentic nourishment. At 25 degrees, Jupiter has moved beyond the early experimentation of the sign and into the mature expression of Cancerian wisdom.

New Moon with Mercury combust at 28° Scorpio (Fixed Water): The lunation at the late degree of Scorpio represents transformation that has gone deep, psychological work that has penetrated to bedrock. This isn’t the beginning of Scorpio’s journey—this is near completion of the sign’s transformative arc. Scorpio waters at 28 degrees have done the work of descent, faced the shadows, and are approaching the threshold of Sagittarius’s philosophical integration.

Mercury combust here—burned up in the Sun’s fire—represents the death of old mental patterns and false understanding. He’s invisible, dissolved, undergoing alchemical transformation in Scorpio’s depths. This is the messenger god descending to the underworld, Mercury as the psychopomp, dying to be reborn with knowledge that can only be acquired through dissolution. The opposition from Uranus adds electric awakening to this deep work—sudden lightning strikes that shatter what’s already burning away, accelerating the process of transformation.

Saturn at 25°12’ Pisces and Neptune at 29°29’ Pisces (Mutable Water): Here we find the most complex point. Saturn at 25 degrees Pisces forms an incredibly precise trine (within 11 minutes) to Jupiter at 25 Cancer—this is the elder wisdom meeting nurturing care, discipline supporting faith, structure enabling flow. Saturn brings form to Pisces’ formlessness.

But Neptune at 29°29’ Pisces—the anaretic or critical degree—is perhaps the most significant placement in the entire chart. The 29th degree of any sign represents crisis, completion, urgency, and mastery. It’s the very last degree before transition into the next sign. Neptune at 29° Pisces is at maximum Piscean intensity, standing at the threshold between the oceanic dissolution of Pisces and the initiatory fire of Aries.

This is Neptune poised for one of the most significant sign changes in recent astrology—his eventual final ingress into Aries will fundamentally shift collective spirituality, dreams, and illusions from water to fire, from boundlessness to assertion, from dissolution to individuation. At this anaretic degree, Neptune represents:

- Ultimate surrender and release before new spiritual initiations

- Maximum mystical and creative sensitivity

- Crisis of faith or spiritual emergency that forces evolution

- The veil at its thinnest between material and spiritual realms

- Completion of a long spiritual cycle (Neptune has been in Pisces since 2011)

The combination of Saturn’s stabilising presence at 25° and Neptune’s urgent completion at 29° creates a fascinating dynamic: structured mysticism meeting the edge of spiritual transformation. This combination says: ground your spiritual insights now, for everything is about to change.

The Sacred Triangle: Integration of Water Wisdom

What makes this Grand Water Trine so profound is that it creates a complete circuit of emotional, psychological, and spiritual intelligence flowing at or near critical degrees of completion and mastery:

Faith & Wisdom (Jupiter 25° Cancer) → Psychological Transformation (New Moon 28° Scorpio) → Spiritual Completion (Saturn 25°/Neptune 29° Pisces) → back to Faith

Each point supports and flows into the next:

- Jupiter’s reflective nuring wisdom (25° Cancer) flows into Scorpio’s deep transformative work (28°)

- Scorpio’s psychological excavation is supported by Pisces’ spiritual perspective and completion (Saturn 25°, Neptune 29°)

- Pisces’ mystical dissolution and structured spirituality return to feed Cancer’s emotional wisdom

- The cycle continuously reinforces and elevates itself

The Uranus Factor: Lightning Through Water

But this isn’t just a smooth, flowing trine. Uranus retrograde at 29° Taurus opposes the New Moon/Mercury cazimi within 1°17 minutes creating what’s called a Kite pattern—a Grand Trine with an opposition that focuses and channels the flowing energy into concrete manifestation.

Uranus brings:

- Sudden breakthroughs in psychological understanding

- Revolutionary insights that shatter old patterns

- Liberation from attachments (Taurus) through psychological truth (Scorpio)

- Unexpected revelations during the New Moon

- Awakening to material and resource realities that demand transformation

The sextiles from Uranus to Saturn and Neptune provide supportive angles that help ground these lightning-bolt insights. Rather than pure disruption, we get:

- Structured revolution (Uranus sextile Saturn)

- Inspired breakthrough (Uranus sextile Neptune)

- Grounded awakening that can actually be integrated

This creates conditions for:

Emotional Healing With Breakthrough Moments: The Grand Water Trine offers flow and ease in emotional processing, but Uranus ensures we’re not just circulating familiar feelings—we’re having genuine epiphanies and liberating insights.

Intuitive Amplification With Practical Application: The water sensitivity is heightened, but Uranus in earth (Taurus) ensures insights land in material reality and practical wisdom.

Spiritual Integration At Crisis Point: Neptune at 29° Pisces represents spiritual emergency and urgent completion. The Grand Water Trine provides the container for this intense transit, while Uranus provides the breakthrough energy needed for transformation.

Ancestral Liberation: The configuration supports both connecting with ancestral wisdom (water trine) and breaking free from inherited patterns that no longer serve (Uranus opposition).

Revolutionary Compassion: Jupiter and Saturn’s tight trine represents structured wisdom and mature faith, but Uranus ensures this wisdom serves liberation rather than maintaining the status quo.

Working Consciously with the Grand Water Trine

Grand Trines, for all their benefic nature, can become too easy—energy circulates so smoothly that nothing precipitates into concrete form. The key to working well with this configuration is to add intention and directed action:

Practice emotional honouring: Create space for feelings without judgment. Journal, cry, laugh, feel fully.

Engage spiritual disciplines: Meditation, prayer, ritual work—whatever connects you to something larger than ego.

Do ancestral work: Honour those who came before. Create altars. Speak prayers. Acknowledge lineage (this is a very powerful time for ancestral healing work).

Creative expression: Allow the inspiration to flow through you into tangible form—art, writing, music, movement.

Compassionate service: Let the overflow of grace move through you toward others who need care.

Trust intuition: When the still small voice speaks, listen. When synchronicity occurs, notice.

The Grand Water Trine - with the possible exception of Saturn’s stern influence - doesn’t force anything, it invites. It creates conditions of extraordinary grace and flow. What you do with that grace is up to you.

Neptune at 29° Pisces: The Anaretic Urgency

One of the most significant features of this entire configuration deserves special attention: Neptune at 29°29’ Pisces—the anaretic or critical degree.

In traditional astrology, the 29th degree of any sign carries special weight. It’s called the anaretic degree (from Greek anairesis, meaning “taking up” or “destroying”), and it represents:

- Crisis and urgency: A sense that something must be resolved or completed NOW

- Mastery through trial: The final exam before graduation from a sign

- Threshold consciousness: Standing at the doorway between one state and another

- Fate and destiny: Events that feel unavoidable or divinely orchestrated

- Maximum expression: The sign’s qualities at their most intense

When a slow-moving outer planet occupies the anaretic degree, the implications are collective and generational. Neptune in Pisces has been one of the defining transits of our era, beginning in 2011 and dissolving boundaries between reality and illusion, heightening collective sensitivity and spiritual seeking, and blurring lines between truth and deception.

Neptune at 29° Pisces is:

The End of an Era: Neptune will eventually ingress into Aries (March 2025), fundamentally shifting collective spirituality from water to fire, from dissolution to assertion, from passive reception to active spiritual will. The 29th degree represents the very end of this Piscean chapter.

Maximum Sensitivity: The veil between material and spiritual realms is extraordinarily thin. Psychic sensitivity, creative inspiration, and mystical experiences are heightened to their maximum during this transit.

Spiritual Crisis or Breakthrough: For individuals and collectively, Neptune at 29° Pisces can manifest as spiritual emergency—moments when the old faith structure dissolves completely and something new must emerge. This is simultaneously terrifying and liberating.

Final Surrender: Before Neptune’s fiery initiation in Aries, there’s a call to complete surrender, to release whatever illusions we’ve been clinging to, to let the ocean fully dissolve what needs dissolution.

Urgent Compassion: With humanitarian crises, collective suffering, and the dissolution of old paradigms, there’s an urgent call to embody Piscean compassion one last time before the sign change.

Within the context of the Grand Water Trine, Neptune at this critical degree suggests that the emotional and spiritual flow isn’t just pleasant—it’s urgent. The grace being offered isn’t optional. There’s a sense of “now or never” around spiritual completion and surrender.

Combined with Uranus opposing the Scorpio New Moon, we get both the urgency of necessary completion (Neptune 29° Pisces) and the lightning-bolt awakening that forces evolution (Uranus opposition). This is a transformation on multiple levels simultaneously—gentle flow (trine) with urgent crisis (anaretic) with revolutionary breakthrough (Uranus). Furthermore, this transformation is being triggered by the Sun in Scorpio, suggesting that our very ideals form part of this citical process. If you’ve been avoiding spiritual work, putting off emotional healing, or resisting necessary surrender, late November 2025 offers both grace and urgency to finally address what cannot wait any longer.

