monday, september 2nd, 2024, 05:55 MST

we live in a material world

time expands and contracts

like everything in this universe

collapse occurs

before expansion is possible

and expansion must happen

so collapse is possible

in youth,

a day is a large fraction of life.

1/365th of each year we’ve been on earth.

At 7 years old,

a day is compared

to the other 2,555 we’ve experienced.

By 40

24 hours is 1/14,600th of the days we’ve lived.

with that experience comes skill (self-expansion)

and with that “accrual” of time comes

a perception that days are collapsed into hours, minutes

moments

No wonder we are irritated in recognition

of how precious it all is

(time)

and the bewildering unknown of the amount allotted.

(time)

and what of the desire to do no-thing with our time?

To abandon modern ideals of productivity

and lay in fertile moments, bursting with potential

and do absolutely f*ck-all?

What a luxury.

And what of the thousand lives

we imagine ourselves being,

living, doing?

Can we rest in that nostalgia and

love the timeline we are on?

Can you love the life you’ve lived

embrace the loops of yourself

tied together

in the daisy chain

that is this moment?

What choices

(what flowers)

you’ve picked

which ones cultivated

from seeds

scattered

by unknown hands

the options

and opportunities we have at our reach

are influenced by a million (billion) variables

and you are not in control of all (most) of those

you are in control of (responsible for)

how you respond to what is before you.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

VENMO @laurenkhickman PayPal or apple pay l.k.hickman@gmail.com

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Jenn Zahrt of CAELi in Seattle, Washington — *THE* collection of astrological texts with over 5,000 editions to peruse — invited me on the WITHIN ORB podcast. Listen to our 38-minute chat or view here

This New Moon in Virgo falls on Labor Day

Labor 1 : to exert one's powers of body or mind especially with painful or strenuous effort : work. 2 : to move with great effort the truck labored up the hill. 3 : to suffer from some disadvantage or distress labor under a delusion. 4 : to be in the labor of giving birth.

labor, labour, working class, proletariat (noun) a social class comprising those who do manual labor or work for wages.

In 1894 Labor Day was established after years of terrible working conditions for both adults and children - impacting mostly the poor and recently immigrated. Children were paid much less than their adult counterparts, and 12-hour work days 7 days a week without proper compensation, breaks or even safe and sanitary working conditions are what this labor holiday commemorates. We have come a long way.

US manufacturing supplanted agricultural mode, an incredible economy was built, adding to a continuation of disparity between the wealthy and the poor- the robber barons and the working class who made mountains of money during the Industrial Revolution continues into today the Technological Revolution.

Have Labor laws, wages, and care been commensary with inflation and the rise of billionaires and (monster) corporations? What about modern technology and modern human stressors? What about the dissolution of community care and mutual support? What about the extraction and lack of accountability for stewarding the environment we depend on? What about disposability culture and how that influences collective vanity and greed?

Virgo is typically linked to the Greek Goddess of Justice, Dike and to Persephone, daughter of Demeter, the goddess of Harvest. The Fall and the Harvest are associated with reaping what we have sown in previous seasons.

We’ve arrived at a moment in the United States where the compiling of previous institutions, systems of harm, and systems of progress are surfacing as a collective discomfort with the system we are living in. We can recognize the micro changes that have happened to benefit the greater good, but what systems are outdated? What discernment is necessary to sort the seeds from the hulls, from what is beneficial to the collective garden and what is harmful, parasitic, or toxic?

How is it winning when success is equated to exploitation?

