AstroCast: July 3 - 9, 2016

By dawn of July 3rd when the Moon enters Cancer, there are four planets in this richly feminine deep still lake water sign.  Including Mars in river rapids heading for Niagra Falls Scorpio and Neptune in oceanic Pisces, the total of six planets representing the triad of water signs archetypally tips the scales to our feeling nature.  We’re not just talking emotions here, although expression of them will certainly be heightened.  This is more about what is deep inside coming to the surface, those quiet little knowings that bypass the intellectual governing principle called mind.  Logical, rational, outward focused doing gives way to intuitive, compassionate, inward-focused being.  (Seriously, the patriarchy certainly did a number on us when it relegated these qualities, traditionally associated with women, to the basement of what is considered accomplishment in society.)  Receptivity is the key word.  And to take it another step further, neutral receptivity.  Consider this: we receive mega gigabytes of data at any given moment, more than we can ever process with conscious awareness, but that doesn’t mean it is not received.  Just imagine where all that information goes and maybe an inquiry may begin into just how much it all truly affects us quite unconsciously.  It is not personal but we’re trained from birth to think it is.  On this day, when the Sun in Cancer trines Neptune in Pisces – no slouch in the sensitivity department, especially being in the sign he rules – perhaps the solar light of awareness into this subject may begin a process of paying more attention to all that is operating below the surface of the conscious mind and just how powerful our own receptive abilities are in sensing the environment around us.  If we allow ourselves to tune into all that is around us, in particular other beings, and allow ourselves to truly feel, then maybe we can get somewhere in a conversation about compassion.

As discussed in the last AstroCast, we are being initiated into the bootcamp of consciousness training.  The first and last step of this is always going to be about self-awareness, getting to know ourselves better through revelation after revelation of what is driving us.  It is as simple as that.  Bringing what is unconscious to light.  On July 4th, the New Moon in Cancer has the potential to be a cosmic set up to bring about a transformation in how we address our feelings.  Perhaps the dominance of planets in water signs will have the effect of relegating the mind to the basement so we can finally hear our own heart beat.  Put a little effort into it and maybe we’ll begin to hear the heart beat of another.  Even more effort and it is possible we could hear the heart beat of the planet and our global family crying out to be held, nurtured, taken care of, told that they matter and that all the external machinations and conditioned thoughts are not who they really are.  This is not meant to demonize “the powers that be” we like to accuse of creating such chasm between the haves and the have nots, for they are the tip of the iceberg of suffering from separation from their compassionate spirit and disconnectedness with the profound cosmic wonder of all creation.  We need to take collective responsibility for where we earth beings are at this moment in time, experiencing violence in seeming epidemic proportions and other maladies of soul sickness.  With the Cancer Sun and Moon in close trine to Neptune, the initiation of this lunar cycle is infused with the need to receive the cosmic heart.  And that need begins with Self.  Do we even know what it means to love ourselves?  Perhaps this month we will explore that more deeply as this New Moon is also in opposition to Pluto, the planet that when making a significant transit to a natal chart can plant an atomic depth charge into the most hardened heart to blast it open into a new way of being. (More on the Sun’s transit of Pluto below.)

Travelling in tandem with the Sun since he entered Cancer a week ago, Mercury follows with his trine to Neptune on July 5th, shifting the focus from the cosmic heart to the cosmic mind, the one that has nothing to do with the grey matter between our ears.  Consciousness can operate independently of our neural synapses, as anyone who has had an out of body experience can attest (although the matter based intellect has little room in its belief systems to accept such a notion).  In this highly fluid alignment, the planet of perception finds an affinity with the planet of compassion so can be more at ease answering his call to, as Jim Sher put it in his recent groundbreaking article on Neptune, “learn to observe from a more impartial place that honors all of our experience while seeking some kind of ‘higher’ understanding” and “to quiet the mind so that we are not controlled by all the chatter and might become able to hear our ‘inner knowing’ or ‘wisdom.’”  The Sun and Mercury’s successive encounters with Neptune imprint their Superior Conjunction on July 6th with “the call to being full participants in the entire reality in which we live.”  Mercury in direct motion conjunct the Sun is the “full moon” moment of the current Mercury cycle, the culmination of the seed ideas planted at the Inferior Conjunction that occurred on May 9th when Mercury was retrograde at 20° Taurus.  It’s worth repeating the Buckminster Fuller quote from the AstroCast that covered that transit: “The things to do are: the things that need doing, that you see need to be done, and that no one else seems to see need to be done.  Then you will conceive your own way of doing that which needs to be done — that no one else has told you to do or how to do it.  This will bring out the real you that often gets buried inside a character that has acquired a superficial array of behaviors induced or imposed by others on the individual.”  If we heeded Bucky’s call, we may find we’ve taken on new responsibilities as we’ve become more engaged with the reality of our life and the people around us, at home, work and in society at large.

