Alright Mandala64 walkers… how did Gate 15: Extremes land for you over the past week? Did the swings feel familiar, or did something in you find an unexpected peace with the range? Drop a note about your Solstice experience in the comments!

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Gate 52: The Story

We have just crossed the solstice threshold, the longest day behind us now, and the Sun is moving into Gate 52 in the very first degrees of Cancer. The light is still full, but something has tipped. If Gate 15 was the exultant crest of the wave, Gate 52 is the moment after, when the water begins its long, patient return to shore.

Gate 52 is called Stillness, and it lives in the Root Center - the center of pressure, adrenaline, and the drive to move. So although it is about inaction, this is not a gate that lives in a peaceful corner of the chart. It lives in the most pressurized center in the bodygraph and carries a single instruction: stop. Because the mountain does not need to do anything to be what it is.

Gate 52 holds the energy of the Buddha under the tree while everyone else is plowing the field - and everyone around it is a little annoyed about that. The world wants this energy of the Mountain to be a motor. Gate 52 knows that its deepest gift comes from concentration, not action, and that the right focus cannot be forced into being.

The shadow of this gate, in the Gene Keys, is Stress. The feeling that arrives when you cannot locate stillness inside yourself - when the pressure of the Root builds and builds with nowhere to go, and you start bouncing between restlessness and emptiness. The fear inside Stress is that if you stop moving, you will miss the thing you are supposed to be concentrating on. The gift is Restraint - which Richard Rudd describes as “no unnecessary movement”.

This is the tortoise pulling its limbs inside the shell, the ability to hold a question without grabbing at an answer. Restraint is what makes the eventual focus clean and true. And the siddhi, the highest frequency, is Stillness itself - a still-point so deep it is no longer an effort, it is simply what you are. “A stilling of the wave”, Rudd calls it.

We arrive here the week after the solstice,,when the external world is at its most vivid and full, but something in our energetic bodies is already curling inward to the shell of Cancer' season. Gate 52 knows this rhythm and it sits with what is here.

Gate 52 in the Body

Gate 52 lives in the Root Center, which occupies the base of the bodygraph and corresponds physically to the base of the spine and the adrenal glands. The Root is a pressure and a motor center both - it generates adrenal energy, that urgent hum of the body’s alarm system, and pushes it upward through the chart in search of release.

When the Root is healthy and aligned, that pressure is purposeful. It fuels focus, drives action, and powers the kind of sustained effort that produces real things. When it is dysregulated, the adrenal system runs hot on empty, creating anxiety, restlessness, and the exhausting sense that you should always be doing something more.

Gate 52 specifically channels Root pressure into the quality of concentrated stillness. Think of the base of your spine settling, your sacrum dropping, and your whole nervous system lengthening downward into the earth. People with this gate defined often have a relationship to the body’s resting state that others without it defined find puzzling. They can go very still, very focused, for long stretches, and they truly need that quality of collected attention to function well. Without it, the Root’s pressure becomes noise. The body gets caught between the imperative to move and the gate’s insistence on stillness first, and what results is that anxious paralysis of not knowing what to begin.

Season, Channel & Polarity

Season: We are now beginning the Gèn lower trigram- as the summer solstice complete, we move from 8 trigrams of Kūn (Earth) (which we were in since Beltane/Mayday) to Gèn (Mountain).

And the Mountain holds still. It does not reach toward the world but waits for the world to come to it. This is the felt quality of post-solstice midsummer - not the exuberant outward movement of spring or the bright apex of the solstice, but the real first turn inward as the days begin to get darker.

The upper trigram of Gate 52 is also Gèn, which makes this a doubled Mountain hexagram. Mountain over Mountain. Two ranges stacked, one behind the other. The image from Wilhelm’s IChing translation is sparse and exact: the image of Keeping Still. The assignment is to not let your thoughts go beyond your present situation. Be here. Only here.

Channel: Gate 52 reaches toward Gate 9 in the Sacral Center, forming the 9-52 Channel of Concentration. Gate 9 is the Gate of Focus - it carries the Sacral’s deep yes-or-no attunement to detail, along with the ability to stay with something and go deep rather than broad. Gate 52 needs Gate 9 to know where to point the stillness. Gate 9 needs Gate 52 to be quiet long enough to hear what the Sacral is actually responding to. The channel is called a Format Energy, which means it shapes the entire logical circuitry of the chart when it is defined. The stillness here is not personal, structural. It creates the conditions in which the collective’s logical process can actually work.

Polarity: Directly across the wheel is Gate 58, the Gate of Vitality - the joyous, ebullient pressure to make life better, to move, correct, and improve with a kind of contagious aliveness. Gate 58 and Gate 52 are the two fuel sources of the logical circuit, and they could not be more different in character. Gate 58 wants to be out in the fields. Gate 52 wants to be the Buddha under the tree. The axis between them is the full breath.

Stillness and vitality need each other the way any inhale needs its exhale. The joy that Gate 58 carries can only be sustainable when Gate 52’s gift of restraint is also present. And Gate 52’s stillness, left alone without Gate 58’s animating spark, becomes inertia. The polarity asks us: can we be still and vibrantly alive at the same time?

A Somatic Practice for Gate 52

Find somewhere you can actually sit down and stay for a few minutes - outside if you can, or with a window nearby. We are in the very beginning of Cancer season, and our bodies have just been through the peak light of solstice. There is a quality of settling available right now that was not there a week ago. Let yourself feel into it.

Bring your attention to the base of your spine, the sacrum, the very bottom of the structure that holds you upright. Feel the weight of your body dropping into wherever you are sitting. The Root Center lives here - all that pressure, all that adrenaline, all that urgency. Let it descend. Let it find the roots underground. This gate asks you to let the pressure you’re feeling settle toward the earth instead of firing upward into action.

Sit with that for a moment. Notice what is there, in your root center when you are not trying to concentrate on anything in particular. The mountain does not seek its focus. It becomes still, and eventually the right thing arrives.

Creativity Prompts

Pull out your favorite notebook, your paints, whatever calls to you, and give yourself 15 uninterrupted minutes with one of these:

Write about your relationship to stillness - and be honest. Is stillness restful to you, or is it a little terrifying? Where does the pressure go in your body when you stop moving? Write toward the specific physical sensation of waiting without knowing what you are waiting for, and then write toward a moment when the right focus finally arrived. What did that feel like in the body?

Draw or paint a doubled mountain - range behind range, the visible peak and the one behind it. What is hidden in the farther mountain? What does it mean for something vast to place itself behind something else, to let the nearer thing be what is seen?

With your Mandala 64 deck, pull the Gate 52 card and sit with both sides. Where is Stress showing up for you right now as the pressure to keep moving before you know where you are going? And where is Restraint available - where could you afford to be still a little longer than feels comfortable, trusting that the right focus will find you?

Next up: Gate 39 · Provocation, the Cancer gate that follows stillness into the heat of summer (and rings in the 4th of July every year in the US…).

xo, Alison

Treat yo’self… get a deck!

If you’d like to have a physical, IRL way to deepen your learnings of Human Design, the I’Ching & the Gene Keys- and how they fit into the Zodiac Wheel and the Bodygraph, you can order a copy of my Mandala 64 deck! I have a few decks left in hand and not sure when the next preorder will be, so get yours while it’s hot! <3

Mandala 64 is a learning and oracle deck I created last year, with one card for each gate, plus 14 cards for each of the planets and luminaries that transit through the gates.

My favorite practice is to pull the card for the current gate and place it on your altar for the week. Let it sit in your field. It’s one of the most embodied ways I know to learn the gates - not through study but through slow, repeated encounter.

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Welcome back to Living the Spiral: Magicians!

So this one was a wander.

I sat down with Petah Raven, editor, writer, and the mind behind Pandora’s Lost Gift on Substack, and we just... followed the threads.

To give you a little context for how we found each other: I’m an astrologer and Human Design guide, and for the last year a significant thread running through my work has been the myth of Inanna - the Sumerian queen of heaven and earth who descends through seven gates into the underworld, stripping away everything she knows, and returns transformed. I’ve been painting her, and I’m writing a book called The Great Below that maps the stages of her descent to the body and the wheel of the year. She has been a real presence in my life and work over this Fire Horse year, not just as a symbol but as something I’d call a genuine visitation.

What really got me was what happened after his visitation: he went and looked up the asteroid Ishtar in his chart and found her sitting exactly on a significant transit point at that moment. She had shown up in the sky to mirror what had happened in the meditation.

That sent me straight to my own chart, and I found her right on my Mars in my first house - conjunct the planet of desire and will, right at the surface of the body and the self. It reframed so much for me. Mars in the first house is the part of you that leads, acts, desires, and moves into the world without apology. And there she was. The queen of heaven and earth, the one who descends by choice and comes back fiercer than she left, sitting right on that point.

It changed the way I read my own personal mythology. And finding a male-bodied writer engaging thoughtfully and personally with goddess mythology from the inside was rare enough that I wanted to have a longer conversation.

I’m really glad I did.

We started with the origin story behind Petah’s Substack name (Pandora’s vessel was a jar, not a box, and it wasn’t actually Pandora who opened it), and from there we were off.

We talked about words as spells - which is where the episode title comes from. The Old English wyrd is where we get both “word” and “weird.” Spelling is casting spells. We are all, at any given moment, weaving something with our language. That thread ran all the way through, from runes to propaganda to the magician card to what it means to build a narrative versus just having good intentions.

We got into the goddess, polytheism vs. monotheism, and why Petah thinks anything “mono” is kind of a bad idea spiritually and psychologically. We talked about the non-binary figures in the Inanna myth, imaginal cells, the tai chi symbol, Fuxi and Nüwa (see their image below!), and how yin and yang in Chinese is actually one word - because they were never meant to be separated.

There was a moment where we talked about the internet as a hyperlinked oracle and then mourned the scroll replacing the surf. And another where Petah made the point that magic gets dangerous when you hand it to people who haven’t earned the wisdom to wield it, which feels very true right now.

The whole thing was that kind of conversation where you look up and an hour has passed and you’ve somehow gotten from Pandora’s jar to Tolkien to the Daoist cosmogony to the etymology of Thoth’s name.

Petah has a book coming out soon called The Living Language of Tarot, and I cannot wait to work with it.

You can find Petah’s writings on Pandora’s Lost Gift here on Substack.

🎧 Listen to the episode in the substack player, or find it wherever you listen to podcasts:

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Pandora's Lost Gift | Meaning, Myth, and Mysticism

A place where nobody dared to go ... stories and musings on all things weird, wonderful, and mysterious. Come for the occult, stay for the tiramisu.

By Petah Raven

About Alison & Living the Spiral

Alison Dale is an artist, writer, astrologer & human design guide based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work lives at the intersection of ancestral systems that track the seasons and the planets, embodiment practices, creativity, and earth-based spirituality. She hosts the podcast Living the Spiral, and offers astrology and human design readings as well as 1-on-1 astro-somatic coaching packages at hearthandspiral.com.

Join her here on Substack by clicking the button below, and follow along on Instagram at @hearthandspiral.

If this podcast has ever helped you find your way back to yourself, the best thing you can do is subscribe to the show wherever you are listening, leave a five star review, or share this episode with someone who might resonate with it. It truly makes a difference in getting these conversations to the people who need them. Thanks for being here. <3

Part one goes through the history of Cancer as a sign going all the way back to Babylon, the six Human Design gates the sun transits through during the season, and all of the major transits of Cancer season 2026. So go ahead and listen to that as well if you’d like the larger picture first.

A quick note for those new to rising sign horoscopes: rising sign horoscopes are more accurate than sun sign horoscopes because they reflect your actual house structure in the chart, which is where the action shows up in your lived experience. The rising sign is the sign that was coming up over the horizon when you were born, and it sets up where all the different astrological houses fall in your chart. If you don’t know your rising sign, you can look it up at astro.com with your birth date, time, and location.

You can listen to all twelve, or jump ahead to your rising sign, your sun sign, your moon sign, or any placement you feel called to. Take what resonates and leave the rest.

Alright. Let’s begin.

Jump to your Rising Sign’s Timestamp:

00:00 Welcome and Overview

01:50 How Rising Signs Work

02:43 Aries Rising: Home & Roots

06:48 Taurus Rising: Voice Care

10:50 Gemini Rising: Values & Worth

17:15 Cancer Rising: Season Reset

21:31 Leo Rising: Inner Retreat

27:02 Virgo Rising: Community Check

31:39 Libra Rising: Career Nurture

36:12 Scorpio Rising: Big Beliefs

40:09 Sagittarius Rising: Deep Healing

45:33 Capricorn Rising: Relationship Axis

50:50 Aquarius Rising: Routines & Health

55:36 Pisces Rising: Creative Bloom

01:00:11 Closing and Resources

Thank you all for being here for the Cancer season horoscopes!

If you’d like the bigger picture of Cancer season, the history of the sign, the Human Design gates, and all the major transits, go back and listen to part one.

The rising sign horoscopes speak to this season, but they also touch on longer arcs - Chiron moving into Taurus is an eight-year transit, and Jupiter entering Leo is a year-long one. So some of what I’m describing here extends well beyond Cancer season itself.

Go Deeper: Get a Cancer Guidebook for your favorite crab friend!

If you’re a Cancer, happy birthday season! Grab a 32-page Cancer Season PDF Guidebook for yourself or another crab in your life!

I made this book with lots of love and care, and it’s filled with the astrological and human design mythology of the season, ritual tips for the holy day of Litha (summer solstice), somatic prompts to attune you to the energy of early summer, and much more….

Get your Guidebook!

About Me

I’m Alison Dale. You can find me at hearthandspiral.com where I offer astrology and Human Design readings, including Soulshine Readings that look at your astrology and Human Design together, your timing, and what’s asking to move in your world right now. I also have the Mandala 64 Walk on Substack at livingthespiral.com, where I walk the 64 Human Design gates in real time with written posts and somatic prompts delivered to your inbox.

If you’re listening out in the world of Apple or Spotify, a review or a star rating goes such a long way. And if you’d like to receive this podcast in your inbox, subscribe at livingthespiral.com.

If you want a deeper look at how this season will show up in your personal chart, her books are open at hearthandspiral.com.

Book a Reading

Let me know how Gemini season went and what you’re feeling as Cancer season arrives in the comments below, or click on the heart to help this reach more people! Happy beehive cluster/emo teen angst season!

xoxo

Alison

One last thing:

Here’s the Mandala 64 Walk article for this week, too! Gate 15: The Gate of Extremes:

This post is coming to you a few days late- apologies! The sun entered Gate 15 on June 19, which this year happened to fall on the same weekend as both the Summer Solstice and Father’s Day - a full and intense and beautiful few days that kept me away from the keyboard. I guess there is something fitting about being late to write the gate of natural rhythms because life was calling me outside. I hope your solstice weekend was sweet.

And - how did Gate 12: Caution land for you over the past week? Did anything ask you to hold back, to wait for the right moment before speaking? I’d love to hear in the comments.

Do you have Gate 15 defined in your chart? Drop a note below and tell me how you feel it.

Leave a comment

My books are open for July!

If you’d like to learn more about YOUR Human Design and Gene Keys as they relate to your astrology, you can book a reading with me. It’s been life-changing for me to get to know the specific gates where my natal planets live in my chart, and I’d love to explore yours with you as well.

My Books Are Open

Gate 15: The Story of Extremes

We have arrived at the Summer Solstice gate, the longest day, the fullest light. Gate 15 is one of the eight G-Center gates that mark the Celtic holy days, and it sits right here at the threshold between Gemini and Cancer, between the world of ideas and the world of feeling, between the airy motion of late spring and the deep rootedness that summer asks of us.

Gate 15 is called Extremes, and the name is spot-on. This gate carries the love of humanity in all of its wild variation. It is the gate that says: people are not supposed to be consistent. Rhythms change. Some days you need to move fast and stay up late and talk to everyone, and other days you need to go quiet and stay close to home. And both of those things are part of the same person. Gate 15 holds that paradox without flinching, understanding that the full range of human expression, from the very ordinary to the ecstatic, is what love actually looks like.

The shadow of Gate 15 in the Gene Keys is Dullness. This is the low feeling that sets in when you believe life is supposed to have more charge in it, when you keep expecting a spark and finding the same Monday morning repeating forever. The fear underneath Dullness is that nothing will ever feel alive again. But Dullness in this gate is also a teacher. When the ordinary stops feeling like enough, Gate 15 invites you to look closer, to let the flatness open instead than fighting it. The gift that lives inside that opening is Magnetism, the gift. This a quality of presence that is rooted, unhurried, attuned to what is actually here rather than reaching for what should be here. People who have worked through the shadow of Gate 15 often carry this quality you can feel before they say a word. Something in them is in rhythm with life itself, and it draws people in.

The siddhi of this gate is Florescence, which Richard Rudd describes as the verb of bursting into flower. Summer solstice is the moment when ordinary life has the potential to become indistinguishable from the sacred. You cannot force Florescence, but you can tend the conditions for it, and those conditions have everything to do with learning to love the diversity of life that is right in front of you.

Gate 15 in the Body

Gate 15 lives in the G Center, which sits at the center of the bodygraph both visually and physically, in the area of the chest around the heart and sternum. The G Center is the center of identity, direction, and love. It is the magnetic core of the design, the place that orients you in space and pulls you toward what you are here to love. When this center is open and functioning well, there is a sense of being carried, moving through life with a kind of ease that is receptive to what arises.

Gate 15 connects the G Center down to Gate 5 in the Sacral, forming the Channel of Rhythm. The Sacral is a pure life-force motor. When Gate 15 is lit up, it is reaching toward that motor, toward the deep generative hum of the body that says yes or no, that responds to what is alive and declines what is not. The rhythm this gate carries is a Sacral rhythm - it cannot be scheduled or decided by the mind. It moves when it moves and rests when it rests, and the G Center holds that oscillation with spacious love.

Physically, Gate 15 is associated with the pericardium surrounding the heart, the liver and the blood, with the physical rhythms of the body that are always changing and that require us to adapt. People with this gate defined often have a deep relationship to their energy levels, noticing clearly when they are in a high-tide phase and when they need to pull back. The body’s natural modulation between extremes is the gate working exactly as it is meant to. There is no version of Gate 15 that looks like a steady, predictable, even-keeled day after day. The invitation is to trust that the full range is the rhythm.

Season, Channel & Polarity

Season: We cross a major threshold here. The lower trigram of the Mandala shifts at the Summer Solstice from Kūn, the Earth - the vast receptive field that has held us through the long Beltane-to-Solstice stretch - to Gèn, the Mountain. The Mountain holds still. It does not reach. It gathers what comes to it rather than going out to meet the world. This shift is the whole felt quality of midsummer, that turning inward just at the moment of peak light. The upper trigram of Gate 15 is Kūn, Earth - so this gate itself is Earth over Mountain, which is Hexagram 15 in the I Ching: Qiān, Modesty. A mountain that places itself beneath the earth is the image of hidden greatness, of something vast choosing not to announce itself. The I Ching says modesty always brings success. This is the quality that Gate 15’s magnetism grows from - a presence that is not performing.

Channel: Gate 15 completes the Channel of Rhythm with Gate 5, the Gate of Fixed Rhythms, in the Sacral Center. These two gates describe a polarity within the channel itself. Gate 5 brings the need for consistency, for routines and patterns that feel grounding. Gate 15 brings the extremes that disrupt and expand any routine that has become too tight. Together, the Channel of Rhythm is exactly what its name says: not a fixed tempo, but the living alternation between pattern and disruption, regularity and surprise, the kind of rhythm that a season makes.

Polarity: Directly across the wheel sits Gate 10, the Love of Self, which is the Winter Solstice gate. Gate 10 is about self-empowerment, having a code for how you move through the world - a personal conduct, a way of being that comes from deep internal knowing rather than needing outside opinions. Gate 15 loves all of humanity in its variation and extreme range. Gate 10 loves the self with that same quality of acceptance. The axis between them is the whole arc of love: you cannot genuinely extend toward others what you have withheld from yourself, and the love of self that Gate 10 carries is the root that makes Gate 15’s magnetism possible.

A Somatic Practice for Gate 15

Find a way to be outside if you can, or near a window where you can see some piece of the natural world. Feel the season - the specific quality of the light, the temperature, whatever is in the air right now. This is not a metaphor. Gate 15 is a body-level attunement to what is actually happening, and the Summer Solstice is a real event in the natural world that the body registers whether or not the mind is paying attention.

Place one hand on your sternum, in the center of the chest. This is the G Center in the body, the magnetic core. Just feel the warmth of your hand there. Let your breath move without directing it. Then ask yourself, without needing an answer: what rhythm am I actually in right now? Not the rhythm you think you should be in. The one that is actually moving through you. Let that be enough for a moment. The gate of Extremes does not ask you to smooth yourself out. It asks you to know where you are in the swing.

Creativity Prompts

Pull out your favorite notebook, your paints, whatever calls to you, and give yourself 15 uninterrupted minutes with one of these:

Write about a rhythm in your life that keeps swinging between extremes. It might be your energy, your social appetite, your creative output, or your need for solitude. Write it without trying to fix or manage it. Let yourself describe the full range, both ends of the swing, and what it feels like to be in the middle of the movement. What if that oscillation were actually intelligent?

Draw or paint the image of a mountain placed beneath the earth, greatness making itself humble. What does hidden worth look like? What kind of presence comes into a room without announcing itself?

With your handy Mandala 64 deck (I still have a few left in this order!) , pull the Gate 15 card and sit with both sides. Where is Dullness showing up in your life right now, as a fear that things are not extraordinary enough? And where is Magnetism already operating, where have you simply been yourself and noticed something drawing close? Let the card sit with you through this solstice week.

