By Amanda Painter

By the time you read this, the restless Gemini Full Moon will be separating. However, I’m writing this piece in the thick of it, and it’s been a challenge for me to stay focused on the Sagittarian arrow of the Sun and not get mixed up in the less-conscious mental chatter of the Gemini Moon. Thankfully, today you may notice certain interpersonal situations begin resolving, even if other feelings are intensifying.

Dancers performing the Tedung Agung, which evokes a protective umbrella, in Ubud, Bali. Photo by Amanda Painter.

Mental activity should ease this evening, after the Moon enters Cancer at 6:23 pm EST (23:22:58 UTC). With the Moon in its home sign, emotions are more likely to be felt for what they are.

Yet they might get verbalized less, as the Moon opposes the impressive collection of objects in Capricorn over Friday and Saturday.

While the Moon oppositions act as mini tidal shifts (either with people you encounter or entirely within you), you’ll want to notice whether there’s anything deeper going on for you.

Emotions that intensified during the recent Full Moon likely still have depths calling for exploration — or excavation. Venus makes its exact conjunction to Pluto tomorrow. Venus is the planet of feelings and the senses. Pluto represents not only change, but also all that exists ‘below’ — such as below consciousness, below the Earth’s surface (as in Capricorn), or below the proverbial belt.

Pluto is also associated with hormones: they operate ‘below’ our awareness until they peak at certain levels. Then it becomes obvious how powerful they are, and that we need to deal consciously with whatever is being heightened. Venus and Pluto can work similarly on an emotional level.

Translation: things could be pretty lusty and intense (and you don’t have to be in your peak-hormone teenage years to feel it — we’re dealing with metaphors in astrology, after all). So if an infatuation spikes today, can you ride that wave and have fun with the energy? Even if you don’t make contact with the other person, there are plenty of ways to give it a positive, healthy, enjoyable outlet.

In tomorrow’s Written in the Planets, Eric notes the more proper and restrictive qualities of Capricorn, and the effect it can have on such a powerful, primal Venus-Pluto aspect. He quips, “You might have great sex and then wonder what your mother would think. Well, it’s not her business.”

How many natural, beautiful parts of yourself have you tried to hide, push down, ignore, project onto someone else or otherwise disown in the process of growing up? Even after reaching adulthood, many people feel pressured to do this to get ahead in a career, to conform to what they think partners want, or to meet familial and social expectations.

Saturday’s square between Venus in Capricorn and Eris in Aries is offering another layer or angle of tension to address. Eris is that incredibly slow-moving planet associated with things like chaos, the identity-fracturing qualities of digital technology, subversive behavior, and the parts of ourselves that we try to cast off.

Is some part of yourself that you’ve had to repress or minimize currently pushing to be expressed? It may have to do with your style of loving, your sexuality or your inner feminine (receptive) side. Work situations (especially if they involve a question of what you value, or your ambitions) might be bringing things to a head. Same with personal, intimate relationships or family ties.

Either way, the important question is how to address it consciously with constructive action, rather than just reacting to the tension. So often that’s the hard part for us human beings, especially when we’re dealing with something that we have not been allowing into our full awareness, perhaps since childhood.

At the same time, activity in Sagittarius is drawing awareness to questions and concepts along much more spiritually expansive lines. Have you heard the saying, “As above, so below; as within, so without”?

Something is connecting the subconscious, molecular-level intensity of Venus-Pluto-Eris with the mysteries of the universe — and that something is you. All of you: your lusty sexuality and any other part of yourself that you were told — explicitly or implicitly — was not ‘proper’ or welcome. Be gentle with yourself as you discover the contact points between how you feel, what’s changing in your life, and what it all might mean. That we are “spiritual beings having a physical experience” does not discount the physical experience, but rather owns and embraces it.

The Saturn-Pluto conjunction is upon us, just weeks away. While this event will happen two or three times in the lives of most people, this particular event is a moment of convergence and reckoning for the world and for us as individuals.

I’m underway recording RESPECT, the 2020-2021 Planet Waves annual readings, to cover the momentous astrology of the coming year-plus. You can read more about the project, and pre-order the readings, here.