Articles and Teachings Beyond the Physical - February 22, 2023

Astrology Influences in Pisces
by Allysa Taylor
New moon in Pisces and full moon in Leo
This new moon in Pisces landed on the 19th of February. Pisces is a mystical, altruistic, creative sign. Pisces can also lead to escapism, addictive behaviors, and can create deception within the mental body. This new moon is conjunct Saturn, which can make our emotional world more serious. There can be feelings of restrictions within the home or intimate partnerships. It could feel difficult to open up and express how you truly feel to someone. There may be ego battles playing out between you and another. Going inward, meditating, getting to a zero point within your energy field can help you make a more pure decision on how to approach the ego battle.
Also, with the moon and sun conjunct Saturn there could be governmental restrictions being discussed or trying to be put on us as a collective. Saturn will be moving into Pisces in the beginning of March, changing the theme for the next few years. Pluto will also be changing signs at the end of March which will bring up themes around freedom, groups, science, futuristic ideas and the shadows of those topics.
This new moon is a great time to connect spiritually, to get into a space of acceptance and forgiveness for everything that has happened within the past astrological year.
During this time Mercury (our thought process) will be in Aquarius and square to Uranus the ruler of Aquarius. This can indicate fast thoughts, electrifying downloads of information. Being still, going inward, being ready to receive will assist in catching these ideas being sent down by Uranus at lightning speed. You could receive information you’ve been waiting for; you could receive futuristic ideas to better your life in some way.
With Jupiter in Aries, we are creating new pathways for ourselves. With this new moon we can receive more ideas, creative endeavors, new ways of being. This Aries energy also helps us stand strong within ourselves and helps with more courageous moves we may be having to make at this time.
I definitely wouldn’t say it’s a comfortable time or a familiar time. It’s very new, uncomfortable, but worth the effort, faith and movement forward.
On March 7th we will be experiencing the full moon in the sign of Virgo. Virgo is an analytical, critical, I need the facts kind of sign. It’s a good time to let go of judgement towards something that is taking up space within your mind that no longer needs to be thought about. It’s also a great time to clean, organize, and donate things you no longer use and that are just taking up space.
At this point in time we’ve got Saturn and Pluto at the 29th degree which is a critical point. Challenges are coming up and again, faith and structure are needed.
With the moon square to Mars and Mars square to the sun, we’ve got a lot of energy built up. Put that energy into something that drives your passion. This energy can easily be manifested into annoyance, anger and disputes. Try to avoid the chaos by focusing on yourself and continuing to focus on your goals, to make your life easier and more manageable. During this month too, I would suggest focusing on your health goals, for your body and your mind. Setting intention, praying, cultivating a healthy routine will help put your mind at ease. Feeling at ease and feeling good within your body is a major win during this time.
Remember to practice love and kindness towards yourself and others.
I hope you all have a great month!

Allysa Taylor, Is a Certified Astrologer, Licensed Massage Therapist, and a Certified Energy Healing Practitioner. She offers astrology readings for adults, children, and couples on her website, and she is offering astrology workshops. She is married to her high-school sweetheart and a mom of two beautiful human beings, Mila and Captain and one fluf baby named Liv. www.SpiritualJourneyEnergyHealingTraining.com

