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What Will Make You Change What You Believe?

Lately, I’ve been experiencing intense nostalgia about my time growing up in church.

My time at my very Black Pentecostal church on the south side of Chicago was the center of my social world. It was the venue of my spiritual initiation and the mirror where I could look in every direction and see a reflection of myself. We looked the same and had the same cultural framework. In a disjointed and imperfect unison, we strived for the same salvation that was just on the other side of water baptism (in Jesus’ name!) and speaking in tongues as evidence that we had been endowed with the Holy Ghost.

The church of my upbringing is often the setting of my dreams. As a symbol I associate it with feelings of safety, familiarity, and most of all, belonging. The innocence of shared sincere (and unquestioned) belief was a comfortable place where I didn’t have to consider the contradictions of my own experiences because they were made to fit neatly into the belief system I had inherited.

My church was home.

I’m a long way from that place now, physically and spiritually. But the longing to return pulls and tugs on my heartstrings at the sound of a Hammond-B3 organ behind a choir singing of the matchless grace of Jesus. “I heard the voice of Jesus say, ‘Come unto me, and pray’…” That’s the opening line of a song by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, from one of the many Gospel albums that formed the soundtrack of my youth. I listen to it to recreate that safe and uncomplicated sense that I belong.

Belief systems are like that, though. They aren’t intellectually wrought byproducts of logic. They are the places we are born or spaces we are adopted into. They become our reference points for distinguishing the familiar from the foreign. The new is molded to fit what we already believe to be true. Or, it is rejected because it threatens the binary nature of our existing truths.

It is only under the psychic duress of our subconscious, trauma, or extreme circumstances that our belief systems change. And it’s meant to be that way. Without that solid core of unshakeable truths that comprise a belief system we’d be tossed hither and thither without an anchor of meaning to keeps our self-image firm and our reality consistent.

We’ve collectively and unequally experienced an incredible amount of trauma and ongoing extreme circumstances since 2020. Yet it seems that our belief systems have been resistant to change. In fact, it seems like every new piece of information or experience that should make us question what we know to be true instead makes us hunker down and tighten our grip on our existing belief systems.

However, eclipse season fall 2023 exposed a weakness in our belief system. The impulse to impose what we already believed to be true about ourselves and the world was met with a data point that refused to take the shape of those beliefs. Then was the beginning of an ongoing genocidal campaign of violence, destruction, and starvation of Palestinians by the state of Israel and the US that has not relented but has escalated.

Now, as we have arrived at eclipse season 2024, the pressure is on to see how resilient our belief systems are. What will it take to make us change them? This is the work of eclipses in sidereal Pisces and Virgo, October 14, 2023 through September 21, 2025.

Spring 2024 Eclipse Dates

  • March 25 – Full Moon + Lunar Eclipse at 10° Virgo
  • April 8 – New Moon + Solar Eclipse at 25° Pisces

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If you’d like to dig in to what the eclipses mean for you personally, book a 30-minute Divination For Liberation Sidereal Astrology Reading. Don’t forget to start redeeming your readings if you’ve purchased a package.

I’m continuing to grow my roster of Psyche + Self + Soul clients. This therapeutic offering is the perfect companion to your ongoing traditional therapy sessions, or to accelerate the work you are doing in your personal healing journey.

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2024: Don’t Let Them Make You Forget

Watch the video replay of my presentation of a Divination For Liberation Sidereal Astrology forecast for 2024.

TWENTY-TWENTY was The Great Sobering Up.

Just as the skies cleared because of the sudden decrease in car and airplane traffic, so too did our awareness of the social contracts we are operating under. It’s not that these contracts were broken. It’s that, for a moment, we were able to see them as they truly are. We no longer saw them as we idealized and fantasized them to be.

