Bedlam.

I've just spent four long years writing a book on self-trust, and every single year in August I watch this very concept get ripped apart online.

I see people latch onto spirituality, even if they normally shy away from it. I see mayhem ensue like one single day of the year has the ability to shower us all in riches. I see grifters, gurus, and manifestation coaches who prey on others seeking hope — which benefits the grifter and does the opposite for the seeker.

In the past, I've been opinionated behind closed doors, only piping up when the passion reaches boiling point and I can't contain it spilling outwards. This year, whether it's my own immersion in the concept of "snake oil” and the four years I’ve spent on this concept of self-trust or my growing obsession with the impact of cultural trends, I've realised that staying silent doesn't serve anyone. Especially myself.

So. Lion's Gate is not real. Why do we keep falling for the bedlam?

Let's start with the astrology, because this matters.

The concept was first written about in 1936, referencing the star Sirius. The claim is that on 8/8, Sirius and Earth align through Leo. Except Sirius isn't sitting in Leo. It's in Cancer (fourteen degrees, as I write this) and has been for decades. Nothing in astrology is fixed to the same calendar date every single year. Real alignments move.

If we lean into the numerology, we need to do it properly because the year matters just as much as the day and the month. Right now, the mathematics isn't working. And we're already inside an eclipse portal, which is for dissolving, not initiating. The two energies are working directly against each other.

But here's the 411, I'm not anti-manifestation. Not even close. The problem isn't the desire for change, it’s that we're wired for the quick fix.

In the digital age, we’re attuned to instant gratification, always looking for the next dopamine hit, whether that's scrolling, a favourite meal, or a true crime documentary at midnight. We’re, at our core, creatures of desire and impatience, and I say this without judgement, because I have been exactly this person.

I remember sitting in my lounge room a few years ago after finishing a subconscious reprogramming session, feeling like I was on the precipice of something enormous, needing a catalyst, needing an edge. And what did I do?

I Googled the closest shaman.

I was also, at that time, inside a manifestation membership that was doing the precise opposite of what it promised. Instead of feeling abundant, I was leaning further into scarcity — fixating every day on everything I didn't yet have. Which is, of course, the paradox at the dark heart of manifestation culture: when it's done from a place of lack, it amplifies the lack. The ritual becomes a daily inventory of everything missing.

That's not abundance, that's just a very sophisticated form of fear.

Saturn and Neptune moving through Pisces over the last few years did something genuinely significant. It forced self-inquiry, inward reflection, and a collective softening that the world probably needed. It gave us fantasy literature, the romanticisation of ordinary life, hot girl walks, an explosion of the esoteric. As an astrologer, I'm not going to pretend those weren't real gifts.

But Neptune also makes us delusional. It dissolves structure, it sees through rose-coloured glasses and calls it vision. And in a culture already primed for quick fixes, it created the perfect conditions for the rise of the TikTok mental health expert, the boundary-as-personality-trait era, and the complete blow-up of manifestation content, all culminating this year with Jupiter’s move into Leo and turbocharging everything into maximalist excess.

This was the year nobody even cared about the actual astrology. It was about the energy, the vibe, the portal, and the permission to want everything at once.

And I understand it. After years of collective heaviness, of navigating what we've all navigated, of course we want it to be easy. Of course we want to pin a date on the calendar and wake up as a new person in a new life, or at minimum catch a windfall. The desire makes complete sense. I've watched this pattern play out collectively for years, and I've lived it personally too.

Real manifestation, anchored in your own astrology, gives you something entirely different. And it’s not one single date for your life to change or a shortcut.

It’s a language for your own timing.

When you're living in alignment with your chart, the outcome stops being the obsession. There's a deep-seated belief — not a Pinterest quote you post when you're anxious, but a genuine internal knowing — that life is either going to unfold or it isn't, and either way you’re moving.

I say this to clients often: you get to flirt with life. That's what astrology, used honestly, actually feels like. It’s the net for when you leap, and the byproduct is unwavering trust that you’re in motion, even when it's invisible.

The universe has three answers: yes, not right now, or something better. That's it, and no portal accelerates which answer is coming, even if someone online convinces you to buy a specific candle in a specific colour which you can only burn at a specific stage of the lunar cycle.

8/8 sounds alluring at first, but only your own alignment, the daily work of becoming the person who’s ready to receive what you’ve been building does that.

Remember, nothing in your life has ever been singular. Not the decision that changed everything, not the relationship that remade you, not the moment you finally believed in yourself. It was never one thing. It was a thousand small, unglamorous actions, taken on ordinary days, in ordinary moments, compounding in the background, in moments you almost missed.

Life is a whole architecture of timing, layered and interconnected, specific to you alone.

So don't wait for the date, you're already in motion.