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I write regularly at jessicashepherd.substack.com — soft, human words on healing, astrology & intuition:
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Mercury & Neptune Station: Speaking & Knowing
I don’t have one voice. I have many voices. Sometimes it is soft, silky and seductive. Other times it is courageously bold. My voice can be wise, with wisdom beyond my years. My voice can be spiritual, moved by the field of connection unifying us all. Or it can be fiercely honest, calling bullshit on me, and on you. I may appear a white woman in her early 40’s but if I were a nineteen years old black man, or if I were in Bruce, nee’ Caitlyn, Jenner’s body, I would still be me. I contain...
Sagittarius Full Moon: Change of Heart
Today I am in Vienna, Austria, a place I typically cherish. Yet this time we arrive to wet, unseasonably cold and dreary weather and an impersonal feeling Airbnb apartment filled with minimalist Ikea furnishings. Our apartment lacks all warmth and soulfulness, I brought all the wrong clothes, I miss my dog, Magnus, and my body hurts from the uncomfortable furniture that makes it hard for me to work - or do anything. A metaphor for life, travel is rife with suffering, discomfort, extreme...
Taurus New Moon: Return To Your Senses
My grandmother’s house had a certain smell. I’ve never identified it as say Chanel no. 5, which she had on her dressing table, yet it was just as much of a signature scent. A combination of Lily of the Valley, cedar and, likely, moth balls, every time I walked into her house this soothing scent was like baker’s vanilla to my soul, putting me at ease. When she died, I thought she would take this signature scent with her, but when I went back to help settle her house, which had been sitting...
Venus, Out of Bounds
This afternoon, while working in my home office, my dog, Magnus, who had been sitting quietly next to me, started barking like a wild man. I had heard a sound in the front yard, and frankly this isn't unusual (we live amongst deer and other wild animals, and we always joke that he barks at ghosts) so I chose to ignore the barking. When he refused to be calmed, I got up, rounded the corner, and saw a woman in my living room about to ascend my staircase. "You have a beautiful house," she said. I...
Scorpio Full Moon: Butterflies
The butterflies in your stomach before you go on stage. That feeling of anticipation right before you move cross-country, away from all you’ve known. The creative mania of those last days before you’re married. The day of your college SAT exam, nerves wracked and palms sweaty. The feeling in the pit of your gut as you wait for news that will ultimately change your life. Welcome Scorpio energy. Scorpio is edgy. It is the raw, alive, stuff of life. It holds the visceral feeling of a high-stakes...
Aries New Moon: Me First
The truism goes, you have to love your self before you can truly love another. Like most truisms that sound too simple to be true but have the gravity to change your life, this one hit home when I'd given the love I should’ve been giving to my self to another and wound up empty & unloved. I worked this one, mantra-like, throughout most of my twenties and thirties. As I age, relationship truisms develop in subtlety. For instance, the idea that before we can be a “We” there must be an “I” -...
Libra Full Moon Eclipse: Force Majeure
In the Swedish movie Force Majeure, Ebba, Tomas and their children are vacationing in the Alps one morning when, while sitting at breakfast on the viewing deck, a controlled avalanche gets a little too close for comfort. Tomas reassures everyone that it is not heading for their breakfast table but Ebba is not so sure. Indeed the blustery mayhem closes in, and as Ebba grabs their two children she looks to her teammate for help. But Tomas, in a moment of instinctual self-preservation, has fled...
Pisces New Moon: The School of Not Knowing
What stimulates your connection to spiritual consciousness? How do you receive guidance? Mercury has often played the star role in the messages I receive, often while driving, walking, writing and sometimes involving books. When I'm working on a reading and feeling I'm missing a thread that would pull it all together, I will silently ask for guidance. I get in the car, and a show on NPR gives me the missing link. Or I'll walk to my bookshelf, allow my intuition to guide me to the right book,...
Virgo Full Moon: Good Enough
Most of us are born into lives with teachers (also known as parents) who are really good at imparting lessons we most need to learn. My mother was a Virgo with a tenth house Sun. With a placement like that you would’ve thought she’d be running an organization, or heading up a service non-profit. The tenth house is the house of "calling", contribution on a large scale; tenth house planets have big ambitions... and planets here need a high level of development to step into such big shoes. My...
Jupiter-Venus: What have you done for me, lately?
As “lucky in love” (Venus trine Jupiter) and “out of the blue windfalls” (Jupiter trine Uranus) aspects alight the planetary skies right now, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement. Whereas astrology has no shortage of excruciating longer transit (read: outer planets) that last years, or next to forever, if I had one gripe to bring up to the Creator it’s that those lovely, expansive transits, usually belonging to Venus, Jupiter, are far too fleeting. But, like a holiday that arrives once...
