Hot damn! An equinox, a new Moon, a Pluto not quite into in Aquarius, and a Saturn in Pisces.

Saturn in Pisces: Order to Chaos, or the Illusion of Order?

We look forward to a new solar year. I look forward to a new solar year and what it will mean for Saturn to transit my South Node and for this new moon to be on my natal moon. And today, sitting down and doing financial work, budgeting, and planning, I realize one thing:

I will never be able to own a house.

I will always have law school loans even if I find myself otherwise eligible for public service loan forgiveness in six years.

I may spend the rest of my life unrooted because of these things.

I would not be able to start a family of my own, even if I wanted to do so, because I could not afford rent and school loans and necessities and the medical costs of pregnancy and childbirth and then the ensuing costs of having a child.

And there’s way too big of a section of my country that fully benefits from an over-educated younger population but has zero sympathy for the sacrifices that younger generation was forced to make, because it simply doesn’t make sense than entire generations were “duped” into thinking college was the way to the middle class when they were magically surrounded by good paying, safe blue collar job the entire time, as if all they had to do was click their heels three times and say “there’s no place like a union shop.”

Because if those good paying blue collar jobs actually existed, the younger generation would know about them because their parents, relatives, and neighbors would have those jobs, but oh, they don’t, because they don’t exist en masse the way they used to before Ronald Reagan came into power — the plants have gone to other countries, the union were busted, and deregulation made things like airline jobs lower paying and less secure.

And it was no coincidence AT ALL that federal student loans were on the rise at that time; the answer to the need for good paying jobs for young people could have been to bring the factories and the unions back, but we needed to be better than the U.S.S.R., not on-par with it, so having a bigger middle class at the expense of a smaller working class and more white collar workers at the expense of blue collar workers made us look like a nation more advanced than we were, less agrarian and rural than we actually were.

And Generation X took the jobs out of material reality and placed them out of Boomer reach in the digital world.

Most young folks these days will never know what it’s like to have a Boomer boss who is computer illiterate, makes decisions based on that illiteracy, and you either have to fix it or be the one to tell them they’re wrong, and they decide the fate of your career based on how stubborn they want to be about being wrong.

The one I’m thinking of right now recently died.

Look, it wasn’t Boomers with only high school diplomas who got a good union job at the saw mill right out of school who created and now maintain the world of convenience we either benefit from or are hopefully stuck as supporting character. It won’t be them who are saddled with the task of fixing the environment, nor will it be them who will have gross stuff like tofu and bugs put on their plates in misguided attempts to fix the problem (I am still uncertain exactly how more nutrient-poor monocrops is the solution). It won’t be Boomers who bought their house for a song in 1984 who will be changing the diapers of other Boomers who have been able to live past their normal expiration date.

We are beyond telling young people that they need to cut back on luxuries, because smart phones are vital to being employable, and because the luxuries of older generations, like televisions, are relatively cheap, and when you consider how much alcohol and cigarettes previous generations wasted their money on, it’s not really so bad to get a latte sometimes — and honestly, now that Starbucks is essentially the McDonald’s of coffee, with drive-thrus and spots in Targets, hot caffeine milkshakes are really a more democratic treat now.

But the complaint about over-educated, underpaid young people just not “trying hard enough” to get the non-existent jobs with better pay and benefits has a certain communist tone to it, as Boomers, who hid under their desks at school during air raids for fear of nuclear annihilation from the U.S.S.R. during the Cold War, are now eerily blase about America becoming a country without an economic middle class and without a social middle class, and have become all too accepting of the rather fatalistic and cynical idea that wanting something that you see others have is a personal flaw in you and not flaw in the system that creates an endless deprivation.

Though I do wonder what happens to all the houses in 10, 20 years when the owners are too old to maintain them but they’re too expensive for most people to buy. Do they just stay in families? But surely not everyone wants to move back to their hometown and live in their childhood home. Do the houses become rental properties? Do we all want side hustles as landlords of our childhood homes?

And what about those of us whose childhood homes are simply not an option?

I would not want to live in my childhood home, nor would I want to become a Section 8 landlord to keep my childhood home. I do not want to take out a loan to pay for the repairs and renovations to make my childhood home marketable as a single-family home; currently, it has a fair market value of about 50-55% of the other homes near it becomes of its structural oddities and flaws that give it no curb appeal and make it, dark, cramped, and uninviting. Add onto those renovations the need to replace all the ceilings, floors, and walls, and that any profit has to be split six ways, it would likely be more profitable to tear the house down and sell the lot instead.

