Leaning into Longings

Meandering musings inspired by the current astrology

My Scorpio Moon sits in a tight conjunction to my IC. My first astrology reading referred to that symbolism as a sign of tremendous geomantic sensitivity — acute attunement to place. I had known prior to the reading that I could feel where I belonged and where I did not by the way my body responded to landscapes. Some places feel like home and some do not. The reading helped me to give it words so I could recontextualize my life experiences with that sensitivity in mind.

In more recent years I’ve learned to suss out the idiosyncrasies of it. When I’m visiting locations at high altitudes in desert ‘scapes, I can’t sense down into water easily enough for my long term comfort. I feel untethered. Sandy ‘scapes feel unsettlingly shifty, like I’ll get sucked into the earth at any moment. Sometimes I feel different facets of my being becoming prominent depending on which sides feel most foundational held. On a road trip a while back, I entered a small town that looked quiet, but the land was shrieking and screaming. I waited until the next town to get gas.

The lands of the Salish Sea, where I’ve lived for 25 years, were the first lands that felt like Home. True, rooted Home. After my first visit, I returned to the place I was raised, but the longing to return the the Northwest would not let up.

A Few of My Favorite Things | Photo by Amanda Moreno, June 2026

Longings have been coming forward a lot lately. I didn’t realize just how often until earlier today when one ran through me so loudly that I had to stop what I was doing and let the longing pinball [softly] through my system. What triggers my longings most potently these days is usually any of the many novels I have been reading. Certain settings unleash what feels like remembrance of landscapes long since left, moved on from, yearned for. Memories that exist in my cells or my soul’s codes.

I have been told time and again in sessions with healers, witches and diviners that my ancestors seem to show up to as humans, yes, but sometimes as bays or harbors or rivers. Specific coastal inlets or beaches. As fish or other creatures. To hear each practitioner describe it is so fascinating to me. They do their best to convey that my ancestors are places, yes, but the entirety of the place, including what has been built or brought there. Wooden docks, boats or nets, living creatures, buildings… as well as the terrain itself.

When I first began doing healing work with my father’s father’s lineage, the journey took me through the interiors of mountains. I could hear the crunching of bones under my feet until I emerged into the bright, salty sea air. The ocean greeted me first, and then a grandfather. Most of the healing for this lineage took place in a valley situated amidst four distinct ranges of giant, towering mountains. I later learned that the last name that carried through that lineage for hundreds of years was Montaño. The Spanish word for mountain.

Earlier this year, Jupiter stationed in my twelfth whole sign house, trining my IC-Moon. When planets station, they slow way down. Lingering. Emphasizing an event, vibe or tone that needs to be seen, felt and worked with. The blessing of this trine carried me through the process of earning seven new scars-by surgery, adding to the several already showcased on my abdomen. The seven sisters, my sister said. And now Mercury will station (while trining my eight house Venus) and then retrograde back to this trine-the-Moon spot. My haunted houses all lit up and talking to each other. I recently registered for an ancestral medicine practitioner training.

I resisted ancestor work for such a long time. Since I was a child, I felt a stubborn ‘absolutely not!’ well up within me at the thought of being psychic or seeing ghosts, even though my mom was sure that I was and probably could. The idea terrified me. I would wake in the middle of the night and squeeze my eyes shut until I fell back to sleep, afraid that if I opened them I’d see something terrifying.

But then… October 2023, and genocide in Palestine hit another crescendo. I was in a Pisces profection period and eighth house year. I felt so helpless and hopeless (and full of high velocity rage that still whips through me on the regular). One of the more empowering things I could think to do at the time was to start connecting with and supporting my Levantine ancestors. My great-grandparents were born in Beirut, coming to America just before my grandma Sarah was born.

In November, 2023 I decided to cook a feast for my ancestors, focusing on the Levantine line in particular. Two ancestors from a bit further back than my great-greats showed up. A man escorted a woman who was in pretty rough shape. He led her to a place at the table where I had set some feta and olives (others showed up for the main course). The way she savored that dry, briny cheese infused her with a visibly settling relief. The memory of it is palpable and yet mostly indescribable to me to this day.

I feel longings for many places these days, but none as acute as my draw toward Southwest Asia. A draw that is, perhaps obviously, piercingly painful. I start to sense the land as it was before, and then remember the now and have to lift out of it. The genocide haunts me. But also… the ecocide. The specific evil of destroying land and life so thoroughly. Even as I wonder how my present-life Amanda feet would respond to the cities and groves and waters of Lebanon, Syria, Palestine.

I know I will never know.

We say the land and its people will persevere, but the pounding in my head, my heart and my hands as I type this knows some destruction outlives the land’s people.

There are other longings, too.

My five year old self appeared to me just before I wrote this. She sent me stumbling out of the shower, and I had to skip drying off to try and get to the computer before all the words you have read here evaporated. She first arrived in a cloud of longing for water babble noise and a memory from one day spent at a creek in the Chiricahua mountains of southeast Arizona. My family and our friends would go to this specific creek all the time.

I have visited with this five-year-old-me before. She has shown up in therapy as a kind of representative of my pre-traumatic-experience self. Today I was taken by how old and wise she seemed. So solid. I had to ponder that a bit, because sometimes “old and wise” means “lived through too much.” But it wasn’t that. It was her innocence. She has a wholeness to her that radiated a wisdom I needed to commune with. Or… more accurately… I needed to more fully recognize that I feel more aligned with her than perhaps ever before. What a gift.

I have written this whole piece without even really addressing that it is inspired by and offered as some kind of meandering commentary on this Mercury stationing retrograde in Cancer thing, and this very Saturnian Full Moon in Capricorn thing (both coming to you June 28, 2026). The former is conjunct Jupiter, and that innocence-as-wholeness is perhaps the most nurturing version of Jup in Cancer I can imagine. The latter squares both Saturn and Neptune, and feels to me like somewhat of an ancestral fugue state and tricky little reality check. But I’m trying to keep this short, because I have more longings to drift through and a brain that needs a rest (and more novel reading!), so…

My invitation to you — if you’ve made it this far, dear reader — is to follow the longings as you can in the next few days. Not in terms of “go out and get it!” But rather, close your eyes or let your gaze soften and turn your attention inward. Your private world is alive and well and so much richness exists there. Let the sensation ping pong [softly] through your body, evoking memories both linear and not. Watery Merc rets are always about reviewing ways we perceive through the emotional body, our intuition… and our longings.

Let me know in the comments what you discover. If you want.

(ps, I wrote a very basic beginner’s primer for our current Mercury Retrograde over here)

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About the Author

Amanda Moreno has been practicing as an astrologer and soul worker since 2010. She is very into relational, evolutionary, psychological and embodied astrologies and engaging them as tools for collective liberation. Follow her on Instagram @aquarianspirals or join her Patreon to get access to workshops, community QA sessions, chart clinics, Full Moon circles, divination swaps and more. Or, if you’re ready for some soul spelunking, you can schedule a session.

About The Astrophile

The Astrophile is a collaborative publication by astrologers Jana Barrett, Amanda Moreno, and Amanda Painter. You can read more about them here. Subscribe below to receive timely articles on cosmology & more. We offer this work for free in the hopes that it touches the hearts that need it most. Please share it if you love it. Your support makes all the difference.