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Astrology for Healing & Spiritual Growth
Welcome to my digital home base!
Explore my website to see what types of readings I offer & to learn a more about the type of work I'm always cooking up to put out into community.
In addition to being an astrologer, I'm also a professor, a writer & artist. I am all about deep multi-dimensional soul healing dives that help us throw off the societal hindrances of mainstream conditionings and let our souls sing in the messy beautiful poetry of earth, water, air & fire.
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Why Astrology for Healing? Because I believe we are all here to evolve & heal, individually & collectively. Because I'm also a cultural theorist and I work at the intersections of social & personal traumas & healing. Because healing, despite what pop culture & even psychology teach us, is a beautiful journey of awakening. Astrology is a language that helps us open to this beauty.
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Iris J. Gildea, PhD.
Evolutionary Astrologer & Astro Coach
Writer & Educator
A recent review from a client:
"My astrology reading with Iris has been one of the most healing and inspiring experiences I have had throughout my journey of self-discovery and self-love. Her critically-informed practice of astrology and comprehensive knowledge of the cosmos, the earth, and the self allows for the safest & most sacred space for you to unfold and see your divine blueprint and find peace within the sacred story of your life. I never really thought of astrology as a healing modality before my visits with Iris, but she has totally shifted that reality for me. With her guidance and expertise, I now frequent my chart to look for comfort and clarity and peace of mind throughout the chaos of this human experience. I am so grateful for this magical wise woman!"
Recent Astrology:
Pluto Re-enters Capricorn
It's a big shift of energy today and for the next while as Pluto makes its retrograde shift back into Capricorn. Pluto remains in retrograde until October and will remain in Capricorn until January 2024. These next six months are a revisiting, realigning, reconsidering & restructuring of the Capricorn themes in our lives. A time to go under the surface and realign ourselves to needs in the very structures of our psyche to support the more sustainable lives we are building, individually & collectively, with Pluto in Aquarius, which we just had a 3 month taste of. Pluto goes deep- Soul deep. Pluto is not superficial or light. Pluto gets real about why we're here in these journeys. Pluto's final move through Capricorn is about a big push of unlearning of how we may have adapted ourselves to societal standards of success, life purpose, direction and...why those societal standards are simply not the meaningful lives our souls are here to live. Pluto shifts such as this are about us seeing into how our own boundary between the known & the unknown has changed, in some way, for ourselves. We're being called to make the unknown known a little more. To let that shore line of consciousness expand as we build a life that stretches out into somewhat unfamiliar territory that Pluto in Aquarius will help us to embody in radical ways. Most likely, Pluto's re-entry into Capricorn involves some goodbyes. Some letting go of old structures of meaning making we've outgrown. We'll have one more Pluto in Capricorn retrograde in 2024, but that will only dip to the 29th degree. These next 6 months are potentially the stuff of major transformation. We'll see it in the collective as outdated structures continue to crumble but in our own lives, rather than experiencing sudden crumbles of structures we can enter this time with mindful awareness (mercury just entered Gemini to help with this) and choose to make whatever changes are calling us, internally & externally, to align to the new paradigms so many of us are waking to. Blessings on the Journey.
Saturn in Pisces
Venus Enters Leo
Saturn is in Pisces now. I woke from a dream of swimming in the ocean with sea turtles and other ancient creatures to step down off of my bed and see that my young cat stole a treasured eagle feather from an altar shelf in the night and tore it to pieces. She left it as a gift for me, an offering for this day in the new era that we find ourselves. Saturn is the boundary between what is known and unknown. Pisces is the vastness of all that is. We enter a 3-year journey in which new boundaries will be set, new divisions between the known and the unknown. What was once unknowable to the human psyche, Saturn will make it real. This will change us all. The wise elder that is Saturn, she knows what we are ready to be initiated into. Such journeys of initiation are not always gentle. They reprogram the psyche. Surely many will choose to resit the shift. Surely all of us will at one point need release into the habits or substances that relieve the grief that comes with the soul's realignment. Saturn in Pisces stirs up grief. But grief is nothing other than a language of Love that society has not taught us how to speak very well. Thankfully, this language is a native tongue of Pisces. We will have the opportunity to weave ourselves through new dimensions of healing that we need not fear. I picture my eagle feather torn to shreds. And the little yellow eyes staring at me, proud of her efforts. I can only laugh. Meaning is always re-emerging, in every moment and we are so lucky that we get to choose to look and understand anew. Choosing not to project that past, good or bad, onto the present, we can accept every experience as a gift. And, Pisces is ultimately, a state of total forgiveness. For those willing, Saturn will teach us how to forgive, perhaps over and over again. This act will reset the boundaries of what is known & unknown. I have been on a journey of forgiveness for, in one way or another, most of my life. Such is the path of survivors of intimate childhood violence. I am so excited for where Saturn is taking me and all of us. May we all wake, again & again, to the beauty of this journey over the next 3 years. Blessings.
Venus enters Leo today. How a planet enters a new sign is important. Venus does not just casually shift from Cancer into Leo. She enters in with an exact opposition to Pluto retrograde. A 4 month journey through Leo, due to Venus' own retrograde through the Lion's fires- this is to be a transit of reassessing what brings us joy. What fills our hearts with desire. What inspires us to be creative and fearless in our lives? Most likely, we don't have everything in place to answer these questions. This is why Pluto is there, marking the entrance and beginning to this journey. It's a time to discover from the inside out- what makes us feel passionate. This archetypal journey is not really about romance, despite the lovely memes abounding on social media, so much as in our own hearts, in our own relationships with life and Spirit~ what lights our creative fires? Then from that place of inner joy and knowing, of filling us with a passion that radiates outwards, from there we enter into relationship with Venus, from there we find love in all its forms, from there we relate to others. The core level of Leo & Venus together though, is about our own joy, courage and passion. Leo is directly related to Spirit. To feeling the creative life force pulsing through us, fires surging such that we cannot but embody that life force into our lives. Where do you have Leo in your chart? What in that area of your psyche or life may have smothered those fires a little bit over the past while? Life has a way of demanding much from us. This transit, especially with Pluto marking its beginning flavours is here to burn through some of that heaviness. To let the weight fall away- whatever that means to each of us- and reclaim some joy, deep within. Blessings on the Journey. May it be joyous.
