This blog is for all things related to "The Art of Consciously Creating Life."  

By practicing this art, we become more and more aware of ourselves and the world around us.  As we become more aware of ourselves, we also are uncovering our deepest soul desires for this life, our strengths and weaknesses, and our gifts and talents.  As we become more aware of the world around us, we begin to connect to the support of the ground beneath us and the inspiration from source above us - and we begin to realize ourselves as the vessel of manifestation between the two.  We begin to pay attention to the seasons and the travels of the sun and moon and align with those energies that tell us when to move and when to pull back and regroup.  And we begin to understand ourselves as the complex beings that we are.  We are not just the physical.  We are not just the spiritual.  We do not create in a vacuum.  We are made up of things seen and unseen, as is our world.  The more conscious we become, the better we are able to integrate our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual beings, and the more adept we become at aligning our truest soul desires with the energies at play around us in order to co-create with the universe.  

What I have experienced personally is that we work on one piece, and then another follows, as we have to catch up the rest of our being.  So for example if we experience profound spiritual growth, we will then probably find ourselves cleaning up our diet and habits.  We could change jobs in this case or our entire social circle might fall away to make room for a new one.  If we grow by leaps and bounds on the physical plane by cleaning up our habits, routines, and diet, and by honoring our body as a temple, we may then find ourselves shifting on the mental, emotional and spiritual planes as a result.  

What I have found is many times as well, I can see in an astrology chart when certain types of growth are likely to occur.  I have seen it in my own, and having lived it, I can say that I don't think I could've forced it to happen faster or somehow found a shortcut around it.  Knowing about the work we need to do in life and understanding it doesn't get us out of it.  We still have to live it to actually learn and grow.  Yet, I feel that astrology is a tool for becoming more and more conscious of ourselves, our work and the world around us, and that is why I focus so intently on it.

Which brings me to something else I am intently focused on:  food.  Years ago after dealing with multiple health issues for years, I ended up being diagnosed by blood test under the guidance of a naturopath with food allergies.  I was allergic to the trifecta of foods - gluten, dairy and eggs.  Not only was I suffering from migraines and depression, at the same time I was diagnosed with the food allergies I was diagnosed with low thyroid and adrenal fatigue.  And after years of avoiding the foods my body finds poisonous, I was able to go off of the thyroid medication, and I am migraine-free.  

More recently I have found myself in a battle with parasites - hitchhikers from my travels abroad.  Funny thing - the physical manifestation of those vampiric drainers of life-force are not only a sign of giving away one's power, but of those same energies existing on a person's emotional and spiritual planes.  More on that in another post.  The point is, this has sent me on a mission of exploring how upsets in our enteric nervous system (the nervous system that lines our digestive tract) affects our everything.  This peculiar predicament has forced me into being way more conscious about food and the effect it has on my system.  In this process, I have realized that our bodies truly are our temples and what happens in our physical realm most definitely affects us on a mental, emotional and spiritual level.  Eating for anxiety, eating for depression, eating for enlightenment - these are all very real things.

And so the arts of consciously creating food and consciously eating are absolutely parts of The Art of Consciously Creating Life.

With fall now fast turning to winter, this soup recipe has been on my mind.  I developed it with a creamy mushroom soup in mind I had tasted at a restaurant before I knew about my food allergies.  The soup I remembered was absolutely delicious (enough for me to remember it years later) but I had not come across anything since then that was similar that was dairy-free.  

There are actually two recipes here.  The first one is for the vegetable broth that makes the base of the soup.  This vegetable broth recipe is from an ayurvedic cookbook that I no longer have - it is just that I loved this recipe to much it has been committed to memory over the years.  You can of course substitute store-bought broth instead of making this, but I promise it will not be as good.

​Happy Eating!

This Mercury retrograde happens to be in Scorpio, meaning that this review of the mind and messages will be occurring through the prism or filter of Scorpio energy.  Scorpio is the sign of other people's money, such as taxes and inheritances, power, transformation, healing, the deep psyche, shared resources, elimination, regeneration, death and rebirth, destruction and creation, the mysteries, occult and taboo, passion, sex, what is hidden, secrets, unearthing, truth, obsessiveness, and resurrection.  

This retrograde begins with Mercury stationing retrograde conjunct Venus in Scorpio.  The conjunction is technically exact the day prior, October 30th. 

