Rising Out of the Ocean – Neptune and Chiron Station Direct at the Taurus Full Moon

“I cried all thNeptunee way through and you know what I found on the other side? Bliss. Total Bliss.” – Kristin Morelli

If your feelings have been on a rollercoaster ride from the highest highs to the lowest lows and everywhere in-between, then you are attuned to the cosmic story of now. We’re approaching a particularly potent Full Moon, exact on Thursday (12:16pm PST), when the rising tide of emotions will peak.

The Full Moon in Taurus amplifies our feelings about security, survival, resources, money, values and needs. As the Moon opposes the Scorpio Sun, the Taurus-Scorpio polarity is also animated — self-reliance vs. merging; holding on vs. letting go; attachment to what’s familiar and comfortable vs. opening to increased passion and vitality.

Coinciding with this Full Moon are the stations of Neptune and Chiron, as they both turn from Retrograde to forward motion. Neptune, god/goddess of the ocean, rules consciousness, Source, the infinite, the All That Is. Chiron the Wounded Healer triggers our deepest pain, and in Pisces the Fish — the sign associated with Neptune — we encounter the pain of separation from Source, a kind of existential crisis.

When a planet stations — appearing to stand still before changing directions — the archetypes signified by that planet are living large. With the Full Moon in play, our sensitivity is amplified. Neptune stations on Wednesday (10:54am PST) and Chiron on Thursday, within minutes of the Full Moon (12:55pm PST).

The extreme feeling states of bliss, ecstasy and oneness, as well as despair, depression and grief, all fall under the rulership of Neptune and Pisces. Because the feelings can seem so overwhelming, we might be afraid that if we “go there,” we won’t come back, and then we can fall into shadow Neptune/Pisces — avoidance, addiction, denial and escapism. As Michael Meade says, “When we think we can’t handle the emotions, we lose the natural substances of the soul and begin looking for substances to replace the flow” (The Great Dance).

Neptune and Chiron have been traveling together for the past few years (see Opening to Oneness), a combination described by Daniel Giamario as “broken-hearted idealism.” As both planets start moving forward again, he says, “It’s over — full steam ahead.” We can get lost in our individual and collective pain, lamenting and regretting the past and what should have, could have been, or we can feel the feelings, and then move on.

Adding to the intensity, Mars the Warrior — desire, passion, courage and personal power — opposes Neptune and Chiron at the Full Moon. This aspect speaks to the wounded masculine in each of us and can trigger pain resulting from the times when we didn’t stand up for ourselves, when we sacrificed or surrendered our power, and when we didn’t have the courage or confidence to go after what we really wanted.

MarsMars opposite Chiron-Neptune also awakens our deepest longings, and, ultimately, our longing to return to that pre-embodied state of pure consciousness, to feel our wholeness and oneness with Source. We tend to project this desire onto lovers, possessions, jobs, money, etc., and when the projection wears off, we experience disappointment and disillusion. The gift of disillusionment is to help us reclaim our projections and turn our attention back to Source, to reorient ourselves toward the truth of our inherent wholeness.

Meanwhile, Venus — the ruler of Taurus — is moving into a conjunction with the North Node in Sagittarius, urging us to broaden our vision and align with a more expansive story. Venus’s meet-up with the North Node, exact on November 13, empowers the feminine principles of reciprocity, relatedness, collaboration, beauty and love.

If you want to get more specific about what this Full Moon means for you, find 18 degrees of Taurus in your birth chart. The house where the Full Moon falls reveals areas of life where events are coming to fruition or culmination; where you might get an important insight into your needs, values and/or resources; where your security may feel threatened; and where you may feel called to release an old attachment.

The Sabian Symbol for this Full Moon is “A new continent rising out of the ocean“:

The surge of new potentiality after the crisis…. When the mind has been emptied and light has been called upon to purify the consciousness freed from its attachment and contaminations, a new release of life can emerge out of the infinite Ocean of potentiality, the Virgin SPACE. What will it be used for?” (Dane Rudhyar, An Astrological Mandala)

- Emily Trinkaus

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Lighting a Fire of Inspiration, Trust and Truth – Venus and Mercury Enter Sagittarius

sagittariusVenus and Mercury just moved into Sagittarius, giving us a taste of the upcoming Sag season, and a bit of relief from the heaviness and intensity of the past few weeks. While Venus and Mercury were in Scorpio (since October 8 and October 13, respectively), we were deepening emotional bonds, digging into core wounds of abandonment and betrayal, and shedding old, self-limiting layers of relational and mental conditioning.

