By Amanda Painter

One way to read the planets right now is that they are all about relating and relationships. But what if you’re not in a capital-R ‘Relationship’ currently? That’s okay: as a human being, a great part of your existence is concerned with relating to others in a wide variety of roles — work colleague, friend, sibling, parent, child, etc. — in addition to lover/partner/spouse.

Sparklewater, a few days before the solstice as Venus entered Cancer. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Plus, there’s always your relationship to yourself in all your various facets. That is, how you think and feel about your dreams, fears, desires, self-esteem, your history, your plans for the future.

It’s the ways you navigate challenges and opportunities, the stories you tell yourself about them, and how those stories make you feel. I’m not talking about self-absorption or narcissism. More like, the more clearly you can relate to yourself, the more clearly you can relate to others.

Currently, the Sun, Mercury and Venus are clustered in Cancer. On one level, this suggests domestic, family-oriented, mother-child and caring/caretaking themes and energy. You might be noticing this in your inner experience as well as in your conversations and impulses (such as to bake, clean the house or have a heart-to-heart; yes it’s cliché, but clichés exist for a reason).

Yet those three objects in Cancer are making some very interesting and potentially provocative or compelling aspects to other planets around the zodiac wheel.

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By Amanda Painter

Saturday we have a New Moon — a conjunction of the Sun and Moon, this time in Gemini, just before 11:00 pm EDT (02:59 UTC Sunday). It occurs against the backdrop of a larger, slower-moving aspect pattern that might have you feeling like you’re at some kind of crossroads lately.

View from the Manhattan Bridge; photo by Amanda Painter.

For some people, crossroads can be exciting. All those options and possibilities! You might be someone who relishes the chance to take charge and make decisions, and to move what was just potential into some new, tangible reality.

On the other hand, you might be someone for whom crossroads are pure torture. For whatever reason, something in your early upbringing or inherent personality makes it very hard to make a decision, to commit and trust that you’ve made the ‘right’ choice.

Wherever you locate yourself on that spectrum, this New Moon represents an opportunity to see (and feel) a new side to an issue or situation, and then approach it differently from how you have been.

The major aspect pattern that the New Moon is part of is a grand cross in the mutable signs. Three of the players in this pattern — Jupiter in Virgo, Saturn in Sagittarius and Neptune in Pisces — have been moving into position for a while now (making a T-square). When the Sun and Moon join Venus in mid-Gemini for the New Moon, they fill in the fourth side to make the grand cross (also called a grand square).

In this week’s Planet Waves FM, Eric describes Jupiter square Saturn as being like the hands of god on a potters wheel: one hand is pushing out from the inside, while the other hand is reinforcing the clay (the limit or structure) from the outside.

Eric also describes Neptune added to the equation, especially Saturn square Neptune, as being a process of synthesis — as in, “Make your own [whatever].” (The example he gives is of making your own salad dressing: creating something new out of disparate elements in your own unique way.)

All of that square energy can feel like a lot of internal pressure to make a decision and do something already; to re-create your life in some way, even if you’re not sure how. Not everyone is going to enjoy that sensation, though some people will certainly get off on it.

If you have a disciplined mind, you’ll likely appreciate seeing your various options and occupying the space between them. However, if you’ve been noticing a sensation of crisis related to a need to make a decision or accomplish something, and you tend to get caught up in thought-loops, you might find this astrology a little uncomfortable.

Like all planetary aspects, this too shall pass. Does that thought bring a sense of relief or of added pressure?

It’s easy for people to say to someone who’s feeling indecisive, “Well, what do you really want?” If you’re someone whose sense of trust in their desires was compromised as a child, however, that question only compounds the angst. Sometimes answering that question is simply a matter of sequencing and scheduling — just figuring out an order in which to tackle things.

If you still feel stuck, it might be time to let the mind retreat to the background and check out how you feel to get to what you want. Feelings are the realm of the water signs. We have significant planets in Pisces, but Pisces is part of that mutable grand cross.

So what if we look to retrograde Mars in Scorpio for some help? Mars has been pointing us inward since mid-April. We already know that the desire/want facet of Mars can be tricky, so let’s lean on the ‘feeling’ quality of Scorpio. It might look something like this:

How do I feel? I feel angry because I am too cold with the window open.

