Hi everyone,
This has been a tough year, and the astrology has reflected that at every turn. In this letter, our focus is today’s south node eclipse in Sagittarius, as well as the fact that this week marks the final days of Saturn’s nearly three year journey in Capricorn (and Jupiter’s one year journey there, as well).
But new beginnings are stirring.
There will be a special edition newsletter next week with writing prompts and more for The Great Conjunction — healer Jupiter and taskmaster Saturn meeting in Aquarius for the first time in centuries and themselves beginning a 20-year cycle, personally, and a 200-year cycle, collectively. It’s also happening on the Winter Solstice, aka the beginning of Capricorn season. This one’s going to paid subscribers only.
But today. In this letter, you’ll find a note on this week’s big energy of endings and releases, with some creative offerings attached. Writing prompt horoscopes are, as always, down at the end if you’d like to skip.
Xx,
Jeanna
Today marks a New Moon in Sagittarius — something we might think of as a time for beginning. But step one is letting go. Occurring on the south node of the moon, this energy demands naps, rest, and integration. If you feel drained, that’s par for the course. This is a time for releasing, recalibrating, and redefining — for clearing out the trash and hosing down your psychic closets in order to make room for something else that is coming in. Eclipses are great clearings.
This energy is magnified by the fact that we are in the final week of both Jupiter and Saturn in Capricorn. The great healer-teacher and the great taskmaster, both, have traveled together for the last year, and will travel together for another year more (in Aquarius, beginning this week). But in structured Capricorn, known more for its CEOs than its saviors, we’ve all had something of a multi-year Big Boss Battle. No one has emerged unscathed, although there have been valuable lessons along the way. This has been especially true for everyone finishing their first or second Saturn Return (those born between Feb 1988-Feb 1991 and Jan 1959-Jan 1962).
Here in the final days of these planets’ journey in the sign of the sea goat, there is a collective pressure, as if something is about to be released — and possibly even leveled up.
In keeping with this enormous, impossible-to-miss theme of endings and release the week is bringing us (truly, sometimes things really are that obvious), here is an offering of a few beliefs and practices to leave (or work on leaving) in 2020 — and one to invite in (or work on cultivating) for 2021:
To Release…
Stop saying “aspiring.”
Language creates reality. How are you bringing the idea of yourself as a creator, as an artist, as a writer into form with your own description?
You are a writer. Full stop.
Your fear is not special. Breathe it out.
The most important realization of my first semester of my PhD program was not that everyone in the room was smarter than me — but that my friends shared that same fear, that everyone else was smarter than they were. My friends looked at me and said, you’re smarter than me. I looked at them and said, no, you’re smarter than I am. The Spiderman meme, but English Lit grad students with hipster glasses hopped up on coffee and protein bars.
I can’t speak for them, but that deeply vulnerable conversation at the Dunkin Donuts in Porter Square ten years ago completely changed my outlook and is probably single-handedly responsible for helping me get my head on straight for the next four years of my program. Every time I thought, god, everyone else is so smart, I remembered: the person next to me thinks this, too. Deep breath. Reset.
Whether your fear manifests as imposter syndrome, writer’s block, or a particularly vicious case of professional jealousy — trust, other people have it, too. But the thing about fear, as Elizabeth Gilbert notes in Big Magic, is that it’s not special. When you think about it, fear is actually really boring. Most of our fears look… pretty much the same?
Do you know what is pretty damn unique, though? The lens you bring to your work. Your personal history. Your weird web of interests and cultural references. The work that the fear might be keeping you from because someone else’s well-curated social media makes it seem like they’re so much more productive than you could ever be. (You see where this is going, yes?)
Fear is a reality of life and isn’t something that I think can ever be totally released (feel free to disagree and conceptualize fear however it is useful for you!). But it can be acknowledged, breathed through, and put to the side in the interest of doing your good and important work and living your one precious life — which is much richer and more creative when fear, as Gilbert puts it, is not allowed to drive.
… & to Invite In
A rising tide lifts all boats
This is one of my deepest core beliefs: that when one of us wins, it opens the door for the next person. And the next. And the next. Less of a ladder than a spiderweb or an ocean that we’re all making our collective way through. People might have their own unique way of making the journey, but when one person starts swimming in the aligned current of their life, it helps the people around them start doing it, too.
This probably comes from the fact that, in my own life, I’ve witnessed and experienced the power of how one person’s freedom can open up space for exploration in others around them. I have been the person who was inspired, and I have been the person whose pursuit of freedom helped nudge others in whatever unique direction they were being called to.
Courage is contagious. So is vulnerability. So is creativity. Ultimately, so is joy.
When you surround yourself with creatively motivated and interesting and empathetic people, it’s hard to not want to swim together and support each other on your collective journeys — and be really excited when someone gets to surf a particularly big money wave or gets whisked away by mermaids to a particularly magical residency or stumbles upon a little starfish of a memory that unlocks the chapter that’s been stumping them for months.
Writing Prompt Horoscopes
An important note: In Vedic astrology, and a number of other traditions, eclipses are considered malefic and less than ideal (to put it mildly) for manifestation. Rest, journal, and reflect with the writing prompt horoscopes instead.