Simply put, Venus and Mercury together translates to "love expression".  However, the meaning here is layered.  Venus is the Roman version of Aphrodite, known most widely as the goddess of love.  Venus manifests as both the evening star, the goddess of love, and the morning star, the goddess of war.  Venus/Aphrodite comes from a long lineage of goddesses including the Sumerian Inanna and the Babylonian Ishtar.  They were goddesses of not only love, but sex, fertility and war.  Venus rules both Libra, sign of relationships, aesthetics, balance and harmony and Taurus, an earth sign associated with values, money, possessions and security.  While Venus represents the feminine energy within us all and attracting our desires to us through alignment and receptivity, and rules over love and relationships, Venus also rules over our values and our value of self, which not only extends into our ability to give and receive love, but is at the core of our relationship to money and possessions because it determines how we value ourselves and the resources we offer to the world to support ourselves.  

Mercury is about how we express and communicate, but that is because Mercury rules our mind and therefore our thoughts.  Our thoughts are a product of our beliefs and values.  Therefore the way in which we express and communicate is driven by our thoughts, which are a product of our deeply held values and beliefs.  

Scorpio is an energy that goes deep.  It has the power to be profoundly transformative, precisely because it will take us to the depths of ourselves necessary to uncover these deeply buried beliefs we carry that hold us back. 

While "love expression" is absolutely a theme of this Mercury retrograde beginning  influenced by Venus, when we take a closer look, that has everything to do with us healing deeper issues within ourselves around our value of ourselves, gaining clarity on what it is we most value, and therefore shifting our beliefs which in turn changes our thinking and therefore how we express ourselves in the world.  

Scorpio has no tolerance for the shallow or superficial - only intense and deep connections will do.  With this retrograde being kicked off with the blessings of Venus in Scorpio's healing waters of transformation, we are given an opportunity to work some relationship magic.  This energy available with Mercury conjunct Venus on October 31st supports love expression as well as any dialogue where compromise is necessary.  Venus loves balance, harmony, equity and peace, and on the 31st she will be whispering into Mercury's ear instructing us on how to go about achieving these with our communications.  

The upcoming Mercury retrograde has one more major influence.  Mercury in Scorpio is making a total of three aspects to Neptune in Pisces that weave through this retrograde.  Mercury and Neptune will be connecting via an aspect known as a trine, which is a sixty degree angle.  This happens when two planets arrive at the exact same degree of different water signs at the same time.  Because trines always involve two planets both in water signs, they are known as easy or helpful aspects, where the two planetary energies are blending harmoniously rather than challenging each other.  

Over three separate meetings Mercury and Neptune are going to help us work something out.  The first of these alignments occurred on October 15th, with Mercury direct and Neptune retrograde.  The second one will b on November 13th, this time with both planets retrograde.  The final connection of these two planets will be on November 28th with both planets direct.  (Mercury turns direct on November 20th, and then Neptune follows suit on November 27th, just one day prior to the third and final aspect.)  

Whatever presented itself in your life on October 15th sets the theme of this series of trines between Mercury and Neptune.  The same goes for the time period of October 11th until October 31st for the Mercury retrograde itself.  October 11th is the date that Mercury began transiting the degrees of Scorpio it will be covering in retrograde for the first time.  This is known as the pre-shadow of the retrograde.  Because Mercury will be going back over these same degrees during the retrograde, during the pre-shadow the issues that come up in your life having to do with the mind, thoughts, communication, and expression filtering through the energy of Scorpio, which includes themes of healing, transformation, regeneration, death and rebirth, the deep psyche, and uncovering truths, not to mention power, sex, and other peoples' money.  

Each of the three times Mercury and Neptune reach the same degree of Scorpio and Pisces, respectively, Mercury, as ruler of our minds, will be receiving Neptune's ethereal messages for us and broadcasting them through the energy of Scorpio.  Remember that Neptune is an enigma - there is nothing here that will be all that tangible or easily defined.  When under Neptune's spell, the senses we use to interpret the mundane world become unreliable; we must navigate with our intuition as what our eyes see could be illusion, and what our ears hear might be deception.  Also Neptune influence dissolves - think of watching wave after wave crashing onto rocks or cliffs and how hypnotic the sight and sound of that is.  And we can watch for hours entranced without ever noticing what those waves are actually doing to the rock that seems so solid - eroding it.  Logical thinking and reasoning won't work here - this is territory we must feel (or even imagine) our way through.  If there ever an aspect to apply magical thinking, this one is probably it!