The darkness of the limial space between now and the returning of the light at the Winter Solstice requires us to work within our inner landscapes, emotional needs and healing together with our spiritual and psychologcial growth. The powerful astrology of November serves up the perfect condtions and resources to enable us to do so with grace if we surrender to the process. May grace be your companion during this time.

Blessed be 💜

To understand how these transits will personally affect you, locate the degrees and signs mentioned above within your natal chart and note which houses they occupy; these houses reveal the specific life areas where you’ll experience the transit’s energy. For example, if Mercury’s November 20th cazimi at 28°18’ Scorpio falls in your 2nd house, the insights and revelations may relate to material reources, values, or income rather than relationships or career.

Additionally, check whether any natal planets fall within a three-degree orb of the transit degree; if you have natal Venus at 26° Scorpio, the Mercury cazimi would aspect it by conjunction, intensifying themes around communication in relationships or creative expression. The tighter the orb, the more pronounced the effect. This personalisation transforms generic transit forecasts into a precise roadmap of when and where cosmic energies will activate your unique chart, allowing you to work consciously and concisley with the astrology​​​​​​ at play.

Watch this video to learn how to download your free birth chart.

📖 If you would like to learn more about astrology and how to read your own chart, my beginers workshop is your launch point into astrological study, providing solid foundations you can put to use immediately whilst opening the door to deeper understanding over time. You can find out more details and purchase your copy here

🕵️ Alternatively you can book a personal one on one consultation with me, where we can focus on a subject or question important to you. All consultations are held on Zoom and are recorded for you. You can book a consultation here

🎁 If you are looking for a unique gift that truly resonates—from Goddess artwork and transformative workshops to personalised consultations and gift cards starting at just £10 —give the gift of cosmic wisdom and spiritual connection​​​ at lindagemmill.com

🤑 All new customers save 10% on total order value by adding the code Welcome10 at checkout.

Creating Your Ancestral Altar

Tonight, I’ll be decorating my ancestral altar, and Samhain is a perfect time for you to create or refresh your own. If you don’t yet have a dedicated ancestral space, don’t worry—you can start simply. Find a small table, shelf, or corner that can become a sacred space for remembering and connecting with those who came before.

Consider adorning your altar with fresh flowers—their beauty reminds us that life and death are forever intertwined in nature’s eternal cycle. Add offerings of food and drink that your ancestors would have enjoyed. I’ll be placing old-fashioned porter on mine, the favourite tipple of my maternal great-grandmother, but you might choose tea, whiskey, wine, or whatever held meaning for your loved ones. Sweets and traditional foods also make wonderful offerings.

Photographs, if you have them, give us faces to focus on, eyes to meet across the thinning veil. If you don’t have pictures of distant ancestors, don’t let that stop you. You can represent them symbolically, or focus on those you did know. Include other memorabilia too—small objects that carry memory and meaning, touchstones that connect you to those who walked before you. A piece of jewellery, a tool they used, a letter in their handwriting—each item chosen with intention becomes an act of remembrance and love.

Beyond Blood: Honouring All Your Ancestors

As the night deepens, I’ll raise my glass to toast my ancestors, and I encourage you to do the same. But remember, ancestors aren’t limited to blood relations. Consider honouring:

Ancestors of blood whose DNA flows through your veins, whose struggles and triumphs shaped who you are today. Even if relationships were complicated, you can honour the gifts they gave you while acknowledging the challenges.

Spiritual ancestors—those teachers and guides whose wisdom has illuminated your path. These might be authors, artists, activists, or spiritual leaders you never met in person but whose work transformed you.

Ancestors of place—those who walked the land where you now live, who knew its secrets and seasons, who are buried in its soil and whose spirits still move through its landscapes. Ancestors of place also include the spirits of place — such as deities, elements, and plant allies — who grace our current lived environments.

By broadening our understanding of ancestry beyond genetics, we open ourselves to a wider web of connection and support.

Working With Ancestors All Year Round

Here’s something crucial to understand: like puppies at Christmas, ancestors aren’t just for Samhain. While tonight’s thinning veil makes it an especially potent time for ancestral work, developing an ongoing relationship with your ancestors is where the fundamental transformation happens.

Consider establishing a regular practice—perhaps lighting a candle on your altar weekly or making offerings on meaningful dates, such as birthdays and death anniversaries. Talk to your ancestors. Tell them about your life, your struggles, your joys. Ask for their guidance. Thank them for what they’ve given you.

This consistent connection creates a living relationship rather than a once-a-year commemoration. Your ancestors become allies and guides you can call upon when you need strength, wisdom, or simply the comfort of knowing you’re part of something larger than yourself.

A Practice of Ancestral Healing

Tonight, I’ll be conducting a healing ritual specifically focused on my maternal lineage, and this is work you might also consider exploring. We inherit not just genetic material from our ancestors, but also their unresolved traumas, unfinished business, pain, and gifts. By engaging in ancestral healing work, we can begin to transform these inherited patterns and send healing both backward to those who came before and forward to those who will come after.

My ritual tonight draws upon and adapts the profound work of Daniel Foor in his seminal book Ancestral Medicine: Rituals for Personal and Family Healing. If you’re interested in deeper ancestral healing work, Foor’s book is an invaluable resource that offers both understanding and practical rituals.

In my practice tonight, I’ll invoke the four great archangels, each positioned at one of the cardinal directions:

Raphael, angel of healing, who stands in the East with the rising sun, bringing the medicine of renewal and restoration.

Michael, angel of protection and courage, who guards the South with his flaming sword, offering strength and the power to cut through what no longer serves, as well as protection.

Gabriel, angel of messages and communication, who dwells in the West where the sun sets, facilitating dialogue between the worlds and carrying prayers to the spirits.

Uriel, angel of wisdom and illumination, who stands in the North, bringing the light of understanding to illuminate the path of healing.

If this approach resonates with you, you might adapt it to your own practice. Or you might work with other guides and guardians who hold meaning in your tradition. The key is creating sacred space and inviting in help—ancestral healing work is not meant to be done alone.

Within this sacred space, I’ll call upon my maternal ancestors—specifically the well and healed ones who can serve as guides and helpers—and ask them to assist in bringing healing to the lineage. Some wounds are too deep, too old, too entangled to heal in a single lifetime or even in a single generation. But we can begin. We can always begin.

Beyond the Veil: Spooky Stories for Halloween

If you have an appetite for the spooky and the strange on this most haunted of nights, I invite you to listen to my recent appearance on Strange Familiars, Episode 557: “I Would Have Described It as a Monster.” In this conversation, I share some of my own personal experiences beyond the veil—encounters that range from the profound to the spooky to the genuinely frightening.

I speak about meeting Flannel Man (a globe-trotting phenomenon), a giant black form, strange nighttime visitors and other encounters with the liminal and the uncanny. Some of these experiences brought wisdom and transformation. Others brought fear. All of them changed me and deepened my understanding of the thin places and the beings that move through them.

My interview begins around the seven-minute mark of the episode, but I encourage you to listen to the whole show—Tim, the host, is a warm and wise human with many interesting stories of his own. Pour yourself something warming, turn down the lights, and settle in for some tales from beyond the veil. After all, on this night, when the boundaries dissolve and the spirits draw near, what better time to hear stories of those strange and numinous encounters that remind us there is far more to this world than we can easily explain?

May your own Samhain be blessed. May you honour your dead well. And may the veil, though thin tonight, allow only love and healing to pass through.

Blessed be 🙏💜

You can watch the full Strange Familiars episode above or listen at this link: I Would Have Described It as a Monster

With the Sun and Moon in cardinal air sign Libra, we’re being called to initiate new ways of relating—to ourselves and others. The Libran themes of harmony and balance are front and centre, yet this is no superficial peace. The Moon’s opposition to wounded healer Chiron in Aries suggests our relationship wounds are rising to the surface, asking for tender acknowledgement. Meanwhile, the square to Jupiter in Cancer amplifies ancestral patterns around connection, belonging and emotional safety.

This isn’t comfortable territory. Mercury and Mars conjunct in Scorpio are digging deep, unearthing buried truths and unexpressed desires. With these two together in such an intense sign, be mindful of sharp words that can cut deeper than intended—the urge to speak hidden truths is strong, but so is the potential for wounding. The Sun’s approaching square to Pluto intensifies the transformational pressure, bringing shadow material into the light for healing and integration. You may find yourself confronting uncomfortable realisations about how family conditioning has shaped your relationship patterns and limited your ability to pursue what you genuinely want.

Yet this challenging astrology is precisely what’s needed for genuine liberation. The New Moon invites us to name our authentic desires—perhaps for the first time—and to release the ancestral programming, thought patterns and behaviours that have kept us small, accommodating or disconnected from our truth.

Plant seeds today for relationships rooted in reciprocity rather than obligation, connection rather than codependency, freedom rather than fear. Release what no longer serves the balanced, harmonious life your soul is calling you towards.

