astrology

Moon Messages for the Next Two Weeks

Thanks Reynaldo for this beautiful photo. At the time of this article being published, the moon is, like the photo, in the waxing gibbous phase.

Corona. What just came to mind? Of course the virus that has caused mass disruption on a global scale that is entirely unique to this moment. I say unique because the world at this point is more interconnected by media, transportation, and economies than ever before. Thus, when a modern virus appears, it can spread literally and spiritually, by nature and fear.

But the principal meaning of corona, different than the one that initially popped into your head, is the outermost region of the sun’s atmosphere that becomes visible during an eclipse. When I learned this, I struggled to ponder what the astrological symbol of corona could mean. I did a little digging and found out that the sun’s atmosphere made visible during an eclipse is comprised of plasma. The last solar eclipse occurred in December, right around the time Coronavirus was ramping up. Most would interpret this as an ominous sign, but many of the great astrologers and diviners teach us to find the silver lining when the heavens look difficult. After some more research, I found that scientists are looking into the plasma of recovered coronavirus victims to develop treatments. That would truly be something if a difficult eclipse also held the metaphorical clue to its abatement. 

On a personal level, I think the coronavirus calamity can be interpreted as a symbolic call to reconnect with home, family, and all things that nourish us. The north node of the moon, which indicates karmic future, is suggesting as much by continuing her transit through the emotive sign of Cancer.

Aries: March 21 - April 19 

By now, it comes as no surprise that your social life has hit the wall. This is reflected in the heavens as the saturnian influence of the planet Saturn has just combined with the aggressive force of Mars in your sector of friends. The best thing you can do is reasonably rely on technology to keep you in the loop while focusing on siblings and neighbors to sate your in person social needs. This will help with social distancing as well as it will focus on a smaller number of interactions that are more meaningful anyways.  

Taurus: April 20 - May 20

Regardless of the disruption you’ve been experiencing, this is a good time to think about your finances as it relates to career. Interestingly, even though the world has been historically upended in the last few weeks, you have been feeling something on a similar level for almost two years. This relates to your work life, and the best way to handle surprises is to adapt to them. Lean on a group of girlfriends to help you sort through these issues—personal, professional, and financial. Though these matters will not resolve themselves instantaneously, the next few weeks will give you a window about how best to carve out your public, individual, and financial path forward. 

Gemini: May 21- June 20

You’re feeling the itch to travel, but clearly that is not going to happen right now. Your best bet is to put those urges to more local endeavours. When was the last time you played a video game, sat down to read a book, or even played chess or checkers with a partner? These activities will give you the fix you’re needing. And, you won’t miss the trip you so desperately thought you needed. 

Cancer: June 21 - July 22

The personal growth you’ve been experiencing over the past year and a half changes at the beginning of May. The shift will occur from the self to a oneness with all that is—in other words, your spiritual world. The interesting thing is that this doesn’t mean renouncing modern society and living in a monastery. What is the hidden, spiritual part of you that connects to the collective consciousness is your fun side! You need to make time to retreat and have a dream world that is childlike and fantastical.  

Leo: July 23 - August 22

You’re feeling the urge to balance your checkbook. The reason this is a challenge is because joint finances with a partner are not clear. I have a feeling this partner is being elusive and possibly deceptive around these matters. This has been happening acutely during the past Mercury Retrograde, the surrounding weeks, and even now. However, this is a long term cycle from 2011-2026. There is an upshot to this—what are your dreams as far as your shared resources with all your partnerships? When you get some clarification around that question, the confusion dissolves.  

Virgo: August 23 - September 22

You’re being your usual Virgoan self—critical, meticulous, and worrisome. To make matters more difficult, a partner is behaving just the opposite—dreamy, out of touch, and unfocused. The best thing you can do is juggle the practicality of what you need romantically while understanding that trying to control others rarely works. A little madness and magic will do you good anyways. 

Libra: September 23 - October 22

Your daily routines and working life have been marked by a lack of clarity since February. You feel like you’re out of focus not only individually but how you relate to society at large. This has generally been a phenomenon since 2011. The best thing you can do, especially since you are at homebound, is take a hard look at your immediate surroundings, change what needs to be changed, let go of what is karmically dragging you down, and reallocate resources that need to be adjusted. This will put things into focus for you.   