Mercury in retrograde reaches cazimi (the halfway point of the retrograde where Mercury conjuncts the sun and therefore appears to disappear under the rays of the sun).  Cazimi is when the retrograde planet is said "to be granted an audience with the king in the throne room".  The sun is the light of consciousness.  This is the climax of the retrograde - the point at which we receive insight.  

Mercury cazimi the sun will be on November 11th at 8:23 a.m. MST.  Typically when the planet of the mind and communications is traveling backward, it is not recommended to try and push any type of message with the intent of moving things forward.  However, due to the favorable influences acting upon Mercury at the degree of cazimi, and cazimi being by definition a moment of insight, enlightenment or raised consciousness, the morning of November 11th is supportive for communications, messages or proposals to be well-received. The closer you can time your communication to the exact moment of cazimi, the more power you can access to back it.

On November 20th, Mercury stations direct.  Just as it began, this retrograde cycle completes supported by harmonizing influences which all in all make this Mercury retrograde more about healing and reconciling than consisting of challenges that teach us lessons and force growth, which is a really sweet thing in the midst of the challenging astrology we have navigated for much of this year.

Happy Retrograding!

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To understand how this is all weaving together, we look to the rulerships - in this case Pluto and Saturn and the signs they rule, and Libra and Aries and their planetary rulers, to gain insight as the sun moves through the signs of Libra, Scorpio, and then Sagittarius, actually ending up in Capricorn to shine the light of consciousness on the stage of the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in January.

Pluto Direct in Capricorn, Mercury into Scorpio, Mars into Libra, Venus into Scorpio, with Mercury Retrograde in Scorpio on Deck....

Last week, the same day in fact that Pluto stationed direct, there were two additional big shifts of energy:  Mercury moving into Scorpio and Mars moving into Libra.  On top of that, Venus moved into Scorpio on October 8th, and the  Mercury retrograde preshadow will begin October 11th, with Mercury stationing retrograde in Scorpio on Samhain/Halloween on October 31st. 

​The sun moves into Scorpio officially beginning a month of Mars/Pluto ruled "Scorpio season" on October 23rd, but with all of the activity over the past week and a half involving Pluto and Scorpio, including the Libra's ruler Venus moving on into Scorpio, this Libra season is carrying a strong Scorpio vibe.

​With the autumn equinox, the sun brought our conscious focus to relationships, balance, harmony, fairness and justice as it entered Libra.  As we move through the lunar cycle of Libra, we will also be exploring the axis of the zodiac that Libra forms with opposite sign Aries - the axis of self and other, the axis of relationship.  At the same time, with Saturn and Pluto now direct in Capricorn, we are moving towards the culmination of a huge astrological cycle that was begun in 1518, when the last Saturn-Pluto conjunction occurred.  With Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn forming a square angle to Libra, and all of the activity now occurring there, we are now being tasked with working through some challenges between the two. Part of these challenges are showing up because of the extra dose of Pluto and Scorpio we are experiencing even from the very beginning of this Libra season - Pluto direct in Capricorn squaring Venus in Libra, Mercury into Scorpio, Mars into Libra, and Venus into Scorpio, with the Aries full moon and then sun into Scorpio on deck,  followed by the upcoming Mercury retrograde in Scorpio.  

Mercury will turn direct in Scorpio just two days before the sun shifts our light of consciousness from the deep truths of Scorpio to the personal truths and beliefs of Sagittarius.  Sagittarius brings us the optimistic enthusiasm that allows us to set off on our Fool's Journey out into the world. 

​But first, over the coming weeks, we must make that journey into our own underworld and into our own subconscious to meet the truth of our own shadows.  This need not be a journey of sorrow and loss though.  We have been doing this work for some time now.  We have been preparing for this.  And this in turn is preparing ​us for our big date with destiny in January, for when Pluto and Saturn come together in Capricorn, we are being given the opportunity - an opportunity that does not present itself once in a lifetime, or even once a century - to reclaim our own inherent power and authority and recalibrate our relationship to it in the world in which we exist.