Next up: Gate 52 · Stillness, the Cancer gate that follows the solstice into deep summer.

xo,

Alison

Participating in the Mandala 64 Walk is free, but your paid subscription helps keep it sustainable.

Paid subscribers get free access to my live rituals at each of the 8 G Center gates through the year, plus bonus articles and extra goodies along the way.

I see you.

Father’s Day landing on the Solstice this year feels extra pointed.

Sol = the sun, the son, the sky-god.

It’s the celebration of the longest, most bountiful day of the year, and we’re spending it paying reverence to men.

Fathers, yes. But…also...lots of men.

If you’re noticing a saltiness to my tone, you’re not wrong. Because I’ll be honest: I’m personally ready to see men step it up.

Not only specific men that I can name, but Men-at-large.

Fathers are so important. So are the men underneath who hold that title.

Step it up. Own yourselves. Listen.

That’s it, actually.

It’s not actually stepping it up that I’m desiring from men. It’s leaning in. What im really wanting is for men to start leaning in close enough to listen - even when something is being whispered.

Sheryl Sandburg spent a lot of time and money telling women to lean in.

But I think leaning in is needed from men far more.

This Father’s Day solstice, with the moon half-full and half-new in the sky, it’s time to find balance within the extremes. It’s time to put it all on the table.

A day of extremes

The Sun is traveling through Gate 15 on the Solstice- which in human design is known as the Gate of Extremes.

And that’s exactly what today felt like.

Everything is out on the table at once. The dust has been shaken from the cloth and is hanging in the air, waiting to drop.

Solstice brings a palpably gorgeous, overwhelming chaos to the surface. Nothing is hidden underground on this day. At Solstice, all the work is being done on the flowers of the vine, not in the roots.

So for this reason, Solstice is always a point of maximum contrast.

After months of building toward summer, feeling juiced by the heat and the light and the fullness, something in our bodies is suddenly registering: the days are getting shorter now. The climax has been reached. The sun is so hot, I might want to go inside. What felt like sweet abundance a few weeks ago could now start to feel like a lot to hold.

That’s the gift and the difficulty of this particular threshold. The diversity of information, relationship, and feeling at solstice can feel like SO MUCH. Buzz buzz buzzzz.

And that same diversity can also feel like.. LOVE. Real true honest agape love.

Both the overwhelm and the deep magnetic love are present on the Solstice. Both are Gate 15.

There’s a beautiful Gemini-to-Cancer dynamic happening right now too. Gemini season was bees rolling in experiences - pollinating, gathering, moving between flowers, collecting everything.

But after the Solstice, the bees are going back into the hive. Cancer season is about choosing which of the multitudes to actually nurture. The womb gets fertilized. You can’t bring everything home.

Not all sperm meet the egg. Not all pollens make the honey. In the post-solstice season of Cancer, you choose what gets nourishment.

The solstice is exactly the moment between those two impulses - still holding all of it, just beginning to sense which thread to follow deeper, and which ones to let disintegrate back into the web.

Father’s Day Feels

For me, this day carries a lot. My own father, my grandfathers, my ex-husband. At different times, I wanted more from them as father-figures. Sometimes a lot more.

There’s so much pain in that. So many memories floating through today, living in my body as felt sensations more than linear thoughts. Today brings up so many embodied memory-sensations of misunderstanding. Judgement. Withholding. Fear-based decision making.

And at the same time on this day that is filled with so much heartache and somatic trauma of not-enough and too-much, I’m watching my daughter with her step-dad, my partner.

And I am moved to tears with the deepest gratitude and joy I can imagine.

He is teaching her things I didn’t know fathers could teach - how to listen to yourself, how to stay emotionally present. They laugh together so much. Deep belly laughs. She adores him. He is the most beautiful example of present, attuned, leaning-in-to-listen fathering I have ever witnessed.

And then, despite all that love, I’m a complete asshole to him on Father’s Day.

Because I guess that’s what happens when the absolute beauty of something so personal to your present life touches a deeper, older wound you haven’t finished grieving.

The tenderness comes up fast. The rawness. The grief disguised as irritability.

Which brings me to the astrology of the solstice.

Right before solstice, Chiron moved into Taurus on Friday, after being in Aries for 8 years, since 2018.

For the next seven years while Chiron is in the sign of the Venusian bull, the wounds asking for your attention are the ones that live in your body - in your sensations and your emotions and your nervous system - much more than the wounds in your mind.

Taurus rules the throat, so the wounds surrounding your throat and your voice, specifically, are going to be showing up now.

But the thing about Chiron is, even though his wounds never fully heal, he is the wisest healer and teacher in all of Greek myth. He didn’t transcend his wound - he taught through it.

Chiron would likely open up his Rumi book and tell you: the truth is, sweet child, the wound is where the light gets in.

This solstice-Father’s Day is a Chiron in Taurus moment if I’ve ever felt one.

Whatever is coming up for you today - the grief, the longing, the tenderness, the way you might be snapping at someone you love - that’s not a failure. That’s the wound doing what wounds do when they’re finally ready to be seen, to be witnessed, to be cared for.

Over the coming season and the coming years, ley your wound be felt, in all its extremes. And let it be nourished and tended to and expressed, so the act of doing so can also nourish others.

Notes and prayers

I had really wanted to hold a live ritual on Zoom for each of the eight holy days this year. We gathered for the equinox/ and for mayday, and it was powerful.

This time of the solstice got away from me in the most Gate 15 way possible - full of extremes, full of multitudes, full of exactly the kind of chaos-that-is-also-love that I described above.

So no live ritual today. But I’m not leaving you empty-handed.

If you’re a paid subscriber, you can take 50% off any reading with code SOLSTICE. I may also record something sweet and send it out to you - a little ritual to sit with. No promises on timing, but it’s on my heart.

However you’re moving through today - with deep grief or with incomprehensible gratitude- or with both at once - I hope you feel the threshold under your feet.

Nourishing, nurturing Cancer season is here.

And the wound is absolutely where the light gets in.

I want to take a breath with you for a second before we dive in, because this season is one of my favorites to talk about and it’s also a pretty complex one astrologically. There’s a lot happening in Cancer Season 2026, and at the same time the whole invitation of Cancer season is to not let the noise of what’s happening out there drown out what’s happening in here.

So let’s start there. Let’s start in the body.

I invite you to take a breath wherever it is you are. Deep breath through your nose. Putting a hand on your chest if that feels right. Feeling your feet wherever they are.

Cancer says come home. Come home to yourself. Come home to your heart. Come home to your belly. Everything else can just wait for a moment.

Just taking another couple breaths here as we begin this dive into Cancer season 2026.

So here’s what we’re going to do today. We’re going to talk about Cancer season from the beginning — and I mean the beginning, going all the way back to Babylon and Sumer and ancient Egypt — because I like to go back in history and give a little context and foundational wisdom about the season in addition to the transits that are happening. The story of the crab is a lot older and stranger than most people know. We’ll get into that, and then we’re going to move into the mythology and the Human Design gates of the season, as we do every month, because these gates as the sun passes through each one during Cancer season tell such a beautiful story arc about the evolution of the crab archetype. And then we’ll get into the transits, because again there’s a lot going on this summer and I want you to feel prepared and oriented instead of alarmed.

So let’s get into it.

Listen to the Podcast in the player above, find Living the Spiral wherever you find podcasts, or read on below for the full transcript.

If you’re a Cancer sun, Happy Birthday season to you! And happy homecoming to anyone with Cancer rising, moon, or other placements.

If you’re a Cancer or have a special Cancerian in your life, I made a pretty cool guidebook that explores the astrology, elements, mythology, and human design of this nourishing season.

Get your cancer guidebook

And if you want to go deep into your own chart and how all of this lands for you personally, my books are open for Soulshine Readings at hearthandspiral.com. A Soulshine session looks at your astrology and Human Design together, at your timing, your body, and what’s actually asking to move in you right now.

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PART 1: THE CRAB BEFORE IT WAS A CRAB

One of my favorite things to do when I’m working with a sign is to go all the way back — before Greece, before Rome, before the symbol that we just come to know in pop astrology as the crab.

The region of the sky we call Cancer is one of the oldest marked territories in the human celestial imagination, and it wasn’t always a crab.

In ancient Mesopotamia, this part of the sky held a position of enormous importance. The Babylonians recognized that when the sun entered this constellation, it marked the summer solstice, the longest day, the peak of solar power. And they called this celestial location the Gate of Man — a divine portal. The sky was a threshold of birth itself. It was like a womb. It was the entry point of existence. It was home.

And that carries through to the symbology of Cancer these days. But I think it’s so beautiful that the Gate of Man was the summer solstice part of the sky back in the ancient times when the zodiac was being developed. Back in 3000 to 2000 BC, during the age of Taurus into the age of Aries, is when the zodiac was developed and codified across the Middle East — and that is when the constellation Cancer was at the exact summer solstice. That has shifted now with the precession of the equinoxes, but that’s why we still celebrate Cancer as the solstice gate.

In the Babylonian astronomical tradition, this constellation was known as Mul al-Lul — and I don’t know how to speak ancient Babylonian, so if I pronounce that wrong, my apologies, pronunciation feedback is always welcome. But Mul al-Lul is a name that refers to both a crab and a snapping turtle. Both of these are creatures that tend the boundary between sea and land, that carry their home on their back, that can retreat and advance with the tides, going in and out of their shell, going in and out along the shoreline. What they were pointing at was this hard shell with a soft interior and this ability to survive in two different worlds. I love that — the snapping turtle and the crab. If you’ve spent any time watching either one of these creatures navigate the shore ecosystem, it’s pretty incredible.

There’s another layer in Babylonian cosmology where Cancer was linked to Tiamat, the great dragon mother of the sea, the primordial goddess of chaos before form. The great mother of the gods in ancient Sumer, whose body was used to create the physical universe, was Tiamat. And there’s something so feminine and oceanic and ancient and dragon-like at the root of this Cancerian sign, long before it was turned into the symbol of the crab. It is this watery sign — it’s a cardinal water sign, the original water — the primordial seas where Tiamat the dragon mother lived.

And in Egypt, around 2000 BC, the constellation was depicted as a scarab beetle, which was the sacred emblem of immortality in ancient Egypt. The scarab was the one who pushed the sun across the sky and carried the ball of light forward. In some Coptic records, the region was associated with Typhon, the power of darkness, and with Anubis, the guide of souls. So again here, with the summer solstice passing through this part of the sky, we have thresholds and passage and this place between worlds, this ability to navigate in between — which is so beautifully aligned with the crab we know today.

When we get to Greece, the crab enters the stage in a small but unforgettable way. You probably know the story of Hercules and the Hydra — that multiple-headed sea monster. Hera, who hated Hercules, wanted him to fail. So she sent a giant crab named Karkinos to distract him during the battle. The crab scuttled over and snapped at his toes. Hercules, being Hercules, just crushed it under his foot. The crab didn’t win. But as happens in many Greek myths, the goddess Hera was so moved by its loyalty and its willingness to show up anyway, even against the impossible Herculean odds, that she put it up in the sky. Karkinos became the Cancer constellation.

To me, this is very Cancer. This story, this mythology, is about showing up with fierce and perhaps impractical devotion to a cause — someone who will protect what they love even when they know they’re outmatched or against all odds. To be crushed and still become a constellation. That’s the story of the crab from the ancient Greeks.

They also called this part of the sky the Gate of Men, the gate through which souls descended to take on human form. Pythagoras believed that souls entered through Cancer and exited through Capricorn — so the Cancer-Capricorn axis was the cosmic revolving door of incarnation.

And in the Thema Mundi, the birth chart of the world, Cancer is the rising sign. Cancer is the origination of the world in the Thema Mundi as well. And then in Rome, Juno — who was the Roman equivalent of Hera — took Hera’s place in the story and did the same constellation-making act. Manilius and Ovid called the constellation Litoreus, the shore-inhabiting one, which again is exactly right. All of the creatures that have been associated with Cancer have been creatures of the liminal zones, the shoreline between the known and the unknown, between land and sea, between birth and death.

And Cancer is associated with the womb in medical astrology, so it’s this time of fertilization in the ecological wheel of the year. Cancer is a time where we go inward to the great depths of the unknown to fertilize what we have gathered throughout the beginning of the year — as everything’s been sprouting and blossoming and buzzing around, it’s now time to bring it back in, into this beautiful threshold of the liminal.

So when we talk about Cancer and home and Cancer and belonging and protection, we’re talking about something that humans have been feeling into for many thousands of years — 5,000, 6,000 plus years. This part of the sky has always been about the origin point, the place where you come from. It’s this threshold of life itself.

The Thema Mundi

I mentioned the Thema Mundi a minute ago and I didn’t get into it because I was just on my ramble, but I’d love to add a little bit more because it’s one of my favorite things in all of traditional astrology.

The Thema Mundi is known as the world chart. It is the mythical birth chart of the universe, used by ancient Hellenistic astrologers. And the Thema Mundi, as I mentioned, has Cancer rising. So if you look at the chart of the entire birth of the world, it is Cancerian.

The Thema Mundi is really a teaching chart. It’s not trying to map a historical, literal event. But the Hellenistic astrologers who were writing in Alexandria and Antioch around 100 BC and beyond used it to explain why the system of astrology — the Hellenistic system — works the way that it does. It explains why the Moon rules Cancer, and why the trine is a beneficial aspect, and why the whole structure of planetary dignities — where planets are at home, in fall, in exaltation, in detriment — unfolds the way that it does.

And these astrologers said — and I would love to go back to Alexandria, Egypt around that time, that would be my top time travel choice, but I digress — the answer was that all of these things were written into the birth chart of the world itself. And that chart begins at 15 degrees Cancer, exactly conjunct the Moon. Each planet sits in its own domicile sign in order outward from the luminaries: the Moon in Cancer, the Sun in Leo, Mercury in Virgo, Venus in Libra, Mars in Scorpio, Jupiter in Sagittarius, and Saturn in Capricorn.

The choice of Cancer as the ascendant of this chart wasn’t arbitrary. Part of it connects back to Egypt, where the heliacal rising of Sirius — the brightest star in the sky, the dog star right there next to Orion — happened when Cancer was on the eastern horizon, and it marked the annual flooding of the Nile at the summer solstice time, which was the beginning of the Egyptian year, when life began to return to the land. This flooding of the Nile with Sirius’s heliacal rising was a rebirth throughout ancient Egypt, and that rebirth began with this ancient mythology of the womb, of the threshold moment, of the liminal, of the Gate of Man. And that was Cancer rising.

So the deeper symbolism in all of this is that the world was born with the Moon on the horizon, and it was a nurturing place as the first face of its existence — a water sign that’s all about feeling and care and the mother.

And this is why Cancer isn’t just a month on the wheel. In some cultures and ancient traditions, it was where the wheel actually begins. I’ve mentioned this pretty much every episode, but I want to reiterate that the wheel does not begin in Aries season and end in Pisces, although that is the story I do like to tell from the sprout all the way back to the compost. But you can really choose any point on the wheel for your new year, for your time of rebirth. I often choose Scorpio season because that’s when you’re going into the dark time of the year — and sometimes Aries season as the emergence of the sprout — but Cancer season as this nurturing time of fertilization feels like a really beautiful new year as well.

PART 2: CANCER ARCHETYPES & STEREOTYPES

Let me talk about Cancer as a sign for a minute, especially if you’re newer to this world of astrology, or if you have some internalized shame or internalized pride around some of the flatter cultural takes — like Cancer being the emotional one or the clingy one or the homebody.

Cancer is the cardinal water sign — the cardinal water sign of the zodiac. Cardinal simply means initiating, beginning, launching into new territory. The element is water, which is all about feeling and sensing, receiving, flowing. And in the planetary sphere, Cancer is ruled by the Moon — the luminary. Which means it really lives in time differently than a lot of the other signs. Most other signs are ruled by one of the planets. Cancer is the only sign ruled by the Moon, which is the quickest-moving celestial body around the ecliptic. And so it has a different vibration.

I really like to think about lunar time as obviously cyclical. It’s very much not linear. The Moon moving around every 28 days — you can clearly see the cycles of it, where it goes in and out, full and dark, present and hidden, like the crab, in and out of the shoreline, in and out of the watery caves. This is Luna time, not Chronos time. Chronos is Saturn, and chronology comes from Saturn — which is more of a slower, forward-moving time. Our culture tends to run on Chronos time, on chronology, on the type of time that has deadlines and schedules and productivity and forward momentum. But Cancer season is the time of year where Cancer really asks us what it would feel like to live in lunar time — to move with the natural rhythm of filling and emptying, resting when it’s dark and expanding when it’s full, really tapping into the tidal nature of life rather than the longer-term Saturnian chronological clock.

In the body, Cancer rules the stomach and the womb, the chest and the breasts as well. These are the regions that are all about fertility and holding something and feeding something and also feeling. The stomach is where Cancer’s emotional intelligence lives in a literal way. Like a gut feeling — when you have really strong emotions flowing through and you can’t process what you’ve taken in and you can’t eat because your emotions are showing up in the belly and with digestion.

And the womb — whether or not you have one physically — is Cancer’s sanctuary. It’s definitely a place where life stirs before it’s ready to emerge, where it incubates, where life is held in a safe and nurturing space. The waters of the womb. This threshold moment where we’re not quite there yet. And Cancer really teaches us that not everything needs to be pushed into form before it’s ready.

I have Cancer in my 12th house, which is the house of the subconscious — essentially the time before the first house of personality, like the compost before the sprout sprouts out of it. And so for me, Cancer in the 12th in the summer is very much about processing and incubating and not trying to push the fruit out right after the blossom. It’s like it needs time to create a space. The bees can’t turn pollen directly into bees — there has to be a time where the honey is being made inside the hive.

And so every Cancer season I think of this Wendell Berry poem that you’ve heard before if you’ve followed me for a while:

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

To Know the Dark, Go Dark. Favorite poem. I love it.

And I think about it a lot in Cancer season because we are a culture that is terrified of the dark most of the time. We carry lights everywhere with us and shine spotlights everywhere we go. We’re always on, always striving to be connected and available. And there’s something about that constant connectivity — as wonderful as it really is — that means we never get to practice being in that dark incubation space, being alone with ourselves.

I think reparenting and remothering and refathering has become a big trend, and oftentimes that’s about thinking about our inner child. But what about going all the way back to the womb? Thinking about being in that nurturing space where you’re being fed through the umbilical cord, floating around in the water with your eyes closed, just existing, being with what is not available to choose or see yet. That is what Cancer season asks of us in the middle of summer, in a lot of ways. Cancer really asks us to come home without carrying a light from the outside world with us, and to find out what’s in there when everything settles.

And it comes after a very busy season. Gemini is the pollinator — the bumblebees and the butterflies and the hummingbirds that are just booping around to all the different flowers.

In the life cycle, Cancer falls in the stage of the wheel that corresponds to adolescence — that threshold between childhood and selfhood and adulthood, where you’re starting to really ask deeper questions and look at yourself in the mirror and say: who am I when no one is watching? Where do I belong? Where is home? What am I feeling? It’s this emotional cocoon of becoming. In the life cycle it comes before Leo’s early 20s — I think of Leo as ta-da, I’m here, I’m 18 and I’m ready to go show myself to the world. But before that you have to be a teenager. And I think of the brooding, moody Cancer as so teenager, right? It comes after Gemini — Gemini is the child that is chatting and learning and gaining new skills and very much a social creature. Then there’s usually a time in adolescence where we go a little bit more inward and start our live journal, start just checking in with our own selves within the womb of our space. I can just see a vision of myself now in my canopy bed, completely hidden from the world, writing in my journal as a 14-year-old. That is Cancer in the body and the life cycle.

PAT 3: LITHA, THE SOLSTICE, THE GATE OF EXTREMES

In the Wheel of the Year, the summer solstice rings in Cancer season. The pagan tradition — the Germanic and Celtic Wheel of the Year — calls the summer solstice, the beginning of Cancer season, Litha or Midsummer, and it falls around June 20th to 22nd each year. This is the longest day, the shortest night, the sun is at its peak.

And we have to also be aware that on Litha, on Midsummer, the moment of maximum light is also the moment when the days begin to get shorter and the dark begins to return. So this is the time in the pagan celebrations that the Holly King defeats the Oak King in this old Celtic myth. And the dark part of the year begins to return. So it is this moment of celebration of the longest light, but also this awareness of the dark beginning to come back. It holds these two extremes. And again, there’s that threshold between the water and the land on the shore.

Stonehenge in England aligns to the solstice sunrise, and ancient peoples there lit bonfires to honor the sun’s power and offer protection. There were herbs harvested at midsummer that were believed to carry extra potency, and it was generally a time for divination and for love magic, a time to set our intentions into the fire.

I find it interesting that in the Human Design mandala, in the wheel of the year, the first gate of Cancer season — the cusp between Gemini and Cancer — is Gate 15, which is known as the Gate of Extremes. And just looking at it: the longest day, the shortest night, but the dark coming back. Those are the extremes we’re considering during this time of year.

In the I Ching, Gate 15 is called Modesty, or Qian, and the trigrams are Earth over Mountain. So this is about the pull between opposites — the dark and the night, going within and going without, the place of maximum light and the returning darkness. And there’s a wildness and a rhythm and a diversity here. When you think about the longest day of the year, all of the types of flowers are out, all of the types of animals are coming out. Nothing is in hibernation anymore at all. Everything is available in the tangible tactile world. The underworld is being exposed. So it’s a beautiful Gate of Extremes to celebrate the summer solstice.