The Sun will be in Scorpio until November 22, and these themes of emotional deep-diving, purging and transformation continue. But the shift of Venus and Mercury into Sagittarius adds an element of trust, spaciousness, optimism, forward movement and future vision. Scorpio’s realm is the Underworld, while Sag rules expansion — the urge to cross borders and boundaries, explore the edges of consciousness, and open to new potentials and possibilities.

Venus, goddess of love, rules relationship, eroticism, kinship, art and beauty. Venus in Sagittarius invites a spirit of adventure, risk-taking, and faith in positive outcomes into these areas. (More about Venus in Sag in my Reviving Venus post later this week…)

Mercury is the planet of perception, connection and communication and in Sagittarius, our minds and conversations turn toward big-picture perspectives and our highest vision for the future. Mercury in Sag depends on intuition rather than rational analysis, trusting instinctual guidance as a path toward freedom and truth. Shadow Mercury in Sag looks like an over-attachment to being “right,” and resistance to other people’s ideas and opinions.

mercuryWe’ll be getting plenty of Mercury in Sag lessons over the next few months because Mercury will be Retrograde in this sign from November 23 to December 13. This will be a period of slowing down forward momentum in order to re-vision your future, and to reconnect with and renew inspiration, faith and optimism. Due to the Mercury Retro “shadow,” we’re actually under the influence starting on November 5, and it lingers on until January 2.

Mercury and Venus have been traveling together since mid-October, and will be closest on November 7 — the true Halloween, the traditional cross-quarter holy day of Samhain. The Mercury-Venus conjunction in Sagittarius wants us to tell the truth in and about our relationships. What was discovered during the Scorpionic process of deep diving now wants to be revealed.

In her Scorpio New Moon report, Barbara Hand Clow writes about Mercury-Venus:

“Comprehension about the real truth in our primary relationships is going to explode: Many partners will have to deal with unresolved elements in their relationships that hold them back from supporting this huge cleansing of human history. Ouch! Do not kid yourself, we all carry these shadows, and this chart says we must clear them before they backfire on us…. As annoying as Sagittarian fire can be, it exposes the lies.” (AstroFlash!)

Mindshifts and Mending Brokenness

venusLast night I listened to two podcasts that seemed to beautifully reflect these current cosmic themes. The first was the initial program in the Art of Love series, hosted by Arielle Ford and Claire Zammit. Mercury rules learning, and Sag rules higher education, so it seemed like perfect timing to get new information and perspectives on relationships — Venus.

The hosts suggested three “mindshifts” about relationships — again, very Mercury-Venus. My personal favorite: “Give up the idea that it has to be hard and take a long time.” We would do well to apply that perspective to all areas of life. Sagittarius is relentlessly optimistic, and while shadow Sag can be annoyingly Pollyanna, making the spiritual bypass move of glossing over the depths and darkness, if we’ve done our Scorpio work, then we’re rewarded with the ability to take off into an expansive, exciting new reality.

The other program I listened to was the most recent Visionary Activist Show with Caroline Casey, in which she interviews artist/community activist Lily Yeh. Wow. If you want to be inspired and profoundly moved (not to mention humbled), please listen to this show. Yeh’s work is to “transform brokenness into beauty and joy” by going into “broken” places like Rwanda, Damascus, poverty-stricken areas of Philadelphia, etc. and initiating community art projects that bring people together through a healing, transformational, creative process.

kujenda pamoja

Barefoot Artists Project at Kujenga Pamoja Park, Kenya

Yeh exemplifies the Scorpio-Sagittarius energy at its best. She enters the Underworld, communities that have been traumatized and torn apart, and, through the magic of making art, “the community is wrestled from the heart of darkness,” and gifted with “strength and vision for the future.” As Yeh explains, the healing that happens through the collective art project creates a foundation of trust and hope upon which practical structures and systems can be built to further help the community.

