The Shooting Star
Monday 29th of December, 2025
I can still smell the salt in my hair from the beach when I emerge from dreaming. As I gently pass through the liminal space between asleep and awake, visions of deep blue makeout sessions with merfolk interface with my view of the inky indigo sky, and I slowly remember where I am, and who I am. I’ve come to love the early morning, though in the old days I’d often sleep until the afternoon. Bartending and Showgirling through the night meant that I’d usually only be crawling into bed when regular folks were getting out. These days, I wake up without an alarm and enjoy my coffee in the privacy of the early hours, before the cogs of production are cranked back into gear. I guess it's about 2:30am, and Fox needs to be up soon to go back to the airport again for a 6:00am replacement flight to New Zealand.
From my comfy nest on the sofa bed in the lounge I have a perfect view of the sky through the floor to ceiling windows that lead out to the balcony. Fox’s apartment is North facing, a gift if you're a cosmonaut, with panoramic views from East to West where you can trace the nightly journey of the Moon, or chill in the pinky-orange haze of the rising and setting Sun. The sky is my favourite shade of indigo blue this early in the morning and when it's clear like this, the stars seem to shimmer like a gently lapping tide. Just off centre of this great cosmic watercolour, I see a bright white point of light shining with such intensity that for a moment I thought it could be Venus, or a tiny Full Moon from some far off place.
In its usual style, my brain kicks into analytical overdrive to generate a Zodiac chart for this passing moment. Our Moon is in its first quarter phase and has already set over in the West for the night. The beaming orb must be Jupiter doing an Esther Williams backstroke though the waves of Cancer. Venus and Mars are at either side of the Capricorn Sun and are steering the followspot that shines across to Jupiter from over on the opposite side of the Earth. I take in the razzle dazzle of the show from the comfort of my bed, and beam back a little love and gratitude in return.
My bedside view of Jupiter and a Moonbeam, taken a few nights later
I sense Fox is stirring from down the hall, and can hear the muffled beat of Britney’s “Work, Bitch” from his alarm. His suitcase has been left untouched and waits by the door, so it'll just be a few moments of face splashing and teeth brushing before it's time for him to head back to the airport again and, fingers crossed, fly over to meet his family in New Zealand for Uncle Tony’s funeral. This is important family work, and I know it’s taking a lot of courage for Fox to keep everything moving after the cancelled flight. I marvel at his resilience as he walks into the lounge dressed and ready. I sit up in bed to have a stretch and we look at each other, clocking the strangeness of this repeated scene that feels like some grim déjà vu.
Fox crosses the foot of my bed and cracks the balcony door for a smoke to calm the mind before he has to leave. Jupiter is making its way West and from my perspective, hovers just above Fox’s head. He glances back over at me, and we share a quiet smile together to gather strength. “Look out there babe,” I say, breaking the silence and pointing over his shoulder. “You see that super bright star? That’s Jupiter.” Fox turns his head to look and on the exact second that he says “Where babe?” a shooting star flashes a glittering streak right over the top of the shining planet, leaving a trail of sparkledust in its wake. “Here babe.” says Jupiter.
Gasps. Silence. We both saw it happen. We both feel the miracle. Jupiter giggles.
“Babe. Did you..?” stammers Fox. “Yep!” I squark back, eyes like dinner plates. Fox's body slams into mine and we hug and wriggle and chirp like a pair of excited pups over the excitement of what we have just seen together. The magic left in the air wraps Fox up and cradles him in a protective blanket all the way to the airport. At 6:20am I send a little message; “She’s onboard?" He replies with a photo of himself, his sister Ebs, and his Dad all sitting side by side on the plane. “Yes she’s onboard.”