In the Gene Keys, the journey goes from the shadow of Dullness — that flatness that comes from losing your rhythm with the diversity of the full, larger, exuberant world — to the gift of Magnetism, which is about this magnetic quality between beings, where we are drawing others in through our authentic full self-expression rather than efforting. It’s about expressing your full light and acknowledging the chaos of the world and that there is diversity within chaos and we need that diversity to thrive. And then the siddhi of Gate 15 is Fluorescence — like a fluorescent light, like fluorescent colors that are very bright, but also thinking about flowers being in full bloom. Fluorescence is being in the right place at the right time at the right pace.

One more thing I want to talk about here is the life cycle of the plant, because it’s really my main way of looking at the zodiac stories — this basic universality that no matter where you are on the planet, seeds grow and blossom and fruit and die and go back to the earth in the same way. Aries season is the sprout, the ram’s horns as the sprout coming up. Taurus is all about sensuality and embodiment and our senses, the blossoming flowers emerging as the bull sits in the meadow.

Gemini season is the pollinators that come and pollinate those flowers, buzzing around and chatting with each other, spreading the word from one flower to the next. And then Cancer is that season after blossoming and before fruiting. It’s what comes in the middle. I want you to imagine a cross-section of a flower where the petals have fallen off, and it’s now putting the energy back into the ovum, the fertilization — where the pollen is closing in and there’s this beautiful lovemaking happening between the pollen of one flower and the ovary of another. You know there’s a time in between the flowering and the fruiting where something else is happening, but it’s hidden. And to me, that’s like summer solstice. It feels like a time to pay reverence to that and know that Cancer is the breasts and the womb and these life-giving, nurturing body parts.

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PART 4: THE HUMAN DESIGN OF CANCER SEASON

So the sun moves through six Human Design gates during Cancer season. During every season, six gates touch each zodiac season. And they tell a story. What I’ve learned from studying and living this over the course of several years now is that there is a different story for each season, and the gates are like micro seasons of evolution within the story.

Gate 15: Extremes (June 20–25)

This is what I just talked about. The gate of tides and compassion. The crab is born here at the solstice and carries its home on its back. It reaches toward safety and connection — inward inside its shell and then outward, in the sea and on the land. It’s recognizing that the world begins in contradiction. There’s perhaps an erratic quality to the gate of extremes: over-giving and then pulling back and not giving at all. That can be a Cancerian tendency. But over time the crab finds the rhythm — this is how much I put out and this is how much I retract back in. Without forcing care, it’s really leaning into that tidal nature, the moon’s pull on the sea, where magnetism is just attuning to timing rather than efforting. Noticing when the timing is right for that and when the timing is right to go back in and recharge inside your shell.

Gate 52: Stillness (June 26–July 1)

This is the gate right after the solstice, an invitation to pause. Mountain over Mountain are the trigrams in the I Ching. This is in the Root Center in the Human Design body graph. Gate 52, the Gate of Stillness, creates primal urgency and then says: don’t act from that urgency. The shadow of Gate 52 is Stress — a certain pressure that tightens our bodies and locks us into a kind of fixed formation, locks our breath. But stillness, when we think of the mountain, the power and beauty of mountains, this gate is really about active restoration. It’s how Cancerian people can recalibrate by sitting in that pressure and in that magnitude without reacting, and knowing that something can clarify from that place of being a mountain over mountain.

Gate 39: Provocation (July 2–7)

I think it’s quite on the nose that the 4th of July here in the US, Independence Day, falls within the Gate of Provocation every year. This is Gate 39. This is a place where the crab has been still and then meets friction from the outside world. There’s a challenging nature to this gate, a provocation that presses on what’s sensitive in order to unlock something beneath that. In the I Ching, this gate is known as Obstruction, and it’s about recognizing that what obstructs you isn’t your enemy — it’s a catalyst for movement out of a stuck place that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Gate 53: Beginnings (July 8–13)

After being provoked out of our mountainous stillness, this is the time when something begins. Gate 53 is known as Gradual Development in the I Ching, about beginning something not in a dramatic, instant-results kind of way but a meaningful beginning that unfolds in true stages — like a plant pushing through soil, or a baby being born. It’s not going to happen instantaneously, but this gate encourages us in the early part of July to start something before you feel fully ready, because you have to know that it is a process of beginning.

Gate 62: Details (July 14–18)

This is my partner’s birthday gate, so I’m familiar with it. Gate 62, the Gate of Details. This is the time when you’ve begun something new — after being provoked, after being still, after being in chaos and the shoreline and extremes. And we’re at the Gate of Details, which is about precision and small details. In the I Ching, I believe it’s called Preponderance of the Small. It’s about having attention to both the smallest details and the whole picture at the same time. All of these Cancer gates are mountain gates, and it really is about this groundedness into the whole big picture and the magnitude of holding your own in the way that a mountain does, the way that a beehive does, the way that a womb does. Details is when there is a recognition of the smallness within the bigness — all of the little parts that make up the whole, the gestalt.

Gate 56: Stimulation (July 19–22)

Gate 56 is the final gate of Cancer season, on the cusp of Leo season, from July 19th to 22nd. This is also known as the Gate of the Storyteller, or the Wanderer in the I Ching. I have a lot of friends with this gate, and I love them because it completes one of my hanging gates in my body graph — it just makes me feel understood. This gate is super animated and curious and loves telling stories, wandering about, loves to tell the tale about where it’s been and where it’s going. It really carries the experience of Cancer into Leo in a very beautiful way — going from that inward exploration of what’s going on in the depths, fertilizing something completely new, and then bringing it onto the stage for Leo season.

PART 5: THE TRANSITS OF CANCER SEASON 2026

Alright, moving on to the transits. Cancer Season 2026, and there’s a lot happening. But know that you can hold all of it. You are already inside it. The astrology is not happening to you, it’s happening as you. You’re part of the pattern.

I want to say something briefly about transit astrology before we get into it. A lot of astrologers I know go in and out with the need to know all the transits all the time. I really love following the sun and the seasons and the micro seasons because it’s always something that can be upleveled each year as we go through the spirals. You learn a little bit more each year. Whereas if you’re constantly tracking only the planetary transits, there’s always going to be a new dynamic to grok and then it’s gone and you move on to the next one, and it can become almost a mental game of chasing. I think it’s good to tap out from transit stuff occasionally and then tap back in. I oftentimes look up the transits when something crazy happens in my life and I’m like, what was that — and it usually is very affirming. But sometimes getting addicted to the predictive nature of it, I’m getting less interested in that. Predictive astrology is only one type of astrology, and astrology can also be used for this unshaming and awareness of who we are on multiple levels, connecting to the ancestral stories, and all the different ways. But I digress.

June 19: Chiron enters Taurus

The first big thing happening is on June 19th, right before Cancer season begins, Chiron is entering Taurus. And this is huge because it really sets the container for all of Cancer season.

Chiron has been in Aries since 2018 — quite a long time with Chiron in the sign of the ram. Think back to 2018 and what has been healed in your life, perhaps through your wounds. The wounds where the light gets in — that’s what Chiron is all about. Since 2018, Chiron has been moving through the sign of identity and self-assertion and inception and new beginnings, Aries, and we might have all felt wounds around what it means to initiate and be seen and be in our full selffulness and the courage it takes to begin something. There might have been wounding and healing that has come from Chiron in Aries since 2018.

Now Chiron moves into Taurus. This brings that wounded healer energy into our bodies. Taurus is Venus-ruled, and Taurus rules the physical sensations — like a toddler’s sensation of the world: touch, smell, taste, hearing, all of the different things. So we’re moving into considerations around what we need to heal about what we value and what we own. Taurus is about material possessions as well, the material world, the earth. What we feel we deserve — that might come up over the next several years.

The healing of wounds around feeling like we’re not enough, or we don’t belong, or we don’t know what we value, or we don’t feel comfortable in our bodies — the healing that can come through this seven to eight year transit is about finding stability and pleasure and worth, self-worth, and identifying more about what we value in a real way.

I feel like Taurus and Cancer have a similar kind of security vibe to them. Cancer is more about tending and nurturing the home, Taurus is more about the physical body and our physical sense of security. But it’s like a toddler and a teenager — they have similar vibes. If you think about Taurus as toddler and Cancer as teenager or adolescent, there’s a similar amount of: I want security, but where is that within my... as a toddler you need physical security in your own body, like lift me up, mommy, or you keep falling down and learning what it is to get back up physically. And Cancer is more about belonging within your family, within your community, within your home.

So it’s an interesting parallel, having Chiron enter Taurus while the sun is coming into Cancer. And Chiron in Taurus will ask us over the next several years about what it means to feel safe inside our own skin. I feel like that’s going to change quite a bit over the next several years as far as this idea that our body is a place of a wound and a place of trauma. We’re going to be healing that through asking the question: can our bodies be a place of healing too, and a site for coming home to ourselves?

This transit is really going to support healers of all kinds. For those of you who do somatic work or breathwork or fascial work or any kind of embodied practices, this transit might support your work in a very beautiful way with Chiron in Taurus.

June 20/21: Cancer Season Begins, Sun enters Gate 15

Then on June 20th, Cancer season begins with the sun in Gate 15. We’ve talked about this already. Litha, midsummer, the solstice, the longest day. I love the solstice. It’s such a juicy, beautiful day to take a moment and pause and pay reverence to the diversity of life and the extremes that are out there presenting themselves in the world. What do you do for the summer solstice? Do you have any rituals? I’d love to hear in the comments.

June 28: Mars enters Gemini

On June 28th, Mars enters Gemini. And this is a crash-bang-boom dispersion of energy. Mars in Gemini is quick and restless and scattered. It’s like a bull in a china shop kind of energy in some ways. It’s always Mars is energetic and Gemini is here and there, moving in a bunch of different directions at once, talking quickly, thinking quickly, maybe arguing for fun. Mind that time of Mars in Gemini. And then on June 29th, the next day, Mars will immediately square the lunar nodes in Pisces and Virgo, which is a point to think about our direction and our purpose being tested, a karmic friction point. Pay attention to what comes up around that time.

June 29: Full Moon in Capricorn, Sun in Gate 52 (Stillness) / Moon in Gate 58 (Joy)

On June 29th we have a Full Moon in Capricorn in the Gate of Joy. The Moon is going to be in Gate 58, the Gate of Joy, and the Sun is in Gate 52 — that mountain over mountain, Stillness gate.

And this full moon is happening on the exact same day that Mercury is stationing retrograde. One Mercury retrograde has already happened and then we have the summer one and then we have a fall one — this is most of July we’ll have Mercury retrograde. And the next day, Jupiter is going to enter Leo. So we have a huge cluster of transits happening with the full moon, Jupiter entering Leo, and Mercury stationing retrograde, all around June 29th and 30th. Lots of very different types of energy, a lot of pulling in different directions around the end of the month.

The Full Moon in Capricorn is this axis of nurturance — the mother-father parenting axis, the long-term thinking disciplinarian versus the moment-to-moment I-just-scraped-my-knee-and-I-need-a-Band-Aid kind of energy. Cancer and Capricorn represent this tension between homecoming and ambition, between inner and outer worlds, the bottom of the chart and the top of the chart, the IC and MC, Luna time and Chronos time.

And so this is falling when the Sun is in the Gate of Stillness and the Moon is in the Gate of Joy. Gate 58 is known as Joyousness in the I Ching, and it is Lake over Lake — opposite from Mountain over Mountain. Joyousness is like pure reflectivity of the aliveness and delight that feeds everything that it touches. And it is in Capricorn, where there’s a lot of structure — but I think of Capricorn climbing to the top of a mountain, the sea goat, and then reaching this beautiful alpine lake where the sky is reflected into it and the mountains around are reflected into it, and it’s just this awareness that everything is everything. So let’s be happy about that point.

It’s a beautiful full moon to be happening in this Gate of Joy, bringing a little bit of reflection and happiness to a kind of serious time and a more reflective and rewinding time of year. Capricorn is about what we’re building, and it could be a good day for releasing and coming to a culmination point, really sitting with the question: not just is this ambitious, but does it bring you joy? Does it carry aliveness within it? And it’s a good full moon to think about what is worth creating and releasing the parts of the thing you’re building that don’t bring you joy. Not everything can be joyous — this is really about recognizing how we’re nurturing something through both our close-to-home and our longer-term ambition, and that whatever we’re building should have a little bit of that joy in the sense of pure lake energy, reflective of the larger picture.

June 29: Mercury Retrograde in Cancer begins (through July 23)

On June 29th, the same day as the full moon, Mercury goes retrograde in Cancer, and it lasts through July 23rd this year. And this is in a water sign. So it’s more about reviewing, reconsidering, reassessing, reevaluating — all the re-words that are associated with retrogrades. It’s not “oh, Mercury is retrograde, everything’s going to communication breakdown and tech breakdown.” I think this one, being in the sign of Cancer, is about reviewing and reconsidering your emotional waves, revisiting things that might have gotten buried, needs that got silenced, coming back around to conversations with yourself and with others that might need to resurface before you can fully move forward into Leo season.

Reparenting comes up here. Reparenting your inner child — and since it’s on that Full Moon in Capricorn, it’s about both types of parenting: the close-to-home version and the setting-goals-for-yourself version. You need both of those within parenting someone — someone to give you a bit of discipline and show you about thinking long term, and someone to tell you that you’re safe right here and now and it’s okay. So this is a great period of three weeks to reparent in both of those ways, revisiting stories about safety and home, who is in your home space.

I’m glad that the Mercury retrograde is happening in this season rather than in Leo season, because I’m ready for Jupiter in Leo to really pop off. During Cancer season, it might take a little bit of time to incubate, and I kind of like that.

June 30: Jupiter enters Leo

On June 30th, the very next day after Mercury Rx and the Full Moon in Capricorn, Jupiter — the planet of expansion, the planet that expands everything it touches — is entering Leo. And this one is big because Jupiter transits through a sign per year. It has a 12-year orbit around the sun and there are 12 signs, so it’s just about a solid year where Jupiter transits through each sign.

Jupiter has been in Cancer. It might have not been as outward of a sparkly event as some people might have thought. I found definitely a depth, an expansion of that inner world, nurturing, crab-shell-kind-of-threshold, hold-moment quality. There have been huge expansions for me as far as the deeper more subconscious coming into its own form. So Jupiter entering Leo is really this move from the private to the visible — from that canopy bed writing in your journal to the house party to the stage to the rooftops. It’s about outer expression. Leo is all about creativity and self-expression, and Cancer is about nourishing and incubating. We go from a nourished root into a radiant bloom. That is what’s happening here.

Jupiter will be in Leo for about a year. This is a time for creative expansion and showing up and being generous. Leo is the ruler of the heart in the body. It is a time for heart-centeredness, for spirit, for feeling abundance from your heart, for feeling into the present moment. Being up on Pride Rock and just looking out and feeling the quality of interconnectedness that you can see in all things.

But — Cancer season, with Mercury retrograde the whole way through, is: don’t rush this. You don’t need to fruit right away. Leo is the fruit, Cancer is the fertilization process. So let’s wait to have really good fruit. If you rush a fruit to ripen, it’s just not going to be good. It’ll be much better if you let it take its sweet time. It’s like roasting a marshmallow on the campfire — you don’t want to just stick it in there. Some people like that, I do sometimes, but if I’m being real, the slow-roasted golden marshmallow that takes a little bit of time to get that perfect gooey center and a nice golden brown is gratifying. But it takes patience. So this is about filling your cup and putting your oxygen mask on first. That is the kind of season we’re in right now.

July 4: Mars conjunct Uranus in Gate 39 (Provocation)

July 4th, Mars conjunct Uranus. This one is something astrologers have been talking about since the beginning of this fire horse year with a little bit of trepidation, I will say.

Mars is war and aggression, assertion, drive, sexuality, going forth with the sword. And Uranus is a lightning bolt of electricity, liberation, disruption. And they’re meeting up together in Gemini on July 4th. The Sun is in the Gate of Provocation that day, as it always is, but Mars will be conjoined with Uranus in Gate 20, the Gate of the Now, where Uranus will be for pretty much the next year.

This is a time when the United States chart is having its Uranus return, and it activates the country’s 7th house of relationships, partnerships, foreign relationships, and also open enemies or open conflict. So there is definitely a bit of political and collective provocation that is coded into this date. Mars conjunct Uranus can be very volatile and electric and break things open very suddenly. It’s a sudden rebellion, an abrupt action, a spark to the powder keg kind of energy. Circle that date. We’re in America’s 250th year right now, the Pluto return of the United States is still in effect, and then it’s also a Mars return for the United States.

I’m not saying this to fearmonger or catastrophize at all. But the astrology is showing that on that day it’s a pretty powerful energy coming together. Gate 39 — where the Sun is on that day — has the shadow of Interference, the gift of Dynamism, and the siddhi of Liberation. Whatever is provoking on that day is not there to break you. It’s there to unlock something that you couldn’t access otherwise.

So keep those crab claws ready for protection. You have your crab claws. You can also go inside your shell. You have practices to stay grounded, stay in your body. Whatever comes through on that day for you personally or in the collective, we can think about it as a time when the provocation is surfacing what is real and what needs to be surfaced.

July 7: Neptune stations retrograde in Aries

Neptune is stationing retrograde on July 7th. All the outer planets station retrograde about once a year, so it’s pretty common and not as close to home as the Mercury retrogrades. But it does help us reflect and review and reconsider Neptunian things.

Neptune is in Aries and had its conjunction with Saturn earlier this year. So Neptune retrograde is helping us review our dreams, review any delusions or illusions that have come through, anything we’ve been projecting onto situations. Neptune moving forward can have this watery, blurry, idealistic kind of quality, and the retrograde is asking us to get honest about our ideals — especially in Aries themes of identity and courage and leadership. Thinking about who we truly are and how we’re showing up versus the vision of how we hold ourselves.

July 12: Mercury Cazimi in Cancer, Gate 56

July 12th, there’s a Mercury Cazimi in Cancer, in Gate 56. Cazimi just means at the heart of the sun, the planet is sitting in the throne of the sun and receiving the bountifulness of the sun. This is the Gate of Stimulation and Storytelling. Cazimis often bring a moment of deep clarity about what might feel like confusion otherwise with the retrograde. Mercury in the Heart of the Sun burns away the noise and leaves only what’s true.

In this time on July 12th, you can ask yourself about the stories you’re telling. There might be a sudden clarity about what the retrograde period so far has shown you about how you communicate when you feel safe versus how you communicate when you don’t. The cazimi is like a halfway point of the retrograde — this seed moment of clarity that is nice to have when you’re in the midst of a lot of review.

July 14: New Moon in Cancer at 22°, Gate 62 (Details)

And the final transit: July 14th, there is a New Moon in Cancer at 22 degrees in the Gate of Details, Gate 62. And this is conjunct Mercury retrograde. A new moon of seeding things, but it’s a quiet one, it’s a reflective one, it’s a retrospective one.

Jupiter has entered Leo by this point, so we’re starting to feel that Pride Rock stage kind of quality, maybe an ego quality, to some of the things happening out in the world with that Mars-Uranus conjunction a few days before. There might be a lot of energy. And so this new moon is an invitation to go back into the interior, into the details of your life, before the spotlight finds you.

Gate 62 is about the small thing that shifts the whole big picture. And gate 62 is where the Venus-Jupiter conjunction happened in Gemini season. So this is about asking: what do you want to bring with you into the next chapter? What do you want to pack with you to take on the adventure of Jupiter in Leo?

PART 6: THE SEASONAL WHOLE

So let’s stand back and look at this.

Cancer season 2026 opens with Chiron crossing into Taurus — this new era of embodied healing. It begins at the solstice, at the time of peak light and the beginning of the return to darkness.

At the end of June, three things happen all at once: Mars goes into Gemini, Mercury changes retrograde in Cancer, and Jupiter crosses into Leo. This is a time of the warrior kind of accelerating, and the mind turning inward, and the spirit preparing to emerge onto stage. Pay attention to the end of the month, the 28th through 30th of June. There is just a convergence of different energies all highlighting different angles of that moment.

The Fourth of July brings this provocative, potentially volatile Mars-Uranus conjunction with the Sun in Gate 39, Provocation. It’s asking us about what needs to be unlocked and what has to give for us to be liberated and to be free. So it’s pretty perfect for the Fourth of July, maybe.

Neptune’s retrograde on July 7th is dissolving illusions and starting a period of reassessing our dreams. The Mercury cazimi on July 12th is a clarification of the Cancerian themes of how we care for ourselves and others. And then the New Moon in Cancer on July 14th is planting it in the deep ground of the self.

This is Cancer season. We’re moving through the gates of Extremes, Stillness, Provocation, Beginnings, Details, and Stimulation. We have the crab moving along on this journey from the chaos of the solstice to telling some really good stories as we enter Leo season.

OUTRO

That is Cancer Season 2026.

We started here with the crab in Babylon and the Gate of Man, the soul’s portal into embodied life. We moved through the six gates of the season, from Extremes to Stimulation, following the crab’s arc of growth and story. And we walked through some complex and contradictory transits that are all happening at once. It’s going to be a big month ahead, and I hope you’re feeling a little bit more oriented as to how to approach these clusters of planetary energy that come up.

I want to leave you with something — the Wendell Berry poem I mentioned earlier that keeps coming back to me: to know the dark, go dark. Time to come back to your inner self, to your womb, to your values, to your deepest self.

