We reclaim the sacred, sanctity of our sensual, sexual, magnificance, knowing that the Divine as Mother Nature has designed us perfectly.

We know that in taking back the power to respect, revere, and communicate about our sexuality, we are consciously healing ourselves and our daughters.  Our Mother ancestors are healed from the repression and suppression they experienced as simultaneously we heal the generations to come.  As we heal now, we heal the present, we heal the past and we heal the future.

We are aware that as we speak freely, and openly, with informed communication about our sexuality and reproductive nature, we are helping our daughters break through the conditioning of shame and ignorance that we have inherited. By taking their education in our own hands, we are empowering them to be able to intelligently and lovingly care for and protect themselves.  

Knowing our sexuality is a potent expression of the life force, we embrace our creative power. We learn to care for our selves and our daughters with awareness. We accept the gift of being whole, intelligent, capable, loving, women.

We affirm the wholiness of our bodies, of the MAterial world, and realize that the sacred is here and now, in matter, and in the physical world of the senses. We recognize that matter is sacred, miraculous and marvelous.

We step into our power as conscious co-creators, creating a world where women respect themselves and see that we are perfect as we are, in all our sizes and shapes. Our worth is inherent and not dependent on the approval of anyone else.

We proclaim our dignity and our divinity, here and now, in each and every body, knowing that we are inherently wonderful just as we are!     And so it is!

©  Esther Frances
February 11, 2014
 

 
 

Dear Moms,

I want to thank you for your courage and the great love that you have for your daughter that enables you to break through the walls of conditioning and shame that have made us feel awkward and unqualified to speak honestly with our very own daughters! 

In gratitude to your commitment to courage I am offering ten free 30 minute sessions to see if you would like to learn more about the astrological territory that connects you and your daughter.

The astrological map gives knowledge and insight that helps us to see each persons'  coding and life path.

I am offering you a three session Astro-Dynamic Family package, consisting of three one-hour sessions, which emphasis a relationship chart comparison and a composite chart that shows you what the two of you are learning through your relationship for the reduced price $450 instead of the full cost of $600.

I'm offering these sessions at a reduced rate, because I know from my experience as a Mother, just how helpful it is to have insight into your child's dynamics so that you can support her in her unfoldment through the teenage years. 

Please call me at 831-234-9795 to set up your free session to see if Astro Family Dynamics is something you'd like to invest in for improved communication, understanding, and harmony between you and your daughter.

If this is all brand new territory for you, I offer you one other special:  You can have a session that will focus solely on your daughter's astrological natal chart.  This hour long session will illuminate for you some of the most outstanding characteristics, gifts and challenges that describe your daughter's life path.  As with modern physics, we look with "possibility consciousness" not through the eyes of rigid, fixed interpretations that would curtail or pigeon hole her infinite potentialities. The investment for this session is $125 instead of $150.  The session is recorded.

I look forward to meeting you and working with you if it is to our mutual benefit to do so.  Blessings,  Esther

Dear Friends,

Where to begin?  It has been about two years since I have sent out a regular newsletter.  To make a very long story short, when I moved west and got a new computer, I lost my email lists.  In the intensity of the transition, I did not feel up to the task of attempting to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  Months turned into years and, here and there, I reassembled most of the disassembled addresses. And alas, I am resurrecting our correspondence and am glad to be reconnecting with you all, old and new....that is, recently acquainted or long time compadres. Those of you that are new to this list may want to just skip this part of the newsletter.  Part 2 will have information about my services and Part 3 a recent blog.

Sometimes grace takes our train off of the track so that we can be given a new route, a new mode of “trance-port-ation”, and a new destination.  The person that left the Hudson Valley is not the one that is typing this note.  It has been an amazing journey, one I will not even attempt to recapitulate at this point, but I will say like the song way back in the sixties that says “so glad you made it”  expresses how I feel. Yes, I am so glad to be here.