Scorpio: October 23 - November 21 

Through the end of June, you’re getting a glimpse into the future of what your home life will be. Your intensely driven to make realize this vision, but future insights are not the present. By the end of 2020, you’re able to start actualizing these goals, but it will still be an effort through 2023 to make all this happen. The key is to stay somewhat emotionally distant from the process while acknowledging your emotions with regard to the situation. Focus on the fundamentals down to the water and electricity—flow, literally and metaphorically, and realize that though the future isn’t the present, how you feel in the present leads you to the future you desire. 

Sagittarius: November 22 - December 21

Watch out for fights on social media with siblings and possibly neighbors. It’s tough to be isolated, and technology is no substitute for in person, human interaction. However, business driven media’s main objective is to fan the emotional flames of the passions between human beings, so be wary of engaging with others on this level. However, the upshot to this is a chance to reflect on what truly motivates you and those around you. 

Capricorn: December 22 - January 19

The losses you’ve been experiencing personally in the past year and a half come to a close in May. Through material losses come spiritual gains. You carry these experiences into the next year and the half, and you have a real chance to experience a spiritual awakening. You become liberated from the things in your life that are the source of your undoing, namely your ambitious nature. 

Aquarius: January 20 - February 18 

Through the month of June, you have the choice of going down one of two paths. The first path is adopting a conservative, slow approach that has you walking into the future by obeying the laws of time and karma. Or, you can yield to an unrestrained passion of trying to improperly launch yourself into the future with less than stellar results. This glimpse into your future self that ends in late June takes material form in late 2020 and will remain through early 2023. Which path you should choose seems obvious to me. 

Pisces: February 19 - March 20

Your physical state that might seem in flux right now gains more sure footing by the second full week of April. At that point it would be a good idea to think about how you want to achieve harmony on the home front. You have a nice opportunity to have some fun, sweet, loving energy come into the house. Come the second full week of May, you’ll be glad you set your mind to your dwelling as opposed to other fantasies that take you away from what really matters.  

 During these tumultuous times, an astrology reading can provide guidance, psychic relief, and hope. Go to the contact section to book your appointment.

Master Your Circumstances, Master Your Destiny

Original Link for photo. This article appeared originally in Ambush Magazine.


You’re experiencing something you’ve never experienced before—forced social isolation. The cycles that have largely governed your life—going to work, visiting family, and hanging out with friends—are temporarily paused with no clear end in sight. As an astrologer, I’m being asked, “What do the heavens have to say about all this?” While it’s true that one can see events here on earth reflected in the sky—as above, so below—there is another way to use the tool of astrology, namely that the stars are a human expression of what is within us. This means that instead of understanding reality as something objective, we can understand it as an active relationship with the cosmos. This has profound implications and yields practical, applicable solutions, the most pressing of which concerns how you will approach your daily activities in light of an unexpected and cataclysmically disruptive event.

So what are you to do? Amor Towles through his novel A Gentleman in Moscow, which can be purchased below, gifts us a helpful maxim through the Grand Duke’s advice to the Count Rostov: when the Count’s parents succumbed to cholera…it was the Grand Duke who took the young Count aside and explained he must be strong…adversity presents itself in many forms; and that if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them. Put another way, if you can master your circumstances, you can master your destiny. I was gifted that latter maxim from my friend and colleague Tracie Storey, a former DJ who now practices Vibrational Sound and Colour Therapy while also using a myriad of spiritual techniques. Read on to see how each astrology sign can best adapt to this trying situation. 

Aries: March 21 - April 19 

You are the first sign of the zodiac and the most viscerally powerful. This power exists on a physical level. You are going to need to release this energy through exercise, and you probably already know this. However, where the real adjustment comes in is combining your pioneering, individualistic spirit with the logic required to organize yourself in a practical, daily routine.  

Taurus: April 20 - May 20

You may relish this opportunity to be grounded at home as you are the most earthly sign and also concerned with immediate environments. Certainly enjoy this time, but make sure to take care of the most significant partner in your life. This will help you in your own daily activities and give you the gift of harmony. Love will emerge here as Venus oversees both of the signs involved. 

