By the time you read this, we will have just experienced two notable peaks of energy: the Capricorn Full Moon, and the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in Leo (which you can see with your own eyes in the sky at dusk). Both were exact yesterday, July 1, but the energy is still rippling out — and that energy is feeding into a third aspect: one that is prompting you to make a decision.
Viewing the Venus-Jupiter conjunction over Back Cove, Portland, Maine, on July 1, 2015. Photo by Amanda Painter.
First, though, the Venus-Jupiter conjunction is a story with legs. Venus is gearing up to retrograde in a few weeks, which means that, by the time it is done with that process, it will have conjoined Jupiter a total of three times.
Venus conjunct Jupiter is generally viewed as a very fortunate, beauty-filled and ‘lucky’ aspect — though as with all things Jupiter is involved with, you can expect to have to provide your own follow-through to capitalize on the mojo.
This week, with the first conjunction still in effect, it’s a good time to put yourself out there in the public sphere. Don’t be shy about showing what you’re worth.
With the second conjunction on Aug. 4 (also in Leo), when Venus is retrograde, you might encounter something that feels like a reversal, a step backwards or some other form of reconsideration connected to what you’ve put into motion. Don’t’ despair. The boat has not sailed without you; you’re just getting an opportunity to see where you need to shore up your efforts, redirect them, or otherwise align better with your highest values.
Lacking any context for your question, let’s assume that you actually find some astrology useful but loathe the “bullshit” remainder. In other words, you’re a friend of astrology looking for an honest answer.
To answer your question, we’ll need different buckets for this bullshit. Not all cow patties stink the same, and the turds get topical once you get used to the smell.
But here’s the big picture: most Bullshit Astrology is personality based. In an age that has practically deified narcissism, Bullshit Astrology offers a portable alter upon which you can sacrifice any ‘difficult’ or ‘hard’ feelings to the god of your self image, satisfied the whole thing’s ordained. Or reduce your enemies to one-dimensional one-liners.
And we know how easily narcissism (and simple insecurity) is exploited for cash.
I could go on all day, but I don’t have all day for this. So we’ll start with the obvious offenders, and some secrets behind the world of popular (and sometimes Bullshit) astrology.
Turd Bucket #1: General interest Sun Sign astrology books. Ever notice how Sun sign books tend to repeat the same shopworn, clichéd descriptions? Here’s why. Mainstream publishers have no interest in actual astrology. Shocking, I know. But they do love the way it sells, and you can trace this success all the way back to the 1920s and ‘30s when Sun sign astrology got cookin’ for the first time.
Many mainstream or ‘gift’ books are written by in-house staff (or ghost writers) who cut & paste the last edition, tweak the cultural references, and then ship it over to the art department, where they spiff up the front window with a new vector graphic, and — ta da! Next’s year’s “Total Aquarius Truths!” Just in time for the holiday$.
Turd Bucket #2: Horoscopes, the whipping boy of the astrology world. At one time smart, writerly, insightful astrologers usually wrote these things. Periodicals were known for their horoscope columnists, and subscribers loyally supported their favorites. The astrology wasn’t usually bullshit.
However, in a cost-cutting piqué, media producers in recent years have sacked many actual astrologers or cut horoscope columns altogether. Astrologers compete with the hundreds of horoscopes offered, gratis, on the Internet today, many of which are computer generated.
Sun sign horoscopes lived on as ‘entertainment’ for almost a century, and the logical consequence of that assumption is what’s happening now: editorial direction need not apply. If your horoscopes lack verve and intelligence — or accuracy — they’re most likely written by a junior staff member who makes them up from whole cloth. Because, entertainment. It’s all fiction, anyway. Amirite?
Turd Bucket #3: The computerized astrology report. If one report’s great, how ‘bout seven million? For many, this is the gateway drug of the serious astrology world. Yes, the best-written reports give glimpses of the true person beneath all that paper, the life buried beneath social conditioning. But sorting the shit from the shinola? They can’t.
Business savvy programmers with astro-chops and a knack for knowing the weaknesses of human behavior jumped into the Internet boat early and rowed that thing hard and straight to stardom and wealth. Answers about Love? Betrayal? Loneliness? Lottery numbers? Come and get ‘em!
Yes, they built empires that introduced millions to a strange and largely hidden art, but their creations reduced a 4,000-year-old tradition to a 40-page document, for the price of less than your dinner tonight. Talk about devaluation.
Turd Bucket #4: NewAgeism. Who knows when the New Age began (1781? 1846? 1916? 1968?) but folks are still selling the hell out of it, so the shop’s not closing anytime soon. NewAgeism is the astrological stage next for many: if you’re not gonna get laid with astrology, you might as well get engaged to an Enlightened Being, right?
Pros: spend enough time looking at the gears in this watch, and you can’t help but think that the mechanism’s much, much bigger than you. So for a moment you do step outside your ego, and discover your spiritual being — which, in itself, is a good thing.
Cons: You become a VSP (Very Spiritual Person), with astrology the filter through which you strain the gnat of quotidian materia — proof of your evolution as an enlightened being of the 5th Ray. Here’s where the marriage of astrology and NewAgeism gets unholy. Astrology is not a religion or a spiritual system. It predates Jung, Freud, Blavatsky, Rudyar and, heck, even Jesus. Astrology belongs to no one and everyone.
Unlike astrology, the current ‘new age’ movement lacks a system and historical precedent to define it. Throwing them together ends up looking like Silly Putty: you can squish it into any shape, press it against some words and made something like the original image, but never as clear. Which doth invoke much disdain, and the creation of things like the New Age Bullshit Generator.