Entering the broken places, within and outside of ourselves, requires no small amount of faith and courage. Mercury and Venus in Sagittarius can help us take this risk. As Lily Yeh says, “When we feel weak and not good enough, that’s not enough of a reason.

- Emily Trinkaus

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Retrieving Buried Treasure – Approaching the Scorpio New Moon

moonOn Sunday we moved into Scorpio season, when the darkness deepens and the veil between the seen and unseen grows thin. The Scorpio New Moon on Wednesday (12:55pm PDT) is a magical time for planting seeds and setting intentions for what wants to be reborn, renewed and regenerated over the next month.

The New Moon opposes Jupiter, whose gift is to expand what he touches — in this case, making obvious the places where we’ve become entrenched and stagnant. A willingness to dig beneath the surface, feel the feelings, and release the old is rewarded with renewed passion and the faith to keep taking the next step forward.

Adding to his power at the time of the New Moon, Jupiter is also forming a close trine — 120-degree angle of harmony, ease and support — to Pluto, the modern ruler of Scorpio and god/goddess of the Underworld. The Jupiter-Pluto trine enhances our capacity to engage with and uncover the power and wealth buried in the depths. This is a time for accessing the resources and gifts both in the depths of our own psyches, and in the detritus of collapsing social structures (Pluto in Capricorn).

Sue Tompkins writes about Jupiter-Pluto aspects:

“We are used to thinking of the unconscious aspects of ourselves, the ‘Shadow,’ as housing the more ugly elements of our psyches but… those ugly and socially unacceptable parts of us are fertile, potent and useful, and house a great deal of buried treasure. It’s rather like the compost heap at the bottom of the garden: it is composed of decaying, dead and rotting matter, stuff we have discarded; but it miraculously transforms itself into mineral-rich nutrients that can be ploughed back into the soil.” (Aspects in Astrology)

Tompkins’ analogy of the compost heap seems particularly appropriate for Jupiter in Taurus, the sign that rules gardening. While Jupiter is Retrograde (until December 25), all “re-” words apply — reclaim, restore, reconnect with, reanimate… — to Taurus-ruled areas of life — resources, talents, values, possessions, security, and our relationship with the natural world.

For deeper insight into what this New Moon means for you, find the house in your birth chart that contains 3 degrees Scorpio. Every New Moon is a power time, but the Scorpio New Moon is especially witchy, ripe for magic and ritual.

- Emily Trinkaus

Note to Portland-area friends: Two exciting astro-events this week! Tonight (Tuesday), 7:00-8:30, Mark Dodich and I will be speaking at New Renaissance about how to navigate the upcoming Eclipses, Mercury and Mars Retro, and more. And Saturday, 10:30-12:30, career coach Aubrie De Clerck and I will offer a workshop on Guidance for Embracing Your Life’s Work (also at New Ren). See the Events page for details.

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Navigating the Depths, Regenerating Vitality – Entering Scorpio Season

scorpio“To not change is to stagnate and truly die.” – Demetra George, Mysteries of the Dark Moon

As the personal planets shift from airy, sociable, “let’s all just get along” Libra to watery, intimacy-seeking, “dig down to the core” Scorpio, the intensity level is rising and emotions are running deep. Are you feeling it?

Venus led the way, entering Scorpio on October 8, Mercury followed on the 13th, and the Sun will shift signs on Sunday, initiating the official Scorpio season (until November 22).

Scorpio rules the Underworld, the darkness, the basement, the subconscious — the place where we typically stuff uncomfortable feelings, store trauma (from current and previous lifetimes) and bury our burning passions and desires. The Scorpio season marks the time of year for a kind of psychic housecleaning, digging into the mess and rooting out whatever is draining your vital life juice and mucking up your mojo.

Literal housecleaning is also recommended — purging the “stuff” that’s carrying old energy that no longer matches who we are in present time and that may be holding us back. While Scorpio’s opposite sign, earthy Taurus, rules the material world and specifically our possessions, Scorpio rules the unseen energy that those physical objects hold. Although many of us may not be sufficiently psychic to consciously perceive that energy, we’re nevertheless registering it and being affected by it on some level.

