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What's on the menu at Lucid Cafe? Stories of transformation; healing journeys; thought-provoking conversations about consciousness, shamanism, psychology, ethics. Hosted by Wendy Halley of Lucid Path Wellness & Healing Arts.
You're listening to Lucid Cafe. I'm your host, Wendy Halley. Hi there. Thanks for joining me. Today's episode is sponsored by the weirdo who's talking to you right now.
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Wendy:Okay. In today's episode, my buddy, Linda River Valente, returns to discuss the astrological landscape for the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026. Our conversation delves into the significant planetary movements that shape collective and personal experiences, including reflections on the cultural and political shifts, and a much needed optimistic outlook for new opportunities and momentum in 2026. So please enjoy my conversation with Linda River Valente. Okay.
Wendy:Okay. Alright. Here we go.
Linda:When I count to three.
Wendy:All right, Linda. Got it. We're back. You and me. We're back.
Wendy:We are so back. With more...
Linda:Prescient wisdom, you might say!
Wendy:Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah. Yeah, I got stuck there for a second. Thanks for bailing me out. The uplift.
Wendy:So when this will be released, it will be the 2026 or the 2025. I'm not sure yet where it'll fall in the schedule. But the whole point of having you come back on, you came on last year, and a lot of listeners let me know how helpful it was to get a glimpse of what was gonna be coming astrologically for 2025 and the 2024 because it was right before the election that you came on. That's right. I I talked about at the end of that episode that it would be great to have you come back on and help us out with this year because we're not done yet.
Wendy:We're not done. So where do you think would be a good place to start?
Linda:So we're recording at the very October '25. And let's imagine folks are hearing this either right at the '25 or '26. So something that I will want to do is to help orient people to remember a little bit of what happened astrologically in 2025. There may be a little bit of cobweb around that. But to give context would be helpful.
Linda:And to give giant context because some of the astrological stories of 2026 were really seeded in the '25. And so you'll need a bit of that retrospective to be able to land on the map for '26. Makes sense. So there will be a reflection on the astrology of '25. And then moving into, I think we've decided we wanna look at the first half of '26.
Linda:And you may hear me referencing little bits and pieces morsels in the second half of '26, but there's plenty of content through the first six months. Okay. And this also allows us to potentially talk about all these themes and kind of bits and pieces of things that you and I already talk about, which is what is the nature or the flavor of the time that we're in? What are some of the important tools for orienting to the time that we're in? Lately, we are definitely of a piece together where you and I are thinking about shaping and reshaping of culture, shaping and reshaping of gathering, of communication itself.
Linda:This is all stuff that surfaces when we talk about the actual astrology, the actual planetary movements in 2026. This gives us a perfect entry into topics like the lawlessness of American culture. Hadn't noticed. The need for continuing and deepening mutual aid. The way that communication and commerce is changing rapidly and the way that we can kind of human scale our response, all of those things are connected to outer planet movements, big cultural changes where we got a peek at them in '25 and we get we get them to stay for keeps in '26.
Linda:So that's how I imagine going along.
Wendy:Okay. That sounds like a good strategy. Okay.
Linda:So let's see friends who are listening at the end of '25 or the beginning of '26 I will give you a little flashback and remind you I know you may not actually want to go all the way back here but I think we have to do it friends. Just listen to me. We're actually going
Wendy:it'll be okay. Trust me. We don't actually
Linda:go back but wanna think about January 2025. So if you did hear the first episode, if you were listening at that time and even if you weren't catching it, some of the astrology in place that opened up 2025 was especially challenging in terms of two planetary aspects we had. One is known as a Mars retrograde, which happens every two and a half years, and one is a Venus retrograde, which happens every year and a half. And it was just our perfect storm at the beginning of '25 that these particular aspects were, like, almost co occurring, but they were directly on the heels of each other. So the opening to 2025 was not the cruising into the new land exuberantly that so many folks wished for.
Linda:It was a very slow, uncertain, and bumpy start. And here in The United States, it overlapped with the inauguration of a new administer well, an old administration, but new back at the Two point o. Right? Two point o administration. And so we had a Mars retrograde starting '25.
Linda:We had a Venus retrograde that was the entire month of March up through April 12. These were hard going moments on people's hearts, and it wasn't just cultural shifts that were happening related to the election and the political environment in The States, but it was a plenty big part of it. So something that I got people ready for in '25 was I said, I know we have all these crummy retrogrades. But sure enough, in the '25, you're going to experience a dress rehearsal of sorts. This dress rehearsal will go from the March through into the autumn when we have some of our outer planets in a brand sparkly new arrangement where we've not experienced them as humans altogether in the gang that we're in now.
Linda:These are much longer transits. So some of these transits haven't happened in eighty four years. Some haven't happened in hundred and sixty five. Some haven't happened in 02/1938. When we mishmash them together, the way that those are sitting together hasn't happened in our recorded human timeline.
Linda:So nobody here today living living the life is entirely familiar with the celestial scape that was created in '25. And that was visible all around us, the entire world over as we continued to have cultural and political moments that seemed staggering. They seemed shocking. They seemed like firsts. They seemed they were easy to get lost inside of.
