Moonthly Letter VII: An invitation to planetary explorations through the history of my homeland
Also, returning to IG...whaaatttt?!
Hello fellow creative wanderer,
I hope you are well-nourished, in body, mind and soul. I feel like May has been the longest month yet this year. And I’ve been hearing that from others too. Sending love your way.
As I mentioned in my most recent podcast episode, I showered myself with a lot of spaciousness and slowness during the Sun’s transit through Taurus, and my mind did not resist one bit. Well, maybe a little. Overall, my mind craved for good quality downtime with my self, with my breath, with my body. And I can report back now that this is exactly what I was feeling into when the seed of the desire for a slow creative life first emerged, way back in 2018.
I hinted on my deepening interest and fascination towards planetary cycles in my most recent Lunar Invitation. And funnily enough, it was last spring that I journalled on wanting to connect the dots between the history of Estonia and astrology but I didn’t quite have all the tools or the energy. Now, with Jupiter in Taurus, I feel like tending to this seed that first emerged last spring. Where the path will lead, I don’t know, but I am excited to be following the thread.
In hindsight, it was in 2018 that my current personal Jupiter-Uranus cycle began.
Back then, as I still worked pretty much full-time, I could only dream of slow meandering early mornings with breakfast and a cup of coffee whilst reading, writing, and exploring, followed by a good workout a few hours later. I could only dream about the majority of my weekdays being spacious and slow filled with following my delight. I could only dream about an hour-long meditations in the middle of my day. I would always hear people spending hours on end meditating, and now I get it. Having space for that in the middle of one’s day is luscious.
Astrologically, Jupiter is coming up to a waxing trine to my natal Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. Dane Rudhyar calls this the expressing phase: integrating what is developing into an intentional way of life.
I must say, this feels like an absolute heaven to this sacral being - the freedom to do what lights me up, the freedom to follow wherever the nudges lead me. The freedom from the constriction of someone else’s work schedule for me. The freedom to choose my own schedule with a lot of spaciousness in-between the doing. I find myself slowly getting better at the being in the present moment.
Fun fact: my Chiron, the Wounder Healer, is in gate 20 in my bodygraph. Christie Inge refers to this gate as the energy to be present and speak truth in the now. As a Virgo Rising with Mercury in the 1st House, I like scripts. But I also find that when I just show up and respond to whatever is present, a deeper truth emerges.
Now, I want to address the big tech elephant in the room. Yes, I am back on IG. When everyone else is finally jumping ship, I am getting back on it. Yes, the one that advocated against social media as loud as she could back in 2021, and got a fair bit of resistance from others on the platform, is back on the platform that completely depleted her sense of self-worth. And I can also say that the return was not a decision I made lightly. And there are clear boundaries this time, which I most definitely did not have back in 2021 and the years prior.
The whole intention why I am on IG has changed. Also, I trust myself and the growth I’ve experienced in the last couple of years. I no longer need the number of likes or follows to define my worth. I am also equipped with more tools to detach myself from that mental space and spend time and energy on things that truly matter to me. And, I trust that I have a magical offering that needs to live out in the world. Realising that made me reshift how I view IG.
IG to me is a noticeboard. It’s a lighthouse. A torch. A lantern. It’s a platform and a tool that will allow me to connect with the ones that resonate with my truth and the ones whose truth I resonate with.
By the way, I appreciate the discussions that are happening in the comments of The Downfall of Instagram by
. I also appreciate and her recent essays on creativity, content creation and social media.Personally, I welcome this experiment just as I welcomed leaving IG back in 2021. As a conscious 3rd Line in Human Design, that is what I do. I experiment through life. In all honesty, I welcome this invitation to notice and honour the inner work I’ve done but also allow my magic to live out there as a lantern. I think of my IG as a trail that will lead to my Substack which is currently the main stage. Oh, I have such a strong desire to nourish the root system I’ve started to create here. You can read more below.
This leads me to the Jupiter discussion I started earlier. But before I do that, the May Delights List is at the end of this letter for those of you who don’t want to participate in the planetary conversation.
Firstly, I want to acknowledge that my understanding of and approach to astrology is currently going through a shift, and it may be one shift in a long list of shifts. As a 3rd Line, I like to poke and prod, as Fiona Wong from The Wild Pixel describes it. She calls us 3/5 profiles Anti-heros. Personally, I can see that, specifically through what I will share with you today, and even through my social media journey.