What’s hidden is often the most powerful, and while our thinking minds like to operate under the illusion that they’re in control, it’s the crap in the basement that’s actually running the show — the underlying emotional patterns and belief systems that got established long before our conscious minds developed. According to biologist Bruce Lipton, the subconscious is effectively “programmed” by age five, and precious few of us got the kind of programming that we would have chosen.

During the Scorpio season we have an enhanced ability to perceive these hidden layers of reality, transform old patterns, and free up some psychic and physical space to create what we actually want. This is a prime time for receiving body work and energy work, shamanic journeying, physical detoxing, and using art and writing as tools for uncovering and processing deep feelings. Regeneration is the reward for being willing to travel through the Underworld.

- Emily Trinkaus

Note to Portland-area friends: Please join me and astrologer Mark Dodich next Tuesday at 7:00pm at New Renaissance Bookshop for insights into the astrology of the next few months. I’ll be talking about the upcoming Eclipses as well as the next Mercury Retrograde cycle, and Mark will shed light on Jupiter and Mars Retrograde.

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Fruition, Frustration and Focus – Aries Full Moon, Sun conjunct Saturn

full moonThe Libra New Moon on September 27 set into motion a new cycle of growth. Now, at the Aries Full Moon, exact tonight at 7:06 PDT, the seeds planted then are coming to fruition. The growth and flowering of the Occupation movement over the past few weeks — exemplifying Libra themes of justice, collaboration, peace and politics — is a brilliant expression of this energy on the collective level.

As you may remember, the New Moon was particularly intense (see Darkness, Regeneration and Liberation). The Sun and Moon squared Pluto and opposed Uranus — to successfully nurture seeds these past few weeks has required deep self-honesty and a willingness to release old beliefs, perceptions and emotional attachments.

Full Moons always offer opportunities for revelation, and this one highlights the Aries-Libra polarity — the balance between self and other, instinct and reason, passion and detachment, independence and collaboration, conflict and harmony, selfishness and selflessness.

Aries is the sign of desire, action, initiation and vitality — pure Eros, the raw energy from which we create, and the fiery spark that catalyzes new beginnings. The Aries Full Moon asks, What do you really want? What brings you alive? How can you express more of your passion, authenticity, creativity?

saturnThe Full Moon opposes Saturn, and feelings of frustration, impatience and irritation are possible. Aries wants action and wants it now, but Saturn rules discipline, restraint, responsibility, and the limitations of the time and space.

Saturn’s gift at this Full Moon is to bring definition, clarity and focus to our desires, and to help us discern what we are truly committed to. Ideally, we can get a new perspective on the systems, structures and boundaries we need to pursue our desires and nurture our vitality.

The Sun is moving toward its annual conjunction with Saturn, which will be exact on Thursday, so this Saturnian energy is strong all week. Saturn is traditionally the Lord of Karma, and the Sun-Saturn conjunction manifests results of past actions, offering clear feedback as to what’s working, what’s not, and how we might move forward more effectively.

Saturn in Libra particularly focuses attention on the realm of relationship. Lovers, friends and partners from the past may reappear, whether in your mind or physical form, to heal unfinished business. Pulling back your energy, taking time for solitude and reflection, and making a strategic plan for realizing your long-term goals are some helpful ways to work with Saturn. Not so helpful — beating yourself up for what you “should have” done and wallowing in regret.

If you want to get more specific about what this Full Moon means for YOU, find the house in your birth chart that contains 18 degrees Aries. The areas of life represented by that house are where something is coming to fruition or completion — and where you may be longing to express yourself in a new way. The opposite house, where the Sun and Saturn are uniting, reveals areas that are calling for discipline, focus, pragmatism and strategic planning.

- Emily Trinkaus

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Introducing Reviving Venus – Venus Rises from the Underworld, Trines Neptune

Dear Readers: I’m pleased to introduce my new blog, Reviving Venus, devoted to Venus — the sacred feminine. Below is my first post. If you’re intrigued by the subject, please visit my new site and subscribe to receive future posts. I’ll continue writing weekly VirgoMagic posts.

venus Venus — goddess of love, beauty, eroticism and the arts — has just recently reappeared in the sky, after a nearly two-month tour through the Underworld. Starting August 14, she was invisible-to-us as she traveled between Earth and Sun.

