VIRGO
You are doing your best to give birth to new visions.
The labor of birthwork is the labor of
presence, trust, listening, intuition,
and the willingness to be intimate with death.
How do you tend to the future
without making promises that it will “succeed” or even exist?
How do you hold your promise to yourself,
which was always, simply, to live?

0:12  

Welcome, Virgo. Thank you for listening. You are tuned in to the Embodied Astrology horoscopes for Capricorn Season, December 21st, 2021 through January 19th, 2022. My name is Renee. I'm an embodied somatic intuitive and a consulting astrologer. This offering, this horoscope, is my sense and interpretation of the overarching themes, opportunities and challenges for you in the season ahead. As you listen, please listen through the lens of your own intuition. My language may not always totally match or resonate for you. So notice what you're associating with and follow those threads. Make the meaning that is meaningful for you. Take what works and leave the rest. I always suggest that folks tune in with horoscopes for their Sun and rising signs. If you don't know your signs, you can get a free chart at embodiedastrology.com in the horoscopes section, where you can also find written transcripts of these horoscopes if you'd prefer to read rather than listen. 

1:12  

Before I get into your horoscope, I want to let you know about two upcoming opportunities. On December 22nd, I'll be offering a Capricorn Season and solstice workshop. This is a two and a half hour practice of embodiment, creative visualization and practice, and support for working with your own chart in relationship to this season's upcoming transits. You do not need to know astrology in order to benefit from this part. If you can't make the live event, the recording will be available through January 19th. On January 8th, I am so pleased to host Janice Lee for a 2022 opening ceremony. Janice is a published author, a teacher, a shamanic healer and an incredible facilitator. She'll be offering a communal ceremony, The Dandelions are Prophesizing. This is a chance to be held in a very deep guided meditation, and free writing, as well as ritual practice with a group that can assist all of us in the medicinal magical work of letting go. And as I'll talk about in the next number of minutes in your horoscope, letting go is a big theme and Capricorn Season and certainly in 2022. Please make sure to stick around at the end of this horoscope for some important updates and more information on how to connect with me and the Embodied Astrology community. For support throughout the months and coming months. You can always find all the information on my upcoming events as well as registration at embodiedastrology.com.

2:49  

Okay, Virgo, my friend, how are you? As I am tuning in with your horoscope and feeling it move through my body and my heart, I feel compelled to give your heart a hug. The feeling that I have is how hard your heart is working. And for some of you this may be quite literal, there may be a very real felt sense, a palpable sense of your actual heart right now that you're working with. And whether it's a metaphor or whether it's reality, it feels to me like the electrical magnetism of your heart and your circulatory system are giving. It's like they're getting tested. And with testing, there is the potential for fortification, strengthening and resilience, and there is also struggle. And testing can sometimes diminish, you know, and cause stress.

3:56  

And so the first thing that I want to say as we move into Capricorn Season is please support your heart. It might be taking heart herbs like hawthorn, or placing your hands over your chest and breathing into your heart and feeling the resonance of your heart that is continuous with the resonance of your arteries and your veins. The electromagnetic current of life, the circulation of life, that moves from your center to your periphery. It might be letting yourself be loved. Letting yourself really receive the love that is there for you whether it's from a pet, or a friend, or a lover, or the sky, the earth underneath you, there is some source of love, I hope, that you can find to connect with and can you let yourself receive that. Virgo, you work so hard. You are such a hard working being, I know that even if I don't know you. I know this about you and I know how much you care and my sense is that as we move into this into the season, that is marked by the threshold of the solstice, a quarterly marking in the Earth's turn around the Sun, that is a window into polarity into the longest night or the longest day, depending on which pole you're closer to. But this is a time of, of increased intensity, in many ways, where energetically we get kind of squeezed. 

5:34  

And my sense for you, is that there is something that is really pushing you right now and is pushing you into a new dimension of your path on this planet and of your learning in your life. Think back on the last 12 months, think back to last year's solstice, the 12 months, depending on when you're listening, of 2021. You have been working so hard this year. And I think in many ways, you may have been working really hard to relax, you know, you might, it's like I feel like one of the things that pandemic has done for many of us has been to bring our attention to the distress and the dis-ease that is caused through white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism, through this ongoing and endless urge for productivity. And that, you know, many people have had some kind of reprieve, not everyone, for sure, but many have had some kind of reprieve whether it was just a couple of weeks or a couple of months, where we couldn't go to work, or where things had to pause. And maybe for those who are on the outside — the essential care workers, the ones who couldn't afford to take the time off, there was still the contrast, the seeing of what was happening. And this resounding chorus within the collective that continues to call for rest, right? 