What desires have you been afraid to voice? What relational patterns are ready to fall away?

This is not merely another new moon. This eclipse carries the weight of cosmic timing, occurring as we navigate the broader themes of our current epoch-changing astrology—a time when the outer planets are orchestrating the dissolution of outdated systems and the birth of new consciousness.

The Architecture of Transformation

The eclipse's placement at 29 degrees Virgo—the anaretic or "crisis" degree—signals completion energy of the highest order. This degree holds the accumulated wisdom and experience of the entire sign, demanding we integrate all we have learned before moving forward. In Virgo, this speaks to our relationship with service, discernment, health, daily practices, and the sacred work of refinement.

The loose conjunction with the South Node amplifies the theme of karmic release. The South Node represents our past—both the gifts we carry forward and the patterns we must consciously release. This eclipse asks us to examine what we have outgrown in the realm of our Virgo house, what no longer serves our soul's evolution, and what must be composted to feed new growth.

Adding further complexity and revolutionary potential to this configuration is the involvement of Uranus in Mercury-ruled Gemini, recently stationed retrograde, forming a powerful trine with retrograde Pluto in Aquarius. This creates a dramatic kite formation with the eclipse-Saturn-Neptune opposition, introducing the possibility of sudden, unexpected, and powerfully transformational energy breaking through the more gradual Virgoan refinement process.

Uranus, the great awakener, operating through Mercury's domain of communication and mental processes, suggests that revelations or sudden insights may catalyse the eclipse's transformative work. Combined with Pluto's profound psychological transformation in innovative Aquarius, this aspect pattern suggests that the changes triggered by this eclipse may unfold through startling clarity, unexpected communications, or revolutionary shifts in our perspective on the path forward. The kite formation channels these volatile energies through the eclipse point, potentially accelerating the dissolution and reconstruction process in ways we cannot anticipate.

The Saturn-Neptune Opposition: Sacred Disillusionment

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this eclipse is its opposition to both Saturn and Neptune, two planets currently moving through their historic conjunction dance that will become exact in February 2026. This opposition creates a powerful tension that may initially manifest as confusion, disappointment, or a sense of structures dissolving around us.

Saturn, the great teacher of boundaries and concrete reality, stands opposite this eclipse, asking us to examine our foundations—our commitments, responsibilities, and the structures that either support or constrain our growth. Meanwhile, Neptune, the planet of dreams, illusion, and spiritual transcendence, brings its dissolving energy, softening rigid edges and revealing where our perceptions may have been clouded by wishful thinking or unconscious patterns.

This combined influence may indeed bring disillusionment, but we must understand this as a profound gift. True disillusionment—the literal "removing of illusions"—clears our vision, allowing us to perceive reality without the filters of outdated beliefs, false hopes, or limiting structures. The chaos this aspect may generate is not random destruction but conscious deconstruction, making space for authentic creation.

As these planetary giants transition into their new 36-year cycle, they are asking us to release dreams that have become prisons, structures that have become suffocating, and spiritual bypassing that has kept us from embodied truth. This is the deeper work of the Virgo eclipse—sorting the wheat from the chaff with ruthless compassion.

Mercury and Venus: The Divine Partnership

Working in harmony with this eclipse energy, Mercury in Libra and Venus in Virgo form a mutual reception—a classical aspect where each planet occupies the other's sign of rulership. This creates a particularly supportive, energetic exchange that offers us precisely the tools needed for the work at hand.

Mercury, as ruler of this Virgo eclipse, brings analytical precision from its position in harmonious Libra. Here, the planet of communication and discernment operates through the lens of balance, beauty, and relationship. This placement enables us to examine our lives with both clarity and compassion, making necessary distinctions without harsh judgment.

Venus in Virgo adds her refined sensibilities to Mercury's domain, bringing an aesthetic appreciation for what truly serves and nourishes. She helps us recognise quality over quantity, substance over superficiality. Together, these planetary allies offer us supernatural discernment—the ability to perceive what is alive and what is dying in our lives with crystalline clarity.

This mutual reception suggests that the changes catalysed by this eclipse will not be harsh or violent but will flow through our increased capacity for wise discrimination. We are being offered the tools for conscious choice-making and the deliberate curation of our life experiences.

The Hidden Nature of Eclipse Manifestations

Solar eclipses, by their very nature, both obscure and reveal at the same time. The shadow that passes across the sun creates a temporary blindness that, paradoxically, allows us to see what was always there but hidden by the sun's brilliance. Similarly, the effects of this eclipse may not be immediately apparent or may manifest as seemingly insignificant developments.

Pay attention to subtle shifts in your daily routines, small changes in your health or work practices, minor adjustments in how you serve others or organise your life. The seeds planted during this eclipse may appear unremarkable, but the energy of the eclipse works on a deep, often unconscious level. What seems like a minor course correction now may prove to be a fundamental redirection of your life path.

This is particularly true for eclipses in Virgo, a sign that governs the minute particulars of existence. Virgo teaches us that profound transformation often occurs through seemingly mundane adjustments—a new morning practice, a shift in diet, a change in daily routine, or a subtle refinement in how we approach our work or service.

Working Consciously with Eclipse Energy

The weeks surrounding this eclipse offer a powerful window for conscious participation in the transformation it heralds. The mutual reception between Mercury and Venus suggests that both mental clarity and heart wisdom are available to guide us through this process.

Ground yourself in both body and presence during this period. Virgo energy responds to earthed, practical spirituality rather than escapist transcendence. Use this time to discern your inventory—examine your commitments, relationships, health practices, and daily routines with loving honesty.

Notice what energises you and what drains you. Pay attention to what feels aligned with your deepest values and what feels like an obligation or a habit that has outlived its usefulness. The Saturn-Neptune opposition may initially create confusion, but if you remain grounded and present, the clarity will emerge.

For those drawn to ritual practice, this eclipse offers particularly potent energy for ceremonies that weave together release and intention-setting. Honour Mercury's intelligence by articulating clearly what you are releasing and what you are calling forth—write lists, speak aloud your intentions, or create written affirmations or sigils that capture both the dissolution and the emerging desires in an affirmative positive frame. Mercury's communication gifts enable you to pinpoint precisely what no longer serves you, while giving voice to what your soul truly craves.

Simultaneously, honour Venus's desire nature by surrounding yourself with beauty and creating an altar that reflects what you genuinely long for. Let Venus guide you toward what brings pleasure, harmony, and authentic fulfilment—not what you think you should want, but what your heart actually desires. The Magician and Empress tarot archetypes embody this perfect partnership—the Magician's focused will and clear communication combined with the Empress's sensual wisdom and magnetic attraction of what truly nourishes the soul.

Integration and Forward Movement

As we navigate the energies of this eclipse, remember that endings and beginnings are not separate processes but part of one continuous spiral of growth. The South Node's influence ensures that what we release during this time is not lost but composted into wisdom that enriches our future growth.

The changes initiated by this eclipse will unfold over the coming months, revealing themselves through practical adjustments and refined approaches to the life areas governed by your personal Virgo house. Trust the process of gradual revelation rather than demanding immediate clarity about the eclipse's ultimate direction.

In our current era of accelerated change and system dissolution, this Virgo eclipse offers us a template for conscious transformation—showing us how to release what no longer serves while maintaining groundedness and practical wisdom. It reminds us that the most profound revolutions often begin with the smallest, most precise adjustments to our daily lives.

As the old structures continue to crumble around us, this eclipse empowers us to build anew from a foundation of authentic service, refined discernment, and embodied spirituality. The future emerging through the breakdown of our current reality requires this level of conscious participation in our own evolution.

The sacred work begins with sorting the wheat from the chaff in our own lives, one deliberate choice at a time.

New Moon Blessings, cosmic friend,

Linda 💜

In my forthcoming newsletter, I will be deep-diving into the energies of the Grand Water Trine of October/November and what they mean for you. Subscribe and stay tuned for more cosmic updates. And please leave a comment, like and share if my writing resonates with you.

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This celestial event speaks to a profound awakening around our Pisces house life area. Unlike typical full moons that focus on release, this eclipse carries a future-oriented energy that's actively drawing you toward your soul's deeper purpose.

Suppose you have any planets or angles between 12 - 18 degrees of Pisces, Capricorn, Sagittarius, Scorpio, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer or Virgo. In that case, this eclipse is not just a distant event. It will be impacting you directly, making it a significant moment in your life’s journey. Its influence will be felt over the next 3-6 months and ties into a series of Virgo/Pisces eclipses over the next three years, including the Virgo partial solar eclipse at the end of September; I will write more about that in a future post.

The Dance of Letting Go and Receiving

This eclipse presents a beautiful paradox: you're being asked to release old patterns and ways of being that have felt safe or familiar, but not to create emptiness - instead to make space for something more aligned with your authentic purpose. It's as though the universe is clearing the decks to make room for your next chapter of growth.