If you want to know about the micro seasons — the micro weather of the season week by week — you can subscribe to the Mandala 64 Walk at livingthespiral.com. I’ll also be recording some rising sign horoscopes for Cancer season that are going to be coming out separately.

And if you want to go deep into your own chart and see how this next month ahead is going to land for you personally, my books are open. I have Soulshine Readings at hearthandspiral.com, and this looks at your astrology and Human Design together, and your timing, and what is moving in your world right now.

Thank you so much for walking the spiral with me. May your Cancer season be tender and fierce in exactly the right proportions. I’ll see you next season, if not before. All my love.

Alison

Key Dates for Cancer Season Transits :

• June 19: Chiron enters Taurus

• June 20/21: Cancer Season / Summer Solstice begins

• June 28: Mars enters Gemini

• June 29: Full Moon in Capricorn, Sun in Gate 52 (Stillness) / Moon in Gate 58 (Joy)

• June 29: Mercury Retrograde in Cancer begins (through July 23)

• June 30: Jupiter enters Leo

• July 4: Mars conjunct Uranus, Gate 39 (Provocation)

• July 7: Neptune stations retrograde in Aries

• July 12: Mercury Cazimi in Cancer, Gate 56 (Stimulation)

• July 14: New Moon in Cancer at 22°, Gate 62 (Details)

• July 22: Leo Season begins

• July 23: Mercury stations direct

Happy New Moon in Gemini- hope it’s been a sweet one for you!

We’re onto the Gate of Caution, the last full gate of Gemini season. Do you have Gate 12 defined in your chart? Drop a note about how you feel it in the comments!

And, I have to ask- how did Gate 45: The Gatherer appear in your life over the past few days? Did you notice anything shifting in how you hold what you have or how you offer it?

Let me know in the comments <3

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Gemini season is coming to a close….

Gemini season is known to be chatty. It brings a flittery quality of aliveness through language, asking questions, coming together and putting things into words and seeing what sticks. This whole season has been full of that Mercurial energy, with ideas and words moving fast and connections sparking.

Gate 12 is the last full gate of Gemini season. In five days the sun moves into Gate 15, which sits on the cusp between Gemini and Cancer, the G-Center gate where we celebrate the Summer Solstice. So I see Gate 12 as a distillation gate. A gate that asks: of all the ideas and words that have moved through you this season, what is actually worth keeping? What has been waiting for the right mood, the right moment, or the right listener to speak into the world? What can you let go of quietly?

Yesterday’s new moon in Gemini landed here in this gate. New moons are always about planting seeds in dark soil, and the seed Gate 12 offers is not about having more to say. It’s about learning to trust the pause before you speak.

To make it personal, my unconscious North Node sits in Gate 12, and my conscious North Node is in Gate 45, the gate the sun just passed through.

The teaching I keep returning to is that most of us spend the first half of life living our South Node. It’s our inherited frequency, the groove that feels like home. My conscious South Node is Gate 26, the energy of knowing how to move things through a compelling story. My unconscious South Node is Gate 11, the gate of Ideas, a mind that is always already full of new concepts.

I feel these deeply, and have lived with both of those energies for a long time.

Gate 45 as my North Node is asking me to move from persuasion and salesmanship toward gathering together and holding space for the tribe. It’s asking for less crafting of a story that might land and more trusting that the field I hold is already enough. And Gate 12 as my unconscious North Node is the part I can’t see directly but can feel underneath things. It’s a pull toward waiting to release, of expressions that have had time to become true before they leave my mouth. Not every idea needs to see the light of day, or feel the vibration of speech.

I definitely feel the pole-shift happening as I approach my big midlife transit, my Uranus Opposition. The South Node grooves are deep and I know them well. But recently I have noticed more of a tendency to slow down and pause before I speak. This new moon in Gemini feels like a marker on that path for me.

Lately I’ve been doing a lot of Nodes of Fate readings where we explore your conscious and unconscious life path, and they’ve been super fun and revealing! If you’re feeling the pull of your own nodal axis and want to explore the direction it is calling you, you can book one here.

Book a Nodes of Fate Reading

Onto Gate 12: The Story of Caution

In the I’Ching, Hexagram 12 is Pǐ, made up of the trigrams Heaven over Earth. The image is of two forces that belong together but are moving in opposite directions, heaven rising, earth grounding, and the space between them widening. It is the hexagram known as Standstill. Here, things are not flowing. The usual channels of communication have become unreliable or blocked. The wisdom in that is not to force the connection but to tend your inner state and to hold what you carry until the moment when exchange and flow becomes possible again.

This is the standstill of holding your breath for a moment before something deeply true comes out.

The shadow frequency of Gate 12 in the Gene Keys is Vanity, which means speaking to be heard rather than speaking from truth, filling the silence with words that are more about managing how you’re perceived than about genuine contact. We all know this pattern from the inside. It’s the voice that performs rather than reveals, or the laugh that covers the thing you really wanted to say.

The gift is Discrimination, and I love this word in this context. Discrimination is the capacity to sense which words are true enough to use your throat to speak. This week, be discriminate in thinking about which expression will reach the person in front of you, which moment is ripe and which is not. This is the intelligence of the body as much as the mind, a felt inner sense of rightness before you open your mouth.

The siddhi of 12 is Purity. This is an unmixed signal, speaking from a voice that has stopped managing itself and is simply, plainly, vulnerably true.

Sometimes it takes a sacred pause to arrive at that signal.

Gate 12 in the Body

Gate 12, like most Gemini Gates, lives in the Throat Center, and its voice is one of the most intimate in the bodygraph. It is the voice of genuine attempt, of willingness to reach across the distance between one person and another knowing the outcome is uncertain.

Gate 12 connects down to the Solar Plexus, the emotional center. This matters enormously for how this gate works in the body. Emotional energy builds in waves, and Gate 12 carries individual emotional truth that is still finding its form. If you speak too soon, what comes out is the high or low of the wave, not the true meaning underneath it. The practice of Gate 12 is learning to wait for emotional clarity before expressing, to let your feelings mature into something that can actually be received.

This gate has a strong aura that communicates without speaking. People with Gate 12 defined often don’t need many words. Their presence already says something. What they carry tends to come through in how they say things, the quality of their voice, their timing, the texture of contact, more than in the content of the words themselves.

(I have my unconscious north node in this gate, and lately I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about the sound of my voice… I guess I’m a podcaster, so that tracks, but it is quite interesting how it lines up with Gate 12! )

Physically this gate connects to the throat, the vocal cords, the resonating chambers of the chest. There is often a kind of shyness that lives here, a vulnerability around being truly heard, because what Gate 12 wants to express is close to the heart. It can withdraw completely when the mood isn’t right, or open fully when it is. That oscillation, despite how we may judge it, is not inconsistency. It is wisdom.

Season, Channel & Polarity

Season: We are still in the Earth season of Kūn, the receptive field that has been building since Beltane- this will shift when the lower hexagram shifts to MOUNTAIN on the Summer Solstice. At this threshold, Gemini’s last full breath before the solstice, the upper trigram of Gate 12 is Qián, Heaven, which is like pure creative force moving upward. Heaven over Earth is the image of two things yearning toward each other across a gap. This is the energy of late Gemini season: so much has moved through, and now something in you is reaching toward what it all really means.

Channel: Gate 12 connects to Gate 22 in the Solar Plexus, forming the Channel of Openness. This is an individual channel, with energy that is deeply personal and not oriented toward the collective. It is the channel of the artist, the mystic, the person whose emotional truth is particular to them and must find its own form before it can be shared. Gate 22 brings grace and social openness when the mood is right, and Gate 12 brings the capacity to articulate what that grace is based on. Together they form a channel that moves between inner emotional experience and outer expression, always contingent on timing, always dependent on the emotional wave.

Polarity: Gate 11, the Gate of Ideas, sits directly across the wheel. Gate 11 lives in the Ajna and is a gate of conceptual abundance, where images, insights, and frameworks arrive faster than they can be processed. The polarity between 11 and 12 is the axis between having a thousand ideas and knowing which one deserves your voice. Gate 11 gathers and ideates, and Gate 12 distills and refines. Together they describe something I think of as the full picture of Gemini season, the huge rush of pollinating input and the quiet time afterward when you sit with what rose to the top.

A Somatic Practice for Gate 12

Find a comfortable seat and let yourself arrive in your body, not thinking about it but feeling it: the weight of you, the temperature of the air, whatever is touching your skin right now.

Bring your attention to the solar plexus, the soft place just above your navel. This is where Gate 12’s emotional truth originates. Don’t try to identify what’s there. Just feel the quality of it, the texture of it, whether it’s moving or still, whether it’s full or empty feeling.

Now let your attention travel slowly up through the chest, past the heart, into the throat. Notice whether there is anything held there, braced or waiting.

Take a breath in, and on the exhale, let a sound come out. Not a word. Just a sound, whatever wants to move. Do this two or three times.

Then ask yourself: what is the thing I’ve been waiting for the right moment to say? You don’t have to say it now. Just let it be known to you.

Creativity Prompts

Take fifteen minutes with your favorite notebook or whatever calls to you, and try one of these:

Write about something you’ve been holding back this Gemini season. A feelingor a thing you’ve half-said in your head a dozen times. Let yourself write it out fully, messily, for no audience but yourself. Then notice: what in it is ready to be spoken, and what still needs to wait?

Draw or paint the image of Heaven and Earth as two fields moving apart, drawing on how it feels to close that gap with deeper meaning.

With your Mandala 64 deck, pull the Gate 12 card and sit with both sides. Where is Vanity showing up in how you’ve been expressing yourself this season, speaking to manage rather than to connect? And where is Discrimination already operating, where have you held something back and felt the rightness of that waiting? Let the card sit with you through this new moon week and see what it clarifies.

Thanks so much for being here and participating in the Mandala 64 Walk!

If you’d like to learn more about your Human Design and Gene Keys as they relate to the Zodiac seasons, you can book a reading with me. It’s been life-changing for me to get to know the specific gates where my natal planets live in my chart, and I’d love to explore yours with you as well.

My Books Are Open

See you in 5 days for Gate 15: Extremes, the cusp gate that carries us across the threshold into Cancer season and the Summer Solstice.

Alison

Alison

Participating in the Mandala 64 Walk is free.

Paid subscribers get free access to my live rituals at each of the 8 G Center gates through the year, plus extra goodies along the way.

For my Summer Solstice ritual, instead of a live on Zoom event, I will be sending out a recorded conscious-connected breathwork session that is focused on the gate of the holy-day: Extremes. This gate has the gift of Magnetism and the siddhi of Florescence, so this session will be about attuning to the brilliance of the longest day and releasing stuck patterns and emotions to attune to our internal magnetism.

Sign up as a paid subscriber to get this session in your inbox this week!

Tomorrow is the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer. And it’s also the official launch of the private beta of a new Astrocartography and Human-Design-Cartography workspace that I’ve been building with my partner Jackson.

It’s called ELA Map — your personalized Energy Location Atlas.

We still have a limited number of spots open for beta testers. Sign up by this Sunday, June 14, and we’ll be choosing thoughtfully from everyone who raises their hand - looking for people who are genuinely curious about the personality of place and ready to engage. Beta testers get a free year of the Pro tier of the app in exchange for their engagement and feedback.

Join the ELA Map Beta

After Sunday, new signups go to the waitlist for the official launch later this summer.

We also started a Substack, where our team will be writing and podcasting some personal stories about how astrocartography lines have shown up in our lives, educational 101s, and more. Follow along here!

What we’ve been building, and why this is the moment

Venus and Jupiter conjoin in Cancer only once every twelve years or so, and this meetup feels worth pausing on. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, the sign of home - not home as an address, but home as a felt sense. The place where your nervous system settles, where you’re known, and where you stop bracing and can be your true self.

Jupiter in Cancer expands our relationship to belonging. It’s been in the sign of the crab since last summer, asking: where do you grow? and Where do you feel held enough to actually become more of yourself? Venus in Cancer is drawn to the type of beauty that feels like lingering nourishment and real care. Together in the sign of the crab, the creature who carries her home on her back and is therefore never truly homeless, this conjunction is an invitation to ask what home actually means to you and where on Earth you might find more of that feeling.

Finding belonging within the vastness of time and space is the question at the heart of my whole practice here at Hearth and Spiral. It’s also the question at the heart of ELA Map.

It’s not a coincidence that this is when we’re releasing it. Jackson was born with a stellium of planets in Cancer - Sun, Venus, and Mercury - and while I’ve been the one whose Sagittarius stellium has a hard time stopping the travel bug from biting, he’s the one who makes home wherever we land. His vision and so many weeks of hard work are the reasons this tool exists, and the conjunction it’s launching on feels like it was written for him. Venus and Jupiter are meeting right on his natal Cancer sun.

The Hearth, the Spiral, and Astrocartography

My work at Hearth and Spiral has always been oriented around the sacred center. The hearth is the heart - where the fire is kept, where people gather, and where the work of tending happens. The spiral is the path we walk that keeps returning, in widening loops that revisit the same territory from a higher vantage point each time.

Place is woven through all of my work. The Celtic wheel of the year, the Daoist Wuxing Cycle, the Indigenous Medicine Wheel, the Zodiac - all of them are inseparable from the land, from the place we stand on this earth. The charts are maps of who you truly are, and astrocartography is what happens when you ask where in the world that unique person comes most alive.

Hearth and Spiral has always been about that kind of deepening - exploring questions that don’t have easy answers, practices that ask you to pay attention over a long span of time. Astrocartography is one of those practices. You don’t check your map once and close it. You come back to it as you change, as the sky changes, and as you move through different seasons of your life. The map has a way of spiraling along with you.

Which is part of why I’ve wanted a better tool for it for years.

The Central American Epiphany

I’ve been an astrologer and Human Design practitioner for over a decade, and astrocartography has been woven into my practice for many years. I’ve used it in readings and applied it to my own life through many moves and travels - everywhere from New Orleans to Brazil to China. That Sagittarius stellium of mine has never really let me sit still, and astrocartography gave me language for what I was feeling in different places that went deeper than what was visible on the surface.

Last year my family spent part of my daughter’s kindergarten year traveling and world-schooling through Panama and Costa Rica. It was on that trip that my relationship with astrocartography took a real leap. We were considering an actual relocation, moving slowly and intentionally, and I wanted to understand not just where my lines fell but where all of our lines fell - and what the Human Design gate layer added on top of that.

Because a Venus Midheaven line tells you one thing about a place, but when you layer in which Human Design Gates are activating in that region for each person in your family, the picture gets specific in a way that changes how you read a place entirely.

So I was doing what practitioners do when the tools don’t quite fit the question: improvising. One app for astrocartography, another for Human Design, another for relocation charts, multiple tabs open for each family member. I’d screenshot everything and drag it into a document just to get a full picture of how a place would affect all of us. It worked, for a time. It was also a mess.

Jackson watched me do this in cafés across Central America for weeks before he said the thing he always says when a problem has a shape he can work with:

I could build that.

(Did I mention that he’s a Manifestor with his natal Sun in Gate 62: The Gate of Details?)

Jackson comes from a lineage of mapmakers, watchmakers, and architects - people whose vocation has been precision in service of navigation and space and time. He’s an avid backpacker who knows how to read a landscape slowly, with his whole body, and who creates home wherever he goes. He builds things to last. So when we got back from our travels last summer, he started writing code.

And now it’s ready for you.

ELA: Energy Location Atlas

The app is called ELA: Energy Location Atlas. Every place has its own energetic frequency, and your chart is one way of reading how that frequency meets you specifically.

In a single workspace you’ll find: your astrocartography power lines alongside parans, midpoint lines, declination lines, aspect lines, asteroid lines, and Hermetic lots. Your Human Design gate activations and design planets on the map. Relocation charts. Synastry charts so you can layer your map with a partner’s or your kid’s or your bestie’s.

It also has a live world transit chart for socio-political postulating. A Conditions page with a daily read on what’s active in your chart and location. And a heatmap engine that scores over 14,000 relocated charts for your birth data and maps them by theme - career, creativity, love, grounding - so you can see the whole landscape at once instead of building it screenshot by screenshot.

We built it with a mission to be the people’s astrocartography workspace. Accessible, navigable, and robust - for seasoned practitioners and for people who are just beginning to feel that how we look at place matters.

Yes, the trademark is in the news

One more thing is worth mentioning here, because the timing is relevant in a different way.

If you’ve seen the news about someone in France trademarking the term “astrocartography,” seeking to also TM it across the EU, and sending cease and desist letters to practitioners who use the word to describe their own work - this is the uncanny timing we didn’t expect to be launching into.

Locational astrology has roots going back thousands of years. Astrologer Jim Lewis developed the modern practice in the 1970s and trademarked his specific stylized brand name “Astro*Carto*Graphy,” with the asterisks - but the un-asterisked word has always belonged to the field of study itself, not any one person. Jim’s trademark lapsed in 2011, and the idea of the general word being claimed now, fifty years in, by someone unconnected to that lineage, is the kind of thing that makes building open, accessible tools feel like exactly the right thing to be doing.

I believe astrocartography belongs to everyone who has ever felt a place have an effect on them. It’s not up for grabs.

The Astrological Association has a petition circulating to stop the trademark in the EU- click through to add your name.

If you want in on the ELA beta, this Sunday, June 14 is your deadline. We have a few spots left, and we’ll be hand-selecting testers who are a good fit. Sign up with the button below. You’ll get a free year of the Pro workspace, we’ll get your honest feedback and requests, and you’ll get to help shape something that I believe has real potential to bring clarity to your sense of home - or at least to learn something fun along the way.

And if you’d prefer to wait until any beta-wrinkles are ironed out, you can still join the waitlist for early access when we publicly launch too.

On this Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer - the sign of home, belonging, and the crab who carries his shelter wherever he goes - it feels like the right moment to ask: Where in the world do you come most alive?

ELA might just be how you find out.

Thanks for your support, y’all. Talk to you on the pod or elsewhere very soon!

Alison

Join the ELA Map Beta

PS» Here’s the link for ELA’s Substack, where I’ll be writing and podcasting from time to time- hope to see you there: Place is Personal.

This week the sun enters my conscious North Node AND design sun gate, 45: The Gatherer, also known as the Queen or the Sovereign. It’s one I think about quite a lot! Do you have 45 defined in your chart? Drop a note about how you feel it in the comments!

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Gate 45: The Story

In the I Ching, Hexagram 45 is Cuì, Lake over Earth. The image is water that has gathered itself into a low place, drawn there by gravity and the shape of the land. The lake doesn’t demand anything from the streams that feed it, they arrive because the terrain makes it possible. This is the energy of Gate 45: the leader who becomes the lowest point in the landscape, the person toward whom things naturally flow because they have made themselves a place of gathering, of welcome, of real resource to the tribe.

The shadow of Gate 45 in the Gene Keys is Dominance. This is the old model of leadership, the one most of us were raised inside, where someone at the top holds the resources and determines who gets access. Dominance doesn’t always look like cruelty or control. It can look like over-managing, like needing to be the one who directs the tide. It can look like hoarding your gifts because you haven’t yet trusted the field around you. It can also show up as its inverse, the person who defers constantly to whoever seems to hold authority, who bows their head before they’ve even been asked to. Both patterns live inside the same shadow, just expressed from different positions within the hierarchy.

The gift is Synergy, which Gene Keys founder Richard Rudd connects to the concept of heterarchy: a mode of relating that still has structure and leadership but where each person’s particular offering genuinely matters to the whole. I love this word. Synergy is what happens when you stop needing to be the most important thing in the room and instead trust that you are one essential piece among other essential pieces, a star within a constellation of other stars.

The voice of Gate 45 is “I have.” What you have is meant to move, to be placed into the hands of those who can carry it further. The siddhi is Communion, the place beyond exchange where the very act of giving and receiving dissolves, and what remains is pure undivided contact between beings. The ancient image for this is the eucharist, bread and wine, the ritual of sharing what sustains life. That is how deep this gate goes.

Gate 45 is sometimes called the King or Queen energy, and it’s worth sitting with what that means underneath the cultural baggage. A sovereign in the truest sense is not above the people. They are the one who holds the field, who ensures that what has been gathered is circulated, and who says with their whole presence:

There is enough here, and it belongs to all of us.

Gate 45 in the Body

Gate 45 lives in the Throat Center, the only center in the bodygraph where what is interior becomes exterior, where your inner reality crosses into the shared world through sound, speech, and the quality of presence that can be physically felt in a room. Gate 45 holds one of the eleven Throat voices, and its voice is “I have,” which is among the most primal statements a human can make. It is an utterance of belonging, and resourced ownership that is meant to be generous.

Physically, Gate 45 corresponds to the larynx and the resonating chambers of the throat and chest. The Throat Center is connected to the thyroid gland, which governs the body’s relationship to its own resources: how much energy is produced, how much is stored, and how the body calibrates between abundance and scarcity. When the shadow frequency of Gate 45 is running in the body, there is often a kind of metabolic guardedness, with a sense that not enough is available and what you have might run out. You might notice this as tightening in the chest before you speak, a rehearsed quality in your voice, a way of calibrating your words for reception before they have left your body.

The channel partner, Gate 21, sits in the Will or Heart Center and carries the energy of the Hunter: determined, driven, capable of commanding resources. When Gate 21 and Gate 45 are working together, the Throat and Pump of the Heart are in full communication. The voice emerges from true willingness to be responsible for others, and the will is guided by orientation toward shared flourishing. In the body, this lands as the difference between speaking from the throat only and speaking from somewhere much deeper, from below the collarbone, from the place where your actual values live.