7:11  

This is a refrain that is getting louder and louder this call for rest, which is fundamentally a call for sanity. And a recognition that the ways that dominant structures of power hierarchies and supremacies function through frenetic, survival oriented, endless labor. And I think that there is a knowing that is innate for many of us. And I really feel this in you as I listen with your chart, that there's this knowing that if we can slow down and actually relate and remember our relationships, remember the relational realm of which we are part of, if we can slow down and care for our bodies and care for one another, and care for this earth and stop being distracted and compelled by this urgency, right, that continues to pull us away from rest — if we can do that, then we can answer the problems. You know, we can fix the things that are so broken in the world because the breakage is the breaking, right? The breaking apart of our bodies from one another, our bodies from the world. The breakage is the severing, the split, that occurs in the dynamics of oppressive power structures, where some people are allowed to rest while others are forced to labor. The breakage is what happens when we extract and exploit the earth for very fleeting temporary pleasures and satisfaction of human desire. I think you're feeling that, I think you're feeling this call to really like be — just be. You know, to be the animal that you are. To be in your animal body. To remember your nature. And that this is also labor like this is also a job for you. This is also a rewiring and reconfiguring of your neural networks.

9:33  

And I think that you're also busy. So it's like you're busy trying to figure out how to slow down and then you're busy with other things. It feels like you have a lot on your plate, you have plenty to do. And it feels to me like there's some tension between this need and this desire to slow down and to be and the labor it requires, because I don't know about you, but I have to continue to make money in order to slow down and to be, right? And it's this horrible paradox where it's like, I just want to fucking be. And if I do that, I am not in a position, personally, to sustain that for very long. I have to continue making money in this weird sinking ship that I happen to be in as a global citizen, and certainly as a citizen of the United States. And I feel this tension in your chart of like, how do I just be? And I also feel you feeling this with others, like feeling this as an imperative of these times. And maybe that is part of what you are so hard at work on, is figuring out how to be of service to all of us in this moment, when we really need to slow down so that we can address the incredible moment that we are in, this incredible moment of proximity with death. 

11:08  

And so I want to just hug your heart. And I want you to hug your heart and it feels like Capricorn Season is an opportunity and a calling for you to give yourself replenishment. And to remember the ways that you connect with joy and vitality and vibrancy. And especially if you are hurting in your body, in your mind, in your psyche. Especially, you know, through pain, can you love yourself? Can you pause and find beauty somewhere, somehow? And become absorbed in that beauty. Let it fill your senses. Let it saturate your flesh. What is it in this moment that you're in, in your life, to let yourself go and really become immersed in something that is beyond time and space. It's like this is the feeling I want for you. And I feel like your heart needs this. It's like your heart needs to be held on all sides by beauty. Whatever that means to you, I don't know what that means to you — could be a song, could be something to smell and touch and taste and eat, it could be relationship, love. 

12:45  

The first 10 days of Capricorn Season, which are the last 10 days of 2021 — I don't know what it is that you're doing, but there's some kind of process that it feels like you're in that on a fundamental level is a process of relationship. Though it may be that this is about your relationship with you, your body, your spirits, certain aspects of your being. It may be that this is very much about you in relationship with others in some way. And so I want to include romance, I also want to include children in the future. You know, whoever the future generations are that you're an ancestor towards. I also want to include audiences and publics, recipients of the products of your creation, of your energy, of, you know, what you are crafting, what you are forming with your energy. I want to include all of those relationships or levels of relationship. And again, listen for the meaning that's most meaningful for you. 

14:06  

It feels like you're in some kind of process around authenticity and the questions that you are asking yourself right now are really important questions. And these are questions about connection and the power of connection. And these are questions about performance and striving and a desire to come across with something or in some way. And I want to tell you to cut through the bullshit. Slice right through it. And the bullshit, I think, is the idea that you need to be anything other than what you are. The bullshit is the idea that you need to know anything at all, that you need to have anything at all. Like if your kid is coming up to you and asking you some unanswerable questions, as children tend to do, can you track the programming that comes up in you that needs to have an answer, that needs to be a grown up? And you know, something like that, and like what happens for you when you really embrace the unknown in the sense of like, it's like the Fool archetype, you know, like, "Who knows?" You know, like you don't have the answers. 

15:29  

And there's some tension in this, because I think that you have a lot of answers. I think that you're brilliant. Virgos are brilliant human beings. People with strong Virgo energy are smart as hell. You have plenty of answers. And you have none. And your brilliance comes through when you can really kind of like, allow yourself to be permeated by that cosmic joke. You know, and you don't know. You can see, and you can't see. And somehow, you, your job right now is to call all of us into that place with you. Somehow, you know, that when we come together in our, in our relationship with one another, and again, this could be with your partner, it could be with a friend, it could be with your child, it could be with the million people listening to your TED talk, I don't know who you are. But there's, it's like when you can call your relationships into this space of unknown with you, and really just sit in that space, then something happens. And the thing that happens is magic. And the thing that happens there is beyond what you can do alone. 