As much as I loved my Woodstock / Hudson Valley community, I always felt like a sunflower in the middle of a shaded forest.  Since, landing in Santa Cruz I wake up with gratitude every morning and even the occasional fog doesn’t chill me as the Catskill cold did. I grew up near the Jersey shore and now live five minutes from the magnificent Monterrey Bay so I am a happy camper, in the environs I love.

My soul never got used to having a continent between me and my son, for about eighteen years, and the joy of knowing we live about ten minutes away from each other is real each day.  Even better, we get to have meals together and I even have the thrill of seeing him unexpectedly on the road or at an event.

The icing on the cake is that I’ve discovered a spiritual oasis called Inner Light Ministries, with Rev. Deborah Johnson, that is situated less about a half mile from my son’s home!  As many of you know, I am an inter/OMni/ faith minister, and it is a joy to have so many of my paths honored under one roof.  Their declared mission statement, in a nutshell, is to live in Oneness and celebrate/ honor diversity, is so similar to my “Earth Is My Cathedral” ministry without walls mission of “celebrating the paradox of Oneness and diversity.”

I love this community of all ages, ethnicities, gender preferences, and backgrounds.  It is diversity to the max and the love is a tangible, ecstatic presence.  There is celebration and the invitation to step up to our edges and be leaders in love, justice, and transformation. (www.innerlightministries.com  livestreams of the services on line)

Many of my other spiritual loves have hitching posts here:  The Land of The Medicine Buddha and The Center for World Networking featuring channeling from Sri Yukteswar, Sri Yogananda’s guru, through Teresa Stolaroff.  Some of my poems have been featured in their magazine which is available on line in the archives. (www.centerforworldnetworking.org newsletter on line) I love the active Sufi community and Rumi readings as well as “dance church” and a love being a part of a small, women’s, spiritual group that meets once a month.

It has been my delight to become a member of the staff of the business of a dynamic, young, wise woman whose name is Sage Lavine.  She is a master teacher and has a huge internet following all over the planet.  She created “Women On Purpose: Turning Women with BIG dreams into Goddess-preneurs.” Her workshops are filled with love, joy and an innovative, creative, effective curriculum to show women how to succeed and thrive in their professional calling.  I love Sage and feel blessed to be able to nurture and be a part of this awakening to a new way of navigating business that includes passion, care and  compassion.

Equally exciting is the opportunity to contribute as a mentor to programs with the 8 Shields Foundation, created by Nicole and Jon Young.  My dreams of intergenerational and nature-based education are being fulfilled by the opportunity to contribute to their programs. Check out

I’ve been continuing to nurture my singing development with classes with Valerie Joi Fiddmont, director of the Innerlight Choir and master teacher Kath Robinson. Recently I was given the opportunity to share songs from my CD “Mother Earth Calls,” accompanied by the talented and beautiful Kinsha on drums, at the children’s stage of the Santa Cruz Rejuvenation Festival in the beautiful park at the center of Santa Cruz.  We had a great time and it feels so good for to me to share these songs.

A new endeavor is coming up in August the 24th and 25th at the annual Santa Cruz Storytelling Festival, where I will be sharing my original story “Granny Green: We Are The Spirit Within It All.”  It is exciting to transport the story off the written page into and through my body, voice and energy, into a live experience, interacting with actual people in person!  There is an edge to it that is challenging yet very alive and satisfying.

The primary challenge has been that my husband Michael hasn’t been able to join me yet, but I feel confident that this too has been a blessing, in that it is healthy to be able to dive deeply within one’s own Self periodically, especially if it is a time of transformation with the shedding of old skin and it is a time of rebirth and resurrection!

I never dreamt I’d have a business taking care of pets, yet due to the kindness of two of my beloved friends here, Marty and Mira, I became an active petsitter.  This week I am Auntie Essie to Foxy and Sophie, two Papillons that are pure love and absolutely adorable.

