Hello friends and Happy New Year!

This will be a long one, enjoy 

I meant to write a post before the 1st detailing the cyclic ending and new beginning with some sneak peeks and tidbits for what’s ahead. However, as I suspected but was still somehow unprepared for, we came down with the ‘Vid on Christmas Day. Plans changed and my body was decidedly NOT a wonderland. It was not nearly as bad as it could have been, I’m grateful for antivirals. However, my mind is still squiggly and so we shall be skipping the last 2023 (obvi) and probably first Tarot Wednesday and Weekly Vibe check of 2024. So this post will be some of that, and a bit of housekeeping, love notes and the like.

 

My biggest frustration with the Vid is my sense of smell has seemed to wane considerably, which was one of the bigger fears with this illness. Leave it to me to take up an aromatic practice just as a disease that neurologically fucks with your memory and sense of time and space via the sense of smell. Lovely.

 

I’m working on pivoting mindfully and slowly. Unfortunately this means I can’t quite put out what I’ve wanted to at the times I was attempting to prepare. This will undoubtedly be revealed as being for the best, but my inner toddler is stamping her feet in frustration now. I have incense blends that need just a touch of tweaking before they’re ready to shine, and many other blends on deck that need more than a little refinement.  Depending on how 2024 goes with my finances and work/energy balance, I might be opening up a Beta testing program for anyone interested.  Let me know if this would be up your alley, because if my nose doesn’t work I’ll need to rely on yall who actually will consume these products to give me constructive feedback. Also we love free things, and I love giving free things away.

 

Also- if you’ve purchased anything from me in 2023- the biggest THANK YOU from the bottom of my monster heart!  It’s felt like FMV has been a part of me for the past decade, and it’s always sobering to realize I only officially launched this website last March. It hasn’t even been a full calendar year of FMV! I’ve learned so much, and made fantastic friendships, magical connections and have been able to meet folks who need this work in person.  Im getting to know exactly who my work appeals to, who it helps, and how it’s getting used. So far, this is all very affirming for my goals and the general sentiment for FMV.  Also if you haven’t, please pop a review for any product you’ve purchased! Good or bad, I would love the feedback and I know it makes for more informed, confident shopping for your fellow shoppers. 🦇💜🦇

 

I should probably write this as its own post, and I’ve been meaning to- but FMV came about because as an astrologer, I saw the upcoming transits and wanted more than an ‘I told you so’ to hand out to people. Ever the practical Virgo, I decided to study Herbalism and Esoteric modalities to commune with plant spirits- hoping to craft something that could physically aid us to move through these phases.  Nothing in FMV’s catalogue is replicated from anywhere else, in any tradition/religion/practice.  I am but a conduit for the plant spirits that act as an extension of this magical planet we reside on. These works are to aid us physically with the pains of revolution our bodies will go through. They are here to help protect us from the energetic hits we take, and to fortify our spirit with the courage of our convictions.  Most importantly, they are physical symbols of comfort reminding us that we are not alone in this fight. There are powers much greater than any one of us that are ready and willing to support our goals. Regardless of it’s making it through the day dealing with toxic people, letting yourself have a real honest to god cry, keeping yourself from phone and tech addiction or finally getting the courage to pick up the phone to make that appointment/have that hard conversation and speak your truth- we all need some help these days.

 

The process of crafting FMV’s products has fundamentally changed my practice and me as a person. I don’t intend for this to grow into some enormous business venture to make millions of dollars. My intention moving forward is to flesh out the concept of FMV as magical and mundane materia for the 21st century. It’s also to welcome anyone willing to participate in dancing with our own inner daemons, riding the paradoxical waves of the liminal space we find ourselves in so often.

 

My monster logo is an homage to multiple perspectives creating the entirety of reality. A wholistic view, pardon the pun. In a liminal space we tend to be overwhelmed by blankness, by the infinite potential of reality. This is where new ideas are born, and where old methods are broken down and repurposed. Each edge of our monster is highlighted by a different color perspective, and without one or both there is nothing but blackness. My favorite aspect of this little dude is that he’s not only made up of multiple truths, but his vision is ultimately informed by those truths. When you are born holding paradox, it is far easier to see them naturally. It is easier to understand, for example, that dismantling evil requires intimate knowledge of it. And one cannot have intimate knowledge of evil without experiencing it from both a victim and perpetrator’s side. So many of us only receive or give one side of a paradox, and therefore only see and live within half a truth.

 

2023 was the year of Paradox. Many things contradicting one another, and yet somehow they remain immutable truths. It is a symbiotic relationship, one of many universal tensegrity designs.

 

Now that we have been exposed to these paradoxes, we will continue to experience them at ever nuanced levels in 2024. People you absolutely hate will be the ones most informed on system flaws that will ultimately be the key information needed to dismantle them. Can we stomach agreeing with someone we despise? Can we give up that part of ourselves that needs to be a ‘good person’ ‘on the right side of history’ in order to see the nuance of our enemies?

