Venus Retrograde 2018: Unplug from Lower Vibrational Attachments

Venus Retrograde in Scorpio: For Love & Money

Venus is the planet that symbolizes love and relationships.  On Cathryn Taylor’s EFT for Spiritual Fitness show, I pointed out that Venus retrograde in Scorpio was going to challenge us to go within and understand how our own unresolved trauma causes us to experience lack, conflict, and dissatisfaction in relationships.

Venus also symbolizes money and what we value.  Another function of the 2018 Venus retrograde in Scorpio is to tune us in to where our values are misaligned with our intentions. This empowers us to make course corrections and experience more joy and pleasure and prosperity going forward.

Love & Money = Forms of Energy Flow

I have had amazing sessions with the clients who’ve signed up for readings during the Venus retrograde promotion. I’ve also experienced some mind-blowing insights in sessions with my coach and mentors.

I’m still processing some of this and meditating on how to share it. I do want to share an image that came through in a session with my amazing coach Lisa this week.

Short backstory: A couple of years ago I did an online prosperity workshop with my colleague Ra Ma Kaur. One of the big takeaways I got from the workshop was really understanding money as a form of energy flow.

We’ve all heard that a million times, right? What I realized was that, as an empath with a lot of childhood trauma, I had never felt consistently energized or safe enough to allow my energy to flow freely into the world.

Rather than focusing my energy into the actions necessary to achieve my goals, for example, I would consistently allow needy people to drain me. Or I would jump into people-pleasing behavior in order to feel safe: “If I just give them enough love and attention, then they will see my value and reward me accordingly.” Continue reading

24 Hour Sale – Astrology Readings & Coaching

Book a reading before midnight Friday and get up to S75 off the regular price – Friday Only!

DK Brainard astrologerI’m pulling the plug on my Venus retrograde discount Friday night at midnight.* So if you want to save up to $75 on a full personal evolution reading or coaching session, now is the time!

The Venus retrograde reaches its halfway point today.  From 6:30 am until 1:30 pm (Eastern time USA), Venus is cazimi or “in the heart of the Sun” – a condition that ancient astrologers deemed highly fortunate.

After this time window, Venus will continue on the second half of her underworld journey and will once again be retrograde, in the sign of her detriment and combust – all of which together signify “highly challenging” in astrology language.

This makes today a powerful moment to reflect on what you’ve learned in the first 20 days of the Venus retrograde and to set an intention to master this lesson and become more fully aligned with your authentic Self between now and December 17.

*The Venus retrograde promotion has ended. Here’s a follow-up piece that explains what I learned about energy flow that made me decide to end the reading special early.

Find out more about personal evolution astrology readings with DK.

Darkness Must Come Out the Light

Women’s Voices in a Time of Darkness – The Naked Songwriter Podcast #33

DK Brainard podcast, Venus retrograde 2018My friend Tamara Star joins me for a passionate conversation about women’s voices and the fall-out from the recent Supreme Court nomination battle.

I tell the story of my “Brett Kavanaugh moment” and what I learned about toxic shame. We discuss the healing that can happen when women reclaim their voices and tell their stories. Plus, why empaths are waking up afraid or depressed in the morning, the power of ritual, and what happens when we don’t stuff our anger.

“Love will never leave us alone
In the darkness must come out the light
Only the fittest of the fittest shall survive…
Stay alive”

Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Could You Be Loved?”

[podcast]

Resources

Talked about on the pod:

Five Ways to Feel Better Fast in Dark Times

Feeling Down? Anxious? Overwhelmed?

Get Your Mojo working with These Road-Tested Consciousness Hacks & Feel Better in 10 Minutes or Less

Five ways to feel better fast in dark timesThe collective angst sure can feel overwhelming these days.

The astrology feels dark and heavy.

You’ve had it up to here with racist, sexist narcissists spouting off in the press, on the campaign trail, and on the Internet.

Maybe you feel like you’re surrounded by the walking dead. Your (insert older relative here) no longer has thoughts of his own. Everything he says to you on the phone is a verbatim quote from either FOX News or Breitbart.

Your partner is in the fetal position on her yoga mat, sobbing silently. You’re afraid she may be emotionally bleeding out for the last time.

Some days you wake up and the first thing you feel is (fear, anxiety, grief, a sense of creeping dread).

OK, so your details may vary, but if you’ve been feeling like you can’t take any more for far too long…

Don’t give in to the collective despair!

The astrology of 2018, even more than the last several years, seems designed to force us to do what we’ve all been trained to avoid doing, at almost any cost. And that is:

Feel our feelings so they can move through us and set us free.

The five consciousness hacks below are distilled from 10+ years of using hypnosis, shamanic journeying, archetypal astrology, and meditation to help people move through their deepest fears and let go of crippling shame. (And to move through my own stuff, of course!)

I can’t promise you that you’ll be able to let go of a lifetime’s worth of repressed anger in one sitting. But I can say with confidence that these five consciousness hacks you can do in 10 minutes or less will break you free from your trauma trance and reconnect you to your powerful, creative Essential Self.

Best of all – you can do any of them in 10 minutes or less. Continue reading

Goddess in the Underworld: Libra New Moon – October 8, 2018

Venus, Ceres & Persephone: Re-Balancing Relationships

As I was meditating on the chart for the Libra New Moon last night, I kept being drawn to the fact that – right after the Kavanaugh fiasco – we have a New Moon in the sign of relationship and justice that is conjunct Ceres. And that Ceres is square Pluto.

