Astrology of the Week Ahead with Chani Nicholas - The Week of September 19th, 2022: Libra season / the Equinox, and Mercury cazimi

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

In this podcast, New York Times bestselling author and astrologer Chani Nicholas discusses the astrology of the week and what it might mean for us all. The astrology of the week of September 19th, 2022, is all about balance. On Monday, Venus trines Uranus, prompting us to realign our relationship to pleasure and play. On Thursday, the Sun enters Libra heralding the Equinox. This is one of two days per year when the hours of day equal the hours of night. Later that same day, the Sun and Mercury (retrograde) come together in a cazimi, gifting us insights into where our systems of justice, fairness, and equity need to be recalibrated. Then on Friday, Mercury continues its retrograde back into Virgo and makes a messy opposition to Neptune, blurring our boundaries and — ultimately — helping us pinpoint where things need to shift. For more, check out your free daily horoscope on the homepage of the CHANI app. Android users can receive their free daily horoscope on the CHANI website. The CHANI app is currently only available for the iPhone, but we are working as hard and as fast as we can on an Android app. In the meantime, Android users can access our content by purchasing the Android Workshops on chaninicholas.com. The music featured in the podcast was created by Latashá.

We are moving towards the equinox, and that is always an exciting time. It is a time that helps us to hit the refresh button on our lives. It's a change of season. It's a change of light. It's a change of pace. And it reminds us of our own ability to change, to move with the rhythms, and to experience ourselves in different ways. We are not supposed to always function in the same way.

If you think of the entirety of human history, electricity is so new. Like it is a grain of sand on the beach of our existence here on Earth. And so we always moved with the rhythms of the sun. And every equinox and every solstice is a major marker of time for us. And it tells us to shift something, to move with the rhythms of nature. In the northern hemisphere, this is of course related to fall, and that is a turning inward moment. In the southern hemisphere, this is a movement towards spring, and that is a moment of rebirth and awakening. So wherever you are, you'll notice or take note of this shift in light

and how it impacts your body. And that's one of the most important teachings of the seasons. It's to not expect ourselves to function in the same way all the time. Our work, our sleep, our way of socializing, our way of eating, a way of taking care of our body, what our body, minds, selves, relationships, communities need changes with the seasons. And to acknowledge that is to mark time. And to mark time is a way to lead and live out a meaningful life. It's a beautiful reminder. that we are part of this cosmos. We are part of nature. We are part of the rhythms

that are beyond capitalist production in modes of being. For so much of our human history, we would go to sleep when the sun went down or shortly thereafter and rise when the sun woke up in the morning when it had its daily rebirth. We had a relationship to darkness that was sacred.

We had a relationship with the night, just as much as we did with the day, there was that demarcation of the natural rhythm of the sun's rise and fall. And this week's Equinox is an invitation to reconnect with that relationship. Hello and welcome. This is the astrology of the week ahead podcast, and I'm your host, Chani Nicholas. In this podcast, we look at the astrology of the upcoming week and how it will be landing for all of us collectively. For a more personalized reading that dives into the ways that this week's astrology will play out for you, download the Channy app for iPhone.

That was a long intro, I know, but I'm really passionate about the seasons, about the sun, and about daytime and nighttime. And I think that part of our imbalance is our loss of connection. to the night, to nocturnal life. We're so fixated on the day and on light, on screens, on electricity, and we're also so fixated on youth and on things that are bright and sparkly. And we have such a hard time honoring the wisdom of the dark, of the night, of the nocturnal self, and of aging and of moving into spaces where we have last. conscious control over everything. That might be a little bit of a leap to connect our obsession

with light, with youth, but there's something there that we're out of balance. And moving into Libre season is all about rebalancing. So my invitation to you, no matter where you are in the world, is to think about your relationship to both the daylight and to the night and the lack of light and how often do you allow yourself to be in or can you find yourself in darkness? It's really hard if we're in cities because there is just light all the time. And the body does feel, maybe the mind doesn't all the time until we can kind of cope with things, but the body does get such relief from total darkness at night or from at least moments of total darkness. Of course, before electricity, we had the full moon moment.

which were really stimulating. They still are. But imagine if there was no electricity in that full moon light was the thing we would go by. This week is really interesting because we're moving towards a new moon. So not only are we in the equinox moment, we are in this major turning point of the year, but by the end of the week, we also have a new moon. And that means that the sky, the night sky that is, is really dark because the moon is just waning, waning, waning, waning, waning, waning all week to be totally invisible by Sunday. And that's a really special configuration, I think. Again, equinoxes and solstices are quite potent and powerful in regards to an astrological

understanding and paradigm of looking at the world because these are points of initiation. Econoxes and solstices correlate to the sun's entrance into the tropical sign of either Aries, Cancer, Libra, or Capricorn, all of which are cardinal signs. And cardinal signs are about initiating something new because they're related to the sun's entrance into a new season. And so this is starting energy. This is initiatory energy. this is energy of a new thing and we get to work with that. And because it is an equinox and a new moon at the same time, there is a kind of power to this combo that can help us to both understand where we're out of balance,

but also to think about the things that might bring us back in to balance. And I'm a huge proponent of sleep, which might sound ridiculous, but it's true. I think most of us don't get enough quality sleep. We don't get enough darkness. We don't get enough downtime. We don't get enough time even before we sleep to let our systems come down off the day or off social media or off of media in general. We don't give ourselves mostly the time to let our systems wind down.

