assuming my math is correct, the sun, new moon, and venus will all be in pisces for a few hours between midnight and 3am. i don’t know much about electional astrology but this feels like an amazing threshold that reverberates the lessons of the past seven months (the entirety of my 12H profection year) throughout every crevice of my life.
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i was born right after a new moon, when the slightest whisper of light begins to highlight the edge of the moon. it feels in my nature to always see that light. i love to see and chase glimmers of moonlight in the dark. i am very hopeful person. i have jupiter in the first house (1H). i was born on jupiter’s day. even if i wanted to, i find it hard to give up hope. i find it hard to give up on understanding what pulls me away from hope. i find it hard not to try to evolve out of whatever does pull me away. i remember the visceral pain of the nihilism that overcame me as a teenager. without hope, what’s the point of living? from where i stand, there is none. so i commit to hope and that commits me to everything that makes life worth living. i’m not narrativizing my life for kicks here. though i do love to talk about me with a little drama :P as this newsletter unravels, hopefully, you’ll see the connection i’m trying to make. the clarity of destiny.
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pisces is the last sign in the zodiac 𖦹༄ sprial-cycle. for context, you can read my constantly evolving understanding of the zodiac spiral-cycle here. it’s important to center that the zodiac is a circle. it is a cycle of archetypes that humans have experienced (and likely will experience for the foreseeable future) in innumerable combinations and in varying and layered intervals throughout time. when imagining the first round of this cycle in time, i see pisces as the culmination of all we learn from aries-aquarius. as the zodiac wheel repeats and layers in the 𖦹༄ spiral-cycle, we can more visibly see how each archetype becomes more immeshed with the others. each archetype informs the others. they can never be separated. they can be extremified, one archetype privileged over another, destabilizing balance. but no energy in the zodiac can be destroyed. thus the zodiac 𖦹༄ spiral-cycle is a mirror of our relationship with time.
i won’t assume everyone reading this shares my definition of time. i elaborated on my internal definition in this reflection called “ɣeyiɣi”
time is the nature
of reality
meaning
TIME
is
REALITY
itself
time is
the nature
time is
the wilderness
time is
space
time is
the dark
time is
the light
time is
up
time is
down
time is
here
time is
there
time is
nowhere
time is
everywhere
time is
moving
time is
still
time is
one
with all
life
time is
life
time is the nature
of reality
meaning
time is
reality
time is
life
time is
one
time is
all
time is
the language
of god
time is
the language
time is
god
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let’s get back to the sun, new moon, and venus in pisces. this transit delights me because of what the archetype of pisces represents in world. pisces is the ocean. pisces is god. pisces is double-bodied. with the moon, (cancer’s guide) pisces reminds me that there is me and my destiny, me & me. that in becoming my best friend—my life partner, caring to understand and listen to all i feel about experiencing being human, caring to understand my resonances and dissonances—i am divining & intuiting my destiny. riffing off of ewe vodu cosmology, it’s me & me(destiny/god) out here and my spiritual other is literally me as time. destiny is oneself as time. we are double-bodied in this way.
in venus (taurus and libra’s guide) pisces reminds me that, to use Thich Nhat Hanh’s language, we are all ocean body and wave body. we are wave whether that be human form, tree form, wind form, rock form, worm form, soundwave form, that beam of light through the window on a partly cloudy monday. we are ocean and we will return to the ocean when we are done with this experience. and become some other wave. we are double-bodied in this way.
we also see venus reflect double-bodiedness in human experience. libra, in this context, emphasizes that there are other waves in the ocean. that we are waves throughout time and space that can send energy from the pastpresentfuture (to borrow language from astrologers Ari Felix & Drew Levanti). our lives move in all directions. and these waves are what influence and move people to act and to create. on earth these acts and creations shape our experience. and for venus, that creation is about creating beauty and abundance. pleasure and love. thinking about how astrologer Av says that venus isn’t negatively impacted in any sign because she will materialize pleasure/beauty/abundance no matter where she is. and that this happens because if she doesn’t, life will become pointless.
we are humans and that experience is unique and something to be explored. it’s something to have reverence for. taurus and libra are archetypes that really emphasize that exploration and reverence by way of earthly delights; the material realm and how we enjoy it are signatures of the human experience. in our human wave body, we can experience a uniquely human concept of our relationality.
