The 3 of Wands asks us to gaze into our crystal ball, connect with our psychic gifts, and let a new creative vision emerge, says Brandon Alter … Cast using the Prisma Visions Tarot
Numinous
NUMINOUS WEEKLY HOROSCOPES: DECEMBER 10-16 2018
Get this week’s astro symbol for your sign with Sandy Sitron’s Numinous Weekly Horoscopes …
Sagittarius // Sagittarius Rising
Popping bubble wrap. What brings you satisfaction? When you feel satisfied, there’s a feeling of completion. Of course these moments are meant to be impermanent, since impermanence is the law of nature. So your quest is not to feel satisfied all the time. Instead, celebrate your satisfaction. Revel in it when it happens. Notice those small moments even when your to-do list is a mile long. It will help you feel at home with yourself.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Capricorn // Capricorn Rising
A dragonfly skims the surface. You are navigating the surface issues in your life. Don’t forget to address the motivations that are below the surface— your emotions and core beliefs. Even though you’re busy out there in the real world, you can’t ignore your inner world. At intervals throughout the week, turn your gaze inward Reflect on your dreams and your feelings. Feel the feelings. It will help everything make sense.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Aquarius // Aquarius Rising
Fire ceremony. You can set your intentions out into the universe. Use ceremony and ritual to seed your intentions and nurture them to development. Stay focused on the vision. You must be able to trust in your future or you’ll be constantly insecure. Build up your confidence and self-trust by believing in your dreams and centering your energy on possibility.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Pisces // Pisces Rising
Riding an elevator. Up, up, up. There’s only one direction you’re supposed to go. Find support. Find the tools, resources and people that will help you achieve. None of us are born with everything we need. We’re supposed to learn, and develop. It might be time to update the way you think of yourself so that you are an energetic match for your own success.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Aries // Aries Rising
A leopard. The leopard’s spots are the perfect camouflage. They mimic the shadows of leaves. How have you been trying to blend in? What ferocious truth is ready to be unleashed? When you leap out of the shadows and announce to the world who you are, what is lost and what is gained? When you have found your answers, it’s wonderful to share them. But remember, it’s okay to retreat back into the question too.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Taurus // Taurus Rising
The bottom of a river. Look for your answers at the bottom of the stream. It’s a shallow stream, ankle deep and clear as air. You can see everything you need to see, as long as you’re really looking. Water represents emotions. so examine your true feelings. But try to remain objective. Receive help from a friend or counselor so that you can really sift through the sediment and sand in an organized way. Tending to your feelings is simple, natural and straightforward.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Gemini // Gemini Rising
Binoculars. Through two lenses comes one image. Can you share your unique perspective with someone, listen to their viewpoint, and arrive at compromise? You’ll arrive at compromise by really listening. On a normal day there are so many chances to blend your viewpoint with someone else’s. It doesn’t mean you need to lose yourself. Opening yourself to an outside perspective will simply help you learn.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Cancer // Cancer Rising
Rowing the boat. To get to where you want to go, you need to get into a rhythm. You need to practice. You can’t just row one stroke and expect to arrive. This symbol inspires patience, and it also asks you to let go of perfection. Give yourself a lot of chances to get where you’re going. Don’t judge every emotional current that pushes against you. It’s the daily practice that will support you.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Leo // Leo Rising
Making faces. It’s time to take a little more ownership over how you’re feeling. Practice making faces at yourself in the mirror. Practice all kinds of emotions. Do this practice so that you can see how quickly you can cycle through all the different feelings. The important thing for you right now is to envision yourself as the creator. The more you can feel like you’re creating the emotional experience of your own choosing, the more options you’ll have. So play around with it.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Virgo // Virgo Rising
A heart beat. It’s often only possible to react to daily responsibilities. Instead, your attention is currently being directed to the core issues that are most important. Ignore the external factors and focus on your internal needs. This is a time for deep emotional healing. You need to clear emotionally and energetically so that you can step back into your responsibilities with focus and clarity. Tend to your inner world.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Libra // Libra Rising
Carrots. This is the carrot that tantalizes the donkey. What tasty tidbit is firing up your curiosity and activating your mind? What idea is propelling you forward right now? If you don’t have one, it’s time to find one. Brainstorm. If you’re clear on what it is, focus there. Talk about it and hash it out. It may turn out to be something that you need to share through teaching, writing or generally communicating.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Scorpio // Scorpio Rising
A floating crown. Solid gold. A symbol of power and prestige. It floats in the air, so it’s available. Take it for yourself. Crown yourself and make yourself powerful. Imagining yourself wearing this crown will activate a strong sense of security and a deep knowledge of your creative power. This symbol can help you have faith and trust in your own deeply rooted stability.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
NUMINOUS TAROTSCOPE DECEMBER 6 2018: 4 OF CUPS RX
As this week’s astro forecast heralds powerful initiations, the 4 of Cups Rx asks us to dissolve our resistance and free ourselves from an emotional rut, says Brandon Alter … Cast using the Prisma Visions Tarot
THE 2018 SAGITTARIUS NEW MOON WANTS YOU TO FIND YOUR ‘WHY’
The 2018 Sagittarius New Moon is an opportunity for inspired curiosity, as we set off in search of our “why” and recover our very reason to live, says Sandy Sitron …
New Moon :: December 7 2018 :: 2:21 am EST :: 15 degrees Sagittarius
An explosion of light as two worlds collide and a portal opens.
A portal is opening and that’s important. But let’s begin by understanding this symbolic explosion of light. In TV shows and movies there’s usually a flash of light when a portal opens up. Insight! Illumination! You see more clearly. There’s more to reality than one singular dimension.
On Friday, December 7th, there’s a New Moon in fiery Sagittarius. Sagittarius is the sign of truth-seeking. Bam! The centaur shoots a fire arrow to illuminate the target of truth. Yes, you are getting a flash of clarity. But it’s a little more complicated than that. This New Moon is a truth-seeking arrow that dissolves against the disappearing body of Mars and Neptune’s Cheshire cat.
Just like the mischievous and confusing Cheshire Cat, your clarity won’t take the form of answer. It takes the form of a question instead. You need to delineate a question and it has something to do with your values. Once you find your question, you can treat it like an egg in a nest. Just sit on it. Tend to it. Keep it warm and away from predators. Treat the question with the honor and respect that it deserves.
One thing that’s become clear during this year of many retrogrades: rushing forward because of emotional discomfort doesn’t get you anywhere. You can’t race through this process of sitting with the question.
But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be passionate, purposeful and exuberant while you hunt down your answers. You can. Raise your energetic vibration purposefully so that when you encounter the answer to your treasured embryonic question, you’ll be a vibrational match for the answer.
How do you change your vibration purposefully? Use your imagination. With Mars and Neptune square this Sagittarius New Moon, your imagination will take you to your target. Imagine a special control room in your mind that has a panel of dials. Visualize or notice a larger dial in the middle of the panel that says “Vibration.” Notice what level it is at now and ask your imagination if you need to turn up the dial. Then adjust it to the correct setting and remember you can always come back in the future and make more adjustments.
The Sagittarius New Moon is an opportunity to align yourself with the big question you need to be asking. When you have the right questions, then you can begin the wild hunt for the answers. When you are driven to understand “why” or “how,” you can raise your vibration up into a new dimension.
Sagittarius the explorer wants to find new worlds. Instead of being stuck in the pattern that already exists, you get above it to see the bigger picture. You can experience the “bam!” of illumination as you journey out of this world and into a mirror-image dimension.
The other dimension through the portal is exactly the same as this dimension, except for one thing; while our world is currently fueled by scarcity mentality, which causes greed and oppression, the driving force there is optimism and abundance.
If you can get through the portal, the mindset shift becomes: “There is enough, so what do I want teach, learn, explore? Not because I have to to survive, but because I am curious and alive.”
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New Moon conjunct Jupiter
A car covered in flowers.
Imagine that you try to get into your car and it’s completely covered with loads of flowers! Not flower petals- entire flowers! It’s so much beauty and joy that the abundance almost becomes inconvenient. You would have to laugh and admire all the beauty while trying to clean off your car.
So much goodness. But is it in the right place? It all depends on how you look at the situation. Remember your gratitude practice and you’ll be able to accept the unexpected gifts that come your way.
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New moon square Mars and Neptune
The Cheshire Cat.
This Cat has places to go and battles to disrupt. Along the way it creates quite the commotion. The world is confusing but we have try to go after what we want anyway. You have two choices with this aspect, Alice. Moon about in confusion and ask all the wrong people for advice. Or actively try to lift your vibration to experience your own unique sense of faith, purpose, and soul-level interconnectedness.