Gemini: May 21- June 20

One of the struggles as the great communicator of the zodiac will be your lack of immediate ability to exchange ideas with those around you. A way you will need to shift your thinking is to focus on the business of things, and this means taking out the trash. Your flurry of thoughts turns into materials, too many, and this is a good time to purge. This will help your bottom line. 

Cancer: June 21 - July 22

As the homebody of the zodiac you’re primed to settle into your natural habitat. One thing you will have to work on is the greater emphasis on the technology that will be surrounding you. If you put your mind to the future and how you must discipline yourself  to get there, you will succeed mightily. You’ll be tempted to get distracted by all the screens so make sure to envision the devices around you as tools, not comfort food. 

Leo: July 23 - August 22

Self-expression and dramatic flourishes are the natural in Leo. However, this quarantine is a symbolic message to tone things down. Setting up structure in your life that is more stoic and conservative will stand you in good stead. Giving yourself boundaries will allow you more freedom to do all things Leo that you love. 

Virgo: August 23 - September 22 

As the most heady sign of the zodiac, you’ll be the most at risk to go stir crazy. You’ll want to make sure everything around you is perfect, and you just might make it so. However, your best is to get outside. Virgo is the virgin who collects the bounty of the harvest, thus you have a unique relationship with nature. Enjoy the birds, flowers, and trees, and reap the rewards of your discriminating taste towards the outdoors.   

Libra: September 23 - October 22

This is the time to get spiritual. Envision this situation as if you were trapped in a nunnery. You have one of the most formidable minds in the zodiac, living up to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ideal of being able to hold two opposing ideas at the same time. However, for you, daily ritual and meditative suspension of your cognitive faculties will help you deal with this pandemic. 

Scorpio: October 23 - November 21 

This is not the time to sit back and furtively observe the fracas that is in the news and society at large. Lead yourself, daily, and cast off into projects that fulfill you on a selfish level. You are so easily bonded to others that you lose yourself in the lives of others. You forget that you have such treasures to offer, perhaps the most of the zodiac, so get to work and bring your jewels to the world that so desperately needs your help.  

Sagittarius: November 22 - December 21 

As the most expansive sign of the zodiac, you’re going to want to go off into the ethers, literally or figuratively. But being grounded out, as the world and corona virus is demanding, is the way to go. Enjoying the simple pleasures that your immediate surrounding has to offer will sate your desire to go to the ends of the earth. You’ll find that once you acknowledge the part of your nature that wants to go far, and release it for now, you wake up and smell the flowers. 

Capricorn: December 22 - January 19

You’re the most ambitious, serious sign of the zodiac, and thankfully so. Without Capricorns, we would not have the structures of society that hold us together. However, while you mind is on all of that, especially given the current predicament, you’re going to need to have fun. Games and the quick exchange of ideas will lighten the load you’re carrying right now. 

Aquarius: January 20 - February 18

You’re generally going to be happy at home, save for the social isolation. What I mean by that is you’ll naturally transition some of your outer world social activities to social media. However, there is a downside to this. Social media, though a good tool, can be a poor substitute for true, in person social interaction. The key will be turning to family, and then you’ll receive the emotional nurturance you need. 

Pisces: February 19 - March 20 

You run the risk of getting washed out at home, possibly drifting into a dream world of your own making. The best way to counteract this is to put these dreams into reality by engaging in expressive activities. These is a deep reservoir of creativity to which you uniquely have access. Don’t let these esoteric, intuitive materials go to waste.

Thanks for reading. I’m Dan Beck, #1 Astrologer in New Orleans. Contact me for readings at dan@innermakeup.net or by calling 504-313-8706. Visit http://www.innermakeup.net/contact-me 

How to Make Your New Year's Resolutions Stick

Happy New Year! Hip, hip, hooray! Out with the old, in with the new. This is usually how New Year’s is celebrated. We mark the year’s end by shouting emphatically, making grandiose statements, and proclaiming the next year will be better than the last. But is this how we should approach the New Year, from a spiritual and/or astrological viewpoint? Yes and no.