Linda:There was also an incredible amount of activity and change in the worlds of commerce, in the worlds of tech. Just big, fast, lots going on, lots of action. So we had this dress rehearsal for 2025, and then something happened on 09/01/2025, which if friends listening roll back in their calendar or in their date book or in their email, they may realize, oh, man. That's true. September '25 arrived, and it felt incredibly heavy.
Linda:It felt static. It felt flat. Something was going on. And, yes, what was happening is that all of the planets that got a chance to try something new in '25, that would be Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, they all slid back into older ground in the '25. And in fact, into the very beginning of twenty six, It will be the January, just the last few days of January 26, where things start to move again from a cultural change perspective.
Linda:But there is a stasis. There is a heaviness. And I think it's fair to say that there is a despair that comes culturally in September and October '25. We are presently inside a time in The States as we record this where there's a government shutdown, and the federal government is in a holding pattern, let's just say, where some of their commitments, their long term commitments for the health and well-being or the supposed health and well-being of their people is gone. It's like safety nets are disappearing one after the next.
Linda:I know that here in Vermont where we're recording, I just saw a news story yesterday that said that as a state, Vermont agreed to try and cover for two weeks at the November, cover people's SNAP benefits. SNAP being here in Vermont, we call it three squares, but it's a program that used to be known as food stamps. So three squares is what it's been for a good long while now. The federal program is still referred to as SNAP. One in eight Americans access SNAP benefits.
Linda:One in eight fucking Americans access those benefits. As someone who has had to access those benefits and am surrounded by people who do so, this is not like an abstract in my mind. Right? So in Vermont in particular, there's 65,000 folks that do. And the state of Vermont has agreed to temporarily band aid the first two weeks in November to try and ease this for those recipients.
Linda:Vermont is an exception. The vast number of states are just having to take it in the chops. Right? So this is a moment in time when I've been preparing clients for the '25. I've been saying, hey, things slow down.
Linda:Things come to a real slow, almost quiet pace. Some things come to a standstill. Some things come to a shutdown was my quote. And it's what is happening in this time. It does not last forever, but it gives us a depth of sitting with grief and lack and loss that we've had plenty of opportunity to work with left, right, and center for a while, but it brings it in with such immediacy, such incredible immediacy.
Linda:And if you're listening to this and kind of getting ready to know, well, what is '26 all about? You can also look back at the '25 and know that that's a place from which we've come. The burst of energy, the burst of momentum, some of it wonderful, the burst of distraction, the burst of bullshit that has also happened in the spring and the summer for folks, again, as a result of the planetary motion that got its little dress rehearsal. This autumn is different. Those planets one by one take their turn, and they go retrograde back into the old places.
Linda:Saturn in the month of September, September 1, slid right back to Pisces. October 22, Neptune slid right back to Pisces. November 7, you're gonna see the planet Uranus move from Gemini sliding right back to Taurus. We're looking at old business in the '25 and in January '26, and it's not easy because we've been sifting through old business for a while. We thought it was on the up.
Linda:We thought there was motion. The spring and the summer brought a really different planetary energy, and we still have to tend all the wounds that are there. Okay.
Wendy:So I'd like to intervene right here and just sort of get a ask a clarifying question.
Linda:Yeah.
Wendy:So my understanding from what you said is that the beginning of 2025, there was a planetary configuration that collectively has never happened in a very, very long time.
Linda:And the word collective is perfectly chosen because the outer planets are concerned with the collective culture at large. So they are impacting. It's not just down to the nitty gritty of your individual natal astrological chart. These are broad brushstrokes. Big picture.
Linda:As of March 31, here comes Neptune into Aries. Big brushstroke. Lots of broad brushstrokes. April '25. Here comes Saturn into Aries.
Linda:Broad brushstroke. That's the May. Here comes snazzy Uranus into Gemini. Broad stroke. That was July 7.
Linda:Right? Yep. So look. New colors on the
Wendy:wall, we think. Right? New colors. Okay. So this is not impacting specifically The United States.
Linda:It is impacting specifically The United States insofar as this astrology is really poignant when we look at the natal chart, the birth chart of The United States. Okay. The United States is having some unholy transits.
Wendy:But, yeah, I was gonna ask
Linda:But it is it is certainly these are globally impactful movements and it is absolutely the case that the inherent nativity, if you will, of the project of The United States right? We don't by any stretch mean the land that First Nations people have lived on for fucking ever. Right? We mean this like, hey, we're having a democratic project Experiment. 1776.
Linda:Right? Yes. This this American experiment, the astrology of the times is just really magnificently engaging and moving when you look at what is the American dream? What is the identity of an American person? What do we believe our government who do we believe our government is?
Linda:In whose name do they act? What is their role? What is our role as citizens or noncitizens or immigrants? Or this is very much part and parcel of this larger astrology. So everything around immigration, privacy, unlawful detentions and expulsions, and more and more.
Linda:These pieces are woven in to some of this big planetary energy. The lawlessness has an astrological signature. It has a signature of Saturn and Aries. This arrived in May '25 in such a powerful way. It's like every astrological signature at the moment has its grand story, and it has a very personal impact.
Linda:So regardless of
Wendy:You're talking about the individual versus the collective?
Linda:It there are collective and individual impacts, but these outer planets are very concerned about scripting new stories around the collective. Meaning that's the direction we're moving towards? Yeah. Meaning that as a people, as a human family, and particularly as a human family doing this American project, quote, unquote, whatever that's all about, or the project of democracy, whatever that might be. This is a moment when these stories are unfolding that are about the human family at large, but they are happening individually person by person, and it will become much more difficult to not feel directly impacted by these things.