What can I do about it? I can close the window or put on a sweater. I can complain about it and hope that somebody else does something about it for me.

What do I want to do about it? I want to close the window.

True, the passive choice is still a choice. But does it make you feel better faster? And does it make you feel better about yourself in the long run?

There’s something to be said for choices that empower you and give you authority over your life, although they often do not look attractive or ‘easy’ at first. That goes for any kind of feeling, desire or decision you meet with this New Moon. If it helps, start with how you feel. Notice your options, evaluate them, and see where that points you.

Curious about what the epic Uranus-Eris conjunction means for you? Intrigued by the dance of Neptune and Chiron in Pisces? In our exciting new class with Eric Francis, The Astrology of Now, your questions will receive thoughtful and insightful answers — and you’ll have lots of fun in the process. You may sign up here.

By Amanda Painter

Do you know your instincts when you feel them? Sure, we’re talking about things like the urge to procreate; but there are also creative instincts — like being in a play rehearsal and moving a certain way without rationalizing the choice beforehand. Or sensing that what you’ve just painted needs a splash of blue, even though you had not intended to use that color initially.

A very confused Christmas cactus with a dozen blooms in mid-May. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Instinct is related to our biology; animals operate on the level of instinct when they mate and migrate and search for certain foods. It can get a little complicated to discuss instinct when it comes to humans.

Intuition (a level of knowing that can be stimulated, intensified and enriched) is generally not described as quite the same thing as instinct, yet people often use the words interchangeably. On top of that, humans often override instinctive and intuitive functions by using conscious, rational thinking or through cultural conditioning — whether it actually works better or not.

In fact, it would seem that the more engaged with and embedded in our digital technology we get, the more confusing the distinctions become. When you’re filtering all your social interactions and communication through texting, emailing and social media posts, you lose the body language and vocal cues that might normally inform you on those semi-conscious, instinctive, biologically primal levels. When you can’t smell the other person or smell and hear your shared environment (wind shifting the scent of food cooking; birds going silent), a level of understanding gets lost.

Those environmental and physical cues constitute a level of input that can help you interpret where you are in relationship to people, situations and your own desires. Without it, you depend more on the mental level of processing; you also have access to your emotional responses — though they may be more subject to projection onto others without the multi-layered input from in-person interaction.

If you’re a very ‘tuned in’ sort of person, your intuition can also help to guide you. But that biological, instinctual level may be harder to access and integrate with technological disconnect. How many times have you ignored the need to eat because you’ve been conditioned to put work ahead of physical instincts?

In turn, that’s layered on top of however many decades of cultural and religious indoctrination you’ve lived through, especially when it comes to instincts like sex. I’ll bet you can think of more reasons why you shouldn’t fuck compared to why you should.

It’s this juxtaposition that the current astrology seems to be highlighting. On one level, there’s an emphasis on the intellectual, the superficial and a devotion to the kind of rapidly shifting external expression we’ve become used to in the Internet age. This comes through the Sun, asteroid Vesta and Venus clustered together in early Gemini — an air sign often associated with quickly shifting thoughts and communication.

Yet we also have retrograde Mars finally making its way backward from Sagittarius into Scorpio on Friday, just before 11:00 am EDT (13:51 UTC). This brings Mars out of the realm of beliefs and plunges it into a space of something potentially steamier: your most fundamental desires and biological urges.

It’s an intense and inwardly focused space, plugged into ‘how you really feel’ and ‘what you really want’. Eric Francis has written a good deal at Planet Waves about the ways that guilt might surface when Mars gets into Scorpio. Any guilt shows you the points of tension you’re holding between ‘what you’re supposed to want’ (or not want) and what your instincts are actually compelling you toward.

How open are you to feeling your way through that? How willing are you to step away from the screen — no matter how tiny and convenient it is — so you can stop chattering away into empty, virtual space and instead step into the moments of stillness that will allow you to see, feel, smell taste and hear the stimuli that really get you going?