Maybe try turning the light. down with the sun. Try looking at daylight first thing in the morning before you look at a screen. Also goes a long way because that's how we're made. We were made to like see the sun's light. We weren't made actually to take in all of this blue light, obviously, from screens. So those are some ideas about how to work with this moment and this solstice to think about your relationship to daylight and to darkness and to see what you could do possibly to balance anything that feels imbalanced. And just experiment with it. Now, an equinox and a new moon within a couple days of each other is a major refresh.

And I want to go through the timing of everything this week and some of the astrological signatures to watch out for and work with. So on Monday, September 19th, we have Venus in Virgo, Euroness and Torres. I love this combo because it is about updating our relationship to pleasure and play and enjoyment and finding new ways to be in relationship or finding new ways to feel connected with one another. This is a moment to think about, to feel into and to be with your intuition in regards to what you value and what helps you to feel connected to your values, what helps you to feel like you're in good relationships, because we all know that relationships

are literal abundance without one another and without a feeling of connectedness. Life sucks to be just blunt about it. Now, the next thing that happens is on Thursday the 22nd, so not a lot. happens between Monday and Thursday. But on Thursday the 22nd, at 604 p.m. Pacific time. So for time zones later than Eastern standard time, we're talking about Friday the 23rd, the sun enters Libra and the Equinox begins 604 p.m. Pacific time on Thursday the 22nd.

But not only is it an equinox, a couple hours later at 1150 p.m. Pacific time, So again, for most people, that will be actually on Friday the 23rd. The sun and Mercury come together to make their inferior conjunction. This happens when Mercury is retrograde. Mercury is snuggled in between the sun and the earth. So it's really close to us. And it's the Kazimi of Mercury's retrograde. And it's a really potent moment for downloads and helping us make sense of what has been going on

during this retrograde. Now, I will say all of this happens in an opposition to Jupiter. And Mercury has been in an opposition to Jupiter during this first part of its retrograde, which has been quite helpful. I hope. I'm recording this in the past. So I haven't lived through the Mercury retrograde yet. But from my perspective, it is an abundance of wisdom or a lot of news. that's hopeful or helpful or prosperous in some way, shape, or form that we're needing to review. So in this moment, on the 22nd of September slash 23rd, depending on your time zone, the shift that's happening and the change that's occurring is also a downloadable moment. It is also a moment that will help us to glean insights.

again about where we are in balance and out of balance, about our relationships, about justice, about fairness, about equity. And look, if this is happening during the nighttime for you, which it will be for a lot of people, this is a beautiful moment to listen to your dreams. So on the night of the 22nd before you go to bed, asking your dreams a question and then see what happens during the night and see if you get any answers. and then write them down in the morning. It's a great time to journal before bed. It's a great time to journal in the morning, if that's not part of your regular practice, either or. And it's a great time to be open to the wisdom that comes in the darkness,

in those liminal spaces. You know, sometimes when you wake up in the middle of the night and you get a message or you have little remnants of a dream and you dismiss it, but then the next day it comes true or you realize that that was commenting on something that was going to happen. That's the kind of potent astrology that's occurring on Thursday slash Friday. So tune in to those liminal spaces and also see if you can make your bedroom as dark as possible. Give yourself, give yourself that healing and see what it helps you to tap in. to while you're asleep. Then on Friday, Mercury retrogrades back into Virgo, which is, on one hand,

good because Mercury rules Virgo. On the other hand, it's going to start to make an opposition to Neptune, which is not as good. So we're going to move into messier Mercury retrograde moments. Speaking of Neptune, Venus is also in Virgo, and it's going to be opposing Neptune on Saturday the 24th. this is good for pleasure. This is good for escapism. This is good for giving you a hangover on any level metaphorical or literal. This is not great for boundaries and relationships and it's not great if you tend to like fantasy more than reality, which who doesn't. So this part of the week by the weekend, by Friday, Saturday, we're moving into some territory that's a little bit sloppier. We talked about this last week when the sun did this. And it's a little bit more

confusing. So if relationship issues are tending towards being complicated or challenging, this will amp all of that up. It's not going to last for long, although Mercury is going to hover around that opposition to Neptune. So Mercury retrograde feelings and moments are definitely going to start to pick up now. So be extra dedicated to double checking your data from this point on. It's going to be real. And then on Sunday at 255 p.m. Pacific time, the new moon in Libra occurs. And we will go into that in depth in next week's reading because it happens after the weekly content updates. And I'll just say that this is a beautiful new moon to work with. Given the complications of the Mercury retrograde, etc. This is still a gorgeous new moon to work with because

it is in that exact opposition to Jupiter. And it is an equinox new moon. It's happening so close to the equinox that it feels like this really energized new beginning that also is connected to a lot of possibilities and abundance. So we will talk about that in your reading both this week and next week on the Chani app, on the homepage, under your week, go to your reading for this week, go to alter suggestions, journal prompts, and rituals, and you'll find this week a equinox ritual to do, and next week we'll have the new moon ritual content in the app as of September 25th, noon Pacific Time. Thank you all so much for leaving app reviews in the app store. They make such a huge difference and they mean the world to us. I wanted to share a short one with you called my

favorite astrological app. This is the only app I pay for because it is truly helpful. I love the focus on the self-guidance, connection, healing, and guides of meditations, affirmations and rituals. If you want an introduction to astrology, this app is perfect for you. Okay, y'all, that's the reading. Happy, happy, happy equinox. I'm so excited for this week. I hope it's filled with blessings and a lot of rebalancing. And keep your eye out for messy Mercury retrograde moments at the end of the week.

As always, we'll get through this together. Bye for now.