We celebrate New Year’s having just left the winter solstice, the day where there is the shortest amount of light. Many events occur at this time of year: the birth of Christ, for myself as a Jew, the celebration of Hanukah, and yes, New Year’s. It is indeed cause to celebrate, the return of light, the birth of the savior, or the miraculous lasting of the oil in the Menorah, but lest we get carried away with the celebration we should remember that ambition, structure, success, and discipline are the key words associated with Capricorn the great mountain goat who symbolizes the year’s end and beginning.

Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, or Kronos, god of time and fate, asks us to make slow, deliberate progress. Slow and steady wins the race. The mountain goat’s climb to the top of the mountain is slow and hard, but the rewards are great. Capricorn asks us to be ambitious but methodical and not to make wild resolutions that are sure to go unfulfilled. Better to look at oneself and structure your behavior so as to make great gains in the long run. This is not jubilant Sagittarius season. There is work to be done. Take it from the conservative Roman emperor Augustus who minted his coinage with a symbol of Capricorn, the supreme symbol of steady work, progress, and discipline.

Even Augustus believed in Capricron

Capricorn season this year is also buttressed by a retrograding mercury, further asking us to slow down. Most of you know that when mercury retrogrades it is not moving in its unusual direct motion, so we must rethink, reevaluate, and revive our actions so as to better realign them going forward. Again, none of this indicates a fast jumpstart to the New Year. 

So when you bring in the New Year, before you make any grand resolutions, think first about making slow incremental changes. That just might be the way for you to become your own emperor. 

Worshipping Capricorn, the mountain goat

Happy Halloween, New Moon!

Nice blouse, Lynn. Way to rock your Gemini Rising and bring some color as the days are getting darker and more Scorpio.

Happy Halloween, everybody! First off, I'd like to thank some wonderful clients who have come to the Inner Makeup Studio the past few days, from distant places such as Hunan, Brooklyn, and England. It's amazing how many people, places, and things converge upon this small city. And thanks to our die-hard Inner Makeup devotee, Lynn, for attending our weekly Inner Makeup gathering Sunday morning. 

But now to Halloween, All Hallow's Eve. What is sacred about this night? As we've shifted into Scorpio, the days are longer, the night is greater, and our deepest, darkest impulses emerge to the fore, perhaps having been rejected by ourselves and others, banished to forbidden places. Halloween is a chance for those ghouls to surface, but beware of the deal you make with the devil, if you are to entertain these ghosts. Decadence comes at a cost, and Scorpio knows this the best, ruling the underworld and death, all too ready to play the undertaker. So have fun, express yourself, revel in your garish expressions of creativity, but do ask, is there another way to channel this energy? Can these impulses, exciting as they are, be harnessed and used transformationally for brighter days? This is the question Scorpio, and Halloween, asks, and since we synchronistically are ensconced in the new moon phase, what do we wish for as we move forward, as the new moon is a new start. But since Scorpio is the great regulatory grim reaper of the zodiac, we may instead ask what needs to go, rather than what our souls ecstatically and aggressively want. Happy Halloween!

 

Prepped for an Inner Makeup Session

What an Inner Makeup Session looks like

We're very happy to have a theology student coming for an Inner Makeup Session today! Inner Makeup does integrate different faith traditions, including Christianity, depending on the client. When you come to a session, you will receive a print out of your astrology chart, hand-typed notes as a guide to your chart, and of course, the hour session where we will discuss your personal spirituality using astrology, tarot, and more. Book your session, today!

Falling in Love: Shifting from Virgo into Libra

As we're experiencing this beautiful harvest full moon, we gather the bounty bestowed upon us by the late summer/early autumn months. As the sun moves into Libra, we experience the height of this beauty, as we are finished our gathering and turn our attention more towards love, relating, and socializing. But as any poet will tell you, love is a fall. So don't fall too hard for the wonderful, arresting beauty of Libra!

Mother | Daughter = Taurus | Pisces

Photography and makeup by Inner Makeup

The relationship between mother and daughter is fraught with beauty and complication. Such is the case for Leslie and Juli, mother and daughter, Taurus and Pisces. Taurus is the ultimate mother: strong, earthly, and possessive. She loves acquisitions and will hold onto them at all costs. Possessing, and that is the key word with Taurus, formidable strength and power, the bull is not to be trifled with. Yet, Pisces is a confounding creature for Taurus. She loves Pisces’ whimsical, dreamy, magical nature, yet can never quite place her under her thumb. It is also frustrating for Taurus that Pisces, so fluid and unimpeachable, seems to be the source of her strength and power. Pisces being a water sign rules the depths of the oceanic dream netherworlds that create, shape, and transform life from its most infantile beginnings through its stormy demise. Therefore, Taurus is simultaneously bemused by Pisces and angered as well.