USE THESE 5 MAGIC WORDS TO CREATE BIG CHANGE
With Mercury poised to station direct tomorrow, author of Little Languaging Hacks for Big Change, Dani Katz, reveals 5 magic words you can use to shift your consciousness right now …
The subconscious mind is getting a lot of buzz these days, as the folks leading the personal development/human potential/manifest-your-best-life-ever movements have honed in on it as the method behind our proverbial madness (i.e. how and why humans operate the way we do).
You see, the subconscious mind is responsible for 95% of our decisions and behavior. It is the lens through which we organize our realities, as well as the command center that determines how our realties organize themselves; and it is programmed – first, foremost, and only – through words and repetition.
Words and repetition.
Words and repetition.
Words and repetition.
This factoid would be one thing if words were objectively neutral symbols, solely defined by intellectual connotation, singularly serving as symbolic reference points for the things and ideas they represent. Alas, words are infinitely more complex, multidimensional entities, each encrypted with a unique vibrational frequency that is itself coded with oodles of metadata that palpably affects our emotional, energetic and psychological bodies in subtle – and not so subtle – ways.
The words we use to communicate with others, as well as the ones running on the incessant loops in our heads as thoughts and self-talk, double as hyper-nuanced programming codes that serve to either empower or disempower us in every given moment. Every word matters, as the subconscious mind tracks and responds to each one we utter, think, type or scribble, without exception.
Quantum Languaging is a fun, simple method of deconstructing and perfecting the myriad ways, whys, and hows that words shape our every experience. I dive into lots of juicy and rollicking detail about it all in my new book, The New P. Handbook Vol. 1: Little Languaging Hacks for Big Change.
In service to up-leveling our lives and our world for the infinitely more wonderful, I offer up these five words we’d all be wise to wield on the regular …
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1// Choose
We live in a world weighty with have-tos. We “have to” work, and make money, and floss, and kegel, and ground, and tap-in, to say nothing of the bills, and the paperwork, and the insurance premiums, and all the other matrix-y tasks that can really get a gal down, if she’s not mindful of how she’s framing her life.
The whole have-to paradigm is super disempowering, because it alleges that we are victims to external demands, and that we are enslaved to the tasks we are engaging.
This is where choice comes in. The reality is, we don’t actually have to do anything, ever. I can choose to skip flossing and kegeling, in exchange for gum disease, leaky pee sneezes, and mediocre sex. I can choose to skip my morning meditation, and let my mind run wild, and approach my day as a scattered, ungrounded, airy mess of discordant thoughts and vibrations.
It’s all a choice. I have free will. I can do whatever I want, as long as I understand that my actions have consequences. With that in mind, it is infinitely more empowering to frame these supposed have-tos as choices that we are willingly engaging as deliberate creators who are authoring our lives as we are authentically inspired.
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2// Thank you
“Sorry,” blurts the woman I jostled while squeezing my way through a crowded party, even though I’m the one who bumped into her, and she’s the one with kombucha dripping down her hand.
For what, exactly, are you apologizing? I want to ask. For inhabiting a body? For placing it in my path? For existing?
Sorry vibrates at the frequency of sorrow, which means that every time we utter a senseless sorry, we are sprinkling sorrow vibes on our reality, and basically, bumming out the planet. To this end, a hearty Thank you is an infinitely wiser, more uplifting way to quell the sting of the oopsie, while acknowledging the awkwardness of the engagement.
When I observe the urge to apologize (which is so often a cleverly disguised excuse to self-flagellate), I will instead offer a simple Thank you, which serves to honor the person for showing up as a valuable reflection in service to my/our growth, while adding some levity to the situation. As in, Thank you for giving me an opportunity to witness my clumsiness, or Thank you for letting me accidentally touch your boob, and refresh your obviously parched wrist.
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3// As
Languaging our intentions in the future is a great way not to manifest them. The subconscious mind is fully steeped in the present moment. So when we say we are “going to” do something, it takes our words to heart, and goes about putting off third dimensional realization for an imaginary future day that never actually comes.
Present moment languaging hacks the subconscious mind, and tricks it into collapsing the perceived distance between our future, and our now, thus bringing our desires into our material realities quickly and easily.
While there are lots of words that shift us from future-based craving to present moment experiencing, as is my current fave. As is affirmative; and it has the agency, the authority, and the mojo to move our manifestations from concept to reality, quickly and efficiently, because that’s how we do. It’s why I’m not going to fall in love when I open my heart; I am falling in love as I open my heart; and, I am not going to relish in all the opportunity and abundance that will come my way when I finish writing my book; I am enjoying all the spoils and wonderfulness flowing in as I write my #1 bestselling literary sensation.
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4// Historically
Just as new p. (paradigm) superheroes choose to language our intentions in the present moment, we frame our shadows in the past, because we are not tethered to the trials, tribulations, hardships, or identity constructs that lead us to this present moment, and we certainly aren’t going to seed our futures with them.
We are sovereign beings, deliberately creating our realities in each and every moment, which we know to be fresh, and new, and rife with possibility. And so, while I have historically tended towards the clumsy, I am now embodying ever-expanding levels of bodily awareness and mastery that have me moving easily and gracefully through the world. And crowded house parties.
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5// Omniscopic
om•ni•sco•pic adj. every moment access to every possibility that is, was or will be.
The word omniscopic is pretty much your new BFF. It’s a handy-dandy alternative to the words limitless and unlimited, which – despite their best intentions – only ever tether us to the frequencies of the “limitation” they profess not to espouse. Remember, the subconscious mind is super, very literal. This means that, well-meaning though our suffixes and prefixes may be, when they are employed, the subconscious mind latches onto the actual word these little guys are attempting to modify, and goes about organizing reality according to the very frequencies they claim to cancel out.
Luckily for us, language is an ever-unfolding work in progress. And so, having happened upon this gaping hole in our lexicon, I have taken it upon myself to toss some linguistic novelty into our collective mix by crafting this handy-dandy new word.
I recommend using it widely and often, while enjoying the spoils, sparkles, and giggles that come from living life as an empowered creator in a world of omniscopic abundance, and awesomeness. We’re welcome.
Dani Katz’s The New P. Handbook Vol. 1: Little Languaging Hacks for Big Change is out now, and you can connect with her on Instagram, Youtube, and danikatz.com for more wisdom.
NUMINOUS WEEKLY HOROSCOPES: DECEMBER 3-9 2018
Get this week’s astro symbol for your sign with Sandy Sitron’s Numinous Weekly Horoscopes …
Sagittarius // Sagittarius Rising
An ant on a twig. You are supported. Being supported and feeling supported are two different things. The universe is offering assistance. Accept it the same way a tiny ant accepts the support of the twig on which it walks. The ant doesn’t overthink how the support got there, it just takes advantage of the pathway. Keep moving, with fire, optimism, and love. Let your instinct drive you.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Capricorn // Capricorn Rising
Weaving flowers. Keep busy and you’ll understand what you’re supposed to do. Beauty isn’t normally a big part of your sign’s symbolism. But for now, let beauty inspire. Connection to nature, Earth, and beauty can open you up to inner knowing. Stay active and focus on appreciation. This helps you act in alignment with your intuition, so that your path lights up ahead of you.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Aquarius // Aquarius Rising
A horse coughs. A horse symbolically represents journey, freedom, power. A cough symbolizes bringing something to the surface. Seems pretty straightforward. Bring your enthusiasm and your gallop to the surface. Where are you going? What’s the vision for the future? What missing piece will set you free? You might need to coax the answers forward— cough it up, so to speak. Contemplate these questions and set some intentions.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Pisces // Pisces Rising
Studying the charts. Examine. It’s time to look for clues. Review the past and set the future course. If you aren’t actually studying a situation this week, you’ll have to redo later. Spend some time examining your data. This isn’t literal advice, just consider which area of your life would benefit from extra research and a systematic approach. That’s where you need to place your attention now.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Aries // Aries Rising
Stomping the Earth. An emphatic gesture. This stomping is meant to get your attention so you can set your intention. You have to decide. Put yourself on notice that this is the week to journey toward your purpose. Take what you know and it’s time to go. Your heart is calling. You now have enough information to answer your “why” questions. “Why” questions relate to your motivation. Make the decisions you need to make and then aim for the stars.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Taurus // Taurus Rising
Stepping stones underwater. Just deep enough that your feet will get wet, but the waters are safe and gentle. So step in. Move across the river. Water represents feelings. It’s uncomfortable when your shoes get soggy, but it’s the only way to get where you want to go. Pay attention to the current feelings. Invite the old forgotten emotions to come forward too. Feeling all the feelings will help you reach your true destination.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Gemini // Gemini Rising
A freight train moves fast. You can carry baggage, but you can still go fast. Start where you are. Common advice is to “get over it,” “think positively,” etc. But that won’t work right now. You have to look at your baggage around relationships. Know that moving forward on the track is inevitable, so you won’t get stuck. But take stock of the cargo you’re carrying so that you can communicate more clearly in the future.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Cancer // Cancer Rising
Ocean waves. Maybe the waves are like the breath of the Earth and Sea. In and out. In and out. Focus on your breath. Any simple, embodied practice developed now will help you find expansion later. Meditation or Breathwork is recommended. This is a moment to keep things very simple, detailed, deliberate and focused. Simple, healthy practices developed now will have an exponential effect on your life.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Leo // Leo Rising
Ouroboros. If you follow the snake longe enough, you’ll follow it all around the globe until it catches its own tail and infinity is realized. Translation 1: Everything is nothing and nothing is everything. Translation 2: Don’t take yourself so seriously. The snake symbolizes creative life force. You are renewed. You are reborn. So live! Don’t let ego get in the way.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Virgo // Virgo Rising
Lioness. A mother lion will protect her cubs at all costs. She is the fighter and the provider. If you need fierce mother energy activated in your psyche, call on her energy. You are a baby cub supported by fierce mother lion. You can surrender. And you can be fierce and strong whenever you wish. Contemplate this symbol and set intentions around receiving nurturance and security.
