{losing friends: does it hurt?}

NOTE: audio file for the book chapter starts at 11:01.254

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

~Socrates (via Plato, Apology)

Losing Friends. Does it hurt?

This Saturday we have a new moon in Virgo and I want to share chapter 11.3 from my audiobook The Nature of My Reality that carries the title, Embracing the pulse of life: Losing Friends. Does it hurt? pages 144-150.

I wrote that chapter very close to the Virgo new moon last year that happened on September 2nd, 2024. That lunation landed in my 8th house right on top of my natal Pluto at 11 degrees of Virgo, and it opened a cycle that unfolded through the long Venus and Mars retrogrades of this year. Those retrogrades shaped everything. Venus and Mercury retrograded from Aries back to Pisces in my second house back in April, reconnecting me to value. Mars in Leo retrograded to Cancer from the 7th to the 6th house and showed me how I use energy, how I work, how I embody, how I take care of the little things. Together they created the sacred ground for what I am facing now: anticipation of Pluto crossing my Ascendant around my birthday in 2026.

Pluto across the Ascendant is a once-in-a-lifetime transit. It does not happen in one day, and it does not happen to everyone. It is a process of many years of shedding skin and becoming a new person. For me it began when Pluto entered my 12th house back in 2011. Since then it has been about bringing light to what lies in my unconscious, exposing hidden patterns, understanding the roots of relationships, and moving through individuation with integrity by embodying my own sense of value. It has been slow but it has been steady.

This is why the last Virgo new moon matters so much. It was preparation. At the time Jupiter was conjunct my Venus in Gemini, Mars was about to connect to my North Node in Cancer, Saturn was transiting over my Chiron in Pisces where the North Node is right now in the second house, and Chiron was on top of my Mars in Aries in the third house. That structure of my chart was lit up: 8th house, 7th house, value, intimacy, wounding, healing, 2nd house. It was a threshold. Period.

This year has been about relationship with the unconscious, with Pluto, and about preparing for the Ascendant passage. Pluto is also squaring my Jupiter long-term, and it started squaring my Sun and my Mercury. So this is going to be a few years of showing up as a new person with updated values and grounding myself in my own experience. Also very important has been the passage of the nodal axis on my 8th–2nd house axis, and Saturn and Neptune squaring my nodes have opened a window for me to deeply create an environment where outside feedback is no longer craved and outside validation is no longer needed. An inner space has shaped a vessel in motion that flows in trust. Yes, I know the image alone is vague and poetic, because I can only feel it.

Sailing comps - Austin cramer

Now moving from that threshold into the present, I’m writing because tomorrow’s new moon in Virgo is the first one of this month, and the next will be on the 21st of September, and that will be an eclipse where Saturn is going to be in opposition at the last degrees of Pisces. I’ve been contemplating a lot this week what it means where I am and why I’m speaking of last year and the next—because I see time as a long-term arc. The passage of Pluto across my Ascendant is not going to happen from day one to day two. It begins with the first passage on my birthday in 2026, then it will hover back and forth on that critical point until finally entering fully into my first house in January 2028. So I’ve been contemplating longer arcs in my life to understand where I’m progressing.

Uranus left Pisces, moving into Aries in March 2011. Neptune entered Pisces that same year, along with Chiron, which stayed until 2018. Jupiter did a brief stint in Pisces in 2022, expanding the themes there. The nodal axis was reversed approximately nine years ago, from November 12, 2015, to May 9, 2017: North Node in Virgo, South Node in Pisces. Neptune was joined by Saturn for the last three years, leaving briefly for Aries in the spring of 2025, only for both to return to Pisces for a few months this coming fall, until they finally make the much-anticipated conjunction at the archetypal degree of zero Aries—the reset where our individual potential can become more than just a dream. Pisces is the end of the cycle, the place where we all return to source, and that is what we are progressing to.

