Consider full moon fever on from now, her power already lighting up the night sky as she draws closer to us all. Today alone a multitude of aspects conspire to create a hybrid path to the scorpion's peak, a many headed behemoth with one thing on its mind.

Paracelsus attributes the five entities:

"of stars (ens astrale)
of poison (ens veneni)
of nature (ens naturale)
of spirit (ens spirituale)
and of God (ens Dei)

Out of his depth Mars cultivates a familiar cardinality now, teasing changing emotions to the surface. Intuition vies with impulsivity. Sensitivity is fuelled with mixed results. Moods swing like trapeze. Cancer is wildly emotional territory. Mars here is tethered to the moon's shifting tides, easily made queasy when flung out this deep ocean.

Venus has been playing with lightning all day, visiting the crackling Uranian currents that have set up camp in her home grounds. The strange music their combination creates electrifies the field and earths itself in changing values. All the better to reflect the overdue revolution of our humanity.

Taurus season is a standing invitation to dive all the way back into the body, in case you inexplicably lost your way. The looking glass of the modern world too often holds us trapped in our minds, a prison of our own making.

Each of the astrological seasons this year are distinct, immersive and transformational. We are four from four, darklings. Taurus season still calls our senses back from the flames, reclaims our body and places it firmly on even footing, grounds it and us back in the natural world we too often miss for what we build on top of it. But this transitional year it comes with a bull's kicker.

Our week kicks off in spectacular fashion as the Sun and Mercury come together at the final degree of Aries, pulling each other across the threshold into Taurus' elysian fields. For half a day they blaze in company and our own transformation by cardinal fire reaches its peak.

Our intense weekend continues unabated thanks to Pluto exerting his significant charm and challenge from the swishing tail end of Capricornia. Today Pluto squares off with Merc as prelude to his rebirth tomorrow, giving us all a great deal to muse upon.

Hang on to your horns / hats darklings, as our two galactic power players challenge each other to more than a duelling solo. Under these clanging stars arrives a weekend fairly crackling with baptism by fire in the lashing tail end of Aries. The Sun squaring Pluto always makes for interesting conversation.

As the first planet to outrun the Aries stellium, Venus' sashay into Taurus today grounds our freshest initiations in the body by reconnecting us deeply to our senses. Here what we feel inside translates the wisdom etched on our bones as sentient beings and relegates heady conclusions back to their place. Venus' home state is the realm of the sensualist and the ardent pursuit of the pleasure principle as guide to life. 

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.

Hot on the flaming heels of the new moon in Aries, Uncle Pluto is making his presence felt again. This week he claims the frame, drawing our attention backwards and forwards - and possibly sideways - to see what has changed. And what hasn't.

The Aries new moon resets the worlds that spin around us, inviting a fresh initiation sequence. Start from where you are, with all you have left and won, carrying nought more than what you can hold, trusting the flint within. A firestarter that arrives determined, the new moon is part of a stellium of planets in Aries, all of whom are willing us to begin again.

In much the same way that every full moon has a unique flavour and influence, not all dark moons are created equal either. Some initiatory months they are akin to a frenzied pop up of shadows and snark factors, misdemeanor and redirection. Insight and learning curves masquerading as what-the-fuckery, playing hard to get in the dark.

It isn't really an encounter. More like a spell cast of yearning, thoughtlessly tossed into the wind by a changing mind and a shifting heart. Mars in his twin skin and out of bounds. Venus in Aries taking her leave from the world of men. Their sextile a long distance conversation without voices. Their mutual reception a sleepover at each other's houses while the other is away.

Though you may not know it, see it or feel it yet, this week is golden. Hidden within the waning folds of the moon, lurking in dark corners we have not noticed before, tucked beneath the masks and mayhem of life as we knew it. Once upon a terrible time, nevermore.

Haul the megaphone from the watery depths darklings and raise your Titian head. Moving from Pisces to Aries, Mercury now crosses the threshold of this powerful point in the zodiac and our marvellous minds poise for welcome change.

dryad dancing today in an old friend forest, found again.