The lynching of George Floyd (may his soul rest in power) was a catalyst for social change unlike any other because of how undistracted many of us were. Those of us who had the power and resources to hide from SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) were situated outside the grinding wheel of industry at that time. We weren’t spending 2-4 hours commuting to and from work. There were no weekends spent mindlessly consuming at restaurants and stores. We could stare directly, without looking away, at the images of a racist murder executed by a representative of the state. We could see it for exactly what it was.

What lies could we tell ourselves about the reality of our social contracts when the fragility of human survival was laid bare by the existential threat of a pandemic?

Undoubtedly, we arrived at an unprecedented nearly global emotional consensus then: SARS-CoV-2 was worthy of our fear and respect. That consensus changed how we moved and used our resources. We bore witness to the fact that change in the best interest of people can be immediate. Aid can be dispensed in the moment of distress. We can change everything suddenly and all at once.

Don’t let them make you forget.

2024 Divination For Liberation Sidereal Astrology - Don't Let Them Make You Forget. A horoscope delineating what 2024 will look like from the vantage point of December 2024.

Remember back in 2020 you felt fear and that fear was honored. Remember those moments when you were not safe, and they protected you. Remember when you were hungry, and they fed you. Remember when you were housing insecure, and they secured your housing. You needed medical care, so they provided it for you. You needed money, so they gave it to you.

Don’t let them make you forget.

Remember when you watched another Black man be murdered by police in plain sight or everyone to see? Remember when your neighbors flooded the streets with you to demand change? Remember when we felt all those feelings together, that rage and righteous indignation?

Don’t let them make you forget.

Human nature is to belong, not to dominate

We are much like herd animals who follow each other off the cliff as we march forward, or into the den of danger as we fight for our lives. A sense other than sight and reasoning other than what is informed by our material conditions is often what drives our behavior as humans. The underlying motivation for almost all human behavior is belonging because belonging equals survival in the safety of the group.

Belonging and the desire for it is expressed by mimicking the behavior of those we are in proximity to, in conscious and unconscious ways. It’s how we efficiently form judgements about who and what is safe and who and what is dangerous. Ultimately, sameness is safety and difference is dangerous, even when sameness manifests like buffalo following each other off the cliff to their death during a buffalo jump. Even hen sameness is being in denial about real threats to our safety.

To instigate change it takes a force, or threat, bigger than the intractable conflicts over power and resources we find ourselves mired in. SARS-CoV-2 was that irresistible force of change at the start. While we’ve positioned ourselves and our cultural norms as immovable objects, we can only hold off the forces of change for so long. Many of us have become the standard bearers for change, leading the charge by refusing to forget while we are all subject to weaponized disability and death by eugenics.

The enforcement of normalcy and sameness through top down, lateral, and intra-communal policing is meant to protect the group from disruptive forces that threaten our stability from the inside. That same policing makes us struggle to adapt to the unrelenting forces of change that come from the outside. The enforcement of sameness is not the problem. The problem is with the emotional consensus that is being enforced. What is the real threat and how do we rally ourselves and our resources to confront it?

We’ve done it before.

Don’t let them make you forget.

Revolution Begins in the Body

Revolution is the act of imposing your internal distress on the environment so that it has a vested interest in your peace. Revolution is sharing the weight and burden of discomfort with others rather than swallowing it down until it forms a cancerous tumor of shame and alienation in your gut.

When did you lose your capacity to cry for help to a lie that says you can take care of yourself by yourself? When did you lose your humanity to self-disregard, an adaptation to your caregivers’ and society’s disregard of you? When did you lose your longing for comfort to a neglect that has normalized suffering you don’t deserve? When did you become so afraid of feeling?

Your feelings are the instrument of change you can wield with power and force. You’ve done it before.

Revolution begins in the body.
Freedom begins in the imagination.
Liberation is what happens when we revolt and imagine together.

DON’T LET THEM MAKE YOU FORGET.

Get you 2024 Divination For Liberation sidereal astrology calendars here.

