I’ve been slowing down this week. The holiday pause is arriving. I am in the process of packing up all my things. Winter inches closer and my mind drifts towards grey walks on beaches where the low sun peeks through clouds enough to make the salt water shimmer. Buying myself birthday books and reading them in the remaining afternoon light of the year.
Next week I will head back East, no longer in the house I grew up but to the Jersey shore. The place of my summer vacations has become the home to which I return.
I am thinking about what seafood dishes my family and I will make for our Christmas Eve Feast of the Seven Fishes. The time I will spend with the Moon and her stations.
I am letting my life enter its temporary phase of repose, of reflection and ritually taking in night skies, lingering over rooftop views and lighting a candle to mirror the stars.
SZA and Astrology
Before this retreat, I wanted to explore some of the timing techniques I use in my Fit into the Flow 2023 Consult Series offering to give you a taste for what working with me in this container can yield.
As she just had a major album release and I loved it, let’s use musician SZA’s chart as an example.
Firdaria
This technique is most useful for setting the scene, or understanding the general flavor of your current year, or even decade. I often begin with it. Firdaria breaks down each part of your life into planetary “ages” of sorts. If you are born during the day, you start with a Sun period; if you are born night, you begin your life with a Moon period. When you are finished with the first period, you begin another planetary period.
Sun: 10 years
Jupiter: 12 years
Venus: 8 years
Mars: 7 years
Mercury: 13 years
North Node: 3 years
Moon: 9 years
South Node: 2 years
Saturn: 11 years
Each larger period is divided into seven sub-sections— one for each visible planet. This means that for any given period of time, you have a longer-lasting time lord and a shorter term “helper” planet. Ali Olomi compares it to ink and a quill; the time lord is the quality of the ink and the helper is the quill, or how that ink is written.
SZA has been in a Moon period since November 2020 and entered a Saturn sub-period last February. Her lunar timelord brings in themes of nurture, sustenance, emotions, and the mysteries within life. The helper planet, Saturn, brings in themes of legacy, constrictions and the potential for great works. The more positive, durable side of the greater malefic is a more likely outcome because SZA is not just a day birth, but has her Saturn in Capricorn in the 12th house, its place of joy. Olomi has referred to Saturn being activated from its place of joy as a potential for elevation.
Austin Coppock says that a Saturn-Moon combination can yield grief, deprivation, bodily injury, but also hard-worn substance, familial ties, ownership, deep thought and authority.
Here, you see, we are making broader strokes about the themes and larger cycles she is within.
I see this combination quite literally in her latest album cover. Inspired by a photo of a vacationing Princess Diana, it features SZA sitting alone on a diving board surrounded by endless sea. Surrounded by water, but alone. By contrast, her 2017 album CRTL was released during a Mercury/Sun period; that album cover featured her front and center, all glammed up, surrounded by broken televisions.
Profections
SZA turned 33 last month, marking her entrance into a 10th house year from the ascendant. Generally, this period affects one’s sense of purpose and broader social role— in SZA’s case, her celebrity, as well. As it rules and is in her 10th, Mars is also her timelord this year— her natal promise is being revealed, namely SZA’s ability to assert herself and face conflict. But, as her Sun and Mercury are also in Scorpio, those two are also activated, i.e. her public image and communication ability.
One would expect her raw hunger (Scorpio I Mars) on display alongside her focus on intimate romance (Sun in Scorpio II) and verbal acuity to describe it all.
We can fill in more by using an Islamicate technique first taught to me by Ali Olomi called continuous profections. This system allows us to break down each month of a year for potential themes, unfolding promises as well as when periods of great activity come to fruition. In SZA’s case, she was going through both a peak month and month of destiny when she released SOS on December 9th. The former tells us something relatively big happened during this month. The latter tells us an outer event leads to a realization or positive inner shift. We can’t know the depths of SZA’s insides, but I would count the popularity and high praises of her album upon release as a positive external change. She did tell us this is her last album so maybe some development on that decision? Jupiter is her monthly lord, which rules her 11th house of fans. It’s currently transiting her 2nd house (co-present her natal moon, one of her timelords!), showing the potential for great earnings as well.
Here is a potential prediction about this past month that I would relay to here: You will release something exactly as you desire, on your own terms, to great acclaim and financial success. It will affect your sense of self and help you come to an internal decision.
The following month has Saturn as her monthly lord, which may see her retreating a bit and favoring isolation after the rush and activity of an album release (ruler and located in 12h). Her second house is also activated, so hopefully she buys herself something nice with all her new cash :)
Fit Into the Flow
This is a taste of some of the color and detail we will dive into if you book my “Fit into the Flow” Consult Package. By meeting for a cycle of readings over 2023, we can luxuriate in your details, noticing how your firdaria helper planet shows up in your art, how that crow you keep seeing is your timelord, but so is your partner, your big work assignment, relationship to your sister. Before we understand how your year will play out, we will dive into your natal promise, i.e. the unique way you Venus or Moon. Combining sign, house, decan, term, triplicity, rulership, natural significations and aspects, we will isolate which paths in your life are tied up with the turning of the Moon or Jupiter.
Once your natal and yearly baseline is established, we’ll dive into the details: where are the peaks and valleys? Times to hunker down and times to dream? Times to take a leap? All are included.
The goals of this reading, though, are fluid, and well-suited to a range of desires for the coming year. As a mystic, spiritual practitioner, I can also help you work with a planet, star or deity that may want to build a relationship with you. Unsure what that may be? I’ll using timing techniques and intuition to see how the world wishes to reach back. And, because we’re meeting more than once, we can check in and make adjustments on any of the ritual or remediative work we discuss.
This is a chance for you to spread out fully into the world.
Tune into 2023 and sign up for 2,4, or 6 predictive sessions for 2023 by clicking the link below.
So for now I leave you with this beautiful graphic of the colors of the 25 brightest stars, which, is related to external temperature
Until next time.
Love,
Chloe
¨If you are born during the day, you start with a Sun period; if you are born night, you begin your life with a Moon period.¨
If you start off with the moon, should the period labeled Moon in the daytime birth list be a sun period?
¨So for now I leave you with this beautiful graphic of the colors of the 25 brightest stars, which, is related to external temperature¨
And Hadar/Agena/β Centauri is on the list! (Me: natal sun 5" from the exact ecliptic conjunction.) My birth star doesn´t get much attention. (Of course, it wouldn´t I suppose, since I have ζ Aquilae/Dheneb/Okab conjunct Mars.)
elm
if only the season involved slowing down