Today would have been my Nanna's 106th birthday. This ultra Aries woman was my first Bohemian role model and I can still see her cheeky wink and knowing smile. She lived well beyond the dictates of the time, raising her two girls in The Australian Hotel - one of our oldest pubs in The Rocks in Sydney - as a solo mum in the 1940's. It is her blood that leaps in my veins every time I defy convention or stand my ground.

With a crowded cosmic chorus of alarms ringing in heads and hearts all week / month / year, we are universally musing. We want to know what in tarnation is going on. Or when it is going to end or start or shift. We demand satisfactory responses to impossible questions when we already know the answer.

The reset button that is the full moon on the rise is here. Our retrograde adventure through Neptunian wonderlands has been a surreal and oft tearstruck journey where nothing has been as it seemed.

As we fairly hurtle to the end of the astrological year and our equinox balancing act looks increasingly wobbly, we would do well to sagely count our chickens. There are influences aplenty at play, each wielding a peculiar magic whose combined weight is staggering.

We are wobbling towards Thursday's tipping point as equinox and another initiatory full moon combine and it feels nothing like a journey to balance. More likely its wild opposite, as mighty forces continue this week to ensure we feel the full effect of our world so sorely beyond equilibrium.

Can you feel the three fates at play in your life? Past, present and future are always knitted together, a function of one another whose tendrils extend far beyond our myopia. But with the curtains yanked back and the veils thinning as we move towards this week's equinox and full moon, you can fairly hear the spindle and the rhythmic beat of its pedal as it spins the wheel.

This is both leadership and grace personified, New Zealand's PM Jacinda Ardern mourning the tragic events in Christchurch. Our hearts breaking with hers in the shocking face of violence and terror.

If any part of today rendered this expression on your face, you have Merc's inferior conjunction to thank for it. A crucial part of his merry dance around the sun and the fulcrum of his confounding retrograde, Mercury today passed directly in front of the sun. Literally projecting his rx-on-roids death rays our way, supercharged by our solar ruler. As though we needed Merc, already on acid, squared.

Trust your life.
Trust the wait.
Trust your soul.
Trust yourself.

Every year in a row Pisces season schools us in the art of illusion. Its deep waters distort our senses and pool our assumptions. The whirlpool of our emotions, particularly those feelings that will not submit to sense or reason, breach the surface of our lives and we find ourselves all at sea.

This is my niece Liv on her way to score a try in her first game of girls rugby last week. Warms the cockles, I tell ya. Rugby tragic that I am, when I was at school girls weren't allowed to play. Now Liv can take her love of the game to the world stage if she wants to - but at the moment she will only be paid if she reaches the national level or attracts her own sponsors.

With our dark moon rudely disrupted yesterday by Urania's cataclysmic shift and Mercury's confounding retrograde, our little ol' new moon in Pisces has been somewhat obscured. She rose quietly overnight in a blue haze, her infant crescent not visible to mortal eyes but her rippling mood felt by many a heaving heart.

If Eclipsia was the agitation cycle and Pisces season was rinse and spin then we can consider the Sun Neptune conjunction of the next few days the deep rinse yet required. Just add Chiron in eye wateringly close proximity to ensure that those old wounds with the tops freshly knocked off 'em get the flushing their healing demands.

Deep in the dark of the moon before our world quakes with change, we occupy a curious confounding space. It will not answer our constant questions or petitions for mercy and grace. It ignores our demands and discomfort. It offers little beyond its balming void. It is without boundaries, an unknowable abyss that asks only for our surrender.

Cue the circus music and don your snorkel darklings because Mercury retrograde is here. I am a rabid fan of these all too regular transits for the insight, movement and creative boon they offer. Hysterical naysayers and astrodoomsday prophets, pipe down. Your control freakery is now a relic and your panic aids nothing. This entire year is built on discovering new ways to see and be and these cosmic curve balls are all part of the plan.

Dig in darklings for this is likely to be the deepest dark moon of the year. It is the deep breath in and the pause prior to the revolution. It is built on solitude and surrender and gently sifting through the detritus of the last eight years on a quest for uncommon wisdom.

Once more the anaretic degrees of fate in a curious choreography forced the break: up, down or through.

Venus leapt first, into the fresh air of Aquaria where she will remain throughout Mercury's retrograde next door. Here she stares through the lens of objectivity, a boon for tragic romantics and rose coloured fantasists everywhere. She trades her wishbone for a stronger spine and her delusions for a grandeur borne of her own heart.

The anaretic degree is the transformative portal of any sign and we're in it right now. When you see that magical 29 in a chart - of anyone or anything - you have unearthed a turning point, a harbinger of fate and an indicator of large lumpy change.