I dedicate November to the Minoan Snake Goddess. Although we have yet to find out who the Snake Goddess was or if she was even a goddess to the Minoans, she has that status in modern Paganism and my pantheon. I associate her with rebirth and regeneration, a theme that I often think about during November, my birthday month, as I reflect on the year that’s been and plan for the new one. Because this month is all about me, I also return to the subject of self-care, a practice that I dedicate to Aphrodite, my goddess of love and shadows.
Over the last year, I’ve been leaning consciously into my Sun Sign, Sagittarius, to help me understand my self-care needs better and how that can contribute to better living. This blog is about this Sagittarius Witch and looks at self-care through astrology.
The cosmic roadmap
A lot is stirring within. My holiday to Greece and Türkiye is shifting my internal world in ways I’m still understanding. I returned with answers, more questions, inspiration, and a new memory of how important travel is to me and my self-care.
It’s also been a year since I quit my full-time 9-to-5 job. I did this because I wanted to work less, have more time to explore other things, and move in a different direction–or several new directions; it’s written in my stars.
I first learned about astrology from my father’s cousin, Neuto, who is like an uncle to me. I was born on the 29th of November, and he was born on the 30th; many years apart, but we shared a bond over being Sagittarius. We were in the best club.
There’s much more to astrology than the Sun Sign, but it’s a good starting point for understanding how a person moves through the world (or how the world moves around them). There are peculiarities associated with the Signs. For example, I am astrologically predestined to be optimistic, breezy, lucky, clumsy, and blunt. More broadly, for the free-spirited Sagittarius, the cosmic archer, the journey through life is a quest for knowledge, experience, and adventure.
To understand ourselves better, we can examine our entire birth chart, the map of the sky at the moment of our arrival with all the Planets, Signs, Houses, Aspects, and more. But if that is too daunting, focusing on your Sun Sign, Moon Sign, and Rising Sign gives you enough to work with–and work on–for a lifetime. Astrology can help us in many ways, including guiding self-care practices.
Types of self-care
I divide self-care into three categories: self-indulgence, health care, and internal care.
Self-indulgence is temporarily gratifying but has no lasting positive impact and may have adverse outcomes. There’s an artificial form of self-care that comes in the form of goods and services we purchase. In a post-industrial economy where everything, everywhere, is commodified and consumable, a multi-billion dollar industry has turned self-care into a consumer activity. Influencers co-opt the rhetoric of feminism and reduce self-care to self-indulgence according to (mostly white) beauty standards and trends. The magical version is to light a candle, and not just any candle, but a particular candle which, according to legend, was hand-poured by a shaman in the mountains under the full moon, but which was actually mass-manufactured in a factory with poor and possibly illegal working conditions for just a few bucks or haphazardly made in someone’s garage. This is faux care.
Consumer activities and pampering yourself can be relaxing and fun and contribute to self-care. I enjoy an evening of Netflix and chill, love fresh flowers on my altar, and the occasional massage. These are pleasures, but this is the most superficial, passive, and fleeting kind of self-care. We cannot create the world we want with purchases alone, and the things we buy will never truly nourish us in a profound, lasting way. They are not intended to anyway. The self-care industry aims to distract us from the broken structures that drive us to burnout. Worse, it helps maintain our relationships with the status quo.
From a healthcare perspective, self-care refers to the behaviours promoting holistic well-being. These measures are proactive and include maintaining a healthy diet, exercising regularly, sleeping enough, not smoking, limiting alcohol consumption, and managing stress. However, many factors affect our ability to perform practical self-care, such as access to care, social determinants, financial constraints, chronic illness, mental health illness, disabilities, and health literacy.
The physical, emotional, and mental pains that we experience–exhaustion, depression, and burnout–are the result of broken structures and a lot of inequality. What we need is representation, economic justice, health care and child care, climate action, sexual and reproductive rights, an end to gender-based and sexual violence, not a fucking candle (or, at least, in addition to that lovely new candle).
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
Internal self-care is also proactive and an active ongoing cycle of resistance. Self-care is resistance because it is self-preservation and anathema to an overculture that (barely) values you only in terms of production and profit.
Self-care is about making big and small decisions to create the life and, by extension, the society we want to live in. That means setting boundaries, practising compassion (for yourself and others), and embodying your values. It’s personal and communal because inner work is always connected to outer work. It’s self-care that spills forth from you. It’s creative in the same way that a Witch casts a circle and creates a new world.
Astrology for self-care
Astrology can help you identify what pampering rituals are best for you and how to navigate difficult self-care decisions.
For example, my Sun Sign is Sagittarius, my Moon is in Cancer, and my Rising Sign is Scorpio. Effective self-care activities for me include getting outdoors and soaking up the sun, swimming at the beach, and spending time alone. When making more challenging decisions that benefit my internal self-care, I lean into the positive traits associated with these three Signs: optimism, love of learning, passion, creativity, nurturing, and ability to strategise.
My Signs help drive what I engage with and how. For instance, my Moon in Cancer expresses a deep need to protect myself. For example, my social media boundaries include turning off almost all smartphone and desktop notifications and using the Do Not Disturb feature every night. Instead of feeling like it’s constantly coming at me, I consume social media when I want to. While I can’t control everything that appears on my feeds, I curate carefully.
The Signs also have “negative” characteristics. In self-care, these are the red flags that help us see where work is needed. I need to pause and evaluate whenever I become obsessive, impatient, and hot-headed. There’s something wrong with a situation, or it’s triggering (possibly both). Do I need to reinforce a boundary, communicate more effectively, or re-examine a value?
The Witch's Sun Sign Series
If you want to learn more about tapping into the power of your Sun Sign, check out The Witch’s Sun Sign Series from Llewellyn.
The Witch’s Sun Sign Series has 12 books, one for each Sun Sign, authored by Ivo Dominguez Jr. and a variety of contributors, including John Beckett, Thumper Forge, Selena Fox, Jason Mankey, Thorn Mooney, Fio Gede Parma, and many others. Each book is a unique collection of information, exercises, spells, and rituals to help you enhance your magical life.
Some books are available now, and some are for pre-order. I contributed to Sagittarius Witch, which comes out in April 2024 and is available now for pre-order. I also intend to get Cancer Witch and Scorpio Witch, my Moon and Rising Signs.