But who will buy a plot of land in a not nice neighborhood a block south of a six-lane state route to build a house?

I think about these things because these things are no longer in the ballpark: they are now

Listen:

I recently saw an astrology video on Instagram that said that Millennials won’t be having a midlife crisis because that generation is “ruled by Pluto” and while it may not entirely apply to me because I’m between generations, I can definitely say…no. Generations don’t neatly fall into Pluto transits, and the change of adulthood has been happening to everyone, everywhere, if they’re lucky enough to live that long. The midlife crisis is social and existential, but it’s also biological, and how a more “Plutonian generation” will escape the Pluto square Pluto transit, the Neptune square Neptune transit, and the Uranus opposition that is the hallmark of mid-life, sounds crazy to me.

Millennials will not escape their bodies changing. Millennial women will still go through menopause. Millennial men will still get old and be called “sir” by young women who will think they’re the creep at the bar. They will not escape the experience of the generation before them dying – their parents, their mentors, their teachers, their bosses – taking with them their narratives about the Millennials, leaving Millennials as the older generation.

However, I think that being the most parented and the least wealthy generation alive makes for quite a hell of a mid-life crisis. At least I got to pay off my undergraduate loans, but I’m trying to imagine being a few years younger, squarely Millennial, and seeing that half my life is over and I couldn’t even afford to do most of the stuff I wanted to do with it, let alone have the time and energy to figure out how to get what I wanted. If there is no script, what do you do? Who are you after you’ve been working multiple jobs to pay the rent, your healthcare, and your student loans and have nothing to show for it but a social media following of people who don’t even know the real you, who could disappear instantly if you say the wrong thing? You’re the most anxious generation, the most psychiatrically medicated generation, the most educated generation, but the most poor generation. You are the first generation in what, hundreds of years, with a lower life expectancy than the previous one? And Millennial power is an illusion: maybe they, and Gen Z, control pop culture, including youth culture, but they do not control the money. Gen X, who created the digital age, and the Boomers, who own the land and the corporations, have the wealth.

So what happens when you hit your early 40s and realize half your life is over, and this is all you have? Just because you’re a “Plutonic” generation who may be used to this powerlessness and complete destruction of your ego doesn’t mean it’s not going to bother you once you hit the age where you think you should be an adult, but you can’t get out of bed without taking your anxiety meds to go to your 60-hour a week job so you can keep afloat? And early 40s is around the time you start having chronic health conditions that can deplete your funds and interfere with your ability to work – this is when type II diabetes sets in, heart disease, etc., and just your luck: your mid-life crisis comes on the tails of a global cost of living crisis, so how can you even afford to do crazy things just for you, like get a sports car, or afford to divorce your spouse or leave your partner, or go back to school to start a new career, or spend thousands on IVF when they will spend the next decade paying off the cost of delivering that baby.

And never mind that Millennials had a very long childhood overall and have spent less time independent of their parents – losing their parents to death and old age is going to hit them way harder than Gen X who was not parented or nurtured much, especially since this generation has overall had children later and is definitely going to be a sandwich generation like Gen X but with far fewer financial resources and the cost of everything going up.

This generation will see their parents, who do not work, who no longer contribute to society in a meaningful way, getting better healthcare than they are to prolong lives that don’t require any contribution to the economy, while they are expected to help care for those parents while making less, having fewer resources, having more debt, more expensive healthcare, and more pressure to stay in the workforce to pay for these things. If they skip a midlife crisis, it’s because they don’t have time because their lives will be in a constant state of crisis anyway, because of an actual, major crisis, like living in a country under attack or something, but I just don’t see that happening to millions of people all over the world.

And what a shame it would be for an entire generation to lose out on the gifts that come after the crisis, the best being The Freedom and The Peace. A generation this anxious and this oppressed could certainly benefit from The Freedom and The Peace that the crone phase offers. Imagine having to miss out on that but still have to keep moving toward old age anyway, and thinking that’s actually a good thing, and wondering in envy how Gen X was magically able to stop giving a fuck, let loose their white-knuckle grip on the world, and simply be, accepting that they’re not young, they’re not hip, they’re not relevant in pop culture, and now they just live their lives.

