WHEN [X] RETURNS, SHOULD YOU…
Resurrection isn’t resuscitation.
“If there is anything good about exile, it is that it teaches one humility. It accelerates one’s drift into isolation, an absolute perspective. Into the condition at which all one is left with is oneself and one’s language, with nobody or nothing in between. Exile brings you overnight where it would normally take a lifetime to go.
”
Still from Hiroshima, Mon Amour. The feature debut of French director Alain Resnais and written by French author Marguerite Duras.
At the beginning of September, I had a huge post eclipse season reckoning that I’m living in “exile”. I know — so dramatic — BUT it’s really the only word one can use to describe being somewhere safe(ish) and welcome(ish) but you know — deep in your bones — you don’t belong. (Considering that my chart lord is a fallen, retrograde Venus in the 12th house of exile and has been activated multiply since I left LA, it’s a literal delineation an astrologer might use to describe my condition.)
When I was pre-Ketu maturation (which happens around 48 years old), I might’ve had a bit of an existential crisis (and did) about realizing something as significant as a “wrong turn” or a “fallow period”. Instead, now I started looking for the open loops and questioning whether or not I needed to close them.
And that’s exactly when they started jumping out at me from the shadows in ways that were almost laughable in their blatancy — because clearly my guides have accepted that I am but a dumb Leo Sun who needs a billboard AND maybe some lightning strikes to not only recognize but understand their messages:
Someone leaving a pristine copy of The Iliad on my building’s community bookshelf the day I decided to — for shits and giggles and the practice — breakdown a Greek Tragedy I’ve been wanting to adapt and direct since I was 18 years old (yes, a whopping 33 years).
Multiple friends giving me positive feedback on Dwell Time (my narrative short about a Special Forces Captain with undiagnosed PTSD attempting to return to service that was screened at Cannes), being invited to speak on a podcast by a veteran about a completely unrelated topic, AND having a film packaging consultant reach out to me within days of me contemplating revisiting the series in 2014 we were going to build around the short.
Waking up from a dream of being on set shooting a short I wrote back in 2012 (and touched on potentially shooting last year) thinking “Maybe I should fundraise for it. She wants to be born.” IMMEDIATELY followed by a text from the actor attached to play the lead female role about something else entirely.
It was like my portfolio of unproduced projects were collectively screaming and running at my tits like, “Mama Mama Mama! We see you!”
The (X) Returns
It all seemed all too on the nose especially given that Venus herself had entered exile in Scorpio when all of this was happening and treading the steps that she would have to retrace during her descent to become the Morning Star at the same time she was also the brightest she was going to be.
At this point, most folks are acquainted with the shenanigans and remedies for Mercury Retrograde, but, since Venus only retrogrades once every 18-months, when it does happen there seems to be a panic and invariably someone is going to bring up the myth of Inanna’s Descent and being stripped down, killed, hung up on a hook, only being able to return to the living in exchange for another soul, and sending back her untrue husband.
Sure, we’re about to apply to the re-verbs to everything to do with Venus — stability, commingling, money, values, relationship, beauty, resources, justice, balance, civilization, reception, femininity, seduction, sex. You’re going to hear people telling you to put off important purchases, signing contracts, cutting your hair or undergoing cosmetic surgery, getting married, etc. You’ll inevitably see posts on social media about what to do WHEN your ex comes back and why.
But what I want you to do is zoom out and see what’s going on in yours and our collective story right now. We’re still in the Great Reset — where the masculine is being re-balanced so that the feminine can dance … but we’re at the part of it that’s asking us to close loops that remain open because we keep trying to close them with the same exact people, situations, tactics, resources, world view that created them in the first place — and we’ve been on a never ending repeat that we can’t see that we’re doing what we’ve always done and getting what we always get … and how do we interrupt our autonomous processes? By giving our conscious mind stimulus that interrupts the brain’s prediction of reality.
Hence retrogrades:
Venus on October 3 at 8 Scorpio (direct again on November 13 at 22 Libra);
Mercury on October 24 at 20 Scorpio (direct again on November 13 at 5 Scorpio); and
Mars on January 10 at 10 Virgo (direct again on April 1 at 20 Leo).
The (X) Returns and it feels like you might get to close that loop finally because you’re a different person — but are you? Can you shorten the arc of reaction — all those deep grooves in your neuronal pathways primed to release with ease the chemistry they can do with their neurons tied behind their backs — to response — the new pathways that have just been laid down to bring regulation fighting to change the narrative?
Can you resurrect instead of resuscitate?
Can you rise in a new identity with an aligned life instead of the same one still trying to fix the old one?
Your First Step into Your Underworld
You see, Inanna knew what she was doing. She had already conquered the sky and the earth. She chose to go into the land of the dead knowing full well that she wasn’t coming out of it on the other side as the same goddess — she was going to come having mastered the last realm.
You’ll probably get this newsletter a little before Venus goes retrograde — but, if not, you have until next Friday to take that step into your underworld:
bust out the old journals and find the open loops that keep repeating
look at the old photo albums or the part of your timeline you skim over quickly because you just want to pretend it didn’t happen
crack open your archives and old to do lists and inventory the projects that refused to get finished
go ahead and take a peak at your exes’ SM profiles (if it’s safe to do so)
make that spreadsheet of the bills and debts you keep recurring in various forms and/or loop money through
revisit those vision boards that never materialized or did in imperfect ways
Better to choose to revisit rather than have any of these suddenly pop up unannounced in your DMs — sneaking up and activating those pathways you’ve been working to move away from.
Make a list. See the patterns. Feel around and see if the desire is still there.
You — you’re the (X). You as you are NOW are the one who will close that loop because you aren’t the same person who failed, who broke up or was broken up with, who got into debt, who squandered an opportunity, who made the wrong choice — whatever it was.
Right There with You
I’ll be right there with you with my three X’s coming back to ask if this is the time. Will I be able to do it differently? Will I be able to get them across the line? Will I close the loop?
In creating a new world — and not just a different iteration with new names for old things — we need to close these loops from a different perspective than the safe and ingrained ones that learned how to survive them. We have to choose our own deconstruction rather than have it imposed on us from the outside with timelines that favor our old reactive conditioned jumping to the fore and continuing the same old same old.
Go ahead. Write that love letter, make that mixed tape, put on that dress, wear the perfume, visualize the reviews … then sit in the dark and listen to your heart beat and your breath sing you your victory song.