Season, Channel & Polarity

Season: We are still held in the Earth season of Kūn, the lower trigram that settles in at Beltane and carries through the Summer Solstice. Its quality is receptive, generative, and stable, a field that is already giving. The upper trigram for Gate 45 is Duì, the Lake, associated in the I Ching with joy, openness, and the quality of reflection. Lake over Earth is the image of Cuì: an open, still surface gathering what comes to it, held by the steady ground beneath.

Channel: Gate 45 connects down to Gate 21 in the Heart Center, forming the 21–45 Channel of Money. This is a tribal channel, oriented entirely toward the maintenance of the collective, ensuring that resources are not just accumulated but circulated as well. Gate 21 is the Huntress, the one who goes out to gather what is needed, and Gate 45 is the sovereign who holds and distributes it. In the Channel of Money, these two gates depend on each other completely: the Huntress needs the Gatherer to give her labor meaning, and the Gatherer needs the Huntress to bring things to the table. When both are operating well, the channel creates real material abundance that flows outward and is felt by everyone in the field.

Polarity: Gate 26, the Egoist, sits directly across the wheel in Sagittarius. Gate 26 lives in the Heart Center and carries the energy of persuasion, knowing how to move information and resources through a convincing story. It is sometimes called the Trickster gate or the Salesperson. It is someone who knows that framing matters, that how something is told shapes what is received. The polarity between 45 and 26 is the axis between gathering for the collective and influencing for the individual, the sovereign and the salesman. In their highest expression these two are complementary: the 45 holds the ground and names what is available, and the 26 finds the story that makes the gathering irresistible. When the axis is working, abundance is both created and communicated in a way that draws people in.

A Somatic Practice for Gate 45

Find a comfortable position with your feet touching the ground. Take a moment to feel the weight of your body, the actual substance of you, and let yourself be held by whatever is underneath you. This is Kūn, the Earth trigram. You do not have to maintain yourself. The ground is already doing that.

Now bring your attention to the center of your chest, just below the sternum, where the heart physically sits. This is the territory of Gate 21, the channel partner, a place where willingness to be responsible for something larger than yourself lives. Let your awareness rest there for a breath or two. Then move your attention slowly up to the throat, to the soft front column of it, and notice whether it is holding anything. Tension, bracing, a sense of needing to get something right before you can speak. You don’t need to change any of it. Just notice it. Then, in a voice as quiet or as large as feels true, say out loud: “I have.” Say it again. Notice what comes. The practice is to feel that statement resonate in the chest and throat together, to let it be both a declaration and an offering.

Creativity Prompts

Pull out your favorite notebook, your paints, your colored pencils, whatever calls to you, and give yourself 15 uninterrupted minutes with one of these:

Write about a time when you were truly received by a community, a group, or a gathering of people. What did they receive from you? What did you feel in your body as you gave it? Then write about a time when you withheld something you had to offer, kept it to yourself out of fear or uncertainty. What were you protecting, and what might have been different if you had placed it in the field?

Draw or paint the image of a lake on still ground at dusk, fed by many streams you cannot see but can feel the evidence of. Let the surface of the lake be luminous, full of the last light of day. Don’t worry about technical accuracy. Let the image be about gathering, about the ground that makes gathering possible.

With your Mandala 64 deck, pull the Gate 45 card and sit with both sides. Notice where Dominance is showing up in your life right now, in how you lead, in how you hold what you have. And notice where Synergy is already happening, where something is being gathered by many hands, not just your own. Let the card sit on your altar for the next few days and see what it brings up for you.

Thanks so much for being here and participating in the Mandala 64 Walk!

If you’d like to learn more about your Human Design and Gene Keys as they relate to the Zodiac seasons, you can book a reading with me. It’s been life-changing for me to get to know the specific gates where my natal planets live in my chart, and I’d love to explore yours with you as well.

My Books Are Open

xo! See you in 5 days for Gate 12: Caution.

Alison

Participating in the Mandala 64 Walk is free.

Paid subscribers get free access to my live rituals at each of the 8 G Center gates through the year, plus extra goodies along the way.

Welcome back to Living the Spiral: Magicians!

My guest on this episode, my friend and teacher Britten LaRue, was the perfect person to talk to this week. I joined her Magicians Table container a few months ago, and meeting so many truly magical folks there was a huge inspiration for starting this interview series.

Britten is the creator of Emergence Astrology, the author of the incredible book Living Astrology, and the host of Moon to Moon podcast. She is also someone who, before all of this, was immersed in academia, studying and teaching art history and the ways popular culture helps sell empire.

When the Neptune transit hit her sun, she was gifted an astrology reading by her brother, and seeing the art, symbolism, and meaning in her chart, she thought- I can read that! And almost immediately, she decided to walk away from her dissertation and became a professional astrologer. And it worked- she has certainly made a splash in the world of astrology, looking at the signs, houses, and beyond as ways to transcend shame and connect with all the facets of ourselves through our voices. She connects the dots between concepts and people and communities in a way that I deeply admire.

I have been a part of several of Britten’s classes and group containers over the past few years, and am just now finishing up a 3-month cohort of one of them, The Magician’s Table. In this space, 12 of us practitioners and a 13th reader/facilitator are paired up to exchange readings with each other every week. We then gather as a group to share reflections on what we’ve witnessed and how we’ve been transformed by our partner’s magic.

It’s been such a delight to be a part of. I’ve received tarot readings, journeys into the akashic records, business-astrology readings, guided somatic experiences, and more. I’ve also had the opportunity to hone my skills as a reader and hear positive what stands out to the other practitioners about my style of Astro-HD and beyond. All of my experiences in Britten’s offerings have all been filled with insightful new ways to look at my internal world, and I have met so many truly wonderful humans through the spaces she creates- Britten has a way of attracting deeply magical people from around the world!

One of the things I love about Britten’s work is the way she moves beyond astrological prediction. It is clear that she is interested in where you are right now from multiple angles, and what the deeper thing underneath the astrology of the moment actually is for you. She describes her approach to astrology as being about holding people and helping them feel connected to something bigger - helping them see their vastness, but also helping them unshame their unique specificities. We talk about this living, emergent way of working with astrology on the podcast, and so much more.

Thanks for chatting with me, Britten! I hope y’all enjoy this fun and emergent episode of Living the Spiral Podcast.

Below are a few highlights of our conversation - watch the full episode in the player above or listen wherever you find podcasts!

On the meaning of magic:

When I asked Britten how she thinks about what magic means, she said something simple but thought provoking: Magic is Change.

“There’s something about taking on being a magician that is an acknowledgement that you’re available for change. That you want change, that you can play with change, dance with change, call in change, surrender to change.” - Britten La Rue

What I love about this is how it removes the gatekeeping from what it means to be a magician. There are no muggles, she said. Magic is not a gift you either have or don’t. It is a relationship you build with change over time, through building skills and being open to being changed by the skills.

On skill as a Saturnian love:

Britten talked about skill in a way I have not stopped thinking about since our conversation. Skill is Saturnian, she said. It grows through time and devotion, through the willingness to be new at something without shame and showing up to a practice consistently, well before it feels like yours. Before she was a professional astrologer, Britten said, she was an impostor professional astrologer.

“Through time is how we grow skill. And so it’s about expanding the capacity to trust that time will bring me what I’m wanting.”

This feels like an antidote to the urgency that lives in most of our bodies. Britten reflected on how urgency and scarcity are the same thing somatically, and the practice of skill is the practice of trusting time.

On there being no such thing as potential:

I talk with Britten about how she no longer uses the word potential, because potential is always out there somewhere in the future, a thing you have to find your way onto the path toward and prove yourself with. It is exhausting. It is extractive. She named the colonial words we reach for around it: maximize, harness, unlock.

Instead, she says: there is only emergence. Here is the longer version of how she put it:

“I came to this phrasing, “there’s no potential, there’s only emergence” because emergence is staying with the present moment and creating the path from there, just trusting that we’re always on our way towards what we’re meant for.

We don’t have to think that it’s a path that we can’t even see. It’s right here. It’s emerging at our feet from desire, from skill, from the dream, from guidance, and we’re just tuning into it one step at a time, one day at a time.

And I don’t think that we understand ourselves at all, in our fullness until we die. I have not died before, so I don’t know. But what I imagine is that we can only ever really see a portion of ourselves at once. And then when we die, we get to experience our multitudes. And that is the potential in a way- the one we meet when we die.

So how do we want to feel about that? I want it to come from the inner place rather than that exhaustion, depletion, shame place.”

On why community so deeply matters:

When Britten first left academia and committed to the magical path, she went into hermitage. She only wanted to hear her guides. Every human she told about her plans got big worried eyes, concerned that she’d left a stable career path for a mystical life. So she just stopped telling humans.

She said she builds her community containers (like the Magicians Table) partly because she never wants anyone else to have to be that alone with their process of emerging into a mystic, astrologer, or seer. I do know that there is a specific kind of isolation that comes from having a vision the people around you cannot yet see. Finding a room where you can speak the full language of your passions and visions, with no disclaimers, is its own kind of medicine.

We also talked about Britten’s work restructuring her offerings right now, creating a pathway toward active learning (Emergence Astrology Pathway) and a community container for ongoing integration and building alliances with likeminded souls (Living Emergence Community).

I’m so excited to see how her containers will evolve- she is such an experienced master teacher with a truly open and kind heart!

Work with Britten LaRue

You can find Britten at @brittenlarue on Instagram, listen to her wonderful Moon to Moon podcast, and get her book Living Astrology through her website at brittenlarue.com. Enrollment for the Emergence Astrology Pathway will open at summer solstice.

This one was a real gift of a conversation. I hope you feel that too!

🎧 Listen to the episode in the player above, or find it wherever you listen to podcasts.

About Alison & Living the Spiral

Alison Dale is an artist, writer, astrologer & human design guide based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work lives at the intersection of ancestral systems that track the seasons and the planets, embodiment practices, creativity, and earth-based spirituality. She hosts the podcast Living the Spiral, and offers astrology and human design readings as well as 1-on-1 astro-somatic coaching packages at hearthandspiral.com.

Join her here on Substack by clicking the button below, and follow along on Instagram at @hearthandspiral.

If this podcast has ever helped you find your way back to yourself, the best thing you can do is subscribe to the show wherever you are listening, leave a five star review, or share this episode with someone who might resonate with it. It truly makes a difference in getting these conversations to the people who need them. Thanks for being here. <3

At the beginning of this project, I put out a call for contributors to write about a particular gate that feels personally meaningful to them. This week’s gate, The Gate of Change (35), was selected by Jahje Ives, a brilliant artist and human design guide who I met last year at the High Desert Human Design conference in Santa Fe (speaking of which, you should totally come this year!) .

Jahje is creating an amazing deck called The EmbodieHD Landscape: The 64 Gates where she has created portraits of 64 individuals who have each of the 64 gates defined in their chart. She also writes the Substack The Art of Human Design- follow or subscribe to her newsletter here:

The Art of Human Design

Come explore the art of Human Design with me, Jahje Ives, a certified Human Design Specialist, Mystic Artist and Intuitive Guide as I teach you how to transform and re-align your life using the unique map within us all... your Human Design.

By Jahje Ives : Human Design

Thanks so much for being a part of the Mandala 64 Walk, Jahje!

(PS. If YOU would like to be part of this project and write about one of the 64 Gates, I’ve still got openings, and would love to share your experience and insights- you don’t have to be an expert, just a felt experience. Please DM me with the gate you’re interested in!.)

“I’m fucking going for it”

Leaps of Faith with Jahjehan Ives: Mercury & Jupiter in Gate 35

Gate 35 is the energy of “I wonder what might happen if?” and then you go and do the thing. In traditional Human Design, it’s the Gate of Change, in the I Ching it’s the Hexagram of Progress, and in the Gene Keys, it holds the shadow of Hunger, the gift of Adventure, and the siddhi of Boundlessness.

I have a lifetime of experience with this Gate as the only channel I have in my chart is the 35-36 channel. I am foundationally built to take the leap of faith.

Or at least that’s how I like to think of it. Gate 35 for me shows up as “here’s what happened when I stretched and did that thing that made my gut twist”. It’s why I often find myself sharing what I’ve done and helping clients emotionally calibrate their own leaps and bounds when you say, “I’m fucking going for it.” and DO.

The Gate of Change & Progress

Gate 35 lives in the throat center and carries the energy of the storyteller who regales you with tales of how they pushed beyond what they thought was possible and what happened when they did.

This gate has the capacity to shift others through sharing your lived experience. It’s part of the collective circuitry meaning your experiences aren’t just for you. They become the medicine of possibility and a gateway into expansion for others too.

In the IChing Gate 35 is called Progress and I believe progress begins when we are open to change, trust in the flow of life, and see each transition as an essential part of our journey.

I often say growth requires discomfort. That’s because growth is taking us to a place we’ve never been before and our nervous system likes business as usual, it likes to know what to expect, it likes consistency.

But growth is going into the unknown with the understanding that while we may not see the end of the path yet, if we begin we will get there eventually.

When we can let go of the fear that change will take something away from us and instead learn to flow, to maybe even find joy in the unknown, and to trust that every experience is an invitation to grow then we are truly free to progress.

That said one of the challenges of Gate 35 can be that when the flow for progress takes too long, the restless jump ship. In the Gene Keys 35 carries the shadow of Hunger, which can show up as restlessly moving from experience to experience.

This can be an endless hunger of constantly needing something new to feel fulfilled and being unable to find contentment in what is. So you move on to the next thing, thwarting progress by chasing the next adventure instead of staying and exploring what might still be unfolding.

Gate 35 is defined in my Mercury and Jupiter

In my own chart, I have Gate 35 defined in my conscious Mercury as 35.2 and in my conscious Jupiter as 35.6. So for me, this energy dwells in what I speak about, what I teach through, and what I naturally expand into (and find my fortune through).

Which makes perfect sense as I’ve always been an artist and a writer and much of what I create comes directly from my lived experiences. Some of my most potent work has come from moving through the emotional wave of the 35/36 channel, processing an experience deeply, and then turning that experience into art or writing that inspires others.

That’s the core of the gift of 35 for me. It’s not just about having experiences. It’s about synthesizing them to share in a way that helps others move beyond their own limitations.

This gate lives in my throat center, which is one of only two defined centers I have in my chart alongside my emotional solar plexus. I’m an Emotional Manifestor, so I speak and create from my emotional truth as my experiences move through me and become tangible.

The 35/36 is called the Channel of Transitoriness, though I like to call it the Leap of Faith Channel because that’s what it feels like.

Again and again, my life has been shaped by taking leaps into the unknown (Gate 36) and then sharing what I discovered on the other side of them (Gate 35).

What’s interesting is that the things that tend to impact people the most — the artwork that resonates most deeply, the stories that bring in clients, the moments people remember years later — are almost always born from that vulnerable place.

I used to feel self-conscious about that.

I used to think I was oversharing and talked about myself too much.

Someone would tell me what they were going through and I’d immediately respond with, “Oh, when I went through something similar, here’s what I learned.”

Now I realize that’s the medicine of Gate 35.

The gift is being willing to share the story. To reveal the vulnerability. To say: I’ve been there too and here is what I learned.

Because through that sharing, people begin to see new possibilities for themselves.

Can you give a specific story where this gate showed up or felt relevant in your own life? What did it feel like in your body?

An example of this gate in my own life was closing down my old business, Baby Jives Co, a company I had built over fifteen years that was still successful and “working” from the outside.

But it no longer felt aligned.

So 3 years ago, I took a massive leap of faith and walked away from it to completely reimagine my life.

I had encountered Human Design in 2020 and it gave me language for things I had intuitively known about myself my entire life. But three years ago, I dove all the way in to my studies and certifications.

And I remember thinking: I don’t fully know what this next chapter looks like but I know I have to trust where this energy is pulling me.

And honestly? The last few years have been an ongoing lesson in surrender. Surrendering into not knowing where the leap lands or when it ends.

It feels like being out on a vast ocean riding wave after wave after wave. Hoping the waters will settle only to realize that the waves never truly settle. You just get used to the waves and learn how to ride them.

So even though change can happen in an instant, it can also unfold in waves.

3 years ago I also received a wave of inspiration that I’ve been riding since (the paintings I’m sharing here are part of it) illustrating the 64 Gates of Human Design.

This project is another leap of faith as I know I’m creating something that wants to exist and can already see it completed but it’s taken its time unfolding and been a huge labor of love. But I know when it’s finally here, one of the most meaningful parts (aside from having created this) will be the story of becoming the person who stayed with it long enough to bring it into reality.

The 35-36 channel is one of the few manifested channels in the human design chart. Which means what you speak can easily become your manifestation.

So the question becomes what would you like to choose?

Would you like to choose the energy of:
“That’s a beautiful dream, but it probably won’t happen for me”?

Or would you like to choose:
“I don’t know exactly how this is going to unfold yet… but I’m willing to take the leap. I’m willing to see what becomes possible if I don’t give up on it.”

That, to me, is the heart of progress in Gate 35.

A Creative Practice to tap into Gate 35

Play with watercolors (my favorite media) by just adding color onto your paper and seeing how the colors interact with each other. Explore line, marks, how the colors flow. Just let go and see what gets created. And if it turns into a mess, tear it up to create a collage or write little notes to inspire your progress.

Or if you like a bit more structure, take an emotional experience you’ve moved through that really impacted you and turn it into a creative piece (painting, poem, photo, etc) and share the results along with a little bit of insight into why you created it.

Set a timer for 5 minutes and use your notes app (or paper if you prefer) to speak out a list beginning every sentence with “What if…” to make a list of all the possibilities you can dream into. Then pick one and take the first step forward and see what happens.

If you enjoy journaling, here are a few questions you can ask yourself and see what comes:

• What leap(s) am I waiting to take?

• What’s holding me back?

• What’s the worst that could happen if I did this?

• What’s the best that could happen?

Go on an adventure. Take yourself somewhere you’ve been yearning to go - maybe a new hiking trail, maybe a new city, maybe a new shop, maybe a new country. Take the leap. Have the experience. Tell someone what you learned.

The 64 Gates: The seeds, weeds, and growth themes that shape our life story

I see the 64 energies as the building blocks of all the potential archetypes that live within us to create our unique story. I think of them as an inner landscape living inside the chart that holds the seeds, weeds, and growth themes that shape our life story.

The Gates are my favorite part of Human Design because they are where our real nuance emerges and when we begin to understand how they flow through us we can use what we learn to navigate our life in greater flow with our natural gifts and potential challenges.

Of course when I first started learning human design the Gates were the part that eluded me the most. That spurred my creative urge that has been unfolding exploring the 64 Gates through different individuals who I photograph and interview to learn about their own experience with specific gates.

The results are now culminating in a card deck called the EmbodieHD Landscape with the resulting illustrations, contemplative prompts, seeds and weeds reflections, and inspirational mantras to explore these themes within yourself and your life.

I’ve been sharing these artworks and interviews on my site and substack as I go and finally after 3 years of growing this I’m excited to be finally launching it this September on Kickstarter.

You can learn more about the EmobodieHD Landscape and sign up to be the first to know when it launches here: https://www.jahjeives.com/blog

How to work with Jahje

Jahje Ives is a Human Design guide, transformational coach, and intuitive artist who helps people navigate seasons of life reimagining with greater clarity and growing self-trust. Using Human Design, creative storytelling, energetic release, and embodied art practices, she guides clients beyond limitations and into the full bloom of who they are becoming.

When she’s not coaching or teaching, Jahje loves to hike the parks around Philadelphia with her family or retreat to her studio and create intuitive artwork using crystal watercolors. She is currently completing the EmbodieHD Landscape, an illustrated exploration of the 64 Gates of Human Design and the 14 celestial bodies that will become a card deck and expanded body of work.

Website www.jahjeives.com

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/jahjeives/

and https://www.instagram.com/jahjehan

Substack https://substack.com/@jahjeives

Thanks so much for walking the Mandala 64 with Jajhe and I!

See you in 5 days for the sun in Gate 45: THE GATHERER.

PS. If you’d like to have a physical, IRL way to deepen your learnings of Human Design, the I’Ching & the Gene Keys- and how they fit into the Zodiac Wheel and the Bodygraph, you can order a copy of my Mandala 64 deck!

I have a few decks left in hand and not sure when the next preorder will be, so get yours while it’s hot! <3

Mandala 64 is a learning and oracle deck I created last year, with one card for each gate, plus 14 cards for each of the planets and luminaries that transit through the gates.

My favorite practice is to pull the card for the current gate and place it on your altar for the week. Let it sit in your field. It’s one of the most embodied ways I know to learn the gates - not through study but through slow, repeated encounter.

Order Your Deck Here!

I also offer Astrology & Human Design Readings and 1:1 Coaching that weaves together Astro64, embodiment and breath, and creative practice. View my offerings on my website:

Hearth & Spiral Offerings

Participating in the Mandala 64 Walk is free. Paid subscribers get my undying gratitude, as well as access to my live rituals for each of the Holy Days through the year, plus extra goodies along the way. The next ritual is for Summer Solstice, which corresponds with Gate 15: Extremes… hope to see you there!

This full moon in Sagittarius is a blue moon, which simply means that it’s the second full moon in a calendar month. On May 1 we experienced an incredibly intense and potent full moon in Scorpio, and now, on May 31, we will gaze up at a very different flavor of bright glowing orb: the Centaur-Archer’s blue moon. By now we’re all familar with supermoons, but this moon is known as a micro-moon- it’s the smallest a full moon will look from earth all year, as it’s at its apogee, the furthest point from earth in it’s orbit.

