My Scorpio friend came over and cooked us omelette with knife-cut noodles and gai lan. After dinner she spotted a big spider crawling under the table between us and with a plastic box gently released it on the nature strip.

The next day, I send her a photo of a spider web at the lake.

"Witchy", my friend replies.

Spiders symbolise "creativity, destiny and your ability to weave your own reality". I decode omens from the internet as if I am researching my own subconscious.

What feels true right now is feeling like I am on the precipice of weaving something new, but that feeling has lasted for years.

In each reading and in each session, we are on the precipice of something, tipping into a new experience - an epiphany, an insight, a new experience of self, even if nothing has changed but your perception of reality.

𓇢𓆸

I tell my new coach that my intention for this next season is audacity.

That’s my word of the year, she replies, and I know I am in the right place.

Later I remember I wanted to say: abundance too!

But I have enough is something I am actively orienting towards, even as another part of me hungers for more.

𓇢𓆸

"This abundance of berries feels like a pure gift from the land. I have not earned, paid for, nor labored for them. There is no mathematics of worthiness that reckons I deserve them in any way. And yet here they are - along with the sun and the air and the bird and the rain, gathering in towers of cumulonimbi, a distant storm building. You could call them natural resources or ecosystem services, but the Robins and I know them as gifts. We both sing gratitude with our mouths full."

Robin Wall Kimmerer

𓇢𓆸

Last Thursday, Venus entered Scorpio. Venus is now in the nocturnal territory of Mars - stealthy, subtle, subversive. Venus is forced to scramble for resources to soften and connect.

Today, Venus in Scorpio squares Pluto in Aquarius, the first of three square aspects they make to one another from now till December.

Squares represent friction, and here we are asked to reach past the surface to examine and excavate what we value. The process of unearthing our real desires coming into contention with where our love has become entangled with fear.

Our fears of intimacy, charged with the intensity of survival energy, are being asked to transform within and in connection.

𓇢𓆸

It is hard to write about reciprocity without thinking about inter-connectedness and gratitude.

Last week, I borrowed Robin Wall Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry when I walked through the library, unaware of what it was about.

A Virgo Sun, she writes precisely like a scientist and lyrically like a poet.

On a morning my insides felt like tenderised meat, I decide to pick up The Serviceberry.

I stare at the tagline in awe: ‘An Economy of Gifts and Abundance’

After days of feeling growing dissastisfaction, I ask for what I need, surprised when I am met with care and understanding.

I am asked why I feel indignant and I start crying instead. I am upset by the extraction of our labour, exploitation of our energy, demands on our time and attention, the cost of lines we cross in survival when our desire for love and belonging feel ravenous and unquenchable.

𓇢𓆸

I write this as the questions continue to make me cry.

I write all this in the midst of not having lived through the answers yet.

I write this as I let my gut digest the lessons I am learning inside of Virgo season.

I thought of making a list, but my to-do list is already piled high. Maybe tonight I will remember to list out all the gifts that arrived, like discovering a new song that liquefies my heart.

I sweep up rice spilled from the jar. I wipe down the floors on my hands and knees. I refresh my altar with a gifted nutmeg from Grenada, and place a gifted stone carved as a mini mushroom, an ode to my discerning wise owl self that cleverly chooses to camouflage under perceived threat.

𓇢𓆸

Kira Ryberg names the first decan of Scorpio where Venus is traversing through: “Endless Hunger”, where there is a tendency to obsess over what is lacking and disappointing instead of our desires that have already been satiated and satisfied.

Gnawing over past pains, ignoring the gifts present in the room.

When I count out the tangible gifts offered freely to me, it is not even a week and I am again astounded: poppy seed sourdough loaf, kimchi croissant, egg tart, morning bun, a can of Pocari Sweat, oat cap, cheese & chilli oil toastie, four containers of kimchi, two cans of kimchi, a glass of red wine, ticket entry to my first listening room, a profound somatic session, iced latte, Persian lunch, homecooked dinner, another oat cap, silverbeet from my neighbour’s garden, magnolias from my mother’s neighbour’s tree.

I slow down to savour. I lean back to appreciate.

I haven’t even begun to count the intangible gifts I continue to receive.

𓇢𓆸

With Venus now in Scorpio, alienated from the comforts of her home, Venus is confronted with hard truths that are difficult to look at, talk about or even admit to ourselves.

The safety we need to reveal ourselves in relationship requires the right conditions.

Last Venus retrograde I wrote: 'in resonant rooms there is no second guessing your blossoming'.

What are the conditions that allow you to feel safe enough to reveal more of your honest truth without feeling exposed?

Venus in Scorpio is the silent hunter that waits for their desire to be matched in potency.

The loyalty of Venus in Scorpio knows that trust can be given freely, but how can you also find intimacy through staying with yourself even in moments of intensity?

When there are differences, disagreements and conflict, trust consolidates in attempts to harmonise disharmony. You fight and the air is cleared. You tussle in the mud and when you wash off in the clear lake you sense that what was harboured and hidden has now been revealed, clear and deep.

𓇢𓆸

“If the Sun is the source of flow in the economy of nature, what is the ‘Sun’ of a human gift economy, the source that constantly replenishes the flow of gifts?

Maybe it is love.”

Robin Wall Kimmerer

𓇢𓆸

May you slowly untangle fear from love this week,

ᯓ♡
Rachel