Astrology is alive and well in my life, although my counseling has also gone to a new level.  I am still available for astrology sessions but realize it is but one dimension of the spiritual counseling I offer, as I’ve come to recognize my roles as guide and mentor.  When I complete this letter I will also send out another with some June astrological commentary and some updates about my offerings as a counselor.

My services are also available through the Between the Worlds website, featuring the amazing medium Adam Bernstein. If you’d like to partake of my services, I’d appreciate it if you just contacted me directly. However if you would like to contact a loved one on the other side, I recommend Adam from my own experience with him.  He described my Dad so accurately there would be no way he could be making it up and the messages always ring true!

Time is going by so quickly these days that I don’t know that I will attempt a monthly newsletter again.  I am committed to at least a quarterly, and now that I started in again, maybe I’ll surprise myself and communicate more frequently.  

I will also be posting on Facebook, probably from my Eco-Astrology page.  If I get it together I’d love if you’d like my page.

On the heels of this note, I hope to post Part 2 with more info on my services and offerings.

I welcome hearing from you and send you my blessings for a beautiful, blessed summer with much joy and laughter in the sun or the shade!

Love & Blessings,

Esther

If you’d like to be removed from the email list, please let me know.
 

You may ask what does this question have to do with astrology?  
We come out of the womb of Mother Earth, through the form of our human Mother.  Earth is impregnated with starlight.  The minerals that nourish our food are made from the belly of the stars.  Our Sun and Moon, feed and sustain the growth and development of the entire Earth’s eco-community.  It is important that we recognize our interdependence with the Earth.  

I am writing this blog on May 28th, 2013.  This past Saturday, May 25th, people came out in droves, all over the planet, to protest against Monsanto and to stand up for our right to have access to food supplies that are not contaminated GMO’s and to have access to seeds that are controlled by a handful of companies.  Peru, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Egypt, Thailand, Australia and Poland, are a few, who have already banned some GMO seeds and crops. This happening coincided ( a word whose root is sidereal, meaning of the stars) with a lunar eclipse at 5 degrees Sagittarius, offering an opportunity for a huge shift in belief, and for wisdom to emerge.

We have just begun the Aquarian Age.  My mentor, the late Thomas Berry, said we are entering a new epic that he called The Ecozoic Era, a time when humans can live in a beneficial relationship with each other and the Earth community. In his book The Dream of the Earth he puts forth the ideas that we must realize the ecological age is the only viable choice we have and that any sense of progress must include the well-being of the natural as well as the human world.

We now live in the time when world views are colliding. The industrial world view is still locked in the illusions of separation and insists on human dominance.  Counter to this is the swell of awakened consciousness, recognizing our Oneness and interdependence, and with it comes an insistence, all over the planet, that we can no longer tolerate the poisoning and manipulation of the natural world by a handful of corporations.


In 2008, Michael Schacker from Woodstock, New York, published a book, A Spring Without Bees--How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply  in which he already pointed to the neonicotinoid, produced by Bayer, as the prime culprit in the death of the bees. On May 26th, the Bay Area radio show “Your Call” devoted an hour to discussing how severely the USA honey bee population has declined this winter. The growing awareness and action regarding this issue is mirrored in the following astrological aspects by the eclipse and an exact square between Uranus in Aries and Pluto in Capricorn, that occurred on Monday May 20th, which will continue to influence us throughout June.  

What is the relevance of this aspects?  We are looking straight into the inescapable confrontation between the industrial models of exploitation of Mother Earth and Her peoples and the rising tide of awareness calling for the need to live in respect and harmony with the Earth and Nature.  The issues cannot be hidden or glossed over anymore.  

Pluto is about power, death and rebirth, degeneration and regeneration.  Squares insist on action and change.  We no longer can ignore the peril if we continue in the direction we’ve been going.  Uranus is the awakener, the insistence that patterns and practices that no longer serve us be abandoned.