Benefic Jupiter Lends a Hand

And with Jupiter, the ruler of the eclipse, currently exalted in Cancer in mutual reception with the Moon, also trining the eclipse, you are being fully resourced to deal with these changes. Mutual reception is a term in astrology that describes a situation where two planets are in each other's ruling signs, enhancing their influence and creating a harmonious energy. A trine is also a harmonious, flowing and supportive energy. Thank you, Jupiter!

The Piscean Invitation

If this eclipse aspects a planet or angle in your chart, it's highlighting that area of your life as particularly important for your spiritual evolution. You're being invited to bring more Piscean qualities - trust in your inner knowing, gentleness with yourself and others, and openness to spiritual guidance - into whatever life themes that planet or angle represents. At the same time, the opposing Sun in Virgo asks you to keep it practical and use discernment as you step more fully into spiritualising your life path.

The Dance of Transformation

This eclipse presents a profound invitation: to release patterns that have kept you playing small or disconnected from your deeper wisdom, creating space for a more spiritually aligned way of living. The North Node's presence ensures that this isn't just about healing old wounds, but about consciously stepping into your next phase of growth.

An Evolutionary Moment

Whether this eclipse affects your communication, relationships, career, or any other aspect of your life, it's asking you to infuse those themes with greater authenticity and spiritual wisdom. You may find yourself naturally drawn to approaches that honour both practical needs and deeper meaning.

Moving Forward

This eclipse marks the beginning of a phase where trusting your intuition and leading with compassion becomes central to your path. Pay attention to what emerges - the insights, subtle shifts, and new directions that call to you. The universe is supporting your evolution toward a more whole and purposeful way of being. At the same time, it asks you to let go of that which no longer serves your soul’s unfoldment.

Wishing you a blessed full moon 💜

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A Full Moon illuminates. And yet a Full Moon always signifies an opposition between our two luminaries, the Sun and the Moon. And an opposition creates tension—a push-and-pull energy—between the two opposing forces. The Full Moon on 9th August is in the humanitarian sign of Aquarius, which means the Sun is in the opposite sign of Leo, representing our sovereignty.

Leo is ruled by the Sun and reflects our solar energy - our need to be authentic, radiant individuals, shining our light and truth out into the world. The Moon, representing our emotional needs, seeks security. In Aquarius, that security comes from contributing effectively to one’s tribe—be it family, a club, group, organisation, work team, culture or any other community of beings - humanity itself.

Thus, we see the Sun seeking to be its sovereign self. At the same time, the Aquarius Moon, opposite, desires solutions that work for everyone. Ideally, we can stay true to our authentic self while being an effective contributing member of a community. Yet Aquarius is also the revolutionary truth-bringer, and on this full Moon, he is illuminating any conflicts arising from these two desires that require resolution.

Problems arise when either the group or the individual acts in a dominating and controlling manner, refusing to listen to others who may feel differently. Such behaviour can manifest as groups demanding conformity to specific ways of thinking, contrary to the individual’s deeper values or truth. Or individuals being overly demanding, controlling or imposing ideologies within the group due to out-of-balance egos – both are problematic for healthy relationships and group coherence. Communities or tribes of any size are, of course, made up of individuals. When some are acting from wounded, defensive or inflated egos, things can get out of kilter very quickly for the whole group. This is when we need to decide to either be brave and speak up or, if the odds are stacked against us, walk away from the unhealthy situation.

You might be feeling these energies playing out in your own life if you have any planets, aspects, or angles around 16 degrees of Leo or Aquarius. They can manifest in family dynamics, close relationships, work, social or cultural groups, or any situation involving relationships with others. Just look to the outside world to see these dynamics playing out as widespread control, division and censorship.

A healthy relationship, whether personal or societal, is one where we can each belong and contribute as our true, sovereign selves, speak our truth, and shine our light without fear or favour. The question is, where, if anywhere, are you unable to do this, and what do you intend to do about it? 

Astrology Workshop Announcement

I’m excited to be running a 2-hour workshop, ‘Astro Magic: Awakening Your Cosmic Blueprint’, in collaboration with Katherine Genet, author of the Wild Grove series, for her thriving community, The Beaconage, to which you are also invited. Perfect for beginners, I will provide a fun and interactive introduction to astrology.

What You'll Discover:

• How your birth chart serves as a map for your most fulfilling spiritual path

• The ancient Hellenistic roots of Western astrology and its connection to nature's cycles

• How to interpret your cosmic trinity: Sun, Moon, and Rising signs

• The sacred language of planets, signs, houses, and aspects

• Practical techniques for reading birth charts with both knowledge and intuition

• A Magical Interactive Experience

This isn't just theory—you'll participate in live chart readings, sharing insights as we collectively explore the wisdom held in participant birth charts. My approach honours both the analytical and intuitive aspects of astrological interpretation, encouraging you to trust your inner knowing alongside traditional and modern techniques.

The workshop is scheduled for Saturday, 30th August. It costs £20, which includes handouts and a free copy of my astrology primer e-book, along with two hours of interactive and engaging exploration of your birth chart, its structure, and its significance. For those unable to attend the 7 pm BST time slot, a recording will be available. For more information and to buy a ticket, please visit here.

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On 24 July 2025, at 8:11 pm BST, we have a creative New Moon in Leo. Known for its vibrancy and ruled by the Sun, Leo is full of boldness, passion, and a zest for life. This New Moon energy encourages you to step into the spotlight, show your true self, and let your light shine. It's not about being perfect; it's about being authentic, generous, and fully alive.

Bold Steps and Unexpected Opportunities

Leo's energy celebrates creativity, courage, and the joy of authenticity. This is your chance to be seen—not just for what you've achieved, but for who you truly are. Whether you're starting a passion project, sharing your unique voice, or embracing self-love, this New Moon supports you in taking bold steps. At the same time, a sextile to Uranus in Gemini invites unexpected opportunities and outside-the-box ideas. With Jupiter now visible in the early morning sky, we can begin to experience his blessings from his year-long stay in Cancer – themes related to your Cancer house receive a majestic boost. See my previous post here on Jupiter in Cancer for a deeper dive into what this might mean for you personally.

Engage in Joyful Activities

Leo thrives on fun and play, so make time for activities that spark joy. Dance to your favourite music, paint with vibrant colours, or spend a day with loved ones laughing and connecting. Let your inner child run free—joy is a powerful healer.

Re-examine & Reflect

The Moon's trine to retrograde Saturn in Aries makes it an ideal time to reassess how you've been using your personal power, initiative, and leadership abilities, with opportunities to restructure these areas more maturely and responsibly. A trine to retrograde Neptune conjunct Saturn in Aries suggests introspection for examining how we initiate spiritual growth and take action on our dreams. With Mercury also retrograde in Leo, it's an excellent time to consciously reconsider our life’s journey, listen to our true heart’s calling, and release that which no longer aligns with our path.

Navigating Challenges with Leo Courage

Like any transformative journey, this New Moon may bring challenges that lead to growth. An opposition to retrograde Pluto in Aquarius could resurface deep emotions or power struggles, prompting you to confront important truths around control issues. Leo gives you the courage to embrace these challenges with a generous and compassionate heart, while Mercury, in full psychopomp mode, offers assistance.

Shine your Light

This is an excellent time to express yourself from the heart, to awaken your authentic self and inner child, and uplift those around you. Let this New Moon be one of bold creativity, deep reflection, and unapologetic self-expression. Remember that love—for yourself and others—is a brave act. By living authentically, you brighten the world around you. Embrace this New Moon and let your beautiful light shine!

Astrology Workshop Announcement

I’m excited to be running a 2-hour workshop, ‘Astro Magic: Awakening Your Cosmic Blueprint ’, in collaboration with Katherine Genet, author of the Wild Grove series, for her thriving community, The Beaconage, to which you are also invited. Perfect for beginners, I will provide a fun and interactive introduction to astrology.

What You'll Discover:

• How your birth chart serves as a map for your most fulfilling spiritual path

• The ancient Hellenistic roots of Western astrology and its connection to nature's cycles

• How to interpret your cosmic trinity: Sun, Moon, and Rising signs

• The sacred language of planets, signs, houses, and aspects

• Practical techniques for reading birth charts with both knowledge and intuition

• A Magical Interactive Experience

This isn't just theory—you'll participate in live chart readings, sharing insights via chat as we collectively explore the wisdom held in participant birth charts. My approach honours both the analytical and intuitive aspects of astrological interpretation, encouraging you to trust your inner knowing alongside traditional and modern techniques.

The workshop is scheduled for Saturday, 30th August. It costs £20, which includes handouts and a free copy of my astrology primer e-book, along with two hours of interactive and engaging exploration of your birth chart, its structure, and its significance. For those unable to attend the 7 pm BST time slot, a recording will be available. For more information and to buy a ticket, please visit here.

I’m delighted to be hosting a beginner’s astrology workshop in collaboration with author Kate Genet of the Wild Grove series. Although this will primarily be hosted on Kate’s Mighty network, The Beaconage, everyone is welcome to join us for this magical exploration of astrology.