16:57  

And so I want to expand this and say whatever it is that you're trying to figure out in your life, because I feel you're trying to figure out some piece of a puzzle. It feels quite practical and foundational in your life, you're trying to figure something out, how does this thing work? What does it have to do with? I don't know. Could have to do with your health, could have to do with your family, your home, your relationships, your job. How do I put these pieces together and make this thing work? My sense is, is that this is the puzzle piece that's gonna unlock and illuminate like, the whole pattern, is the absurdity of it. Like I don't know. Like, it's like about humility, it's about failing, it is about laughing, you know, and having a sense of humor at how messy it all is. And over the next year, as we move into 2022, this becomes a huge gift that you bring into your relationships. And it feels like you have so much to give. And you also have so much to receive. And the giving and the receiving have to happen at the same time in order for it to be sustainable, in order for you to realize the power of whatever it is, the giving and the receiving have to be simultaneous. And they happen most effectively when we let go of all the rules. 

18:46  

You are not your child's parent. Which is not to say you put them in the role of parenting you, but that you recognize that they're already your elder, right? Like how they teach you forces you to mature. And so you may have been part of producing the materials of their body, but the spirit that inhabits their body is just as timeless and infinite and ageless as the spirit that inhabits yours. How do you dissolve the layers of assumption that arise within our conditioned relationships? So if you hold the seat of a teacher, how do you invite all of your students to squish into that seat with you? If you are an employee and feel yourself laboring for another, how do you recognize the ways that you take leadership and guidance? And how do you elevate your dignity, right? And really walk as your own owner, your own authority. 

20:14  

The beginning of the new year of 2021, there is quite a remarkable sensation of change. I said 2021, I meant 2022, excuse me, let's not go back in time! The beginning of 2022, a remarkable sensation of change. I want to invite you into your creativity. In this new year. If you're making any new year's resolutions, can you make a resolution to be present with play, and spontaneity and imagination, on a regular basis? Creativity is any space time continuum, where you lose track of the goal. Right? The creative process is an emergent process. It is a listening practice. It is following instinct and inspiration, and letting whatever it is that you're working with unfold. It's being absorbed on the journey of whatever it is. And you know what brings you pleasure. You know what gets you enthralled and excited. And I want to ask you to turn towards that. And then I want to ask you to be very discerning, because I think that you have quite a knack for turning your pleasure into work. And I think you have quite a knack for being very enthralled with laborious processes, right? Like, it's like, oh, "yes, oh, my God, I get to work," right? Part of the Virgo temperament. And so, that's fine. You know, it's chill, like, it's your choice. 

21:59  

But when we make our pleasure, our jobs, then there can also be a lot of sadness, right? And there can also be depletion. Because then there's obligation, and it's like, oh, shit, you know, I really liked this thing and now, I have to keep showing up for it. And I've made all these promises, and even if it's just to myself, and this kind of thing. So my invitation for you is in 2022, to find ways to engage with pleasure and labor as if they are the same thing, with no expectations, and no promises. Now, obviously, that is a lot easier said than done. And maybe it is impossible to do. But it could be something to entertain, it could be a piece of poetry to just kind of like, hang on to and let it inspire you. What would it be if pleasure and labor were the same thing? And you, Virgo, more than anyone, I think, could teach us something about this. But the part about not making promises — for example, let's say you're a poet, and you are going to show up every single day to write your poetry and the labor of writing poetry is the discipline, it is the repetition, it is coming back to the same page. It's the redaction, it's the editing. And maybe there's an opportunity for you that has already arrived, or that is really fairly close on the horizon. If it's not coming this year, then it's coming in 2023, you've got some opportunities in your life, to move out into a larger public into a larger space. So let's say you're a poet, and you have an opportunity to publish a book of poems.

24:05  

You're going to sign a contract. You've got a publishing due date already, you're screwed, right? Because there's a promise. But in this promise, is also the promise of your creative practice. And so this is the kind of, this is the koan, this is the paradox, like how do you show up for the labor of your creativity, for the realization of it? And the commitments in it, without the commitments, without the promises becoming a prison for you, like becoming too formulaic? How do you make promises that are open ended and expansive and experimental? Can you write it into the publishing contract that your book of poems might also be filled with pictures and maps and blank pages with diagrams for someone else to fill in the blank and write their own poems, you know? Like, how do you get really creative in the ways that you orient towards what it is that you want to do and that you're trying to do. And because of your earthly existence, that you live in the material realm, and you have to deal with time, and most likely, you have to deal with money. And these kinds of commitments. It's like, how do you? How do you show up in that space? With as much room for emergent imagination and present moment, spontaneity, and improvisation as possible. 

