Thank goodness you are still here. July has been a long month thus far. You have been witness to a lot. Hopefully, what you have endeavored and endured has also been witnessed, and with compassion.

Although witnessing does not exert the same level of energy as it does to take direct action, it still in fact takes energy, intention and focus.

To attest to what you have seen (as in the reader comments we cherish here), which becomes a form of participation, likewise requires some effort — effort appreciated by the recipient, whether they take time to acknowledge it or not.

On some level, all of you know that what you have served to witness is remembered somehow. In some way we all get the hint that nothing is forgotten.

That’s how it’s important to act as if your every deed makes a difference, because it does. Perhaps even more important, however, is to note (and testify to) the acts of others as we would want ourselves to be noted and remembered.

For in a world where so much seems to go wrong so often, it’s vital to recognize that most people are just like you. It’s important to proceed with the certainty that nearly all of us are trying to do the right thing in the right way to achieve the best outcome for everybody involved.

Of course, it’s a learning process. Each of us can almost certainly think of how we might have done better with a little more work, and a little less sleep. Yet, it does you no good to get wrapped up in ‘if only’. What you should have, could have or would have done after the fact is not worth your regret, it is only worth learning from.

In order to apply what you learned so as to to do better, it helps to witness and integrate the teachings of those who serve as a better example. People such as Judith Gayle, who counseled us here on Planet Waves this last weekend to go beyond either demonizing or idealizing those we witness. Or Christine Louise Dietrich, who on the same day patiently taught Planet Waves readers how devotion to another mortal is best offered to the divine within that being (and how devotion to the divine is best expressed towards the mortal beings through which the divine manifests and makes itself known).

Human beings have long intuited that another expression of the divine is in the motions in the skies above. Among those motions, the most easily witnessed and understood are those of the Sun and Moon. Hence, it is both instructive and indicative that July should end as it began: with a Full Moon.

The first Full Moon of July was in Capricorn, heavily aspected by the outer planets so as to imply that your part would be historical, somehow. Even if all you did was witness (and hence record into immortal record through the divine’s expression in you), that will have been enough. And you will have done well enough by posterity simply to still be here to testify.

Then, in the middle of July, the Sun and Moon converged in the same degree of Cancer for a New Moon. That New Moon was timed so as to appear as if the Sun and Moon came together to hold each other close while we were all holding our breath, as we waited to witness what word would come from both Pluto and the stressed financial centers of the world.

Now we approach July’s second Full Moon in Aquarius on Friday shortly before 6:43 am EDT (10:42:52 UTC). Over the next several days, as the Moon moves from the end of Sagittarius (when today started), through Capricorn and finally into Aquarius to oppose the Leo Sun, you might want to consider how best to observe the event.

Surely you will not want to trivialize all you have served to witness, and taken pains to learn, by chattering idly about what (or what does not) constitute a ‘blue’ Moon.

Rather, you might want to attest to the courage, erudition and strength of those who have faced every test and overcome every doubt, done so with a resolve to persist in and for all that their inner divinity can be said to be. Just like you have. Which is more than enough reason to reiterate to others (just as the last Full Moon of July is symbolically reiterating the first) the first sentence of this piece: thank goodness you are still here.

Offered In Service

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

Planet Waves is running a membership drive.
Read more in Solstice Fire and the Art of Service, by Eric Francis.

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

I’m here to change history. If we want a change we can really truly make it happen.”
—Sandra Bland, b. 1987, d. Waller County Jail, Texas, on July 10, 2015.

Yet another theatre shooting ended a week that gave us an indecisive Jeb, a creatively dramatic Rand, and a copycat Lindsey, all vying for attention and sucked into the vortex that is Donald. You’d think Bush the Youngest declaring Medicare obsolete, then walking it back as he does most of his talking points, would grab some attention. Or that Rand Paul taking a chain saw to the IRS code, or Lindsey Graham doing violence to his cell phone after Trump outed his number, would tickle the masses, but no. All eyes were glued to our big-mouthed national embarrassment, who — capturing first place with the radical right as the “tell ’em like it is” candidate  — is making it plain what the Republican party has come to.

