Menu
  • Home
        • 2021’s Saturn/Uranus square: the Shattered Mirror

          2021’s Saturn/Uranus square: the Shattered Mirror

          True to the volatile and chaotic nature of Saturn/Uranus periods, the choices that confront us today are both exhilarating, scary, …Read More »
        • Capricorn New Moon: Rise to the Challenge

          Capricorn New Moon: Rise to the Challenge

          As much as we all long to march forward at this first New Moon of the New Year, we still …Read More »
        • Capricorn Meditation: Think like a Mountain

          Capricorn Meditation: Think like a Mountain

          Successful, striving Capricorn holds the wisdom that comes with patiently abiding the ever-moving, ever-changing cycles of time.  At this New …Read More »
    • Close
  • Free Moon
    Phase Report
  • Dana’s Moon
    Workshop
  • The Astrology
    of Bliss
  • Astrology
    Reports
  • Sessions
    with Dana
          • Astrology Readings With Dana

            Astrology Readings With Dana

            I believe in life, in the archetypes, and the capacity of people to write better and better stories for themselves. …Read More »
          • Astrology Mentoring

            Astrology Mentoring

            Are you an astrology student who’d like to turn pro? Hoping to read charts with greater insight and accuracy? Desiring a boost in confidence? …Read More »
          • Boundaries & Emotional Mastery Sessions

            Boundaries & Emotional Mastery Sessions

            From the beginning, my 12th House Moon has attracted plenty of likeminded spirits I call “energy sensitives,” whose intuitively gifted natures benefit …Read More »
    • Close
  • Books
    • [Widget Area]
          • Dana's eBooks

            Dana's eBooks

            Dana’s writing… brings the meaning of the planets to life like no other writer in this field. She’s the Meryl Streep of astrological writers: …” Jeff Jawer, The Mountain Astrologer …Read More »
          • Free eBooks

            Free eBooks

            “It took me years to learn each of these simple principles, and with each one, my Moon practice deepened. May they do the same for you!” …Read More »
          • Books We Love

            Books We Love

            Looking for a good read? Mooncircles authors share a few of the great books on their shelves. Read More »
    • Close
  • Store

Mooncircles

Moon Astrology

Chart Play Current Moon Ritual
  • Contact
  • Subscribe
  • View Cart
  • Facebook
  • Instagram

Taurus Full Moon: Spellbreaking

By Jessica Shepherd

The world is a spell, an enchantment, an amazement, an arabesque of such stunning rhythm and a plot so intriguing that we are drawn by its web into a state of involvement where we forget that it is a game. – Alan Watts

I’ll be honest, I was hoping the content of this essay would be different, that the spellbreaking I’m writing about would be the broken enchantment of Donald Trump. Poof, in a puff of orange gas, gone, many glad to see him as a distant, strange memory. But, as we’ve learned, his spell has more power than we’d thought.

How does a spell begin? I know this from working magic. You must hold an image of your desire in your mind. Then you use words, incantations, that you repeat over and over again. The more you imagine this image, and the more you repeat the incantations, the more your emotions respond and the stronger the spell becomes. This is the essence of spell-working.

There are personal spells, like the spell of romantic love… and collective ones that make a direct leap from the imagination of one person into many, as propaganda. Hitler was good at this. So is Trump, a Trickster figure who, perhaps by sheer luck, spoke just the right words and images to en-trance a majority of our country into believing that he is the answer to their unrest and dissatisfaction. Match an image with the right words, add emotion, repeat, and you have a spell.

Lynn Bell gave an excellent talk at ISAR on spellbreaking, the inspiration for this essay. We each fall under different enchantments in life, which she suggested we explore by planet. The spell of love is Venus. Perhaps the spell of loyalty belongs to Saturn or Moon, misplaced idealism to Jupiter/Neptune, power to Pluto, etc. Each spell has its own compulsive quality, and it’s subsequent dis-enchantment… falling out of love, falling from power, disillusionment over a job, person or place that formerly enticed us. There are toxic spells. Lynn told the story of a young woman whose mother told her she was unwanted from birth — a very toxic spell.

Via Lynn, Carolyn Myss has said, “I don’t think people realize how easily influenced they are, and the worst aspect of it is that, for the most part, the people who cast spells in our lives hardly qualify for holding that kind of power over us. Give that a serious thought for a moment. Breaking a spell takes a great deal of conscious effort, especially if the source of that spell is a person with whom you have a complex relationship. By complex, I mean that the relationship can be loving, competitive, aggressive, or approval-based — or the person could be deceased.”

So how does a spell break– and when? In magick, to break a negative spell you must understand all the components of it, see the situation clearly, and know that you are not a victim, that you have your own power. You strengthen yourself spiritually and mentally, via meditation and affirmation. You remove yourself from any situation that reinforces the spell (ironically, traveling over a body of water, to another country, is a powerful spellbreaker). And finally, there’s the act of ritual, of taking symbolic action. If this sounds similar to a strategy you’d take in a counselor’s office, psychology and magick have big overlaps.