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to elaborate on the sun in pisces, i’ll need to share a brief reflection on saturn in aries & 1H (1H = you). before this piscespiscespisces threshold, i experienced another stirring threshold: saturn in cazimi. to paraphrase the astrologer’s encyclopedia, saturn is about ignorance and darkness (and, in aries, arrogance). the clairty of light, according to them, is the sun and jupiter’s domain. they also reflected that saturn is usually teaching them that they are small and fragile (i think they have natal saturn in aries). reflecting on what natal saturn and jupiter in aries + the 1H look like in my life, i definitely agree. to reference Av again, saturn in aries teaches me that i may plant my crops yet reap no reward this season due to drought. saturn in aries teaches me that life is random. i’d say about 99% random. i’m one of many stakeholders and collaborators. and, though yes my action and perspective matters and is factored into things, there are many compromises being made all of the time. many of which may look nothing like what i think i want or what i think should happen because of how many perspectives have to be factored in and how creative reality is and how often it eludes our conceptual grasp because it has to consider so much more than we do (and can) on a moment to moment basis.
like damn, i wouldn’t want to have to orchestrate the timing of the universe all by myself!! that shit sounds hard as hell. and none of us have to. none of us are supposed to. this is an example of archetypal imbalance (arrogance). it is an imbalance to privilege our ability to act over all else. it is an imbalance to believe our action is more powerful than anything else in this reality. it is an imbalance to create systems and institutions that deny the nature of reality and create a class of “elites” that act as though it is their ability that gives them their position. when, like all of us, it is simply their luck (randomness). if saturn is ignorance, then the ignorance of aries is partially about the arrogance of overestimating the power of our action in reality. this shows up, for example, as a society that is ableist.
if we only have 1% influence on the randomness of life, what’s the point of trying to do anything? that 1%, as we know from being alive, is still the whole of our experience. it may only be 1% but we feel every inch of that 1% as our individual and collective human lives. i know in capitalism 101 it’s: bigger is better. it’s: grow, expand, scale up. but we have enough. i am content with the 1%.
it’s my belief that my 1% is best spent getting to know myself. being an attentive and curious life partner with myself. a devotee of myself. understanding what makes my heart sing. it is a process that is inseparable from getting to know every[], time, god. it is the process by which i learn why i care to be human and what i feel called to do during my time in this form. i believe this is key to tranquility and pleasure in my experience. it reminds me of sonia sanchez poem i saw when i was younger, not fully knowing what it meant but knowing how i felt about it. now it resonates even more deeply:
I shall become a collector of me.
ishallbecomeacollectorofme.
i Shall become a collector of me.
i shall BECOME a collector of me.
i shall Become A COLLECTOR of me.
I SHALL BECOME A COLLECTOR OF ME.
ISHALLBECOMEACOLLECTOROFME
AND PUT MEAT ON MY SOUL.
let’s come back to arrogance one more time. if saturn is ignorance, then the ignorance of aries also includes the arrogance of thinking you can know nothing about yourself and have some kind of life. simply it’s not possible. that’s why so much of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism—just think of north american residential schools used to assimilate indigenous children or think of british colonizers demonizing african spirituality—is about making sure you don’t know anything about how you feel. about who you feel you are and what you feel is right for you. even when you do, these systems have a generally effective failsafe in the form of punishing people who do know how they feel and act on it. and they make sure to do this publicly to snuff out all hope. to quote Ari Felix again, “that’s the point of the oppression. to make us forget that we can create new realities. we can create new dreams, we can create new experiences, we can create new structures.”
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in the sun (leo’s guide), pisces reminds me that if reality is 99% random and not up to us, the 1% we have is oft best spent understanding what lights our fire and makes us shine (leo) and keeps it lit by way of listening to how we feel (cancer) about the human experience. and the human experience is a creative one. the sun shines on all that it sees. it can see so much. it can see just how creative reality is by looking at the earth as a microcosm. and humans are a microcosm of the earth. just 1% of the 99% is so beautiful and weird and creative. just 1% of the 99% holds billions of possibilities. we can see this with more clarity as we scale down, as we get smaller, as we go slower, as we (in Fon etymology of vodun) “rest to draw water.”
the sun in pisces reminds me that my dreams, my imagination, myself will always be the starting place of the art and creation to focus on when “myself” is grounded in this understanding. sort of like the heart of pranja paramita sutra says, “you should have the total understanding of the ever-shining prajna wisdom. if you don't understand, then you do not shine; if you are not shining, then you don't understand. therefore, you should understand and then understand even more, shine and shine even more. you should shine brightly in your total comprehension and totally comprehend in your shining brightness—that is understanding. you should be very clear.”
if this isn’t the sun (leo) in pisces, what is?!!
