THIS MONTH’S ASTROLOGY
We look like having a wild and “witchy” month with the Sun in the vibrant Leo transiting a number of quite different goddesses, while the two great change agents of Uranus and the Black Moon are continuing in a radicalising square between each other. The latter has much to do with the simultaneously intense and unstable energies during all of July and now August.
Another aspect of the current intensity is that Pluto, having retrograded back into Capricorn, is now in a second round of exact squares to the North and South Nodes of the Moon, a clear and weighty demonstration that we are in the middle of a major karmic crucible and turning point.
As a counterbalance to the psychological intensity of this time, we do fortunately have significant stabilising energies in the earthy, contained and capable sign of Virgo to give us some sense of more solid support while bigger processes are afoot.
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In this first eight days of Leo the Sun in many ways is at it’s very luminous best. It shines its light and consciousness on the witchy medicine woman Hekate and the wild spiritual warrior Kali, conjuncting the former on July 30th and now on the latter, an exact conjunction starting tomorrow and lasting the weekend (hence Saturday’s workshop!)
This represents a time of being able to see these so-called dark goddesses (I prefer deep sacred feminine!) with greater clarity and awareness of these often deeply hidden and disturbing parts of ourselves. As we have way too few role models of how to embody these great powers well, it is a time when we can connect to the gifts of each, while bringing awareness to the often intensely distorted shadows. In Leo they will want to be free to express and each has a wildness that can be positively liberating from our more contracted and over-civilised patterns within.
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Against the backdrop of the above, this is fabulous news! Jupiter adds grace, positive expansiveness, trust and fluidity to the expressive power potentials of the Sun, Kali and Leo. The Jupiter factor makes even more obvious the deep love, grace and feminine eros in the depths of Kali, while the sextile to Ceres, an expression of the great earth mother, empowers the environmentalist and the protective mother within us all.
Both will assist with lubricating the wheels of opening and purification, while smoothing out some of the more dangerous and scarier edges of working with Kali. As with all Jupiter squares though, we have to be a bit careful about going over the top, particularly around the dramatic urges of Leo.
Both support our confidence, courage and sense of safety when going into the deeper and darker places within ourselves that need both light and purification.
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Mercury in Virgo reflects a period when we can get more grounded, practical and realistic in our thinking, giving us a period where we can fine tune our ability to express and manifest our ideas in the world and, confer a greater capacity for disciplined, multitasking, focused thinking and for impulse control. (The latter is very useful when there is a great deal of Leo energy around!)
His conjunction with Pallas Athena reinforces all these capacities, as Pallas is in many ways a higher octave of the human intellect and yet shares the Virgoan capacity for contained, focused thought and energy that allows us to become even more effective. As a warrioress and still conjunct the male warrior Mars, there are clearer pathways for translating thoughts into forthright action in the world. Basically, this is a really good time for getting things done, assuming that we are not to knocked around by the big, more subterranean changes that are going on.
Pallas and Mars start the month trining Jupiter in Taurus, adding good energy, positive expectations and trust in our visions that in turn enhances the steady, can-do expressions of these warriors in Virgo.
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Even though Mercury is catching up on this highly energetic, action based Mars/Pallas Athena conjunction, he is also hitting some significant opposition from Saturn in Pisces, something that represents an initial foot on the brakes. Saturn oftenpresents significant obstacles that can block or delay what we are attempting to do. Whether that comes from outer events frustrating our plans and/or from meeting internalised negative or overly rigid thinking from earlier patriarchal origins in this life.
And even though this can make things tough and having to work harder to achieve, there is always a strange, hidden wisdom behind the actions of this traditionally stoic, tough love, disciplinarian. While Virgo has an obvious preference for concise, rational thought, it is not too keen on the undisciplined, chaotic and watery realms of Pisces. Nevertheless, the sign of the Fish has its own intuitive, nonrational intelligence, and if that part of ourselves is disowned it can undermine our ability to make things happen in the world.
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Venus on the Black Moon is a very powerful, challenging and potentially empowering line-up. In Leo, the goddess of love wants to be seen, admired, adored even, she wants to express her passion and, as someone with once said, her sunlit sexuality.
The Black Moon, as the dark face of the great mother, has an almost opposing agenda, which is to draw Venus into greater depths, of truth and shadow, of purification and transfiguration, to get more in touch with her primal, tantric core. The Black Moon, who includes the Black Madonna, Durga and Kali, calls upon us to face any damage to our hearts and our sexuality, unresolved trauma, the residues of past relationship experiences and anything else that gets in the way of our capacity for ever deepening intimacy and vulnerability. So, we can expect some significant dredging up of such psychic emotional baggage.
The potential fruits of this are positively life changing; to face life and our relationships with a commitment to depth, ongoing evolution, to getting to the raw truth of things while bringing ourselves wholeheartedly to our beloveds on every level, emotionally, spiritually, sexually, with great reservoirs of sacred passion.
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The grace continues and is prolonged for rest of the month in the form of Venus squaring Jupiter in Taurus.
Normally a Venus transit to another entity will only last a few days, a week at the most. However, she forms this aspect with Jupiter in the third week of the month and because he is slowing up in preparation for going retrograde early September (around the same time that she goes direct!) they stay in this square aspect from mid-August to late September, an extraordinarily long transit.
So, after a period of significant challenges, followed by further healing opportunities, this goddess of love stays in expansive mode for the following six weeks. Venus/Jupiter squares are hardly troublesome and are associated with “party time”! The main thing to watch out for is for going over the top, with too much indulgence, for experiencing great restlessness in stagnant relationships scenarios or simply getting too arrogant.
In a more balanced expression, any Venus/Jupiter contact has opportunities for great heart openings, for joy, for having fun and for the creation of abundance. There are intimations here of Laksmi the Indian goddess of spiritual and material grace.
Cheers to that!
Enjoy the fruits of all of this, watch your stress levels and make sure you give yourself some highly expressive releasing. Sometimes all we need is a good cry and a wild dance!
With love and blessings,
Daniel