Astrology

Lelia

Jun 27, 20234 min read

Crabwise: The Wisdom of Cancer

In Lauren Groff’s Matrix, there’s a wonderful character called Nest. From her name to her every action, she embodies the healing,...

The Great Work of Saturn: Grave and Persistent Effort

Lelia

May 2, 20231 min read

The Great Work of Saturn: Grave and Persistent Effort

“ A Worn Path ” is one of Eudora Welty’s most powerful short stories, and if you've read it, you know the epic journey Phoenix Jackson...

A Uranian Anthem: Navigating Bolts from the Blue

Lelia

Apr 11, 20232 min read

A Uranian Anthem: Navigating Bolts from the Blue

Having just had a thunderbolt knock me out of my routine and off my comfortable perch, I’ve been thinking about Uranus, the Lord of...

Learning from Clichés: The Trite but True in Astrology

Lelia

Oct 15, 20222 min read

Learning from Clichés: The Trite but True in Astrology

In one of Steven Forrest’s books, he mentions that every astrological sign could be reduced to a few clichés. That cliché might be a...

Gibbons, Gornick, Hardy, Bauby and Living Your Great Story

Lelia

May 21, 20227 min read

Gibbons, Gornick, Hardy, Bauby and Living Your Great Story

Great Story Coaching * outlines the 3 ways we tend to narrate our lives to ourselves. The victim story (similar to Parul Sehgal’s...

Lelia

Apr 30, 20224 min read

Edmund White, Memoir & Astro Reading

About halfway through My Lives by Edmund White, I expected to give it a two-star rating. White spends so much time narrating his abject...

Lelia

Apr 2, 20224 min read

Megan Marshall and the Art of Biography

As a biographer Megan Marshall plays very close to the vest. She doles out her subject in single words or phrases, holds stories out of...

Lelia

Mar 14, 20224 min read

Uranian Freedom & Vita Sackville-West

Early in Vita Sackville-West's All Passion Spent , the elderly protagonist Lady Slane says, “Besides, I have considered the eyes of the...

Desire in Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Lelia

Mar 12, 20224 min read

Desire in Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

In Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Audre Lorde uses the erotic, or what Mary Karr might call the carnal, to deeply embed herself in her...

Lelia

Mar 9, 20222 min read

Saturn and Your Great Work

Accomplishment is one of the ways we measure our lives, but in terms of what gives meaning to our lives, accomplishments are often merely...

An Imaginary Astrology Reading for Joyce Carol Oates: Part I

Lelia

Feb 18, 20226 min read

An Imaginary Astrology Reading for Joyce Carol Oates: Part I

Imagine that Joyce Carol Oates*—who does not seem the type to sit with an astrologer, but let’s pretend—came to see me for a New Year’s...

Lelia

Jan 11, 202210 min read

Jane Austen, Joan Didion & Self-respect

Don’t you think Persuasion the best Jane Austen novel ever? It’s by far my favorite. That’s kind of a joke because most characters in...

Light and Dark: Awakening in Life's Shadows

Lelia

Dec 29, 20212 min read

Light and Dark: Awakening in Life's Shadows

I’m trying to reread John O'Donohu's Anam Cara, and can’t stomach the pollyanna sunshine spiritual message. O’Donohue writes, “Light is...

Lelia

Dec 26, 20211 min read

Your Soul's Original Instructions

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about Indigenous Americans’ Original Instructions. “These are not ‘instructions’ like...

Mars as Imaginary Friend and Creative Muse

Lelia

Dec 24, 20212 min read

Mars as Imaginary Friend and Creative Muse

In an interview in The Guardian, Maxine Hong Kingston describes a male alter ego from her memoir I Love a Broad Margin to My Life....

Lelia

Dec 20, 20213 min read

Eudora Welty + Aries + Guilt

In One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty says her short story"Livvie" is “about youth and old age: the death of an old, proud, possessive...

Lelia

Dec 8, 20213 min read

Memoir and the Moon

I used to pay a lot of attention to the first lines in books. I had a notebook where I wrote them down and classified them according to...

Arbitray Stupid Goal and Attracting Perfect Customers

Lelia

Sep 14, 20213 min read

Arbitray Stupid Goal and Attracting Perfect Customers

Artbitrary Stupid Goal is excellent. I bought it having seen that it's one of Austin Kleon's book club picks and I devoured it, both...

Wandering with Jean Shinoda Bolen, Charlie Warzel and Edith Wharton

Lelia

Sep 7, 20213 min read

Wandering with Jean Shinoda Bolen, Charlie Warzel and Edith Wharton

As I read through Crones Don’t Whine by Jean Shinoda Bolen, I found myself dismissing it as fluff. It seemed to be just a collection of...

Dominique Christina, the 4th House and Toni Morrison

Lelia

Aug 12, 20212 min read

Dominique Christina, the 4th House and Toni Morrison

I loved Dominique Christina’s This is Woman’s Work. It’s not a scholarly work on archetypes, it’s her lived experience of these...