And that’s why I’ve been shy to re-enter astrology:

The reason that so many modern astrologers are wrong, and have been fantastically wrong about things (i.e. Jupiter in Pisces didn’t save the world, did it? Saturn in Capricorn sure didn’t make every rich, did it?) is because of one major flaw:

Their predictions are not rooted in material reality where the human bodies are. They’re fantasy projections onto a fantasy humanity in fantasy circumstances because to be pragmatic, to be cynical, to be the Debbie Downer is a crime, even if that means you’re correct. Social media makes it easy to think you are disembodied. You can change your appearance even in videos. You can simply call yourself an expert, and you’re an expert. You do not have to prove your credentials. You do not have to show your real face. It’s easy to think of astrology as only applying to the ethereal spaces like the ones we create on social media, and it’s easy to mistake that ethereal world for the real one, and that the material world is just an annoyance we have to deal with in order to get back to the cosmic world that the algorithm of your favorite social media app creates for you.

It’s easy for a lot of new astrologers to think that astrology is in the sky (it’s not), but also on some entirely other plane of existence in which we are the god in the sandbox and not just someone addicted to the tiny dopamine hits when the algorithm figures out which demographic you’re a part of. Astrology comes from the Earth, and what exists now on Earth isn’t going to suddenly, inexplicably jump the rail and go into an entirely different direction because the most ideal of astrological interpretations says otherwise. Chances are, the river is going to continue to flow in the same direction, and the climate is going to evolve in one direction despite weather patterns.

After all, Uranus and Pluto may be planets of change, but they are nonetheless slow-moving planets.

And I honestly think one of the hardest parts of growing up for an astrologer is to accept humanity as it actually is and not what you think it could be.

Pluto in Aquarius: just a couple quick thoughts.

If we are not “enlightened” or “spiritually evolved” now, we won’t be next month, especially when not all of us are here to pursue that (including me), and when we can’t all agree on what that means. Frankly, a lot of the descriptions of mainstream white-girl “spiritual enlightenment” makes me happy to be with out it since I would rather be dead than live in a world where I have to spend all my time chanting “I’m rubber your glue” in various pop psychology terms while popping anxiety meds, because deep down, I don’t really think that at all and anyone being negative makes me remember that I’m not happy, either.

But the last thing I want is to find out all these ten-cent astrologers on social media are correct, and that there is a sudden spiritual evolution coming when Pluto enters Aquarius, but it turns out that the evolution is in favor of an extremist religion that will result in me being killed for being a heretic.

Because wouldn’t it beat all if this great, spiritual enlightenment meant that now we’re all forced to wear burkas and be silent in public unless we want to be stoned to death? Eurocentric astrologers tend to make Eurocentric predictions, and I tell you not a single white girl social media astrologer would have seen it coming.

Because if you don’t think that Pluto in Aquarius can also mean more power for extremist, oppressive religious groups, then you have way too rosy and way to incomplete of an understanding of both Pluto and Aquarius, or perhaps way too much assurance for someone who is alive post 9/11, because Pluto is both power AND surrender. It is total destruction. Aquarius is change and departing from the past, whatever that past is, and creating a new order that is supposed to address what the previous one didn’t, sometimes to bring “power to the people” even though every “power to the people” movement inevitably creates a new class of elites who control everything. Pluto in Aquarius could be radical reform in how we govern and what we do about the future, and that could be reversing climate change (we can do something like that; when was the last time you even heard of a CFC?), but literally, it could also just be rich people going to space with an eye on terraforming Mars while the rest of us stay home and starve — and this is not a wild prediction because rich people do go into space now, and Elon Musk wants to terraform Mars (which I am fine with if he goes alone, stays there, and never Tweets again). Pluto in Aquarius could mean the end of the strangehold the Abrahamic religions have on many countries, including my own United States…or it can mean that totalitarianism (Pluto) in the guise of saving humanity (Aquarius) brings us Gilead.

More likely than not, because this is a transit, it will be both. There will be a power struggle of ideology, on a global scale. I don’t actually think it will be something like Islamic extremists vs. everyone else, or Christian Nationalists vs. Every Fucking Thing They See That Confuses Them.

Last time Pluto was in Aquarius, we did get some different, earthier forms of Protestantism that were meant to bring God to the people but replaced the loftiness with more rules, and also: we had an industrial revolution that didn’t enlighten anyone, but also forever change the rhythms of life for most of the world, even fooling them into thinking those rhythms were good, even holy.