Libra // Libra Rising
A satellite dish. You are taking in ideas and digesting information. Notice to what extent. At this time you’re extra sensitive and receptive. Your mental antennae are activated and receiving signals. Carefully moderate what comes through. It’s important not to go into information overload. With the right filters in place, this can be a heightened phase of teaching and learning.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Scorpio // Scorpio Rising
A kitten laps up milk. There are many resources available. Understand that you have what you need. It’s time to feel satisfied. The symbolic kitten is eating milk, so it doesn’t need milk. Your sense of satiation will help you make better decisions. Metaphorically speaking, don’t go grocery shopping on an empty stomach. Apply this metaphor to every area of your life.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
NUMINOUS TAROTSCOPES: DECEMBER 2018
Dive into this month’s medicine for your sign with our Numinous Tarotscopes December 2018, cast by Melinda Lee Holm. Artwork: Prince Láuder
SAGITTARIUS // SAGITTARIUS RISING
Six of Cups
Happy solar return, Sagittarius! You’re closing out the year and another journey around the Sun with a little congratulatory pat on the back – centered right over your heart center. Something tells me that ring of Fire you jumped through last month really boosted your intuitive powers, fueling the empathy needed to earn this achievement in the realm of Water. Sixes generally indicate a reversal of fortune after the chaos of the five, a hard-earned win after a long struggle. And because of that I always read in them a deep appreciation for the accomplishment they assume and a deep empathy for those who have not yet made it there. It’s like coming in out of the cold and looking back out onto the street, hoping those still walking are mere steps from their own warm solace.
Maybe what you’re looking out at is another part of yourself that hasn’t made it in, some piece of your heart that can’t quite catch its breath yet, still steeling against the wind. This month, find forgiveness and empathy for all those parts of yourself so you can lift them up and integrate this new emotional lift and use it to help others do the same. If you’re the type that doesn’t care much for birthday celebrations, make an exception this year. Have dinner with a few close friends. Allow them to celebrate the very fact of your existence on the anniversary of your entry into this world and as you do, really feel in turn how grateful you are that they’re here with you.
Sagittarius stone for December: Green Apophyllite. Green Apophyllite helps to cleanse and heal the heart through the power of the natural world, while its attunement to the energy of the Earth grounds our perspective.
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CAPRICORN // CAPRICORN RISING
Five of Wands
Lay down that magic wand you’ve been wielding, Capricorn! The time for action has hit a distinct pause. All that glorious conjuring that served you so well last month will not likely get you where you think it will this month. It is time to step back to reflect and observe. And look, I know the Fives have a bad reputation. We (me included!) tend to think of them as unwelcome bumps in the road, barriers to our progress. Let’s turn that around this month. I’ve got a Five this month too (Sun in Cancer), so I’m giving myself the same pep talk I’m giving you. Let’s spend the last month of the year changing our relationship to these challange points, welcoming them with open arms.
All December, I invite you to REVEL in disconnecting from taking action, from creating, from reading all the messages between the lines. You’ve accomplished enough for now. Sit back and enjoy the view. Even better – barely notice the view. Let the whole world roll past you and over and through you as you become very quiet and still. So still that you hear sounds within you never knew were there, the music of your body serenading you, blood pumping through veins and breath steadily moving in and out, cooling and warming as it goes. You can choose to be frustrated by this moment or you can take advantage of it as an opportunity to fine tune your inner frequency without any guilt around slowed productivity, with the knowledge that when you do make moves again, you’ll be wiser and better equipped.
Capricorn stone for December: Grape Agate. Grape Agate provides a safe haven to get settled, centered, and refocused. It calms the mind and body, allowing superficial stressors to take a backseat to more urgent needs.
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AQUARIUS // AQUARIUS RISING
Ten of Wands
It’s full steam ahead for you this month, Aquarius, so strap on your coziest work boots and get ready to feel utterly brimming with creative potential. These moments don’t come along often and when they do, there can be outside factors that make them a little sticky. With Mercury stationing direct on the 6th, and following up on all that great interior work you did last month, I feel you’re going to have a really nice period of productivity that will have you wondering how you got it all done. We usually need to slow down on our own projects when the holidays come around, but you are well positioned to elegantly navigate family and social obligations while bringing your own creative visions to life.
Exciting times! My guess is that something blew into your orbit in November that rekindled a previously forgotten desire of your heart, some long lost goal or creative dream. Now is the time for you to bring that dream into reality, into a form that you can see and taste and feel. If you’re unsure what this dream project is, call on the intutive aspect of Wands to guide you. Sit quietly with your eyes closed and ask for clues to be sent into your view that will point toward the most fertile areas of growth. Even if you spend all month doing this once a day without taking action, it would be a month very well spent. We can only make our world as big and lush as we can dream it. Dream big, Aquarius. You have the power to make it reality.
Aquarius stone for December: Shiva Lingam. Shiva Lingam stimulates the physical and energetic bodies, infusing both with the vibrancy and stamina needed to bring crazy dreams into reality through hard work.
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PISCES // PISCES RISING
Ace of Swords
Oh, Pisces, this is quite a Solstice gift for you! Your highly tuned empathic sense is the envy of the zodiac, but it can also lead to a murky sense of truth. After all, our perspective and experience determine what we see as real and if you’re able to tap into the perspective and experience of others with such ease, that reality can shift around quite a bit. But this month, you have the great gift of clarity both received and expressed. All of that careful assessment you got into last month is going to be rendered in super sharp focus, high definition realness. Be ready to accept what you see and trust yourself to speak to it. This Divine gift of reason and communication is precious, especially this time of year, coming off a string of retrogrades!
Your gorgeous sensitive heart may be made uncomfortable by what you can see now or by the directness of the words that come to carry your expressions. That’s ok. Instead of trying to avoid or suppress any discomfort, embrace it and turn this x-ray vision you’ve been gifted to the task of seeing where it’s coming from, what it’s rooted in, and what that tells you about yourself. Be kind and patient with yourself, offer yourself shelter, and hold always in your heart the joy of growing and evolving as a spiritual being and a human. And make sure you’re surrounded by your nearest and dearest on New Years. Something tells me you’ll improvise a speech that will leave no dry eye in the house.
Pisces stone for December: Opal. Opal inspires independent thought and action through a connection with one’s innate and deeply held personal truth. It offers the freedom to express oneself openly and honestly.
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ARIES // ARIES RISING
Page of Swords
You’re turning over a new leaf to close out the year, Aries! There must have been some beautiful and profound revelations that came out of the heart explosion you went through last month, and now you can get a better grasp on their meaning. You are stepping into a completely new style of communication with yourself and with others, forgetting all the rules you adhered to before. It’s a wonderful way to really feel the integration of all the lessons of not just last month, but the past year. The freshness of the Page energy can sometimes be seen as naive, but here it feels like an achievement, a sign of wisdom, an indication that you’ve gotten all you could out of the previous path and yearn to walk a new one, to learn more.