Two young women are dead in Louisiana, nine wounded. The shooter, described as a middle-aged drifter (who killed himself rather than be captured) is being vetted at this writing, authorities looking for motive. That seems at cross-purpose to me. He’s white, so it won’t be labeled terrorism — white folks get a pass on that, wrongfully. That he had mental health issues is a given, no one opens fire in a crowd who has all their bb’s in the pack. Still, what we SHOULD be vetting is our absurdly lax law giving us access to guns  and our heartbreaking inability to establish reasonable controls and safeguards, both of which the President has identified as his largest regret in office, thus far.

Despite anything the NRA might propose — everyone packing heat in the movie theatre, for instance — engaging the shooter in a gun fight would have created a shitstorm of bullets, even more havoc and wounding, if not more death. I’m surprised that didn’t happen, frankly. While I’m not anti-self-defense, in Louisiana — with some of the most lenient gun restrictions in the nation — you’d think someone would have been better prepared.

Since the shooter walked out with the crowd (before sighting the cops and running back in the theatre), it might have been productive if someone in the audience had one of those pink tasers in her purse — you know, hostess gift at the down-home Tupperware Party? — although even that makes me cringe. Still, there is a vast difference between tasing to stun and shooting to kill. One is self-defense, the other seems to me a bridge too far.

We’re very familiar with death in this country. We like to think that war and displacement only occur somewhere else in the world, that oppression and cruel conditions are only possible far from our shores, but that’s fantasy and it’s becoming more obvious every day.  We started to notice not that long ago. The Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Missouri, seems a lifetime ago, but it was just last August. Remarkably, it provided a turning point regarding police reform, a critical need pushed forward in large part by a group of activists who named themselves #BlackLivesMatter.

Separate from the Department of Justice investigation into Ferguson’s police department and Brown’s death — which found that the cops routinely engaged in profiling and excessive force, as well as violating the constitutional rights of the city residents by “pattern or practice of unlawful conduct” —  the President’s commission on police reform issued recommendations this March that included “establishment of external and independent criminal investigations” of officer shooting or in-custody death.

It did not take a presidential commission to convince most on-lookers that this was a grievous situation of police exploitation and cover-up, just one of thousands occurring in this nation and routinely ignored — unless those on-lookers were white. Early polls indicated a white finger pointed at black troublemakers, and a complete misunderstanding of the perils of “breathing while black.”

Here’s the good news: we’ve come a long way, although it certainly came at a price. White America is quickly waking up to the disparities of systemic racial bias. Oh, not the smug conservative farts on the Supreme Court or the crusty old fools that still watch the FOX propaganda channel to validate that Obama — and his ‘kind’ — are the real problem in America. No, not them, hanging on to their world-view through thick and thin.

The rest of us are getting an education, a reality check, if you will. Certainly the kids are aware of the inequality situation, as are those of us who have noted the long list of people of color who have died in this revealing year since Ferguson. Statistics point to one black death every 28 hours, many of them brutally senseless.

Recently, poor oblivious Dem candidate, Lincoln Chafee, put his foot in it at Netroot’s Nation, confronted by a chanting Black Lives Matter crowd. Chafee, a particularly well-mannered man and one born to privilege in the nation’s smallest state, agreed by saying that “Black lives matter, white lives matter, ALL lives matter.” When he was booed, he seemed perplexed and repeated the sentence, more slowly.

Over at FOX, much was made about those black folks hooting at one of their own who was, after all, only speaking up for caucasians. They too, missed the point. The point of the movement — yes, it’s a movement and it’s gathering steam — is to make clear that black life is devalued in this nation, as proven by the dreadful statistics, and that is the issue taking prominence at this moment. The protesters wanted recognition by white America that they, as representatives of Black America, were on equal footing as American citizens. Yes, all life matters — but not in that particular conversation at that time.