Linda:Right? So for example, the government shutdown in The States and the losing of SNAP benefits, Great example. Right? That's hitting people for sure, for real, one in eight Americans. But think of all of the other unlawful behavior by an administration and the way that it impacts all those folks living under that umbrella.
Linda:It's the micro and the macro.
Wendy:Yeah. I mean, because you think about it's how much do grocery stores depend upon that money. Yes. Exactly.
Linda:And then the folks delivering the food Yeah. The truckers. It is just a nonstop awakening to the web of if you have made it this far believing that we're not all connected, '25 with its sobering messages delivers that. And, you know, as I was getting clients ready for '25, I was saying to folks, again, this is what to expect. These are the slowdowns.
Linda:Don't feel discouraged if you have projects that seem asleep on the field or like dead in the water. Up until it was actually happening live, I retained my absolute best cheer that one could really trying to remind people this is a moment in time. We can hold each other through a moment in time. We can get through these moments. And I was saying, will need the slowness.
Linda:You will need the downtick in the '25 to integrate everything that's happened from the spring and the summer. That is the case. That is truly the case. And in my wish to support my people, I can say that I underestimated exactly how heavy it could feel. Because we felt so many heavy things.
Linda:No, that makes But perfect the accumulated process. Well, and there's also the wondering or imagining of what it could be like Would
Wendy:it when you're and then there's the reality of it.
Linda:And it it's
Wendy:sort of like
Linda:Yeah. That that energy to be able to dream new possibilities was much more accessible from April '25 through to 09/01/2025. That kind of visionary capacity. That's a marker of the astrology, and it's coming back in '26. It comes back.
Linda:But as we record here today and as people reflect on '25, it was harder and harder for people to access those dreams and those visions of, hey, we could build toward this. Let me roll the dice even a little bigger. I bet we could roll Mhmm. Toward this because it's just feeling for people like a matter of survival. The astrological signature let us stretch big and broad and wide in our imaginings from April through to the September, and then our imagination got nipped.
Linda:Got a little nipping that said, woah, woah, woah, reality checking for a bit. When we look at '26, the uplift arrives. But I felt like it's just so important for us to be able to name the way that we might be turning that first calendar page and coming into '26. We have to account for what we've been managing through the autumn time.
Wendy:Okay. Yeah.
Linda:Heavy shit. Yeah. Really heavy. It's interesting because there are very heavy planetary water signatures in the '25, and I know one of the things that I was really trying to share with folks is that heavy water energetics can be such a blessing in the way that if the conditions are sufficient for the dream, if the conditions are sufficient for the magic and the dreaming, it's a wonderful space to do so. But what it's felt like this autumn is like we're not largely, people have been challenged to make use of the dreaminess of the potential brewing of magic.
Linda:Because as you also know, water's fucking heavy. She is fucking crazy heavy, and she can destroy before she finds her level. She will always find her level, but she will also do her own magic in a way that you can't always anticipate. And what I'm seeing about '25, you know, holding people through it over and over is like, wow man, that water's gonna find her level. She'll find her level.
Linda:We'll find the sweetness. We will be sufficiently hydrated but not underwater. Not drowning. But it feels underwater for people. It feels emotionally, psychically, spiritually underwater.
Wendy:Well, it's hard not to sink into despondency.
Linda:Yeah. And having Saturn returned to Pisces for this period of time between September 1 and February 13, please just know it's a patch of time. The heaviness is real. It's unmistakable. Saturn in Pisces is the reality check.
Linda:It's the reminder. Yes. Sometimes we have to have faith in really gory fucking situations. And bam. It comes back and the government shuts down, happens in short order, and you're trying to talk about how are we gonna heat this place?
Linda:You know, like, sorry, but in Vermont, it's already getting cold. You know? So there's a lot. There's a lot. We move into 26, and what we want to know is in the first half of the calendar year of '26, some of that momentum, some of that visioning, some of that dynamism that we may have tasted in the spring or the '25, which was frankly so missing from the autumn and end of the year in '25.
Linda:That dynamism returns step by slow step during the first half of twenty six. And what it looks like is January. Neptune, the outer planet that lets us dream, that lets us vision, that has to do with our cosmology, with our metaphysics, with our magic, with art, with the arts and art comes out of its little backtrack into Pisces, moving back into the sign of Aries to stay for about the next thirteen years. We had a taste of this in the spring and in the summer. It comes back.
Linda:That's January. We move into February. Saturn, who slugged back heavy heavy into Pisces, moves back into Aries. Saturn returns to Aries, February 13. We have in February '26, an aspect that astrologers have been knowing and anticipating.
Linda:It happens once every thirty six years. This is called a Saturn Neptune conjunction. This is when these two planets, these two characters land on the same spot together. If Neptune is our dreamer, Saturn is our reality check. It is where the rubber meets the road.
Linda:Saturn is that crabby professor who gives you all the challenges in the world and you think that it's because they hate you. They do not hate you. They are making you a boss of all things. And it's a very heavy process. It's a humbling process to go through when Saturn is at work.