Allow December to be a clean slate. If there are stories that you’ve been telling yourself about who you are or can be or are capable of, let them go. In your relationships with others, step out of automatic repsonse styles and really consider what you want to communicate befoe your words come out. Open yourself to the wide open expanse of options in your thoughts, your intellectual frameworks, and your verbal and non-verbal expressions. Think of the whole world as your cosmic thesaurus, showing you variations on themes you never knew existed. And whatever you do, resist like hell any urge to fall into old patterns in your interactions with family over the holidays. That is your richest area for growth opportunity this month.
Aries stone for December: Optical Calcite. Optical Calcite offers the opportunity to see things, people, and situations through a different lens, challenging our own perspectives and opening understanding.
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TAURUS // TAURUS RISING
The Sun
Well, Taurus, here we are. You made it through all of 2018 digging around in Earth and Major Arcana and I have to say, I am deeply impressed. It’s a beautiful thing to see a year tied together like this and I truly hope you are feeling the culmination of lessons around creating the world around you in collaboration with the Divine Universe. And if you’re not yet, you will this month! December holds a beautiful illumination for you, a chance to see and believe as you haven’t been able to before. Your world is about to take on new form and color, new meaning, as you take in this landscape that has developed over the past year. Take time to drink it in and enjoy it.
December can often bring a tendency to overcommit, overschedule, and overindulge. Resolve early to not bite off more than you can chew – literally or metaphorically. You want to maintain a nice, calm center from which to survey your world – especially with the revelations of these retrogrades still waiting to be understood and integrated. It’s been quite a journey for you this year. What you see this month will bring it all into focus, revealing how far you’ve come and giving you hints about how to begin planning for the next year. Don’t forget – the other aspect of The Sun is that it provides the energy needed to grow fruit from the Earth. Takes notes on what seeds find their way onto your path this month.
Taurus stone for December: Garnet. Garnet grounds passion in reality, ensuring that we take an optimistic, yet realistic, view of our personal potential in a given set of circumstances.
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GEMINI // GEMINI RISING
Seven of Pentacles
December is bringing you a lesson in patience and your own power, Gemini. Be ready to encounter many opportunities to confront limiting beliefs about yourself and your productivity. While these may seem harsh or painful at first, know that they are here in the service of showing you how much you truly are capable of and to bolster your trust in your own ability to create. Sevens are about overcoming doubt, and you cannot overcome doubts you cannot name. Before they are named, we just think they are part of the fabric of our reality, a truth that tells us the boundary of our capabilities. So strap in and start digging early in the month. The more you can uncover, the greater the bounty of this work will be – and just in time for a fresh new year!
You know how everyone gets all excited when Mercury stations direct because things can start moving again? Well … don’t get too excited. Not about that anyway. What I want you to try to focus your excitement on instead is the action and process of work itself, the experience of it, feeling how capable your hands and mind are to create and build. The output isnt important right now, your trust in your own ability and your faith in the eventual outcome of that ability is. If you have difficulty with this, give yourself small reminders – set realistic daily goals, put one foot in front of the other, and see them completed by the end of the day. Trusting yourself is a practice. Keep working at it and let it unfold.
Gemini stone for December: Vanadinite. Vanadinite clears blocks to creativity and productivity, particularly those coming from within ourselves. It can unlock hidden potential and artistic avenues of exploration.
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CANCER // CANCER RISING
Five of Cups
Ok, Cancer, don’t freak out. I feel your deep sighs reverberating through the cosmos. Trust me, they were mine too when I pulled this card for us. What a way to close out the year, right? But then I challenged myself to push past those feelings and consider more deeply the implications of this mournful, chaotic energy, and now I am honestly stoked about it! That Page energy last month really stirred the emotional pot. Feelings were coming fast and furious, creating surprising reactions and the potential for huge transformation. We’re not who we were before. No one can be after making themselves so radically vulnerable and open, and we wouldn’t want to be. And now we have the chance to mourn the loss of our old selves before we step into the new year.
So often we are told we’re being dramatic or negative if we express a sense of loss when our situation changes or we evolve as people. We’re not supposed to admit attachment to lifestyles or mindsets that we’ve outgrown. But if we don’t acknowledge the attachment, we can never be released from it. So, let’s do this, Cancer! Ruminate on who you no longer are, make a shrine to your old self, write yourself letters, and be ready to gather it up and let it all go. I’ll give you extra credit for ritual disposal of an item that is symbolic of who you used to be – and EXTRA extra credit if you do it on the Solstice.
Cancer stone for December: White Calcite. White Calcite helps to gently cleanse and revitalize the energetic body, removing debris from past woundings and traumas from this life, previous lives, and inherited trauma.
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LEO // LEO RISING
Five of Swords
All this big cosmic power has got you a little mixed up, Leo, but it’s no reason to panic. While this month may feel unrelentingly confusing, you can greatly soften the experience by eliminating one little phrase form your repertoire: “figure it out.” Our human brains are obsessive little things. They like order, categorization. They are made uneasy by ambiguity. In other words, they like to get things figured out. However, there are very few things in life that we actually NEED to figure out in order to get through our day to day. Where the keys are so you can leave the house? Yes. What exactly your sister meant by that comment on social media? Not so much. You following me?
Stick to the basics this month. Don’t figure anything out. Practice the art of purposeful naivety. That guy who cut you off on the freeway? Maybe he has a family emergency! You’ll never know for sure anyway, so why not believe it and spare yourself the churning anger of road rage. If you feel called to it, read up on the Buddhist concept on nonduality. Try on the idea that good and bad do not exist, that everything in the world is neither and also both. If you need to make decisions this month, rely on your gut instinct and your heart. Air is in chaos, but Fire and Water should serve you well. Play your cards right in this energy and you’ll be the most content person at every holiday gathering of the season.
Leo stone for December: Rainbow Hematite. Rainbow Hematite encourages mental clarity and focus while removing stagnant energy and helping to raise consciousness and psychic abilities.
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VIRGO // VIRGO RISING
The Chariot
You are riding off into the sunset of this year with style, my dear Virgo. You’re packing up only what you need and allowing the fruits of your labor to sweep you off your feet and into your future. And with the serious amount of internal balancing and excavation you’ve been up to over the past couple months, it should be a very easy task deciding what it is you want to carry forward into this next chapter. Allow the last few days of Mercury’s retrograde trip to shake off before you make final decisions, but don’t stall too long. You’ll want to be moving before the holidays hit. Make the Solstice on the 21st your deadline for any decisions on what you want the landscape of 2019 to look like.
The Chariot is about the vehicle, not the driver. The message here is to pay attention to what it is that you are allowing to carry you. My guess is, you’re in good shape, but do take time the first half of the month to check the metaphorical oil and the tire pressure on the container you’re driving through life. Sometimes we get on automatic pilot, we forget to check our navigation closely, to get that squeaky hinge oiled up. Look around your life and make sure that everything that you trust to keep you moving forward is in good working order – for YOU. And then sit back and enjoy the ride. It should be a beautiful journey into the new year.
Virgo stone for December: Pink Tourmaline. Pink Tourmaline is a particularly soothing heart stone, creating a safe environment for the heart to open and be nurtured and healed by oneself, loved ones, and the Divine.
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LIBRA // LIBRA RISING
Two of Swords
Ah, Libra, do you hear that? It’s the sound of your mind quieting down after all that cosmic balancing out last month. As we shift out of the retrogrades and into the last lap of 2018, you’re hitting that runner’s high clarity where everything sort of pops into focus and the pieces that have become irrelevant fall away like dead leaves from a hibernating tree. Allow the gentle breeze of your native element to sweep through every fiber of your being, coaxing out any dust that may have become lodged in the corners, leaving you renewed. This is a time for a fresh start, for getting back to basics. The seed of wisdom in the element of Air is settling itself into your consciousness. Your task is to make sure it has a healthy place to grow.
Take care to free your mind of clutter this month. I am big proponent of regular meditation for everyone all the time, but for you, this month, it is crucial. Twenty minutes twice a day is my preference, but if you can get even five in I’ll take it. Don’t get bogged down in which style of meditation is “correct” – that’s just your brain cleverly distracting you. Pick one and go. Change it up if you need to. Just be disciplined and do it daily. Trust me, you’ll thank me when the Soltice rolls in and you find you have a crystal clear vision of how you need to proceed with your work and life in the new year.
Libra stone for December: Bismuth. Bismuth transforms through providing a hard reset on connection with others, the environment, and our true selves, inspiring a push for positive change and growth.
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SCORPIO // SCORPIO RISING
King of Wands.
