Wednesday night at about 11:30 pm EDT (Thursday 3:30 UTC), the Sun entered Leo, ushering us into the middle month of the season. This sets the general tone astrologically (and it’s a warm, golden one), but another significant event Saturday is contributing an undercurrent you’ll want to begin working with consciously: Venus stationing retrograde in Virgo.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

Let’s start with the Leo action. Leo is the sign of kings, but monarchy is not a terribly relevant construct these days.

At its essence, Leo is not about lording over all you survey and being bowed down to, though some Leos can get caught up in that unfortunate posture. In its most evolved state, Leo is about leading through love — which can seem to take courage, especially in this era where personal online PR is everything.

Now, Mercury joins the Sun in Leo at 8:14 am EDT (12:14 UTC) and the two form a conjunction about seven hours later. Having the planet of the mind so close to the Sun (consciousness) can really boost communication in positive ways. It can also make it hard to see what your ego is up to; so far, I’ve not heard of anyone making polarized sunglasses for the psyche.

So the question is: How often do you actually fill the role of ‘spiritual royalty’ — that is, not by your own ego’s assessment, but through unassuming actions (leadership) clearly guided by your heart?

Thankfully, the Sun and Mercury are conjunct the asteroid Eros. Eros’ main theme is love, especially in erotic form. The message here is that there’s support in being loving, especially if you’re willing to shine it out on others, rather than waiting to ‘get some’.

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Read more in Solstice Fire and the Art of Service, by Eric Francis.

Dear Madame,

I have a friend who’s been through hard times lately, and by that I mean not the usual set-back. In the past few months I’ve done several kindnesses for her, including giving her money for groceries and rent, to help her get back on her feet.

I’m a good-hearted Taurus who can’t stand to see someone without even the smallest security, so I was shocked to find out recently that she’s been giving some of these funds to others, like her former boyfriend who I consider a total sponge. I know Taureans are supposed to be finishing some partnership lessons this summer with Saturn in Scorpio finally leaving their partnership house — and this person used to be a business partner. Is it time for me to cut her off?
— Confused Cow

Dear Co-Co,

I wouldn’t want your good-heartedness besmirched. So let’s see what we can do.

First, it would help to identify the true nature of this relationship. Once a person plays a particular role in our lives, it’s difficult to relinquish that image or recast the actor. In other words, once our brains cast the role, we get comfortable with that image and begin to stereotype our expectations of its performance. So what do you expect from this person, your friend?

You say this person used to be a business partner. In astrological terms, a business partnership is a 1st/7th house position as equals. As a 1st/7th house relationship, any money that’s shared between two people of comparable status or power hopefully would be managed on terms agreeable to both parties.

Today, however, you are no longer equals if you are no longer business partners. It’s clear, also, you two are on considerably unequal footing in finances. Knowing that, and knowing you are no longer equal investors in a project, you can’t continue to expect your friend to play the role of the co-equal ‘partner’. This is the role you’re used to her playing. But is this the role you unconsciously still want and expect her to fulfill, socially and emotionally? Think hard about that one.

Because she can’t. Right now, at least, your friend can’t be the 7th house person. Instead of being an equal, she’s fallen into hard times where she lacks the means to choose her role and her place in life. And you play the part of charitable benefactor.

Suddenly you’re the boss, the parent, the loan officer. As such, you expect to have more say in what she does with her money. This is true even if it doesn’t accord with your desired and self-comforting image of “good-hearted” buddy. In fact, you DO expect to name the terms. And because the relationship is now unequal, you also expect her to agree to the terms.

This is hard on friendship. In fact, there’s no friendship between you two right now. True friendship is an open-ended and self-selecting relationship between two people who view one another as equals. Your old bonds of friendship ended as soon as she fell on hard times and you took up the job of The Bank. It’s true even if you feel sorry for her and (rightfully) know she can’t get back up without a hand.

If you continue to hand over money or other support, you need to recognize this and stop insisting she behave like a venture partner in your latest project. She needs help, and if you want to help, do so. If you don’t like the terms under which she currently uses your generosity, then change them.