Yes, this will likely bring up some emotions for you. And you have a choice as to whether or not to feel them, how you process them, and how you let them influence your self-awareness and self-expression. A pair of minor planets in Pisces (Nessus and Pallas) are squaring the Gemini cluster. Can you use what you learn proactively, or will you let emotional reactions use you in the same unproductive patterns they often have?

Your opportunity here is to exercise your spiritual and creative muscles through your innate humanness. To do that, you have to reclaim your power beyond the dictates of social media. That is, you have to be willing to hear your biological instincts and emotional desires, and be willing to want what you want.

Three planets in ‘Gemini mode’ are calling your attention to the intellectual level, making you aware of the other side of every story. But Mercury, which rules Gemini, is still in Taurus: body-knowledge is still accessible, and it plays very well indeed with Mars in Scorpio. Feel it, and see where it takes your mind.

Visit the garden of delights that is the Planet Waves Boutique, and find the top-quality reading, class or membership that you need, or that special gift for a loved one.

Earlier today, The New York Times and other news outlets reported that Pres. Obama has rescinded a decades-old embargo on Vietnam. Dissolving any lingering vestiges of the Vietnam War and the Cold War would seem a good thing until you realize one detail: it was a lethal weapons embargo.

Is something ‘off’ about this ‘normalized’ relationship? Barack Obama at a press conference with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang at the Presidential Palace in Hanoi May 23, 2016. Photo by Reuters

Fabulous. As if U.S. arms manufacturers were lacking anybody to sell to, right? As if any country in the world is lacking ways to kill people.

One reason for lifting the embargo is that apparently Vietnam needs a little more muscle in the face of China’s buildup in the South China Sea. China and Vietnam have long been trading partners and ideological pals, but Beijing’s claims of waters off Vietnam’s coast in the South China Sea have been raising tensions.

The Times notes that one remaining barrier to lifting the arms embargo had been Vietnam’s lagging human rights record — “an area where we still have differences,” according to Obama.

He is perhaps referring to factors such as a lack of independent media; or that, “Legally and formally, human rights organizations and unions cannot exist independently of the Communist Party of Vietnam,” according to John Coughlan, a researcher at Amnesty International for Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, in an interview on Slate.com. Amnesty International’s ”conservative” estimate is that there are 83 prisoners of conscience detained in Vietnam at this time.

John Sifton, the Asia policy director of Human Rights Watch, said, “President Obama just gave Vietnam a reward that they don’t deserve.”

So did the U.S. just lose influence over Vietnam’s approach to human rights? Does the Obama administration think that it’s bribing Vietnamese president, Tran Dai Quang into behaving better? Or do Obama and his advisors just not care as much as they claim to?

Even though “only” about $1 billion is earmarked for weapons procurement out of Vietnam’s $4.6 billion defense budget, spending on new equipment is expected to reach $1.6 billion a year by 2015 according to the Teal Group, a Virginia-based consultancy.

Obama is playing Santa Claus on this visit to Asia, essentially telling Vietnamese officials they’ve been good enough this year. Meanwhile, American military contractors’ Christmas stockings look to be further stuffed should the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal among 12 nations, pass.

Obama has suggested that the TPP would benefit Vietnam greatly, and will eventually become law — though it has little chance of passing Congress before November’s elections. Plus, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump all oppose it (at least for now — you never know when Trump will change his tune on something).

With or without the TPP, the U.S. government seems to be on its way to “normalizing” its relationship with Vietnam.

“The decision to lift the ban was not based on China or any other considerations,” said Obama in a press conference with Pres. Quang at his side. “It was based on our desire to complete what has been a lengthy process of moving toward normalization with Vietnam.”

Given the blind eye turned toward human rights abuses and the clear benefit to arms makers, it’s clear that “normal” relationships between the U.S. and other countries are just as screwed up, co-dependent and potentially abusive as any personal relationship in the U.S. these days.

When you get rewarded for not changing your destructive ways, where’s the impetus to change? I’d suggest couples’ therapy for the U.S. and Vietnam, but from what I can tell, they’d be better off working on themselves individually for a while. Can anyone recommend a good meditation retreat or something for an entire government?

Visit the garden of delights that is the Planet Waves Boutique, and find the top-quality reading, class or membership that you need, or that special gift for a loved one.