Tonight I sat in my hot tub under the vast New Mexico sky and looked up at the moon as it waxes it’s way to fullness. It was caught in a web of gossamer haze, sitting between two clearly-defined cumulus clouds. It truly looked like a pearl sitting in the mouth of a dragon. It was so beautiful.

Lately, strangely, the whole world has been beautiful to me. I’ve been going through a lot of endings and changes in my personal life, and yet the moments that I’ve been taking in have been extra delicious. The mullein growing in my backyard has been making me gasp with delight, as has the shiny tiny black beetle crawling across the concrete, the fat brown bird on the windowsill, and the way my little dog wiggles when he runs. Lately the twinkle in the eyes of people I’m having conversations with has deeply affected me, making me lose track of what I was saying because the sparkle they’re carrying is just too perfect.

Gemini season is ALIVE.

Gemini season began with the sun in the Gate of the Now, the human design gate where Uranus currently is and will be staying for the entirety of the next year. This is also the gate where my natal Chiron lives, and this year as the sun and Uranus came together there, something major shifted inside me. Like a lightning bolt zapping me into the present moment.

What this Cazimi did was break any spell of thinking that paying attention to the Now is a wound that needs to be healed. That my present moment awareness was superficial, something to move past. I notice that when I’m hanging out with children, their present moment obsession is a true gift. It’s the best gift. But as an adult, actually living in the now tends to become something that references aspirational coffee table books. It is vaguely spiritual, but ultimately something that I just dont have time for.

It seems strange to write that out:

“I don’t have time to be in the present moment.”

Why? Because there are too many pasts to reconsider and to analyze and to heal from, and way too many futures to plan for and worry about.

I remember reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle when it came out in high school, which I suppose my gateway drug into the breathwork and somatic practices that I do now. In my breathwork training we read The Presence Process by Michael Brown, another book working in the same territory, but from a very different angle. Tolle points you toward the witnessing awareness behind thought, and Brown gives you a ten-week structured practice built around conscious connected breathing, asking you to move through the stored emotional charge in your body rather than simply observe your way past it. In retrospect, the two books work well together…. but neither brought me into the present moment as much as Uranus and the Sun hitting my Chiron in the Gate of the Now :)

Transits are funny like that.

Do you remember a certain transit that made you feel, deep down in your bones, “Ok, astrology HAS to be real…”

I have several big transit aha moments from past years that got me to this point of being an astrologer and writing about astrology, but those are stories for a different day.

Right now, the one that’s shining brightest for me is Uranus in Gemini. It’s stirring me up in the wildest way, as only the planet of lightning and electricity and sudden change can do. Uranus is on my Chiron, and it’s also across the sky from my natal Uranus AND Jupiter, which means… dun dun dun… my Uranus opposition is coming. And it’s gonna be a big one, touched by upon the great expander.

The Uranus opposition is THE big midlife transit that, for many who live through it, fully rewires life as they have known it up to that point. I’ve got front row seats, and I’m feeling the heat from the fiery ring, even before the tiger officially jumps through it.

The Full Moon in Sagittarius opposite the Sun in Gemini

This ties into the full moon in Sagittarius because my natal Uranus and Jupiter are in Sag, along with my Neptune and South Node. This outer planet stellium in the gate of the Centaur Archer are all being activated by the moon this week. It’s lighting up my emotional and creative self with the bigness that only full moons can bring. And it’s reminding me of the polarity between Sagittarius and Gemini, which is all the more electrifying due to Uranus. Gemini is the Now, Gemini is the elegantly flittering butterfly and the bee that’s burrowing in the pollen of the current moment.

Sagittarius, this moon reminds us, is the archer pointing his arrow toward one of the horizons, making decisions that will take time to execute. He points, he draws back, he shoots, and then his powerful horse legs take him running, with a fixed rhythm, with focus and determination. He’s on an adventure, but he doesn’t have time to stop and smell the flowers. His season is late fall, and unlike Gemini’s late spring buzzing about, the chill of winter winds are making him recognize the weight of his decisions, the focus and strength needed to do what needs to be done before the snows come.

Full moons, in this way, truly remind us that the season we’re in is fleeting, and sweet, and that it’s important to be where we’re at and embrace the eccentricities of the season as much as we can.

Bumblebee vs. Man-Horse

This full moon is the showdown of bumblebee vs. man-horse, and our task is to both honor their differences and revere their similarities. I always think of full moons as times when we get a little, round, moon-sized porthole into the opposite season from the one we’re in.

We’re here in late spring in the northern hemisphere, experiencing all the late spring kinds of things. More communication with friends, more professional invites, more ice cream, more outside time. Tending to all the little sprouting broccolis and tomatoes I started from seed in March. Putting sweaters under the bed in favor of more shorts and tank tops. Bringing my easel and paints in from the garage so I can make some art while I’m parenting on summer break (writing = screen time, so that has to be done post bedtime). More noticing the beauty of the moment, as these physical acts of connecting with my clothes and paints and plants welcomes my daughter and partner into my world far more than making a spreadsheet on the computer does.

Buzzy, buzzy bees. Gemini season. And then, for one day only, the moon becomes full in the opposite sign, using it’s magical gravitational force to pull us momentarily into the vibes of the opposite season. Sagittarius is late fall. Plants are dead, and the harvest has been eaten or canned up. Sweaters are definitely back in the closet and shorts are a distant memory. Fires are being lit. The pollinating explosion of late spring is out of sight, out of mind, as the archer’s arrow points toward the horizon of the holiday season, of the New Year, of the time when the days start getting longer again. Sagittarius is the last sign that heads into the dark, and he needs both his focus and his flame to make it through. The moon reminds us that it’s not always a time for buzzing. In 6 months, we’ll be in a season of running, putting our blinders on and using our strong horse legs to move.

The Gate of Focus vs. The Gate of Enthusiasm

Fittingly, the human design gate where this new moon falls is Gate 9: The Gate of Focus. It’s across the sky from the sun in Gate 16: The Gate of Enthusiasm, aka The Gate of Skills. Within these two contrasting energies, you can see what I mean about the polarity between Gemini and Sag. I almost don’t need to write any more about it!

Enthusiasm, being lit up about gaining new skills by working on things with your hands and experimenting with the joy of presence as we work. And the full moon of Focus, aiming and shooting an arrow toward what is best for you long-term. As well-rounded humans,, we certainly need both.

This full moon will remind us of the great adventure that is life. Our current season, Gemini, is for adventuring through local space like a bee bouncing from flower to flower. Overbooking our calendars, making mistakes, leaning hard into the WHIMSY trend that seems to have taken over the internet.

It’s not random, it’s the season. The season across the sky, Sagittarius, is for adventuring through distant space, and through metaphysical space too- making plans, drawing maps, and then moving as fast as wildfire to get to the horizon (or the galactic center) that we pointed our arrows toward. The full moon reminds us of the larger frameworks, the philosophies, the atlases we use to understand the fullness of the terrain. Gemini brings us back home to the conversation with friends as to why the maps are important in the first place.

“Whimsy & Connection in the Present Moment “vs “Focused Creativity & Strength”

My Uranus opposition AND North Node/South Node axis happening on this polarity of Gemini and Sagittarius is hitting me hard. And it has it’s moments of “WTF is going on”, but overall, so far I’m loving it.

I’ve been obsessed with integrating polarities as a practice for a long time, and this feels like the universe is handing me a powerful opportunity to move consciously through this massive midlife terrain. I don’t expect to predict whats going to happen, and I’m not delusional enough to think that I can glide through unscathed just because I’m aware, but I am grateful to know that I can call on the guides of Whimsy & Connection in the Present Moment AND Focused Creativity & Strength- and I don’t have to choose between the two. Learning how to bring them together feels like the assignment right now. With no shame. I know I’ll feel the shadows of these signs - force and superficiality- from time to time, but my plan is to try to embrace them, too.

The Map and the Moment: Announcing ELA Map

Part of what I’ve been up to as I move through this pivotal Uranian transit has been working as a consultant on an an amazing piece of astro-software that my partner Jackson and his team have been building for the past year. It’s perfectly on theme with the Sagittarius full moon, the map and the moment, which is why I’m introducing it to you today.

It’s called ELA Map: Energy Location Atlas.

ELA is a personalized geographic interface, bringing insights from astrocartography, human design, synastry, asteroids and more onto a beautiful map so you can zoom far and wide like the Sagittarius centaur and find places on the globe where you feel most like you.

Locational astrology and the evolving scope of the framework through the lens of human design has been lighting me up for a few years now, and I’m SO excited for this app to get out into the world.

Last year, Jackson and I homeschooled our daughter for kindergarten and took her on a world-school adventure for part of it, traveling around the States and Central America. We were thinking of potentially relocating, so we were paying close attention to the schools, the climate, the elevation, the cost of living, the culture, and other factors about each place. And when we started to bring each place’s astrocartography lines to the equation, it added a beautiful layer of depth to how the place truly felt to each of us as individuals, and how that energy influenced our family unit. It was pretty wild to learn through doing (such a Gemini Gate of Skills thing)- it didn’t feel theoretical, it was living and breathing data that was uncannily spot-on.

It was on that trip that ELA Map was born…. with the deep belief that Place is Personal.

I want to invite you, my lovely readers, to the early access. The first version is launching in a couple weeks, so if you’d like to be an early-adopter or beta-tester, you can join the waitlist by clicking the button below. And please feel free to share this link with anyone you know who works in the realm of locational astrology or is intrigued by astro-cartography! Thanks in advance!

Sign up for the ELA Map Waitlist

Signing up is free, and you’ll get a free premium subscription when you join the beta. If you’re not ready to sign up but want to stay in the loop, you can follow ELA’s evolution here on Substack, and on Youtube and Instagram . I’m going to be writing some stories about my personal experiences with various astrocartography lines on the ELA Substack, so stay tuned for that!

My practice here at Hearth & Spiral and Living the Spiral Podcast has been all about finding a home - a hearth - within the changing seasons. Charts to me lately feel less like maps and more like compasses, pointing toward our true direction as we navigate the cycles of time. For that reason, it’s been so cool to be a part of a project that takes that same consideration of direction within physical space, on actual maps of the world. Whether you’re relocating or traveling or just want to know more about the energetics of your hometown, it’s an extremely fun rabbit hole to go down!

As always, thanks so much for reading and listening and being on this journey with me. My books are open for Astro64 Readings (my unique blend of astrology & human design) as well as astrocartography readings, and I’d truly love to explore your charts with you. I also have a couple spots open for 1:1 coaching, where we work with your charts in a slower, more creative and embodied way to help you connect with your hearth and reach your goals. You can check out my recently updated website HERE.

Until next time,

Alison

Gemini reminds us that the map is not the territory- the flowers and the fields are.

But at the same time, this Sagittarius full moon is here to remind us how helpful maps are when we zoom out to see the global picture.

And what a beautiful globe we get to live on, too.

Have a really sweet and powerful full moon, y’all.

At the beginning of this project, I put out a call for contributors to write about a particular gate that feels personally meaningful to them. This week’s gate, The Gate of Skills (16), was selected by Mel Rolfes, a new friend based in Roanoke, Virginia who works as a psychotherapist and mind-body practitioner. She shares her brilliant creative writing on the Substack Underbelly.

If YOU would like to be part of this project and write about one of the 64 Gates, I’d love to share your experience and insights! Please DM me with the gate you’re interested in!.

Thanks so much for being a part of the Mandala 64 Walk, Mel!

Cultivating Devotion to a Craft

Mel Rolfes on Gate 16

In Human Design, Gate 16 is located in the Throat Center and is often associated with enthusiasm, talent, versatility, and the refinement of skill through practice. It corresponds to Hexagram 16 of the I’Ching, traditionally translated as Enthusiasm. In the I’Ching, enthusiasm is not just excitement or hype, but a kind of energized alignment that helps mobilize movement, creativity, and collective momentum. There’s something deeply alive about this hexagram. It speaks to the power of inspiration, rhythm, preparation, and emotional resonance, especially when that energy is grounded and directed toward something meaningful. It reflects the spark that helps us engage more fully with life and devote ourselves to what wants to be cultivated through us.

In the Gene Keys, 16 moves from the Shadow of Indifference to the Gift of Versatility to the Siddhi of Mastery. This progression speaks to the difference between disengaging from life versus fully participating in it. The Shadow of Indifference can show up as apathy, scatteredness, self-doubt, cynicism, or withholding ourselves because we’re afraid of failing, being seen, or not being “good enough” yet. The Gift of Versatility emerges when we allow ourselves to experiment, stay curious, and engage with life more creatively and wholeheartedly. Over time, that sincere devotion to practice can evolve into the Siddhi of Mastery, not as perfection or performance, but as a deeply embodied relationship with one’s gifts.

To me, this gate is about finding your gifts through cultivating a devotion to a craft. It’s the energy of refining something over time, not because it is obsessed with mastery in a polished or performative sense, but because it believes in the transformative powers of the actual process. Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes purpose. Through repetition, experimentation, failure, and continued engagement, something slowly gets polished, whether it’s a skill, yourself, or more likely, both. It requires presence, curiosity, and a willingness to accept that mastery rarely arrives fully formed.

And because it’s a process, fully showing up with your gifts often means sharing them before you feel like you’ve mastered them. That takes vulnerability. And vulnerability tends to sit pretty close to our wounds.

I chose this gate because I have it as my conscious Chiron placement (16.4), and it feels deeply intertwined with my broader astrological makeup, especially my 9th house Gemini stellium. There’s a strong part of me that longs to learn, synthesize, teach, and translate complex ideas into something relational and accessible for others. But that desire sits surprisingly close to a fear of being misunderstood, scrutinized, or seen before I feel fully “ready.” I think this placement is asking me to learn how to share imperfectly anyway.

Gate 16 strengths are often described as enthusiasm, talent, and versatility, but for me, it also speaks to the willingness to stay engaged long enough for something meaningful to take shape and emerge. As someone with a strong Gemini influence, I know how easy it can be to become fascinated by many things at once, constantly moving toward the next idea, insight, or possibility before giving myself the chance to truly deepen into something. Gate 16 seems to ask us to not just discover our gifts, but tend to them. Return to them. Refine them over time without turning it into a performance, a productivity machine, or simply another source of external validation.

Because of that, I think the shadow of indifference can sometimes look less like laziness and more like disengagement, self-doubt, or withholding ourselves because we’re afraid of not being good enough yet. Almost like a form of self-protection that manifests as apathy.

Having this gate as my conscious Chiron feels deeply tied to the “wounded healer” archetype and the tension between expression, visibility, and self-worth. There can be a fear of not being ready enough, skilled enough, or polished enough yet. There is a temptation to believe that we have to perfect ourselves before we can fully offer our gifts. But I think Gate 16 teaches something softer and wiser: that devotion itself is transformative. Through practice, repetition, and continued engagement, both the practitioner and the gift are refined together. The gift is not meant to emerge fully polished. Part of its refinement happens through the vulnerable act of sharing it before it feels complete.

Writing this piece honestly feels like a living example of Gate 16 for me. I don’t identify as a Human Design expert, and there’s still a part of me that wonders whether I’m “qualified enough” to speak on this gate at all. But the more I sat with that tension, the more I realized that is the gate for me. Learning how to share what’s emerging before it feels perfectly refined.

In my body, this energy feels like vulnerability and aliveness existing side by side. A kind of creative charge in my chest and throat, like something wants to come through me and be expressed, but needs practice, structure, and devotion so it doesn’t scatter itself in too many directions. Almost like learning how to channel something being born in real time rather than waiting until it feels complete before allowing it to be seen.

The Practice

When the Sun transits Gate 16, I think it can be a beautiful time to reconnect with the practices, skills, or creative expressions that make us feel genuinely alive. One practice I’d recommend is setting aside time to engage in something imperfectly but devotionally (aka: make some bad art). The point isn’t mastery or productivity. It’s participation. Let yourself reconnect with the experience of practicing something simply because it lights something up inside of you.

This could look like painting, dancing in your living room, practicing an instrument, writing poetry, coloring, learning a new skill, or returning to something you once loved before becoming overly concerned with being “good” at it.

Before beginning, you might reflect on:

• What am I longing to practice or cultivate right now?

• Where have I confused mastery with perfection?

• What wants to be expressed through me, even imperfectly?

• What would it feel like to approach my gifts with curiosity instead of performance?

Then spend some time engaging the practice slowly and attentively. Notice what happens in your body when you allow yourself to be a beginner again. Notice where joy, resistance, frustration, enthusiasm, self-consciousness, or self-judgment arise. And remember that some things become luminous only because we keep returning to them.

Practice Makes Purpose

The 64 gates and the I’Ching hexagrams are symbolic patterns and archetypal energies that help illuminate different dimensions of being human. I don’t feel the need to approach these systems with absolute certainty in order to find them meaningful. For me, their value is experiential and reflective. They offer mirrors, frameworks, and invitations into greater self-awareness and wholeness. These systems aren’t here to tell us who we are, but to guide us toward remembering who we came here to become.

Gate 16 is an invitation to participate more fully in the unfolding of our own lives, trusting that along the way our gifts will reveal themselves. Stay curious. Experiment. Follow the thread of what makes you feel alive. Mastery doesn’t arrive overnight. It’s shaped through returning, over and over again, with sincerity and devotion. And maybe our unique soul purpose isn’t something we excavate fully formed, but something we slowly grow into through practice.

And yes, vulnerability is terrifying. Being seen, and the potential of being misunderstood or rejected, can feel deeply threatening to the nervous system. But if we never allow our messy authentic selves to shine through, underdeveloped gifts and all, then the people who are looking for us can’t find us.

Happy Gemini season, everyone.

All about Mel:

Mel is a psychotherapist and mind-body practitioner based in Roanoke, Virginia. She has a telehealth private practice, as well as a second business where she weaves together psychology, somatics, and contemplative practices to support folks in moving toward greater wholeness and developing more resourced nervous systems. She is currently completing a two-year diploma program in astropsychology and looks forward to weaving this symbolic system into her already integrative healing work. She keeps a low-key Substack where she practices devotion to her own unfolding gifts through creative writing:

UNDERBELLY

some of this is true. some of this is not. most falls somewhere in between.

By melchemy ✨

You can learn more about her private practice at www.inhaleexhalecounseling.com and her mind-body care at www.melrolfes.com.

Thanks for walking the Mandala together, y’all.

See you in 5 days for the sun in Gate 35: CHANGE.

PS. If you’d like to have a physical, IRL way to deepen your learnings of Human Design, the I’Ching & the Gene Keys- and how they fit into the Zodiac Wheel and the Bodygraph, you can order a copy of my Mandala 64 deck! I have a few decks left in hand and not sure when the next preorder will be, so get yours while it’s hot! <3

Mandala 64 is a learning and oracle deck I created last year, with one card for each gate, plus 14 cards for each of the planets and luminaries that transit through the gates.

My favorite practice is to pull the card for the current gate and place it on your altar for the week. Let it sit in your field. It’s one of the most embodied ways I know to learn the gates - not through study but through slow, repeated encounter.

Order Your Deck Here!

Participating in the Mandala 64 Walk is free. Paid subscribers get access to live rituals at each of the 8 G-Center gates through the year, plus extra goodies along the way.

Part two of the Gemini season overview is up, and this one is all horoscopes!

Jump to your rising sign in the timestamps below, or listen through a few. Sun sign, moon sign, wherever you have Gemini placements in your chart, it all applies.

I’m doing these by rising sign because rising sign horoscopes reflect your chart’s house structure, which is how the astrology lands in your real lived experience. If you don’t know your rising sign, you can find out by pulling your chart at astro.com with your birth time.

In this episode, I go through all twelve rising signs and how Gemini season is touching your chart, including the Uranus Cazimi at the start of the season (May 22), the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer on June 9th, the Sagittarius full moon on May 31st, and the new moon in Gemini on June 15th. And because Uranus just moved into Gemini for the next seven years, I touch on the longer story of that transit too, not just the month ahead.

If you missed part one, that episode covers the six human design gates of Gemini season, the major transits, and the eco-somatic and mythological backdrop for the season. Both are worth a listen together!

00:00 Welcome

02:47 Why Rising Signs Matter

03:09 Gemini Season Big Shift

03:31 Aries Rising Third House

06:00 Taurus Rising Money Values

08:26 Gemini Rising Identity Rewire

11:19 Cancer Rising Twelfth House

14:22 Leo Rising Community Shakeup

17:33 Virgo Rising Career Calling

20:21 Libra Rising Beliefs Travel

22:48 Scorpio Rising Deep Transformation

25:39 Sagittarius Rising Partnerships

28:41 Capricorn Rising Routines Health

31:15 Aquarius Rising Creativity Play

33:34 Pisces Rising Home Roots

37:01 Wrap Up Resources and Links

Gemini Season Guidebook

If you’re a Gemini, happy birthday season! Grab a 32-page Gemini Season PDF Guidebook for yourself or another twin in your life!

I made this book with lots of love, inspiration and care, and it’s filled with the astrological and human design mythology of the season, ritual tips for the holy day of Litha (summer solstice), somatic prompts to attune you to the energy of late spring, and much more….

Gemini Season Guidebook

Work with Alison

Alison is an eco-somatic astrologer and Human Design guide based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her readings weave together your birth chart and Human Design to give you a felt sense of where you are in your own timing and what’s asking to move.

If you want a deeper look at how this season and the longer Uranus-in-Gemini cycle are showing up in your personal chart, her books are open at hearthandspiral.com.