You’ll be the belle of the ball this month, Scorpio, and not (just) because of your good looks and charm! You’re going to have an almost psychic ability to plan and execute on your obligations, freeing you to truly enjoy the social time you schedule and earn. Kings represent the Air of their suit, and when that mental clarity and vision is combined with the magick and intuition of Fire it creates quite an enviable atmosphere of laser-focus and deft execution. You’ll have a supernatural ability to know exactly where and with whom your energy is best spent. If you have a tendency to feel dragged down by draining holiday events, rejoice and look forward to a month spent surrounded by inspiration.
In order to get the full benefit of this energy, you have to have great boundaries in place. Boundaries – not retaliatory meaures. Keep the stinger under wraps and your focus on making sure you don’t feel the need to use it in the first place. If this sounds overwhelming, spend the last few days of Mercury’s retrograde run asking for guidance on how you can let go of anything standing in the way of your embracing the power of a loving “no.” Sometimes even just acknowledging you have an issue will be enough for you to clear it. You cannot deny what you choose to see. Light a candle, throw rocks in the sea, let it go. And then shine up your dancing shoes. You have a a lot of reveling to do.
Scorpio stone for December: Nuummite. Nuummite activates powerful internal magick and self-mastery. It reveals areas of weakness so they can be molded into strengths and shows us how to reach our full potential as creative beings.
NUMINOUS TAROTSCOPE NOVEMBER 29 2018: THE DEVIL
The Devil is a juicy opportunity to dance with your shadow and free yourself from shame, says Sagittarius Season’s reader-in-residence, Brandon Alter … Cast using the Prisma Visions Tarot
THE 2018 VIRGO WANING MOON WANTS YOU TO CLEAR THE WAY
As we move ever closer to the Solstice and New Year, the 2018 Virgo Waning Moon tempers Sagittarius Season with a precious pause. It’s prime time to purify, refine, and clear the decks for personal freedom, says Jennifer Racioppi …
Waning Quarter Moon // November 29 2018 // 7:18pm ET // 7 degrees Virgo
As the Sun blazes through the mutable fire sign of Sagittarius and 2018 passes through its denouement, the Virgo Waning Moon invites you to embrace a life purification process.
While this Virgo Moon’s sense of organization, discipline, and attention to detail might feel contradictory to the larger-than-life influence of the current Sag stellium (the Sun, Jupiter, and Mercury are all traveling close to one another in this live-and-let-live sign of fun), leaning into Virgo’s austerity will accelerate your path towards the freedom you most crave.
With just a few weeks remaining before the Sun enters Capricorn, use this time to organize your life. You might consider purging your closet, refraining from making big year-end purchases, limiting your intake of alcohol and sugar, and letting go of toxic relationships.
Take a stand for your truth, and let the rest go. Staying disciplined now sets you up for success at the start of the new year.
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// The Cycle //
In personal development circles, the idea of “becoming our best self” often equates with a journey of acquisition. Gaining the job/relationship/status/fill-in-the-blank becomes the objective. However, this journey towards achievement requires sacrifice too. Sacrifice means to release something of value to create or receive something of equal or more significant benefit.
While the Waning Moon often goes unnoticed, this is a critical time between the last Gemini Full Moon, and the upcoming Sagittarius New Moon. When used intelligently, this Moon is the missing ingredient in manifesting your New Moon wish. It asks you to make a sacrifice in order to achieve the freedom you ultimately desire.
In purity driven Virgo, this Moon commands discipline. As we inch closer and closer to the upcoming Solstice, consider any indulgences that are holding you back from the growth you crave most, and eliminate them. Yes. Choose to change. Now. (Not after the clock strikes midnight on January 1st).
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// The Transits //
This Waning Quarter Moon happens at an exciting astrological moment. In the days leading up to this turning point in the lunar cycle, the Sun and Mercury (who’s retrograde) aligned in a perfect conjunction with Jupiter, the planet of growth, elevating the potential for expansion!
However, Mars the planet of action, squares this trifecta of awesome, and opposes the Virgo Moon, creating a t-square. This is a fancy way of saying that the freedom-seeking Sag Sun needs to slow his roll! Traveling through mutable Pisces, Mars ushers in a deeper understanding of the values driving the desires for gains.
While this might require a sacrifice in the short term, in the long term it will deliver on Jupiter’s promise of freedom during his yearlong transit through Sag. While sacrifice can sometimes feel punitive, here it offers liberation.
Mutable signs indicate change, and require you to engage with your transformation process (not just wish for it from the sidelines of your life). To support this, the Virgo Moon makes a perfect trine to Saturn in Capricorn and, simultaneously, Mars in Pisces sextiles Saturn. These harmonious angles with growth-through-sacrifice Saturn indicate that discipline trumps freedom now.
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// The Square //
Virgo vs. Sagittarius is a classic battle between austerity (Virgo) and abundance (Sag). Both signs are mutable, meaning they prepare us for change, yet beyond that, they share few similarities.
The Virgo Moon aims to purify, reminding us that our emotional needs can be met through release. This is amplified by the fact that it’s the last Waning Quarter Moon before the Solstice, and this idea of surrender syncs perfectly with the metaphor of dwindling light.
Sagittarius, on the other hand, resists discipline in all forms. With a go-big-or-go-home motto, the Sag Sun drives merriment, not surrender. Yet, given Saturn’s essential participation during this Waning Moon, take this time to tune into the Virgo opportunity for purification. 2019 begins with the Sun and Saturn conjoined, meaning Saturn’s influence isn’t going anywhere. So we might as well honor him now and get a head start on the journey ahead.
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// The Opportunity //
Like the Moon, which wanes back to new, surrendering the light of the Sun in the process, we have to learn how to yield to our rebirth, again and again, month after month. And often our resurrection depends upon our ability to let go of something we cling to, to make room for something we want.
With this Waning Quarter Moon in fastidious Virgo, forming a mutable T-Square with the Sun and Mars, our egos might feel a wee-bit under the gun—which makes total sense. However, honoring Virgo’s mission to call out old habits, patterns, people, and behaviors that once served you but now block you is critical to your growth trajectory—even if your ego despises this.
This Virgo Waning Moon presents the perfect cosmic moment to surrender into faith: to let go of something, or make a sacrifice, on behalf of what you most desire.
Your freedom hangs in the balance …
Discover more about astrologer and success coach Jennifer Racioppi and her work HERE and follow her on Instagram.
SEX DRIVE: A JOURNEY TO THE CLITORIS OF AMERICA
In an excerpt from her new book, Sex Drive: On the Road to a Pleasure Revolution, which chronicles her cross country search for a lost libido, Stephanie Theobald embarks on an “ecosexual” nature walk led by porn star-turned-performance artist Annie Sprinkle …
Annie Sprinkle christened San Francisco’s Bernal Park hill “the clitoris of America.” Researching my new book, Sex Drive, I knew I had to visit for myself, and so Sprinkle and I met in a local diner for breakfast. After demonstrating her ability to have an “energy orgasm” on the spot (think Meg Ryan’s infamous turn in When Harry Met Sally, but for real), she promised to take me on a Bernal Park “ecosexual” nature walk, where she would show me how to do it too …
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An X-rated nature walk
By this time, I’m quite keen to get up onto the Clitoris of America and try it all out myself. So off we set on a climb up the hill to Bernal Park and an X-rated nature walk begins. It’s not X-rated because Annie’s going to take her clothes off. The plants are going to be doing much filthier things. “Look at that,” she says, stopping in front of a cherry tree in full bloom. “Flowers are tree genitals. Basically, you’re looking at porn.”
We walk on until the siren call of another tree brings Annie to a halt. “Look at this trunk, it’s like a big penis. Isn’t it beautiful?
Hockey pitch nature walks with Miss Corbett at the convent were never like this. Annie says that I need to find my “E-Spot,” her ecosexy take on G-Spot. (She’s great at coming up with new words). I’m drawn to an exuberant hibiscus flower. “Oh yeah!” she says approvingly in her raunchy porn voice. “Hibiscus stamens!”
I wonder if David Attenborough shows ever give her that Deep Throat feeling. We approach the hibiscus and she says, “You can smell it casually. Or you can imagine this plant is a lover and it wants to give you a gift.”
She smells her new lover, pulls off one of its genitals and sticks it on her third eye. She sticks one on me too. None of this strikes me as stupid or odd. Cornwall isn’t a million miles away from California in terms of country weirdness. My eco or “E-Spot” as she calls it, kicks into action as I notice that a tree we’re passing looks a bit droopy.
“Don’t you think this tree looks a bit sad?” I say.
“It is a little heavy, isn’t it?” she nods.
