The alchemy of turning difficult human encounters into creative and spiritual energy.
On the micro-scale of our personal relationships, we don’t need to react to everything. We don’t need to prove someone else is wrong. We don’t need to constantly defend ourselves, protect ourselves, or fight for our right to exist. And, of course, we shouldn’t have to!
Sometimes our reaction only ignites an augmented attack. Sometimes a person, subconsciously or semi-consciously, may be provoking a situation precisely because they need the reaction, the conflict, the energy. The flames and human hell opening up to re-enact unhealed pain.
The enlightened state is to see and remain neutral. To rise above. Seeing, but not reacting.
Someone told me during this Venus Retrograde that I don’t follow through on my art projects.
I didn’t take the comment seriously because I know what my own truth is.
My truth is that this year I presented an installation in January, created two performances in May, published two novels by other authors, and created a collectible new edition of my sixth poetry collection. I wrote three new songs and created a wild, beautiful ritual for a local festival.
I published a hand-sewn book of my photography celebrating a female permaculture community organizer. And I started crafting my own teas, working with echinacea and other plants.
That’s a lot, even for a multidisciplinary artist. Well done, me. And the year is not even over yet.
Do I have many more ideas I didn’t fully manifest?
Hundreds! I’ve been keeping journals of ideas throughout my life. I sometimes write stories that give my female heroines the power to manifest what I cannot.
So no, I didn’t take the person seriously. And if the intention was to hurt me, it had the opposite effect. It made me smile because I could see through the comment, especially as it wasn’t the only one they made.
I did react once. I simply said, “No, that’s not true.” And they became very upset and offended.
So you see, sometimes it really is better to stay Zen.
You don’t have to convince anyone of your truth when you are already living it.
It is something I learned, or perhaps something that was brought sharply into focus for me, by my psychic friend, Byzantia.
Years ago, I was telling her how someone had said behind my back that I wasn’t an artist. It hurt my feelings because I valued that person’s own academic painting style, and therefore their opinion mattered to me.
Byzantia simply pointed out: “But if you know, if you truly know who you are, why would it even bother you?”
And something clicked.
Her fairy voice, or rather, that deeply authoritative stream of consciousness coming through her psychic lineage in impeccable British English, skyrocketed my understanding of people’s games, dramas, projections, and even their hidden traumas.
A valuable lesson!
Let people chew on their own pain if they cannot accept the medicine of your presence, or the mirror you hold up to them.
Then, I always look beyond. If a friend keeps saying mean-spirited things to you, why do they do it? And why do they want to be friends with you in the first place if, under their critical scrutiny, you are such a terrible human being?
There is usually something underneath the criticism. Something that belongs to them more than it belongs to you. Unless… Unless we are all one, figuring it all out as we go. Hence my deep need to share with you what I sense.
If you are me then who am I?
If other people can become your lessons, your joy, or your transcendence, which one do you choose?
Transcendence doesn’t require romanticizing harmful experiences as “lessons.” Sometimes the lesson is simply: I’m not doing this again.
I also analyze the living sky, watching how the mighty cosmos affects us. I learn from it. I notice the patterns. And perhaps next time, I avoid an explosive mix of one person’s chart with the energies stirred by certain transits altogether.
But we cannot always know how those energies will express themselves. One person might be spilling their anger onto you in a passive-aggressive way under a Pluto/Mercury transit, while another is setting off firewords: like fireworks, but made from neatly arranged letters of the alphabet, exploding with deep spiritual truths!
I experienced both in one day…
And I want you to know – astrology isn’t deterministic. We always have a choice. The planets aren’t our spiritual prison, but they can be our compass on the map of this human venture.
Poetry, like setting off those firewords, is my other favorite tool of alchemical transmutation.
I don’t write people off. I thank them for the experience, learn my lessons, and send them Slavic fairy dust and laughter, with the blessing of Baba Yaga and her forest spiders.
I can quiet my pain. I can relax my body to the beat of a mountain stream swooshing down from high altitudes, surrendering to the ecstasy of healing waters.
And from that place, I know what I want. I know what is good for me.
Then I call it forward.
For a deeper exploration of the cosmic currents shaping our relationships, creativity, and sense of self-worth, read my astrological guide, Venus Rx 2026: Transformation, Reciprocity and Return.
