What the Crab Knows: The Sideways Scuttle, Water Clocks, and Backbone Swells

What the Crab Knows: The Sideways Scuttle, Water Clocks, and Backbone Swells

This week's astrology centers on Mercury in Cancer squaring a lineup in Aries (Vesta, Saturn, Athena) — a week-long tension between careful speech and urgent action, tended feeling and imperfect forward motion. Venus conjuncts Jupiter in Cancer for one of the sweetest moments of the summer. The myth of Chrysomallus the golden ram anchors Wednesday's pile-on in Aries. Venus enters Leo opposing Pluto, setting up a month of tension between adolescent joy and the forces that desecrate it. Sunday brings a New Moon in Gemini that requires a sense of humor. In the descent: a global tour of low-tech timekeeping devices — the Egyptian clepsydra, the incense seal clocks of Song dynasty China, the Ethiopian Ge'ez calendar and clock (including the complexity of Ethiopia as a nation state and the history of internal colonialism toward the Oromo people), and the Marshall Islands stick charts of Micronesia. None of these devices try to control time. They're all just paying attention to it.   Links Interactive Colonial Timekeeping Timeline — https://effortless-bavarois-314f8a.netlify.app/ [https://effortless-bavarois-314f8a.netlify.app/] Group Space Co-Design Poll — https://lively-marzipan-dfc058.netlify.app/ [https://lively-marzipan-dfc058.netlify.app/] Join Group Space on Monday June 8 (free with code: IFWECANDREAMITWECANBUILDIT) — https://calendly.com/amaliathecoach/new-meeting?back=1&month=2026-06 [https://calendly.com/amaliathecoach/new-meeting?back=1&month=2026-06] Book a session — https://www.amaliathecoach.com/ [https://www.amaliathecoach.com/] Music by Charmie Chandler - https://www.instagram.com/charmie_chandler/ References Apollodorus, Library Book I — https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html [https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html] Hyginus, Fabulae — https://www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae1.html [https://www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae1.html] Clepsydra of Karnak — https://egypt-museum.com/clepsydra-of-karnak/ [https://egypt-museum.com/clepsydra-of-karnak/] Royal Museums Greenwich, dragon fire clock — https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-212049 [https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-212049] Ancient Origins, incense clocks — https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/incense-clocks-0017419 [https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/incense-clocks-0017419] Time in Ethiopia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Ethiopia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Ethiopia] Foreign Policy, Ethiopia and internal colonialism — https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/14/ethiopia-must-end-internal-colonialism-or-it-will-fall-apart-like-yugoslavia/ [https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/14/ethiopia-must-end-internal-colonialism-or-it-will-fall-apart-like-yugoslavia/] Smarthistory, Marshall Islands navigation chart — https://smarthistory.org/chart-marshall/ [https://smarthistory.org/chart-marshall/]   Chapters 00:00 — Opening 00:57 — Welcome & grounding ritual 02:18 — Announcements: timeline tool, Group Space 03:55 — Astrology: week overview 04:35 — Monday June 8: Mercury square Vesta, last quarter moon in Pisces 07:30 — Tuesday June 9: Venus conjunct Jupiter in Cancer 11:24 — Wednesday June 10: Chrysomallus and the pile-on in Aries 17:19 — Thursday June 11: Moon in Taurus square Pluto 17:56 — Friday June 12: Uranus square the nodes 19:37 — Saturday June 13: Venus enters Leo 22:30 — Sunday June 14: New Moon in Gemini 26:23 — Descent: low-tech timekeeping around the world 28:49 — The Clepsydra 32:04 — The Incense Clock 34:13 — The Ethiopian Ge'ez Calendar & Clock 38:09 — The Marshall Islands Stick Charts 40:42 — Summary & closing reflection questions