Linda:This means that in our culture, February '26 is highlighted, has quite a spotlight on it, 02/13/2026. This is our Saturn Neptune conjunction and the sign of Aries reshaping a Saturn Neptune cycle for the next thirty six years. This is cultural. This is political. This is about art and the role of art in culture.
Linda:This is about the rule of law or in the case of Saturn and Aries, lawlessness. What do we do when the fabric, when the institutions, when the faith in those, when frankly anybody's inherent trust in them has frayed to such a great extent that we have to start new shit. It's time to sew something else up. Right? This is a big important astrological moment.
Linda:And only one week following that, the Saturn Neptune conjunction just one week following, we have our traditional Chinese New Year, Lunar New Year. Okay. This is on September 20 of this. Is it the twentieth? No.
Linda:The conjunction itself is on the twentieth, and the Lunar New Year is the seventeenth. Is that the case? You said September? Or We're looking at February. February.
Linda:Okay. So February '26, we have this important conjunction, Saturn, Neptune, and we have the traditional Chinese New Year. And what a step change it is. It's always so beautiful to see a diversity of systems and cosmologies pull together with such power, such wisdom, and turn these pages together in tandem. Because as we turn a page for the Neptune and Saturn conjunction, so too do we turn the page to lunar New Year, and we're in a horse year.
Linda:It'll be a fire horse year. I believe it will be a young fire horse year. Get on the ponies and ride. Shit picks up. The speed of life is back.
Linda:If you thought that September was dragging and October was dragging, yet the world was at a fast pace. You will join the fast pace. You will rejoin the fast pace in February. March '26 has a number of aspects that adds to the speed, the velocity, the dynamism. We have Venus and Mars doing things in the month of March for '26 that are fiery, that are bold.
Linda:We have sets of eclipses. So you can see already. We might come into '26, and we might kind of walk into January and be frankly, you know, still a little shell shocked from what has been a foot in the closeout to '25. But no sooner do we get to the January than we have signatures that are just the pace picks up. So we have the January uptick with Neptune, February uptick with Saturn, Saturn Neptune conjunction, lunar new year changes to horse, lots of energy in March around the sign of Aries, around the energy of fire.
Linda:It will be quite a spring. It will be a spring that is springing. That's only the first three months of the first half. Mhmm. Right?
Linda:So it's even before we look at the '26, it's about having faith that these things are always moving and turning, but trying to figure out how you sit with them as an individual and where you sit with them inside the collective. It's something we've been talking about each time we've done our astro updates here for a while because the signatures around the collective, it matters so much. As a human family, we are evolving. There will be no return bridges. Right.
Linda:Right. There will be no return bridges. Which is a good thing, ultimately. Which disorienting, often disheartening, exhausting from a nervous system perspective. Mhmm.
Linda:You know, we've talked about how essential it is to be able to build nervous system capacity, to be able to handle this shit or you will melt down all day long. There will be plenty of shit that will send you sideways. But if you have your supports, if you have your resources, if you understand that there's a foundation for you to work from within that foundation, it can feel different. There's plenty of excitement and really wonderful things in '26. It's also staggering how quickly things will move.
Wendy:Okay. Yeah. Well before I ask questions about that do
Linda:you want to talk about the second quarter? When we greet the month of April in 2026 we will have had these signatures that I just named that are like wow. Okay. Back in action. Conversations happen again.
Linda:Here we go. April, May, and June come. In the month of April, here comes the last of the outer planet kind of rebounds, I guess we'll call it. Right? Coming back into the new shiny spot.
Linda:This is a planet Uranus moving back into the sign of Gemini. Uranus is a signature of tech and communication. When we have experienced Uranus and Gemini in the past, because we have it every eighty four years, we can see leaps and bounds from a tech perspective. And in the world that we're in presently, you know, yikes, do we not have enough leaps to buy? But so there's a lot around this and you know it's interesting to me, Gemini is not just tech in general but Gemini has to do with media and communications specifically.
Linda:Digital media, absolutely. But what people sometimes think less about, which I would really love to emphasize as a positive and more accessible way to do this Uranus and Gemini doesn't mean that you are having to be swept headlong into 1000% digital. You actually do have an opportunity in your own way to embrace analog and hyperlocal communication because Gemini is about neighbors and neighborhoods. And I love the idea that Uranus and Gemini, however highly digital it is as a signature, and believe me, is, it still leaves a lot of room for innovation around individual stories and play and coeducation and learning from your neighbors and gathering this is something you and I were, like, poking at a little bit earlier when we were talking about before we started recording the nature of gathering, evolution of culture. In a way, I think that Uranus and Gemini can be an unusual antidote to the digital and reenergize gathering in small groups with focuses on education, humor, and multiplicity of identity.
Linda:Those are Gemini things. So here comes Euronision Gemini back in April. Will you hear every conceivable tech news headline in the world? Yes please just prepare. Be ready for it all.
Linda:And you can also have tucked in your pocket this realization that these dominant narratives and these dominant paradigms we still have every day as individuals and small groups we still have power to create our own fabrics. Are the lasting enduring. This is what the real thing is. For years, we've been talking about how do you build a parallel spell so that when it's time to jump the track, it's built. Right?
Linda:This is what we're doing. If you have been building that spell since 2015, wonderful. If you have not, you now know, god, that's right. I don't wanna always have to receive my news in just this way. I keep realizing the the thing that I was thinking about as well is here in October '25.