For the Spiritually Curious Soul

Whether you're drawn to earth-based spirituality, animist wisdom, or the sacred feminine mysteries, this workshop will awaken your understanding of astrology as a profound spiritual practice. Far more than daily horoscopes, astrology is a sacred technology that connects us to the living cosmos and reveals our soul's deepest purpose.

What You'll Discover:

• How your birth chart serves as a map for your most fulfilling spiritual path • The ancient Hellenistic roots of Western astrology and its connection to nature's cycles

• How to interpret your cosmic trinity: Sun, Moon, and Rising signs • The sacred language of planets, signs, houses, and aspects

• Practical techniques for reading birth charts with both knowledge and intuition: A Magical Interactive Experience

This isn't just theory—you'll participate in live chart readings, sharing insights via chat as we collectively explore the wisdom held in participant birth charts. Linda's approach honours both the analytical and intuitive aspects of astrological interpretation, encouraging you to trust your inner knowing alongside traditional techniques.

Your Guide: Linda Gemmill

Certified astrologer, spiritual life coach, and visionary artist Linda brings together ancient Hellenistic wisdom with modern psychological insights. Her unique approach includes the sacred feminine energies of asteroids and dwarf planets, offering a rich, multi-dimensional understanding of your cosmic blueprint. Linda's years of experience and mastery of spiritual tools will guide you to uncover hidden strengths and align with your soul's purpose.

Perfect for:

• Pagans and earth-based spiritual practitioners

• Those drawn to animist and nature-based wisdom

• Beginners wanting a solid foundation in chart reading

• Anyone seeking deeper self-understanding through cosmic wisdom

• Those interested in the spiritual and psychological dimensions of astrology

What You'll Take Away:

By the end of this workshop, you'll be able to create a basic interpretation of any birth chart by understanding the interplay of Sun, Moon, and Rising signs. More importantly, you'll understand how to use this sacred knowledge as a tool for personal growth, spiritual development, and living in harmony with cosmic rhythms.

Your cosmic blueprint awaits!

This two-hour interactive workshop, on Sunday 20th July at 7 pm BST, is just £20 or $27. If you cannot make this time, a reply will be available for 30 days. Book your place now via this link

You can check your local time zone here

Episode Description

An exploration of Astrology with artist & astrologer Linda Gemmill. Join me as I learn all about my birth chart and how my life choices, character and personal plot twists are mapped out in the stars. As Linda unpicks my life, I discover there's much more to astrology than star signs, in fact it could redirect my life altogether!

Sam’s podcast can be found on all the popular podcast platforms and is highly recommended. You can also find her here on Substack at

Something magical is happening in the cosmos right now, and I’m a little late in getting this out to you due to its ramifications in my own life! On June 9th, 2025, Jupiter—our Great Benefic—entered Cancer, beginning what I believe could be one of the most healing and transformative transits of this decade. His transit lasts until June 30, 2026. (I’ve just had to edit and update this because in my rush, I put 2025 when it should be 2026 - a year-long transit)!

This isn't just any planetary movement. This is Jupiter entering his exaltation, where he's very comfortable, powerful, and able to shower us with his abundant blessings. Think of it as a cosmic homecoming, where the planet of expansion, wisdom, and good fortune settles into the nurturing embrace of Cancer's protective shell.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

After the challenging years we've all lived through—the Saturn-Pluto conjunction, the pandemic, the collective trauma—Jupiter in Cancer feels like the universe offering us a healing balm. Where Jupiter in Gemini had us scattered, seeking information and mental stimulation, Jupiter in Cancer asks us to come home to our hearts.

Cancer, ruled by our intuitive Moon, governs everything we hold dear: family, home, emotional security, and that deep need to nurture and be nurtured. When Jupiter expands these themes, we're invited into a year-long journey of emotional growth, healing, and rediscovering what truly matters.

The Divine Marriage: God and Goddess in Sacred Union

What makes this transit particularly magical is the relationship between Jupiter and the Moon—the god and goddess coming together in sacred symbiosis. Jupiter, our benevolent king of the gods, is visiting the Moon's royal temple of Cancer, where she reigns as the divine feminine embodiment of nurturing, intuition, and emotional wisdom.

In the ancient world, Cancer was called the "Gateway of Mankind"—the sacred portal through which souls enter material existence. The Moon, as Cancer's ruler, is the cosmic midwife, the Great Mother who nurtures spirit into form. When Jupiter enters her domain, it's as if the Sky Father is honouring the Earth Mother, bringing his gifts of expansion, wisdom, and abundance to amplify her powers of healing and creation.

This celestial marriage creates a beautiful feedback loop: Jupiter expands the Moon's nurturing gifts, while the Moon provides the emotional container for Jupiter's wisdom to take root and flourish. Together, they offer us the perfect blend of spiritual growth and emotional security—expansion that feels safe, growth that honours our deepest needs.

During this transit, the Moon in our birth charts becomes activated alongside Jupiter, creating a powerful dialogue between our need for emotional security (Moon) and our quest for meaning and purpose (Jupiter). This is why understanding both planets in your natal chart is crucial—they're working together to heal and expand your capacity for both receiving and giving love.

Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Understanding

In my studies of Hellenistic astrology (the ancient roots of our Western practice), I've learned that Jupiter was never seen as bringing anything negative. From this traditional perspective, Jupiter is pure blessing—it's how we choose to use his gifts that creates our experience, for good or ill.

The ancients saw astrology as a divine tool, a way to understand the cosmic order and our part in it. They believed Cancer represents the "gateway of mankind"—the point where spirit enters matter, where souls choose embodiment. How beautiful is that?

Modern astrology adds the psychological depth, helping us understand that Jupiter in Cancer expands our emotional intelligence, our capacity for empathy, and our ability to create security not just for ourselves, but for our communities.

What This Means for Your Heart and Home

Jupiter in Cancer brings blessings through:

Emotional Healing - Old family wounds can finally begin to mend. Ancestral patterns that have held you back may suddenly shift, creating space for new growth.

Home as Sanctuary - Whether you're moving, renovating, or simply redecorating, your living space (or inner space) becomes a source of joy and expansion. Nesting takes on sacred meaning.

Nurturing Leadership - We may see more women in positions of power, or leaders who govern from the heart rather than the head. Care ethics become central to public discourse.

Family Blessings - Pregnancies, adoptions, reunions, or simply deeper connections with those you love. Jupiter expands our definition of family to include chosen family and spiritual community.

Embodied Spirituality - No more spiritual bypassing! Jupiter in Cancer asks us to find the divine through caring for our bodies, honouring our emotions, and tending to earthly needs. Nourishing ourselves and our loved ones brings us the greatest fulfilment.

The Cosmic Weather Report

Looking at the ingress chart (the snapshot of the sky when Jupiter entered Cancer), I see both challenges and incredible opportunities. Saturn and Neptune in Aries are squaring Jupiter —a fallen Saturn who's become a bit of a rebel, asking us to tear down old structures that no longer serve, while Neptune dissolves illusions about authority and power.

But here's the beautiful part: Jupiter is also parallel the Sun (a powerful hidden aspect) and sextile Venus in Taurus. This creates a gorgeous flow of energy between our heart's desires (Jupiter in Cancer), our life story (Sun in Gemini), and our values and relationships (Venus in Taurus).

The Moon, as Cancer's ruler, sits in Sagittarius—Jupiter's own sign—creating what we call mutual reception. It's like Jupiter and the Moon have swapped houses, each supporting the other in their divine work.

The deeper cosmic players (asteroids and trans-neptunian objects) add their own flavours to this celestial symphony. Haumea and Hekate, both in Scorpio, form a trine to Jupiter, bringing profound themes of death and rebirth, working together as cosmic midwives to support Jupiter's healing work through deep transformation and ancient feminine wisdom. Hekate can help with making the right decisions when at a crossroads, while Haumea is regeneration personified. Eris in Aries brings her fierce energy of justice and righteous disruption, shaking up systems that no longer serve truth and fairness, creating necessary space for Jupiter's expansion into more authentic ways of being.

Chiron in Aries offers the wounded healer's medicine, helping us transform our deepest hurts into sources of strength and wisdom—perfect support for Jupiter's healing journey through Cancer. Chaos conjunct Jupiter brings the creative potential of the void, reminding us that from dissolution comes new creation, allowing Jupiter's gifts to emerge from what seemed like endings.

The North Node in Pisces calls us toward collective healing and spiritual unity, beautifully supporting Jupiter's mission to expand our emotional and spiritual intelligence. This nodal placement suggests our karmic destiny lies in developing greater compassion and intuitive wisdom, exactly what Jupiter in Cancer offers.

Your Personal Jupiter Blessing

To truly understand how this divine collaboration will unfold in your life, you need to look at three key areas in your birth chart:

Your Cancer House - This is where Jupiter is currently transiting, bringing direct expansion and blessings to these life themes.