Chafee was being asked to respond to the desperate need for action regarding the African-American population at crosshairs in cities across the nation, and he flubbed it. Well, Rhode Island isn’t famous for its ghetto scenes and racial disruption, I suppose, so Lincoln got a lesson in broader presidential politics — but the response from conservatives, pointing to this exchange with glee, shows how tone-deaf they are to the actual problem at hand. It is not within their tradition to figure it out, since it would shatter their mythology of superiority.

But here’s one of those things that’s changing quickly, adding fuel to the fire that finds not just government untrustworthy, but all of the justice system: the call  that ‘young black men’ are dying all around the nation has to expand to include not just women of color, but people of all colors who do not have the means to defend themselves.

Economist and populist pundit Robert Reich argues that we mustn’t allow “… the progressive movement to split into a “Black lives matter” movement and an “economic justice” movement.” He writes:

This would only play into the hands of the right.

For decades Republicans have exploited the economic frustrations of the white working and middle class to drive a wedge between races, channeling those frustrations into bigotry and resentment.

The Republican strategy has been to divide-and-conquer. They want to prevent the majority of Americans – poor, working class, and middle-class, blacks, Latinos, and whites – from uniting in common cause against the moneyed interests.

We must not let them.

While I understand the desire for validation from the white community, we must become aware how much a class issue this is — even more than racial, although perhaps not so overtly. Eventually we are going to find, I think, that — different moment, similar  context and stealing no virtue from the demand that racist genocide end  — Lincoln Chafee was right as rain. ALL lives matter. All colors, all sexes, all classes, and that’s because it isn’t a simple matter of racism that is driving the problem. It’s a misunderstanding of purpose by the law enforcement community, taking clues from a paradigm fighting to hold on to power. In short, this an ethical matter of civil liberty in the face of abusive authority, and that, unless addressed by a motivated public, will define our future on every level.

First, the particulars. I’ve been following issues of police brutality for much of a decade, my go-to girl on this is Digby over at Hullabaloo (and Salon) who shares a loathing for authority with a taser in its hand (let alone a service revolver). Unhappily, my scads of examples are hiding in my next-to-dead computer, awaiting liberation at the hands of some (pricey) techy type, so I can’t flood you with the gory details — or perhaps happily, given the content. But here are a few examples.

We all remember the woman who, apparently disoriented by driving into a White House fence, was chased to the Capitol building in October of 2013. Hemmed in by police vehicles, when she put her car in reverse, bumping up against a patrol car, she was shot five times, killing her, the bullets miraculously missing her one-year-old daughter in the back seat.

How about the eleven-year-old Bronx school girl who witnessed a snowball fight last winter that lead to allegations of cell phone theft. Mistaken for the perp, she was manhandled, thrown to the ground and cuffed. While she was released to her parents eventually, she is still dealing with the system and marked as a troublemaker, even though she was the one terrorized by those who have pledged to “serve and protect.” She will likely mistrust authority for all of her life, and with reason.

Here’s a piece by Charles Pierce detailing the five-year-old murder — no other word will do for this car shooting — of an unarmed mother of four by police outside Atlanta, and the complete corruption of the justice system in both overlooking and dismissing any culpability, including a congratulatory  discussion of how the target —  her head — exploded.

In January, cops fired eight bullets into the car that a young 17-year-old Hispanic woman was driving trying to escape. They felt compelled to answer the threat to their life by killing this girl for driving 16 feet, going all of 11 miles an hour before hitting a fence. She was, they testified, “too close” to them.

And if that’s not enough, here are a dozen more black women who fell prey to the system. There are fewer, but no less serious, allegations regarding many white men and women — many of them with identifiable mental illness, which is dealt with  as a character flaw that makes them ‘dangerous.’  If they aren’t killed outright, the for-profit prison system folds them in with little concern for their treatment.

Much as Michael Brown will be remembered as someone who was picked off for minimal reason and the subsequent, unjustifiable response of law enforcement in the Heartland, from street to court, Sandra Bland is going to be the poster child for naked aggression and abuse of power. Even so unlikely an accuser as The Donald has remarked on how disturbing he found this sequence of policing events. Perhaps you’ve seen the clip before, but it’s worth further scrutiny, because — as Larry Wilmore made clear — this is a study in escalation of authoritarianism. Given the deep divide with which this nation is forced to deal — along with the fixity of the Aquarian signature that will color much of our future — we need to get this under control now!