 

It is not a betrayal to your ethics if you see humanity in someone despicable. It does not undo the years of work and self reflection you’ve grown through if you find yourself sharing a goal or two with terrible people. Purification leads to more evil that we like to acknowledge, and pushing away one another based on self proclaimed identities is exactly what keeps us from our goals.  This is not a ‘there are good people on both sides’ speech. Evil is evil. We are all a little more capable of evil than we’d like to admit to ourselves. This is a year to level with that collectively. There will be ample opportunities to understand how we have been evil as individuals and as societies- willingly or not.

 

As a Chironic Astrologer, these next few years are my Super Bowl. We have the very first exact Chiron return of the United States in April. Mars will be transit this Chiron return in May, just before we begin the Chiron retrograde.  The comet will retrograde for most of the year, and transit back over the 20°8’ mark in November (lawl). The more boisterous of US Chiron returns will happen in 2025- but we have two eclipses crossing over San Antonio in 2024 amidst this first passing.

 

If you’ve followed my disjointed rantings about Chiron- or have listened to my formal lecture from 2021- the US’ Chiron return in Aries is a big deal.

 

Themes of identity, including but not limited to race/gender/overall presentation of self to the world are on deck. With a natal Saturn opposition, we typically see legislation move both forward and backward during this time. We’ve already seen the rights of women and lgbtq+ folks stripped in certain states, and that will continue to be pressed until we fight back.

 

Most notably, our POC friends and Indigenous friends are clearly the most affected. We have horrific conditions from ICE at the border- which this year will undoubtedly highlight in gruesome detail. When Texas froze over in 2022 my first thought was those border camps of ours.  Remember the Alamo my friends. We were the bad guys.

 

Similarly our prison systems have been corrupt and horrific for years, especially in the south. I’ve been keeping tabs on the Alabama prison conditions (and more) and it’s truly heartbreaking to witness. Not to mention the for profit aspect of prisons and the 13th amendment loophole that allows for slave labor for the incarcerated, there’s much more to this we have yet to unravel. I hope prisoners continue to strike, but I digress.

 

On the upside- a HUGE Chiron transit for the US theme is how our treatment of Indigenous people has been legislated. In 2020 we saw the unearthing of mass graves from forced assimilation not just in the US but also in Canada. In 2023 however, the Supreme Court decided to uphold the ICWA, which is a huge win and relief in an otherwise horrible situation.

 

Our issue with land, homeland, who owns it, and what the people look like who own it is always at the forefront of the US’ wound. This obviously relates to our foreign policy as well, and as previously stated, we will be given ample opportunities to realize how portions of our identity is unequivocally evil.

 

Additional themes for the US’ Chiron return as I’ve mentioned are- Tech + identity which includes- Tech/propaganda/digital hypnosis, the algorithm curating a self fueled identity machine, literal face stealing for identity theft purposes but also falsification of digital records and evidence in court. Face stealing/manipulation regarding beauty industry and ‘influencer’ culture, deepfakes and all sorts of fun things. We have already seen issues with face (and therefore identity) ownership with the SAG strike in 2023.

 

Digital literacy and media discernment is going to be a very practical skillset to continue cultivating. If you were able to listen to my DL lecture in 2022 you already are seeing some of this play out as well.

 

This includes celebrities we uphold as idealized reflections of ourselves as individuals and as a society. Think of them as tributes for our own narcissistic Hunger Games. It’s not as fun as it sounds, I promise. We already witnessed in the last few years the very real collateral damage on mental health that power (perceived or real) has on people.

 

Speaking of mental health- our sense of time/space/memory regarding neurological issues is at the forefront as well. Environmental pollution dating back to the 50s and before will likely be revealed as a possible source for several ‘neurospicy’ tendencies we all seem to be developing these days, and that won’t exclude Lead and more modernly, PFAS. Groundwater pollution (and likely sea life pollution) is no longer something we can sweep under the rug.

 

 

This isn’t all, and it’s not all bad. However, Chiron is here and it’s coming for us hot. The moral of this year, and the years to come from Chiron’s Us Return is this: let go of your perceived sense of self and identity as being tied to your moral superiority. There are no winners in that game.  Our sense of self will be tested until we reach non attachment, or become the opposite of our value systems. There is no perfection to be had.

 

I suppose this turned into the post I meant to write anyway. I hope it was informative and enjoyable.

 

Happy New Year!

 

With Love,

ECHO 💜🦇💜

 

 

 

EDIT TO ADD: Re the US Chiron Return- if you’ve ever been in an abusive relationship, especially with a narcissist (a real one, not the way the term has been popularized in the last few years)- trust your intuition when things begin to feel familiar in that gaslighty way. 

On average, it takes 7 attempts to leave an abusive partner. Usually because when they sense you’re gaining autonomy and on your way out, they’ll pull some huge stunt to get you back. The US is not above acting this way when we’re beginning to break up with Capitalism. September and October will test our resilience to the large scale flail. Socially, we’re primed to respond to great swaths of showmanship. If something looks like a circus, it’s probably an act. 🦇