Your Natal Moon - As Cancer's ruler, your Moon becomes Jupiter's celestial hostess during this transit. Her sign, house, and aspects reveal how you'll receive and process Jupiter's gifts. A well-aspected Moon will make Jupiter's blessings flow more easily, while a challenged Moon might require more conscious work to integrate the growth.

Your Natal Jupiter - Your birth Jupiter shows your natural relationship with expansion, wisdom, and abundance. During this transit, your natal Jupiter gets activated, potentially bringing opportunities related to its placement and aspects.

The houses where your natal Moon and Jupiter reside will also receive special attention during this transit, as these areas of life become part of the divine conversation between the god and goddess.

Here's how Jupiter's Cancerian blessings might unfold through each house:

1st House - A powerful rediscovery of who you are, with increased faith in yourself and a more meaningful life direction. Your nurturing nature becomes part of your identity.

2nd House - Growth around your values and resources, both inner talents and material wealth. What you truly value becomes clearer, and income may flow through caring professions.

3rd House - Healing with siblings and close family, improved communication, and meaningful connections in your immediate environment. A time of emotional maturing.

4th House - Profound healing around home, family, and roots. Property matters are favoured, and your private life becomes a source of great joy.

5th House - An incredibly fertile time for creativity and children. Creative projects flourish, and life becomes more playful and joyful through meaningful connections.

6th House - Health improvements through consistent self-care. Work or daily tasks become more meaningful, and small daily efforts bring big rewards. It's the perfect time to establish nurturing routines.

7th House - Relationship blessings abound! Partnerships bring emotional fulfilment, and you learn that life can be sweet—you don't have to carry everything alone.

8th House - Restoration of trust and faith after difficult times. Shared resources flow more easily, and you're liberated from unhealthy attachments through unexpected gifts or insights.

9th House - Permission to protect what you believe in. Spiritual growth accelerates, and higher learning brings deeper meaning. Your philosophy expands to include more compassion, possibly through travel.

10th House - Career recognition and public success, especially in caring professions. Your reputation grows through your nurturing leadership style, and you feel safe to be seen.

11th House - Jupiter's favourite house, where his gifts are magnified! Community connections bring healing and joy. Your hopes and dreams get powerful support from friends and groups who truly understand you.

12th House - Deep spiritual healing and release of old patterns. Your subconscious reveals its treasures, and you learn to trust the flow of life. Perfect for meditation and inner work.

But remember, Jupiter bestows gifts without instructions. He expands whatever he touches, but it's up to us to use our free will and wisdom to make the most of his offerings.

A Time for Redemption

As I reflect on Jupiter's journey through Cancer, I can't help but feel this is our collective redemption story. After years of division, fear, and disconnection, we're being called back to what matters most: love, care, compassion, and genuine human connection.

The Cancer New Moon on June 25th, conjunct Jupiter, felt like a powerful reset—a chance to plant seeds of healing that will grow throughout this transit. And with Jupiter going retrograde in November, we'll have time for deep inner work before emerging in spring 2026 with new clarity about how to nurture ourselves and our world.

The Invitation

So here's my invitation to you, beautiful soul: How can you embrace Jupiter's Cancerian gifts? Where in your life are you being called to nurture, to care, to create emotional security? What family wounds are ready for healing? How can your home become more of a sanctuary?

This is astrology as spiritual practice—not just predicting the future, but participating consciously in the cosmic dance. Jupiter in Cancer is offering us a year of profound blessings, but only if we're willing to open our hearts and receive them.

May this transit bring healing to your lineage, joy to your home, and expansion to your capacity for love.

Blessed be, Linda 💜

Want to dive deeper into how Jupiter in Cancer affects your personal chart? I offer consultations and reports that blend ancient wisdom with modern insight. Visit lindagemmill.com to learn more.

The Nature of Spiritual Transformation

Before we explore these two approaches, it's essential to understand that spiritual growth isn't linear. Unlike conventional self-help models that promise quick fixes, authentic spiritual development honours the cyclical nature of consciousness. We spiral deeper into wisdom, revisiting themes at ever-deeper levels. Some seasons call for focused action and clear direction, while others invite us into the mystery of becoming.

This understanding forms the foundation of why different approaches serve us at different times—and why some souls naturally gravitate toward one over the other.

Understanding Spiritual Life Coaching

Spiritual life coaching emerges from the recognition that we are spiritual beings navigating a human experience. Unlike traditional life coaching, which often focuses solely on external achievements, spiritual life coaching addresses the soul's calling while honouring practical needs.

The Sacred Structure of Coaching

Spiritual life coaching typically operates within a structured framework designed to create tangible transformation. Sessions focus on specific goals, challenges, or areas of life requiring conscious change. This approach works exceptionally well when you're ready to:

• Transform specific patterns: Whether it's releasing limiting beliefs, healing relationship dynamics, or stepping into your authentic power

• Manifest conscious changes: Bringing spiritual insights into practical reality through aligned action

• Work with cosmic timing: Understanding how planetary cycles support your transformation

• Develop spiritual practices: Integrating meditation, energy work, or intuitive development into daily life

The coaching process often incorporates tools like astrological timing, energy healing techniques, and practical spiritual exercises. It's goal-oriented while remaining deeply soulful, creating a bridge between the mystical and the mundane.

When Coaching Serves Best

Spiritual life coaching tends to serve souls who:

• Feel called to make specific changes in their lives

• Appreciate structure and clear action steps

• Want to understand how spiritual principles apply to everyday challenges

• Seek to manifest their soul's purpose in tangible ways

• Feel ready for focused transformation

The Sacred Art of Spiritual Mentoring

Spiritual mentoring operates from an entirely different paradigm. Rather than focusing on specific outcomes, mentoring creates a sacred relationship where wisdom is transmitted through connection, presence, and shared exploration of life's mysteries.

The Organic Unfolding

In mentoring relationships, transformation happens organically. There's less emphasis on achieving specific goals and more focus on deepening spiritual connection, understanding archetypal patterns, and developing intuitive gifts. The mentor serves as a guide who has walked similar paths, offering wisdom garnered through their own spiritual journey and study.

This approach honours the divine feminine principle that transformation happens in its own timing, through relationship and receptivity rather than force and achievement.

The Mythic Dimension

Spiritual mentoring often explores the mythic dimensions of your life story. We might examine which archetypal energies are awakening within you, how your personal mythology serves your soul's evolution, or what ancestral wisdom wants to emerge through your unique expression.

This exploration can include working with:

• Archetypal patterns: Understanding which goddesses, gods, or mythic themes are active in your life

• Cyclical wisdom: Honoring your natural rhythms and seasons of growth

• Intuitive development: Strengthening your connection to inner knowing

• Sacred feminine principles: Embracing receptivity, intuition, and cyclical transformation

When Mentoring Serves Best

Spiritual mentoring tends to serve souls who:

• Crave deeper spiritual connection and understanding

• Want ongoing support through life's unfolding mysteries

• Feel drawn to explore archetypal and mythic dimensions

• Desire a nurturing, relationship-based approach to growth

• Sense they're being called into a more mystical path

The Divine Feminine Thread

Whether through coaching or mentoring, the most transformative spiritual work honours divine feminine wisdom. This isn't about gender—it's about embracing the receptive, intuitive, cyclical aspects of existence that patriarchal culture has long dismissed.

The sacred feminine teaches us profound truths:

• Transformation happens in spirals, not straight lines

• Intuition is as valuable as logic in navigating life's complexities

• Healing often requires descent before ascent—we must journey into shadow to reclaim our light

• Receptivity and being are as important as action and doing

This wisdom infuses both coaching and mentoring approaches, creating space for organic unfolding alongside conscious choice.

Integrating Both Approaches

Many souls discover they need both approaches at different times—or even simultaneously. You might begin with mentoring to deepen your spiritual connection, then move into coaching when specific goals emerge. Or you might start with coaching to address immediate challenges, then discover deeper questions that call for mentoring's exploratory approach.

The key is recognising that your spiritual journey is unique. What serves you may shift as you evolve, and there's profound wisdom in remaining open to different forms of guidance.

Practical Considerations for Your Choice

When discerning which approach calls to you, consider these questions:

For Spiritual Life Coaching, ask yourself:

• Do I have specific goals or challenges I'm ready to transform?

• Would I benefit from structure and clear action steps?

• Am I drawn to understanding how spiritual principles apply practically?

• Do I want to work with cosmic timing for manifestation?

For Spiritual Mentoring, ask yourself:

• Am I seeking deeper spiritual connection and understanding?

• Do I want ongoing support through life's mysteries?

• Am I drawn to exploring archetypal and mythic dimensions?

• Would I thrive in a nurturing, relationship-based approach?

For Integrated Work, consider:

• Do I want the best of both worlds?

• Does my spiritual journey have many facets requiring different approaches?

• Am I ready for deep transformation that honors both practical and mystical aspects?