I feel ripples of tingly relief rush over my body, however my mind starts to scrutinise the many definitions I’ve learned about Jupiter in Cancer, where that lines up on Fox’s birth chart, all the while weighing up the odds of a shooting star sighting at the same time. “Shut your face.” I tell myself, stopping my brain in its tracks. I don’t want these feelings of wonder to dissipate. Fox is traveling safely. We saw it. It was real. Let it be. Analytics can often kill the magical effect. I lay down again and feel the indigo silk of the morning softly slipping away and as Jupiter disappears out of view over the Western Horizon, the Sun breaks through on the East, its light spilling over the city skyline and bathing everything in a pinky-orange haze.
ARIES SEASON
Saturday 21st March, 2026 - Sunday 19th April, 2026
VI of Swords: Compartmentalisation, dissociation, or intellectual strategy?
Astrology is a system so reliant on numbers, diagrams and tables that when deep in research, the student sometimes forgets to look up at the night sky. Down here in the Southern Hemisphere, we have to juggle some pretty tricky cognitive dissonance when describing the Zodiac based on a Northern Sky that we can’t see, and seasonal weather patterns that happen in reverse down here. Academics salivate over debate. Artistic types find it all such a drag. Breaking the study down into the elements seems a fairly universal practice.
Air = Psychology, Water = Empathy, Earth = Biology, Fire = Alchemy(?)
During Aries Season, folks that feed on a diet of regular Astro content seemed to suffer from a bout of anxious indigestion. Another mission to the Moon was imminent too and, for obvious reasons, jubilation was hard to come by. In the age of Air, hurtling down the information superhighway tickles our dopamine receptors so intensely that we risk turning into scandal junkies, yet somehow, we still manage to scroll past the struggles of our shared Humanity without so much as a bruise to the collective conscience.
Since 2011, Neptune in Pisces has bamboozled us all with promises of universal interconnectivity via the means of social media. The physical boundaries between us were seemingly dissolved, careers skyrocketed with the help of fans and followers, and ideas were shared freely among likeminded folks across the planet, regardless of Hemisphere.
Your sky is my sky.
Neptune left Pisces for another 165 years last January, though not before bursting our bubble on the way out. The damage has been done. Screen addictions are now rife, mental illness diagnoses are through the roof, and friendship don’t mean shit without a wall to post on. How did we get to this point of adrenal oversaturation? And why are the kids so mad at capitalism? Aren’t leadership, expansion and ambition qualities to be admired? Well Grandpa, The Moon remembers everything, even if we pretend not to.
Back in the American Summer of ‘69, when rich kids were dodging the draft and the Apollo 11 Moon Landing turned the sky into a rock concert, Jupiter was copresent with the Moon in Libra only a few degrees away, waiting in the wings and cheering on the show like a proud and loving stage mother. Back in the old days, the mission wasn’t just about whose rocket was biggest, it was a flirtation between Humanity and Infinity. A swaggering declaration, delivered with an American drawl, on behalf of Humankind;
One small step. One giant leap.
If we followed the leaders of the free world, we were told we could climb up a ladder of light and swing open the Universe’s front door like we owned the joint. And maybe, for just over half a century, we believed that we did.
U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!
However, imperialist ideology, like gravity, will always come crashing back down to earth.
Black Salt Moon craters
Flash forward to Aries Season 2026, the rich kids are making redactions, and the Artemis II mission prepares for another lift-off, as the Aries Sun shines its light on the Libra Full Moon. The Goddess of the Hunt is primed to track a well trodden path in the name of Humanity once more, but this time, optimistic Jupiter is far away in Cancer, and forming a square angle to the main event. Its enthusiasm is tainted with skepticism, like it’s seen this formulaic pageantry all before.
“Who’s included in your definition of Humanity?
All of the people of planet Earth?
Or only a select few?" asks Jupiter.
The Age of Information continues to ply us with data like a lonely bartender at the after hours lock in, and now we’re all staggering around drunk on facts but starved for meaning. We once gazed upward in star struck wonder. Now, we wonder which technocratic bigot is footing the bill and pulling the strings.