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Weekly Horoscope December 12 – 18, 2022

Here is your weekly horoscope for December 12 – 18, 2022.

This week we settle firmly into what we were transitioning into last week. You don’t have to look too far or too deep to see that the following themes are loud and imposing:

  • Trust & Truth,
  • Prejudice & Prejudgement
  • Skepticism & Paranoia
  • Zealotry & Indoctrination
  • Belief & Conviction
  • 15 – Sun in Sagittarius

A crucial question of this moment is this:

Do personal experiences meet the criteria for what qualifies as accurate and factual knowledge?

The fact that we have a word—anecdotal— that means to judge as not reliable or necessarily true because it is a personal account, speaks to the power dynamics inherent to our cultural definition knowledge, and the context within which we must develop self trust.

We are socially conditioned to reject our bodies as a primary source. Because no one can (allegedly) get inside your body to experience you, you must immediately seek external evidence. You look for some kind of consensus via a word to describe it; validation from authority with the power to make your experiences real in the eyes of others; or “irrefutable” proof from science—that what your body says/feels/knows is real.

These hierarchies of knowledge and power are our cultural indoctrination. Trust yourself less, trust the gaze of others more. Trust the gaze of those with power in capitalism, patriarchy, and white systems of domination the most.

I recently finished the audiobook version of Zora Neal Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, performed by Ruby Dee. In the lead up to the climax of the story, a hurricane was about to slam the everglades where Janie and Tea Cake had taken up residence, several days passed where the Seminole bands traveled east away from the coming storm. Snakes and crows and other animals traveled east. And the Bahamian folks living in the ‘glades were the last to go by car. They saw the “crow gahn up” and knew it was time to go. Yet, Janie and Tea Cake stayed.

When the Bahmian offered a ride, Tea Cake said:

“Dat ain’t nothin’. You ain’t seen de bossman go up, is yuh? Well all right now. Man, de money’s too good on the muck. It’s liable tuh fair off by tuhmorrer. Ah wouldn’t leave if Ah wuz you.”

“There Eyes Were Watching God” by Zora Neale Hurston

Meaning, Mr. Turner, the white land owning planter that Tea Cake worked for, hadn’t left. So, in his logic, why should Tea Cake? The white man with access to land, money, and power knew better than the fear of the Seminole band, the crow, the Bahamian, and even his own body. Besides, Tea Cake was making money too good leave.

Everything was more true, more real, more powerful than his fear. So much so that he couldn’t access it. He couldn’t feel it.

  • Whose authority do you petition in order to validate what you sense and feel in your body?
  • How do you know what you know? How do you know that what you know is true? 
  • How do you access the body as a way to know what is real?
  • What happened to you that makes it difficult for you to access your body?
  • What political, religious, or spiritual beliefs do you have about what your emotions and sensations in your body mean?
  • What privilege and power do you have that facilitates this access?
  • How are you becoming more sensitive to your body in ways that contradict your politics and your religious and spiritual beliefs?

This is a sidereal astrology horoscope. Use this guide to cast your sidereal birth chart. Learn to read your sidereal birth chart, and identify its wounds and gifts.

Do you want to keep track of where the planets are each day? My Sidereal Moon & Planetary Transits iCals make it super simple. Download the files and upload them into your phone’s calendar app. Then you will see in your calendar the dates and times of the Moon’s sign changes, New & Full Moons +Eclipses, and all the transits of the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

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Relationships: Mars & The Gift of Autonomy

This is the first post in a series on Sidereal Astrology For Relationships. This first post is about Mars & The Gift of Autonomy.

I am now offering Sidereal Astrology Readings for Couples. Limited appointments available. Schedule here.

We each have two fundamental and equally important needs that we seek to have met inside relationships. And there are all kinds of relationships where this happens. Familial, friendship/platonic, communal, romantic, and those that don’t fit neatly inside the confines of those relationship structures.

