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I write regularly at jessicashepherd.substack.com — soft, human words on healing, astrology & intuition:
Blog
Virgo New Moon Eclipse: Earth School
Six months ago, during the the Pisces-Libra eclipses, something shifted in my consciousness and my sensitivity gates opened up with great, brutal force. As the song for Empaths goes, “Anything you can feel, I can feel stronger. Anything you can hear, I can hear more”. Empathy is “feeling and understanding emotions that aren’t yours,” and while I can do that, too, my bigger challenge has been environmental, collective. I began feeling I was living on an exposed cliff on a windy day where the...
Aquarius Full Moon: Dream Catchers & Dream Posses
Aquarius Full Moon is a time of nurturing both our visions for our future, and the friendships and alliances that help us get there.
Leo New Moon: Goodbye… and Hello
As an introvert, with a cluster of vulnerable Cancer planets assembled all around my Mid-Heaven (MC), I doubt I’ll ever feel comfortable in the spotlight. Yet my progressed Sun, and MC, my evolving self and “calling card”, respectively, in the extroverted, notice-me sign of Leo, has impelled far more charisma from me than even I thought possible. So, as my progressed MC moves into Virgo in little over a month (a once every thirty-year shift), I honestly feel something akin to relief. Like...
Capricorn Full Moon: Wisdom Nature
When I was a child I remember suffering feelings of frustration over forgetting what I already knew. Have you ever had dreams where you knew how to solve complex math equations or speak Japanese as a matter of fact, when in waking life you couldn’t access that knowledge? That’s how it felt being in my earthbound body. I knew the knowledge and wisdom was there, barely veiled. It was so palpable, so close, I could taste it...Why couldn’t the adults around me see it, too? Spiritual traditions,...
Saturn and Neptune Have a Conversation
There’s a planetary conversation taking place between Saturn in Sagittarius, Capricorn’s ruling planet, and Neptune in Pisces (square thru September 2016). The promise of this combination is integrating the divine into the ego. The risk of this combination is exaggerated fears and feelings of separation. Molehills can become mountains when we take our fears too seriously, leading us to a macabre picture of believing in a very scary "reality". To lighten up, let's listen in on an...
Cancer New Moon: Healing Sanctuary
"Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you." -Rumi I moved out to California, my home for almost two decades now, shortly after graduating from college and my mother’s death. San Francisco proved to be far foggier and colder than I thought. The saving grace of that first home I lived in was its close proximity to a lush forest of eucalyptus trees and California lilies, providing a sacred space where I could be alone with my swirling thoughts, feelings and grief. The...
Sagittarius Full Moon: A World You Want To Live In
Have you ever found your self in a relationship dynamic that you didn’t want to be in? Ever find your self, wondering: How did it get this bad? Was it the leaky faucet we neglected to fix? All those times I went silent when I should’ve spoken? That’s how many of us feel, lately, living in this world gone mad. And this dysfunctional relationship is extremely one-sided. The world is not being a good listener. It doesn’t ask you what you want and need, nor does it care. No matter how much you try...
Gemini New Moon: Perceptual Shifts
While Mercury retrograded through my eighth house, in the silent sign of Taurus, I experienced a few hours of deep panic where I feared I'd lost my writer voice. Writing never is easy, but when I’d go to the page no words came. To an artist friend, I expressed how different this was from writer’s block, and that this journey of inquiry led me through a valuable process, a deep dark knowing that being a writer isn’t really up to me. This re-telling seemed to have struck a nerve. She told me...
Beyonce’s Lemonade & Innana’s Journey
Last night I was working on creating and destroying energy in my feminine meditation class. Beyonce's Lemonade kept entering my mind. Specifically this image: Then, these: A point my teacher made was we often use our feminine energy to create, create, create (often to the point of obsession for us creative types) but neglect to honor the need for destruction. I thought of my twelfth house Pluto in Libra and the idea that Cosmos holds us accountable to the principle of balance, regardless of...
Remembering Prince: The Nodal Story of Prince
Prince’s passing has become my preoccupation. Purple synchronicity is omnipresent. Everything is purple. Everything is Prince. It’s been a year of death. People who are dying are so much younger than we think they should be. Life proves that we each have different expiration dates (we must have), and we are not in control, which makes the case for living life well and fully today all the more compelling for each of us. Did he die too soon? Prince had Gemini on the cusp of his eighth house of...