Mother and daughter is the ultimate relationship. The most fundamental, basic biological building block of life, namely a harkening back to watery, asexual, feminine replication and reproduction. For a Taurus to yield a Pisces daughter is for a mother to yield to her very own historic nature and submit to the eternal, timeless, watery depths from which she sprang forth. Their relationship exists outside of time and is time itself. Inextricably linked and bound to each other, Taurus and Pisces will persist because they transcend the usual boundaries of space in time.

To understand the spirituality and astrology of your life and relationships book your appointment at dan@innermakeup.net or call 203-889-8328.

How It Gets Better

How does It Get Better? We’ve told by the It Gets Better Project that we shouldn’t worry, our best days are ahead, that whatever is difficult in life shall pass and is temporary. This is an incomplete picture as to how things get better. For things to get better, it means they have to have been bad or even worse before. In fact this is the binary that permeates nearly all of Western culture. Things are bad, and then they break for the better. We don’t enjoy the peace that Eastern cultures aspire to; rather we ebb and flow, seek and destroy, rise and fall. Yes, rise and fall. Just like the craze of Dionysus as contrasted with the blazing of Apollo. Just like the crucifixion of Jesus and his subsequent rise. Just like the season of Pisces that magically breaks from the bleakness of winter into spring. So yes it’s bad. But it will get better. However, one has to start with madness, death, hopelessness, and despair, to then experience the ecstasy of redemption. To circumvent that step would mean that, no, it doesn’t get better; it had never gotten anywhere in the first place.

 

Amber Or Johnny?

Whom do you believe? Johnny or Amber? It’s a tough position to be in. Amber Heard has just leveled serious, career-threatening allegations at Johnny Depp including accusations and photographic evidence of physical and verbal abuse. Johnny Depp has responded by launching a bunch of surrogates to claim Amber is shaking him down. What are you to do? Don’t believe either. Believe in their astrology.

Johnny Depp is a classic Gemini. Geminis are the outsiders, the airy twins who were the first humans to live outside of the Garden of Eden. Gemini represents a glibness and flightiness associated with the child-like beckoning of the early months of summer. We see this in Johnny Depp. He seems never to have grown up. He plays fantasy parts in his major movie franchises, has always maintained a hard-partying, violent, rock lifestyle, and even as these serious accusations are being leveled against him, he’s off playing concerts in Europe. What gives? Amber is a Taurus.

This is some classic s%^t. Taurus is Eve. She is possessive, earthly, and the materials of the world come easily to her. She’s also eats from the forbidden fruit and offers it up to Adam, commencing her fall from grace. Is Amber Johnny’s foil? Probably. She is also a mother figure he is trying to reclaim as his mother had been ill and recently passed away. It’s Oedipal and Biblical, Johnny trying to get with Taurus (Eve), his mother, and also attempting to get back into paradise. Even though Gemini has all of the airy, creative power, Taurus maintains the upper hand with her earthly prowess.

But as we know, once man falls from grace he is never allowed back in. Paradise has already been lost. Johnny already was fallen, being the outsider for most of his life. Perhaps this explains his obsessive need for love, fame, and self-medication. Unfortunately for him, loneliness is the fate bestowed upon those lost. Trying to find one’s way back to his mother will only result in his and her destruction, wandering blindly as Oedipus did. Strangely, Gemini still maintains a glib attitude about all of this, having never known the bliss of paradise.

As for Amber, she may yet live to see another day, withstanding the pains God bestows upon Eve. Taurus, being an enduring, materially replete earth sign, may get the windfall she covets. Only at the expense and the fall of herself, and her child, or twins, in Johnny. 

To better understand your personal astrology and spirituality, contact us for a reading at 203-889-8328 or dan@innermakeup.net

Is Kanye Our Saviour?