What Got Rounded Down: Hera, the Lunar Calendar, and Hours That Breathe

Something was lost in the rounding. A matriarch. A month. An hour that used to breathe with the seasons. This episode goes looking for all of it. The astrology section opens a summer-long invitation — Mercury in Cancer through August, with a retrograde built in — to understand and differentiate from the things that nurtured you. The week's maternal theme runs through Hera/Juno, whose pre-Hellenic story as a pilgrimage goddess and matriarchal mother got compressed into the jealous wife of Zeus by the same cultural machinery that rounded down the lunar calendar. The descent moves into ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to ask why Western timekeeping uses 12, not 13 — and finds that both numbers have body bases and cosmic bases, just different ones: one from the skeleton, one from the trading hand. The episode ends in 1967, when the second was officially decoupled from astronomical movement and handed to a cesium atom. Transits covered: Mercury into Cancer (retrograde June 29–July 23), Sun trine Juno, Mars square Juno, Uranus conjunct Ceres, Ceres square the Nodes, Neptune sextile Ceres. Key sources: Karl Kerenyi on Hera's pre-Hellenic origins; Sylvia Wynter on colonial language and humanization; Anishnaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Cree turtle calendar traditions; NIST published history of atomic timekeeping; Victor Warring on grief and the erotic (rewilderos.com); Alexis Pauline Gumbs, ed., Revolutionary Motherhood.   CHAPTER MARKERS: 00:00 — Opening 00:47 — Grounding ritual 01:56 — Week overview: a gentler sky, themes for all summer 02:25 — Monday: Mercury enters Cancer / what do we mean by mothers 07:54 — Tuesday: Mars squares Juno / Hera before she was a wife 14:19 — Wednesday through Sunday 19:27 — Midway: algorithms operate in time 20:06 — Descent begins: orienting the project / colonial time 21:23 — In the tradition of Sylvia Wynter / Patois as genius breakage 25:47 — Why 12? Ancient Sumeria’s lunar calendar 28:23 — 12 and the body: Babylonian hand-counting 30:27 — Two algorithms for the same reality 30:38 — The turtle shell: Anishnaabe, Haudenosaunee, Cree lunar calendars 34:45 — Rounding down: 12 vs 13 and the menstruating body 36:38 — Egyptian hours that breathe with the seasons 37:47 — 1967: the cesium atom takes over from the stars 41:16 — Recap and closing questions

Sleeper Agents: Epistemologies of Survival

Episode Description: This week we’re talking about language as armor, language as weapon, and language as time travel. Jane Goodall spent 60 years figuring out what makes humans different from chimpanzees. Her answer: we can speak of things that are absent — the past, the future, ideas that don't exist in any room we're standing in. I explore how whoever gives you the words gets to give you the time. This episode traces what happens when someone uses that power against you — and what it takes to get your timeline back. On the astrology side: a Sagittarius Full Moon asking where your hard-won knowledge actually belongs, Athena as feminist sleeper agent, Vesta making way for ecstatic chaos, and the Arachne story as a case study in truth-telling strategy. Plus Mars square Pluto, Ceres entering Gemini, and a week that wants you to get strategic about how you apply what you know. Content warning: sexual trauma. References: * Jane Goodall, "What Separates Us from Chimpanzees?" TED 2003 [https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_goodall_what_separates_us_from_chimpanzees] * Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (2010) * Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Sister Outsider (1984)\ Music by Charmie Chandler [https://www.instagram.com/charmie_chandler/] Group space, 2nd and 4th Mondays 5:30pm CT: sign up here [https://www.amaliathecoach.com/groupwork] Book sessions: calendly.com/amaliathecoach [https://calendly.com/amaliathecoach]   Keywords: astrology podcast, Sagittarius full moon May 2026, epistemology and trauma, language and power, Jane Goodall human language time travel, Athena Arachne myth, Vesta asteroid astrology, sleeper agents mythology, knowledge production, sexual trauma healing, somatic healing, Michelle Alexander injustice system, IFS astrology, Mars Pluto square May 2026, Ceres Gemini 2026, this erotic timeline   TIMESTAMPS 00:00 — Cold open: how do you know what you know? 00:54 — Welcome + grounding ritual 01:48 — Astrology of the week 02:33 — Monday May 25: Squaring up with the dark 04:46 — Tuesday May 26: Athena — feminist sleeper agent 09:02 — Vesta — the invisible hearth keeper who made way for ecstatic chaos 11:18 — Thursday May 28: Ceres enters Gemini — talk about the grief 13:04 — Sunday May 31: Sagittarius Full Moon — how do you apply your hard-won knowledge? 15:16 — Athena and Arachne: a case study in truth-telling 21:03 — Midway: Jane Goodall, language, and time travel 23:27 — Descent: the word epistemology and what it cost me 31:00 — Leaving academia, learning to walk on the ground 38:06 — Survivors of sexual abuse and the power institutions don't want us to have 41:17 — Holy shit! your body has been time traveling all this time 45:50 — What this podcast is actually for 49:01 — Weekly recap + closing questions