Suddenly I experienced a little mental nudge: “I wonder where Persephone is?” (More on that in a sec…)

Venus, Persephone, Ceres: the goddess and her underworld journeyCeres’ tight conjunction to the New Moon indicates that Ceres themes (the pain of women and children in societies based on patriarchal privilege; abortion, abduction, sexual assault, pedophilia) are going to predominate. As I noted in my piece last week on the mythology of Ceres and how she shows up in astrological charts, Ceres has a strong warrior nature. But there seems to be a need for ritual grieving of the wounded feminine (in women and men) before that warrior side can be truly empowered.

Check. There’s definitely plenty of grief and shock to go around since the Senate voted Saturday to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as our newest Supreme Court justice. Kavanaugh’s judicial record and public comments certainly seem to legitimize the widespread fear that a high court now tilted heavily in favor of right wing ideologues will act as soon as possible to reverse Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that made abortion legal 45 years ago.

New Moons always herald the end of an old cycle and the beginning of a new one. We are definitely still deep in the mourning / letting go of the past energy of the  ‘old cycle ending’ phase.

In my post on the astrology of the September 27 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, I hypothesized that the reaction of Republican Senators, the President, and the right wing media was actually more important than whether or not Kavanaugh was confirmed.

I know it doesn’t feel that way for many of us. And it’s important that we feel our feelings now.

But Ceres has been super active in this year’s key astrology charts. And when we place this New Moon chart in the context of some bigger astrological cycles, we start to see the power of divine evolutionary intent at work.

I believe Ceres’ presence at this lunation indicates an evolutionary imperative to fundamentally rebalance our society’s attitudes toward not only women but toward the divine feminine and the divine masculine within each of us.

Even more than oppositions, squares in astrology indicate two archetypes butting heads with one another. Squares are challenging aspects, true; but they always produce change or movement in the material world. The potential of this square between the Sun/Moon/Ceres in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn is for an evolution in consciousness that challenges the status quo and contributes to the destruction or transformation of the patriarchal power structure.

Strange Echoes & A Light in the Darkness

So, I mentioned that I started wondering where Persephone was. I knew there was an asteroid named Persephone. But there are hundreds of named asteroids, most of which I’ve never used when casting charts.

Still, given the circumstances, it seemed wrong not to at least look up where she happens to be at the moment. And would you believe it?

Ceres, Venus & Persephone: Libra New Moon, October 8, 2018, 11:45 pm EDT, Washington, D.C.

Ceres, Venus & Persephone: Libra New Moon, October 8, 2018, 11:45 pm EDT, Washington, D.C.

At tonight’s New Moon, Persephone is conjunct Venus in Scorpio (< 0° 10′). Not only that, she’s in the exact degree where Venus stationed retrograde last Friday (10 Scorpio 50′). Continue reading

Astrology of the Kavanaugh-Ford Senate Hearing

The Astrology of me too: Re-Visioning Our Society’s Values and Attitudes Toward Women

If you want to see the astrology of me too in action, look no further than the chart for the September 27 Senate hearing of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that Supreme Court nominee (and now justice) Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were both in high school.

In the current climate it would be shocking but not surprising were Kavanaugh to be confirmed as the new Supreme Court Justice. This, despite Kavanaugh’s having put on a display of erratic behavior – and having lied under oath – in front of the Judiciary Committee that almost certainly would have seen him thrown out of his own courtroom.

We Need to Have a Real Conversation About Sex and Women’s Safety

The themes in the chart for the hearing ‘s official start time (Thursday, September 27, 2018, 10 am EDT, Washington, DC) couldn’t be more explicit.

"Astrology chart Brett Kavanaugh Christine Ford hearing Thursday September 27 2018"

Chart for the Brett Kavanaugh – Christine Ford hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Click on the chart to see full size image.

First, we note that Ceres is exactly conjunct Mercury (1/60th of a degree) in the 10th House of the USA’s natal chart. In our country’s birth chart, the 10th House is our public face, what we aspire to, our life’s work: This is what we stand for as a nation. Continue reading

Ceres Astrology: The Pain of Women in Patriarchal Society

Ceres, the Earth Mother: The Journey Through Grief to Advocacy

Ceres in astrology symbolizes the suffering of women in patriarchal society and societal values around nurturing.Ceres is often described in astrology writing as a benevolent but somewhat impersonal nurturer. In my experience working with Ceres in client charts, though, she more often symbolizes the suffering of women and children under patriarchal privilege.

The description of Ceres as a sort of less emotional Moon/Mother archetype accords with her mythological role of Earth Mother and harvest goddess. (Bread nurtures us, but it won’t rub our temples and tell us everything is going to be all right when we’re feeling down.) But it also paints a falsely rosy picture of a complex and challenging feminine archetype.

The Myth of Ceres and Proserpine

In the myth, Proserpine is abducted by Pluto and taken to the underworld. Ceres/Demeter goes to Mount Olympus and demands help from Jupiter in finding her missing daughter. Jupiter initially feigns ignorance to protect his bro.

“Sorry, can’t help you,” he says. “She was probably asking for it.” Continue reading