Best way to know you are in shadowy territory? You can't make it all add up. There are holes in your position you could drive a bus through. It's not working anymore. Because everything becomes business under capitalism - just ask organised religion - we all have a glaring stinking problem in the whitewashed West. Find it at the intersection of spirituality, capitalism and abundance.

Try as we might it is nigh on impossible to ignore the siren song of the shadowlands when it keens to you. All this shedding year and well before it, shadows bigger than just the wayward facsimiles of tender selves and past participles, the vaster kind we pretend are not ours too.

The online inversion of our shadow, lightwashed for those looking for cheat codes to their underworld, isn't working. There are none but there is just so much more to authentic shadow work, the kind that changes lives and communities. Any wilful refusal to partipate in unspooling the cultural shadows that hold our worlds stuck at the crossroads of evolution is not everybody else's fault.

The lion goddess does not trifle, ever. Her full moon rises now over a world at war with its horrible histories and life itself. Whose overlords know their grip is slipping and the game is up. Whose people teem and scatter as this bright lune plucks at heart strings and shadows.

As well as Kerrie’s writing scrying the star currents and nature's tides, as Bohomofo she has offered readings, shadow work and imaginal healing for thirteen years now after many decades of study in diverse fields. No fly by night and well preceding the days of cheap regurgitation, this highly original witch's business has long been a lighthouse.

Pluto's retrograde is the next to tangle itself in this eclipse season, now stationing to turn and head underground for his regular sabbatical in the shadowlands. This year locked in a challenging aspect with the axis of past and future and our current eclipse ground zero. Dragging us back and forth across evolutionary thresholds that grate and smooth by design.

Even after such a long dark middle ages she resisted the cocoon until finally the gossamer weave was placed gently over her sagging shoulders. She folded herself into it gratefully and balled up to swim her way through the transition.

The notion of “shadow work” had been clouded for me by the overuse of the phrase. Kerrie helped me to redefine what shadow work needed to be for me… a reuniting of all the parts of myself I had denied or cut off as a survival response to pain and trauma.

I spent a decade living in a flood zone. It is terrifying at first, often unheralded and arriving out of the blue with a disconcerting inevitability. But over the years as I would sit and watch storms dump rain in my tank and crossings go under, I began to see how unwilling we are to accept nature in whatever form she arrives.

Personal power is actually built by chewing on your own gristle. It is strengthened in times of adversity and challenge, particularly those that kick out the crutches and leave you to go it alone. Power is not restricted by external conditions, dictates or the actions of others - though all can knock you off your spot. It pivots on perspective and is nourished by our whole truth.

The storm is here darklings and the sirens are ringing out around the world. To your bunkers, they cry. Seek shelter and protect yourself from the marauding virus that threatens life as we know it.

I bloody hope so. This tipping point has been ratcheting for some time.

Though Chiron has been in Aries since Feb last year, with the world burning then flooding then completely freaking out there has been precious little time to dive into our deepest existential identity wounds. Survival mode makes hasty decisions and rash vows. But there ain't nothing like isolation - and a gentle shunt from the stars - to push the world's individuals to grander considerations.

A word to the wise mermaids, as we navigate the fathoms of Pisces season and Mercury's emo retrograde. Though this sign cultivates the shamanic depths and our emotional currents, it also has a spectacular penchant for drama, delusion and evasive bypass. Pisces is just as great at opting out or cultivating unconsciousness. Everything has its shadow.

New year brings new readings, deeper shadow work and a whole bunch of new ways to work together. If you are looking for a sign, this is datura.

Not any journey to the shadowlands is a sunshiney walk in the park but all are undeniably worthy and transformative, a revolution within. When we accept the result is guaranteed - and my darklings it unequivocably is - we are better able to submit to the process itself. All of its many twists and turns, its great pain and even greater healing, its stunning capacity for teaching and understanding our sweet self.

Unless you have been trapped under a small planet sized rock, it could not have escaped your attention that Uncle Pluto has just turned retrograde. Next week he is joined by his partner in Capricorn crime Saturn as he also backs the truck up. Each offers us yet another opportunity to stop dicking around when it comes to our shadow, unarguably the greatest work of our life.

Pluto's grind is here again as the dark lord of our underworld turns retrograde in Capricornia. Only five months to go. Unlike other rx's where we get to slow down, this actually amps Pluto's unholy purpose: to create the kind of chaos that forces us into our dark corners. We are transformed finding our way out. His retrograde takes us deeper and holds us under longer.

If you have been fairly choking on the constant change of the last little while or longer, a cosmic let off is here. Ish. In the last few days Jupiter has shifted into reverse gear in Scorpio. First cab heading back off the rank, his retrograde retraces his steps as far back as last October.