By Amanda Painter

You’ll be happy to know that Mercury finally stations direct in Taurus Sunday at 9:20 am EDT. Before you breathe that sigh of relief and go buy the new car/grill/phone you’ve been eyeing, however, remember that the days around a Mercury station are often the most challenging part (they can also offer key pieces of missing information).

Even Mother Nature knows that being grounded doesn’t mean not changing. Photo by Amanda Painter.

So that’s a reminder to take things slowly and consciously, especially anytime you get behind the wheel this weekend.

Along with the usual advice to read the fine print (twice) and noticing whether you have your keys with you, the part about alert driving at legal speeds is especially important this weekend. See, we also have a Full Moon brewing. Mars is involved in that aspect directly, adding a need to stay aware of impulses based in anger, impatience or ego/resentment.

Even if you don’t have the urge to cut someone off on the highway to ‘make a point’, you’ll want to watch for that kind of behavior in others, and temper your reaction to them. I suspect that since Mars is still retrograde, how you handle your reactions and your beliefs about what constitutes ‘justified’ behavior are important for your own safety.

About that Full Moon: the Sun enters Gemini Friday at 10:36 am EDT. The very next day, the Moon enters Sagittarius (where it conjoins Mars).

A few hours later, the Moon opposes the Sun to make a Full Moon. This is the Sagittarius Full Moon, exact at 5:14 pm EDT Saturday.

Now, the question is, given the confrontational nature of a Full Moon, and given the potentially scattered or glitch-y tendencies of Mercury stationing direct, how do you go beyond basic mental housekeeping and safety precautions to actually use this energy creatively?

Yes, there is tension in the chart. But the solution to tension is not paralysis. The solution to tension is making a decision when faced with a choice — and noticing what you use to guide that decision.

You might find yourself guided by empathy as part of your natural tendencies. For most people, however, empathy must be a conscious choice. Look around at all the horrible things that people are doing to each other, including ‘casual’ cruelty online, and you’ll get a better sense of just how often empathy is not chosen. When faced by someone who needs some understanding and assistance, what do you do?

I suspect that for most of us, news reports about the inhumane treatment of Syrian refugees or yet another natural disaster are totally overwhelming. It can be hard to know what to do beyond making a donation.

One friend of mine, faced with a feeling of helplessness toward the Syrian situation, remembered Mister Rogers’ famous advice to “look for the helpers” in scary situations. She now blogs regularly on a widely read forum, featuring ‘the helpers’ who are doing what they can to assist the refugees, and points out ways that readers can get involved and know that their efforts, money or supplies will go to those who need it most.

That’s just one example. I’m sure you can think of others, some of which might be very direct and personal for you: the homeless person you see on the corner as you walk to work each day; the co-worker struggling with personal issues or an oversized workload; a friend who expresses that she is feeling cut off from friends lately and Facebook just is not cutting it.

Speaking of which: the very technology that lets us know about global suffering or a friend’s rough day also allows us to detach from it under the guise of ‘sharing awareness’ of an issue. Re-posting an article tells others about it, but what else can you do? Typing a heart emoticon lets someone know their pain has been seen, but it’s not a phone conversation or an actual, in-the-flesh hug.

Beyond the Sun moving into Gemini and the Moon into Sagittarius this weekend, we have a lot of planets in mutable signs right now (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces). That emphasis is going to continue for quite a while. In fact, Eric describes in his Planet Waves FM broadcast for this week how this Sagittarius Full Moon and the Gemini New Moon in two weeks are connected — and have an important message.

One of the key traits of the mutable signs is flexibility. That is, that ability to move from one state of being (or thought, or action) to another as necessary.

Have you ever thought about the difference between being grounded versus being resistant for its own sake? You could say that being grounded places you firmly in reality, whereas being resistant to change or to making a choice or taking action actually detaches you from reality.

You are being asked to make a decision. Are you resisting? Can you make the choice of empathy, and can you bring it from the ‘virtual’ into actual reality?

Visit the garden of delights that is the Planet Waves Boutique, and find the top-quality reading, class or membership that you need, or that special gift for a loved one.