Linda:I've been waiting for this. Substack. Substack is having its moment and it is being munched up by the shit that it purported to never want to have anything to do with. Oh no. With the algorithms, with the money.
Linda:It's doing that. Long story short, it's going there. It's going fast and people are now jumping. From Substack which was the salvation, uh-uh The remedy can. We not have nice things?
Linda:Right? Bang. They nailed it. Like lots going on right now with Substack. So oh my gosh.
Linda:What a beautiful example of the constant iterations and reiterations of communication tools, of networks, of platforms, of like we gotta keep rehatching them. We have to keep humanizing them. Extract them from an algorithm. Take them out of just this transactional stage. How do we put the soul, how does the soul stay in?
Linda:That's something that we'll really be thinking about and discussing in '26 quite a bit. We'll have to. We'll have to because the wave of tech that is soulless or unfortunately that is embedded with soul that is of great question. You know, that's a discussion. Okay.
Wendy:It's a lot.
Linda:Yeah. Okay. It's a lot and you know, it's again, that's just the beginning of the calendar year step by step, month by month, that landscape starts to change and change and change. I think people will appreciate some of the momentum when it comes back in the '26. There will be a lot to collaborate with.
Linda:There will be more fire. There will be more momentum. There will be more motion. There will be much more noise. There will be much more bluster.
Linda:There will be a lot more to filter. That's what I
Wendy:wanted to touch on. I have this concern about where a lot of us are at as far as being so embedded in the digital world and disconnected from Yeah. Other people. Yeah. And I'm seeing that disconnect more and more and more.
Wendy:It feels like people are so wrapped up with their phones and and the news headlines and social media, of course
Linda:Yeah.
Wendy:That this sort of urge to connect with people in real life.
Linda:Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:I'm like, will the the addiction that the digital stuff offers, that dopamine, all those dopamine hits and stuff, it's like, will people have the strength to pull themselves away from every time they get a text message alert, every time
Linda:they get a notification of a Instagram post? This is this is my favorite avenue of inquiry if we start to talk about the astrology of '26. This examination of how to human is this in my heart
Wendy:That could be your next book.
Linda:Is the central discussion. And some of these, you know, as an astrologer, it's like when you're an astrologer, you're also a historian. So you are tracking ginormous amounts of information and cycles and watching them overlap and watching them roll out and anticipating them, experiencing them and then processing them as they go by, right?
Wendy:But also referring to the past.
Linda:And also referring to the past. One of the things that I found so moving I'm gonna be 49 next week. I have been a student of astrology since I was 10 years old. I started working with my own chart when I was 12 years old. I started doing charts for friends and family in my early twenties.
Linda:I've been having a professional astrology career for a long while now. This is the shit I pay attention to. And I've gone through lots of iterations or relationships with astrology itself. And, of course, the wonderful bonus of maturation and age is that you come to new eras and new cycles of understanding things. And if I had to look at the astrology that has been shaping up for us as a human family since 2016, I would trace a narrative in which with the increasing digitalization of all things and the forgettingness of our implicit connection and that we belong to each other and that we belong to the earth and that she out of spectacular love for us exerts her gravity to hold us to her body and keep us here learning and growing and gives us every cycle that we need to learn from.
Linda:It's about gathering. It's about human culture. What does it mean to be human? The astrology in place since 2016 is having us examine that through a multiplicity of lenses. What does it mean to have all this digital world?
Linda:What does it mean to not be able to leave your house during a lockdown? What does it mean? And I think that at a moment in time where there's an increasing understanding of the costs of technological investment obsession and addiction, when that cost is becoming clearer and clearer, those folks who are quite literally invested in retaining our interest engagement and dollar signs are ever more sophisticated in the way that they claim and contain our intentions It's and pretty amazing. It is fucking fascinating. Yeah.
Wendy:It's like, wow, talk about innovation.
Linda:Innovation, right? Like, and so in '26 Like a digital heroine. In '26, we're having to say, what is culture? What does it mean to make culture? What does it mean to be human in such a more urgent way than we even have been.
Linda:If you've been, again, having this conversation for the last ten years and building toward the answer, this is a long fucking haul, but it's doable. Right? If you are a little bit taken aback by the intensity of it, if it's overwhelming to you, if you don't feel well resourced enough
Wendy:what do you mean by well resourced?
Linda:This is a time where loneliness and isolation and a sense of disconnection is everywhere. It's everywhere. Mhmm. And when people's most basic when people who have already been struggling with their most basic needs for material security, for emotional belonging. Emotional belonging's not a fucking extra.
Linda:That's the shit you should get because you were born in this world. Yeah. And that is not the case. This neurotypical capital we can go on. Right?
Linda:There is it is this is not designed for the pleasure and the wellness of every critter, human or otherwise. We are starting to see more and more that these systemic disparities are huge chasms. We have to learn how to love each other better. It's just how it
Wendy:is. Okay. Alright. Yeah. And I'm wondering, wouldn't it be lovely if I'm looking through the more psychological lens now Yeah.
Wendy:To be able to understand to understand contentment or happiness? You have to be despondent or be in despair or depression in order to have the the context for it. So if you apply that to what you're talking about, the absence of connection and the illusion of digital connection Yeah. Like, I am tuned in
Linda:Yeah.
