As we begin today to come up for air after a typically torrid saison d'eclipsia, not for me the new moon intention setting or break neck fast track to my brave new world. I am wary of any kind of bring-me-this magic woven under eclipsing skies. We know eclipses to be portents of change, unpredictable beasts who do not bow to our attempts to tame or harness their peculiar magic. We know too that they ripple: across astrological and emotional axes, across years, pinging our past and future alike.

Under these slow cooked retrograde skies, all that was fixed and known is shifting. The movement is slow and organic without our constant adjustment and intervention, tectonic in its changes.

Both Pluto and Mars have turned retrograde, joining taskmaster Saturn and truth bomb Jupiter in reverse gear. And although it may well feel like the brakes have been slammed on, in truth this an invitation to enter the shadowlands prepared to spend some highly instructive and revealing time walking among our skeletons, the denizens of our dark.

After the spectacular whirlwind that has been the first quarter of this year - I'm still looking at you eclipse season - we're all more than ready for a hearty dose of slow mo. In the next month we will find ourselves having the pause button repeatedly pushed by three retrogrades as Mars, then Pluto and finally Mercury all haul themselves into reverse, joining long players Saturn and Jupiter.