And in America, we think it is righteous to behave more like a machine than an animal, to worship your employer and hustle endlessly, to go to work when you’re sick and to have to treat your coworkers like family and your family like an distraction from your job, spending the better part of one’s life doing drudgery in a chair inside when the human body was never designed for that. But if we’re lucky, America will really see people resisting the scourge of the Industrial Revolution, and maybe, just maybe, when Neptune enters Aries, demanding to return back to a more natural rhythm of life: let the Koreans and the Japanese get cancer when they’re 23 because they think sleep is a waste of time; we can’t afford the newest smartphone here anyway. We’ve had a good run playing king of the hill, but supper is ready and Mom is calling.

I don’t see that happening in reality, not in my lifetime. Industrialization is way too ingrained in our thinking to tease it all out and discard it, but maybe a trend, maybe a change that seems radical by American standards but not by First World standards, like paid lunches for everyone, or paid sick days, or not being fired just because you’re sick?

Could we repair and replace what the Industrial Revolution did to our psyches? There are still people who think 3 meals a day is necessary, and that breakfast is “the most important meal of the day,” even though that’s only because that’s the fuel that sends you off to the factory or the office and you’re not taking time away from your job to eat it. Almost all of us have to “earn” vacation days, if our jobs offer them at all. Hard fought and won and then almost entirely lost again, would we ever get unions back the way we did?

Because I’d rather pay a couple extra dollars more for my food so the barista who is unionized and earning a living wage with benefits than to be pressured to pay a 25% tip so her employer can keep her at slave wages under 40 hours a week.

This is not Pluto in Pisces, so I’m not optimistic for universal healthcare in the U.S. as being a feature of this transit, nor am I optimistic for a mass disinterest in Christianity in America – I am a little more concerned that Pluto in Aquarius is going to bring us more extremism from the Big Two religions – Aquarius is tech and Pluto implodes, so be careful what buildings you’re in.

Back to Saturn in Pisces

Listen: my Millennial friend predicted Delta and Omicron, but where is her Allure byline? One of the crankiest old men astrologers I know predicted the birth of Prince George at his the time of his parent’s wedding WITHIN A DAY, and predicted his own death WITHIN A MONTH, but he’s pretty much lost to history, which is what he feared. Meanwhile, Aliza Kelly screwed the pooch on Jupiter in Pisces thinking it was going to be the savior of humankind (as if it was 12 years before that, right?). Then again, unlike Aliza Kelly, my Millennial friend, my cranky old man friend, and myself are astrologers under no pressure to kiss anyone’s ass to sell magazines, to get clicks, to garner followers. We have the luxury of doing this at our leisure, of withdrawing our faces and our thoughts from the world at any time. My Millennial friend and I have means to pay the bills, I have entirely other career that garners more respect than astrologer, and the cranky old man successfully predicted his death. We have no advertisers to lure in, no masters to please.

I have written astrology articles for small magazines that have been given back to me with requests for extensive revisions because they were too pessimistic, too practical. People don’t want to be told to save their money for the lean times ahead when Saturn and Pluto are in Capricorn; they want to be told to go ahead, quit their day jobs, and start businesses because while Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn can mean solidifying (Saturn) power (Pluto), that’s for those who already have power (Capricorn) and the pecking order will be maintained (Capricorn), that sort of very practical prediction doesn’t take into account that the West has no poor people, just temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

And then a little thing called the global pandemic happened which — surprise surprise — made the richer WAY richer and the poor WAY poorer, sparked a cost of living crisis and a supply chain shortage that we’re still recovering from. Sure: Saturn went into Aquarius and we figured out maybe we aren’t being paid what we’re worth, and maybe we don’t need to go into the office, and maybe it’s actually cleaner, healthier, and better for the environment to just wash our asses after we shit (especially if we’re home all day and can do that), than paying $30 a roll for toilet paper. But many people in the United States succumbed to the pressure to have additional jobs and now it’s normal to have a full time job and a side job to pay student loans, to pay child support, to supplement one’s retail or service wages because they are often not enough.