25:42  

I feel you wanting to get off of a schedule. I feel you wanting to craft commitments that hold space for you to arrive in them. Rather than, like, rather than hold space for you to arrive in the past, it's like when you make a commitment to the future. What are you doing, right? Like, if you make a commitment in January, for August, by the time you get to August, you're going to be a different person than you were in January, then you have to show up for that commitment from the past. Change is uncomfortable, right? And we are programmed to continue to do the same thing. We program ourselves, our minds and bodies and habits all become programs. So how do you write programs into your existence for change? How do you commit? How do you make commitments for your future that lead you into the unknown? This is my question for you. I wonder if that makes any sense in the ways that you're listening to it. 

27:04  

I think that this is something you think you're doing, that you are doing, for sure. And I do want to say that January is a little bit of a trickster, tricky month for you. Because in January, it feels like you are making plans for the future and you are setting yourself up for some work. I don't exactly know what this is, you might be quite busy at that time. It may be that you are preparing yourself to be busy at some point in the future. This is a very important month for you to be really conscious of not forming expectations for yourself that are going to feel stifling. So especially as you move into the new year, really try, in whatever way you can, to make plans that are flexible. And I mean that for the rest of the year. Or maybe you're a person who plans multiple years out, that's a drag, if that is you right now, because you are changing a lot. And so you you really want to, you know, if it's like, okay, I'm going to be there, you know, wherever there is in January of 2024, you're making some kind of commitment, then in the agreement that you're making to be wherever that is, can the thing that you're showing up for arrive with you then? Can you not make the promise now of what it's going to be? And in the commitment, and I think this is, you know, one of the gifts of the pandemic is like in the commitment, it's like, we'll see what it's like in January of 2024. You know, if God is willing, like I'll be there, but also who knows, right? Like you have to build in flexibility with your plans in January, please. And in February, I want to say it's a little bit of the same, and the letting go piece for you is letting go of the promise. It's the letting go of the perfection. It's the letting go of needing to be anything for anyone. And in that letting go is an embrace of who you are, that you don't even know who you are yet. It's an embrace of who you are becoming. And that's not a fixed point, that is a constantly unfolding process. 

29:28  

The Full Moon on January 17th really highlights your future and it highlights the future by highlighting the past. What are you learning right now about what entraps your energy? What makes you feel depleted? What keeps you feeling stuck or misaligned or inauthentic? How do you not replicate those patterns? You don't replicate them by honoring them, right? You have to get to know them. You have to be very intimate with those patterns, so that you can feel when they're there, and you can do something else. And the doing something else is the uncomfortable part and that's where your growth is right now. It's in making space for the unknown, making space for change. That Full Moon is powerful, and it is opening up a new chapter for you. And it feels like it's opening up a new chapter in the ways that you are engaging in the world at large with your future, with your labor. I don't know what any of that means for you. So I hope that any or all of it is landing and that you find any or all of it interesting and helpful.

31:03

If you want more astrology from me, check out your Year Ahead Report for 2022. Those reports are available by pre-order now and they'll be delivered by January 10th. They're hour and a half long readings special for your sign, where I intuit and interpret what I feel as the major themes, opportunities and challenges for you in 2022. For support throughout Capricorn Season and beyond, I have different levels of membership that you might enjoy. I have a subscription to my monthly workshops: once a month you can attend live or get a recording of a two and a half hour practice that includes some kind of embodiment and meditation, some kind of creative exploration, and practical tools, suggestions, tips for working with the language of astrology and your own chart. I also hold a virtual community space where you can connect with other astro enthusiasts and folks who are wanting to learn more about astrology and the possibilities for synthesis between astrology and other modalities. That's my jam, like how does astrology work as a tool, whether we're doing embodiment work, or psychotherapy or environmental solutions, or something like that. So if that sounds fun to you, you can find more information on my subscriptions and memberships, my Year Ahead Reports and all of my classes and workshops, including Your Chart is a Body, which is a multi-part Introduction to embodied chart reading, all of that and more at embodiedastrology.com. If you enjoyed this work, please help support and sustain it. The number one way to do that is by sharing it with your friends and networks, by subscribing rating, reviewing, leaving affirmative reviews on your favorite listening platforms. And of course your financial donations help sustain the production of this work. A one time or recurring monthly contribution is so appreciated. Thank you. You can find the links for all of that in the show notes. I'm wishing you all the best, Virgo, in Capricorn Season and beyond. Bye for now.