A new moon on Saturday, June 8th is at 19 degrees Gemini. Gemini corresponds with the season of pollination.  The issue of freedom of the seeds (Uranus in Aries) is threatened by the laws passed that grant ownership and control of seeds to a few corporations. Our ability to feed ourselves healthy foods that are not poisoned, polluted and manipulated is at stake. The choice is life or destruction, respect or ruin, self-determination or dictatorship.  Mars and Jupiter in Gemini, for all of June, support us as we find our voices and speak out for what we care about.

 On the 20th we welcome the Summer Solstice as the Sun moves into Cancer and the Moon is in Scorpio. A full moon on June 23rd in Capricorn will bring extra emphasis to the Pluto /Uranus square.There is an urgency for us all to tap into the Cancer energy of nurturing and its primary expression as nutrition.  

The Aquarian Age nudges us to hatch from the illusion of separation and to recognize we are all part of an interdependent web of Life.  The time of complacency is over.  Transformation is calling us to own our own power and take back the responsibility to care for our Earth with love.  

To do this we have to stop telling ourselves the story that we are powerless and once again claim the knowing that everything begins within, with our consciousness, with intention, with the willingness to align with “The Great Greatness” living inside of you as you.

As a lyric in my song, The Dream of Earth Is Waking says,
“We each have a purpose, a place, a destiny, to work and play together in Divine Harmony.  Our dictators cannot function, if we all unite. Our power will provide us with a shielding of Light.  We can create miracles.  We can change the tune.  Bring care and compassion back into the loom.”

I invite you to look into how these energies are calling you, where they live in relationship with your birth chart.  It would be be my honor to serve you in discovering how you can best bring forth the greatness inside of you, as indicated by your astrological signature.  

It is an exciting time to be part of the Earth community.  I’m optimistic and confident that we are in the midst of a great evolutionary moment. Let us rise to the occasion for the benefit of us all.

©  Esther Frances
May 28, 2013

 

Humans have this wonderful thing called choice to a degree that instinct does not allow the other creatures in our world as far as we know.  We have no wings, yet we can fly, no fins, yet we can go below the waters and hang out with the creatures way beneath the waves.  It is our false sense of separation that has fed the arrogance, dominance, and suffering caused by the ignorance that forgot we are magnificent, Divine Beings, One in Spirit and one in interdependence with all life-forms.  An awakening and transformation in consciousness is the medicine and antidote to the poison we've created within us and around us.  

All we need to do is remember our Divine Isness, Be it, share it, respect and revere it in all that we see and by releasing the dis-connect we will stop the actions that harm.  We need to release the idea that we are inherently an inferior or superior species and take our place as conscious creators in the web of Life, endowed with marvelous capacities and a heart of love that shines like the Sun, for all, when the veil of separation is evaporated by the rising Sun of awakening.  We are the people. Now is the time. We are the blessed ones that are awakening and awakening!

©  Esther Frances
July 20, 2013
 

We collectively have a deep fascination with the holiday of Halloween.  It is a particularly special day for me because it is the day my son Aleph was born, at home, in Fairfax CA, thirty seven years ago.  As I was contemplating on the theme for the current Scorpio passage, the name Halloween revealed itself to me afresh, as if I had never heard it before.

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary “hallow” is:  1. to make holy or set apart as holy. To respect or honor greatly; venerate.  Vocabulary.com says “To hallow is to bless, consecrate, or render holy by means of religious rite, especially significant religious places or relics of saints.”  Whoa!  Powerful words for an occasion we often consider a minor holiday whose purpose is to entertain and parade around in costume!

Then there’s the ween in Halloween....If ween can be seen as an abbreviation of tween, and I am choosing to see it that way, it is most appropriate for a holiday that is at the midpoint of the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice.  Halloween is one of four midpoints that indicate the eight primary natural holidays based on the play of light and dark in our natural journey through the seasons.  