Is Kanye our savior? He would certainly have us think so. With an album entitled Yeezus and a generally defiant, rebellious nature, we might conclude that Kanye is a contemporary incarnation of the child of Nazareth. But is he?

Jesus, unlike Kanye, was a despised, rejected, and reviled political criminal. He was suspicious of the nuclear family, going so far as to recommend that one leave his kin in order to seek spiritual nirvana. He preached that wealth was the enemy and that the downtrodden would inherit the earth. He was crucified, willingly, providing his body as a sacrificial lamb for both his people and the Romans. Does this sound like Kanye? Not really. But then again, neither does our contemporary conception of who Jesus was. The modern Jesus generally passes as an acceptable, personal, convenient punching bag, serving as absolution for one’s sins and as a get out of jail free for the guilt-ridden. It’s quite a contrast to the man who lived on the fringes of society and was so unilaterally rejected in his time.

Astrologically, Kanye is a Gemini. Geminis exhibit a sunniness and glibness of tongue associated with the beginning months of summer. While Kanye takes his work seriously, there is a child-like, flighty duality to his thoughts and actions. In fact Mercury, the mercurial planet of thought and communication, rules Gemini. You never know what he is going to say, like twins talking back and forth. Gemini is the twins in astrology. Gemini is also the outsiders, Cain and Abel, being the first humans to live outside of the Garden of Eden, having been banished from paradise. While Kanye seems keenly aware of the fallen nature of humanity he seems to be unaware of his own flighty, attention-seeking nature as it relates to his own invocation of Messianic prowess. This is the same sin that Jesus warns against, the one that states we should be pious for the sake of being pious, not for attention.

So why does Kanye feel crucified? Well, being kicked out of the Garden of Eden is admittedly tough, as well as being an outsider. But a Messiah does not that make. No, Kanye’s astrology features a Pisces ascendant, Pisces being the sign most associated with magic, dreams, and Jesus, the month of deep, spiritual transformation from winter into spring, water into wine, men into fish, and death into rebirth. But one’s ascendant, the sign in which the Eastern horizon is placed at the time of one’s birth, is the mask we put on for the world. It is an act, an artifice. Kanye puts on the mask of Yeezus or Jesus, but doesn’t live it in reality.

Kanye displays none of the features of Jesus meek and mild. For one thing he has dived wholeheartedly into marriage and children, which flies in the face of Jesus’ raison d’etre and abdicates to the mass’s almost singular desire to bear and keep children. He appeared recently on Ellen communicating a boyish, misbehaved, childish persona, palatable to a daytime audience much more than the artistic mask he puts on as the crucified Jesus. He worships at the altar of billionaires, an act anathema to the anti-money stance of Jesus. Does this sound like the markings of a rejected man?

But Kanye may yet be our savior, as Jesus in antiquity has nothing to do with the Jesus of today. Jesus had no social media, no Ellen, and rejected the biological trappings of nature, namely procreation and arguably the kind of ambition someone like Kanye espouses. Kanye and Kim Kardashian getting married is amongst the most overexposed, animalistic acts we’ve witnessed in recent media history. A doubling down on the traditional man/woman procreative binary, Kim Kardashian with her fertile, bulging hips just ripe for child rearing, and Kanye being the irreverent husband that can be tamed by her and her coven even when he misbehaves. The much more Christ-like and transformative act for Kanye would be to come out in some fashion because allegedly he is gay.

So we crucify Kanye with every click, every tap, every retweet, every petty judgment, convenient like our garden-variety conception of the modern Jesus. In this sense, he is justified in calling himself a Messiah. But, a Messiah can only be crucified if he saves us and is truly the one who transforms us. And Kanye is nothing of the sort. He saves himself in his own Gemini game, understanding the significance of the air he flies in but nary a thought spared for the gravity of his influence, ignoring the potential for deep cultural transformation as a humble, Christ-like figure. But as it stands, we don’t have much of an appetite for transformation. We merely want to see reflected back to us a hyperbolic, technologically expedient version of who we are and who we think we should be. Kanye is all too happy to deliver, dragging the carcass of Jesus through the mud, faking a crucifixion, laughing all the way to the Gemini bank. 

To learn more about your personal spirituality as divined through Inner Makeup, contact us at dan@innermakeup.net or 203-889-8328.