Through client work, Lynn has linked the progressed balsamic Moon phase, and hard transits of Saturn, to times in our lives when old patterns can finally end. I’m a counseling astrologer, so I can only look at the US as though it were my client. In the US Sibly chart, transiting Saturn is taking its sobering first house journey, while shadowy Pluto opposes our Cancer Sun. We’re having an identity crisis. Who are we? So if this were the chart of your child, or your self, would you abandon them/you during a time of crisis, name call, or figure it out? I experienced both of these transits over the past six years; the temptation of my lower nature was strong and compelling. It was hard to love myself through it, to not get pulled under by fear and negativity, but it can be done. We can grow through this. This spellbreaking will take time.

Full Moons are spellbreaking times. Every month we have an opportunity to break hypnotic patterns. We’ve reached the apex of the lunar cycle whereby we gain the fullest illumination, or awareness, of a situation before the Moon starts her process of letting go into the dark hemicycle. At these monthly Moons, we stand in the fullness of life, yet apart from it, can more objectively see what’s come to pass, and what’s ready to be let go.

There’s a lot to let go of at this Full Moon. Grief, shock, anger and fear, for a start. Yet Taurus Full Moon is a gorgeous affirmation of our personal values, and the beauty of this natural world. The Sun still rises each day, and the Moon, too. On my daily walk with my pup, Magnus, we watch hummingbirds drinking from flowers. No election result changes that. The landscape of our future may be uncertain, but when isn’t it? The real questions are, will this era lower the degree of love we have in our hearts, or raise it? Who will we be? What is the best possible response we can have? It’s time to love stronger, harder. To put our values into action. As we’ve learned, love without power is no match for fear with power.

We can break any negative enchantment with our willingness to see our own true power in this situation. Let’s rise, daily, just as the Sun and Moon do, to our better natures (and imagine that for Donald Trump, too, because we need that from him). And let’s acknowledge we are always weaving spells with our words, images, and emotions, and choose only positive, empowering spells in our lives, knowing that the images and words we give our emotions to, and the frequency we repeat them, verbally and in the privacy of our own mind, will create our reality. And so it is.

Filed under:

About Jessica Shepherd

Jessica Shepherd is a writer, astrologer and health coach who has studied and practiced modern astrology since 1992. She is the author of A Love Alchemist’s Notebook: Magical Secrets For Drawing Your True Love Into Your Life (Llewellyn, 2010) and the books Venus Signs: Discover Your Erotic Gifts and Secret Desires Through Astrology
(Llewellyn, 2015) and Karmic Dates and Momentary Mates: The Astrology of the Fifth House (Moonkissd, 2014). In 2018, after living in California for twenty years, she relocated to Honolulu, Hawaii with her husband, dog, and cat. Find out more about Jessica at Moonkissd (www.moonkissd.com).

Comments

  1. CK says

    Nov 15, 2016 at 5:01 am

    Thank you for this thoughtful article. I especially appreciate your urging to send and speak encouraging words over Trump. He needs it and I need it for my healing. After several hours of horrified shock, I found myself finding good and positive outcomes that can come of the election. One of the top good things was the almost overwhelming fear I felt. Fear focuses our attention and creates a powerful pivot point. Shall we (I) pivot into the auto-response system of fight-flight and resist this new reality? Or better, make a rational choice and focus on what is before me, a table of plenty, an incredible blessings of good health, fresh air, happy family and more. We’ve spent much too much time with our energy straining outward and far away, focused on lives far removed from our own. The election was like the snap of a rubber band bringing us back to our own lives. Here, now is where we live. It’s ok to focus on our own lives and our own communities for a while.

    Reply
  2. BEKA says

    Nov 14, 2016 at 8:54 am

    This is fantastic, thank you! So healing in its clarity and simplicity. You provided a portal to expansion her. Blessings!

    Reply
  3. Akasha says

    Nov 13, 2016 at 1:13 am

    I once had a boss like that. Everyone in our department knew how clueless he was, but he would reign by terror and only put on a masterful show for those 15 monthly minutes when he had to make a presentation in front of the big bosses. And during those times he was a different person, a star, I was amazed by! Lying to his teeth, of course, but able to make a good impression every single time. He put his energy in those small moments that mattered in building that false facade and getting promotions. Illusions and spells work in the sphere of politics, media and capitalism…

    Reply
  4. Pat E says

    Nov 12, 2016 at 1:02 pm

    Exactly what I need to help me out right now. I was about to give in to “powerlessness” and you’ve helped me regain my strength and keep on no matter. Now for just the right “spells.” Third eye will help me. And so will that tiny bird sitting on the fence outside my bedroom window yesterday. Thank you!

    Reply

Leave a Reply to BEKA Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Subscribe

The Moon is in its
Crescent Phase

in the
Sign of Aries


Today's Lunar Aspects:

  • Moon sextile Saturn, 2:19pm  Jan 18 2021
  • Moon sextile Jupiter, 8:45pm  Jan 18 2021
  • Moon sextile Sun, 1:09am  Jan 19 2021
  • Moon square Venus, 9:42am  Jan 19 2021

Venus is currently
The Morning Star

in the sign of Capricorn


Enroll in Dana Gerhardt’s Moon Workshop!
Your Venus Unleashed!
Moonshadow Eclipse Report
Moonprints Lunar Report
Steven Forrest’s Transit/Progression report
Mary Shea’s Solar Return report
John Townley’s Lunar Return report

© 2000 - 2021 Mooncircles.com