Hi friends. Before we dive into today’s newsletter on Bridgerton, Our Flag Means Death, and the Full Moon in Libra, a quick reminder:
Today is the last day to sign up for my course, How to Write a Book Proposal. Deadline is 6pm Eastern.
Hope to see you there!
Xx,
Jeanna
P.S. I’m not spoiling the end of OFMD.
Regency enemies to lovers and gay pirates. Kate Sharma and Anthony Bridgerton. Stede Bonnet and Edward Teach, née Blackbeard. The stories that have dominated the timeline, our current cultural obsessions, are romances. Pure romances.
Not exactly what you’d expect during Aries season.
If internet memes are to be believed, Aries is all about being bold and independent, self-starting and kick ass. Ruled by action star Mars, Aries is more than happy to get in your face to prove their point and get their way.
There isn’t a lot of space for tenderness here. For pausing to reconsider choices. For falling in love.
Thing is, developing feelings for someone and being vulnerable with another person invites conflict faster than just about anything. And being vulnerable enough with yourself to admit that you want to change, that you want to confront trauma, that you want to live life differently — that takes courage.
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Today’s Full Moon in Libra arrives at 2:55pm Eastern. The Aries-Libra axis is the axis of the self and the other, of independence and interdependency. That doesn’t necessarily mean romance: that means an ability to build connections and bridges outside of oneself. Too much emphasis on Aries and we’re buying into the myth of rugged individualism; too much Libra idealism, perhaps stemming from that hope for a happily ever after at all costs, and we’re tipping into enmeshment and codependency.
This full moon brings up the connections that we rely on, the people we’re vulnerable with, the areas where we might be feeling the strain or fears of intimacy. The moon makes an exact square to transformative Pluto, which wants to dredge up all those buried feelings — the buried feelings which, if we’re willing to sit with them a while, might just end up being buried treasure.
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It is striking to me that Bridgerton and OFMD, so popular in Aries season, are romances which feature perhaps more-than-typical amounts of conflict. Not in a tropey way; not in a, “all stories have to utilize some amount of conflict to keep it moving” way.
Rather, the stories are invested in reshaping and challenging the lovers’ relationships to conflict itself. We think of Venus as the goddess of love, as the planet that rules love and relationships, and this is true, but we only have to peel back a layer to see Mars readily at work.
For Kate and Anthony, one primary source of conflict lies in confronting their shared trauma as eldest siblings so used to sacrificing for the good of the family — something which causes rupture after rupture in their relationship as they repress their desire to go after what they truly want, as they refuse to acknowledge the source of their true motivation. Mars is our desire, our motivation — to deny it is to put us in conflict with our true self. So those internal struggles must be overcome by the season’s end for their relationship to get off the ground.
However, in the process, Kate and Anthony’s mutual repression of their Mars principle negatively impacts the people around them, people who they deeply love, and this, then, requires reconciliation, restitution, and forgiveness — essentially, conflict resolution. Which must also require direct, forthright conversations with each other and with themselves. All of this relies on the courage and strength of Mars.
For Stede and Ed, their different approaches to conflict, woven so humorously through the series, lead to an unexpected and cliffhanger season ending I won’t spoil here. Ed, the infamous Captain Blackbeard, has a reputation for bloodlust and brutality that precedes him; he comes from what appears to be an impoverished background, and he’s used to being direct and aggressive in order to get what he wants — in all things. He takes charge. Once he knows what he wants, he goes after it, to extreme degrees. A hyper-compensating Mars.
Stede is, in many ways, the opposite — less gladiator, more chess master. Though he clearly has the capacity to strategize go after what he wants — leave his wife and children to become a pirate on a ship he secretly had built, for example — his upper crust, “passive aggressive” upbringing leads him to circumvent and avoid direct confrontation. But this, too, is a Mars issue — what astrologers would call a need to remediate Mars. There is a moment, near the series’ end, where both Stede and Ed begin changing — Ed softening, Stede becoming more direct.
As a writer who is also an astrologer, one of my favorite pastimes is watching which stories really “hit” the zeitgeist during a particular season. In a culture so soaked in aggression, so incapable of nuance in public discourse, it speaks volumes that the stories we’re obsessing over are ones that are not afraid of conflict, where characters are tender and kind with each other. Where upset does not preclude softness.
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And this softness, cloaked in conflict, says something.
The other thing to remember about the Aries-Libra axis is that it’s a Mars-Venus axis. Mars, the ruler of Aries, governs conflict and war. Venus, the ruler of Libra, governs love and peace. The not-so-secret-secret is that we all contain Mars and Venus within us; we all have both planets in our birth charts, nurturing masculine and feminine principles, seeding our approaches to courage and relationships. They are part and parcel of each other, impossible to separate.
Look for one, and you’ll inevitably find the other.
Writing Prompts for the Full Moon in Libra
What conflict are you experiencing with your writing right now? Is it about your process, the work itself? Is it with yourself, with your identity as a writer? Or is it within the story, the essay, the work — a structure that is unwieldy, a character whose voice you’re having trouble with? Where can you find some gentleness for yourself?
Think of a time when you experienced courage, on your own or in your writing. What did it look like? What did it feel like? What did you like about yourself in that moment?
Think of a time when you felt beautiful/handsome/attractive/aesthetically most yourself — or when the writing felt like that. What did it look like? What did it feel like? What did you like about yourself in that moment?
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I don't really have anything witty to say about it but I greatly appreciated this post and a "like" just didn't seem enough. Thank you!
I agree with the other commenter… I don’t have anything witty to say but, this newsletter is just incredibly timely for me and said all the things my heart needed to get in the right thought path. Thank you so much for the work you do! I can’t wait for your book (I preordered it!)!