In esoteric traditions the ‘tween or “in between” times are considered to be portals of power.  Much like the cusp between signs they are times of transition where the energy is potent because the chi is in a shift mode, and if we attune to and harmonize with movement we can tap into creativity and potentiality at a more essential level than we can at other times.  ‘Tween times are associated with magic, power, vision, possibility and tapping into the Divine Reservoir with heightened awareness. We could say that ‘tween times are when Nature is in a shapeshifting mode, as the currents shift in synchrony with the energetic turning of the tide or as they change their emphasis.  

What if we were to retrieve the time of life we call teens and view it anew as a time of being between the child and the mature human and meet it with empowerment and possibility instead of viewing it only as an awkward or immature necessary passage, not significant in itself? I imagine we’re overlooking a great and fertile period of human development by framing it as a time of difficulty and insufficiency rather than a time where the “tweens” could be considered as precious conscious bridges, no longer forced to leave behind the joy of childhood in the process of becoming a grown-up human.

I have a bias against the word adult for adulterated usually means something that’s lost its purity and unfortunately that seems to be exactly what has happened to far too may of us “grown-ups” as the most innocent and pure aspects of us are left behind and abandoned to function in an “adult” world where joy is so frequently exiled in the pursuit of success or survival.

Astrological cusps share the “tween” potency which is why they are so hard to pin down. The cusps may be the most shamanistic placements, as they are comprised of the ener-”chi” of fusion, and simultaneous endings and beginnings which mirror the shamans passage in and out of dimensions of consciousness to retrieve and re-introduce needed wisdom and perspective.  

Typical ‘tween times are dawn and the sunrise and twilight or dusk as the sun appears to set.  The eight natural holidays--the Vernal and Fall Equinoxes, Summer and Winter Solstices, and the midpoints of these turnings that we call Halloween, Candlemas, Beltane and Lammas, could all be considered tween times.  

‘Tween places are where the elements come together in novel or dramatic ways like here in Santa Cruz where the North American continent meets the Pacific Ocean.  On the shore there is an intense concentration of Fire / Sun, Water / sea, Earth / land’s edge, Air / wind and Space, the vast openness revealed as we gaze at the horizon.

Halloween punctuates the time we descend more deeply into dark. Death of the summer is completed with the falling of the leaves and the end of the harvest in zones where winter occurs.  The emphasis moves from the outer world into the inner domain.  We move from the outer Sun light’s fullness into the possibility to activate our own “inner light” as the outer light lessens and we dwell more fully in the dark.

The pumpkin, with its inner light shining through the carved eyes, nose, mouth and ears, is a beautiful symbol for this opportunity.  With the death of so much outer focus we can gift ourselves with the inner realms, letting our awareness be the inner light that reveals to us what we need to know. It reminds us of the need to rest and receive. We can die to the yang demand for so much outer action and be dormant.  We are invited to the fallow field of renewal for the restoration needed to insure a vitalized awakening into spring at Candlemas.

As we don the “cos-tombs”  we allow for the crew of our inner selves to emerge.  The conscious persona, so associated with work and fixed “me-ness” is given a chance to die as we defer to the “g-hosts” and inner Spirits that have been restrained while we have been paying our dues to the solar realm. We invite the cast of characters, our cosmic archetypal ensemble, to come forth and remind us of our inner diversity.  How many sub-personalities have been contained in the land of taboo that arise with loud cries of boo to scare and haunt the tightly held ego?  

It would be great to consciously have a coming out party, dressing as our nemesis, the exiled part of our self that we most resist admitting is part of our entirety.   The town philanthropist might show us as a miser, the compassionate mama as a shrew, the beauty as the beast!

Halloween is also the eve of the “Day of the Dead.”  It is often said that Halloween is a time when the boundaries between the world of the dead and living is most thin.  We can honor the fact that the mortality of all the lives in the world of form is a sure thing even as we celebrate the immortality of the Spirit, the Soul, the inner light that leaves the body at its demise and no longer lights up the eyes with presence.