The video is a symposium of what’s wrong with law enforcement at this point. It presumes that the citizen has NO rights, when in fact she does. It presumes she may NOT question authority, which in fact she can. It assumes that absolute unquestioning  obedience is the first and only requirement for this woman to escape violence to her person. That is not what the Bill of Rights guarantees and is, in fact, a vivid example of what prompted its writing.

We have turned away, too often, from these stories, thinking there’s nothing we can do about them. We’ve given away our own essential freedoms by refusing to defend the liberties of those around us who are receiving the short end of the stick. We have scorched ourselves on this kind of oppression, probably not feeling that heat as much as the victimized citizens we’ve discussed here. We’ve seen the judicial system too often compromised, those with money dancing away from worse crimes scott free. We’ve seen the system no longer working. If it didn’t work for Sandra Bland, I guarantee it will not work for you and me.

With Venus slipping into retrograde today, we have several weeks ahead of us to rethink what is important to us, what we value. That can be a very private matter, very personal — or it can be very broad, as is the codified system of checks and balances that kept the ship of state on an even keel for a few brief decades. If we’re to keep her afloat, we all have to decide if we value Lady Liberty enough to create a groundswell of demand for her restoration.

To me, Venus has always represented comfort, a kind of authentic skin we occasionally slip into that soothes and allows us to present our best self. Given the mayhem of the moment, our larger national skin, unhappily, cannot feel all right to any of us today. The frightened, constricted response that puts a gun in the hand of law enforcement with no checks and balances is the fascism of absolute control.

ANY whiff of that energy must be dealt with from an intelligent perspective, putting paranoia and hysteria behind. There are answers to be found in retraining, in psychological testing, in inclusive culture and the review of professional ethics. There are techniques to be learned that de-escalate violence rather than provoking it. There are spiritual concepts that help us to shed old biases and let go of irrational fears.

But we need to WANT those badly enough to take notice, to become an active voice for healing the wounds of separation, to find commonality and respect for one another that will produce positive outcome.

Sandra Bland told us that she came here to change history, and she may have done just that. Her voice will not be silenced in this fight for civil liberty and balanced justice. We have come a long way in a short time, seems to me, and with a newly energized president who understands every nuanced bit of the problem. There’s every indication that he’s working behind the curtain to deal with the prison system, judicial inequity, and too-tough sentencing for drug violations. His ability to do what he’d like to do will very much depend on the energy that you and I can bring to that demand! Pushing him ahead on this will provide him the cover he needs to accomplish change in the short time left to him.

Let’s bring our best dynamic to the process, shall we? With the news of the day, we have another opportunity to demonize the man with the gun and idealize the victims, or perhaps, instead, we could see the vulnerability that has shoved so many of us to the edge. Once we stop placing blame, and see this matter of gun control as equally impacting us all — black, white, sane and not so much — there are options in front of us that weren’t available when our hearts were closed.

This shooting in Louisiana may be a similar fulcrum for tipping gun legislation as happened last year — begun with Michael Brown and ending with Sandra Bland — with a clear look at structured racism within the judicial system, leading to evolvement and adjustment. With Venus whispering in our ear, asking us to rethink, review, renew, perhaps we will realize that we need a more loving, more temperate and more inclusive way forward into a healing future for all our citizens. As ever — and especially for all of our brothers and sisters under the skin — we can only win this battle for tomorrow if we lead with our hearts.

Planet Waves is running a membership drive.
Read more in Solstice Fire and the Art of Service, by Eric Francis.

If there were one phrase to express about half the astrology as it would apply to your personal life right now (and even through to the end of July), it might be “busy, busy, busy.” If there were one image to express the other half of the personally applicable astrology, it would be a young, supple tree bending in a stiff wind.

