Dear Madame,

Recently a vibrant, fun, Sagittarius woman I’ve been seeing since last winter decided she needed some time away from me. This, I assume (or I hope!) is part of the Venus retrograde thing right now.

I know this seems like a really basic question, but does this mean she’s not going to return? She’s asked that I not contact her at all, and I’m respecting that even though it really hurts not to hear her beautiful voice. I’m a Piscean dude. Have I got too much fire on my hands? Will Venus burn me with her hot coals this summer?

— Fried Fish

Dear Fish Fry,

What’s curious to me, dear finned one, is what you’ve left out of your letter — WHY. Why is your centaurish friend cantering off, leaving your ears wanting for her dulcet intonations over the speakerphone? Hm?

I’m curious because you Fish Folk usually adopt a ‘swim and let swim’ philosophy about intentional coupling. Fantasizing Fish? Yes. Fretful Fish? Not so much. What gives? What’s actually happening? I can’t speak to that.

But you asked about Venus. Yes, indeed, this could be a Venusian dodge calculated to cut you out. However, that’s not a given because I see another piece to this puzzle that definitely deserves examining.

Let’s give Saturn a squiz, too. He’s had his cold and heavy hand in here as well.

You say you began seeing one another this past winter. At that time Saturn was just beginning his new adventures in the sign of Sagittarius, giving all our Saggos a new opportunity for focus and gravitas. This past spring, though, Saturn sat in the same spot for about five weeks, preparing to turn retrograde and revisit his old Scorpio stomping grounds.

It was at that time your Saggo darling may have felt decidedly hemmed in with multiple responsibilities and demands. As a fundamentally freedom loving sign yourself, you can appreciate that you may have chafed your Lady Friend.

As Saturn moved back into the sign of Scorpio this summer, the story shifted into an even deeper and possibly darker mood. For Saggos, the theme was fundamental: these were the last days of a season that began in 2012, and one that challenged them to wrestle with their own mortality.

You see, the typical carefree persona we all adore in Sagittarians has been tempered the last couple of years with Saturn in their solar 12th house. Call it a perpetual haunting. They’ve been doing it tougher than a bail-bonded Hollywood starlet sporting a semi-perpetual ankle monitor. Carefree? As if. When you’re hounded and held back under perpetual observation by the stern eye of Karma in the shape of Sheriff Saturn for nearly three years, memories of Good Time Sally could seem, in retrospect, just silly.

This Monday Saturn turned direct again, preparing himself to begin tracking across those last degrees of Scorpio. Whether she’s aware of it or not, Saturn could be the true source of your Saggo’s reluctance to mix ’n’ mingle. The Old Man won’t return to this land for another 30 years. That’s kind of a big deal, you know. So consider that. It’s quite possible your dearest needs these days to reconsider all that’s passed these last three years. Venus retrograde just gives it that extra anti-social spin.

Will she return? I have no clue. But if she does, it would help if you consider the influence of Saturn’s final lessons this summer. While you may have caught her on the upswing last winter, seemingly free from the dark shadows of the 12th house experience, Time demanded that she revisit that territory this summer to finish old business. It’s sort of non-negotiable. And tough.

When Saturn finally reaches Sagittarius’s green pastures Sept. 17, you’ll begin to recover the early degrees of Sag, echoing those first days of your acquaintance. If there were ever a time to meet for the first time again, mid-September’s your go-to zone. Until then, find a different focus for your sizzling Saggo fantasies.

Swim loose, FishMan.

— Madame Z

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.
— John Muir

Should your life be somewhere between intense and overwhelming right now, it’s almost certainly not just you. If you also have a paradoxical sense of at least one shoe taking forever to drop, you are probably not the only one. Whether unresolved tension or unrelieved intensity is preponderate for you at this time, indications are that you are not alone.

It’s easy to feel alone when you have been too darn busy to stay in touch. Alternatively, you might feel isolated because you have retreated from engagement in order to take rest or nourishment. Either way, it’s tempting to get down on yourself.

Rather than beating yourself up, however, take a moment to at least imagine the possibility that many (or even most of us) are faced with the same temptation.

Were it true that many people (if not most everybody) you know have been similarly unable to cover all their bases recently, you would know what to do. Your own experience would dictate that you show the same patience, compassion and tolerance you hope to receive. It would also assuage your concerns to hear assurances that things will get better one way or another, as opposed to being the recipient of pressure to do more than you can manage.

Interestingly, there is one motif unifying this moment in astrology that symbolically supports the notion that many of us really are in the same tippy canoe. It’s the same tableau that implies an impending release or relief. It’s a pattern currently being expressed by Mercury, Jupiter and retrograde Venus in Leo, along with Mars in Cancer and Saturn in Scorpio. All are moving through the final few (or ‘anarectic’) degrees of their respective signs this week.

The anaretic part of any sign represents intensity. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. The energetic demands of the Sun, Moon or one of the planets so positioned can often be redeeming. However, with fully half of the sign rulers occupying the latter degrees of their respective signs at the same time, indications are that a sense of both extremity and some sort of strain are probably widespread.