Adam Sommer, in a great post on this current Venus cycle (Venus as the Evening Star) describes Venus’s time in the Underworld as a shamanic death…, where everything that serves us no longer is stripped away and destroyed, so that we can move forward, without fear, awaiting the next blessings to arrive into our lives.”

Venus now reemerges as the Evening Star — Hesperus or Vesper — the archetypal Crone, Wise Woman, Dark Mother. A new Venus cycle started in November 2010, and it’s worth looking back to what was happening in your life last fall, what has died since then, and what now wants to be reborn.

The Sun, Mercury, Venus and Saturn are all congregating in Venus-ruled Libra, and today, Friday — the day of the week associated with Venus (called Freya in Norse) – Venus forms a harmonious trine with Neptune, god/goddess of the ocean.

Neptune — planet of consciousness, spirituality and oneness — is the “higher octave” of Venus. Venus is love, Neptune is unconditional love. Venus is pleasure, Neptune is bliss. When these two planets are cooperating, we have the opportunity to access higher states of consciousness through Venusian avenues — relationship, sensual and sexual pleasure, art and beauty.

Introducing Reviving Venus

At this auspicious cosmic moment, I’m pleased to welcome you to my new blog, Reviving Venus, dedicated to excavating, exploring and engaging with the astrological, mythological, cultural and historical Venus — the archetypal sacred feminine.

What is the sacred feminine? As we evolve out of the Age of Pisces, as the Mayan Calendar comes to an end, as the old, outgrown systems and structures of patriarchy and industrial civilization self-destruct, there’s a lot of talk about the return of the goddess and the reemergence of the divine feminine. But what exactly does that mean? What does that look like in our everyday lives? And how can we participate in her return?

Marion Woodman has said, “The feminine is so difficult… to talk about… because so few people have experienced it” (Conscious Femininity).

The astrological Venus is my starting point for delving into this question. Over time and across cultures she has appeared as Aphrodite (Greek), Inanna (Sumerian), Isis (Egyptian), Ishtar (Babylonian), Freya (Norse), Anahita (Persian), and Astarte (Hebrew and Phoenician). Archetypally, she is the Sacred Prostitute, the Temple Priestess, the Lover, the Seductress, the Muse, and the Virgin (meaning sovereign — she who is whole unto herself).

This blog was born from my grief and outrage at all the ways that the feminine is abused, denied, discounted, repressed and distorted in the dominant culture.

Let me count the ways:

  • sexual abuse
  • violence against women and children
  • the abuse and torture of animals
  • the torture of our fellow humans
  • the desecration and exploitation of the Earth
  • a lack of vitality and pleasure in daily life (aka depression)
  • an economy based on extracting resources and expanding markets
  • the dishonoring of the body in general and sexuality in particular
  • the distortion of natural rhythms and cycles and enforcement of clock time
  • standards of external “beauty” that most women can never achieve
  • art as the property of an elite few rather than an essential part of everyday life
  • hyper-consumption of land and natural resources
  • the uglification of culture and our home planet
  • an epidemic of female infertility and other reproductive health issues
  • the prioritizing of profit uber alles
  • a “power over” model of leadership — “might makes right.”

And so on.

Knowing that what I see “out there” must be reflecting what’s “in here” (the whole “out there/in here” separation proven false by physics), this blog is also born from my desire to heal, reanimate and reconnect with my own inner Venus, to restore my own conscious femininity.

The absence of the conscious masculine is no less destructive, and worthy of its own blog. Just to be clear — when I’m talking about masculine and feminine, I’m not referring to men and women, but to the fundamental, complementary, and equally essential energies of yin and yang — Venus and Mars.

This polarity can be expressed as: matter and spirit; body and mind; being and doing; immanence and transcendence; darkness and light; lunar and solar. It’s up to each of us to make conscious our own expression of feminine and masculine, and to integrate and balance this polarity within ourselves.

As Venus reappears in the night sky, reborn and renewed, she invites us to reconnect with our own expression of the feminine. How does the sacred feminine manifest in your own life, in your everyday experience? What can you do to call in more beauty, more love, more pleasure?

Please consider subscribing to Reviving Venus – I plan to publish a new post every Friday.

