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I write regularly at jessicashepherd.substack.com — soft, human words on healing, astrology & intuition:
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December End Of Year Wrap Up : Stoking The Fires
It's a wild ride this December as we enter both the holiday and 'eclipse season', so instead of my regular New Moon essay, I'm publishing a few cliff notes for these last two weeks of 2009. The Sagittarius New Moon on Wednesday 12/16 encourages the power of our enthusiasm, our joy for life, our innate optimism, and seeing our life problems through the higher perspective of meaningful journeys. It's time to re-affirm our faith that the Universe is conspiring for our blessings, and no matter...
Saturn in Libra Square Pluto: Taking Up The Long Conversation With Astrology
While Saturn was transiting Virgo, one of my clients asked whether she should put down a loving and loyal pet, a dog, who had been hit by a car. Saturn in Virgo was beyond difficult on humanity's little helpers as many of my clients and friends found their pets with terribly costly health problems. We weighed the merits of each side of the decision. The dog was a loyal friend but the cost of rehabilitation would be costly - she was struggling to pay her bills. She is also a caring and...
Gemini Full Moon : Bored
We all get stuck in ruts: working the same job for years, looking at the same old four walls, it’s hard not to get into a groove, and not always the groovy good kind either. Brains are groovy though, as new neural pathways, or grooves, are forged every time we learn something new. But the brain is tricky. Once we master a new skill, the mind gets lazy. Right after the initial push of new learning, our brains efficiently go on automatic pilot so we don’t have to recreate the wheel driving to...
Scorpio New Moon : Hecate’s Moon & Graveyards
Today’s Scorpio New Moon is known by those in Pagan circles as Hecate’s Moon. Hecate is the Pagan Goddess of the Underworld and she ferries, from one life phase to another, those who are undergoing cycles of transition. A three-headed Goddess of the Maiden, Mother and Crone, her energy is present during those liminal spaces of time during which we feel "in the dark"; in the dark about the future, lost, or uncertain about which way to go, or somewhere between death and new life. At times when...
Full Moon In Taurus : It’s Uncomplicated
‘Why do you have to go and make things so complicated?’ -Avril Lavigne, Venus in Scorpio It’s the Taurus Full Moon and I’m comfortable, safe and secure tucked away in a comfortable pocket of the world, Vienna, Austria. This is our fifth (or sixth?) time visiting and Vienna despite the rash of pickpockets (our Indian friend was robbed of several thousand euros on the subway in a cheap change-dropping trick) it remains a haven of respite from the day to day grind. A change of scenery is like a...
New Moon in Libra : A World In Balance
Every autumn, like clockwork, life hits full tilt boogie. Schedules compress, far too much happens far too quickly all at once. And every autumn we travel. It’s a stressful scramble to pull the house together, get chicken-sitters, and take care of the business we’ll be limited from taking care of overseas, but I wouldn’t trade the hectic disruption of suspending life in one part of the world for experiencing the rest of the world. The most stressful thing is the simple idea of surrendering....
Full Moon In Aries, Fumbling Toward Victory
There’s a line in the Will Ferrell movie Talledega Nights that my husband has been known to pull out at non-sequitir moments. The main Will Ferrell character, Ricky Bobby, has a rough and tumble drug addict dad and at a key point in the film (the last time he sees dad) dad’s parting words are burned on Ricky's brain: ‘if you ain’t first, you’re last, Ricky Bobby’. Dad's last words may be Ricky’s 'driving' motivation for Ricky's career as a NASCAR driver, forever vying to be first place in the...
New Moon in Virgo: If It Ain’t Growing…
Once, long ago, I was really really ill and no one knew what was wrong with me. I now know that myriad issues of basic self-care ie not eating properly, getting enough rest, and the inability of my parents to model a hygienic lifestyle along with the spiritual crises of many life changes - well, it all piled up like a mountain of broken bicycles. It was a Virgo pile-up of massive proportions and the only thing that could save me was a cataclysmic and life-changing lesson in ‘how to’: how to do...
Sabian Symbols & Mercury Retrograde
Trolling for preliminary props and praise, A Love Alchemist''s Notebook manuscript ended up in the hands of a few astrologers I''d never met before -including one, Lynda Hill. As a direct result of this synchronicity (as well as seeing Lynda's work featured on April E. Kent's website), I've become re-acquainted with the Sabian Symbols - which are essentially visual images that describe each degree of the zodiac. For those of you who aren't familiar with the background of how Sabian Symbols...
And Now For Something Completely Awesome
We astrologers are earnest about being taken seriously. This can turn the best of us into curmudgeons, when certain of us shun popular astrology for generalizing (dismissing horoscope writers who shepherd the masses to us for a proper natal reading as irrelevant). The problem with that need to be taken so seriously is that we lose our humor and our perspective, and heaven forbid that happens, because humor is a true friend to creativity and inspiration. That’s why I’m delighted that Matt...