The Astrological Lens

One powerful way to discern your path is through your astrological blueprint. Your birth chart reveals natural tendencies, timing for transformation, and which approach might serve your soul's evolution. For example:

• Strong Cardinal energy might gravitate toward coaching's action-oriented approach

• Dominant Water signs might resonate with mentoring's intuitive unfolding

• Prominent Air signs might appreciate coaching's structured exploration of ideas

• Earth sign emphasis might benefit from mentoring's organic, embodied wisdom

Your chart also reveals optimal timing for different types of spiritual work, helping you align your growth with cosmic support.

Walking the Path Together

As someone who has dedicated years to understanding these sacred approaches—both through my own transformational journey and in service to others—I feel called to share what I've learned about creating containers for authentic spiritual growth.

My path led me through comprehensive training in Hellenistic astrology, spiritual life coaching, and spiritual counselling, not because I was collecting credentials but because I recognised that souls need different types of support at different times. Some moments call for the focused clarity of coaching; others invite the organic wisdom of mentoring.

In my work, I've discovered the profound gift of being able to fluidly move between these approaches—sometimes within a single session. You might arrive with a specific challenge that calls for coaching's structured exploration, only to find yourself diving into the mythic dimensions of your story as more profound questions emerge. Or we might begin with mentoring's gentle unfolding, then discover specific goals that want coaching's practical support.

The Cosmic Blueprint

What makes this work particularly powerful is the integration of astrological wisdom. Your birth chart serves as a cosmic roadmap, revealing your soul's purpose and the optimal timing for transformation. When we understand the planetary energies supporting your growth, every session aligns with the universal flow rather than working against it.

I'm particularly drawn to the wisdom of asteroids and dwarf planets—celestial bodies that carry the sacred feminine mysteries often overlooked in traditional astrology. Sedna's shamanic energy of transformation, for instance, offers profound guidance for navigating major life transitions. These cosmic allies add layers of depth to our work together.

Creating Sacred Sanctuary

Whether through coaching or mentoring, my commitment is to create a sacred sanctuary where you can explore your spiritual essence with complete safety and support. This isn't about imposing my spiritual beliefs or pushing you toward predetermined outcomes. Instead, it's about holding space for your unique unfolding while offering the wisdom I've gathered through my own journey and years of study.

In our work together, we might:

• Decode your astrological blueprint to understand your soul's calling

• Release emotional and energetic blocks that dim your natural radiance

• Develop your intuitive gifts and spiritual practices

• Unlock the wisdom of your heart through powerful breath-work

• Explore archetypal patterns awakening in your life

• Align your daily choices with your deepest values

• Navigate life transitions with cosmic wisdom and grounded support

The Journey Unfolds

For those drawn to spiritual life coaching, I typically recommend beginning with at least four sessions to build a strong foundation for lasting transformation. This gives us time to understand your unique blueprint, address immediate challenges, and establish practices that support ongoing growth. For souls ready for deeper exploration, nine sessions allow us to work with multiple areas of your spiritual life meaningfully.

Those called to spiritual mentoring often find that the relationship unfolds more organically. We might meet monthly for ongoing support, or you might reach out when specific themes or questions arise. The beauty of mentoring is its responsiveness to your soul's natural rhythm.

Many clients discover they want integrated sessions that draw from both approaches as needed. Your spiritual journey has many facets, and honouring that complexity often creates the most profound transformation.

Practical Details

All sessions are conducted via Zoom, allowing us to connect regardless of physical location. I offer recordings of our sessions so you can revisit insights and guidance whenever needed—spiritual wisdom often reveals new layers as we integrate it over time.

No long-term commitments are required. You can work with me session by session, allowing your soul's calling to guide the pace and depth of our exploration. What matters most is that you feel genuinely supported in your unique spiritual journey.

The testimonials from souls I've been honoured to serve speak to transformations that go far beyond surface changes—shifts in how they relate to themselves, their purpose, and the sacred mystery of existence itself.

Your Moment of Recognition

If you've read this far, something in your soul recognises the call to deeper spiritual exploration. Whether you're drawn to coaching's focused transformation or mentoring's nurturing wisdom—or the integrated approach that honours both—trust that recognition.

The divine feminine energies are rising to support awakening souls, and your birth chart holds keys to understanding your unique path of service and growth. Your challenges are indeed gateways to expansion, and your intuition carries wisdom beyond measure.

Your moment of transformation doesn't require perfect clarity or readiness—it simply requires your willingness to begin. The stars have aligned to bring you to this moment of recognition, and the sacred feminine wisdom that flows through all existence is ready to support your awakening.

If you feel called to explore how spiritual life coaching, mentoring, or integrated sessions might serve your journey, I invite you to trust that calling. Sometimes the most profound transformations begin with a simple yes to what our soul already knows.

Ready to discover which sacred path calls to your soul? Book a session and step into the life of greater alignment, purpose, and radiant joy that awaits you.

An earworm for your pleasure 💜

The current astrological setup is undoubtedly unusual and somewhat confusing. Understanding these significant events can provide a sense of direction as we navigate the changes occurring personally and in the outer world. The new moon solar eclipse chart below clearly shows a lot is happening across the signs of Aries and Pisces. I'll break it down into digestible bites for you.

A Giant leap forward and two small steps backwards

The Aries New Moon solar eclipse on March 29th and Neptune's ingress into Aries the next day represent a giant leap into our future. Meanwhile, Venus and Mercury's retrogrades have demanded a release or recalibration of relationships and desires that no longer serve us and a general reorientation of our mental mind maps.

Pisces, the end of the zodiac, speaks of a lifetime of lessons - an accumulation point, while Aries speaks of the new. Given what we know now, what do we wish to take forward as we step into a brand-new future? This time of potential growth and change inspires us to consider what we want to carry forward into this new phase of our lives.

Saturn in Pisces assists in this life review and clean-out, providing structure and discipline to our process as we sort the wheat from the chaff and let go of what no longer nourishes us, before we move on. The presence of the North Node conjunct Saturn suggests we are being helped with our acts of discernment through the pull of our karmic destiny. This support is a reassuring reminder that we are not without resources in this process.

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The Chandra symbol for the degree of the new moon solar eclipse is uncanny in its summary of where we find ourselves:

Roots of a tree entwined around the statue of a nude woman.

The impulse to make yourself over is strong, courageous, ready, and willing. The old stuff dies hard. You are engaged in a pitched battle between retrogressive and progressive ideals, impulses, and desires. Both sides are so impassioned and sharply intent that this becomes a knockdown battle of wills. The backward leaning will is immune to change. The visionary forward-thrusting will feels moved by evolutionary forces never to give up. Eventually the future prevails over the past.1

Neptune’s Ingress into Aries

The ingress of watery Neptune into fiery Aries on March 30th signals a powerful energy shift. He has not visited this part of the zodiac since 1862, so no one alive today has Neptune in Aries in their natal birth chart. Apart from a brief retrograde back into Pisces in October 2025 through January 2026, Neptune will remain in Aries until May 2038.

Aries is ruled by Mars, the god of war, traditionally associated with aggression. But he also symbolises our will, assertiveness and initiation. How his energy manifests for us personally depends on how healthy our relationship is to our inner psyche. We can use his energy to initiate actions for the highest good and to protect what we love. Or we can have it thrust us into conflict due to our lack of healthy boundaries or self-control. Mars is both a protector and protagonist, for good or for ill.

Without the energy of Aries, the new seedling could not penetrate through the soil to find the sun and grow - a fitting metaphor for how we can utilise this energy in a supportive manner.

Neptune is the beautiful dream, the oceanic field of oneness. It is also illusion and dissolution of those illusions. Hence, there is a need to stay grounded and firmly rooted in reality, even while it shape shifts around us. This tricky balancing act calls for awareness and connection to our intuition and gut instincts to help us navigate. Stay grounded and check in regularly with your somatic responses to ensure a steady and safe passage - with Neptune's watery energy within the fiery domain of Aries, we may encounter foggy conditions ahead.

Neptune in Aries represents using our motivated will to find meaning and develop our spirituality in relation to whichever house topic Aries occupies in the birth chart. There may be a call to a higher purpose, our sense of justice or increased inspired creativity. If you are on a spiritual path, expect a deepening relationship with the divine in whatever form that takes for you. On a collective level, we will see the birth of a new era, and what form that takes will depend on how we individually respond to these energies.

After the Full Moon in Libra on April 13th, when both Venus and Mercury will be moving direct, we should be able to find the motivation, clarity of desires and focus in order to proceed. A new era beckons, are you ready to respond to its call?

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If you would like to know more about how this year's epoch-changing astrology will impact you personally, you can order a report or book a one-on-one consultation with me at this link

To say that the astrology of 2025 - 2026 is epoch-changing is not hubris, as I shall attempt to show in this article with my personal take on the energies at play. Yet, as the old cliche goes, “there is nothing to fear but fear itself”, and ultimately, the changes ahead hold much promise for humanity and us individually.

