How Freewriting Can Make You a Better Astrologer

astrology

Mar 8

When most people talk about journaling, what they mean is freewriting.

Freewriting is the practice of sitting down with a piece of paper and writing out your thoughts without editing or judgement.

Some freewriting practitioners follow strict rules: They only write by hand—no keyboards allowed. They are not allowed to cross anything out. They do not lift the pen from the page the entire time they’re writing. They write for a certain amount of time and fix their attention completely on the act of writing during that time—no multitasking.

Whether you follow those rules or not, at its core, freewriting is a form of meditation. When you are freewriting, your attention is fixed on writing down the next word. If you are a slow writer (like me), you probably have enough mental space while forming each letter to think about other things, but thoughts move more quickly than the hand (which is why most freewriting practitioners insist on using a pen), and by the time you’re done writing a word and are ready to move on to the next one, the thought you had while writing is gone.

Freewriting allows you to engage with your thoughts from a distance. It gently keeps you focused on a single train of thought while allowing distracting thoughts to fly around freely without hurting anyone.

Freewriting Can Help You Work With Astrological Transits

Freewriting can help you to tune into transits and observe their impact on your thoughts and mood. By noticing the fleeting thoughts that happen while writing and fixing some of your more important thoughts on paper, you create a record of the state of your mind in the present movement.

As the transits you’re experiencing change, the things you write about—and even the way you write—will change. Observing these changes allows you to hear the voices of the planets, what the ancients called the “music of the spheres.”

Are your thoughts depressed or obsessed with blocks, failures and mistakes from the past?

You may be hearing the song of a Saturn transit.

Are your thoughts dreamy, unfocused, and tending toward the nonverbal?

You may be hearing the song of a Neptune transit.

Mercury is buzzy and chattery.

Mars and Venus are full of passion.

Jupiter is optimistic and future focused.

The luminaries bring aspects of life into focus for a short time before shifting your attention or mood to something else.

An Example: Freewriting the Moon in Libra

Before writing this post, I spent some time freewriting. I have a lot going on in the sky at the moment. Neptune is sextile my sun. Uranus is square my moon. My relationships are recovering from Mars being conjunct my sun, and Mercury is passing over my Jupiter for the third time this year.

When I started to write, I expected to hear the voice of one of these big transits. I was surprised to find that the song that came to the forefront was none of these. It was the moon in Libra.

In my natal chart, I have no planets in Libra. I find it challenging when the moon is in a sign that doesn’t have any planets in it. My work with that sign feels second hand.

When an empty sign is activated by a transit, it can be scary and awkward, like trying to perform a song I’ve never heard on an instrument I’ve never played.

When I started freewriting, I felt nervous. I had been procrastinating. Everything that I used to procrastinate with was very important—arguably, more important than my freewriting practice—but I felt the sick feeling that I get in my gut when I know I’m letting myself down.

When I finally did start to write, my thoughts came in a single, disorganized tangle. No stopping. No paragraph breaks, but no single train of thought, either. I started and stopped and started again. I darted from subject to subject, tipping back and forth like a set of scales, always going forward, never returning to subjects I’d started and abandoned before. My thoughts kept returning to choices that I’m finding difficult. I worried about all of the little details that are coming up in a house move I’m considering. I got meta. I spent a lot of time thinking about the way I think, but I didn’t revel in words the way I usually do when under the influence of the other air signs.

In the end, I couldn’t have been happier to tear the day’s pages out of my notebook and throw them in the trash (which is my usual ritual after a session of freewriting).

And, yet, I’m so glad I forced myself to stop procrastinating and sat down with my pen. Knowing the reason why I was scattered and jumbled was comforting. Because I knew it went along with the moon in Libra, I also knew roughly how long the feeling would last, and I was able to plan. I cut myself some slack and did more drafting than writing while the moon was in Libra.

And I planned correctly.

As soon as the moon entered Scorpio, I found myself in a more comfortable place with my writing. The scattered work I did while the moon was in Libra came together into two blog posts, more than making up for the time I lost.