Wendy:But to nothing that is of any substance. It's just zeros and ones Yeah. In various patterns. I'm connected to that. But if you pay attention to how that feels in your body, it'll tell you a huge story of why depression symptoms are so high, why anxiety is so high, loneliness, as you mentioned.
Wendy:So I'm hoping that's the extreme end and that there'll be a longing to have that connection. Maybe it's a little cobwebby as to how to go about doing that again, but the extreme nature of it. It's like maybe we'll appreciate being human when we've been kind of divorced from being human for a bit?
Linda:When we are divorced from sacred time as human beings when we have had our celestial maps and our cyclical magic disrupted, we are lost. We do not have an intact culture. And there is a greater and greater recognition and hunger for people in their own multiplicity of unique ways to reclaim the idea of time itself, of connection itself. We need more analog gatherings, but we need to understand that at this point in time, our nervous systems are still trying to expand capacity in order to go to those gatherings or have those gatherings or be able to go to those gatherings, be present, integrate what's happening. There's such a lot competing for our attention.
Linda:There's such a lot. It's insane actually. The repair between humans has to do with the nature of time and right timing, experiencing cycles together. We cannot do those things without feeling sufficient safety and nervous system capacity. And I guess my hope would be in '26 for us all to get a chance to limber up and warm up and try and remember, bring back some of those times in other parts of our life where these in person meaning charged context specific exchanges of time happened.
Linda:It's like just being able to gather in a place, be present with each other and not have an agenda. That is sounding pretty revolutionary. Sounds kind of dreamy too. Yeah. That's kind of thing.
Linda:I feel like there's a I'm super ready. This is like maybe this this is like my Gen X talking. I don't know. But I'm just super ready for a mixtape.
Wendy:I'm so ready for a mixtape.
Linda:You're making it for me once. Do you seriously have to make me one now? I'm super ready to be able to be like what are the ways of spending time that are about unfolding. There's not a gigantic agenda. There's nothing transactional about it.
Linda:How do we just be plain friends? Can we just be plain friends I like that idea. With each other.
Wendy:Yeah.
Linda:Can we just be plain neighbors? Let's just be plain neighbors today. So as you're hearing that,
Wendy:lovely listener, I wonder what sparks in your mind as far as what just comes to mind Yeah. Around that idea. What would that look like for you?
Linda:To be able to say, man, there's so much going on and there's so many things pulling me in so many directions. I have lots of responsibilities and I know these things are important and I do want to take time to be with my people. And what if I really sat with it and asked myself what are the patches that are coming between me feeling able to do that to access that because there's a lot of like speaking as a person with chronic illness, speaking as a person with sensory stuff, I mean, fuck, there's a 100 fucking reasons why going to in person gatherings might not ring the bell. Right? Right.
Linda:And yet, and yet beautifully bespoke version that is within your own nervous system's capacity that is feels sufficiently safe for you to reach for. We're practicing our humaning. Okay. So
Wendy:I think those are all lovely things to think about. I'd love to, if it's okay, do a big picture kind of Yep. Chat around all of the stuff you talked about and kind of a continuation of last year's episode you recorded with me. And where I had talked about my visionary experience back in 2008 that gave me this glimpse into that things were gonna be changing in the future, and I didn't know what it was gonna look like. Then these synchronicities unfolded where I discovered that, oh, there's actually a lot of prophecy around this time, indigenous prophecy in particular, talking about the end of a world age, the beginning of another world age.
Wendy:It seems to be unfolding in this way. Like, I didn't know what it would look like, and yet here we are. And everything's kind of going into this severe state of chaos. I mentioned that I've been calling it a global dismemberment. And one of the things I wanted to ask you about, like, these retrograde periods in the in 2025 that you referenced, I've been doing these little talks around this particular time, a bunch of visionary experiences I've had that seem unrelated, but then come to find out they were kind of related giving me the little glimpses into what what how how the world age we're coming out of has impacted us as humans.
Wendy:And what that might suggest for where we wanna move to. And so it's like the end of a world age. So it's like the the cultural worldview that's dominant in this world age that's the world age that's ending, which has been a masculine focus these last five thousand plus years or however long based on our culture in particular, and and it actually is prevalent a lot of places, is this colonial mind worldview
Linda:Yeah.
Wendy:Of manipulating your environment, externally focused domination of Yeah. Resources, other people, making things the way you want them to be in your external world. And so I was wondering if, like, this whole political scene is there's this I'm seeing it as, like, an illusion of we've nailed it. We're there. We've arrived.
Wendy:We've gotten to the place we've always wanted to get to, which is this absolute it's like colonial mind on steroids.
Linda:Oh, yeah.
Wendy:This try like, the haves and have nots, the the yeah. So that if those retrogrades are a reflection of that, like, of that sort of the victory lap that the folks that represent that really love that worldview and wanna, like, have that world domination kind of thing going or at least national domination.
Linda:Yeah.
Wendy:If if it's getting this sort of if it's an illusion of of victory, but actually it's just a death rattle.