Coming off her June 30th opposition to Pluto, Venus in Cancer is likely to take any action necessary after her turn with the Lord of the Underworld, who above all is able to trigger the deepest parts of our nature into expressing, for good or bad depending on how suppressed they are to begin with.  If we have been authentic, i.e. doing only those things that we see need to be done, then the life we’re creating can only get better with a deeper level of intimacy and engagement with other.  However, as Venus trines Mars in Scorpio on July 6th and squares Uranus in Aries on July 7th, any dysfunction in relationships will likely come to a head with this potentially explosive configuration.  The scope of this article is generally confined to the five Ptolemaic aspects (conjunction, sextile, square, trine and opposition) but it bears mentioning that Mars and Uranus have been in an extended tight inconjunct (150° angle) that is within 2° orb June 10th through July 22nd and correlates to a rash of mass shootings, suicide bombings and other violent acts from Orlando to Bangladesh (and we might as well throw in the shocking British exit, or “Brexit,” from the European Union that sent economic shock waves around the world), and serves to act as a mirror to just how soul-separated the collective family of man has become.  Venus in Cancer’s highest mission is to bring the family of man together and keep it safe.  As she dares to take on the extreme individualists that Mars and Uranus can be (while being cognizant that the world is still fired up with the revolutionary spirit evoked by the 2012-2015 square between Uranus and Pluto that will be in effect through 2020), she could become the fierce mama bear wearing her special security-of-the-family-at-all-costs Cancer protective night vision goggles and come out fighting for those she loves, able to see in the darkest places where to point her love gun for maximum effect in dealing with the constant stress created by the irritating Mars/Uranus alignment.

July 7th through 9th, Mercury and the Sun, still tightly conjunct in Cancer translate the now waning but still potently productive trine between Jupiter in Virgo and Pluto in Capricorn, who finished their last of three exact alignments over the course of nine months on June 26th.  The Sun/Mercury opposition to Pluto on July 7th in itself is a dramatically powerful aspect that one can’t help but notice manifest – on the 3D earth plane as external power plays, feats of endurance and/or secrets revealed to name a few of the possibilities. As this alignment has come into orb, we are already seeing reports that correlate to the power-conscious, secrets-obsessed forces at play.  Interestingly, while Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server continues to be investigated and every morsel however insubstantial reported on, a little item went mostly unnoticed by local and national media outlets when the Associated Press sent it out on the wire.  In mentioning that the government is supposed to have made a decision by the end of June whether to declassify 28 pages from a congressional investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks, the AP reported the government quietly declassified a related report, the little-known File 17 that lists more than three dozen Saudi’s who had connections to the hijackers.  At the time this article was being written, the fate of the 28 pages was still unknown but the “connections” make for fascinating reading of how the Big Brothers of Saudi Arabia took care of the men who with deadly Plutonic focus deliberately crashed airliner jets into the World Trade Center towers in New York.  (As you may already know, Pluto factored significantly into that day which ushered in a whole new level of clandestine surveillance, another of Pluto’s concerns).  On a more inspiring note, in the feats of deep space probing endurance department (definitely Pluto’s realm), NASA announced the extension of the historic New Horizons mission, which shattered deep space records when it sent back intimate photos of Pluto last July, to flyby asteroid 2014 MU69 in Kuiper belt, “more than a billion miles from Pluto and not even discovered when New Horizons was launched.”  And as a nod to Jupiter’s role in the powerful Sun/Mercury/Jupiter/Pluto configuration, NASA also announced that its Juno probe will reach the gas giant on July 4th and commence an unprecedented 20-month orbit that will provide answers to ongoing mysteries about the Jovian world.  For those of us on earth who would dare to travel deep into the occult world of sexuality, death and regeneration governed by Pluto, the Sun/Mercury sextile to Jupiter that becomes exact on either side of midnight between July 7th and 8th as it is still within 2° orb of its opposition to Pluto provides an expansive opportunity outlet for us to be deeply focused on fundamental matters.  As we begin to understand the hidden sinews of influence operating freely under the noses of the unconscious, we can transform the mundane into the magical.  Pluto is the master magician who wields his wand of esoteric knowledge, casting intentions out into the ethers, then sits back and watches them manifest as he gathers the elemental forces into the desired shape.  What is fascinating is that while an abundance of esoteric knowledge is readily available, few ever touch the pages containing secrets of cosmic magic, mostly out of fear of the unknown.  In our daily lives, as we face issues of power and control during this time, may we put the spotlight on the hidden aspects of our nature that sabotage our hopes and dreams, and have the courage to have open encounters with all things taboo.   May we tap into our empowering inner magician and take control of our choices, gathering them into the shape we want our lives to take.

Here’s the data (using Pacific Time and planetary positions rounded to the nearest whole degree, unless otherwise noted):

July 3 – Sun trine Neptune at 12° Cancer/Pisces at 4:02 a.m.

July 4 – Moon conjunct Sun (New Moon) at 13° Cancer at 4:01 a.m.

July 5 – Mercury trine Neptune at 12° Cancer/Pisces at 5:20 a.m.

July 6 – Venus trine Mars at 23° Cancer/Scorpio at 1:17 p.m.

July 6 – Sun conjunct Mercury (Superior Conjunction) at 16° Cancer at 8:24 p.m.

July 7 – Mercury opposite Pluto at 16° Cancer/Capricorn at 4:54 a.m.

July 7 – Venus square Uranus at 24° Cancer/Aries at 7:24 a.m.

July 7 – Sun opposite Pluto at 16° Cancer/Capricorn at 3:24 p.m.

July 8 – Mercury sextile Jupiter 18° Cancer/Virgo at 2:06 a.m.

July 9 – Sun sextile Jupiter 18° Cancer/Virgo at 10:41 p.m.