The Sacred Ecliptic | Darkstar Astrology

Why I came full circle. Grief, ritual, and living between the altar and the stars

In this article, I want to go more deeply into explaining my recent Catholic V Astrological existential crisis. It has to be looked at against the backdrop of what occurred from February 2024 to February 2025 — probably the most challenging twelve months of my life. Coincidentally, this period aligned with my second Saturn return and a Pluto-to-Sun transit.

The pull toward the Catholic Church wasn’t a conversion so much as a recognition — a sense of returning to something through grief, ancestry, and ritual. What at first felt like confusion and purging now seems more like a cycle coming full circle.

So to put this all into context, we need to start with my mother. Our relationship was always difficult and complicated, and her death in February 2025 came as a shock. Only a year earlier, she seemed indestructible — eighty-six, still running her aerobic classes, very mobile, fiercely independent, living alone in Spain with her cat. Then, unexpectedly, she collapsed and couldn’t get up. From that moment, everything changed: she needed constant care.

Mother’s Descent

My sister and I were in London; my mother had moved to Spain twenty-five years earlier. Money was tight, and I faced an impossible choice: travel to see her or pay for her care. I chose the care. She seemed to be improving, and we genuinely believed there was time. My sister kept saying, “She’ll outlive all of us.” She didn’t. I never made it back to see her before she died, and there is still guilt…

Mother’s Catholic faith, shared by my Sicilian grandmother (My Dad’s mother, whom I adored), was always part of the backdrop of my life. After her death this year, I found myself drawn back to Catholicism again, something I had been exploring back in 2021. Grief began pulling me toward something familiar and ancestral, a space where loss could be acknowledged in a soothing ritual. My mother had donated her body to science, so there was no coffin, no funeral in Spain. After another stressful six months of clearing her flat for sale and sorting out her debts, we then felt ready to arrange a memorial service for her in England.

This final tribute to our mother was made possible through a lovely Benedictine monk from Ealing Abbey — someone my brother-in-law knew through the Catholic school where he teaches music. Even though we weren’t previous churchgoers, he agreed to serve as the priest at the memorial mass for us and was incredibly welcoming, warm, and non-judgmental. His availability meant the service was held on September 20th. I thought this was amazing synchronicity, the day before the autumn equinox — a time traditionally associated with transitions and letting go. Most of my Sicilian dad’s family came, as well as my mother’s oldest friend in the UK. It was genuinely beautiful.

Honoring The Ancestors

My sister gave a fitting tribute and honest eulogy — funny, raw, and full of family stories that made everyone laugh and cry at the same time. I had designed the memorial leaflet, which brought up so many memories as I sifted through old photographs of my mother over the years: from her as a child, her days as a young model, to her final chapter in Spain. I think compiling that collage for the inside covers helped me reconnect with her spirit in happier times and make peace with her.

At the end of the memorial, the priest brought everything together in a way that felt deeply meaningful and almost magical. It struck me that this kind of ritual can help process complicated grief as effectively as any therapy. My daughter burst into tears at the final hymn, which set me off, too. It felt cathartic and spiritual. Afterwards, I ran up to the priest and feeling very emotional and grateful, told him how moving the service had been. To my surprise, he gave me a big hug. It felt incredibly healing and forgiving, like it had washed away the guilt of being the “bad” daughter.

Image Reference: Archangel Uriel By Marina Marchione On Etsy

The Latin Mass

What drew me to traditional Mass services, like those at Ealing Abbey, was the ritual itself — the Benedictine monks, the organ, the choir, the incense, and the sense of something reverent, ancient, and deliberate. After that, I began attending Mass every Sunday, and each one brought a tear to my eye, especially the one on Remembrance Sunday (Poppy day in the UK), which is, of course, not far off “All Souls” day held on November 1st. Traditionally, it is a time when we remember the dead and our ancestors.

So again, the timing of this church-going was appropriate and in tune with Scorpio season and my Pluto transit. With the vibration of the organ and the wafting frankincense, it all felt deeply purifying to my soul. I was hooked, and I wanted something even more steeped in history and closer to the ancestors. So behold! The following Sunday, I entered the Brompton Oratory, a gorgeous Baroque Cathedral in central London, for their High Latin mass. The spoken Latin felt so very mystical, evocative and ancient. Being the foundation of many European languages, Latin carries a kind of power that I can’t quite explain.

What I hadn’t fully confronted until then, however, was the direct conflict between Catholicism and astrology. If you take Catholicism seriously, astrology is considered divination — a mortal sin! That realisation was unsettling. At the same time, I began consuming a lot of online content — especially testimonies from people who had left New Age spirituality for Christianity. Many of their stories resonated with me: difficult childhoods, fractured family relationships, a search for meaning, a desire for redemption. There was something very Plutonic about it all — death, rebirth, purging.

Purging The Witch!