She knows immediately what to do. “You just need a hug,” she tells the tree enfolding it in a bosomy embrace. “Oh, love you.” I participate in the love-in, realizing only afterwards that I have just hugged a tree in California. This is the sort of thing that people make fun of back at home, but American Stephanie doesn’t care. Annie looks wistfully at the tree then mumbles something about, “I may be projecting…” She slaps the tree’s butt. “You’ll be OK,” she cracks. “Hang on in there.”
It’s fun going on a nature walk with an ex-porn star. She’s not great on the names of flora and fauna, but she does things like saying hi to her favorite Eucalyptus tree. She plucks a leaf, thrusts it under my nose and chuckles, “Sniff that pantie!”
The sap must be rising from the ecosexy nature walk because I soon have a sort of sexual panic attack. I start gabbling about how I want to check out some seedy places in San Francisco and how I really want to get laid and, “you know that feeling when you want to have sex and you’re not having sex and…”
“Stay in the moment,” she puffs as we carry on up the steep road. They’re magic words and I immediately calm down. I think back to my interview with Barbara Carrellas back in New York a month ago. I arrived too early for the interview and the prospect of writing a book about masturbation suddenly overwhelmed me. What the hell was I thinking of?! I wasn’t even sure what I meant! So I just experimented with letting go: dropping into my body, unsticking from the world so that for a few moments I was just snow and boots and crunch. When I came ‘back’ a few seconds later, it felt like a shot of a week of the best sleep ever.
And then suddenly Annie announces that we’ve reached “the urethral sponge” i.e. we’re in Bernal Park but not quite on the clit. My main feeling is that the Clitoris of America has had a bit of a bikini wax. Its green pubic hair is a bit patchy. There’s a lot of uncovered soil. Maybe the dog walkers nobbled it. There are a lot of them. Annie says it’s the drought. It’s been a serious problem in San Francisco. Annie has actually married the main culprit along with a group of ecosexy friends.
“If you think about it, right now the sun is penetrating your pores,” she says in her incantatory broad-from-the-1950s voice. “They’re fucking your whole body.”
When I ask her how she knew the sun wanted to get married, she says, “We can only assume that things respond well to love and appreciation. Like, if you cruise a bunch of girls or guys, you’ll get the message who’s available.”
She and Beth have also married the mountains, the snow, coal and the ocean. I try and impress her by saying, “My favourite drugs are sugar and the sun.” She enthuses, “Oh, I love sugar too,” but adds that she has to lose weight for the filming of her and Beth’s upcoming ecosexy tour. “Saying it’s OK to be fat, it’s the one thing about feminism I don’t agree with.”
By now we’re sitting on the very top of the park, a bumpy grassy area that slopes down with massive views over the city on every side. Looking at the view, it suddenly strikes her that, “Maybe the earth is the clitoris of the universe.” She laughs. “Betty would say, ‘Oh that’s bullshit!’” She tells me that we’ll do the energy orgasm right here.
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Meditation + masturbation
She describes the technique as similar to something she used to call “medabation,” meaning a combination of masturbation and meditation. But mainly, she says, it’s like learning tennis because, “It’s a technique and at first it’s confusing and you’re like, ‘Woah! How do I hit it and how hard?’” She confides that it took her three years to learn how to do it properly.
I realize that this “energy orgasm” is her take on the heart wank that Barbara Carrellas told me about back in New York. Annie explains that the idea came about when she and Carrellas were investigating more spiritual ideas about orgasm during the AIDS years. “All of us had lovers who got HIV, so we had to figure out how to have safe sex.” They adapted the breath technique from a method taught by a Native American called Harley Swiftdeer. He calls it “Firebreath Orgasm,” but Annie doesn’t “because I didn’t take the very expensive training that initiates you.”
And so my tennis lesson begins. She starts by telling me to, “Say, ‘Yes’ to erotic energy. You have to allow it because it’s there just for the asking.” She points to the tree in the near distance and says that the ideal would be to, “Start feeling sexy and then direct your energy to the tree and see what happens.” She tells me to do some kegels (clenching of the vagina as if you want to stop a stream of pee) and undulating movements of the pelvis. “That’ll stoke the furnace.” After that comes the most important thing of all: the breath.
“You’re really sucking the inhale and relaxing the exhale.” She advises to make noises because that helps shift energy in the body. “The idea is to bring in energy through the feet and end up shooting it out of the top of the head. Fake it til you make it,” she quips in what she tells me is jargon from the porn world.
It’s a great lesson. It reminds me of the Transformational Breathing technique I tried out in my hippie journalism phase with the British teacher Alan Dolan. Basically you breathe quickly in and out, taking in more than usual amounts of oxygen until a wave of euphoria hits you.
And then there I am, lying on a hillside in San Francisco as the woman once dubbed “The Golden Girl of Porn” makes sounds ranging from deep Witches’ Sabbath to mid-range horny-bitch-on-heat to high-pitched damsel-in-distress to glass-shattering Kate Bush on the moors. “Wooo! Woo!”
Listening to the tape afterwards, I do sound a bit stuck in Witches’ Sabbath mode. Clearly I need to work on moving my energy up to more damsel-in-distress mode. Meanwhile, I am in the ludicrous position of lying with my feet towards the top of the hill and my head towards the bottom because I want to face the sun. But something is definitely happening. I get to the state where I forget to worry about what the dog walkers must be thinking of us.
I have a flash of some of the boring-looking dog walkers I’ve seen in Presidio Heights. I want to unzip them and show them some love. Tell them it’s OK. Occasionally I get distracted by the fact that I’m not feeling anything remotely like an orgasm although Annie is now sobbing. Wailing almost. We get in breathing synch. I try and keep up with her her “Ah! Ah!”s until finally she makes a prolonged, “Oh yeeeeeeah!” presumably when the energy passes out of the top of her head.
I open my eyes and the sky is indeed bluer. There is also dog shit on the bottom of my right boot. I think I won’t say this to Annie. She’s clearly having a moment.
“When I masturbate like this, I feel the pain of the world, I really do. The Boko Haram, The Charlie Hebdo shootings. The animals, everything. I become a channel sometimes. I just need to release the pain. It’s like truly connecting. It sounds really strange.”
“No, it doesn’t sound strange …” She’s right that the concept of words becomes shaky after this kind of tennis. I struggle to speak.
“We can’t really experience pleasure on a really grand scale unless we can feel the suffering and the blocks and the disconnect somehow.”
Watching Annie with tears streaming down her face, it strikes me that this is what a modern-day nun looks like. Sending an orgasm to promote peace in Nigeria and Paris isn’t that weird. Christians and Buddhists send off distilled thoughts known as “prayers” to try and alleviate world suffering every day. Yet the kind of energy generated during orgasm is jet fuel compared to the economy petrol that comes from a morning at mass.
Stephanie Theobald’s Sex Drive: On The Road To A Pleasure Revolution is out now. Join Stephanie in LA for the launch party on December 7th from 6-9pm at The Pikey 7617 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, and follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, and check out mysexdrive.org for more details. **And discover more about Annie Sprinkle’s SexEcology HERE!