Beyond the Booklet:
Reading Tarot Intuitively
by Bee LaRosa
You heard about tarot and wanted to learn more, so you picked up a deck or two. You've downloaded apps and eBooks and have memorized all the meanings of the cards by heart. You feel pretty confident about drawing a card or three and knowing the general gist of the message. Still, something feels a little off about your readings. You wonder how the tarot readers you see on YouTube are able to convey such rich, detailed messages and advice from just the basic definitions of the cards, while you feel like your readings are AI-generated. The secret is that professional tarot readers usually aren't relying on the card definitions to construct their readings - instead they read intuitively.
As a beginner, it's totally normal and perfectly fine to rely on the deck booklets and tarot apps to remind you what meanings the cards are generally associated with. However, it's also really common to come up against a wall with this method. Eventually, the booklets and definitions begin to limit your perspective on what the cards may be trying to convey. This is where it can be helpful to learn to read intuitively. Reading tarot intuitively is a skill that can take some time to develop, but usually comes more naturally to creative types. That's because this method of interpretation relies on using your imagination, not a dictionary, to construct the narrative that accompanies the cards. Here are some tips to get started:
1. Connect with the cards, not the booklet. The booklets are there to help you learn about the imagery and symbolism of the cards - but they are not the cards themselves. It's kind of like confusing a photograph of a mountain with the mountain itself. It's easy to begin to think that the booklets and the definitions are the cards, but that's not correct. The next time you pull out your deck to do a reading, try just looking at the cards. You may feel called to arrange them a certain way other than the way they came out. You might notice repeating symbols or details that jump out at you that wouldn't even have been mentioned in the booklet. Notice what feelings or ideas come to you when you look at certain cards. How does it feel to look at The Devil, especially compared to Temperance? How do the colors, landscapes, and figures make you feel?
2. Give the cards a story. It’s helpful to treat spreads like a storyboard. What are the events taking place from start to finish? Who are the main characters? What are their motivations? What is the primary conflict of the story? What is needed to overcome the conflict? Sometimes you might even see the same character across multiple cards, tied together by some consistent color or symbol. You might even spontaneously imagine an entire backstory to the cards that has little to do with the traditional meanings. Let your imagination take the wheel here and you might be blown away by how relatable your reading becomes. This is often where readings really start to come alive.
3. Experiment with spreads or no spreads. Spreads, such as the Celtic Cross, can be helpful because they give a predefined purpose to each card. It gives structure to the overall narrative and arrangement of the cards. Sometimes this can just cause confusion instead. If you find yourself confused, try reading without a spread. Let yourself arrange the cards in whatever way feels right to you and allow the narrative to emerge organically. Just don’t forget to have a well-constructed question going into the reading, or you may find yourself just as lost and confused as before. How we apply language is important for cultivating specificity within a reading: too much, and the reading becomes formulaic and lifeless; too little, and the reading becomes too general to be meaningful.
Continued in next column.
4. Let your inner critic take a backseat. When reading intuitively, doubting yourself is the surest way to throw off your game. That’s because acting on intuition is ultimately faith-based - you can’t be sure that your interpretation is going to resonate with your client or friend until you just go out and say it. Don’t hold back what you’re picking up from the cards - it may be that it takes a while for your message to make sense, due to external circumstances. The same goes even if you are reading for yourself. Also, it’s okay to just plain be wrong sometimes. Even professional readers are wrong sometimes - we’re not omniscient. If something isn’t landing, it can help to make your message more general and see how the querent responds. Perhaps, for example, you see the Knight of Cups appear and you think it could be about a lover or long-term relationship only to discover that the person you are reading for has no interest in romance. You can walk things back to something more general like “acting from the heart.” Reading intuitively isn’t an exact science.
Try putting these tips into practice and see how your readings evolve over time. Eventually, you may find yourself not even bothering to flip through the booklets of new decks you buy - not that there's anything wrong with doing that. Booklets often contain valuable information about the deck they belong to, and it doesn’t make you a worse reader to refer to them. Tarot ultimately is a medium for channeling messages and advice, and booklets can serve as that medium as well. What’s important is understanding that channeling is an intuitive act, which can be difficult to grasp when you are first starting out. Using these tips will help broaden the perspective with which you approach your readings, so that your approach is not exclusively logic-dominated. No matter what techniques you use to do a reading (booklet or no booklet, spreads or no spreads, etc.) your experience will benefit from finding ways to allow your intuition to participate.

Bee La Rosa is an intuitive professional specializing in tarot, Vedic astrology, and dream interpretation. She draws upon Jungian psychology, eastern thought, her 10 years of experience in social services, and her own healing journey to guide others to wholeness. She releases astrology and tarot videos on her YouTube @moonlodgemystic . See https://moonlodgemystic.com/ for more information.

A Pisces Plant
by Darcy Macpherson
The Lauren Grape Poppies are one of the plants connected to Pisces.
The element is water. Pisces (February 19th-March 20th) is co-ruled by the planets Neptune and Juniper. The plants come in all colors, often growing near water. They are large, graceful, and hard to find.
Darcy J. MacPherson owns Silver Thread Gardens. It is a business that does consulting about plants and what they can do for us spiritually, emotionally, and physically. She is an author, a plant mythologist and photographer. Her books are Tree Spirituality and Weaving Color
silverthreadgardens@gmail.com