So rather impulsively, I threw all my tarot cards and astrology books out, until a friend said she would take them. I retrieved them from the recycling bin, but then I panicked that I might be “enabling witchcraft”, so they sat in the hall for weeks. In the end, I’m glad I kept them. I don’t believe Tarot cards are evil in themselves; there is even a book called “Meditations On The Tarot ~ A Journey into Christian Hermeticism” by Anonymous, showing their links to Christianity, which is mindblowing. It’s all connected!!

I did throw out all the crystals in the house, though, convinced they had absorbed the emotional residue of past relationships — especially the unhealthy ones I’d had after my divorce. I suspected those negative experiences were aggravated by a certain amount of demon possession. In truth, of course, I had attracted these shadow men from my upbringing and unresolved wounds. Still, the act of clearing things out felt necessary. The stones have ended up in a shallow pond near my home — and part of me thinks I might retrieve them one day, cleansed by water and moonlight.

Gnosticism

While creating my pagan and Christian calendars for 2026, I listened to more balanced discussions online, including whether astrology and Christianity could coexist. I also went back to researching the Gnostics, the very earliest Christians (Before the Romans made it the state religion), which had always been an interest of mine. That led me back to something I’d always known deep down: the profound overlap between Christianity, the Sun, the seasons, and the zodiac. The Church calendar mirrors the agricultural and solar year. Easter, Christmas, saints’ days — they all align with seasonal thresholds. Irish Saint Bridgit herself is a Christianised version of Brigid, the Celtic Goddess of artists, poetry, fire and blacksmiths. Then Jesus, of course, is the Sun; Virgo Virgin Mary stands on a crescent Moon, crowned with stars. This isn’t a new idea — it’s all laid out in works like Manly P. Hall’s writings.

Church architecture reinforced this for me. Churches are traditionally oriented east–west, facing the rising sun. Stained glass captures light at the altar. Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.” When the host is raised, it resembles a solar disc. Even the word Eucharist echoes the Greek “efcharistó” — giving thanks. The Last Supper is a thanksgiving meal for the harvest, which ultimately comes from the Sun.

Sun Gods & East-Facing Altars

The more I looked, the more obvious it seemed: Christianity carries the structure of solar and seasonal worship beneath its theology. Greek Orthodox churches adhere most strictly to the east–west alignment, as do, weirdly, churches found in my own ancestral homes, Sicily and Malta. Germany comes next in accuracy, then France, Spain and England less so. They are still East/West predominantly, but more at an angle.

So all of this raised difficult questions for me. I struggle with the idea that missing Mass is a mortal sin, and that faith becomes a system of rule-following rather than inner transformation. My Mother went to church every Sunday without fail, evening with a banging hangover from dancing late the night before. A lot of people do this while breaking a lot of the commandments during the rest of the week (I’m looking at you Michael Corleone.) I know church attendance doesn’t automatically make someone “good”. (My Sicilian grandmother, however, was an actual saint!) I personally struggled the most with consistency in Church-going. I often found myself thinking during Mass that Jesus would have to be a huge narcissist to be demanding all this on-your-knees worshipping.

At the same time, I understand the appeal of structure. Ritual, repetition, reverence — they can be stabilising and soothing. Going to Mass every Sunday, sharing the same actions and repeating the same words with others, is said to foster empathy and connection. It’s one of the few times I’m ever in a crowd. As a solitary person, that may actually be healthy for me. Another excuse for me to attend Mass (even if I don’t take communion) is to practice Ecclesiastical Latin, which I am learning on an app. I love it! I also think Mass reminds you to at least try to obey the commandments and that self-discipline is generally a “good thing.”

Coming Full Circle

Where does this leave me now? I honestly still don’t know. I’m no longer giving astrology readings, so that cuts out the overt divination. I’m happy keeping this website up and running now. I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater so all the archetypical, psychological natal astrology will stay. I’m also leaning towards the fact that predictive astrology can be valid when applied to the collective rather than an individual. Astrology started out as reading sky omens after all. Natal astrology was reserved for royalty only and even then, the monarch often represented the fate of its people rather than itself.

What I do know is this: my return to Catholicism wasn’t about dogma. It was about grief, ancestry, ritual, healing and closure. It was about my mother’s death, my own reckoning, and my attempt to understand how all these systems — astrology, Christianity, the Sun, the seasons — are far more interconnected than we’re usually allowed to admit. At the moment, I am reading “Jung and Astrology”, which, for now, is helping me to make sense of how Christianity, mythology and astrology can all work together.

So in the end, I live on the ecliptic — that ancient, tilted path where light moves, seasons turn, and meaning is never fixed. It is the line that binds the Sun to the Earth, heaven to matter, time to ritual. Standing in a church, facing the east-turned altar where light is expected to return, I recognise the same order I once traced through charts and stars. My mother’s death, and the rituals that followed it, almost forced me to abandon one system for another. But instead, they brought me full circle, back to the place where faith and form, symbol and body, grief and light, all meet. Hopefully, after more research, I will not need to choose between the altar and the zodiac but find a way I can comfortably combine both without diluting or corrupting either side.

Archangel Uriel