I. How I Use Astrology to Collapse Time

preamble: In the effort to collect all my Notes app thoughts from the last couple months, I wrote a very long, messy essay that combined too many ideas together, and not very well. So for the next few weeks, I’ve split the essay by its main ideas — sharing one at a time below. And, though it may not be explicitly stated, each section displays a way I look at both astrology as a way of thinking and long form writing projects as a way of becoming. I hope these thoughts are either neat-o or helpful for people in the process of making things.

On the difference between manifesting time and meeting it.

There is a phrase in “tha discourse” right now — or has been for a while but it became very conscious to me in 2020 when the online manifestation coach boom began: collapsing time. This idea promises duration bends to the force of your desire. I think this idea lends possibility to us, it helps us get past mental barriers and into action mode, but it can also feel punishing if not held like water.

You state your desire, your intention, your end result. You choose a time for this to be “realized” and you do all you can do in the meantime to make it happen. Maybe you choose a container to do this inside of like a semester at college or hunting season or “your 40s.” But I fear this is difficult for us for a couple reasons — to really, truly know what you desire is the hardest part (because “more money” is never just “more money.” And “writing a book” is never just “writing the book.”). Second, every delay in the plan becomes your fault. You may slip into blaming yourself for not being good enough or clear enough.

Every project that takes longer than the launch window is evidence of resistance, blockage, scarcity, something to be cleared. I fear everything that didn’t work out for you will become your “failure to manifest.”

While I see there’s an argument to be made that this approach is one where you have agency and belief in your own ability to choose your reality is important. But I’d like to argue for another approach which is working with the natural rhythms, seasons, and units of time as a companion to your desire. Rather than simply choosing your own timeline and bending it to your will.

Okay so astrology is time magic. By that I mean it is a system of measuring, tracking, and interpreting the quality of time. Every planet takes time and is predictable in its pace and placement.

You want to write a short story and the area of your life that relates to writing (as shown in your birth chart) is ruled by Venus? Venus spends time in one sign for roughly a month (depending on her speed and if she is retrograde). Take the month to write the short story, no less, no longer.

Saturn has entered your 2nd house of income, skills, talents, and material security? You have 2.5 years to pull all your focus on your net worth and see the hard work pay off.

I want to make the case for using astrology well — especially for people who make things. Work with the energy that is already in motion.

Alternatively: you desire to make a movie in the next couple years? Let’s say you’re Mars ruled. Look to when Mars is retrograding next (early 2027). Avoid requiring fast progress to be made in this time period. Plan for delays, plan for frustration… by avoiding it.

You are designing an art workshop for children this summer? You want it to go well and for everyone to get along? You are moon ruled? Make sure to pick a date where the Moon and Mars are not in conflict.

Just like no one starts a flower garden outdoors in Wisconsin in November… us as artists, makers, doers have the astrological ephemeris to work with to make sure our efforts will become worthwhile.

all these time words… meantime, worthwhile, plan, delays. Is it that obvious Saturn is my chart ruler???

Your chart ruler’s house transit — the planet ruling your rising sign, and the house it is moving through — is the most prominent signal for you and your body of work.

Your profection year time lord — the planet ruling the sign of the house your age activates this year — changes every birthday.

The faster planets — Venus, Mercury, Mars — and the houses they are in this season, are weeks to months.

For myself, I read these “time lords” in this order of importance after years of seeing their influence in my life. For you, you may choose a different order.

If you want to find these three in your own chart, I made a free Notion walkthrough that takes you through it step by step, using whole sign houses (which is the system I use as a Hellenistic astrologer).

Find Your Three Transits — a free guide ↗

The walkthrough is most useful if you are sitting with a project you are thinking about committing to and want to know whether the timing supports it, or what the timing is asking the project to be. The third essay in this series — coming two Tuesdays from now — will be about how to actually stitch your work to what you find.

So this guide is the what to look up. Essay III will be the what to do with it.

My chart ruler is Saturn. A few years ago Saturn was in my 3rd house, which traditionally rules close-range learning and the work of the mind in small groups. I joined a workshop called Art & Altar, taught by the psychic medium and artist Mary Grisey . We met on Saturdays for a few months as a large group and were assigned a new practice partner each week. I learned to channel and to read images I had been circling for years without being able to make sense of yet.

I told myself afterward that the workshop had compressed time. Collapsed time. And it did! But it also was how Saturn’s energy was expressed in my life at that time — where if I hadn’t been a part of that class, Saturn would have found another way to express, and maybe not as pleasantly.

So this 3rd house class experience had shortened the distance between me and a set of practices I would not have committed to alone. The workshop fit Saturn in my 3rd because it was small, defined, instructional, and held in a group.

Saturn moved into my 4th house this year and will be there for two years. The 4th rules family, the home, ancestors, the dead, the interior of a life. I don’t think this transit is asking me to launch anything. But I know Saturn’s energy will be expressed anyway, so I might as well lean in. I will be moving closer to where my family lives, to spend the hours with my grandmother that are still available to spend, to find an IFS coach I trust and work with her over years, to make my private life the actual subject of my attention.

I can do this or I can refuse it. People refuse their transits all the time! I have done this so much myself. And, I can see myself “pay” for it.

I am not saying desire and designing your future is foolish! I’m saying: look to where the energy already is going. Go where the energy is flowing.

Match your desire to this.

Makes me think of when I was in the Mental Wealth Method coaching certification program led by Jenna Knapp and on one of the first calls she led us through a Time Technique where we planted a specific, sensory-rich event on our future timeline, on the day of our graduation. She had already led us through selecting our one-word intention for the 3 month program and mine was “Show” — my desire was to be seen in my whole body, which had been the hard thing for a long time. (Still is, though it gets easier every year.) I asked a friend1 to take my pictures in front of the lilacs, blooming. That big row of bushes by the marina. And he did, and the photos I have of me from that moment felt so joyful and alive!

The next day I drove by the lilac bushes and saw that 90% of the blooms had browned and wilted. Imagine if I had planted this future event on my timeline and the lilacs were not blooming anymore. It felt magical in that moment but if I had been a gardener who knew the lilacs well, I would have known to plan for those portraits to be taken a week earlier, so that there was some buffer.

Maybe this is too loose of a connection to this concept. But it fits in my head: that if I want something badly, I need to become more intimate with the time it takes to make it happen. The quality of time, the seasonal truths. And how time works as a medium in that effort.

What if I was one day late? I can’t get this lucky every time! (Or…?)

I wouldn’t tell a Venus ruled person to begin something new and big this year until after the Venus retrograde is over — because there’s going to be a pivot no matter what. And nothing hurts my heart that more than wasting my precious energy. And sometimes waiting in contemplation mode, in observation mode is the most productive, generative thing you could do. If you know what your planetary guide is doing (or undoing lol).

In the next two pieces I will write about hope math — what I do when the season is hard — and about which transits to actually track if you are making things. For now I want the frame: astrology does not collapse time. It tells you where time is moving, how, and for how long, so you can meet it with what you want, inside containers that fit.