A Radical Redemption
At the crossroads of a multi-planet retrograde cycle.
Dear Relatives,
Before getting into today’s letter, I want to let you know about three opportunities to connect and work together:
Astrology Readings
I am hosting a year-end sale on virtual 1:1 astrology readings, available through the end of 2025. Next year, I will shift focus to hone my research and understanding of a specific astrology topic. Hence, a sale!
6-Week Partnership
This is a 1:1 partnership and collaborative engagement, where we will delve into your natal chart and create a comprehensive, personalized strategic plan for the year ahead. Please book a complimentary consultation first if this longer-term offering interests you.
Tea Time Chat
This offering provides an opportunity to engage in a relaxed conversation and learn more about how we can best share resources, support one another, or collaborate in the future. In the past, discussions have ranged from career and work to astrology and contemplative practice. Think of this as a time to connect and hold space for what is present, together.
I sincerely look forward to meeting some of you soon!
I write to you during the middle of multiple retrograde cycles, while taking a short break from writing about acupuncture. This week, I’ve been working on the final edits to my astro-calendar—a project I started last year, and hope to continue in the future. Once complete, I will share it with a dear friend with whom I meet every month, a ritual that I love and look forward to.
In a recent conversation with Farm to People, food and culture writer Alicia Kennedy said something that I can’t stop thinking about. In discussing the systems that shape the way we eat, she says, “We do have to get there imaginatively before we can get there in reality.” As I look ahead to next year and reflect on the past year, I recall the numerous shifts that were made individually and collectively. I am particularly thinking about the movement and activity that occurred in the sign of Pisces. As a Pisces Sun, I felt the constant churning, the ebbs and flows.
I appreciate this insight from Kennedy because it rhymes with the themes that have arisen with the Lunar Nodes being on the axis of Pisces and Virgo, and with the planet Saturn, with its form-generating qualities, wrapping up its final pass through the sign of Pisces. More broadly, I think about the importance of cultural work as a regenerative force.
To materialize something different, overtly contrarian, and decolonial is to enact a kind of sacred fugitivity. Similar to those who dared before us, for this rogue endeavor, we must first look back and listen, and then move forward.
As Dr. Bayo Akomolafe writes, “There’s something strangely sacred about discontent. The itch that pines for a soothing balm. The broken heart that mourns a lost love. Lilith refusing the lordship of Adam. The sharp and stunted breaths of the runaway slave escaping through the plantation fields in the dead of night, his torn shirt and scarred back shocked by the wind. A bespectacled woman refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The fist of a political prisoner pointed skyward in ruthless hope.”
To envision a more restorative reality, one must fetch what was left behind and echo-locate the sanctuary of refusal.
As the Sun slinks toward the final decan of Scorpio, or the last 10° of the sign, there are five planets currently retrograde, including Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, Mercury, and Jupiter. The etymology of the term ‘retrograde’ borrows from both French and Latin, ‘retrogradus,’ meaning “backward; reverse; palindromic.” Accordingly, retrogrades are generally considered a time for reflection, reorganization, and remembering.
Each of the planets currently in retrograde is categorized as either personal, social, or transpersonal. These categories are based on each planet’s proximity to the Sun and the length of time it takes to orbit through the ecliptic, or the apparent path of the Sun in the sky.
Personal planets tell stories of selfhood. Social planets give meaning to the relationships between self and others. Transpersonal planets help to discern the big-picture narrative about the collective.
In this multi-planet retrograde moment, I find myself asking multi-dimensional questions:
Mercury facilitates communication, thinking, and travel, and is a personal planet. Mercury is associated with the Trickster, Hermes, Thoth, Esu, or Messenger to the Gods, one who can move between the sky world and the underworld.
When Mercury is retrograde in Sagittarius and Scorpio (November 9 to November 29), what if the veil is pulled back and the story is rewoven?
Jupiter governs philosophy, judicial matters, and faith. Saturn regulates structures, agriculture, and the aging process. Jupiter expands, Saturn contracts; both are social planets.
When Jupiter is retrograde in Cancer (November 11 to March 10), what if hope is reconstructed while the river temporarily reverses direction?
When Saturn is retrograde, in Aries and Pisces (July 13 to November 28), what if the incarnate Phoenix is baptized in the fire, its ashes soon to resurrect and rise in spirit?
Uranus dismantles convention to reinvent, revolutionize, and reform. Neptune imagines and dreams about what is unseen; it senses what is not said. Uranus and Neptune share in common the impulse to break things down, either by deconstruction or erosion; Uranus and Neptune are transpersonal planets.
When Uranus is retrograde in Taurus (November 7 to February 3), what if the radically disempowered are repositioned as alchemical ley lines?
When Neptune is retrograde, through Aries and Pisces (July 4 to December 10), what if the key to collective imagination is rebirthed in the forge?
There is much work ahead. Not work done in isolation, but that of reclaiming story and shadow so that they may be threaded back into the tissue of an ever-present unfolding creation; a radical redemption in the temple of consciousness.
Until the next one,
Christian
p.s.
You can learn more about my work and values via interviews I’ve done with homies Sheree Mack, Rose Blakelock, and Lakan Ubaya Nagsalad.