When I first came to astrology, I wanted my natal chart to tell me what to do with my life. I was seeking a purpose to my life. That led me to all sorts of things, from Tropical astrology to True Sidereal to Sidereal back to Tropical. What a wild ride!
What’s emerging through all of this is this desire to use astrology as a navigation tool to self-actualization, self-discovery and self-fulfillment. Astrology to me is becoming a meaningmaking practice. Astrology to me is becoming a tool that allows us to uncover, recover, and/or discover who we really are and what our assignment in this life is. I don’t think that our natal chart pins it down specifically, rather, it is through our own explorations and discoveries that we tend to stumble upon it. Whether we are conscious of it is another matter. As Dane Rudhyar writes:
“…cycles do not determine what will happen. They only evoke the possibility of the happenings and if it happens, something of its basic character.”
(One of my astrology teachers, Britten LaRue, talks about this idea of us all having an assignment here in this episode of her wonderful Moon to Moon podcast.)
Our natal chart is the seed that holds the possibilities and capacities to our life form. The environmental conditions influence if and how and when we’re able to live and embody the fullness and the wholeness of the potential of being and becoming what our seed holds.
Sidenote: I am noticing how certain words like potential and power make me feel unsettled. I’m noticing becoming more intentional with the words I do choose to speak out or write up. I’m noticing how words are energetic beings and they each have an impact. Therefore, I’m allowing myself to become more intentional with them. My 1st House Virgo Mercury is becoming more discerning and I thank them for it. I’m also realising how my 1st House Mercury talks and writes from a place of personal experiences. My hope here is for you to take what’s needed based on my own lived experience and the way I decipher my own natal chart and bodygraph.
Anyway, Jupiter in astrology is, according to Richard Tarnas, the principle of expansion, growth, elevation, advancement, and abundance. Jupiter is our capacity and impulse to enlarge and grow, to ascend and progress, to improve and magnify. Jupiter is our philosophical and cultural aspirations.
Renn Butler writes in his dissertation “Archetypal Astrology and Transpersonal Psychology” that Jupiter is our expansion of consciousness toward the Universal Mind and all things within it.
Uranus, according to Tarnas is the principle of change, rebellion, freedom, liberation, reform and revolution. Uranus is sudden awakenings and insights. It is also linked to unpredictable and disruptive changes hence its nickname of “cosmic trickster”. Uranus is also astronomy and astrology, as well as science and esoteric knowledge.
I have a waning Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in my 4th House of Home, Roots, and the Uncoscious. In fact, they are mere minutes apart and formed an exact conjunction about 17 hours after my birth, which marked the beginning of a new Jupiter-Uranus cycle.
In terms of planetary cycles, Jupiter is the faster moving planet of the two which means my natal Jupiter-Uranus conjunction is the very end of the cycle that began around 1968-69. I like to link these planetary cycles to my homeland of Estonia, the place of my birth, since environmental factors play into our individual journeys.
So, looking at the history of Estonia around the time of running upto Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, it was a period known as the Khrushchev era. It was a time period known as de-Stalinization.
The era of Stalin is widely written about. It was a time of cultural repression for the Estonian nation, and more widely, to a lot of other ethnic groups that ended up as part of the Soviet Union as a result of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Second World War.
My own family did not escape it unscythed. My dad’s side of the family was deported to Siberia in 1949. My great grandpa ended up in a prison camp somewhere in the very far east of Russia never to return. I often wonder what happened to him. My great auntie remembers receiving a letter that he was coming back and yet he never did return.
The waning square in the beginning of 1950s is an important turning point. It was a period of temporary reorientation where seeds to a different Estonian state were sown. Due to Stalin’s poor health, he was less active in running the Soviet Union, giving less speeches and writing less. After Stalin’s death in March 1953, when Jupiter was forming a waning sextile aspect to Uranus, things started to slowly turn around.
The closed borders were slowly opening up. Estonians would be able to pick up Finnish TV on their television sets. I remember from my own childhood, whether-permitted, watching western shows on a Finnish TV channel. Back in the 1950s and 60s it was a time of cultural liberation and expansion. Estonians were finally able to join back in on the matters of the western world, if only momentarily.