We have the need for connection–to be accepted and approved of. And we have the need for  autonomy– to feel our bodies, our feelings, and our identities as separate autonomous. However, each of us has a unique hierarchy of survival that shapes which fundamental need takes precedence, how, why, and when. Your sidereal birth chart is an invaluable and versatile tool to name and understand your hierarchy and the experiences that have defined it.

Square graphic with muted light gray background. 5 balloons in a row close to the ground. 4 are white, 1 is red. The 2nd in the row is the red one floating above the rest. Text in white reads SIDEREAL ASTROLOGY FOR RELATIONSHIPS. Text in red reads MARS & THE GIFT OF AUTONOMY. Text in white beneath that says BY DAYNA LYNN NUCKOLLS.
Mars & The Gift of Autonomy by Dayna Lynn Nuckolls

Understanding the wounds, coping strategies, and gifts of your sidereal birth chart is an efficient and comprehensive guide to navigate the relational dance of togetherness and separateness.

Mars, Conflict, and Survival

That fundamental need for autonomy is signified by the condition of the planet Mars in your sidereal birth chart. In fact, autonomy is what I call the “gift” of Mars. More on that in a bit.

Conflict in our relationships is fundamentally about the struggle for autonomy. Autonomy generally equates to having a measure of control over oneself, one’s feelings, one’s self image, and freedom of movement. Mars in your sidereal birth chart is going to have much to say about your conflict style. When we compare your Mars with your partner’s Mars we can see the specifics of what’s at the root of much of the conflict in your and create tools for how to navigate it.

There are situations where autonomy is seen as a threat to your survival, like when you grow up in a high control group or under the thumb of a codependent caregiver. There are also situations where autonomy is your only means to survive because there is no one else to rely on.

Mars and the Wound of Abandonment

Wounds most simply are our experiences inside relationships. They can occur at any point in life, but it is our earliest experiences with our caregivers that shape the world we adapt to in order to survive. Although there is likely a negative judgment attached to the general usage of the term wound, I mean it here with no inherent value judgment attached. Wounds can be malignant or benign, willful or passive. 

Some wounds dominate our experiences more than others. Other wounds feature less prominently. No matter how they are experienced, everyone experiences wounds. We survive as adaptations to that world long after we have aged and moved on to new places and phases in life. Abandonment is one of those wounds that we all experience in one way or another, and it is the wound of the planet Mars. 

One partner’s Mars may tell the story of mostly malignant experiences of abandonment during childhood. They may have been disowned, willfully or passively left to take care of themselves without any adult supervision or care. Maybe they were alienated because they had a different father than the rest of the children in the family. Their anger at these experiences kept emotional distance between them and the rest of the family.

Another partner may have experienced mostly benign abandonment. They had experiences where they got to see what they were capable of doing on their own without having to shoulder age inappropriate responsibilities. Perhaps they were given the freedom to explore their need for autonomy, yet they were still held when they needed help. They might have been allowed to embody and express all emotions, even when those emotions made their caregivers feel uncomfortable.

Coping With Abandonment

Coping strategies are how we survive and adapt to our wounds. They are the tools we carry with us in expectation of having to survive those relationship experiences again and again. Coping strategies are evidence of what we have survived and the fact that we have survived. They are there when we inevitably need them to help us navigate the realities of relating and surviving. They can also be stumbling blocks that keep us from getting other important needs met.

The partner who has experienced mostly malignant abandonment learned to cope with that abandonment by emotionally isolating, or by preemptively severing from those they become close to. They may engage in reckless behavior that negatively impacts their loved ones. Their experiences didn’t equip them with the tools to be close in a relationship, even though they might crave the feelings of deep connection and acceptance. Still, they unintentionally find themselves bracing for abandonment.

The partner who experienced mostly benign forms of abandonment would likely have a sense of autonomy that is less disruptive to the relationship. They are able to sever when there is danger or when their emotional or physical boundaries have been violated. They would be able to maintain a measure of emotional autonomy inside a close relationship, holding on to themselves and their emotional truth without. They would be able to take risks without necessarily making their partner the collateral damage.