13 Joints, 20 Digits, 260 Days: Mayan Timekeeping, Ecological Collapse, and Changing Your Mind

Your body is not a vehicle. It's a timekeeping system. This week, the sky is moving slow enough for you to hear it. Episode 5 moves from a beautiful week of astrology —Mars into Taurus, Venus into Cancer, and a Uranus cazimi asking which kind of revolution we're committed to— into a descent on the Mayan timekeeping practices that have been changing how I understand what time is, where it lives, and why the body might be the best calendar any of us has ever had. The descent takes us into the Cholq'ij (K’iche' Maya) or Tzolk'in (Yucatec Maya) —the human-level calendar— and the sacred math behind it: 13 major joints in the human body, 20 digits, and a 260-day cycle that corresponds to human gestation, the growth cycle of corn, and beyond. We also go into the Mayan concept of najt, a single word for space and time together, because in this system, they cannot be separated; and we discuss the 2012 myth and what actually happened. Also discussed: how in the Mayan creation story, humans were made to be timekeepers, and what it might mean that our experience of time is generated from inside the space of our own body. I share what I learned from Solveig Barrios of the Mayan Wisdom Project, founded with her late father, the renowned Mayan elder Carlos Barrios. From Celene, my guide at the Museo Regional de la Costa Oriental in Tulum. From Javi, my guide with the Sian Ka'an Community Tours. And from the Popol Vuh, which tells us that humans were created for a specific purpose: to keep the days. I also talk about why the Maya never "mysteriously disappeared" — and what their era of ecological collapse and eventual mindset renovation has to say to us in this particular moment in history. Sources and links: * The Mayan Wisdom Project: https://www.themayanwisdomproject.com/ [https://www.themayanwisdomproject.com/] * Museo Regional de la Costa Oriental, Tulum (INAH): https://inah.gob.mx/museos/museo-regional-de-la-costa-oriental [https://inah.gob.mx/museos/museo-regional-de-la-costa-oriental] * Sian Ka'an Community Tours: https://siankaantours.com.mx/ [https://siankaantours.com.mx/] * Creation Story of the Maya / Living Maya Time (Smithsonian NMAI): https://maya.nmai.si.edu/the-maya/creation-story-maya [https://maya.nmai.si.edu/the-maya/creation-story-maya] * Living Maya Time — The Calendar System (Smithsonian NMAI): https://maya.nmai.si.edu/maya [https://maya.nmai.si.edu/maya] * The rattlesnake, the Pleiades, and tzab / Susan Milbrath research via Mexicolore: https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/flora-and-fauna/rattlesnake [https://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/flora-and-fauna/rattlesnake] * Venus synodic period and Mayan calendars: https://journalofmathematicsandculture.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/venus-synodic-period-jmc-final-10-1.pdf [https://journalofmathematicsandculture.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/venus-synodic-period-jmc-final-10-1.pdf] * Chichen Itza and the Venus cycle (National Geographic): https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/chichen-itza-venus-cycle [https://www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/article/chichen-itza-venus-cycle] * A New View on Maya Astronomy (Maya Exploration Center): https://www.mayaexploration.org/pdf/A%20New%20View%20on%20Maya%20Astronomy.pdf [https://www.mayaexploration.org/pdf/A%20New%20View%20on%20Maya%20Astronomy.pdf] * Maya Decipherment (epigraphy and scholarship): https://mayadecipherment.com/ [https://mayadecipherment.com/] * Ajchich1 (Mayan calendar daykeeping blog): https://ajchich1.blogspot.com/ [https://ajchich1.blogspot.com/] * Breaking the Maya Code (documentary): https://vimeo.com/ondemand/115559 [https://vimeo.com/ondemand/115559] * Delulu is the Solulu: https://www.tiktok.com/@resego_mojela/video/7269354134472576261 [https://www.tiktok.com/@resego_mojela/video/7269354134472576261] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/delulu/photos [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/delulu/photos] * Music by Charmie Chandler: https://www.instagram.com/charmie_chandler/ [https://www.instagram.com/charmie_chandler/]   CHAPTERS 00:00 — Opening: your body is not a vehicle, it's a timekeeping system 00:47 — Grounding ritual 02:30 — Monday May 18: Mars into Taurus + Venus into Cancer. The exhale 05:47 — Interoception: your body reading its own signals and reporting back 07:49 — Tuesday May 19: Venus sextile Mars + Mercury square the nodes (your words are at a crossroads) 09:49 — "Truth that comes from inside the body is like fucking fertilizer for the space around it" 11:04 — Friday May 22: Uranus cazimi — the biggest day of the week 12:05 — The mythology: Ouranos, Cronus, Zeus — power transferred, not transformed 13:47 — Prometheus and the freak frequency: handing power down instead of hoarding it up 17:44 — Transition: the imagination as departure lounge, and why the body has to be the anchor 18:50 — "The body isn't just a vehicle. The body is the matrix." 21:45 — Descent begins: Mayan timekeeping, and complex feelings about sharing 29:01 — The Cholq'ij / Tzolk'in: 13 joints, 20 digits, 260 days — the human-level calendar 36:07 — The Popol Vuh: humans were created to "keep the days" 43:32 — "They never disappeared. They just changed their mindset." TAGS mayan timekeeping, tzolkin calendar, cholq'ij, mayan wisdom project, najt space time, 260 day calendar, human body calendar, interoception, uranus cazimi, prometheus astrology, freak frequency, astrology may 2026, mars taurus, venus cancer, gemini season, popol vuh, keep the days, mayan geocosmovision, sian kaan, tulum mayan ruins, ecological collapse mindset, IFS internal family systems, embodied time, erotic timeline podcast

