Welcome to Episode 5 of Soul to Life!

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In this episode, I’m diving into the energies of the Full Moon in Capricorn, Mercury Direct and Jupiter Retrograde.

Along the way I also share about my ongoing journey with my neurodivergence, internalized ableism, and my experiences with bullying.

Mentioned in this episode:

Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici

TEXT TRANSCRIPT:

Welcome fellow traveler. I'm Stephanie Elizabeth Briggs and this is Soul to Life, a podcast for old souls on the multi dimensional journey of being human.

In this episode of Soul to Life, we're getting into the vibes of the moment at this Full Moon in Capricorn, June 24, 2021 at 2:39 pm US Eastern time, as well as Mercury Retrograde, Jupiter retrograde, and where we are finding ourselves now that we have exited the latest Eclipse season. We've made it out the other side; what now?

So we have the Moon at three degrees of Capricorn opposite the Sun at three degrees of Cancer.

We also have the asteroid Pholus in a conjunction with the Moon in Capricorn. Now Pholus is one that you probably don't hear about much. It's sort of an energy of like opening Pandora's box. Something is being let out that cannot go back in. When you squeeze the toothpaste out of the tube, that's it. You can't put it back.

So there's a sense of something perhaps coming apart, coming out, being revealed into your awareness that could change everything.

This Eclipse season that we just had was really a time of expanding our awareness, our worldview, our beliefs, and how we express and live by those, how we use our voice, the way that we think about things, like what is our perspective?

With the North Node in Gemini, this is a long term area of focus for everyone right now. But it's especially prominent lately with the Sun having been in Gemini, eclipses in Gemini and Sagittarius, and Mercury Retrograde.

So Mercury was retrograde in Gemini from the end of May, and has just gone direct again on June 22 at 16 degrees of Gemini. So now we're in the first few days of direct motion, and covering again the same ground that we were first going through in May.

So thinking back to May, if you can (I know time is weird for a lot of us now, since the pandemic), what was really up for you at that time that you have perhaps had a shift in perspective or a deepening of awareness or new inspiration, new understanding?

This process does continue as we have the North Node still in a wide trine to Saturn, which is also interacting with Mercury. So this inner awakening continues.

And with all of this as well, we're examining our desires and our will and all those things represented by Mars. Mars is currently in Leo, and is moving toward an opposition with Saturn. And then also in the mix is Uranus, positioned in the corner, and Mars and Saturn are each of the walls that are converging in the corner.

We continue to be in a time of restructuring, re-evaluating, rewriting our stories of who we are, of how we are, of how we want to be. We are liberating our true will and our true desires, our true ways of being, and expressing our beingness, asserting our existence out in the world.

You can think of Mars as the drive to make our impact on the world. How do we hold both our individual and collective needs and desires?

With Mars also being trine to the South Node, and Juno is also on the South Node in Sagittarius, we're still working on uprooting any kind of fundamentalist worldview or dogma that we've taken on, that we've perhaps been devoted to or committed to that is no longer serving us.

With this Full Moon and the Moon in Capricorn, there's especially a question here, and an invitation to look at how we relate to our needs, to our feelings, and our vulnerability. How do we relate with belonging? And how can we find a sustainable balance between seemingly competing or polarized forces and perspectives?

So let's unpack the Moon in Capricorn a bit. The Moon is not at home in Capricorn; I'll start off by saying that. The Moon rules Cancer, the sign where we currently have the Sun. The moon is in its detriment in Capricorn. It can't do “Moon things” here very easily.

So the Moon is all about feeling and sensing, working with the subtle energies, the emotional level, the often unseen level of experience, but in Capricorn, it's trying to operate on a tangible Earth level. So Moon in Capricorn often brings the more stoic, responsible approach that tends to hide or suppress need and vulnerability.

Moon in Capricorn people may feel deeply but they can seem to be emotionally dismissive to others and/or to themself, especially. This placement can bring really high standards, just being more work-oriented, and responsible.

Capricorn does have a connection with the institutional level of society. And we can see this with ableism under the system of capitalism.

So many of us have been taught and experienced that we have to live to work, basically. There's such a focus on productivity. And oftentimes, we are motivated to do this through force and punishment.

There's often denial of any accommodations that people might need in order to do the work.

And there's a sense of urgency oftentimes, in order to continue creating endless profits, right? That's the unsustainable driving force of capitalism.

So this is something I've been looking at for myself as far as I have internalized this ableism on myself in so many ways, as a neurodivergent person, or just generally as a human that has feelings, that has needs, that has boundaries, that has limits.

There's so many ways that we have been taught and often required to override our boundaries, our needs, our agency, in order to do what's asked of us or required of us as good employees, good family members, good children, good parents, etc, etc. With Capricorn, as well as Cancer, we can have a sense of tradition, of lineage, of ancestry.

We have to look out for any tendencies toward lack of nurturance, denying ourselves what we need, holding ourselves to an unreasonably high standard.

Moon in Capricorn can be somewhat solution-oriented as well, which is not a bad thing in general. It's great when you're trying to problem solve, but it's really not suitable for supporting emotional process.

Having high standards isn't a bad thing across the board. But when it's used to harm ourselves or others, when it's used as a justification for workaholism, for perfectionism, for overriding our needs and boundaries, then it has gone out of balance.

Another dimension that comes to mind here is the Moon and its connection with the unseen realms, with psychic phenomena, with dreams and all manner of witchy things.