Hence, if there is validity to astrology, your part in the solar system right now would entail demonstrating either intensity or resilience as appropriate.

What’s appropriate depends on who you are. President Obama, for example, has a reputation for thriving in the heat of high-pressure situations that might overwhelm others. While such a trait is laudable, there is no shame in not evincing it.

Indeed, there are some who become habituated to the hectic, sacrificing their capacity for contemplation and patience in the bargain. Even so, there is nothing inherently bad or discrediting about craving an active life.

What really matters is awareness, especially self-awareness. It’s important to know what works for you as regards to both stimulation and sustainability. It’s a personal matter. Since you can realistically expect to control or change only yourself, acceptance is just as important as initiative, with discernment being the crucial factor.

Fortunately, astrology — especially in its modern form, helps with discernment. Behind us are the days when planets were divided into good guys (benefics) and bad guys (malefics). Astrology is not as cut-and-dried as it used to be, leaving more room for you to take responsibility, participate and determine your personal outcomes.

As Robert Hand put it in the October/November edition of The Mountain Astrologer: “There are no benefics and no malefics. There are planets that are used outside of their proper level on the planetary ladder.” In other words, modern astrology is largely a matter of context and discernment of values. That makes astrology a more authentic reflection of the realities of your life.

The first priority for astrologers (including you) must necessarily be the luminaries: the Sun and Moon. They are the largest, brightest objects in our sky.

In addition to the illumination they provide, only the Sun and Moon exhibit a substantially perceptible gravitational effect on Earth – the tides. Also, the luminaries are the trend setters and primary definers. All major aspects (angular relationships on the zodiac circle) are interpreted through the template of the Sun and Moon aspecting each other.

Today is the first full day of the Sun in Leo, and the Moon (right after entering Scorpio late today – or early tomorrow, depending on your time zone) will be halfway between its new phase (a conjunction between Sun and Moon), and its full phase (an opposition, with the Sun and Moon on opposite sides of the zodiac circle and the sky, a separation of 180 degrees).

Halfway between new and full phases is a square (a separation of 90 degrees) between the Sun and Moon called the first quarter. This aspect implies tension originating within you (although it may not seem that way), and something you can change and/or control if you take responsibility.

Additionally, both Sun and Moon will also be making a lot of aspects to other planets over the next handful of days. In sum, the luminaries are now combining to represent initiative (new in a sign), activity (lots of aspects) and some tension (a square aspect to each other) — all of which imply busyness and a need for some resilience on your part.

In addition to the Sun and Moon, Mercury, Venus and Mars constitute the so-called personal planets — so called because they repeat their cycles many times over the course of your life. Hence, the personal planets are probably what you want to look at when seeking information from the sky that corresponds with the more immediate, frequent, ephemeral rhythms and cycles of your life.

Right now, Mercury being on the other side of the Sun (or, to put it another way, conjoined with the Sun in Leo) correlates with Mercury moving as fast as it gets (about two degrees every day on the zodiac). It also correlates with Mercury being about half way between periods of retrograde. All combined, that makes Mercury an additional emblem implying (but not causing) hectic tension.

Mars is also making some energetic aspects from Cancer, most notably a square (emulating the Sun and Moon at first quarter) to galvanizing Uranus in Aries. That square will be exact on Saturday, but is functional now, and represents yet another echo of intensity necessitating a supple response.

Venus, among the personal planets, is the exception. Venus is practically stationary in Virgo from our perspective on Earth, holding the tension before its next retrograde period begins on Saturday.

As such, Venus correlates with your option to make or be an exception, if that’s what works for you. Rather than being compelled to keep up a pace you can’t sustain, the example symbolically being set by Venus is to be in touch with your own values. With such self-awareness, you can choose.

Please keep in mind, however, that even a decision to slow down might require some resilience on your part. Social pressure can be very compelling, as can unreasonable expectations you may have for yourself. You may have to sit with (and hold) some tension in return for sitting out. In the face of stiff prevailing winds beyond your control, however, discretion can indeed be the greater part of valor.

Offered In Service

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