Today, Friday October 18th we have a lunar eclipse highlighting the 26th degrees of Aries and Scorpio. After the recent New Moon at 12 degrees Libra, across from Uranus in Aries and square Pluto in Capricorn, we are still very much exploring the territory of relationships and interdependence.  Many folks were astonished to discover how the government shutdown influenced their lives, far away from D.C. as parks closed and whole towns had their economies eclipsed by the governmental decision. Interdependence was revealed as many people began new strategies and new actions.

I imagine a continuation of new action arising with this Aries Moon eclipse. We are needing to look at myth of individualism and the disconnect between the declared U.S.A. persona and the contradictory experiences arising.  More than one friend had their almost negligible food stamp allotments cut down to $5 a month!  It is a joke that is tragic.  The implications of the governmental policies are now being revealed.

Mercury goes retrograde October the 21st at 19 degrees of Scorpio.  It will team up with Saturn on October 29th, cross the Scorpio North Node and go direct again on November 11th at 3 degrees Scorpio.  So what does this indicate?

We are in a time of transformation.  Intense birthing is taking place as the old forms that no longer serve us adequately are dying. We feel this personally and collectively.  No one is spared yet those of us with strong Scorpio placements or placements activated by the Uranus / Pluto square are feeling this profoundly!

This is prime time for us to take the retrograde journey and take that inner light lantern that we all are equipped with and go deeply into the cave of our own being.  We are asked not only to shine the light on the parts of us we’d rather not see, that we’ve disowned or abandoned, but also to bring forth all that we care about and treasure.  

Now is the time to bring forth your passion for life, to willingly become the grail by allowing what is ailing you and us to be transformed by the awareness of the inner fire.  We are the alchemists and what is required is our yes to the willingness to let go, forgive, release and accept the breakdown so that we can embrace the breakthrough.  

It takes courage.  Yes, and it takes each other.  Now is the time to share, collaborate, commiserate, celebrate and co-create.  Shine your light into your darkness and discover that there are treasures to be found there.

To be whole is to be “w-hole-ly.”  The light and dark are lovers.  We have turned them into enemies.  It is not their nature to fight with each other.  We act as if light is good and dark is bad.  This is silly and dysfunctional. We are the dark as we are the light.  The dark is the womb and the tomb of the light.  Cosmologist/physicist Nassim Haramein says that they are inseparable from each other, the light being the radiant, expansive expression of the black “w-hole” that is it’s interior, and to which all returns in a cycle of communion and communication.  This archetypal yin / yang is a template of co-creation and complementation.

As you gaze into the pumpkin’s face this year let it remind you to be the light that you are, embracing the darkness, knowing that you are the hallowed ‘tween bringing the magic that you are into the world that you live in.  You are the Hallow ‘Tween!

© Esther Frances, October 18, 2013

I am long-winded and can’t squeeze what wants to be said through me into commercial sound bites.  If you u’d like to be taken off my newsletter just let me know.  
Also, if you’d like to know how this all personally interacts with you, please schedule a session.  For my Halloween treat I offer you the usual singletonschedule a session.  For my Halloween treat I offer you the usual singleton session for the reduced cost of $100, a full $50 savings.  The trick is that this offer is only good if you book it before November 1st, although the actual appointment can be in November.  And a limited number of free 30-minute sessions are available to see if you’d like to experience a three-session special for the package price of $100 each for each session.  
These sessions need not be comprised of astrology alone.  A life-long love of expansion of consciousness has brought me many processes to share including journeying, guided meditation, The Journey Work by Brandon Bays, and a host of processes learned in my three-year training with Dr. Jean Houston.

For those in the Santa Cruz neighborhood, I am also available for storytelling and songs for children’s birthday celebrations.

May the blessings & beauty of the season be with you,  Esther