Linda:Well, there's plenty of death rattle at the moment. The retrogrades in '25 are sobering and heavy because they do speak to us about having a crisis of faith. And something that's interesting Remember that when astrological signatures happen, that signature itself can be interpreted in a wide range of here's how I do this energy wonderfully and with lots of integrity and on the other side here's how I do this in the most power over egotistical domineering way possible. Something that has happened with the new astrological signatures that I mentioned that we sampled in '25 and that reoccur in '26 These outer planet signatures are crystal clear that human family is in a new era, that there's a turning point in the way that we do this human project. The retrogrades at the end of '25 really do squeeze you with the remembrance of, for example, very specific to these retrogrades, you know, the last good ten years, it really does have you reflecting on some of the heaviest components within that ten years of time.
Linda:And during this retrograde, when planets retrograde, it is our opportunity to say, oh, this planet's not so shiny and energized, and it's not trucking ahead with its business. It's really needing me to slow down, redo it, edit it, run it through the filter, assess it, integrate it.
Wendy:That's what I was just thinking.
Linda:Yeah. This is a time with these retrogrades where what I was initially saying to clients is, oh, you will need this slow time to integrate the jazzy things that happened in spring and summer. Yes. It's true. But what's actually happening more potently is it gives you a moment to integrate the jazzy things, but it gives you the recollection of the heaviness that preceded some of what was new era.
Linda:And that's what's so rough right now. And that is a kind of death rattle or really just like a banshee kind of wailing of here are all the pieces that have disintegrated. Here are all the things that have ended. Here are all the bones that I'm holding. And I know that there is resurrection.
Linda:And yet I'm also doing all of this in some very deep mud right now. The and it's just started raining. Right? Like, the heaviness of what it takes to digest some of what has been lost is a signature of '25. Our ability to step into different potentials and feel that we have more agency or more to work with is what comes back to us for '26.
Wendy:Okay. What I'm thinking and tell me what you think about this is that would these retrogrades be bringing this stuff so in our face, so to the surface that it's like the contrast I mean, my visionary experience showed me the one I was referencing a little while ago back in 2008, that all that was hidden was gonna be revealed. Well, right now, it's like in our faces, especially during these retrograde periods. It's like, it's been there all along. It's just now it's on steroids.
Linda:And it's Now right we don't have forward moving momentum. So now it's static. So now we have to sit and see it, right? The current stopped.
Wendy:But maybe that's what I was gonna say is maybe that's necessary because if it's so in your face and so obvious that it's like do I want this?
Linda:It's a great blessing that planets give us every day when they retrograde. Any time you experience a retrograde that is your moment to say, do I want this? Is this what I thought? Mhmm. I gotta read I I need to feel this through.
Linda:Every retrograde ever is your chance to say, wait a minute. This feels kinda weird. I'm gonna make my decision. And so, therefore, on the heels of the momentum of the spring and the summer, yes, the retrogrades in autumn twenty five just feels so do or die. Mhmm.
Linda:You know? That is how it feels. Okay. Yeah.
Wendy:What's been arising in my conscious thought is the indigenous concept of this reality that we live in is the dream Yep. Which a lot of indigenous people have suggested. Yep. Ancient wisdom. It's a weird concept to think of that is this dream that we're collectively dreaming together.
Wendy:Like, well, not is this dream. If it is a dream, then what the hell? Right? Mhmm. So if it's a dream, then you look at your life symbolically and all the things that happen in it, which is kind of interesting.
Wendy:It gives you a little distance from it for a minute. Not that you can stay there all the time, but in having conversations like this, it always comes to mind. And so if this is a dream and let's look at Trump as a character in this dream
Linda:Yeah.
Wendy:I wonder if he's the archetype of colonial mind. Yeah. That worldview.
Linda:Yeah. I mean
Wendy:And when he physically dies, that will be the symbolic death of this world age.
Linda:Yeah. I mean, a sensibility or an orientation toward how many layers of reality can coexist at the same time and layers of dream can coexist at the same time. And looking at things symbolically, that's just the kind of creative medicine that can really turn things around inside a person. The danger and the destruction is very real. And in American culture, it's just beginning to fully unfold.
Linda:And the administration that's is in place because of decades of wrongheadedness being lost and not knowing how to human and having broken magic. So figures like the president of The United States presently, it is helpful to think of them in their human form and in their symbolic form. There's a sense of and if you're able to hold both of those, just playing around with it, like you say, just for a moment. Yep. Just as a thought experiment.
Linda:Know, wow. What is because being able to depersonalize a thing and put it into a magical frame gives you access to growth and understanding that you don't always have in a consensus reality frame. And it gets you out of your head. It gets you out of your head and it has you trying different things on for size, which is always a valuable thing. Yeah.
Wendy:I'll drink to that. Yeah.
Linda:Well Linda. Well. What do you think? I think that every year that goes by for me when I'm caring for clients inside an astrological and sacred time frame, every year that goes by for me, like, just gets more and more fascinating. Notion.
Linda:And more Yeah. And and richer and more sophisticated and more complex and continues to remind me that one of the great gifts that having an astrological frame can give you is finding yourself inside the web that's being woven. It orients you to cycles, cycles within cycles. When we look at your chart, it tells you what is great timing for something, what is the time to hold back, where are you ripe and ready for a thing, where is it not the moment. It's really important for humans to have the opportunity to click out of a linear, what's called a monochronic timeline.
Linda:Right? There's only past, present, future. Everything's on a time like, time is money. Every the the way that Western modern capitalist time is measured, that's a type of poison. And if you have the opportunity in little baby sips to click back into sacred and cyclical time, there is honestly great relief in that.