So what am I talking about here? Well, one of the things I see is that this decade, that long decade, has given us a lot of pollution and lack of clarity, especially in everything that is labeled “spirituality.” I think there is a problem with that word. We all have a spirit incarnated in our body, so somehow we all live with spirit. What changes is the level of awareness. Calling yourself a spiritual person is an oxymoron. It is like calling yourself a physical person or a mental person, because in doing that you edit out something essential. This is very Virgo-like: separating and dissecting until you don’t see the whole. Pisces is the whole of everything, and Virgo as polarity is about separation, analysis, and critique. The whole scope is to be able to integrate both.

It was also the decade known as fake it till you make it, and living in New York was the ground zero for that. That is when my life became disillusioned, and it accelerated toward the end of the decade when I took the impulse to leave the matrix and move to Miami Beach. As Saturn and Neptune traveled together through the last degrees of Pisces, it became obvious to me that I needed to integrate the polarity point, which is Virgo. And Virgo, where the South Node is right now, has created an incredible opportunity to revise, to refine, to discern, to integrate, and also to surrender to what it really means to be incarnated—spirit incarnated.

What happened to me this week is that I realized: it is not so much why did I miss Bitcoin last decade, but yes, I was very much immersed in my spiritual and emotional awakening, with its delusion and confusion. I was focused there, and I completely missed the boat on the physical reality of what Bitcoin could mean. This is not good or bad. I don’t have regrets. It was just what happened. Other people got on the boat, and perhaps now they are trying to get on the boat of integrating their emotional self, becoming more holistic instead of continuing to fragment.

So my thought with this new moon is that there is some uncomfortable relationship to Uranus, because it is going to square the lunation, and there will be a quincunx with Pluto in Aquarius and Saturn–Neptune in Aries forming a Yod, a finger of God. While Venus in Cancer squares Chiron in Aries, themes of value, courage, and movement are also activated. It raises an interesting question: what is it about your journey right now that is taking you to a different place? Where can you begin refinement—an upgraded version of yourself? It could be your mind, the way you relate to people, or the way you relate to the little details in your life. To find out look at the houses Virgo/Pisces land in your chart.

That’s all I’m going to say. It’s a marvelous life. I’m super grateful every day for the possibility not only to have the kind of relationship I have with my own needs, but also to be supported by wonderful practitioners. So yes, losing friends hurts, but it would hurt more if I stayed in places, situations, or with people no longer aligned to my frequency.

And now I am looking forward. The Virgo new moon in 2026 will arrive on September 10th, landing at 18 degrees of Virgo, exactly where the South Node of the Moon is right now, hovering for weeks, and in opposition to my Chiron. By then the North Node will have moved to Aquarius/Leo. Mars will again be in Cancer, and Pluto will have already crossed my Ascendant. Chiron will be in Taurus, starting to conjunct my Jupiter, and Uranus will be five degrees into Gemini, shifting toward the fifth house. Venus will be at zero Scorpio, Mercury at zero Libra.

The question for me is: how will my life be a year from now? I can feel that it will mean a new relationship to the way I was clinging to feedback in all of my relationships, and having changed my perspective on so many matters in my life has given me the possibility, in a very joyful way, to see so much potential right now—not coming from the outside but coming from within. I have created a safe haven in the relationship I have with myself, and I have myself to be grateful for.

And if you have planets at the very first degrees of any sign—mutable, cardinal, or fixed—there is an incredible activation that supports transformation through refinement, reflection, dissolution, and quick adaptation. And if your personal planets are at the beginning of Virgo: go ahead, be bold.

Have a great week! Oh, and don’t forget—the reading of my chapter is coming after this note. Stay tuned.

“Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.”

~ C.G. Jung, Alchemical Studies, Collected Works Vol. 13.

chapter 11.3 from my audiobook The Nature of My Reality that carries the title, Embracing the pulse of life: Losing Friends. Does it hurt? pages 144-150.

chapter 11.3 from my audiobook The Nature of My Reality that carries the title, Embracing the pulse of life: Losing Friends. Does it hurt? pages 144-150.

chapter 11.3 from my audiobook The Nature of My Reality that carries the title, Embracing the pulse of life: Losing Friends. Does it hurt? pages 144-150.

chapter 11.3 from my audiobook The Nature of My Reality that carries the title, Embracing the pulse of life: Losing Friends. Does it hurt? pages 144-150.

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