By the same token, any experience concurrently shared by many (no matter how challenging) enhances the possibility of equally widespread understanding. In order for informed compassion to carry the day though, you have to break the icy grip of isolation and reach out to reassure others with words you long to hear and gestures you would be relieved to receive. 

Reassurance is the upside of a planet moving through the anaretic degrees in direct motion. For any such object is by definition on the cusp of entering a new sign. When you consider the palpable refreshment that often accompanies just one planetary ingress, you can easily imagine how several such changes in a short period of time might well correspond to a significant amount of solace.

Indeed, such changes are not long in coming. By this time next week the earthly archetypes of no less than three planets will be manifesting from entirely new fields of expression.

Mercury will move first, entering Virgo on Friday to ease your mind. Mars will follow on Saturday, shifting into Leo to quicken your consciousness and enliven you body. Then, Jupiter will end more than a year in energetic Leo next Tuesday to begin a trek equally as long through the modulated frequency of Virgo.

Finally, Saturn will complete nearly a year of transitioning from one sign to another next month by settling into Sagittarius for the long run of two years more.

If you can only manage to grasp one message from the astrology this week, it would be the proverbial advice that “this too will pass.” Nonetheless, it would be helpful if you could venture a step or two further.

Whenever others express regret, it would soothe so much to simply reply with reassurance. Similarly, requite remorse with forgiveness, and healing will be the result. Responding with compassion for those who are contrite will likewise function to literally change the world for the people in question. 

Most of all, reach out to at least one of those who have withdrawn. Contact those unable or unwilling to either express their bewilderment or ask for pardon; let them know it’s not just them, but all of us on the cusp of changes that promise to be as liberating as the world is now weighty. It’s a promise that all of us (not just you) can act to make real.

Offered In Service

Len is available for astrology readings. You can contact him at lenwallick [at] gmail [dot] com.

To our national shame, it is becoming the norm to see a weekly police killing of an African American, with Sam Dubose and Sandra Bland the most recent victims. The targeting of African Americans has been made more than obvious in the way the criminal justice system is set up: from street arrest, to violent confrontation, to inhumane and deadly treatment during or on the way to incarceration.

Sam Dubose’s killer, university police officer Raymond Tensing, had a look of outraged disbelief as he watched the video footage of his encounter with Dubose — disbelief that his own arrest, for killing Dubose, was even happening. Even though his own body camera betrayed his lies about his actions and about being dragged by Dubose’s car, the man pleaded not guilty to the crime of first degree murder.

I hope to be wrong on this, but it would not surprise me at all if we find Tensing at minimum a racist, perhaps even a white supremacist. And even if he isn’t, he has on his side a criminal justice system that will find cause for his defense based on a tradition of police bias and racial profiling. Tensing is now out on bail and, unfortunately, that is no surprise.

If there is truth to Raymond Tensing being a racist, he joins others who have found a home in police departments, where racial profiling against African-Americans is institutionalized. And regardless of their fellow officers’ guilt or innocence, they still protect their own.

Homeland Security Newswire reported that in 2009, Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano updated FBI reports on domestic terrorism from 2004, 2006 and 2007 alerting Congress of the local threat from right-wing extremists and other hate groups. These reports were met with criticism from conservative members of Congress and the media, who called Napolitano’s warnings “politicizing.” The article goes on to report:

The FBI notes that since then, most of the extremist groups have been using secretive tactics in order to keep themselves under the radar. One such maneuver is to go to various police stations and offer information in order to gauge the agency’s interest in an organization.

Another tactic is called “ghost skins.” This involves members of neo-Nazi and other white supremacist groups hiding all or part of their affiliation in order to join the military as well as other areas of law enforcement for the purpose of receiving training.

The FBI had it right in 2006. The greatest threat to the country’s security does not come from Islamic extremists threatening to take out a city using a hijacked airplane. It comes from extremists who are home-grown.

From Ruby Ridge to Waco, Oklahoma City and onward, white extremists and other hate groups have never gone away. They went underground, finding safe havens formed under the radar using the Internet like any other political group, as an organizing and recruitment tool. Sept. 11, 2001, was the best thing that happened to the extremist movement because it eased the heat the government had been putting on them for nearly a decade — from the 1990s on. This allowed enough time for these groups to organize militias and stockpile weaponry from lax gun control laws abetted by a Congress that reflexively cowers before the National Rifle Association.

It was difficult to broach the subject of Sam Dubose’s murder on the heels of the death of Sandra Bland, Freddie Grey, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner and Walter Scott without first finding and looking at a larger picture, which we now have, minute by minute and provided in stunning detail from police cameras.

African Americans are targeted. They aren’t the only target of hate groups under police guise, but they are certainly the largest. If racist and homophobic police can be found in uber-liberal San Francisco, they can be found anywhere.

Until we root out the worst offenders within police ranks — people with racist agendas, anti-Muslim vigilantes, homophobes — armed with deadly weapons and using them indiscriminately, and until there is actual police reform across the nation, the police are suspect. And these deaths will continue.

This is why the Black Lives Matter movement is both timely and important for African Americans and for all of us. This is why the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups since the FBI can’t (because that would be politicizing), needs to be supported at every level possible. We need more sunshine to blast the underside of rocks where these vermin live, undetected.