Book a Reading

Let me know how Gemini season is shaping up for you in the comments below, or click on the heart to help this reach more people! Happy twin bee season loves!

xoxo

The latest episode of Living the Spiral is up, but I want to start with a short announcement before we get into the astrology.

I’ve been feeling a pull to change how I’m showing up here a little bit- I’ve decided to move away from lunation-by-lunation tracking and into a monthly rhythm. For the forseeable future on Living the Spiral, I’ll be putting out:

• a season ahead episode (with rising sign horoscopes) at the beginning of each Zodiac season,

• a Magician’s interview where I chat with amazing practitioners about the magic they’re bringing into the world, and

• one more open-ended episode each month to hold whatever’s rising- big picture transits, the collective pulse, personal musings, etc.

  It’s now my kid’s summer break (as of yesterday), and I’m making this change for me to have a little slower, more spacious season, with more room to actually live in the spiral of the season rather than chasing the transits for a while. <3

This first episode in the new format is a full Gemini season walkthrough.

I cover the six human design gates the sun moves through from May into June, the energetic arc from presence to skills, change to gathering, caution and finally on into the exremes of the summer solstice as Cancer season begins. I also go through each of the major transits of the season ahead, including the Uranus Cazimi that happened on May 22 in Gate 20, the Gate of the Now, the Mars-Pluto square on May 25th, the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer on June 9th, and Chiron’s ingress into Taurus on June 19th. Full and new moons of the season are included here too, along with their human design gates and overall vibes.

Uranus is in Gemini now through 2033, and this season is the first real immersion in that energy as the sun brings light to the sign of the twins and we feel into these pollinating, buzzy frequencies. Uranus is in the first Gate of Gemini, the Gate of the now, for the next year, and will then move through each of the Gemini gates for about a year each- so pay attention to these archetypical frequencies, as they’re being lit up like lightning for long periods of time over the next seven years!

There’s a lot of electricity in the air, so I invite you to find your breath, use your arms as extensions from your heart in creative play, stay curious and in childlike wonder, and try not to feel like you have to take it all in at once. Like the honeybeee pollinating the meadow, let’s take the month ahead flower-by-flower.

The Mandala 64 Walk here on Substack will continue running, with written gate posts delivered to your inbox as the sun moves through each gate. That’s free to subscribe and a good way to stay with the micro-weather of the season week by week!

Your rising sign horoscopes will be sent out as a separate post, and this one will give you the over/under of the season at large.

🎧 Listen to the episode in the Substack player above, or find it wherever you listen to podcasts.

Let me know in the comments what’s alive for you as Gemini season begins!

xo,

A

PS. If you’re a Gemini, happy birthday season! Grab a 32-page Gemini Season PDF Guidebook for yourself or another twin in your life!

I made this book with lots of love, inspiration and care, and it’s filled with the astrological and human design mythology of the season, ritual tips for the holy day of Litha (summer solstice), somatic prompts to attune you to the energy of late spring, and much more….

Gemini Season Guidebook

Work with Alison

Alison is an ecosomatic astrologer, Human Design guide, and spiritual teacher based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She weaves together astrology, Human Design, the Gene Keys, the wheel of the year, and somatic practice into readings, courses, and seasonal gatherings that help people attune to the deeper rhythms they’re already living inside.

Her Soulshine readings combine astrology and Human Design into a single session that looks at your chart, your body, your timing, and what’s asking to move in you right now. She also offers stand-alone astrology and human design readings, so if you want to go deeper into how the current transits and your own design are intersecting, her books are open.

You can find her full offering of readings and courses at hearthandspiral.com, and follow the Living the Spiral podcast and Mandala 64 Walk here on Substack.

Book a Reading

Leave a comment

Now onto the energetic frequency of the next 5 days- The Gate of The Now, the first Gate of Gemini Season! This is the gate where Uranus is currently hanging out, so as the sun passes through this region, Uranus will experience his annual cazimi moment - sitting on the throne of the Sun. This week will likely have some electrical charge, reminding you to surrender to the present moment. Remember, even the best of plans aren’t set in stone.

Gate 20: The Story

Something happens right at the edge of Gate 8 and Gate 20, the cusp of Taurus and Gemini Season. Gate 8 asked what distilled offering you were ready to bring forward, what essential thing had been gathering itself into a form specific enough to be shared with the world. Gate 20 is what happens when that offering actually meets the present moment and you discover, all at once, that the only place it can live is now.

In the I’Ching, Hexagram 20 is known as Guān, Wind over Earth. It’s the image of wind moving across the whole landscape, touching everything without pausing, reading the terrain as it goes. Ancient commentaries on this hexagram describe a high tower, a place of seeing. Like a lighthouse scans the sea, this is the energy of witnessing what is here, right now, in this exact moment. The voice of Gate 20 in the bodygraph is the most existential statement in the entire Throat Center- it says “I am”.

The shadow of Gate 20 in the Gene Keys is Superficiality, which is the way we can check out from the present moment while technically still occupying it. You are talking, but part of you is already somewhere else, managing the next thing, rehearsing or reviewing, running a background track of commentary over the top of what is actually happening. Your body is in the room but your being, your soul, is elsewhere. This can show up as being busy for the sake of being busy, or over-preparing in a way that insulates you from the aliveness of the actual moment.

The gift of Gate 20 is Self-Assurance. This is not just “confidence” in the usual sense of the word, or the loud kind of assurance that comes from assuming in advance that things will go well. Self-Assurance here is surrendering the need to know something in advance, and instead trusting the moment enough to show up in it without a prepared position, letting what is true and alive in you speak from where you actually are.

The siddhi is Presence. In the Gene Keys, Richard Rudd’s language around it moves toward something that cannot fully be spoken. It’s the moment when a person who has been trying to be present dissolves, and what remains is simply the now itself, The Presence with a capital P, moving through a human form.

There are teachers in the lineage of this gate - Ramana Maharshi is one - who said very little and whose presence was itself the transmission. The teaching was not in the content of what they said. It was in the quality of attention behind it. Maharshi taught that the present moment is the only reality. He stated that past and future are mere mental projections. By quieting the mind through Self-enquiry (asking "Who am I?"), one dissolves the ego and rests permanently in the eternal "Now," where the true Self is realized. That is the siddhi territory of Gate 20: your being in this moment is the offering.

Uranus in Gate 20

Uranus has been moving through Gate 20 since April 28th of this year, and it will stay here until May 26, 2027. That is a long time to have the planet of disruption and awakening sitting in the gate of presence. The sun will meet the sky god here this week on Friday, adding extra light and heat to this liberatory transit.

What Uranus tends to do is break up whatever has calcified. In Gate 20, that means the old habits of speaking without landing, of being somewhere without really being there, or of moving through your days on autopilot. Uranus here is not going to be gentle about that. It will keep surfacing moments where you realize you checked out, where you said the expected thing, and where you were technically present but not fully in your body. A big clue here is to pay attention to what your eyes are doing as you move through the world- are they connected, alive, meeting the entities of the day? Are they darting about too fast to take anything in? Or are they glazed over, looking inward only or toward the past or the future?

The invitation over this whole year-plus with Uranus in this gate is to let that disruption do its work. The throat’s nature wants to speak from now, from this specific unrepeatable moment, and Uranus is going to keep making the alternative (zooming too far to the past or the present) feel increasingly uncomfortable. What wants to come through you that could only come through you right now, in this season of your life? That’s the question this transit keeps asking.

Gate 20 in the Body

Gate 20 lives in the Throat Center, the same center where Gate 8 lives, along with many of the gates of Gemini season. The Throat is where energy crosses from the interior body into the larger world. It’s only center in the bodygraph where what is happening inside you becomes something outside you, with sound, speech, action, and breath taking on physical vibrational shape. Gate 8 was the voice of contribution, the willingness to put forward what has been distilled from your life experience. Gate 20 holds a different voice, the one that speaks from pure present-tense aliveness rather than from accumulated knowing.

Physically, this territory includes the larynx and the thyroid, and the vagus nerve as it moves through the throat. These are the mechanisms that regulate both speech and the parasympathetic tone of the whole nervous system. There is also a connection in the Integration Circuit in the bodygraph, which is a circuit that runs through the gates that form the spine of individual self-empowerment: 57, 34, 10, and 20. This circuit is sometimes described as the energetic backbone of the chart, and Gate 20 is its expression into the Throat. It’s the single point where the whole self-sustaining individuality of the Integration Circuit finally breaks through into voice.

When this gate is under pressure, or when the authentic present-moment quality of it is habitually bypassed, what shows up in the body can look like chronic busyness or a kind of low-level fragmentation, the feeling of being scattered across several timelines at once. In this shadow frequency (which always has an underlying current of fear), the body never fully lands. Something in the throat or the chest stays slightly braced, holding against the full arrival of right now. I always associate Gemini season and it’s buzzy energy with pollinators- bees, butterflies, hummingbirds. These creatures can carry a high frequency, but they must decide to land on one flower at a time, or they will burn out from exhaustion.

The correction away from hyper-business is not to slow down exactly, but to let your body actually be in the moment it is in, to stop running ahead of it or behind it and feel what it is like to be here, with nothing else required. Is the flower next to you ripe for pollination? You can’t decide in advance, you have to trust the moment.

Season, Channel & Polarity

Season: We remain in the Earth season, Kūn, the lower trigram that settled in at Beltane and holds through the Summer Solstice. The grounded, receptive, generative quality of this season is the felt foundation beneath everything during these weeks. The upper trigram for Gate 20 is Xùn, Wind, which is the trigram of penetration, of reaching into everything. Wind is the gentle force that moves through every opening it finds, and Wind over Earth is the image of Guān. Earth as the whole terrain, stable and receiving, with wind as the presence that touches all of it without needing to hold any of it.

Channel: Gate 20 reaches down to Gate 34 in the Sacral Center, forming the 20–34 Channel of Charisma, also called the Channel of Responsive Power. This is a pure Manifesting Generator gate, where sacral energy connects to the voice and center of expression. Gate 34 is pure, raw sacral force, the most potent generative energy in the bodygraph, and Gate 20 is the bridge through which that force becomes presence in the now, something that can be heard and felt and received by others. When the channel is active, the quality people sometimes call charisma or magnetism is not about performance or strategy. It is about what happens when enormous life force and full present-tense awareness arrive at the same time in the same body, in the same moment. The whole being becomes the message.

Polarity: Gate 34, Power, sits directly across the wheel in Sagittarius, and these two gates form one of only three pairs in the whole bodygraph that are both polar opposites on the mandala wheel AND channel partners in the chart. Gate 34 is raw power looking for a channel to move through. Gate 20 is the present-moment awareness that gives that power somewhere to go. The question between them is whether the life force you are pouring out is actually meeting the now, actually landing in real time in real contact with what is here, or whether the power is running ahead of the presence, busy and activated but not quite arrived.

A Somatic Practice for Gate 20

Find a place to sit or stand where you can be still for a few minutes without having to perform being still. Let your feet feel the ground underneath them, the actual surface, whatever it is. Notice whether you are here, truly, or whether some part of you is already somewhere else in time. There is no need to chase the elsewhere part back. Just notice where you are.

Take a slow breath in through the nose and let it go without deciding what should come next. Let the next breath arrive on its own, when it arrives. Repeat this two or three times. Then take your attention into the throat, not the larynx specifically but the whole soft column of the throat, and let it be exactly what it is. Let it be warm or cold or tight or open without correcting it. Let yourself exist, uncurated and unfiltered, in this moment. The practice is not relaxation. It is arrival. Your body knows how to be here now, and the invitation is to stop removing yourself from it.

Creativity Prompts

Pull out your favorite notebook, your paints, your colored pencils, whatever calls to you, and give yourself 15 uninterrupted minutes with one of these:

Write about a moment when you were genuinely, fully present. Not trying to be present, just actually there. What was happening? What did it feel like in your body? Then write about a moment recently when you left the present moment by zooming into the future or the past. Where did you go, and what pulled you out of the now? What is the difference between those two experiences when you let yourself feel them side by side?

Draw or paint the image of wind moving over a wide landscape at dusk, touching everything it passes but holding nothing. Let it be loose and exploratory. Let the land be whatever the land wants to be. Notice what it feels like to let a whole scene exist without having to resolve it.

With your Mandala 64 deck, pull the Gate 20 card and sit with both sides. Notice where you are living in the shadow of Superficiality this week, skimming the surface of something that wants your full attention. And notice where Self-Assurance is already present in you, surrendered to this instant in time. Put this card on your altar for the next few days and let the words, image, and hexagram remind you that there are two sides to everything- at least.

Thanks so much for being here! Participating in the Mandala 64 Walk is free.

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Welcome to Living the Spiral. For those of you who are new here, this is a podcast about learning to read the language the world is always speaking, through astrology, human design, and the deep ancestral wisdom of the earth’s changing seasons.

Today I’m thrilled to have my dear friend Rachel Simon Stark on the show as a special guest for my new series Living the Spiral: Magicians. In my mind, magic is what happens when you remember that you are not separate from the forces that made you, and you start acting accordingly. It’s the practice of making the invisible visible through attention, intention, and the words you’re willing to say out loud.

After walking the wheel of the year and attuning to the spirals of time for several years on the podcast, I’m excited to start bringing in conversations with people who are doing this particular type of magical work in the world. Rachel is definitely one of those people, and I’m so excited to welcome you to this thought-provoking episode: Ancestral Magic.

Rachel Simon Stark is a Santa Fe-based writer and founder of Widening Circles Collaborative. Her work explores belonging, identity, ancestral inheritance, and social change, moving between the intimate and the universal to engage questions of meaning-making in times of disorientation and rapid change.

Rachel spent sixteen years directing large-scale social impact initiatives across nonprofit, academic, public, and technology sectors, and currently serves as a Program Director for New Mexico’s statewide launch of Universal Child Care. She holds degrees from Northwestern and UC Berkeley, her academic research has been published by Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute and Duke’s Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity.

She is also a farmer and compost enthusiast. All of that grounds her work in something real and rooted, and it truly shows. I first met Rachel at a Día de los Muertos gathering outside of Santa Fe, a perfect space to naturally fall into deep conversation about ancestral healing, reclamation, and curiosity. Through Widening Circles, Rachel teaches a course called Cultivating Culture, a nine-week container focusing on ancestral reclamation and attention to long cycles of healing. She’s now offered the course six times, moving participants through present, past, and future as a way of opening into genuine relationship with their lineage.

In this conversation we get into how ancestry came to Rachel through a grandmother who showed up in dreams while she was at rock bottom in grad school, the difference between shame and humiliation and why that distinction matters, the idea that identity is a river and why fixing it in place is a kind of loss, what it means to consider yourself a future ancestor, and why every one of us has indigenous marrow in our bones.

Rachel plans on offering another cohort of her Cultivating Culture course this fall, a perfect season for working with your ancestral web of relations.

To learn more about working Rachel and the Widening Circles Collaborative, visit her website at wideningcirclescollaborative.com.

Follow Rachel on Instagram and here on Substack at , where she writes the deep and thoughtful publication hi•ne•ni : here i am.

🎧 Listen to the episode in the Substack player above, or find it wherever you listen to podcasts.

About Alison & Living the Spiral

Alison Dale is an artist, writer, astrologer & Human Design guide based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work lives at the intersection of ancestral systems that track the seasons and the planets, embodiment practices, and earth-based spirituality. She offers astrology and human design readings as well as 1-on-1 astro-somatic coaching packages at hearthandspiral.com.

Join her here on Substack by clicking the button below, and follow along on Instagram at @hearthandspiral.

If this podcast has ever helped you find your way back to yourself, the best thing you can do is follow the show wherever you are listening, leave a five star review, or share this episode with someone who might resonate with it. It truly makes a difference in getting these conversations to the people who need them! <3 <3 <3

Before we begin, how did Gate 23: Assimilation show up for you over the past 5 or so days? (Thanks again to Meg of Salty Muse for contributing your piece about the gate!)

Did you feel the distilling happening, the excess falling away, something underneath the noise becoming clearer? I'd love to hear what showed up. Drop a note in the comments or the chat.

Up close and personal with Gate 8:

This is the new moon gate

This week, the sun is in Gate 8, and on Saturday May 16th the new moon joined the sun here. It’s a supermoon, conjunct Mercury and two other significant presences: Algol, the fixed star known as the Medusa star, and the asteroid Ceres.

Algol sits at the severed head of Medusa in the constellation Perseus and has one of the fiercest reputations in the fixed star lore. For centuries astrologers called her malefic, a demon star. But that reading belongs to the people who feared Medusa.

Before the hero myth overwrote everything, Medusa was a face of the goddess herself, and the gorgon mask was sacred, used in ritual to protect the threshold between the profane and the holy. What the culture called monstrous was originally the gaze of the divine feminine meeting you fully, seeing through every performance of yourself down to the core essence.

The star’s name in Arabic, ra’s al-ghul, shares a root with words for returning, for coming back, for what cannot be killed or kept down. A new moon conjunct Algol in the Gate of Contribution asks: whose truth are you holding in your throat right now… and how much longer are you planning to hold it?

Ceres is in Gate 8 with the sun and moon and mercury, too. Ceres is Demeter, the mother who lost her daughter to the underworld and in her grief let the earth go fallow, withdrew every green and growing thing from the surface of the world until the terms were renegotiated and Persephone came back. Her presence at this new moon is asking what you are willing to nourish even after loss, what you are willing to plant again after a season of fallow ground. Gate 8 is exactly where Ceres belongs: contribution and nourishment are not separate things. The thing she brings to the table here is whether you trust that the giving itself is part of how you get replenished.

This is a new moon, with dark soil for planting something real that comes from your heart, your gut… your whole being. New moons are native territory for beginnings, and this one has the weight of some historical goddesses and priestesses at its back.

Gate 8: The Story

There is something deep inside you that has been gathering itself together.

Not just this week, not just this month. Over time, through the receptive opening and the closing and the distilling, through every season you have moved through and everything it pressed out of you, something has been concentrating into a specific, irreducible offering. Gate 8, where the sun lands this week, is where that offering meets the world.

In the I Ching this is Hexagram 8, known as Bǐ, Holding Together. Water over Earth. The image is of streams moving across the land from every direction, all finding their way toward a single place of convergence. Things cohering around a center that is solid and knows its own essence. Gate 8 is a throat center gate, and its particular voice in the bodygraph says: I can make a contribution.

The shadow of Gate 8 in the Gene Keys is Mediocrity. Mediocrity here is the very specific way we make ourselves acceptable, the sanding down of the edges, the offering of a version of ourselves so carefully managed that nobody can actually be fed by it because all the nutrition has been removed. We do it because it is safer, because showing up fully has cost us before.

The gift is Style, which Richard Rudd describes as the irreducible specific quality of a true rebellious human being, unchained by external definitions, unfettered by conditioning. Style is the thing that is yours so completely it could not belong to anyone else. And the siddhi is Exquisiteness, coming from the Latin exquisitus, ‘pressed out’, the most essential thing, offered in its wholeness.

Gate 8 in the Body

Gate 8 lives in the Throat Center, located physically at the throat itself — the larynx, the vocal cords, the thyroid gland, the place in the body where breath becomes speech. The Throat Center is the only center in the bodygraph where energy actually crosses the threshold into the world. Every other center processes, holds, generates, or transforms energy internally. The Throat is where something finally gets said, made, and done.

The thyroid gland governs metabolism, the rate at which things are processed and moved through the body. When the Throat Center is chronically under pressure, or when the authentic voice is habitually suppressed, the thyroid often carries the first signal. The body is not subtle about this territory. It will eventually say what the mouth has been refusing to say, and it will say it in the only language it has.

Gate 8 specifically holds the voice of contribution, the offer of what you are and what you see, extended toward the collective without any guarantee of reception. When this gate is in its shadow, the throat holds too much. The truest thing you know stays down because you have learned that saying it fully has consequences. You have learned to manage it into something more palatable, something less likely to cost you. The correction, though, is not to speak more or even to speak more strategically. It is to let what has been distilled from your life be what you offer… the irreducible, specific, fully committed thing that is YOU: your style, your exquisiteness, something that only you could imagine up.

Season, Channel & Polarity

Season: We are in the season of Earth, Kūn, the lower trigram that settled in at Beltane and stays through the Summer Solstice. Gate 8 pairs this Earth foundation with the upper trigram Kǎn, Water: the abysmal, the force that moves and adapts and finds its way through everything. Water over Earth is streams converging across a landscape. The Earth holds the terrain. The Water moves through it until it gathers. This is the felt quality of late Taurus tipping toward Gemini: the deep groundedness of the season is now in active relationship with something that wants to travel and to reach beyond where it originated.

Channel: Gate 8 reaches up to Gate 1 in the G Center, forming the 1-8 Channel of Inspiration. Gate 1 is the Creative: the spark of self-expression that arises from a deep and specific sense of self, the most yang gate in the system. Gate 8 is the contribution of that creativity to the collective. Together they form the Channel of Inspiration, sometimes called the channel of the Creative Role Model: someone whose way of living, whose particular path and aesthetic, is itself the offering. Without Gate 1’s creative originality, Gate 8 has nothing genuinely distinctive to bring forward. Without Gate 8’s willingness to make it available, Gate 1’s creativity stays private forever.

Polarity: Gate 14, Power Skills, sits directly across the wheel in Scorpio. Gate 14 is the sacral gate of abundance. Its the capacity to pour life force into what you love and generate real resources through it. The polarity between 8 and 4 asks: what are you pouring your energy into, really, and is the contribution you are making in the world an honest expression of where your deepest life force wants to go?