The five outer planets - Pluto (who transited into his new home of Aquarius in December 24), Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus are all changing signs and elements this year (from water/earth to fire/air signs). This rare and radical astrology speaks to the immense changes we find ourselves within, providing us with the means for sense-making, hope and a path through. We are experiencing a period of profound system dissolution. Systems of all kinds and sizes are reaching a level of dissonance so far removed from their purpose that it's time to evolve. Many are so beyond evolution that they are doomed to fail.

Meanwhile, power grabs keep us under the cosh of the global elites as they scramble to make the most of the resulting chaos—by design or opportunism, the result is the same—so predictable. Yet their desperate attempts to cling to their power cannot hold up against the powerful planetary forces at play. Meanwhile, we are waking up to the hypocrisy, greed, and injustice meted out by those who would dominate us while alternative solutions are being created from the grassroots up.

As with any movement of the planets, how they affect us personally is governed by the houses where the action takes place and how the transit impacts planets within the individual birth chart. If you are familiar with your birth chart, see which houses and, therefore, life areas the transits will impact, along with any personal natal planets, to better understand how this powerful time will affect you personally.

On a more mundane level (globally, culturally and politically), while we cannot know what will happen, we can understand the broad themes this once-in-a-lifetime planetary lineup portends.

The Major Planetary Aspects

The karmic nodes of fate change signs Janaury 12th

The North Node (representing our collective Dhamara) is moving into intuitive Pieces at the end of January, while the South Node (representing our Karma, our past) enters Virgo's analytical and practical sign, where they will remain until 2026. This transit provides an opportunity to dream in a new reality of spiritual connection for ourselves while letting go of any self-imposed structures and judgements that no longer serve us. With this transit, we can bring our practical selves into greater balance with our more intuitive nature - it will be interesting to see how this plays out globally and politically!

Saturn and Neptune conjunction 0 degrees Aries June 2025 - 26

This highly important aspect herolds the collapse of longstanding power structures, empires, corporations, and even nations, with accompanying significant political and economic change. The firey Aries zero point is a place of new beginnings - yet the old needs to die before the new is born. Practice detachment from the ensuing chaos while being in service to others, your spiritual growth and practices.

Uranus moves into Gemini July - Nov 2025 and April 2026 - 2032.

In mercurial Gemini, Uranus brings rapid and sometimes disruptive change, and innovation in how we communicate, think and travel. There could be innovative ideas around commerce, freedom of speech, and unexpected new information informing the way forward. Increased feelings of restlessness highlight the need for staying grounded.

Uranus Stationary Retrograde 1 degree Gemini trine Pluto in Aquarius 6th September

Uranus tracks back over recent ground for a course correction regarding the driving forces of evolution and revolution. The themes in play are death and rebirth, our ideals for a better society, social change, working to bring it about and fighting injustice, awakening or fanatical idealism, cataclysm and upheaval, rebellion, power shifts, freedom and individuation. Expect news of natural catastrophes such as volcanos, earthquakes and lightning storms. If the period of Solar Maximus, which has been ongoing since Oct 24, continues, the September astrology would be a prime time for extreme space weather with the possibility of a solar flare causing damage to electrical infrastructure, necessitating the retrograde rethink.

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In September Uranus also comes within close conjunction with Sedna in Gemini (within 22 minutes, then they both retrograde). The exact conjunction is in May 2026 after they have both turned direct. Think revolutionary (Uranus) personal spiritual growth (Sedna) within your Gemini house. This energy can become a crisis if we are not consciously awake to our spiritual nature and following our soul’s desires. The North Node in Pisces will be supportive here as it deepens our intuition, as will the Saturn/Neptune conjunction helping us to move into a more grounded and practical spirituality, wisdom and maturity.

Added to the potent mix, in September 2025, transformational Pluto moves out of bounds in the south1, commencing a rare cycle of massive global reform away from authoritarian power just as it trines Uranus. To understand just how rare this decade-long cycle is, it will not happen again for thousands of years! Themes could include revolution or uprising (not necessarily violent), empire collapse or fragmentation, a mass shift in consciousness or spiritual awakening, increased individuation, a renaissance of the creative arts, significant societal change, and surprising technological leaps forward that support humanity (think alternative energy systems and healing modalities outside our current reality).

What would love do?

As you can see from the above, so many of the themes and energies of 2025-26 repeat and reinforce each other. One thing we can be sure of, we are in for a wild ride over the next year and beyond. A new world is imminent, and the old world needs to fall apart for that to happen. Let go of what no longer serves you, while remaining open, curious and flexible to what is being birthed for you. Keep hope in your heart, stay grounded and connected to love as old systems and structures collapse. If in doubt about personal actions, check in with your intuition and ask, “What would love do”? A spiritual practice and deepening is supported by the energies and supportive of nagaviating through these times. For those with the time, energy and inclination, help usher in the new dawn that beckons by organising locally to develop grassroots solutions and community cohesion - act local.

The themes outlined above give a flavour of the big picture, and we haven’t even touched on the eclipses, Chiron or how the astero goddesses, with the exception of Sedna briefly, are impacting us! I hope you will stay tuned for more astrology and sense-making as we navigate together this pivotal year, and beyond.

If you would like to understand how these powerful planetary aspects will play out for you over the next year, book your personal astrology consultation at this link

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I was recently propelled down a fascinating rabbit hole(or should that read well hole?) when this divine beauty emerged from a painting. Who was she?

The answer to this question still eludes me. Usually, when I paint a deity, they reveal themselves, speaking to me of who they are. Not this time. The most obvious answer—a naiad1 of the Greek or Roman pantheon—just did not gel. She felt more local, more connected to the land where I currently reside, England. Or, more precisely, a small remote peninsula on the Essex coast.

It seems to me that many people alive today are not fortunate enough to be born into the culture and geographic location of their ancient forebearers, not within Western civilisation anyway. Most of us are mongrels of diverse extraction, cut off from our lineage, traditions, and the spirits of place. Perhaps this is why we suffer such ennui— bringing a deep yearning for a sense of “home” and the growing interest in paganism and Celtic mythology.

I was unfamiliar with Coventina, the wellspring water nymph, earth mother, and Romano-British goddess. That is until my painting catalysed an exploration of ancient Brythonic (ancient British) goddesses in an attempt to understand who the deity of my painting was. And although she has so far refused to reveal her heritage to me, I am pretty certain that the enchanting goddess of my painting is not the lovely Coventina.

Still, Coventina is worth knowing based on the contemporary accounts of those who have established a deep and meaningful connection with her, and perhaps her history can inform my own search. Modern day Druid Paul Sandover writes of a deep relationship he has developed with this enigmatic goddess, including a beautiful poem dedicated to her. 2

Usually pictured as a water nymph with water lilies and lying upon an oak leaf, this holy and revered earth mother goddess was actively worshipped between 200 BC and 400 AD. She represented abundance, renewal, new beginnings, purification, life cycles, gentle inspiration, prophecy, birthing, and healing.

Though a similar deity is found in Spain and the former Goual, Coventina herself is not known in the wider Roman pantheon. Yet Roman soldiers garrisoned at Hadrian’s Wall revered this local goddess, finding her “most holy”. Finds at the well and adjacent temple include many votive offerings and dedications that highlight the relationship foreign soldiers had with this local deity. Throughout ancient Britain, there is much evidence of Roman soldiers and civilians worshipping the local deities with similar reverence. Miranda Aldhouse-Green in her book Sacared Britannia writes about many of these sites and related gods and goddesses, including the ‘Spirits of the Place’ as follows:3

“…. when solders were first drafted to a particular provincial location, they made it their business to ascertain who the local gods were and to worship them alongside their own deities.”

Just outside Cramlington, twenty-five miles east of Coventina’s wellspring and adjoining temple ruins at Carrawburgh, we find a vast land sculpture that opened in 2012 as a tourist attraction. We are interested in this modern-day engineering feat built as a reclamation project from an old open-surface mine because the sculpture's original name was Coventina. Unfortunately, some local busybodies took umbrage at our goddess's pagan roots and successfully petitioned for a name change—hence, Northumberlandia or, as she is known locally, Lady of the North. I don't believe it's an accident that the sculpture incorporates water elements; to me, she is the goddess, Coventina, back to claim her rightful place in our landscape and hearts.

My painting has awakened my yearning to establish a relationship with the spirits of my ancestors. It has initiated a journey to find roots and a sense of belonging.

Yet how does one embark on such an endeavour when we do not know who our ancestors were or where they lived? Perhaps it is right that, like the ancient Roman soldiers garrisoned far from home, we honour and connect with the ‘Spirit of the Place’ (Genius loci) where we find ourselves. Such a connection, I feel, can help bring us back into balance with all life and ourselves.

I am now on a journey to find my local water deity, a geographically specific and potentially powerful way to connect to the Great Mother through the ‘Spirit of the Place’—the place I live in today. In future posts, I will write more about this and my journey to find meaningful spiritual roots.

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