Lies I Have Known

Old lies can be quick to reveal but take time to unravel and process. A full moon is full exposure, it is the brightest most unpredictable night in the lunar cycle. When something completely absurd, terrible, or unbelievable is revealed and we don’t know how to process it, sometimes we pretend it’s not there. This full moon we have a choice. Look at the hideous thing in the eye and be willing to make mistakes while confronting it or suffer it’s burden.

The Sun, Moon, and Neptune are squaring off this Sunday which is shaking up our ability to communicate. There is a big truth to tell and there we need the DETAILS, girl.  It may take hundred attempts, an iron clad resilience, and an incredible level of patience to do so. Neptune is like a fog that can obscure truth with muddying logic. The term “gaslighting” is useful to describe what I think Neptune and the moon may be illuminating. It basically means a person repeating lies over and over again until the victim becomes unsure of their own reality in order to dominate and control them. This can also be used by people through systems of oppression to keep the oppressed from reclaiming their power. Sometimes people in positions of privilege within marginalized community (men, non-black poc, ablebodied, etc) perpetuate a culture oppression unconsciously by practicing gaslighting on their own community. We’re seeing a lot of people coming out about abuse of power in the name of justice and it can be overwhelming for many who are still struggling with their own abuse narratives. Sometimes, when we have unresolved abuse histories we can subconsciously (or even consciously) repress stories of others because that is what we’ve conditioned ourselves to do. In this space I ask you to be committed to curiosity and patience over righteousness or fear. It is an incredible and difficult journey to begin the process of accountability.  Saturn (discipline) conjunct Mercury (communication) is highlighting the need for a disciplined mind but it can also create intellectual congestion where we may overdevelop or over-think an idea and experience difficulty expressing it or experience a heightened sensitivity around how it is received. When we are talking about such sensitive topics like survivorhood and abuse I can only assume that mistakes and miscommunications will definitely happen. Oh yeah, and Mercury is retrograde. So… there’s that.

Jupiter in Scorpio is playing the part of relentlessly impassioned exposure of the shadow. It can be hard to tell where you stand amongst all this intense information. My suggestion is to start by witnessing and validating. Validate the stories of the survivors, the people you trust, validate the feelings coming up for you. Remember, just people information is coming up rapidly, does not mean you have to respond to everything at the speed it arises. In fact, if you don’t know what to do with the information just yet, be still and wait for your intuition to come through. The gift in the conversation between Jupiter in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces is a chance for us to clearly understand and develop the integrity of how we manage conflict and accountability. It is important to open up to tension and hold our personal boundaries as well as being responsible for our feelings and actions.

Speaking of boundaries… Neptune is a dissolver boundaries between all things and in Pisces (it’s corresponding sign) it gives us a double dose of both boundary melting and desire for disassociation. This will be a LONG transit (until 2025) but the importance of it this week is its square to the Full Moon (a point of unresolvable tension) and trine to Jupiter (an open channel). Some of us may choose to go along with this dissociative and passive energy and it may be the safest thing for you to do. Mental health is a precarious thing and sometimes shit is too triggering to stay present for AND I encourage those of you who have the resources to stay present and grounded to do so to the best of your ability.

I also want to say, Neptune in Pisces has an intense shadow side of addiction, greed, and disassociation, but there is an incredible potential for spiritual revolution. I’m not talking about hot yoga and cold pressed juices. I’m talking about a spiritual evolution that will ready our spirits for a long overdue change. I’m talking about ancestral and descendant healing on an non-linear level. I’m talking about reclaiming indigenous lands, languages, and lives and the unsettling of settler nations. I’m talking about the fall of prisons and the end of the economic, environmental, social, and systemic war on black people. The death throes of gender based violence. Power taken back by the marginalized people of the world. One of many things these depend on is the ability to find yourself within these the incredible and terrible truths and to stay present with each emerging voice.

Art by Eileen Agar

“Not everything that is faced can be changed but nothing can be changed until it is faced”  James Baldwin