A shout out and a salutation to my shadow dancers, old and new. I see you. Diving to unexplored outer reaches in search of buried treasure and fresh currents. Whose courage crackles and arcs even when the tides are strong and the crossing asks for confronting new medicine.

I see you. Your shadow lit from within and curling about you like a glittering shroud. Your eyes bright and clearer. Your bones shifted by the work. Your face taking a fresh shape.

Already we arrive by the sabbat, solitary witches turning things over in heavy heads and blessed empty rooms. Sifting and sorting and crafting fresh sense, as the wheel creaks and rolls over.

Pluto as first cab off the retrograde rank for his annual half year sojourn to the underworld is shadow o'clock. No matter what your idea of that means. Despite naysayers and bypassers and the love and light show, I remain devoted to the dark and to our shadows. Our soul's job here is not only to scarper higher, as much as to learn by digging down deeper into ourselves.

Though the past six months or more have given us cause to cultivate our resting WTF face, the past six weeks have really knocked it out of the park. Today brace yourself and your Mona Lisa smile for fresh shockwaves as two of our key planetary players invoke the kind of radical manoeuvres that engender more than just a ripple in the matrix.

Though the tidal pull has been deep and dark it has served its holy purpose, permitting us to scrub off the scourge of the old world and our uneasy place in it. Unsustainable living and PPE that ignored the greater good are so last year. The new moon in Taurus arrives as invitation and invocation alike. It is past time to break new ground as we each plant ourselves anew in a rebirthing earth.

As the dark descends, so too the peculiar melancholia. The swinging weight of this manic month drawling to a close. Neither our singular selves nor their many shadows desire the dance, as the dark moon draws the buried truth out into the barely there twilight. We stare blankly at its mass on the floor. The air is languid and heavily pregnant with transition, almost a day's labour away.

Most every dark moon I leave a photo of a dreamy bolthole here, a fantasy escape from the every day hustle and grind in which to rest and renew. But this is not life as we know it and the last lunar cycle has been one for the history books. Not one of us has escaped its impact, adjustment or shocking upset to our applecarts.

Taurus season always arrives like a balm, a field of belonging we can sink deeply into no matter which way our year and world has spun. That has never been more true than this ride around the sun. As he crosses the border from an incendiary Aries season that saw the old world burn, the earthy grounding of the little bull's playing field proffers welcome relief and good grounding.

There are three things that have always soothed my soul, no matter how my head is rolling or my heart is crooning. The first is the ocean. She is never the same girl twice. I love her wild storms as much as her glittering glassy calm. The second is birds and their signature songs. Winged creatures are my allies and friends. The final and always most effective at settling understanding into me is to write.

After a rather average week of challenging astrology, a global pandemic and isolation blues, I am in just the mood for a let loose with my witches!

Our inaugural coven cocktail party this Friday evening AEST will be a rollicking delight.

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.

If you are beginning to feel your head just above water, you can thank Mercury's recent move into Aries after the longest time in the wavy Piscean waterworld.

I rise in the dark
dress quickly and fly
before dawn gives the game
away

Today's supermoon in Libra is another peak in a moon cycle crammed full of them. Most are new to us, having skipped analysing graphs since high school. All of them have scary moving targets. None of them are fixed - except of course the beautiful moon. She never wavers from her natural cycle and she knows what she is doing.I've never understood the cynicism that exists towards magical thinking. While realists and pessimists cry into their coffee and rationalists claim to only believe in what they can prove or debunk, there are those of us who cultivate a deep and abiding relationship to the imaginal.

Feeling the snap, crackle and pop, darklings? Welcome the curtain raiser to tomorrow's full moon peaking as Mars glowers at Urania. Their square dance is disruptive and reckless, unlikely to play by the rule book that was tossed out the window

Last weekend's meet cute of Jupiter and Pluto sent a chime through our rebirthing world, yet another veil dropping to reveal. So riddle me this darklings, now with time to muse upon it. How did the bell toll for you?

This dystopian rollercoaster is quite the ride. Emotional flux daily. Changes in news / advice / laws even more often than that. Strange new conditions as old familiar routine dies quietly and without fanfare. A toll on so many fronts and a gnawing uncertainty as fear keeps peeking in the window from outside.