But don’t expect her to accept them when you make your offer. She, too, remembers you as a partner and may be unaware of her own conflicting expectations about roles in the relationship, assuming you are both still friendly equals. Thus, she uses money as she sees fit, like an adult who’s used to managing her own decisions. Even if it means some of the money goes to an unworthy ex-boyfriend.

Perhaps it’s time to practice that ancient form of charity where the ‘right hand knows not what the left hand does’. The original context of this wisdom is that we give not to be recognized for the gift or charity. We give discreetly and modestly so that our hands, in ignorance of the other’s actions, cannot conference about the matter, and so come together in self-congratulatory appraising applause for our good-heartedness.

Generously yours,

Madame Z

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Read more in Solstice Fire and the Art of Service, by Eric Francis.

Imagine you are standing on astrology’s zodiac circle of signs just inside the territory of Leo, where the Sun is ruler (and where the emblematic Sun will be after tomorrow). Then, envision a friend standing in the very last part of the sign Cancer, where the Moon is ruler (and where the symbolic Sun is today). Finally, picture holding hands with your friend, and that your hands are clasped directly over the line (or cusp) where Cancer and Leo meet.

Then, please allow yourself to imagine that you and your friend agree to each go your own way for the time being, walking around the zodiac in opposite directions at exactly the same pace to meet precisely on the other side, 180 degrees away. (Note: you and your friend are not impersonating any particular planets in the sky in this exercise.)

If you were to walk in a counter-clockwise direction (emulating direct motion), you would eventually leave Leo behind and step into Virgo, where Mercury rules.

Your friend, walking clockwise (impersonating retrograde motion) would simultaneously retrace Cancer to eventually enter Gemini (albeit through the back door) where Mercury also rules. Interesting, that.

Your own journey around the circle would next take you from Virgo to Libra, ruled by Venus. In synchronized ambulation, your friend would step into Taurus (the other sign ruled by Venus) just as you were entering Libra.

Continuing your circular journey, Scorpio (where Mars alone ruled before the discovery of Pluto) would be your next destination, and your friend will concurrently have reached Aries — the other dominion of Mars. The next sign on your itinerary after Scorpio would be Sagittarius, domain of Jupiter. In the meantime, your partner would be making her or his way into Pisces, where Jupiter was also preeminent before the discovery of Neptune.

At the end of your trip would be Capricorn, realm of Saturn. Your collaborator would likewise conclude explorations in Aquarius, where Saturn also reigned without rival until the discovery of Uranus.

Clasping hands once again, but this time where Capricorn and Aquarius meet, you might share the details of your separate journeys. If such a discussion were to include the succession of signs (and corresponding rulers) respectively traced, your combined experiences would reveal an impenetrably ancient order in the zodiac — an order that begins at the cusp between Cancer and Leo.

There are no archaeological or anthropological records of astrology in the process of development. No matter where on Earth you go, no matter what culture you study, the earliest surviving evidence of astrology is of a fully functional system. Hence, the documented, as opposed to speculated, origin of how the original planetary rulers (all visible to the unaided eye) came to be arranged on the zodiac is lost to irretrievable antiquity.

When the Sun enters Leo tomorrow shortly before 11:31 pm EDT (03:30:24 UTC Thursday), the solar symbol of consciousness will once again make its own annual journey across what is thus a highly consequential cusp. It’s the place where this missive first asked you to imagine your hand conjoined with that of your friend. The place where a mysterious, yet entirely natural order in the zodiac begins.

Assuming you are awake as tomorrow segues into Thursday, you might want to stand in simple awareness of that mystery. You may want to sit with the apparently simple cypher that so many take for granted. Rather than trying to parse out the details of aspects, getting all wrapped up in what it ‘means’, you could simply consider feeling the moment and connecting with times long past, beyond scholastic recovery.

For in every cell of your body, there is a record of life’s entire history on Earth. In your DNA (and probably many other cellular components), mysteries are recorded. Through your genes and the essence of your physical being, all that preceded history is understood. That understanding would include the origins of astrology.

Whether astrology was somehow developed by humanity, or whether it was in some way bequeathed to us whole is something you can grasp and know, but not through the abstract machinations of your mind. That’s how tomorrow or Thursday would be an appropriate occasion to put your intellect aside for awhile.