From Oil to The Pomegranate Economy: On Shadow Hunger, Grief, and Cutting New Deals

Saturday's Taurus New Moon arrives conjunct Mercury, the asteroid Ceres, and the fixed star Algol (the Demon's Head) at the exact moment the International Energy Agency is calling the current oil disruption the greatest energy security crisis in recorded history. Their recommendation: work from home. Slow down. Minimize travel. Sound familiar? This episode covers the full Ceres and Persephone myth as a map for collective grief, why Thursday's Mercury and Ceres cazimis are an invitation to cut new deals with your own shadow, what Algol and the Morningstar have to do with disrupting hierarchies right now, and why Persephone eating the pomegranate seeds was not a mistake. Plus: the grief curriculum we've been inside since 2020, what oil has to do with ancestral time, and a brief loving return to Blursday, March the fortyteenth of Maprilay. Keywords: Taurus New Moon 2026, Mercury cazimi May 2026, Ceres astrology, Persephone myth, shadow hunger, pomegranate economy, Algol fixed star, grief and astrology, oil crisis 2026, Strait of Hormuz, IFS and astrology, Eleusinian Mysteries, Mars Chiron Aries, collective grief, energy crisis spiritual meaning   Chapters 00:00 — Opening: the extraction economy and your body 01:12 — Welcome & grounding 02:41 — Astrology of the week ahead 04:01 — What is a cazimi? Burning down to the bone 05:42 — The story of Ceres: innocence, obsession, and the narcissus flower 07:26 — The hole opens: Persephone's descent 15:12 — Mercury arrives: the psychopomp at the wall 17:45 — The pomegranate seeds: she was so hungry 20:37 — What grief generates: agriculture, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the gifts of fallow seasons 23:53 — Why these cazimis, why now: the deals you've cut to live with your pain 26:05 — Algol, Lucifer, and the Morningstar: big disruptions of power 31:50 — Stop being precious 33:36 — Midway: the binding was also the becoming 35:37 — The Descent: Blursday, the IEA, and the grief curriculum since 2020 47:10 — Closing: questions to plant this New Moon   References Jason Holley — astrologer and depth psychologist, source of the narcissus/narcissism interpretation: jasonholley.net [https://jasonholley.net/] International Energy Agency, Oil Market Report: iea.org [https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-march-2026] IEA demand-reduction recommendations: iea.org [https://www.iea.org/news/new-iea-report-highlights-options-to-ease-oil-price-pressures-on-consumers-in-response-to-middle-east-supply-disruptions] Atlantic Council — Webster & I'Anson on oil rationing: atlanticcouncil.org [https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/dispatches/the-strait-of-hormuz-closure-forces-a-choice-ration-oil-now-or-pay-a-steep-price-later/] World Bank Commodity Markets Outlook April 2026: worldbank.org [https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2026/04/28/commodity-markets-outlook-april-2026-press-release] Washington Post — "It's been six months. Our sense of time is still broken": washingtonpost.com [https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/its-been-six-months-our-sense-of-time-is-still-broken/2020/09/10/1f6a5442-6dc7-11ea-a3ec-70d7479d83f0_story.html] Elisabeth Kübler-Ross & David Kessler — the five stages of grief: grief.com [https://grief.com/the-five-stages-of-grief/]