- Emily Trinkaus

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Darkness, Regeneration and Liberation – Libra New Moon Squares Pluto, Opposes Uranus

“The dark becomes frightening and destructive only when we deny and disown it.” – Demetra George, Mysteries of the Dark Moon

New Moonlibras are magical power times for turning inward, connecting with inner guidance, and setting intentions for what you want to create. Today’s New Moon (exact at 4:09 am PDT) features five planets in Libra, the sign of relationship, justice, peace, beauty and balance — areas particularly up for renewal and regeneration.

Every New Moon is a journey into darkness. Although darkness has been essentially banished from the modern world, the wild, cyclically-attuned part that still lives inside us knows that it’s the Dark of the Moon. Disappearing from the night sky, the Moon embraces the Sun, joining together at the same degree of the zodiac. The ancient story says that, at the New Moon, the Cosmic Mother and Father are making love, hidden from our view. Their union then gives birth to a new cycle of growth.

This New Moon squares Pluto, god/goddess of the Underworld, deepening the darkness. Pluto’s job is to reveal what is diseased, stagnant and corrupt, challenging you to heal, transform or let go of what no longer serves you. The message of this New Moon is that, if you want to make a new beginning, something’s got to go. That something might be a belief system, an emotional attachment, a self-destructive habit, or something more tangible — physical “stuff” that’s holding old energy, a job or home you’ve outgrown… What are you afraid to surrender? Are you afraid of the power that could come through you if you let go of what’s holding you back?

plutoPluto’s square to the Libra New Moon means that we’re likely to see our shadows — to see the disowned and rejected parts of ourselves — playing out through the people we’re closest to. Ouch. This is typically not a welcome reflection, because there’s a reason why we rejected those parts of ourselves in the first place. What are you afraid to see in yourself that you’re seeing in other people?

Grief, the purpose of which is to dissolve old feelings and stories, can be part of the Plutonian process of surrender. Forgiveness is also helpful.

Disruption and Freedom

“[C]laiming one’s freedom always causes a certain degree of disruption. Breaking free is the polar opposite of comfort and stasis, very different from sedating ourselves so we can tolerate captivity.” – Victoria Castle, The Trance of Scarcity

Libra likes things to be “nice” — to look good, to feel harmonious, for everybody to love each other and just get along. But every sign needs to be balanced and integrated with its opposite, in this case, Aries the Warrior, the sign of conflict, individuality and passion.

uranusUranus the Trickster, now in Aries (2011-2019), opposes the New Moon, and is exactly opposite Mercury — perception and communication. Uranus in Aries wakes up the revolutionary potential of being our authentic selves, honestly expressing our desires and passions, sharing the truth of who we are.

Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, is Eros, the vital life force, the spark that sets the whole cycle into motion. Libra wants relationship, harmony, kinship, and without Aries — without the willingness to temporarily disrupt harmony and enter into conflict — relationship becomes dead, superficial, the Eros is no longer there.

Although an opposition is considered a “hard” angle, Mercury and Uranus have a natural friendliness with one another that can make this aspect a helpful New Moon ally. Mercury-Uranus disrupts and liberates our usual ways of seeing the world, in this case, particularly how we see our selves in relation to others, our beliefs about relationship. As the Trickster, Uranus rules reversals, turning things upside-down — which is a recommendation for this New Moon.

Byron Katie’s “Judge Your Neighbor” worksheet (which you can download on her site) has guided me through many a projection. The process she’s developed (“The Work“) involves first being as honest as you can in saying what you don’t like about someone — what you’re seeing in other people that’s triggering you — and then asking yourself a series of questions about your projections (starting with “Is it true?”). The final step is to turn your judgments around on yourself. The purpose of this process is freedom — freedom from the filters through which we habitually view the world and the people around us, so we can relate from a more authentic, open and vulnerable place.

If you want to get more specific about what this New Moon means for you, find 4 degrees Libra in your birth chart. (In response to recent comments, whether or  not you have planets in Libra, you have the sign Libra somewhere in your chart.) The house activated by the New Moon is where these themes of balance, relationship, love, justice and harmony are especially up for you — and areas that may be ripe for both deep transformation, and a liberating new perspective.

- Emily Trinkaus

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