The Gift of Autonomy

Gifts are the ultimate goal that we strive to manifest inside relationships. These gifts can be accessed via the privilege of being born in the right place at the right time, with the right gender expression, racial appearance, sexual predilections, or class station. They can also be hard won in spite of, or even because of, our malignant wounds. Autonomy is one of those gifts.

The person who had malignant experiences of abandonment (death of a parent, being disowned, having to care for themselves or siblings while a parent worked, etc) might get to that autonomy in a way that disrupts or sabotages their relationship. Autonomy wasn’t a product of the presence, care, and attention of a competent adult. It was foisted on them when they had no agency, no option to say no.

How might this partner learn to express and embody that need for autonomy inside the closeness of an intimate partnership? The condition of Mars in this person’s sidereal birth chart will provide the context in the form of tasks and tools, and the timing of how and when this can happen for them.

Without having gone through hardship to arrive at the gift of autonomy, the partner who had mostly benign experiences of abandonment might be willing and able to model the tools they were gifted through those experiences. Maybe they are aware of their strengths and abilities and are better able to gauge when their partner is doing something that might have unintended consequences.

Perhaps this partner’s emotional boundaries mean that the relationship is not workable. The struggle for autonomy is just not an experience that is familiar or tolerable for them. Willingness and endurance are two of the most important traits required to navigate these kinds of differences.

Do you know the condition of Mars in your sidereal birth chart? What are the differences and similarities between the condition of your Mars and your partner’s Mars? Learn about this and much more in a Sidereal Astrology For Couples Reading.

Sidereal Astrology For Couples Readinghttps://orcle.me/couples
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Mercury Retrograde Fall 2022

One of many things I’m watching for during this fall’s Mercury retrograde in sidereal Virgo is the aspect of intellectual debate and general conversation where people are having two different conversations. Systems thinking versus binary thinking. Inductive versus deductive reasoning.

Individualism precludes pattern recognition, specifically with regard to causes of behavior and remedies for our present challenges as humans.

In individualism, everything comes down to individual agency. Pattern recognition tends to reveal the fact that causes are not individual and neither are solutions.

It happens all the time in conversations on social media. The recognition and naming of a pattern makes people feel like their individuality and identity is being erased. We struggle to pull the lens back and see the containers that individual human experiences occur in.

Actual solidarity becomes scary in this way because the environment for connection is rotted by capitalism. It puts our access to food and shelter in the opposite direction of connection. When in fact, food and shelter is on the path of connection.

But how do we connect?

Mercury Retrograde in Sidereal Virgo

Mercury is gonna spend about 10 weeks in sidereal Virgo. It will oppose Jupiter in sidereal Pisces 3 times! Here is some guidance that may help you navigate this time more intentionally.

Just because you hear and comprehend the words some says doesn’t equate to you understanding meaning.

Context clues cover a multitude of sins. And a lot of times the context is the relationship itself, how you know them… if you know them at all.

Curiosity and asking questions are an alternative to telling people they are wrong. Nuance is truly your best friend.

Literalism + black & white thinking can be a communication strategy born of living in high stress environments/relationships where your safety + survival is at stake.

A very effective communication strategy is to always ask, “did I understand you correctly? Is _____ what you meant?”

And sometimes it’s not worth it to engage in conversations where both parties aren’t curious enough to ask questions and question their own assumptions.

Jumping to conclusions based on your own context that others may not be aware of is asking for hurt feelings.

Sometimes extending grace looks like you considering that you might have misunderstood someone, asking questions, and seeking mutual understanding before forming judgements, whether emotional or intellectual. Collect more data first!

Originally tweeted by Dayna Lynn Nuckolls (@PeoplesOracle) on August 16, 2022.