Protesters Saturday in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. There were protests last night in all five boroughs of the city. Photo by Chang Lee for The New York Times.

Dear Friend and Reader:

This week leads into a penumbral eclipse of the Moon in Sagittarius on Friday, June 5. This will be followed by a partial eclipse of the Sun on the northern solstice on Thursday, June 21.

With a Full Moon eclipse happening, we may experience a sensation of pressure rising, which will have the sensation of pushing at loggerheads, deadlock or stalemate. Given the mounting frustration in the United States, now being provoked by national protests against the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers one week ago, this could be messy.

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Gemini is the happening place right now, home of the Sun, of Mercury, of Venus retrograde, and of the goddess Vesta.

Much of the year’s most daunting astrology has been in Capricorn. All that has happened to society the past three months we can attribute to the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in that sign. Matters that fall under the Capricorn energy signature are not easily adjusted; they are more subject to breakdown and rebuilding, as we are seeing.

What happens in Gemini, though, is expressed through many adjustments, in a mentally dynamic environment.

Gemini’s form of ambition is the drive to be curious, and to take an experimental approach where many different ideas are considered. At times this can seem like too much meandering and not enough action, though that will not be a problem this week.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

On Wednesday, Venus turns to retrograde motion in Gemini. The retrograde effect has been present for a while, as Venus and Vesta have been moving through Gemini in a long conjunction, which culminates over the next couple of weeks. The retrograde lasts through June 25, though Venus finally leaves Gemini and enters Cancer on Aug. 7. I consider that the duration of the process.

I have a number of presentations on Venus retrograde conjunct Vesta, including a special edition of Tantra Studio focused exclusively on the topic, from a deep healing perspective. The entire DHARMA series of readings looks at the retrograde from the the perspectives of the Sun and rising signs (that comes with many other resources). There is a lot to this event.

What I have for you today is a simple message from this retrograde: it is about reconciling with yourself.

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Avebury Henge. Detail of photo by Grassrootsgroundswell/Flickr.

Dear Friend and Reader:

We are now in the season of The May — what some call Beltane. This is the first cross-quarter day of the solar year, coming about 45 days after the Sun has entered Aries. Sometimes it’s called the midspring holiday. Other traditions consider this the beginning of summer. The theme is celebrating the renewal of life, and the rebirth of our forests and gardens and farms, and bodies.

Imagine all those plants all over the landscape, pushing up out of the ground. Imagine all those trees coming into bloom and developing leaves and new branches. That’s a lot of energy moving, and Beltane is the time to celebrate it.

Beltane is often counted as the midpoint of Taurus, though this year there are solar events on either side of that marker. Monday, Mercury and the Sun form their exterior conjunction (when Mercury is, from our point of view, directly behind the Sun). Then on Thursday, the Moon opposes the Sun from the sign Scorpio, which is the Full Moon.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

There is a gem of a book from the early 1970s called The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment. It’s about 50 little pages in total and designed to be memorized. The purpose of the book is a trip guide. At the time, people were taking a lot of LSD and it was still a relatively new thing in the culture, so there was a bad trip problem. The book is about how not to have a bad trip — on acid, or in life.

The author, Thaddeus Golas, explains the vibrational relationships between beings, and how this affects the way we perceive one another. At one point in the book, he explains how people get high off of being threatened. Horror movies are one of the most popular genres; millions of people go out and pay $12 plus popcorn to be terrified for a while.

Well, we have all just been threatened with death for two months running. That’s how you get people’s attention. Nothing like a hostage situation, terrorism, a mass shooting or a bit of anthrax to silence the room and give everyone a cortisol rush.

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Dear Friend and Reader:

Today the Sun entered Taurus at 10:45 am EDT. It did so toward the end of the lunar cycle; the Taurus New Moon is Earth Day — Wednesday, April 22. I’ll come back to that in a moment and develop the story in Daily Planets over the next few days.

The Earth is thrilled about the novel coronavirus. Fewer cars, less noise. This is the Grandmother Land in High Falls, NY, a few hundred feet from the waterfall shown below.

Astrological changes have also indicated developments in our weird global situation.

The momentum of the novel coronavirus has been in “coast” mode since the last New Moon one month ago — the “turning point, tipping point” square the nodes in Aries. So we will be entering new territory with new terrain and different light.

Let’s consider Taurus itself, and the position of the sky at the time of the Taurus ingress. Study astrology for a while and you might decide Taurus is one of the most interesting signs. Taurus is the second sign of the zodiac. Its symbol is a cow or bull, representing both vitality and sufficient wealth to have milk and plow the fields.

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Photo by Lanvi Nguyen.

Dear Friend and Reader:

There are two patterns in the sky right now. The first is the Sun passing through the Pluto-Eris square. The second is the conjunction of Venus and Vesta, which is further described by Mercury conjunct Chiron. The first pattern is easier to size up than the second.

I will give a short overview of Venus-Vesta and Gemini in the last section, and if the themes appeal to you, I would suggest you listen to my spoken-word presentation in the third segment of Planet Waves FM. (This begins at time marker 1:19, after the second song break.)

Additionally, I focus this topic, along with the upcoming Venus retrograde, on a special edition of Tantra Studio that I distributed last week. It’s the second program down. There are some things it’s easier to describe than to write about, and Venus conjunct Vesta is one of them. I consider the Venus-Vesta pattern to be of utmost importance for those who are focused on their healing process rather than day-to-day strategy for life. It is a once-in-a-lifetime aspect pattern.

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It seems like only yesterday that we had the tipping point/turning point Aries New Moon, and last week I was looking forward to the Minor League Baseball season beginning.

We’re now at the full phase of the lunar cycle, which is exact Tuesday, April 7 at 10:35 pm EDT. Basically this happens overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday where most of our readers are. In Perth, the Full Moon is 10:35 am Wednesday, April 8, AWST, and in Sydney, the Full Moon is 12:35 pm Wednesday AEST.

The ‘tipping point’ quality of the New Moon was that it occurred at a right angle to the lunar nodes. This corresponding Full Moon occurs at a right angle to the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction. It’s a bit slow-acting, and will build over the next five to six days as the Sun moves into a square to Pluto, exact on the 14th. So after the first peak with the Full Moon, we enter a short phase of gradually building to another crest.

Said another way, the net effect is a Full Moon peak, in the midst of a lot of energy moving, followed by a gradual confrontation between the Sun and Pluto.

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