And it was then that we were forced to see that wealth isn’t just money, and it isn’t just freedom, either: it’s time and it’s quiet. When you don’t have to hustle all the time, when you can take your days off of work for relaxation, self-discovery, self-care, and avocations instead of working another paying job, when you can afford to live somewhere where you can work from home comfortably because it’s quiet enough, you have a certain amount of wealth because when you unplug from your social media and your electronics without anxiety that you will lose your job, your side gig, your followers, or your leads, you’ve got wealth.

So that’s why, after I got promoted, I quit doing astrology readings. For the first time since 2013, I was able to have one job and simply be when I stopped working, to have my weekends and evenings to myself to do things like properly grieve, to figure out what I wanted and how I was going to make a life after a sudden change, and to just turn off and smell the roses sometimes, figuratively and literally, because there’s a whole world on the other side of my computer screen I don’t want to keep putting off: I now think that sometimes, it’s less lonely to be standing alone in a beautiful garden than it is to be in the company of a thousand random people online.

In too many ways, modern astrology exists in a bubble on the Internet where everything is an illusion and authenticity is an afterthought, and there is no need to make it make sense offline. You can create hifalutin astrological theories that have no reflection of the reality on Earth for anyone and you’ll still get applause for it, because people go onto social media to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear, and the algorithm makes sure you get a steady supply of what pleases you.

But it just makes me want to retreat more and more from astrology because of the free-for-all, astrology-is-whatever-my-personal-feelings-tells-me-it-is bullshit going around. I don’t mean disagreements among astrologers over details, but I mean wholesale bullshit being spread on social media and people and defending it by “well, I’m an X and it totally applies to me, therefore, it is true for everyone else forever, even people who are obviously very different from me.”

Because astrology isn’t about you, sweet dear child. It’s energy and archetypes, and your subjective experience does not inform the position of the planets or the transits, because….you’re just a person subject to the energies and cycles of the Earth. How many times I have left an astrology Facebook group because I’m tired of reading things like “well, I’m a Pisces Moon and I get very fired up and tell people off and I find it offensive to be told otherwise!” Okay, but that’s not Pisces Moon energy there. If you keep digging, it turns out you’re dealing with an immature Cancer Sun who totally will get fired up and tell people off and has a Mercury in Leo that would find it offensive to be told they’re wrong. Winner, winner, chicken dinner – but none of that was Pisces Moon. Pisces Moon will go offline to wonder what she did wrong and lay awake all night thinking about it.

I’ve made a lot of incorrect predictions, incorrect readings, and incorrect interpretations. It’s a learning experience, but it took me about 15 years of study before I was bold enough to tell the world I was an astrologer. Maybe there are astrologers who feel ready after a few years. Some maybe less. It’s not a profession, and it’s not a science. While I’m glad that it became mainstream during the time I was studying, I don’t expect it to last at all in the West.

But listen:

I think there’s a strong possibility that Saturn in Pisces will make astrology fall out of favor in the West again after this transit. This is not wishful thinking – when Saturn is in Aries, we tend to cycle toward more practical concerns and wars because the things being built (Saturn) secretly (Pisces) breaks out onto the scene (Aries) in a material way (Saturn) like world wars and revolutions, like installing electricity in buildings so people can see it all the time.

When Saturn is in Pisces, the structure is fluid, nebulous, grains of sand shifting in the wind. The only certainty is that you are falling but there is no landing. Will it be replaced by human design? Maybe? Who knows. I have tried and failed to get into human design because I need it to be practical. There’s plenty of astrologers interested in your spiritual evolution; I am interested in you getting through your day. But I think all forms of divination may retreat back to occult status. It happens – a decade or two of interest, and then disinterest when there’s bigger fish to fry: wars, famine, economic crises, boredom, the rise of organized religion and a “return” to conservative values, and looking for the new fad. Then, it goes back into the shadows where the dedicated quietly work on their occult interest, publishing and studying, taking the brunt of the social stigma of being an occultist once again.

And if you get off social media and look around bookstores, you’ll find that there is a still an older generation of astrologers who are still working and have been this entire time without the mainstream media taking any notice. Ever since Dave Roell died, I have been covetous of my own astrology library.

But an inescapable truth for me is that I’m a better astrology writer than I am a counselor. Even if I had the energy to dedicate to full time counseling, I would still be better off writing, so maybe Saturn in Pisces is a good time for me to write – no podcasts, no videos, no social media posts, no live feeds – just writing. My people tend to like to read anyway, and when Instagram stories disappear and TikTok videos are buried by the algorithm when there’s a new fad, a new interest, the writing will remain in one way or another, to be enjoyed quietly, surreptitiously, waiting for another heyday.

