Eclipse Breakthroughs and April 2024 Gems

This beautifully captured photo of the April 8 Total Solar Eclipse was taken in Texas by my colleague and astrophotographer extraordinaire, Rod Chang. One of the best things about belonging to the Organization for Professional Astrology, is to know folks like him and share their work.

I began my Astrology Gems of Wisdom by pointing out that from Earth´s perspective, the Moon appears the same size as the Sun, and therefore has the same astrological importance. And here is proof of that remarkable fact, and the sacred geometry of our Solar System, where the Sun is magnitudes larger than the Moon but also the perfect further distance away to create a portal like the one experienced in totality in the Northeastern Americas.

During eclipses, Sun, Moon and Earth are aligned. Eclipses happen in pairs, the Lunar Eclipse of March 25 in Libra, together with this Solar Eclipse in Aries, highlight the axis represented by these two signs: the sign of the Peacemaker and the sign of the Warrior. Does this remind you of what is happening on Earth right now?

The Solar Eclipse was also remarkable because it was exactly conjunct Chiron, a planetoid (a Centaur, really) that represents the archetype of the Wounded Healer, posing the question: What do we need to collectively heal right now, even as we struggle with our own individual wounds?

We begin to explore the Trauma Healing journey by naming each trauma reaction and its corresponding healing response.

We continue exploring different types of oppression, including internalized oppression, and we acknowledge that the best place to start our liberation journey is within.

We complete the tour of Spiritual Geography, and we define shamanic power, which is not power over others, but the self discipline to have power over ourselves.

I pray that in responding to the opportunities and questions posed by the Libra-Aries Eclipses, we learn to make peace, not by avoiding conflict, but by entering into the difficult conversations with courage and in alignment with our deepest ethical principles. May we have the wisdom to find a way through.

We Are Not Orphans If We Are Children of Earth and Sky, March 2024 Gems

One of the most important realizations from my work of integrating Astrology and Shamanism into my healing work is that, despite the fact that many of us have at one time or another felt abandoned, excluded, and orphaned in the world, the deepest truth is we all belong and are worthy of love just by existing, because we are children of the Earth and Sky, who love us unconditionally. If you aren't convinced, let me take you through this journey in my new article on The Evolving Astrologer, the quarterly magazine of the Organization for Professional Astrology, which you can find here on page 44.

We continue moving through the understanding of trauma and healing. As I contemplate the unfolding conflicts in the world, I am reminded that war is bad for children and other living beings. War is the opposite of healing. War is the many-headed monster that separates children from their parents, emotionally and physically injures everyone, devastates food production, pollutes water, destroys infrastructure, creates wounds that take lifetimes to heal. That's what we say no to war and the greed that fuels it.

Consider instead what a human being needs to thrive and to heal.

Our astrological journey continues with the understanding that we are immortal souls who incarnate on Earth again and again, and we come here to learn and to become more whole. Come with me on a tour of the planets as our internal psychic organs. We all have them. They fulfill the same functions in each of us, but of course they are colored by their position in our birth charts, by sign, house and aspect to each other. More about that later. For now, let´s begin with Sun, Moon, Mercury and Venus.

We all know how racism hurts people of color, but do we ever stop to think of how it hurts white people? In this journey of Liberation, we also look at how sexism hurts men, how homophobia and transphobia hurt straight people, and how class oppression hurts the rich. As you see, it benefits everyone to dismantle all the oppressions, which only serve to keep us divided and make us easier to manipulate and control.

Come with me on a journey into Spiritual Geography, as we explore what all Shamanic cosmologies have in common, and let us recover our profound sense of belonging.

If you're signed up for my newsletter, you'll get my blog with the month's Gems of Wisdom, but if you'd like to see them in real time, you can follow me on social media:  FB @magalimoralesspiritualcounseling, IG @magalispiritualcounseling

I am looking forward to healing the world with you!

Gems of Wisdom, February 2024

Welcome to my Gems of Wisdom. This month I began offering what I've learned from 20 years of working at the intersection of Healing Trauma, Liberation/Anti-Oppression, Astrology and Shamanism.

At first sight these may seem very disparate things, but as I've prepared these weekly offerings, I see how much they have in common.

All forms of oppression--sexism, racism, homophobia and transphobia, class, religion, disability and others--are violence. And in a world structured by violence, the result is trauma. This is why we all must walk a journey of healing.

The connection with Astrology and Shamanism may be harder to see, but bear with me. Every human problem, from the climate crisis to the wars, to greed and poverty, can be summarized in one word: separation.

Feeling separate from nature is what has allowed us to go on this frenzy of destruction that is threatening life on Earth. Feeling separate from each other--a dynamic reinforced daily by all forms of oppression--is what allows greed and poverty to happen side by side. We forget that the Earth is a finite system that cannot be exploited infinitely. The Earth is our only home, and when we destroy her ecosystems and destabilize her climate patterns, we only harm ourselves.

Astrology and Shamanism are powerful contradictions to our artificial sense of separation. We are all indigenous to the Earth, even if in the colonial shuffle our people have moved around. We all have ancestors who thought every being was ensouled, including the animals, plants, rivers, mountains and planets. And every Shamanic/Animistic society had an astrology.

I will say more about this in my upcoming article for The Evolving Astrologer magazine, which I will be sure to share in my mailing list, but for now suffice it to say that Astrology and Shamanism guide us back from our culture of separation and disenchantment, to seeing the world as ensouled, and us as having a sense of belonging here.

If we heal ourselves, and the separation between us, and reclaim our sense of belonging as children of Mother Earth and Father Sky, the world is ensouled again and we begin the work of world repair.

So, from now on:

Friday Venus Day is Astrology Day

Monday is Moon Day is Healing Day

Tuesday Mars Day is Shamanism Day

Thursday Jupiter Day is Liberation Day

If you're signed up for my newsletter, you'll get my blog with the month's Gems of Wisdom, but if you'd like to see them in real time, you can follow me on social media:  FB @magalimoralesspiritualcounseling, IG @magalispiritualcounseling

I am looking forward to healing the world with you!