The cycle that started with a little more cultural freedom shows up in my own chart at the very tail-end of it. As Rudhyar says, “the seed-in-the-beginning has now become the seed-in-the-end, waiting to be transformed into a seed-in-the-beginning.” And that seed re-emphasised to ethnic Estonians the strong desire to celebrate the rich cultural heritage.
With the appointment of Gorbachev as the general secretary of the Soviet Union in 1985, this re-emergence of national awakening kept spreading. A huge part of that reawakening was The Singing Revolution - a mass gathering of hundreds of thousands who would sing patriotic songs whilst flying the national flag that was forbidden from the public spaces.
The culmination of all the events of the second half the 1980s came as Jupiter and Uranus opposed in the sky in August 1989. I’m reminded of Rudhyar’s words here about planetary oppositions:
“What began as a stirring deep within a seed implanted in dark, humus-rich soil now culminates in a blushing bloom.”
On the 23. August 1989, two million people joined hands and created the biggest human chain in history, known as the Baltic Chain, spanning from Tallinn, Estonia through to Riga, Latvia and to Vilnius, Lithuania. Within seven months, Lithuania declared independence, followed by Estonia and then Latvia.
The end of that Jupiter-Uranus cycle and the beginning of the next one occurred in 1997 which also marks the year Estonia started its negotiations to join the European Union. The following Jupiter-Uranus cycle began in 2010 with Estonia in the talks to adopt Euro as its new currency which passed in January 2011.
We are now at the end of that cycle as we find both Jupiter and Uranus in Taurus. The two planets will come together again in April 2024 beginning yet another collective cycle. I’m hoping for a rest revolution. I’d give credit here to the person I spoke about it but I honestly can’t quite remember who it was. So, if you recognise yourself here, please claim it in the comments.
To finish off this hefty talk, I love what Richard Tarnas writes about Jupiter and Uranus conjunctions in “Cosmos and Psyche”.
“An expansively and buoyantly energizing quality characterized such eras, one that often engendered a certain creative brilliance and the excitement of experiencing suddenly expanded horizons.”
I’m curious: would my ongoing research process be at all useful or interesting for you to read? If so, do you think it needs to be a separate publication, a separate section under this publication, or maybe even something else?
Input welcomed!
Love,
Silvia
May has finally brought the sunshine and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it with lunchtime walks and sitting outside listening to podcasts.
Speaking of podcasts, here’s a few great ones from May.
*Cosmic Cousins from Jeff Hinshaw is a new one for me, even though I know of their work. The Taurus New Moon episode was an epic introduction which opened up my awareness to an asteroid called Hygeia and deepened my 3rd House Scorpio understanding of my chart.
*This episode from Amanda, the founder of BARNEY+FLOW, on deconditioning and breathwork. Amanda brings up some valid points on when breathwork is useful and when it might not be the best tool.
*If you’d like to learn more about Human Design, The Human Design Collective has some great conversations with people who use Human Design in various ways. I particularly loved this episode with Peter Schöber and this one with Peter Berv.
*I’ve also thoroughly enjoyed Healing the Spirit and the weekly planetary contemplations from a fellow Magician, Jonathan Koe.
*As for books, I have been devouring Dane Rudhyar’s texts. Other than that, I did finally start Deep* by James Nestor and so far have been blown away by it. Below is a photo of a sea lily that gets mentioned in the book. And no, it is not a flower. It is a sea creature. *Affiliate link.
*As for music, I have recently discovered frequency music and it has been a beautiful addition to my morning breath awareness practice.
*I’ve also shown up in a few online community settings to stretch my own comfort zone, which was one of my intentions for this year. (Hello, Chariot year, I see you!) One of such circles was Jennifer’s Intuitive Guidance Gathering and it was such a delight. We pulled cards, shared our reflections and ended up chatting about Human Design. Thank you, Jennifer from
Such a fascinating read Silvia and yes I agree May has seemed like a long month. Good lunch with your return to IG its sounds like you have a great plan for your return xx
It does sound like you’re in a perfect place right now to experiment with Instagram again with your plan and boundaries. I’m excited for you, and I do agree that your message deserves to be seen by others too.
For me, I’m not in that place right now. My energy is being pulled in other directions (thanks to my newborn! 🤣), but I may get there again one day.