Healing The Spirit: Astrology, Archetypes & Artmaking

In this episode of Healing the Spirit, I speak to the experience of stuckness.
Why does stuckness feel so intense?
How might we understand the deeper energetic current that contributes to feeling stuck?
What vaster perspectives might we lean upon to help us move through these challenging impasses with grace and power?
I also contextualize this inquiry in the current astrology. We’re entering a week full of squares: between Mars and Pluto, the Sun and the lunar nodes, and between Venus and Saturn.
Whether you’re listening as these transits unfold or finding this episode later, I invite you to carve out some space to dialogue with your stuckness and to recognize it as a nexus of creative energy, waiting to flow towards more authentic expressions.
_______
Resources & Links
Support the podcast on Substack here
Join the waitlist for an upcoming summer course on unleashing your inner creative beast here.
If you’ve enjoyed and benefited from the podcast, I invite you to apply for private mentorship and coaching with me. This is an intensive container, designed to support you in refining your self-leadership skills, moving through important life thresholds with grace, and expanding your capacity for creative expansions.
Try the incredible breathwork and meditation app Open for 30 days free using this special link.
This podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jonathan Koe. Theme music is also composed by me! Connect with me through Instagram @jonathankoeofficial, and listen to my music. For podcast-related inquiries, email me at [email protected].


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jonathankoeofficial.substack.com/subscribe

In the last few years, the word ‘liminal’ has become a mainstay within the public discourse. And yet, navigating our own liminal moments with grace remains an elusive art. It still requires awareness, attention, and practice.
In this episode, I contemplate the in‑between times: when the old chapter has dissolved but the new one hasn’t quite landed yet in our system. Losses re-organize our sense of belonging, not just on a larger identity level, but also through the disappearance of familiar rituals that hold micro moments together.
How might we support ourselves and others as we walk through these bridge periods?
It’s easy to forget the basics in these moment. To abandon simple practices and timeless principles that actually keep us sane and connected when everything else feels like an emergency.
I walk through three ways we tend to respond to these bridge periods. Some of us check out and take a metaphorical (or literal) nap, watching life pass us by like a video game. Some of us go into hyperfocus and hyperpanic, building giant checklists, trying to control every possible outcome, our minds going a million miles per hour even when our bodies are lying in bed.
And then there’s a third way that’s much rarer. We can choose to fully ground into this chapter. To treat the bridge itself as holy ground. To recognize it as a temple in its own right.
Those who practice this third response glow in the midst of transition because they’re not trying to escape, numb out, or fast‑forward. They’re fully present to the exact moment they’re in.
_______
Resources & Links
Support the podcast on Substack here
Sign up for my newsletter to hear about new offerings here.
If you’ve enjoyed and benefited from the podcast, I invite you to apply for private mentorship and coaching with me. This is an intensive container, designed to support you in refining your self-leadership skills, moving through important life thresholds with grace, and expanding your capacity for creative expansions.
Try the incredible breathwork and meditation app Open for 30 days free using this special link.
Join the waitlist for Venus & Mars, a 3-month alchemical immersion to rekindle your inner flame and fall back in love with your life here.
This podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jonathan Koe. Theme music is also composed by me! Connect with me through Instagram @jonathankoeofficial, and listen to my music. For podcast-related inquiries, email me at [email protected].


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jonathankoeofficial.substack.com/subscribe

Uncertainty is really up in the air right now. Many of us are navigating periods of intense existential questioning. About our work, relationships, and place in a world that’s changing at a pace that feels almost impossible to keep up with.
What’s shifted is that this isn’t just an individual exploration anymore. The collective is asking these questions now, and for those of us who have been sitting with these kinds of questions for a long time, we’re feeling the amplification of everyone else beginning to ask them too. Sometimes in ways that look a little like an allergic reaction 🙃
In this episode, we contemplate what it actually means to find spaciousness when the ground beneath us feels like quicksand.
Spaciousness, to me, is really a perceptual switch. A kind of inner discipline that prioritizes allowing and softening, rather than the muscling or efforting kind many of us are habituated into.
As we head into a Mercurial week featuring a Mercury cazimi and a conjunction with Uranus in Gemini, we look to the archetypes of the messenger and the magician to consider our uncertain times. Mercury teaches us that uncertainty cannot actually exist without spaciousness. They are two sides of the same coin.
Whatever feels uncertain or unresolved right now, instead of relying on your mind to find the one exact solution (which, frankly, never really exists) allow yourself to sit with your imagination. Be playful with your uncertainty. Be like jellyfish: No spine, no rigidity, and one of the oldest surviving creatures on the planet.
_______
RESOURCES & LINKS
Support the podcast on Substack here
Sign up for my newsletter to hear about new offerings here.
If you’ve enjoyed and benefited from the podcast, I invite you to apply for private mentorship and coaching with me. This is an intensive container, designed to support you in refining your self-leadership skills, moving through important life thresholds with grace, and expanding your capacity for creative expansions.
Try the incredible breathwork and meditation app Open for 30 days free using this special link.
Join the waitlist for Venus & Mars, a 3-month alchemical immersion to rekindle your inner flame and fall back in love with your life here
This podcast is hosted, produced, and edited by Jonathan Koe. Theme music is also composed by me! Connect with me through Instagram @jonathankoeofficial, and listen to my music. For podcast-related inquiries, email me at [email protected].


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jonathankoeofficial.substack.com/subscribe

In this episode, I share an unedited version of my conversation with astrologer and musician Mara Smith about the astrology of 2026, focused on the first four months of the year from January through April.
We recorded this at the start of the year, and I’m excited to offer it here in a form that preserves the spontaneity, thinking-on-our-feet energy, and insight of our original exchange.
I love exploring astrology as a lens not just to anticipate what may unfold, but also to reflect back on lived experience. And now that this first stretch of 2026 has passed, I invite you to listen with your own experience in mind and consider how our delineations and predictions resonate with what you lived through.
Mara and I explored the year’s opening tone, including the powerful “cazimi town” feel of January, with Venus leading the way through Capricorn alongside the Sun and Mars. We also talked about the clarifying but not always comfortable quality of the early-year transits, and the major threshold moment of Saturn and Neptune entering Aries, which shifts the energy from preparation into action.
Overall, this conversation points to a year that begins with structure being challenged and rebuilt, asking us to move with more intention, courage, and willingness to act before everything feels fully settled. I hope this episode offers something useful for your process and deepens your understanding of the first part of the year.
Resources and Links
* Support the podcast on Substack here
* Apply to work with Jonathan here
* Visit Mara’s website: www.lizziesgriffs.com for current offerings and connect with her on IG @finfeathermusic and @lizzies_griffs
* Try the breathwork and meditation app Open for 30 days free here
* Join the waitlist for Venus & Mars, a 3-month alchemical immersion to rekindle your inner flame and fall back in love with your life here


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jonathankoeofficial.substack.com/subscribe

Resources and Links
* Support the podcast on Substack here
* Apply to work with Jonathan here
* Try the breathwork and meditation app Open for 30 days free here
* Join the waitlist for Venus & Mars, a 3-month alchemical immersion to rekindle your inner flame and fall back in love with your life here
_______
The theme for May 2026 is: You already have everything you need.
What might we find when we garner the courage to really look deeper into our compulsion to search for more?
What lost states of paradise might drive the never-ending seeking for better?
How might we surrender to our form, our spirit, and who we actually are?
And what might begin to blossom as we allow ourselves to settle into the core of our essence?


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jonathankoeofficial.substack.com/subscribe