“Whether it’s science or magic, if it’s of fun benefit, enjoy!” ~ ed

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“For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.” ~ Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

The new moon on 22nd May falls in the sign of Gemini, the home of the mental explorer, the mercurial interrogator, the masterful interpreter of the world.

It’s setting up a new four-week cycle for us all, continuing last month’s theme of inward movement, specifically around the stories we tell ourselves and the outdated scripts we run that no longer support the “outing” of our authentic selves.

With Venus and Mercury conjunct, the focus becomes more specific—the looking glass of life is being turned toward love, money, and our values.

Specifically, this month’s energy is probing into our mental constructs around how we love others, how we allow others to love us, and—most importantly of all—how we love ourselves.

This cosmic energy, like the sorting hat at Hogwarts, has precision focus and is able to dive through all our mental chatter and creations—even our should/must/ought nonsense—getting to the essence of who we are and what our heart really craves, needs, and indeed bloody deserves.

Questions to be curious about this month:

>> If in a relationship, do you feel able to express your needs and talk about how you feel, and are you confident that the other person holds space for your dreams too?
>> If you are single and looking for love, what is it about being in a relationship that you think would enhance your life?
>> Have you ever spent time in your life happily as a single person?
>> What are your nonnegotiable values in life?
>> What self-care practice do you have in place to nurture yourself?

Boundaries are going to be super important at this time, especially when we consider that this lunation is squared by Neptune, the planet of the boundaryless, of enchantment, and of confusion. There is not just a sprinkling of enchanted fairy dust; there’s a full-on Midsummer Night’s Dream blizzard of divine mist descending.

Whatever Neptune illumes, the invitation arises to get curious about whether it is right for you. Do you really want or need it or its higher purpose in your life?

Putting it more plainly, doubt creeps in where once there was certainty. Trust dissolves and is replaced by confusion. Beliefs that were once rock solid become distorted by the mystical haze.

“I am not in my right mind,” might be a phrase you hear a lot this month—from both yourself and others.

So, in true Neptune style, let’s take this idea down the rabbit hole a bit further in search of the transcendental gift in this all.

Maybe not being in your right mind is actually a chance to view what your right mind truly looks like.

Viewing it from another perspective may help you achieve the detached curiosity that can discern whether your inner dialogue truly supports your heart-centred persona actualising in the real world.

Perhaps shifting your viewing point is an opportunity to remove the filter of your outdated programming.

To allow a more hopeful vision of love in your life, one that loves you and believes in you enough to want your most outrageous, audacious dreams—the ones that you only admit to when alone at night in the safety of your own company, or to others when you’ve had one too many gins (the ultimate Neptunian drink of choice)—to manifest, and is prepared to take the sometimes scary, but oh-so-worth-it steps toward achieving them.

Perchance seeing the world through the stardust magic of Neptune will inspire your vision of what incredible love you and your heart truly deserve.

Before your normal brain, programming, and inner dealer of the truth (aka the crusher of dreams) kicks in to tell you all the reasons you can’t have it, that “it’s not for people like you,” or some similar f*ckwhittery BS that you have on loop in your head.

This is the month to kick the “helpful” inner friend to the curb in matters of love.

So, grounding all this cosmic inspiration into reality this month, what is the take-home message?

Remain curious this month about what arises. Allow yourself to dream, but don’t treat everything that arises as fact. Use the Gemini energy available to you to check that the choices you are making support healthy boundaries in your life and in love, and also support both self-love and compassion toward the self.

Particularly, be cautious about matters of love this month. Venus is not only currently retrograde (13 May – 25 June), but it has also disappeared from our night skies into the underworld ready to reemerge as a morning star. What you desire or see in another person now may be very different when she goes direct again.

This inward calling for change and transformation continues all summer, with four planets now in retrograde—Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus—and Neptune and Mercury as well as Mars soon to join them in June and September, respectively.

The Saturn/Pluto/Jupiter conjunction has been the outward pressure, exposing the fault lines in our lives. As this tension recedes over the summer, we have a chance to follow the cracks inward to their source—our ego scripts.

The end game? Understanding why we created the lives that we currently have.

Doing this work now will support our forward, external journey again in October as the pressure to transform returns.

This month, move ahead with an open heart and, like Alice down the rabbit hole, stay curious about where this journey is taking you.

We all have an inner Alice somewhere, however well hidden. Embrace her this lunation. Make it your practice to believe six impossible things before breakfast, follow the path of your heart and dreams (you’ll invariably end up where you are meant to be), and embrace who you are right now. With all the Neptune, Saturn, and Pluto energy around this year, it may well change several times before 2020 is out.

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“’Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar.
This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I—I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar sternly. ‘Explain yourself!’
‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.'” ~ Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

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For Jason, who will forever be my Caterpillar down the rabbit hole.