I mean, it’s not like I’ll be busy chasing after kids or idling until death in Fort Myers waiting for 4:30 to come around so I can have the early bird special at Denny’s before I go to bed at 7.

A New Year, a New Moon

We may misspeak and say that astrology is sometimes literal — it is actually always literal. We live in a material world on Earth and project the energy here into the stars because the cycles on Earth happen to coincide with the seemingly circular movement of the heavenly bodies around the 360 degrees of a circle (or the 3283 degrees of a sphere for cosmobiology and Uranian astrologers). Astrology has always been literal. Vedic astrology is very literal. Traditional Western astrology is very literal. It’s only been a recent thing, like within the last 130 years, that astrology has taken on a more spiritual application, which has coincided with the rise of democracy and a middle class that has time, interest, and disposable income for such things, as well as a pervasive disappointment in organized religion. In the 17th century, no one gave a rat’s ass about your spiritual development unless you were in a monastery, and even then, probably not. The more pressing concern was whether you would have a living male heir if you had sex with your new wife that month, whether your cow would give birth to many calves, whether the spring would bring enough rain but not too much rain and whether the summer would yield on rain enough for your serfs to harvest the wheat to pay for the use of your land. The more pressing concern was whether your disease could be cured with readily available treatments, or if it would kill you. The more pressing concern was whether your marriage would be lucrative and produce male heirs, not whether you were compatible or had good sex or a karmic connection. The more pressing concern was whether to enter into talks with the neighboring country or to go to war with them.

And while I tend to chalk it up to my Earth placements – Venus in Capricorn, Mars, Jupiter, and the North Node in Virgo, Chiron in Taurus, a lot of my need for practical results is very rooted in my Aries Moon. Aries Moon deals with the here and now, the right away, the what’s-in-front-of-you. After many Piscean lifetimes of withdrawal and looking forward to Heaven or dwelling on fear of Hell in order to ignore the horror and sorrow around me, this is the lifetime where I say “no, I am on Earth for a reason. I have a body for a reason. And I will use this life in this body to experience life as much as I can with it.”

This is the Ostara wisdom. There is enough life now just waiting to push up to the sun, and it is chasing away the darkness through the entire season. Our bodies are awakening from a hormonal slumber – there is sunshine to see and feel. We are driven out into the light.

I will say something heretical about the light, something very Aries Moon:

I do not wear sunglasses unless it’s so bright it’s a safety issue, nor do I wear sunblock unless it’s so bright, it’s a safety issue, and yes: I have light skin and light eyes. And no: I don’t have wrinkles or sun damage.

The sun is not your enemy. We evolved to be in the light. We need it for vitamin D, for serotonin, for our sleep cycle.

The warmer it gets outside, the fewer plant foods I eat, and when I’m fully carnivore, I can enjoy the summer sunshine. I can even tan. My dermatologist is not concerned with my skin, and my skin still retains its elasticity. I have no more wrinkles than I had before, which is pretty much none, no discoloration, no worrisome growths. People still think I’m younger than I look, and I date younger men.

Because it just didn’t make sense to me at a fundamental level: if the sun is so bad for us, why do we need it for bone growth and maintenance, for mental health, for sleep? Why are we sad without it? Why do we become nearsighted if we’re deprived of it? And if it was always so bad anywhere in the world, then how have humans survived this long? Maybe something else is causing the problem?

Basically: if it’s so bad for us, why does it feel good to be in the sun?

If it’s so bad to walk outside barefoot, why does it feel so good?

If it’s so bad to raise animals for meat rather than the monocrops used to feed them or us, even though ungulates eat grass and nourish the land in return as Mother Nature designed them millions of years ago, even though they don’t require toxic pesticides to keep them safe that inevitably end up in our water and killing unintentional targets like pollinators, even though animal husbandry of grass-fed ungulates doesn’t require the killing off all the other animals on that land, and even though they provide more nutrients and satiety per pound than monocrops, and even though ungulates can thrive on every continent and don’t require globalism for distribution…then why do they taste so much better than monocrops?

And if monocrops are better for your body, why do they make me fart and give me pimples, whereas steak does not?

If it’s so bad to let my skin air dry on a hot day, why does it feel good?

If it’s so bad to let my hair air dry in the sun, why does it turn such a pretty color?