Major aspects involved in this New Moon focus less on the new moon in wide opposition to Saturn and more on the Mercurial aspects synonymous with the season.
Virgo is more sand-like because of the airy quality of Mercury combined with this mutable Earth season.
Mercury at 23’ Leo is now out of the retrograde period and back into motion. Square to Uranus, directly trine to Chiron, sextile to Mars, this is a MERCURY re-enforced New Moon.
Mercury aspects unpacked
Mercury-Uranus days can feel like brilliance or irritation. Impacts to the Nervous system are always associated with this transit/aspect and staying grounded is a highly recommended practice. Taking a breath, a drink of water, a walk or a hug from yourself or another can help to bring you back into your body. With Mercury in Leo there are lots of big dreams and ambitions, that we have these glorious visions of our being and becoming that are limited by physical reality. Journal or chat with a friend about what is coming up around topics of dissatisfaction or disappointment.
These same perceived restrictions come into form as Mercury and Chiron align at a trine and there can be clarity about how the soil you’ve erupted from (soil =life, lineage, storyline, experiences) has shaped you into the being you are today. There can be a reckoning and healing available when we allow ourselves to be exactly where we are.
The Mars sextile to Mercury can allow for some direction, focus, and clarity. Take some time to channel that energized mind into some brainstorming or vision boarding or find an outlet like a good book and a comfy spot to explore your imagination.
The new Moon falls on Labor Day in the United States. Celebrated on the first Monday of September, Virgo season is the most appropriate season for the result of laborers vs. police riots in Chicago in the 1880s.
Industrialization quickened the pace and has shaped productivity in modern times. 8 hour work days were meant to balance harsh conditions, uncapped hours and low-wage child labor…
We’ve come a long way.
Yet we are in a labor moment of toxic proportion.
The hysteria of the masses struggling to make rent, that wages have not increased in equal proportion to inflation as billionaires are richer than ever that “corporations” as entities are doing better than ever, and yet basic needs are not met amongst the masses says there is something deeply and disproportionately wrong.
Factor in systems of segregation, hierarchies and inaccessibility and we have a whole other system of sorting involved in this horrible chess game of haves and nots… except the haves still have all their playing pieces intact, while the have-nots are trying to cobble together checkers and that shoe piece from Monopoly to just play the game.
Change is afoot as Pluto returns to Capricorn for its last moments there for another 248 years exiting Capricorn in October of this year. Individually, we get to look and uproot systems that have worked and have not worked starting back in 2008. For systems, like the United States, we have to look at what must be dismantled, what is falling off the bones, what is broken, what is decaying, what is thriving, and what is parasitic.
**Other important stuff… relationships.**
Venus is conjunct with the South Node in Libra for this New Moon in Virgo.
Relationship “stuff” has been thematic and with eclipse season coming back around this month, any relational chaos that occurred back in April will reach some conclusions this month.
Sometime back, I wrote about the need for balance in Aries and Libra's work. Some of us are too self-centered while others of us are too other-centered. In my readings, I’ve seen time and again how so many of us are quick to center ourselves and not make space or consideration of others when pursuing our goals — creating a level of myopic perspective. For others, the focus on others and compromising our desires (Venus) to prioritize a relationship, to feel safe, and to uphold out-of-date relational institutions are creating toxicity and illness when we forget who we are, what we want, and what we came here to do.
Take some time to feel through how far you’ve come since April when focusing on the health of relationships by prioritizing your health, and well-being and centered in self-focus. Yes, we need one another, but we also need to need and love ourselves and not compromise our values by putting someone else’s desires above our own.

we live in a material world

bound by material law

by physical boundaries that prevent us from flying

warping time

from fast-forwarding through an endurance test of a dental appointment

from rewinding back to that painful relationship

or the (over) romanticized one

but our minds do.

our minds

can check out

time travel as they do

manipulate universes

re-write history

yet we fail to re-write the one we exist in with much success

fascinated by history

captivated by distant futures

we are challenged to navigate this moment with much fluidity

halted by distractions,

information to process

factoids

tidbits of information

passing through our cognition

our consciousness both muddied and clarified

by our experience

If you would like to learn more about how this lunation or the current transits impacting you personally…

Schedule the Mirror astrological consult

NOTES FROM THIS ONE…

I’m just outside Deadwood, South Dakota.
I draw up my astrology charts from wherever I am writing them, and it felt appropriate to write about the New Moon in Virgo from the back of my red Ford Transit Connect near a town with such a name.
Also, I didn’t love it there tbh. No offense, Deadwood. Just disappointed. And my god, the amount of offensive tee shirts.
America feels like an offensive tee-shirt to me.
Deadwood evoked a story about a college professor I will share with you.
I found him fascinating as he embodied a softness and a hardness. His speech was quiet as if he meant you to listen. He had a handwritten paper quiz he would pass out every single class, g*d help you if you’d forgotten to read your assigned pages. He was meticulous. There was no using Cliff’s Notes to prepare for his class as his questions were obscure. At times, even if you HAD read the assignment, you would fail to remember what specific detail of a character’s backstory prompted his interest enough to ask you about it.
He was the kind of teacher that demanded your attention, the way few do. He was about as nontoxic as an old white American man could get, and for some reason, I have a soft spot for such creatures.
He would pull me aside for minor violations, such as my use of red pens to submit assignments or take quizzes as he noted “red is an academic color.”
One of the things that he loved to do with his red pen was mark up my papers. He would slash through whole sentences with a long crimson line annotating his brutal markings with the word
dead wood. He had an eye for literary rubbish, superfluous language, and unnecessary details. I honestly love to write such things, my mind loving to create connections with every other thing I’ve ever experienced. Learning to cut back (which I have not, based on the length of this newsletter even after multiple edits) is an ongoing journey.

expansion and constriction.
Discernment is an acquired skill.
There is something precious about folks that keeps the rest of us in line a little bit. That a person’s presence requires our posture to be a bit more aligned and to pay attention to our speech and our habits a bit more closely.
Virgo is that teacher. Virgo requests that we sit up and pay attention, that we engage in the moment so we might meet that moment with a level of service, precision, and accuracy that otherwise would fall short of meeting the market. Virgo is the target and the bow, the arrow, and the breath. It is a function, a process, a choice.
May this New Moon in Virgo bless you with the kind of discernment that would serve you and your community right now.
stay inspired.
ursidae