Linda:Because as intense as these astrological cycles are, life is moving through us and that's how we want it to stay. I'm gonna stay here and life is gonna keep moving through me. Like this is I pick yes. I'm staying. Right?
Linda:Having a sense of time as polychromic, also makes me think of polychromatic, multicolored. Like time having a way of overlaying many types and qualities and natures of time on top of each other and being able to hold that there's a lot going on at any one moment in time. And we can't possibly register or digest or make human meaning over every single thread. It's too much for us. We're not designed to do that.
Linda:Our like little human bodies aren't even our big juicy brains are so far from being able to do that but there is such a lot of medicine in analog connection and hearkening to cyclical time. And if that for you means something as simple as the cycle in a day, the morning, noon, evening, midnight cycle of time. If that means for you cluing into lunar cycles and you watch her as she goes around for twenty eight and a half days, seasonal cycles, like, is all around us opportunity to understand cyclical time, and that is part of our human charge being here on the planet is healing our relationship with time. And when we feel like we don't have enough of it or time goes in a certain way or the quality of time is totally bendy, yeah, those things are all true. But undertaking this play, this kind of experiment in '26 that says speed picks up, all kinds of things start happening, forward motion, iteration of new things every day.
Linda:How do I wanna be with this? How do I really stay human? That's what I would say coherence it. Okay. Yeah.
Wendy:So would you say that you are
Linda:optimistic? I'm a Jupiter rising so I'm inherently optimistic although I'm not a Pollyanna that's for fucking sure. Like there's no, I mean have rough patches ahead of us and we have every opportunity if we take it in the little bites that we can manage to find each other, allow ourselves to give and receive support, allow ourselves to love and be loved. There's a million ways that that looks. There's a million billion ways that that looks.
Wendy:Yeah, you don't have to make out with everybody you meet.
Linda:I mean you might, right? But Damn Linda. You know what I'm talking about. You know what I'm talking about. It's like communion.
Linda:It's this idea of I just thought of Whitley Strieber's book. Oh my god, yeah. I love you Whitley Strieber. I really love you Whitley Strieber. It's this idea of let's have more opportunities for small human moments of communion that are not transactional, they're not based on some dominant agenda, they're just small, it's all down to You the mean a small gathering?
Linda:Yeah. It is all down to the small moments. Yeah. Yeah. Small things frequently like small small moments frequently where you can experience that sense of ah I'm humaning here we go.
Linda:Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. The little chat on the sidewalk Yep.
Linda:Yes.
Wendy:Or in the line at the grocery store.
Linda:Yes. It's just like here I am. I am making up the fabric of sacred time. We're making it as we go. Yeah.
Wendy:Beautiful. Alright. So how can people connect with you if they would like an astrological reading list?
Linda:Yes. Yes. I'm sure that in show notes that you'll put a little something but if people want to visit my site you can find me at lindarivervalente.net and I do astrological charts and transits for individuals, couples, more than couples. I love doing synastry charts with entire families. I have been doing charts for a very, very long time.
Linda:Right? I'm also a holistic sex educator and I am very happy to be working with folks around erotic liberation, pleasure, how it's you know it's just another version with holistic sex ed. It's another version of like how do you human? How do you human?
Wendy:That's a great point.
Linda:In your most sacred So that's also up there. I'm also an artist and love to do art mentorships with folks, magic mentorships. There's a lot. So just come take a peek at my site, send me an email and yeah. I don't have Patreon at the Patreon, okay.
Linda:The P. I am in an assessment of platforms. Oh yeah. Right? Due to and I'm really looking energetically at the Uranus in Gemini era and how I want to connect and be with my people.
Linda:Cool. Yeah, so that's under so getting me in person for real even on Zoom because I mean I know you're all over the world so whatever you are people just we can do it. But yeah I'm thinking more about crafting more and more analog opportunities so. I'd be
Wendy:curious to see how that plays out for you.
Linda:So let me know.
Wendy:And for me and for all of us. Yeah. Well,
Linda:a million thanks. Thank you. Always. Thank you. We did it.
Linda:We did it. We did it. Yeah. We talked about it. It's like nothing, nothing in this astrological forecast should bring any sense of like oh, e.
Linda:God. Nope. We are just we're already in it. We're already in the story. The iterations are flowing.
Linda:Now it's about forward momentum. Be in '26, we will be like, wow. Okay. Here we go. This is the shape of the world, this culture that we're crafting.
Linda:So what kind of dream do we wanna collectively Exactly.
Wendy:Dream together for this new world?
Linda:That's a big thing. And so finally, when those outer planets get back there in '26, we can find out. But we needed a little we needed a little, you know, time out in between and that was where we're at now.
Wendy:Okay. Back in the saddle. Back in the yeah.
Linda:For horse year. Oh my god. The astrological saddle. Yep.
Wendy:Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Welp. There's no getting around the fact that we're going through a challenging time here on planet Earth, but I hope Linda's forecast offers a bit of hope and some much needed relief.
Wendy:If you'd like to see how the coming months will be impacting you directly, I highly encourage you to reach out to Linda and get on her schedule for an astrological reading. I've included a link to her website, lindarivervalente.net in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you have an amazing day and a magical 2026. Our next episode will take us in a completely different direction.
Wendy:We'll be exploring what it's like to be on the autism spectrum as a high functioning adult. Until next time.