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I write regularly at jessicashepherd.substack.com — soft, human words on healing, astrology & intuition:
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The Divine Venus in Virgo
Venus is in Virgo from September 19 - October 13, 2017 If Venus in Leo is all about the bling, the Virgin sets the record straight. Virgo is, foremost, a realist, hardly diving into love affairs without considering how her potential paramour fits into the rest of her life. She is the busy bee, the worker bee who tirelessly gathers pollen for the Queen, not for herself, but because it connects to the endless stream of Divinity, where she belongs. She's simply doing her part. No other sign can...
A Temple for Neptune
If you enter a room to get something only to forget why you went in; if you discover mid-sentence that you’ve lost your train of thought entirely; if you lost yet another several hours or days doing...(yes, what exactly were you doing?) it’s probably not early dementia --it's Neptune. Popular astrological opinion says if we aren’t honoring the Gods in our life, they vie for our consciousness in a disruptive way. With Neptune, we may lose our keys, get lost on the way to a simple errand, lose...
Pisces Full Moon: Do Nothing
At the end of each summer, like clockwork, I used to anticipate surviving the fall. Thinking about back-to-school, carpooling kids, back-to-school events, weekend social calendars, travel plans… as life spun like a top perilously close to the edge of the table, I believed I could alleviate this feeling of over-extension by getting everything in order. I’d organize the dreaded tupperware drawer, and usually end up more tightly wound. One day, with one more birthday party to throw and dinner to...
Pallas: Your Inner Amazon
“There’s a little bit of Amazon in every woman.” - The Lost Sisterhood by Anne Fortier "Be careful in the world of men, Diana, they do not deserve you." - Wonder Woman It’s no coincidence that Wonder Woman was a box office hit in summer of 2017. Here, a fierce and beautifully feminine woman who fought (yes, fought) for the triumph of love and truth over evil. Women love female film role model who don't fall into patterns of self-deprecation, deference to males, and romanticizing love. Diana is...
Leo New Moon Eclipse: Play Bigger
This week, my energy teacher gave me an exercise that seemed custom- tailored Leo. We were having a conversation about thinking we want and need our partners to show up in a certain way, and the disappointment and resentment when they don’t. Instead of getting caught up in what they’re not doing, she said, the work of the new dimension is to focus on what we need, just as men naturally focus on what they need. Then, we discover, we won’t think we need it so much. Because we actually don’t....
Aquarius Full Moon: The Call of Truth
Last December I did something bold, and something absolutely terrifying. I told my husband I wanted to move. Out of state. Away from California, our home for twenty years. Actually, I had been telling him I wanted to move for months, but I wasn’t being received. He didn’t want to move. We’d lose his retirement benefits. Not the right time. Maybe in about five years. And the conversation was shelved. But I didn’t have five years. I was desperately unhappy. Nothing felt good or right here,...
Stop Using Astrology to Scare Yourself Silly
We're in the eclipse zone, that concentrated period of time surrounding two eclipses, and a time when some people who know just enough astrology to be dangerous, grow really afraid. As you read the myriad web resources available about this very special time, or any astrological event, pattern or aspect, let's remember several things: 1) Human Egos write this information -not a Diving Being (though Divinity shines through more clearly for some, than others)- and their writing is being run...
Two Leo New Moons (one’s an eclipse!): Say Yes to You
It takes tremendous courage to put our self out there, to trust we won’t be rejected for who we are. We can all understand insecurity of worrying about our worth, abilities, what others think; Leo doesn’t hold the patent on that. And we don’t have to be a Leo to tear a page from this playbook. We are in an astrological period of intense Leo activity for the next month. On 7/23 we have this first New Moon at zero degrees, and a second New Moon Solar Eclipse at 29 degrees Leo on 8/21.
How Well Do You Know Your Ceres?
Have you seen the picture of Beyonce with her twins? The pictures likeness to Virgin Mary, mother of Christ, reminded me of Ceres the Great Mother Goddess. I looked it up and sure enough, Beyonce’s Ceres is in Virgo conjunct her Sun -which means her identity is fused with the archetype of nurturing, loving Earth Mama.While her public face has been primarily as the creative artist (Venus in Libra), she has been very vocal about how motherhood has given her a sense of purpose (Sun). "I feel more...
Pluto Transit? Reclaim Your Innocence with Persephone
When we consider Pluto, our minds tend to go to the darkest places. It’s not unwarranted; after all, Pluto shows us our deepest wounds, the places we’ve been disempowered. Yet in astrologically giving Pluto/Hades all the limelight, we've overlooked the Goddess (again). Persephone’s story is about innocence lost. In the divorce, death, abandonment, betrayal, illness- the Plutonian event- we too lose our innocence. Of course it doesn’t leave us, it never does. Every effort we make to heal (and...