And so when the Moon is in Capricorn it makes me also think of the ways that magic and the inherent magical connection and power that we all have in our human bodies, more or less, has been systematically denied in the dominant culture. And this had the impact of diminishing our felt sense of our own power and agency.

If you are curious to know more about this, I highly recommend the book Caliban and the Witch, and that book is by Silvia Federici. It's an amazing although challenging book that goes into the rise of capitalism in Europe and all the campaign of terror, essentially, that went along with that.

One piece was a deliberate attack on magic. If they can convince you that it's not real, or that only crazy people do magic, only evil people do magic, then they can stop you from using your power.

If they convince you that the way that you are, that who you are is wrong, you spend your entire life trying not to be who you are, trying to be who they told you to be.

I've been thinking about this a lot as I continue to explore my own relationship to neurodivergence and understanding where I might fall on that spectrum. And I am finding, more and more, just the evidence of how much I've masked my natural tendencies and ways of being.

I've also been reflecting on the intense bullying that I experienced from a young age, starting with friends in the neighborhood, as well as family members, and continuing into my peers in school, and especially the middle school years were just terrible.

I've learned to try and perform normalcy. And along with that, I learned to be mean, and I learned to be a bully. I was trying to protect myself.

I have a lot of anger about this, that I had to go through all this and especially from people who said that they were my friends or that they loved me, that they cared about me. It doesn't feel good to be mocked by someone, to be laughed at, to be laughed off like you don't matter, like they don't take you seriously. . .

It definitely shaped a lot of the ways that I move through the world and I still struggle with the impact of that. At this point, I know enough to know that there's nothing wrong with me. What's wrong is this culture that disregards humanity, that disregards difference.

With the Sun now in Cancer, our experience is shifting from the mental, intellectual realm of Gemini and into the emotional and instinctual realm…

Safety, softness, places of welcoming and spending time with our nearest and dearest, honoring the needs and the experience of those who we care about.

Cancer brings energetic sensitivity to people and places. And remember that this is a way of perceiving. It's a way of knowing and it has its own wisdom.

Cancer offers us the gifts of nourishment on all levels, rest, care, tending to what is needed, slowing down, and really being present with the quality of our experience, as well as taking time to dream and to explore and be in relationship with the unseen, with the subtle realms, with people around us, both human and other than human.

With Venus in the late degrees of Cancer in an opposition to Pluto, there may also be some Cancerian shadow material here, which often looks like caretaking, taking too much responsibility for others, and often at our own expense.

We might deny our own needs, even though we're taking care of everyone around us. I notice this in myself so often, where I will be outraged and fiercely protective of my loved ones. And yet, I would not have that same fierceness toward my own needs and experience.

And this is something that I learned as a way of navigating: that if I deny myself, then that's what I have to do in order to be in relationship.

With this Pluto transit, we're really learning more about how to do relationships sustainably. We're gaining inner awareness and possibly working on transforming any legacy of deprivation or lack in relationships. We may have internalized experiences of loss or abandonment.

Is there a part of you that you reject or regard as unlovable, unworthy, wrong or not enough?

As my friend James-Olivia Chu Hillman says, belonging is a choice that we can only make for ourselves. No one else can decide that I belong.

We have some help in this process, some benevolent spiritual support, in the form of Jupiter. Jupiter has also recently turned retrograde in the early degrees of Pisces, and Jupiter is currently trine to the Sun and sextile to the Moon.

So Jupiter is kind of here to give us a helping hand, bringing us some spiritual support, some grace, maybe just a little bit of inspiration, whatever we need to just surrender and just slow down and step back for a moment and just give ourselves some space.

Be the loving witness to all that we are embracing, all that we have experienced.

Out beyond right and wrong is a field. I'll meet you there.

I love this line that is attributed to Rumi, this image of this field that is beyond right and wrong. It's a field where we have suspended judgment.

Just for the moment, I like to try on the energy of that field when I'm finding myself getting stuck in self-judgment, or just dealing with parts of me that I find hard to be with sometimes.

I invite you to try on that energy, to step out into this field where there's no right or wrong, where there's no good enough or too much or not enough.

In this moment of pure presence, can you allow all parts of you to remain, before you jump into what to do about it?

Can you allow what you oppose in you to remain?

And can you welcome it just for a moment?

Most of the time, the parts of us that may even seem the hardest to deal with are often just trying to help us and protect us in the way they know how. So the way forward is to create space for all of it to exist.

So with this Full Moon, drawing on the excellence and the diligence of the Moon in Capricorn while bringing it into balance with the sensitivity of Cancer, tending to what we need to remain nourished for the work that we're doing.

Practice kindness and gentleness with others but also with yourself, and keep you close to your own heart.

Don't let your big beautiful heart have room for everyone else other than you. You deserve all the goodness that you would wish for others.

I want to thank you so much for spending your precious time with me today. You can find the full show notes and an archive of past episodes at soultolifepodcast.com.

If you'd like to learn more about me and my work, you can go to my website at heartblossom.life. And that's also where you can get on my email list to be notified about new episodes and to receive other subscriber only goodies and updates.

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Soul to Life is created and produced by me, Stephanie Elizabeth Briggs, in collaboration with my guides of earth and sky and our theme music is the song “Pleiades” by Starry Eyes. This is my musical alter ego. 

Thanks again for being here with me today. Until next time, wishing you all the best on your journey. Take care!

Transcribed by Otter.ai [affiliate link]

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Soul to Life is created and produced by Stephanie Elizabeth Briggs. Our theme song is “Pleiades” by Starry Eyes.