NUMINOUS WEEKLY HOROSCOPES: NOVEMBER 26-DECEMBER 2 2018
Get this week’s astro symbol for your sign with Sandy Sitron’s Numinous Weekly Horoscopes …
Sagittarius // Sagittarius Rising
Giving a flower. The full description of this dream-like image is “a bubble that has a hand gives a flower.” This symbol represents generosity, potential, and expansion. Generosity is the seed. Your ability to be generous energetically opens up your potential for new developments. And that leads to your expansion. So if you don’t know what else to do this week, start with generosity.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Capricorn // Capricorn Rising
A snowboard slices through snow. You want to find your momentum, but as usual you have to make your own path. Trust that you can get to where you want to go. Put yourself in motion, then enjoy the ride. Let your subconscious guide you intuitively. The more you can coast instinctively, the better. If you overanalyze every move, you’ll topple.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Aquarius // Aquarius Rising
Examine the distant sky. It’s easy to take the sky for granted. But staring at the distant horizon will improve your sense of vision, literally and figuratively. This is your moment for vision. How do you want to feel, in every important area of your life? What’s your vision for your contribution to humanity? Answer these questions with a vision board or brainstorming session. Know your direction.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Pisces // Pisces Rising
A beating heart. A heartbeat pulses through your entire body. It sets the rhythm in a subtle way. What pulses through you and sets the rhythm for your career goals? What is your purpose when it comes to the topic of your sacred vocation? Big question, simple answer. Stay focused on the core service you want to offer to the world. The central heartbeat. Everything else is just noise.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Aries // Aries Rising
A golden star. A star is always above. It’s something to look up to. Gold is symbolic of many qualities, among them: illumination, love, virtue, wisdom, magic, and prosperity. It’s time for you to lift up your mind and set your sights higher. There is no limit to your sense of love, wisdom, and prosperity. This week can teach you that. Open yourself up to a new way of thinking. Or if that’s too extreme, refine your current thought process. There’s room to grow.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Taurus // Taurus Rising
Rolling the dice. You have got to take a risk, especially in your personal relationships. Nothing is solid, ever. Nothing is guaranteed. Your strength is tangible and real when you trust yourself. When you know that no matter what happens, you’re good. Then you can take the risks that your heart yearns to take. Then you can create intimacy.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Gemini // Gemini Rising
Bird feet. The bird mostly travels by wing. The wings seem much more important than the feet. Although they’re far less obvious, the feet represent stability for the bird. What’s the hidden stability in your life? One factor to consider is your important relationships. Have you been taking them for granted? Do you need to make more room for stabilizing relationships? It’s time for adjustments to be made.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Cancer // Cancer Rising
Stones thrown into the pool. A ripple effect. Start with the basics and let your energy ripple out from there. Make sure you feel tidy and organized. The ripple effect will be stability and efficiency. Take preventative measures to help your body feel healthy. The ripple effect will be productivity and peacefulness. These are just examples, but the idea is to keep your focus on the core principle and then admire the results.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Leo // Leo Rising
A sewing project. There’s a step-by-step process to be employed. Choose the pattern and colors, thread the needle, attend to the details. There’s also the joy of creativity. Making something appear from nothing. Don’t hold back. There is something that you need to put out into the world. Identify your step-by-step method and make it happen.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Virgo // Virgo Rising
A child’s birthday party. The hats are decorated according to theme. The children play and have fun. When was the last time you felt this way? Enjoy an innocent celebration. Tend to your inner child by doing something fun and childish. Your inner child has a very specific way that they yearn to feel special. Find out what it is and celebrate it.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Libra // Libra Rising
Leaves fall in autumn. There’s a lot of motion. Everything is changing, but especially the way you think and communicate. It’s time to truly listen to yourself. You need to let go of something and you need to change the way you think. It’s a big deal! But it’s also very natural and just another phase. So ask yourself lots of questions and wait for the answers.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
Scorpio // Scorpio Rising
Pine tree forest. The more that you can let yourself go at your own rate and speed, the better. Try not to feel rushed. Take deep breaths and lean back. The pace doesn’t set itself, and it shouldn’t be set by someone else. What does time feel like for a pine tree forest? Possibly ancient, slow, and unhurried. Soak up that feeling and set your watch by it.
Want more wisdom? Book a reading with Sandy here or follow her on Instagram.
THE 2018 GEMINI FULL MOON WANTS YOU TO LIVE OUT LOUD
The 2018 Gemini Full Moon is a powerful opportunity to tune in to our environment, and let trust in abundant connection lead to compassionate communication, says Sandy Sitron …
Full Moon :: November 23 2018 :: 12:41 am EST :: 0 degrees Gemini
Listen to the blue jay sing. A splash of inspiring color against gray sky. But the bird is on attack. Caw caw caw. It scolds and picks with aggressive intensity. Then it takes flight and the whole interaction is forgotten.
On November 23rd, 2018, there’s a Full Moon in inquisitive, talkative Gemini. The Moon is opposite the Sun in truth-seeking Sagittarius.
There’s a potential to verbalize with this Full Moon. That drive to communicate can come through in different ways.
First of all, it’s fleeting (that’s something to be remembered in the midst of your next big conversation). What feels important is impermanent. Next, it’s vibrant. Fired up. A flash of interest, vitality, brightness. There is an urge to communicate with intensity.
That can result in sharing opinions that you’re not even sure you believe. Gemini likes to talk and Sagittarius likes to know. When it comes to conversation, who is listening? Notice an urge to nitpick or criticize, like the bossy blue jay. Maintain an airy sense of lightness. You can fly away from the conversation. You can let it go.
There are so many strands of information flying, so many truths to be determined with this expansive Full Moon. Be deliberate about the information you take in. Notice your environment. Who are you influenced by? Whose messages and opinions are seeping into your mental space?
If you aren’t deliberate, you’ll will find that you scatter your energy against the wind. This could happen through internet binges, continuously scrolling through social media, or asking for advice. How much do you want to take in?
The best results of this Full Moon energy come when you are driven by compassion. When in doubt, move through your world with an awareness that everything is interconnected.
The Moon in Gemini increases your desire for input. The Sun in Sagittarius pushes your ego to KNOW and to have your truth defined. This is an opposition of energies that can be solved by the T-square to Mars in Pisces. Translation? Take all of this cerebral processing and balance it with your drive to feel emotionally connected.
When your actions are guided by a feeling of continuous and universal love, all is well …
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Moon opposite Jupiter
Bundles of flowers overwhelm the aisle.
So much abundance, it’s hard to decide where it should all go. Of course that’s not a problem. Let yourself be lifted into a positive vibration by this radiant energy. You don’t have to maintain a limit on how much happiness you’ll allow. Notice if your joy is immediately followed by thoughts of worry and fear. If that happens, remind yourself that you really do get to be happy. Your joy won’t be counteracted. You won’t jinx yourself by talking about your good luck. And you aren’t taking up too much space. There’s always room for more flowers.
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Moon square Mars
Ice skating.
Just keep going and going. There doesn’t need to be friction. There’s so much movement in general with this Full Moon making a challenging angle to action planet Mars, and a slew of planets in mutable signs. Take up the pace you need to take. Go for it. Make all of your adjustments. Just remember to keep your center of balance. You don’t want to spin out of control. Mars is in Pisces, so your actions need to be filtered through a vibration of love and compassion. That will help it all mean something.
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The conversation starters below are to help you get deeper into what the 2018 Gemini Full Moon means for you. Find a friend and talk it out. For the most accurate reading, look to which house holds 0 degrees Gemini in your chart and use the prompt for that house. New to your birth chart? Calculate your chart for free HERE.
Aries / Aries Rising / Full Moon in the 3rd House
“The question I would most like answered is …”
Taurus / Taurus Rising / Full Moon in the 2rd House
“What feels delicious to me right now is …”
Gemini / Gemini Rising / Full Moon in the 1st House
“I feel most confident in myself when I …”
Cancer / Cancer Rising / Full Moon in the 12th House
“I am letting go of …”
Leo / Leo Rising / Full Moon in the 11th House
“This time next year I will be …”
Virgo / Virgo Rising / Full Moon in the 10th House
“My long-term career goals are …”
Libra / Libra Rising / Full Moon in the 9th House
“The trip I am longing to take is …”
Scorpio / Scorpio Rising / Full Moon in the 8th House
“I can’t stop obsessing about …”
Sagittarius / Sagittarius Rising / Full Moon in the 7th House
“The most important relationship in my life right now is …”
Capricorn / Capricorn Rising / Full Moon in the 6th House
“I am working hard each day to …”
Aquarius / Aquarius Rising / Full Moon in the 5th House
“I feel like a kid again whenever I …”
Pisces / Pisces Rising / Full Moon in the 4th House
“I can always care for myself by …”
NUMINOUS TAROTSCOPE NOVEMBER 22 2018: THE 4 OF PENTACLES
With Mercury now retrograde, the 4 of Pentacles asks us to release from the rigid and make space for magic, says Sagittarius Season’s reader-in-residence, Brandon Alter … Cast using the Prisma Visions Tarot
SAGITTARIUS SEASON 2018: LET YOUR FEELINGS SET YOU FREE
Sagittarius Season 2018 is awash with direct motion, urging us to burst forth into new ways of being in the world. Bring your freshest feelings along for the ride and keep your eyes and your mind wide open, says Bess Matassa …
Race straight into the great, wide open, and let the wind throw back your mane, Numiverse. Sagittarius Season 2018 is top-down and ready to ride, a reminder that life is pulsating with possibilities when we risk rolling the dice and losing the map.
Sag Season 2018 invites a pack of direct planets to the party, including Mercury going direct in Scorpio and Sag, Venus now moving forward in Scorpio, and Neptune and Chiron slipping and sliding in Pisces. There’s a surprising freshness and adolescent flair to all this locomotion, as we feel the range of big feels with the celebratory aliveness of a teenage dreamer. Meanwhile, the stage is set for unveiling some hard-earned truths.
With a perpetually-packed suitcase, Sag asks us to get out and collide with the world, letting ourselves be blended, shifted, and changed by all we encounter. This Sag Season, how can you fully immerse yourself in the experience of living … without having to fully understand it all?