Aries & Aries Rising
For the eclipse: What long-term plans are you sifting and shifting? What beliefs are you shifting around your abilities, desires, and ideas when it comes to teaching or higher education? What goals are you reorienting and recalibrating around what you’re publishing?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: Where in your professional life have you noticed a maturation or increased sense of responsibility? What have you learned about authority — your own and others’? Where have you wrestled with structure and boundaries? Where are you experiencing healing in your career and public roles?
Taurus & Taurus Rising
For the eclipse: Which creative collaborations or shared resources are being recalibrated? Has this year brought into focus the kinds of people and creative projects you want to work with and on? What needs to be cleaned out or let go of in order to create more space for this?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: What have you learned about yours and others’ authority as a teacher? Have you sought or even become a mentor over the last three years? What have you learned about structure and organization when it comes to what you’re publishing? What has felt healing about these long-term journeys?
Gemini & Gemini Rising
For the eclipse: What partnerships — or ideas about partnerships — that involve or support your creative life are shifting? What beliefs about romantic or professional relationships, especially as they relate to your career plans, are up for review?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: What have the last three years brought you when it comes to understanding the expertise you bring to collaborations and building shared resources and creative projects? How have you worked with (or been forced to work with) taxes, debts, inheritance, contractual settlements and agreements, or other assets that involve other people? What has this brought up for you?
Cancer & Cancer Rising
For the eclipse: What commitments within your daily work life are being shed? What aspects of your work that have been hanging on could use a trim or a good shucking? What beliefs are causing you to hold onto projects, tasks, or people beyond their expiration date?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: How have the last three years brought more form, structure, boundaries, and overall understanding into your romantic and professional partnerships — and especially your ideas about the partnerships you want, and what those partnerships should be? What has felt healing about this maturation? Have you entered into significant personal or business contractual relationships?
Leo & Leo Rising
For the eclipse: What aspects of your creative practice or beliefs are being flushed out in order to create space for new ones that more reflect who you are growing into? How do passion and playfulness factor into this?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: How has your work life shifted over the last three years? Have you been promoted or changed jobs, or even industries? If you work with other people, has the makeup of your team significantly shifted in ways that pushed you to take on more responsibility or get clear about your boundaries? Have you dealt with health diagnoses or issues and, if so, how has this led you to learn new ways of working that honor your body’s integrity and flow? How has this felt for you?
Virgo & Virgo Rising
For the eclipse: Are you in the midst of processing, releasing, or otherwise sorting through feelings that relate to home and family? On a mundane level, does your home office, or the space where you most often work, need a refresh, a thorough cleanse, or a makeover? On a more conceptual level, what feelings is the holiday season bringing up that could use a cleanse?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: When it comes to how you structure your creative life, what changes and boundaries have the last three years brought into your life? What new muses have arisen? What healing medicine have you found in your artistic practice and play? Have children played a role?
Libra & Libra Rising
For the eclipse: What daily routines and rituals are in need of an upgrade or a makeover — and which are just being repeated out of habit? Which no longer reflect or work for the person you are and the life you are building for yourself? Which writing projects and practices are deserving of your focus, and which need to be moved to the back burner or perhaps even the compost pile?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: What have the last three years taught you about home: how to build it and the roles you take on within it? About your relationships to parents, grandparents, and perhaps even your relationship to parenting itself? What has felt healing about this process? What has been a challenge?
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
For the eclipse: What ideas and beliefs about money are you working through and letting go of in the interest of clearing space for new growth? What income streams are excusing themselves from your life?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: How have you got serious and otherwise really buckled down about your work and daily rituals over the last three years? What has changed when it comes to your daily life, local neighborhood, or communication style with the important people in your life? What about your writing routine feels supportive?
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
For the eclipse: What parts of your identity or core ideas about yourself are you working through at this moment? Are you shedding an old skin — metaphorically or even literally? What feels difficult but necessary to sort through? What are you making new room for in your life?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: How have you restructured your budget, income streams, or even your overall relationship to money over the last three years? What has felt healing or helpful about this? What has been challenging?
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
For the eclipse: What are you currently unpacking behind the scenes? What psychic residue, self-sabotaging patterns, and old, even ancestral beliefs are you ready to clean out and not take into 2021 — or, to begin to work with and realign in a more conscious way?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: What have you learned about self-mastery over these last three years? How have you learned to set and honor your own boundaries, as well as others’? How have you begun to understand and appreciate your own authority and expertise? What has felt healing about this process? What has helped things click into place?
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
For the eclipse: Who do you really want to spend time with? Which friendships are being clarified? Which community commitments, organizations, and networks do you have the energy for? Which groups and platonic connections align with your vision for the future?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: What structure, order, understanding, and responsibilities have been brought to your inner life over these last three years? What therapeutic practices, clearings, meditations, and regimens have helped you sort through the under the bed bins and psychic closets of your past? What unconscious patterns have become conscious? What have you discovered about yourself? What has felt healing?
Pisces & Pisces Rising
For the eclipse: What beliefs about your career, audience, goals, and legacy are naturally composting? What is emerging?
For the end of Saturn & Jupiter in Capricorn: What community commitments have solidified over the last three years, in ways that may have surprised you? What transformations have you experienced with and through networks and friendships? What has been brought into focus regarding who you want to commit to, platonically, and why? What responsibilities and boundaries within these connections and groups have you become aware of?
P.S. Up next: the newsletter on The Great Conjunction & Winter Solstice!