The Snake and the Stethoscope: Diagnosing the Soul’s Evolution
Listening inward and finding the heart of the matter
The image symbol transmitted to me for the week of 5.12.25:
A stethoscope.
Diagnosing the heart and the heart of the matter.
The questions I posed and the cards which came are:
What do we need to examine from our unconscious and subconscious minds?
Card: Frozen in Time. Nonaction, slow down, not yet. Is there a part of you saying “Not so fast”? Or perhaps an external obstacle has arisen, forcing you to slow down and regroup.
What do we need to examine from our conscious mind?
Card: Elder Snake. Release the old. Okay, so this seems obvious, but you will see in my share below that it may also involve calling back something old to be repurposed.
Physician, heal thyself. Although I am not a physician, I have strongly been feeling this sentiment leading up to the potent Full Moon in Scorpio. Scorpio energy is in fact, deeply healing, if we allow it to penetrate the depths of our subconscious, and like its modern ruler, Pluto, allow it to survey that underworld unflinchingly.
There is an unspoken challenge here for us, in a nuanced yet powerful arrangement of the planets at Monday’s Full Moon. So nuanced, even I, a psychic, could not quite grasp what I was seeing. Could that be the meaning of the refrain, Physician, heal thyself, but substitute in Psychic, see thyself?
I began to stalk myself (echoing Pluto with Persephone), examining my behavior and my words. What is true and what is fiction (because it is an old story from an old wound)? Beneath life’s scars, what is now throbbing below the surface, poking at my status quo (the Sun in Taurus prefers to remain in the known)?
This unspoken challenge arises from the arrangement of Jupiter (natural truths) in Gemini (multiple ways to perceive) in a sextile aspect (mutual spark) to Chiron (our intrinsic wounds) in Aries (our origin story), forming a yod aspect (pointing to destiny) to the Moon in Scorpio.
The image of the stethoscope appeared snake-like in my third eye, only to be echoed by the Elder Snake card I pulled later. The message on the card hissed “Release the old”. In fact, I had just been complaining to the energy worker as she performed her intake on Friday that I was a little frustrated with the transformation I was undergoing, as it often feels like my skin is being peeled off. She noted disharmony in my sacral and heart chakras, which synced with the intention I had been guided to set around having space to creatively serve my soul’s mission. While I am not a card carrying physician, I was trained to think like one, and immediately went into diagnosis mode (cue the stethoscope), ready to take the scalpel to my heart to excise the traitorous cells.
Shhh, whispered the snake, removing the scalpel from my mind the next day. You forget that you are no longer in a battle, that you have chosen a different way of being. How can you hold your new tools when you refuse to put down the old?
And while I was not physically holding a scalpel, I realized that I had made my entire being into a warrior in this life. In my birth chart, Mars is conjunct my Sun, both in Leo, in my tenth house, fueled by my Aries Moon in the sixth house. This explains why I was able to rise to great heights in my career (10th house), why I was able to tear myself apart daily (6th house) to achieve goals and perform many duties. It explains why my first impulse is to GO. The dilemma, the disharmony picked up by the tuning forks, is that I no longer have a destination. I am here.
I must put down the weapon of productivity that is the throbbing wound underneath the scars. I cannot take this with me into my transformed selfhood. It is such an old familiar tool turned wound, I suspect I will continue to struggle to release it, but I am going to try. I yearn for the life I have begun living. I am the only thing getting in the way of enjoying it, by limiting the creative space I need with the familiar clutter of productivity.
You will likely have other tools, wounds, patterns, and transformations in your life. And if you have also felt something nagging at you below the surface, don’t lose hope. We have help from the planets to get to the heart of the matter once and for all. Ceres and Saturn are conjunct in Pisces, very close to the North Node and Neptune. The presence of this energy at the Full Moon may reveal how you can work spiritual (Pisces, Neptune) sustenance (Ceres) into the structure of your life (Saturn) in a way that evolves you (North Node).
As I set down the tool of productivity in order to heal the core wounds of having to earn love and belonging through specific actions and ways of being, an old tool was revealed to me. Oddly, it is one which arose from my strong Mars and Aries energy. I spent many years running marathons and ultramarathons, and one thing I learned was impermanence. I would find myself miserable at mile 35 or so of a 50 miler, and would remind myself of all the previous moments I had felt it was impossible to continue, and how those feelings never lasted. A mile or two later I would be cruising again.
I find myself reaching for this tool during meditation, as I have been increasing the frequency and duration of my practice. Just this morning, it was feeling hard to relax and focus. My son is sick and I could hear him moving around, I knew I wanted to mow the lawn, etc. This will pass, just allow the thoughts to fade into the background, I was able to reassure myself. And sure enough, before the bell rung, I had a stretch of feeling simultaneously spacious while connected to everyone and everything. Meditation has indeed been sustaining me as I experience growing pains getting used to my new life.
And my love of running has been reborn, now that my body and mind are in working order after recovering these last few years. I have started increasing my mileage and who knows, I may get back to ultras. The mountains keep calling me!
Where do you see a tool may be repurposed in your life, in order to sustain you through difficult times?
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In the interest of releasing in order to welcome the new (or repurposed) into my life, I am going to scale back just a bit (I am pausing my Wednesday posts), posting as follows:
Mondays: Guidance/questions to ponder for the week ahead, often with some personal reflection and astrology woven in.
Fridays: A brief audio related to recovery (from you name it), and how we can inch closer to living freely and authentically.
You may also enjoy:
"I must put down the weapon of productivity that is the throbbing wound underneath the scars. I cannot take this with me into my transformed selfhood."
This line nailed it! I just wrote last night in my journal about the SHEDDIING happening right now, the pain and the struggle of letting go, allowing the new self to emerge. It is a process that I am engaged in personally within, as well as externally with aging family members whom I dearly love as they lose autonomy, bodily control, and definitions of self that have been outgrown. 'Productivity' sounds like a hollow word in a foreign language. Thank you for these questions and guidance. It helps me unpack horrendously confusing baggage and sort out what is mine to carry and what I've outgrown. It feels like this time calls for a seemingly harsh and brutal self-truth but I still want to find a way to weave compassion into the process.
This is very meaningful to me, Maria. Thank you for sharing this reading. 🩶