Bow to a higher law, wild ponies, confident that when you commit to hitting the road without holding back, it will rise to meet your gold-dipped hooves at every turn …
Listen to the full Sagittarius Season 2018 report from Numi resident astrologers Bess + Sandy HERE and get the quick and dirty on the season’s 4 key astro events below …
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Sun in Sagittarius (11.22—12.21) Road Tripping
The Queen of experiential learning, Sag longs to stretch her muscled legs, powerfully poised to dance all the way past the end of the dirty and dusty roads. Though this is the energy of the seeker and philosopher, the most vivid treasures are found in the unscripted detours. Perpetually on the move towards the edge of the infinite, and ready to mythologize each tumbleweed that passes, Sag works best when unattached to the destination. Let this energy take you on an impromptu getaway, either real or imagined. Remind yourself of your innate ability to meet the moment, and the precious promise of a life lived far beyond the limiting beliefs of “right” and “wrong” turns.
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Mercury direct (stations direct in Scorpio 12.1; re-enters Sagittarius 12.12) // Say Anything
Mercury’s journey between Sag and Scorpio has reminded us that we can dance with our demons without having to signal the final death knell, relating to each season of our life with presence and curiosity. This final forward push of Mercury in Scorpio and into Sag finds us ready to share all of the hard-won gems that we’ve mined with the celebratory fervor of a lovestruck teen. A trip to the cosmic karaoke booth, this energy urges us to allow whatever’s on the tip of our tongue to come alive without fear. Let John Cusack’s unabashed boombox declaration to the neighborhood remind you that when we reach out from the inside, there is never any reason for regret.
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Neptune direct (11.24 in Pisces)// The Art of David LaChapelle
The zodiac’s dream weaving planet takes us far beyond the mundane and steeps us in the pure mystery of the unseen world. With Neptune stationing direct, it can sometimes feel like a rude awakening, as we’re forced to pull the blinds up on anything that’s been keeping us from clarity. This Sag Season, recapture the creative force in checking out to check back in, and turning your night sleeps into waking dreams. Bring heaven all the way down to earth with David LaChapelle’s glamorous escapism, which channels the Neptunian sensation of mixing the material and the mystical.
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Chiron direct in Pisces (12.9; trine the North Node in Cancer 12.2) // Bubble Wands
Chiron’s last direct pass through Pisces before it shifts into Aries in early February is an opportunity to take the full plunge into our iridescent, shape shifting feelings, exploring our most profound longings without judgement, and letting any shades of pain bring us closer to each person and creature in our lives. Pisces energy gifts us radical allowing, and paired with Chiron it invites us to widen our container and accommodate as many shades of sensation as there are drops of water in the ocean. Dip your bubble wands into the mix, and kiss the preciously ephemeral human experience with your breath.
HOW TO EXPLAIN YOUR SPIRITUAL AWAKENING TO YOUR RELIGIOUS FAMILY
When Fundamentalist threats of Hell left her wanting more, Kate Forristall turned to Now Age practices. But how to explain your spiritual awakening to your religious family? Kate shares her top tips for making the holidays less hellish …
Christmas 2017. Reaching for a beautifully wrapped present (the gene I didn’t get, sigh), I notice my sister Sally give our mother a nervous glance. Given my family’s tradition of one-at-a-time unwrapping, there’s no hiding what’s inside, but I have to smile as I open my package and see an intricately carved wooden box … with a pentagram on top.
I steal a glimpse at Sally’s face and feel her telepathically communicating with me in a desperate Tim Gunn voice, “MAKE IT WORK!” I lift the new repository for my tarot deck (pentagram covered by my palm) and wave it quickly, “A wooden box!”
“Who’s next?!” Sally chirps, as we simultaneously head into the kitchen to get coffee and put my gift away. When it comes to the spirituality we now embrace, we’ve decided pick our battles.
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Finding a faith to set me free …
At the age of 15, I began attending a church youth group known more for fun and community than hard line theology. Leaders preached the Gospel, but it was as simple as the original version (appropriate for humans without a pre-frontal cortex). The Jesus People movement had paved the way for a faith that was about loving God and loving each other, and I was happy to go along for the ride.
Unfortunately I got hijacked on the way.
In college I met Christians who could recite whole passages of the Bible and never seemed to struggle to obey all the rules the way that I did. They let me know that I wasn’t doing it right and by the time I graduated, the shame I felt over my failings was enough to send me right into the arms of Fundamentalism.
There were no sermons about the messiness of life, no Young Adult Group talks about how hard it was to be in your 20s. Floundering was considered moral failure and the threat of Hell was always looming. My goal became security, for myself, and eventually, my growing family, and I lost the delight and wildness of the God I’d met as a teenager.
In other words, I can help you explain things to your conservative mother, because I’ve been her. But while I forgot the kindness of the Divine, it did not forget me, and over the past 20 years I’ve managed to unload the toxic institutional religion that held me captive, while finding a faith that set me free.
Such faith means changed opinions about almost everything in life – politics, sexuality, social justice, capitalism, feminism – topics my family has often been less than thrilled that I brought up at the Thanksgiving table. But they were small potatoes compared to announcing I’d fully embraced New Age practices that we once believed were nothing short of demonic.
The new practices of my faith—meditation, spiritual direction, energy healing, multiple sacred texts, astrology, body work, and tarot—came from a period of darkness and spiritual searching, a time when I lost the ability to hear God and believed I’d been abandoned.
Now I can see that I was never alone, that my unknowing was, in fact the gift that pushed me through the Life-Death-Life cycle and into a belief that now sees the Divinity of all things.
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So as you prepare for Thanksgiving and the inevitable questions about why your life looks different than it used to, here are a few tips I’ve learned along the way …
1// “Preach … at all times. When necessary, use words.”
This advice from St. Francis is the best wisdom I’ve ever found for sharing experiences that have changed my life. If your example is one of serenity, service, love and hope, you’ll have no better evidence for the truth of the New Age spirituality you’ve embraced.
2// The Bible is your friend. Really.
I know, right? Whether it’s the Wise Men who used the stars to find Jesus, God noting the wheel of the Zodiac when conversing with Job, or Jesus feeling the energy leave his body when a hemorrhaging woman touched him, the Bible has an awful lot of examples of “New Age” faith. The word meditate is mentioned 20 times and if you do a Google search you’ll even find phrases like “centering prayer” from many corners of traditional Christianity.
3// Because science.
Meditation’s benefits are now proven by so much data that if your loved one can’t handle it, they probably believe in a six-day creation. Measurable energy fields of everything from the flowers in your garden to the heart in your body have uncovered a universe way weirder than science fiction. Neuroscience has revealed that our brains are supercomputers capable of affecting objects miles away (hello, pray much?) If none of that lands, find an empty room, light a candle … and meditate. At least you’ll feel better.
4// Try not to brace for impact.
This phrase has carried my family through many an anticipated rough situation. Neural communication studies show how much we convey before we ever say a word and I can tell you from experience that if you are telepathically shrieking, “I fucking dare you to make fun of my Tarot practice,” someone is going to comply. Moments like these are when the rubber meets the road. The Buddhist practice of accepting suffering while trusting its transitory nature has completely changed my life.
5// Baby steps.
I’ve always been an evangelist. Whether it was Jesus or toasted pecans in chocolate chip cookies, if I love something, I can’t wait to tell everyone I know. But when asking people to expand beyond a fear-based bias, I’ve learned that you need to move like an acrophobe in a skyscraper – one floor at a time. My mother now knows that I own a tarot deck. We’ve discussed the astrology of the moment on multiple occasions, and for her birthday, I gave her a book about manifestation. But it’s been seven years since I began this journey and my goal isn’t conversion. It’s that she too would find the path of greatest freedom for her life, no matter what it looks like.
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My resistance to the New Age movement wasn’t because I hated everyone outside my church. It was because I was terrified that it could destroy people I loved. Those who cling to fundamentalism are inordinately motivated by dread – circling the wagons to protect a God they can’t imagine being bigger than their sanctuary. Considering how vast and unknowable the Divine is, that’s a pretty sad perspective and I’ve given my kids unlimited permission to make fun of me forever for all the dumb stuff I did that was driven by fear.
Ironically, the greatest thing my New Age practices have taught me is how to deal with the fear I meet in this life. “If I go to the depths of the sea, You are there,” says the Psalmist to God, an understanding that no circumstance can separate us from Them—including, no matter how scary it is, spending the holidays with your family.
Kate Forristall is a writer, actor, mother, and lover of stories. Connect with her at #IRL Project, and on Twitter and Instagram.
