Latest on Substack
I write regularly at jessicashepherd.substack.com — soft, human words on healing, astrology & intuition:
Blog
The Art of Losing, Uranus Leaves Pisces
In the past two days, I’ve been informed of two deaths. One, an acquaintance’s family member; the other, a high school classmate who was a fixture in my social circle. The former was a suicide, and the other was young and healthy enough to surmise that free will played a role in her death, too (you usually guess this when you see ‘no foul play suspected’ in the police reports). For me, this brings up feelings already brewing from a more acute loss this Winter: sadness, loss, and the...
Pluto, Saturn, Squares, First House Planets: Trust Your Authority
After my previous V-Day Plutonian post, I was talking to a long-term counseling client who told me the whole situation would’ve scared her. Wasn’t I scared, she asked, Didn’t I feel violated by unsolicited attention? I can’t say I didn’t feel incredibly unnerved by being the object of someone’s affection. However, my fears were mostly about my own ability to live in the center of my own life. To be nervy, but to not lose my nerve. To trust my own authority. I’ve seen this as a theme in the...
My Pluto Valentine: Bottomless Love
Some things we will never know the answers to; mystery questions that will change the course of our lives if we chose to follow and answer to them. UFO’s, crop circles, thirteen crystal skulls that have come to earth to bring us peace and healing. Then there’s the whole question of death, reincarnation, the ultimate meaning of our existence. I’m may be more spiritually curious as the next person, but thanks to my three year brush with Pluto, my perspective has changed. I love to search for...
Venus in Capricorn: Woman of Substance
"I want a fingerprint of my own and I want credibility, and that's all I want. I just want some substance to my existence." - Lisa Marie Presley (Venus in Capricorn) "Find out who you are and do it on purpose." - Dolly Parton (Venus in Capricorn) "I find the same thing sexy in a man now as I always have: humor. I love it when they are funny. It's to die for." -Diane Keaton (Venus in Capricorn) If you were born when Venus was in the constellation of Capricorn, the Sea-Goat... Venus likes to be...
The Twelfth House, Repulsion & The Crazy That Heals
The Roman Polanski film Repulsion is one Twelfth House look into the mind of a woman's descent into madness. Like watching a beautiful train wreck, there’s something mesmerizing and terrifying about watching Catherine Deneuve somnambulistically shuffle between the flat and her day job as a manicurist filing the finger nails of old rich ladies and avoiding the sexually suggestive leers of men. She is mesmerizingly beautiful to watch but also terrifying because see she is hanging onto sanity by...
Cancer Full Moon: Growth
People come to astrologers for many reasons, but a big one is to unlock a mystery, put perspective around an area of life that has become a tremendous source of pain or confusion. Often they (we) are conditioned to think our life should be otherwise. Pick any subject. Love relationship; now that’s supposed to be all hearts and roses, right (feel free to insert your own rant/ expletive here)?! Many have a hell of a time getting into a relationship, and if we’re ‘lucky’ enough to be one of those...
Blonde Ambition: Women, Madness, Astrology
I love cinematic hollywood starlets of long ago, movie stars who epitomized glamour and initiated our love affair with the movies. Women like Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Jayne Mansfield, Audrey Hepburn...the list goes on. These women excite a rare glamour nostalgia for me, nostalgia not for a time, but for the women themselves - a rare combination of sophisticated, feminine, tough and real. These strong women put up with a lot, like, sexism before feminism, and being...
The Transiting Nodes: Ghost of a Dog
With South Node conjunct my natal Cancer Sun, the moon's nodes have always held intrigue so as a professional astrologer I use them often in my work. Steven Forrest’s epic work Yesterday’s Sky, helped me bring core karmic complexes to life in full cinematic glory, and those elusive mysteries, unraveled. Eclipses are inextricably linked to the nodes, too, as any full or new moon falling within 18 degrees of the nodal axis creates what we call an ‘eclipse’. Eclipses are wicked good at opening...
Venus in Scorpio: Queen of the Scorpions
"I've intimidated men my entire life and it has nothing to do with fame." -Anne Hathaway (Venus in Scorpio) "It's not that I've had a lot of lovers, it's that I never hide them. It's a different thing. I have not one day of regret." - Carla Bruni Sarkozy (Venus in Scorpio) If you were born when Venus was in the constellation of Scorpio, the Scorpion... Never, ever judge a Venus in Scorpio on looks alone! The inner life of a Venus in Scorpio born is complex. Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist...
Gemini Full Moon Lunar Eclipse: Turning Inward for Answers
The Sagittarius/Gemini eclipse season is upon us, and just in time for the holidays. With retrograde Mercury hobbling along, squared by Uranus and Jupiter in Pisces, about whatever we can say ‘let it be’...we’d do well to let it be. Last minute changes, unpredictable weather, unexpected news, or crises, the challenge is to not get so distracted by busy-ness and temporary fallout that we miss the magic and wonder of the lunar eclipse and this solstice, this darkest night of the year. The winter...
