The next event up is Tuesday’s total solar eclipse in Cancer. This is part of the first eclipse pair solidly on the Cancer/Capricorn axis since around 2009. These are the eclipses that start to ring the bell on the Saturn-Pluto conjunction of Jan. 12, 2020, whatever that is about. Well, we know what it’s about — we’re standing right in the middle of it; however, this is often the most difficult perspective from which to see clearly.

House announcement — We will not be doing an edition of Planet Waves on Thursday, taking a breather in honor of the Independence Day holiday. I am also planning to take a week off from Planet Waves FM on Sunday, July 7. We are planning to have a Monday Morning horoscope for July 8.

Second house announcement — I spent much of the day Saturday recording the Cancer/Capricorn eclipse edition in the Special Reading series. I’ve focused on these eclipses — eclipses in general, and those out to the end of 2020 — for those who want to be educated and informed about this process. The reading comes with many charts and useful articles and is halfway between a reading and a late-night astrology discussion at the edge of the world. The eclipse topic is interlaced with many hints about astrology (current and in general) and what do do with it. It’s $33, or $44 with the complete Astrology Studio for Cancer.

Special Focus: Mercury Retrograde in Leo/Cancer

I think I’ve said everything I need to say about this eclipse. It’s time to take the ride. If you are looking for astrological details, you may find them here, in the introduction to the July monthly horoscope. The Monday Morning horoscope below is based on the chart for the eclipse. It’s a second, more immediate read of the same chart I used for the monthly horoscope.

Let’s focus on the forthcoming Mercury retrograde, which enters what some call “storm phase” this week, when Mercury is moving at its slowest, right before it changes apparent direction.

This retrograde will begin in Leo on July 7 and heads back into Cancer. Tomorrow, before that happens, Mars enters Leo. So Mercury’s retrograde begins in a week, and then on July 8, there’s a Mercury-Mars conjunction. This is the second of three of these conjunctions this year, one each in Cancer, Leo and Virgo. So this is part of a process that will work itself out through the whole Northern Hemisphere summer season, winter Down Under.

The Mercury-Mars combination in fire sign Leo is saying put the brakes on your communication. By all means brainstorm, improvise into your notebook, rock out on your MIDI controller and play it backwards, or dance around your room naked whilst recording video from six directions. But be careful communicating with others, as this is the classic astrology for misstatements and misdirected anger. Put everything on delay.

Don’t type in the name of the recipients of emails you want to send. Rather, “send” to your drafts folder. Then read it every day for a few days, and decide what, if anything, you really want to say. In-person meetings will serve most purposes better than anything electronic.

One underlying issue of this astrology is anger. This is the ‘anger management’ Mercury retrograde. Right now there is a lot of disembodied anger at large in the collective psyche, and in many people as individuals. We need to notice this, before we can address it in any coherent way. Yet part of the problem is that the whole notion of “coherence” has given way to society becoming what used to be called a postmodern pastiche.

In its disembodied state, we tend to connect anger to such pointless things. Had society been in this state in the 1950s and 1960s, there never would have been a Civil Rights or anti-Vietnam War movement. I don’t mean to point to a golden age, though at least things got done.

As Marge Piercy said, “The good must learn to cultivate their anger like fields of wheat that must feed them, if they are ever to win.”