In the “good old days”, Apollo played out with all the theatrical bravado of a Humanity still enchanted by its own Mythology. Artemis, though, launches in an era where the propaganda of optimisation reigns supreme. We’ve had to trade awe for analytics, magic for metrics. The Moon hasn’t changed, but our gaze has developed a kind of defensive sarcasm, like we’re afraid to be impressed in case someone calls us naïve. American Imperialism didn’t just plant a flag on lunar soil, it planted a narrative. The Moon became less a celestial body and more a geopolitical territory. A cosmic siren with a target on her back that whispers,
“Who gets to write the story of Humanity?”
The answer, for a long time, was sung to the tune of “The Star Spangled Banner.” But Empires always fall, as Suzy Eddie Izzard says, like a flan in a cupboard.
Horticulture on the Moon
If Apollo was a love letter- bold, declarative, and a little self-important- then Artemis feels more like a therapy session, and maybe this is where Jupiter in Cancer might begin to do its healing work. Dr. Gabor Maté considers trauma as some kind of subterranean river, its current shaping everything from our addictions to our anxieties, and posits that the unresolved pain of the individual ripples into the collective unconscious too, resulting in a dam swell of systemic corruption, bigotry and abuse of power. If this is so, then we are returning to the Moon not just to explore, but to process. To ask what it meant that we went there in the first place, and why it didn’t fix us. Because it didn’t.
We still fracture. We still divide, separate and dominate. The Age of Information hasn’t made us wiser so much as it has made our arguments louder, our perceived right to retort only a few taps of the finger away. And yet, when I think of that shooting star flying over Jupiter’s head, something magical persists. Maybe it’s in the way that the Stars, and the Sun, and the Moon refuses to editorialize. They just shine, indifferent to our vitriol, our empires, our academic turf wars.
They don't care whether we arrive in a tin can or a Falcon 9, whether we come as conquerors or as confused primates with a poetry problem. They just exist. And perhaps that’s the real benefit of learning Astrology- not that the stars dictate our fate, or that one theoretical approach based on one set of Mythologies based on one version of the sky reigns supreme, but rather they simply offer us a stage large enough to see all of our many inflated contradictions and inconsistencies.
Apollo showed us that we could reach the heavens. Artemis might show us whether we deserve to or not. At the very least, let's try to look up at the night sky without picking a fight, or rolling our eyes. Analytics can often kill the magical effect.
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions by Larry Mitchell
I’ve journeyed back to my memories of the shooting star many times over the last four weeks. I’ve imagined it as a burning torch lighting the way to some far off Utopia that I visit sometimes in my dreams. It was a really good Omen and I’ve been glad of its company during the shit show that was Aries Season. At the New Moon, my Mum and I made a fresh batch of Black Salt- our own recipe of protection that has kept us safe for many years now. Our magic is a family trade secret, one that she and I have been developing since I was little, passed down to us from Nature.
It all boils down to self determination when we work with Aries, no matter which side of the sky we’re viewing. It’s just a matter of refining our definition of what that principle truly means, and we’d better watch what we say if we’re speaking it on behalf of others.
Each time a new threat to civilisation is uttered, or another border is invaded, or another gauntlet is thrown down in the name of Empire, I remember the indigo sky of that morning back in December. I try to summon the magical blanket of protection that swaddled Fox and I when we saw that star shooting sparks over Jupiter's head, so I can throw it over the shoulders of our Humanity. Times are tough, friends. And magic is real.
When I look at the Omen Days Tarot spread that I pulled at the start of this year, it tells me that I need to put my head down, my bum up, and hit the books again this Taurus Season. The corresponding Omen I found on the 30th of December daunts me a little, but I reckon I’m up for the challenge. Come by the Omen Days page again on May 20th and as the Sun enters Gemini, I’ll share with you what I came up with while pottering around in the hermitage.
Keep your chin up, friends. Go look at the sky.
Taurus Season Coming Soon