That’s how this week constitutes a good and appropriate time to ask the manifestations of fire, earth, air and water in your body to tell you of their own journey as the Sun once again crosses a consequential cusp. Perhaps by doing so, you can achieve a significant crossing as well. 

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 Amanda Moreno

What a week — a potent New Moon and new images of Pluto, the lord of the underworld — or at least one of his masculine celestial representatives. While writing my column for last week, I had no idea Pluto and its surrounding themes, particularly the nuclear ones, would be making an appearance on the world stage. Now that I’m paying attention again, I’m delighted to see the underworld getting some airtime.

Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day

I shouldn’t be surprised, really, that something related to nuclear power made headlines this week. The detonation of the first nuclear bomb does, of course, coincide with the ‘discovery’ of Pluto, reflecting its themes of complete destruction, chaos and volcanic eruptions from down below — be that below place the underbelly of the Earth or the unconscious.

Of course we also have an invigorated thread about underworld themes. Although I’ve enjoyed looking at the various images of Pluto, nothing has sparked excitement within me quite as much as this article, which discusses the naming of many of Pluto’s newly discovered features for creatures related to underworld mythologies. I see in that the potential for some old mythologies to re-enter the collective consciousness.

My spirituality has evolved to embrace the mythological as vital to our culture’s ability to navigate a global rite of passage. Realizing that all of those underworld mythologies are being re-animated within collective consciousness during this time is exciting to me not just because it’s all so intellectually fascinating and gives us the opportunity to actually talk and think about death, but because those images and stories get the imagination pumping.

Juicy imaginations are the key to developing a new, sustainable, global mythology or mythologies. More than that, a hearty imagination is a key ingredient in scientific breakthrough, and something we need more of if we’re going to create sustainable options for things like clean energy.

According to Joseph Campbell, “myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation.” Underworld mythologies are particularly important because they place us in contact with the life/death/life cycle and therefore in contact with the organization of the universe.

Western culture has such a deep and profound fear of death. We constantly attempt to banish the reality of death, stripping our social, psychological and cosmological views of any recognition of this completely unavoidable facet of life. Instead of using mythology or even natural cycles to illustrate the regenerative and creative aspects of death, we act as if the death of a body is a definitive and concrete ending. It is my belief that this avoidance inhibits our ability to have healthy, transformative relationships at the soul level with other beings, with our food and surroundings, and with ourselves.

A teacher of mine often says that the human psyche is constantly throwing up seeds for a new global myth, marking the signs of spiritual revolution, and these are most often and obviously found in dreams. Dreams are the way that the psyche speaks to us, and in times of paradigm shift dream images can help us to understand how our personal unconscious speaks, elucidating our ever-shifting personal mythologies within the context of the collective.

It often seems like as we become capable of understanding our personal mythologies, whether by acknowledging past stories we’ve told ourselves, or recognizing frameworks we’re moving into, we have to encounter and experience them. We then add those stories to the deepening collective myth of the times we live in — even if we live in a culture that seems to think ‘myth’ is a synonym for ‘lie’. The beauty and the burden here lies in that as we shape these interwoven stories, we have the power to transform them.

I wonder sometimes whether we should be reworking old myths or going off on an entirely new path. It seems that in many ways, the obvious answer is that we are doing the latter, creating something completely different. Carl Jung believed that we would ultimately re-work and revitalize the Christian myth. In that sense, the nuclear myth, which seems to be the prevailing myth of our time, encompasses the Beast-Messiah complex quite nicely.

I don’t know, though. I wonder how our general cultural ambivalence towards mythology, and unconscious creation of overarching stories, increases our feelings of being acted upon by outside forces, and of being victims. I like to think we can move away from waiting for something from the outside to save us, or blaming something out there for our hurts and pains.

Perhaps all of this Pluto stuff will just fall away, with only a little ripple of collective awareness of underworld mythologies. It’s quite the dynamic, isn’t it? With the closing of the Uranus-Pluto square, I’m intrigued at the possibility of a cultural deepening. Not that I’m suggesting pictures from outer space will definitely trigger that. But I am aware that those Uranian lightning bolts and the mental trauma and liberation associated with them tend to register more quickly than the cavernous tumult of emotional Plutonian transformation. So we shall see, I suppose.