If it’s so bad to spend my weekends alone, why do I look forward to them so much?

If it’s so bad to sleep in the nude, why do I sleep so well?

If it’s so bad to let my clothes air dry in my apartment, then why do the last so much longer and feel so much better when I put them on?

In the end, the answer may be because I am foolish and simplistic, that I do not understand the holistic issue. The thing is, I do probably as well as anyone else. I can go into a giant Virgoean spiral into any subject. I get the agenda that says cow farts are killing the planet. I get the factors that go into it. I get that frankly, anyone who thinks a cow can only feed seven people has never seen a cow in real life and doesn’t understand that a cow is 99% edible or thinks that everyone is twelve feet tall. I get the argument that I am susceptible to skin cancer, and that too much sun exposure is dangerous for me. I get the argument that hang drying clothes in my apartment could raise the humidity in my apartment and cause mold or structural issues (but honestly, I never have that much laundry to make the apartment swampy). I understand the argument that there is a possibility I could cut my foot, or get ringworm, or some other bad thing from going barefoot.

But I also understand that I could get athlete’s foot from wearing sweaty socks and shoes too long. I could end up back on metformin, spironolactone, and synthroid if I ate a plant-based diet again because my pancreas simply will not adjust. I also know that I could end up with hormone imbalances and lack of vitamin D and bad skin again if I’m slathered in sun block all the time. I also know that if I don’t have at least a day to myself, I become a very angry, unbalanced person. I also know that whatever germs I’m supposed to fear because I sleep directly on my bedsheets are going to be present in the inside of my pajamas anyway, and the easiest solution is to wash sheets more often (and hang dry them).

Virgo is perfection, getting rid of the extraneous. Aries, however, is a different type of simplicity. It is instinctive, unfussy – Virgo is cheese and crackers, and Aries is a taco. It believes in the five second rule and even if it doesn’t know that maybe more exposure to the environment means a stronger immune system, it knows that that cracker didn’t suddenly become covered in listeria because it touched the carpet.

Babies put everything in their mouths because they’re exploring and because they’re building their immune systems. If all babies died because they ate things off the ground, it would be the end of the human race. Now, this totally hits differently if you’re a parent, and yes, swallowing watch batteries and grandma’s medicine IS dangerous. But they do what they do out of instinct. Children play so they can learn about their environment, about interacting with others, and building the social network that will keep them alive and thriving when they are adults. Sure, this hits differently when you’re trying to get a kid to do their homework instead, which is unnatural on so many levels. Children resist sleep and yet inevitably succumb to it wherever they fall asleep. Children give affection freely, state their likes and dislikes freely, and point out the obvious without concern as to whether some cultures preferred they didn’t. Children don’t persevere through eating bitter foods that give them gas and bloating and leave them hungry in an hour regardless of how healthy they’re supposed to be. They have their emotions when they have them, naturally.

And children don’t care if they’re spiritually evolved. They have yet to open Pandora’s box on that shit.

This new moon, and this new year, look to that kind of innocent, natural simplicity that actually protects your innocence. Start with that. Sit around naked because it feels good and don’t worry about putting your bare ass on your desk chair – you do wash your ass, don’t you, you fucking weirdo? Do something interesting just because it’s interesting. Be the weirdo who goes to the museum by yourself. Go home when you’re done working, regardless of whatever blustering show of being busy you’re expected to put on to demonstrate your value to your employer. Stop buying kale if you’re just throwing it out. And yes: it tastes like ass, it’s a pain to prepare, and there’s way better sources of bio-available nutrients without the plant toxins. Strawberries are colorful, tasty, and eye-catching spring food, but moreover: food is still a wonderfully profane experience, and nothing you eat in and of itself will raise your vibration or change you spiritually, so why torture yourself? You could find spiritual enlightenment forcing yourself to meditate or to starve, or you could find it watching koi in a pond while eating an ice cream cone.

Children use their senses to take in the entirety of the world to make sense of it, to find their place in it, to find what is good in it – when did you decide that only certain parts of it matter? Who gave you that terrible advice? This is the new moon to forget all about it. There are no rules, no hierarchies, because it’s all child’s play: whether you win the spirituality game or you lose, you all actually lose because you’re actually playing the game in the first place if you’re still lingering in Pisces – after all, Saturn both solidifies and erodes, and some Piscean things need to be eroded.