A Somatic Practice for Gate 8

Bring one hand to your throat, resting gently there without pressing. Feel the warmth of your own palm against that part of your body. Notice if there is any holding here, any habitual tightening or bracing. Notice any subtle closing that has become so familiar you stopped registering it. There is no need to know how long it has been there or where it came from, let that go.

Take a slow breath in, and on the exhale let sound move through — whatever sound wants to come. It does not have to be a word. A hum, a tone, a long slow sigh with some texture to it. Let it be quieter than you think it needs to be. Stay here for several breaths. Notice what shifts in the chest when the throat begins to move freely, when the offering is no longer held back but allowed to travel.

Creativity Prompts

Pull out your favorite notebook, your paints, your colored pencils, whatever calls to you, and give yourself 15 uninterrupted minutes with one of these:

Write about the offering you have been holding back, or the version of what you know and have lived that you have learned to manage into something more acceptable. Let yourself write it without editing for palatability. Then ask: what is the most essential thing in all of that? What is the distilled offering underneath the long explanation?

Draw or paint the image of water finding its way across a dark landscape — streams from different directions, all moving toward a single place of convergence. Let it be literal or let it become personal. What are your streams right now, and what centerpoint do they want to cohere into?

With your Mandala 64 deck, pull the Gate 8 card and sit with both sides. Where are you living in the shadow of Mediocrity this week, managing yourself down to the lowest common denominator? And where is your exquisite personal style

Participating in the Mandala 64 Walk is free.

Paid subscribers to Living the Spiral get all my love and appreciation, plus access to live rituals at each of the 8 Holy Days through the wheel of the year

Listen to the full episode in the player above, or wherever you find podcasts! Thanks for liking, sharing, and reviewing Living the Spiral- it truly helps me to reach more people and continue writing and recording this labor of love on a regular basis.

The podcast goes into the depths of this new moon, but here’s a synopsis if you’d prefer to read <3

This new moon, happening on Saturday May 16th in the sign of the Bull, is truly one of the more layered lunations I’ve tracked in a while. We have a super moon conjunct communication planet Mercury, sitting right on the fixed star Algol (the Medusa star), which could bring to the surface themes of betrayal, power dynamics, and how we stay with ourselves after something unjust happens. The new moon is also conjunct Ceres, the asteroid goddess of nourishment and tending what we care about. All of these are meeting in the Gate of Contribution, Gate 8, calling us in to consider what we are bringing from our hearts and souls to the larger collective.

And on the same day as the moon, Mars is moving into exact conjunction with Chiron in Aries, in Gate 3, the Gate of Ordering, known as Difficulty in the Beginning in the I’ching. This conjunction may bring up a collective wound around feeling like we’re in a chaotic void- with a Martian urgency to speed things up, but no idea how to. The underlying gift that this transit could bring is a deep remembering that order always rises out of chaos, and that new beginnings, while chaotic, are filled with raw potential.

The through-line of this lunation is: Your wounds are here to teach you something, your voice is needed more than ever, and only you can decide how to share your offerings with the world.

The Path that led to the New Moon

To feel this new moon you have to feel the gates that the sun and moon moved through before landing here. A couple weeks ago the sun was in Gate 2, Receptivity, the Beltane gate. This was the energy of the fully open flower, one with no strategy, no protection, just wide availability to what wants to move through it. Then, over the past few days, the sun has been moving through Gate 23, Assimilation or Distillation, where the receptivity of Mayday concentrates into something that can be offered, like a bee bringing the nectar back to the hive. The radiance of the bloom becomes a single drop, and the excess falls away.

Gate 2 to Gate 23 to Gate 8 is the pathway we’ve walked through Taurus season, with the blossoming flower, the distilled essence of the fragrance and the pollen, and then the offering back to the hive. You cannot skip to Gate 8, Conribution, without living through the other two. This is true for any gate or sign or seaonal progression, but it’s felt especially palpable to me over the past few weeks.

The Spaniard serenading his señorita is the Sabian symbol for 26 degrees Taurus, where this new moon lands, and this image captures the essence of what Gate 8’s contribution really means. The guitarist is standing under a window singing his heart out, not knowing if it will open or stay shut, not caring which way the tune blows on the wind. He sings because the song is what he has in his heart, and withholding it would be a disservice to humanity. His style and his flair and his devotion is his contribution- it’s not a measurable, productive achievement, but it’s a gift from the heart.

That’s Gate 8, Contribution when it’s not whittled down into a narrow capitalist framing. That’s what we’re working with this new moon.

Rethinking “Contribution”

The title of this Gate holds a charge worth examining, because I noticed what it brought up in my body as I recorded this episode. In the world that most of us were raised inside, contribution is productivity-coded. It means output, achievement, and the finished product you can point to and measure and put a gold star on.

But I watched a video recently about research into the female nervous system, and it moved me. This research barely existed at all until the early 2000s. Before that, our entire understanding of stress and regulation was built on studies done almost entirely on male bodies. When researchers finally started studying female nervous systems specifically, what they found is that women regulate through oxytocin, not dopamine. Men tend to feel grounded and whole through succeeding, through accomplishment. Women regulate through touch, relating, and genuine connection.

The part that really hit me was that excess dopamine in a female body actually depletes oxytocin. The harder you push toward productivity, the more you deplete the very neurochemical that makes you feel loved and connected and like yourself. The “the harder I try the worse I feel” spiral is not a personal failing, it is physiology. It is what happens when a female nervous system runs on a fuel it was not built for.

So the shame that comes when you need to rest, or tend a relationship, or just be present with someone instead of producing something, that shame makes sense inside a system that was only ever measuring one kind of contribution. But the relational labor and the emotional tending is, to me, more what Gate 8 is all about.

The gift of this gate in the Gene Keys is Style, and I think Style here is the irreducible specific way you nourish, relate, and tend. The siddhi is Exquisiteness, a word that means pressed out, as from a flower, the most essential thing offered whole. That includes things like a text you sent at the right moment, or the meal you made for someone, or the way you listened to someone’s story without trying to fix it.

Medusa’s Head at the Point of the New Moon

Algol, the star in the constellation Perseus that’s associated with the severed head of Medusa, has one of the fiercest reputations in the lore of fixed stars. For centuries astrologers have called her malefic, a star of violence and calamity.

But that reading belongs to the people who feared Medusa.

In another telling, Medusa was a brilliant priestess. Her power was so genuine, her presence so real, that the only story the culture around her could hold was the monster story. When she was assaulted by Poseidon on the steps of Athena’s temple, she was the one turned to a snake-headed monster and exiled away. She, not the god who wronged her, was demonized, contained, and eventually beheaded. Some say that Athena turned her into a monster to protect her from men, from gods, by giving her power to turn them to stone. Some only see the awful truth that the goddess turned on one of her own in order to please the gods. Either way, after all of the exile and victim-blaming that Medusa went through -and even after being beheaded- her head still held magic.

That’s the part of the story I want to pay attention to on this new moon in the realm of Medusa’s severed head.

What the myth almost buries is that from her severed neck sprang Pegasus, the winged horse. And when Pegasus’ hoof struck the earth on Mount Helicon, it opened the Hippocrene spring, the waters the muses drank from. Every poem, every song, every piece of art that cracked someone open and let light into their souls, that lineage runs back to Medusa. Her destruction created the conditions for the dispersal of her power. She became, at the end, not a monster, but a source of creation.

We are living inside a Medusa moment collectively. The voices being silenced right now are not random. Funding is being cut from universities, arts organizations, public health infrastructure, and pretty much anything that asks people to think critically or feel deeply. Look at what’s being made monstrous by the powers that be, at what’s being exiled to an island like Medusa was. It is the gaze that sees clearly, that looks into your soul and doesn’t avert her eyes. Medusa represents a deeper, cthonic type of power that does not ask for permission. When we have been wronged, our very gaze has the power to remind the world of unjust systems that are in massive need of reinvention.

That strong gaze is a contribution to the world, in and of itself.

And this is what the star Algol conjunct this new moon reminds us. Medusa’s power did not die with her. Almost any goddess myth will remind you that true power never dies. Even more, the goddesses and female demons of old myth that remind us that life itself does not end with death- it is all part of a larger cycle.

The question this new moon is asking, of you, personally, in your body, is whether you are willing to keep seeing clearly and speaking from a place of deep feeling and personal truth, especially now, when the stakes are high.

Chiron and Mars

On Saturday, the same day as the new moon, Mars and Chiron are meeting in exact conjunction in Aries Gate 3. This is the gate of ordering, representing the seed in the dark or the spark in the night before it knows it will become anything.

In the myth of Chiron, the wounded healer asteroid, the centaur archer was immortal and took an accidental strike from a poisoned arrow that he could neither heal nor die from. He carried that wound for as long as he lived and became the greatest teacher in the Greek world because of it. The thing that could not be fixed in him was exactly what gave him access to what others needed.

Medusa and Chiron are both major players at this new moon. Both of them were transformed by a world that could not hold their power without distorting it. Both became sources of wisdom, art, philosophy, and creativity, in spite of everything.. and likely because of everything. The “difficulty at the beginning” that you might be confronted with during this new moon is not a sign you have taken a wrong path. It’s the void before something truer begins. Remember, as the sword of mars activates the wound of the centaur healer, cracking open is how anything gets in, and how anything gets out.

An Invitation

In honor of the Gate of Contribution from the Heart, I wanted to let you know that I’m opening a small number of spots for 1:1 coaching, a container called Tending Your Flame. It’s three months, six sessions, with your Human Design chart and astrological transits as the map, breathwork and voicework as tools for coming back into your body, and voice notes between sessions for when insight can’t wait for the next call.

This offering is for people in transition and folks who are done waiting for the world to calm down before they come home to themselves. If this sounds interesting to you, I offer free 30-minute consultations to talk about specifics and see if it’s a good fit for where you’re at right now. A real conversation is always the best place to start! You can always email me at alison@hearthandspiral as well.

Book a free consultation

One more announcement: I’m moving Your Heart Is a Compass, my course mapping Inanna’s Descent to the Wheel of the Year and the Heart Center, to the fall, where the energy of descent and return feels much more at home. To those of you who signed up and supported this framework while it was still finding its shape, thank you. Your curiosity means more than I know how to say.

A short practice for the new moon

Put both hands on your chest. Feel the warmth there, your own heat, your own life still burning.

Three slow breaths into that warmth, and ask your body, not your mind: what in me needs tending right now? What contribution have I been discounting because no metric could measure it or it didn’t seem ‘productive enough? What contribution wants to come through me, from my gut to my heart to my voice, that is a pure expression of whatever in me can’t be held down? Where do I refuse to be demonized for my true power and style?

The flame in you is real. The relational, the devotional, the stylish and exquisite parts of your being- all of these are like tributaries feeding a nourishing lake from the surrounding mountains.

If this podcast resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it, leave a five-star review wherever you listen, and subscribe if you haven’t yet. Every share helps this work find the people it belongs with.

Happy New Moon in Taurus. 🌑

xo

Alison

Questions about this moon or my offerings or anything else?

Write me at alison@hearthandspiral.com or DM me at @hearthandspiral on Instagram.

At the beginning of this project, I put out a call for contributors to write about a particular gate that feels personally meaningful to them. I’m so happy to present to you the first guest post for this week’s Gate 23 by my dear friend Meg Koenig, who writes over at Salty Muse. Meg is a self-development strategist and certified hypnotherapist who uses play as a portal to deeper self-discovery and authentic living. She’s based in Bozeman, Montana, and the 23 is her grounding Personality Earth gate.

If you’d like to be part of this project and write about one of the 64 Gates, I’d love to share your experience and insights! Please DM me for more details.

Thanks so much for being a part of the Mandala 64 Walk, Meg!

Gate 2 Reflections

One thing before we dive in to Meg’s experience with Gate 23, as per usual: let’s take a short moment to reflect. How did Gate 2: Receptivity appear in your life over the past few days? It finally felt warm enough to plant some of my seedlings outdoors that I’ve been growing inside, and getting my hands dirty felt really good- and really perfect for the season of double Earth.

The Gates that ring in the solstices, equinoxes and cross quarter days do feel collectively important, kind of like reset points for the season ahead. With Gate 2, we’ve moved from the frequency of thunder to the energy of Earth, and I’m definitely feeling the shift in my body. A little more permission to rest, and to bloom. How about you?

Thanks to everyone who came to Superbloom, my Beltane ritual on May 5 as well, right in the midst of Gate 2’s receptive potency. It was a beautiful time spent singing, toning, creating, and learning together. The next somatic-creative ritual for the Wheel of the Year will be for the Summer Solstice- stay tuned!

Today is also the last day to get in on the early bird price for my upcoming course Your Heart is a Compass. It’s an embodied deep dive into the 8 Seasons of the Wheel, the 8 Gates of the G Center, and the 8 stages of Inanna’s descent into the Underworld. It’s gonna be fun….

Early Bird: Your Heart is a Compass

Now, onto the Gate of the week!

The Distillation of the Moment

Meg Koenig on Gate 23

I love this gate.

What strikes me most is that it is wisdom that deepens through me. I feel how in my life it moves in a spiral — reworking its magic in layers, through different lenses, through newly found wisdom as it comes online in each present moment.

It has been a joy to have guidance actively encouraging me to make things more simple and easeful — for myself first, and then for others. I have to understand something before I can synthesize it most of the time, and then other times things just arise through me that I cannot explain. I grew up in a very direct, no-fluff home and this has made all the difference in my actual strength in living into this gate.

I allow things to move through me. I recently learned the Latin phrase lectio divina — which I receive as allowing sacred words to wash over you. When this gate is activated, words move through me for myself and others in the same way. If someone is open and ready to shift, they just come through without trying. It is the same with writing.

My great test in life is timing. I am here to learn how to wait for the right moment to speak. The longer I hold back, the more powerful my influence becomes. Timing is so imperative for me because it gives my mental processes time for distillation. If I speak before I am ready, I will not be fully heard, even if I think I have been. I recognize right timing because I receive praise and recognition when it lands.

I lived this viscerally in the corporate world. Any time I spoke from a need to be seen or acknowledged, it backfired — I would be met with silence, overlooked, as if I hadn’t spoken at all. It was bizarre and disorienting. But when I learned to wait, to let a meeting move around me until someone turned and asked for my thoughts — that is when I was truly heard. Moving from ego, nothing landed. Waiting in patience, everything did. Wildly humbling. Wildly powerful. And in hindsight, absolutely hilarious.

The shadow is genuinely entertaining to me. The shadow is complexity. I know I am out of alignment when things feel complex, or when I find myself telling a complicated story about a situation.

What I find most interesting is complexity as a form of protection — because it looks like intelligence. It looks like thoroughness, like rigor, like care. Nobody calls you out for it because from the outside it resembles mastery. But underneath it is a very old fear: what if I say the simple thing and it’s not enough — then I am not enough.

This has become one of my favorite filters. If something feels simple and easeful, it is for me. If it does not, it is not meant for me right now.

I move through this evolution of the gate naturally — starting with complexity, moving into the gift of simplicity, and sometimes arriving, or helping another arrive, at the siddhi of epiphany. It is a constant dance. I find it a lovely challenge to start at a knot and work to free it.

I do let my trickster side play here. When I get annoyed I will toss something into a conversation to deepen the complexity and then quietly walk away, laughing. It is naughty. But it also helps me detach when I find myself too involved in something that is simply not mine to carry. It helps me laugh, relinquish my serious nature, and come back into lightness and play — back into the trickster I love being. The shadow becomes a boundary tool — if something feels too dense and I know I am not resourced, I will leave it alone until I am. Occasionally I am a messy, reactive human and I spill the beans before I am ready. And hey — this is life. This is real human beingness.

I first encountered Human Design about seven years ago, but found the Gene Keys shortly after and they resonated immediately. The free profile alone has been a lifeline I return to again and again. I have explored more advanced teachings with Richard and others, but the simple foundational guidance has been the most profound for me. A life raft, if I am honest.

23 in the Gene Keys and I’Ching

The Gene Keys name it beautifully: the shadow of complexity, the gift of simplicity, the siddhi of epiphany.

Reinforcing simplicity is liberating at its core — in all dimensions. This gate is part of what has led me back, again and again, to inner child work — tending to the wounds there rather than looking outside for answers. The science behind bilateral movement and EMDR is compelling in this same arena. The body finding its way back to simplicity through rhythm and repetition. Simple, practical, backed by science, and deeply healing.

I also love the I Ching hexagram language around this gate — Splitting Apart.

The image is a mountain sitting on the earth, but the earth beneath is dissolving. The lines fall away one by one from the bottom until only the top line remains — the one true thing, the elevated wisdom that was always there, waiting. Everything else quietly gives way beneath it.

On the surface it sounds ominous. But the deeper teaching is anything but.

The splitting apart is not destruction. It is the removal of everything that cannot hold. The inessential falls away. What remains is only what is true.

This is the same alchemy as Gate 23 in the Gene Keys — complexity collapsing into quintessence. The hexagram is the visual of that process. Everything that isn’t load-bearing dissolves. What remains is enough.

The 43-23 Channel: Meg’s Conscious Sun & Earth

Gate 23 is defined for me, fully connected to Gate 43, forming a complete channel. I am literally built to be a channel, which has been a wild ride over the last eight years experimenting and playing with Human Design, the Gene Keys, and astrology.

It is my Personality Earth — my conscious grounding force. And it carries the 5th line, which is its own beautiful paradox: learning to transmit without attachment to how it lands. The Heretic. The projection screen. Seen as everything, known as nothing.

Essentially I have to be OK living in paradox at all times. Fully responsible for nothing. Fully accountable for everything. And somehow, that is the most liberating thing I have ever been handed.

Starting my Substack last year was one of the clearest expressions of this gate I have lived.

In my hypnotherapy and coaching sessions and group work it shows up constantly. I am always tracking patterns — conscious and unconscious — and I trust my knowing. When I write for fun, as a form of play, I follow consciousness rabbit holes as they present themselves and trust whatever arises. You will either love it or hate it — or maybe both — and I have made peace with that. Whatever it evokes in you is part of your journey. That is the 5 line doing its thing.

In those spaces this gate feels like lightness. Like freedom. An effervescence in the body — bubbly, uncontained, a little fizzy. It moves through me before my mind has a chance to organize it into something proper. When I can catch it I like to bathe in it, relish it, recirculate it back through my system. An energy bath. Taking it in as the gift it is and letting it fully land in me before it moves on.

It is also worth naming: this is not where I make my living, and that matters. Having other ways of being in the world gives me the freedom to play here without grasping. The transmission stays clean because nothing is riding on it. No attachment to how it lands. Just the fizz, and then the letting go.

A Somatic & Creative Practice for Gate 23

When the sun transits Gate 23, try the Distillation Game — a three-minute practice for simplicity and embodiment.

Begin by bringing something to mind that feels knotted. A situation, a relationship, a decision, an emotion. Don’t analyze it. Just let it sit in your awareness like an object on a table.

Then begin drawing figure 8’s — eyes tracing the shape in the air, pencil or pen or paint brush moving in the infinity symbol on the page, a hand moving out in front of your body, hips swaying, or feet walking the pattern on the floor. Allow the movement be loose and unhurried and let the complexity of the thing breathe inside it. Don’t try to solve anything. Just move your body.

Allow the figure 8 hold it. After a minute, slow the movement down and ask your body one question:

what is the simplest true thing here? Don’t reach for an answer with your mind.

Let the movement draw it up.

Then come to stillness.

Place one hand on your heart and one on your belly and breathe in whatever word or phrase or feeling arose.

Let it land. That is your quintessence. And if you want to close the loop — write it down. Note the way it made your body feel, notice if there were smells, or sensations on your skin, or if you saw something in your mind or in the present moment, did you hear anything, awareness of anything that would be considered a 6th, 7th or 8th sense.

One sentence or one word. The simplest true thing. That is Gate 23 doing its work through you.

All about Meg:

Meg Koenig is a self-development strategist and certified hypnotherapist who uses play as a portal to deeper self-discovery and authentic living. Based in Bozeman, Montana, she works at the intersection of the body, mythology, and the nervous system — guiding people back to the simplest, truest version of themselves. Her framework, the Seven Gateways to Self-Realization, forms the backbone of her brand Salty Muse, where her tagline says it all: life is a beautiful game, let’s figure out how to play your version. I am a 200-hour registered yoga teacher, a devoted student of the Gene Keys, Human Design, and Astrology, and a lifelong investigator of what it means to live closer to yourself and closer to the land.

@ saltymuse on Instagram.

Website: saltymuse.com/

Have a gorgeous week ahead, everyone- the sun is in 23 and the earth is in 43 for the next 5.5 days, so the channel is alive for us all.

This channel is known as the “genius to freak” channel, so enjoy that ajna-to-throat connection and let your freak flag flyyy!

See you in 5 days for the sun in Gate 8: Contribution

PS. If you’d like to have a physical, IRL way to deepen your learnings of Human Design, the I’Ching & the Gene Keys- and how they fit into the Zodiac Wheel and the Bodygraph, you can order a copy of my Mandala 64 deck! I have a few decks left in hand and not sure when the next preorder will be, so get yours while it’s hot! <3

Mandala 64 is a learning and oracle deck I created last year, with one card for each gate, plus 14 cards for each of the planets and luminaries that transit through the gates.

My favorite practice is to pull the card for the current gate and place it on your altar for the week. Let it sit in your field. It’s one of the most embodied ways I know to learn the gates - not through study but through slow, repeated encounter.

Order Your Deck Here!

Participating in the Mandala 64 Walk is free. Paid subscribers get access to live rituals at each of the 8 G-Center gates through the year, plus extra goodies along the way.