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the sun/new moon/venus in pisces, to quote my friend Hameedha, reminds me that reality is “harmonious entropy.” the sun/new moon/venus moon in pisces reminds me of every[] all at once.
it aids in visualizing just how small i am, how my action is maybe 1% of the innumerable influences on reality. it reminds me that there is always more to reality than what dominant influences may want the masses to believe. you may do everything “right” and still not reap what you’ve sown. pisces reminds that there is natural law, yes. you cannot run into a brick wall without slamming into it. the dominant systems manufacture brick walls and proclaim them to be natural law. as you try and try again to no avail, society attributes your “failure” to imaginary character flaws. and you may feel hopeless and like nothing you do matters.
these are still human-made systems. maybe this is part of why i can’t give up hope. there’s a lot that is absolutely horrible about how humans have evolved (read: not evolved). but even as i feel the impact of the horribleness, i do not believe in human supremacy. i do not believe that our ability to inflict such pain on each other makes us the most powerful vessels in the universe. and i have seen so many examples of humans doing what they can to live in other alignments and succeeding. the past is the present is the future. everything that has ever existed continues to exist in some form. so i am hopeful. and i think it’s worthwhile (and many people’s destiny) to keep investing in all that rejects something like colonization and its aftermath’s idea of the human experience.
the sun/new moon/venus in pisces reminds me that all of our paths naturally unfold and cross no matter how we choose to live. but we always have a choice. no matter how much anyone tries to convince us that we don’t and that’s just how it is. that other stuff, hierarchy and oppression and all that—that is the arrogance of trying to homogenize destiny. systems of oppression will always have cracks for this reason. and these cracks are to be exploited. Sista Docta Alexis Pauline Gumbs reflected on this recently, “like Nat Turner, that one month of refusal, gave me my belief in total freedom. another relation is possible. and if you watch the sky, everything is a sign. let’s go. because you already know something that will make the systems that your extracted labor supports unworkable. your freedom could make every lie about power shake in its sheets.” this piscespiscespisces transit reminds me that my freedom makes every lie about power shake in its sheets.
so much is up to chance. when my path will be crossed with another is up to chance. when i’ll be ignorant and illuminated about different things is up to chance. when i will die is up to chance. but my relationship with my unique weird self, my unique weird embodiment of freedom, my unique weird destiny is my ability to divine/intuit what brings me pleasure inside of the random absurdity that is life. my relationship with myself is my choice, it is my freedom. my relationship with myself is my relationship to every[], to time, to god. the sun/new moon/venus in pisces reminds me that if i may trip but never fall1, then let me wander happily with myself through this life.
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in astrology “you” or the 1H also exists in a wheel, similar to the zodiac.
you, when thinking of the houses as an additional set of archetypes that layer in cycles that inform one another, then contains your ancestors (you 4H), how you relate to others (your 7H), your routines and personal health/constitution (you 6H), what makes life pleasurable for you (your 5H), and so on. and, of course, these things evolve billions of times throughout your life. as a kid, i definitely had a negative connotation of spending so much time thinking about myself. i thought it to be arrogant! and morally incorrect. as i get older, it’s easier to see what opinions are my own and which ones are loan. and that is made possible by having unprecedented curiosity about myself. by always being interested to get to know my ever-shifting feelings on my human experience.
i’m really delighted by the concept of “conscious parenting.” it’s another affirmation that we can choose to do anything in the realm of humanity differently. i saw this thread right after writing the draft for this newsletter and couldn’t help but smile:
if you’re someone who is actively reparenting themselves, my whole spiel about destiny and curiosity about ourselves is beautifully mirrored here. when i am curious about myself, i reparent my inner child as well :) very creative
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avèk tout kè m [with all my heart]
sienna
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shouts out to hameedha for catalyzing so much of this articulation <3
another thanks to all the astrologers who have influenced me over the past few years and shown me that, beyond pop astrology, astrology is a cosmological perspective that reflects the nature of reality as perceived by humans. it is a friend, a mirror, a guide.
astrologers that influence my path (in alphabetical order)
alice sparkly kat
alicia lochard
ari felix
avalldar
diana rose harper
drew levanti
durgadas allon duriel
katy swallow
maeg keane
in soul talk: the new spirituality of african american women Lucille Clifton describes talking to her mother outside of her human iteration, many years after her passing. a natural channel, “from time to time, Thelma [Lucille’s mother] imparted various bits of information and advice. one of her “sayings” has been very helpful to Lucille. Thelma once said, baby you might trip, but you will not fall. that reminder has helped Lucille to have faith in the universe. Lucille also conjectures that, perhaps, because she sees it as ‘not threatening’ the universe does not threaten her…”
from the chapter, talking to ancestral light, p.58