Turd Bucket #5: Pinterest/Twitter/Facebook. Sun Sign self-absorption reductio ad absurdum. It’s everywhere, like dust mites — bad for your health and almost impossible to avoid or eliminate. “A Leo friend would never turn their back on you.” “When a Virgo says they care, it’s for real.”
Who writes this stuff?! Geniuses.
Geniuses of marketing, I mean. Why bother with the book, when you can pin it in seconds? Your Inner Goddess as click bait. But hey, your friends will you know faster. Right? Don’t mess with me: “I’m a bad-ass Scorpio.” And monetized, as well!
I’m sorry to say that, indeed, much of the popular astrology you see is probably inauthentic, narcissistic, navel-gazey bullshit. Or if you prefer, it’s as much astrology as Velveeta is cheese. Both are basically ‘products’ built for convenience and commerce. And like Velveeta, this popular astrology gets extruded through machinery meant for mass production. It’s found everywhere, is largely inoffensive and inexpensive, comforts the comfortless, and sells like gangbusters to unsophisticated palates.
However, the historical practice of astrology has been more like real cheese making. It takes time, and it takes training to get it right. The varieties of astrology run from mild to sharp, and everything in between. Beyond personality and the natal chart, did you know about the astrological art of forecasting weather? How ‘bout the astrology of stock markets, geology, politics, news, sport and health?
Nothing under the heavens has escaped its scope. Nothing. And the people who practice and study astrology have been and are equally diverse: priests, astronomers, philosophers, mathematicians, geologists, computer engineers, lawyers, professors, journalists, artists and musicians, to name a few backgrounds. Speak three languages? Sure! Polymaths? We got ‘em! Buddhists, Jungians, Jews, Catholics and Christians. Anarchists, atheists and agnostics. Witches and Gnostics, too. And every political stripe.
Diverse, we are. But we all dig the weirdness of astrology, and its wonder. Its true beauty can only be glimpsed in the best horoscope columns, books, and websites. Fortunately, they can be found (cough). You are, after all, reading this on Planet Waves — a website that champions not only the true art of astrology, but also the Art of Service.
It’s my hope you’re encouraged enough to dig for more of these gems, assured by my words that astrology is much more than a crass cash grab. And assured that those who practice astrology in a way that actually offers you food for thought, healing and growth do, in fact, deserve your support and participation in tangible ways, such as through membership. It’s so much more than bullshit in a bucket.
In the Tuileries Gardens, which stretch elegantly between the Louvre and the Place de la Concorde, there is a small carnival that sets itself up each summer, where today children were trying, with all their might, to walk on water, inside plastic bubbles.
Paris-based photographer Danielle Voirin travels the world and documents her experiences in photographs. She takes street photography and photojournalism a shade beyond even art, to the level of mysticism. You may see more of her work on her website DanielleVoirin.com, or her alt website, DaniVoirin.com.
You may be rich or poor, you may be blind or lame — you may be may be living in another country under another name, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.
— Bob Dylan
The Capricorn Full Moon shortly before 10:20 pm EDT tomorrow (02:19:33 UTC Thursday) will be the first of two Full Moons in July. Subdivisions of the civil calendar don’t usually mean a lot to astrologers. Even so, based on its aspects and timing, the Full Moon tomorrow appears to be as just much in service to measures of civil history as to the epochs implied by astrology.
In her Planet Waves column yesterday, Fe Bongolan adroitly brought us up to date with a synopsis of your place in service to this time in civil history. Tomorrow, the Capricorn Full Moon completes the picture from astrology’s perspective.
For astrologers, tomorrow will initiate more than a civil month. Also starting with the Capricorn Full Moon will be a series of meaningful aspects from the luminaries (Sun and Moon) to what one might call planets of history: Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.
Unlike the so-called personal planets (Mercury, Venus and Mars) and trans-personal planets (Jupiter and Saturn) the cycles of Uranus, Neptune and Pluto repeat over periods of time longer than the average human life expectancy. Granted, many in this day and age do indeed survive long enough to see Uranus make one full circuit of about 84 years around the Sun, and through all 12 signs of the zodiac. No human that we know of, however, lives to see Neptune (nearly 165 years) or Pluto (almost 248 years) complete even one orbit.
Nonetheless, the Cancer Sun in opposition to the Capricorn Full Moon tomorrow implicitly supports a suspicion long held by many now living. It’s the perception that you are living now to fulfill a unique place in history. It’s the idea that your choices in this life will unavoidably serve to have more influence than any who have gone before when it comes to determining the fate of our kind.
Indeed, if there is anything to astrology, both your conscious and less-than-conscious awareness of your place in service to history will have expanded considerably by the time of the Aquarius Full Moon on July 31. Appropriately, it all begins tomorrow with the Sun and Moon opposing each other in simultaneous aspects to Neptune.
Neptune is big, both literally and figuratively. From all appearances, Neptune’s symbolic influence has increased immeasurably since it first entered Pisces in April of 2011. Everywhere you look, both the upside of Neptune (which includes both inspiration and creativity, among other qualities) and its downside (which includes delusion and deception, among other liabilities), have ramped up to unprecedented and pervasive levels.
Tomorrow, the Cancer Sun will be in a precise water trine (a separation of 120 degrees) with Neptune. At the same time, the Capricorn Moon will be separated from Neptune by precisely 60 degrees, for a sextile aspect. Trines and sextiles imply amplification, emphasis and support. The trine is inferred to be both easier and potentially more dangerous than the sextile because of how it alludes to unimpeded (and therefore unregulated) flow.
Hence, the Sun (which represents waking consciousness, among other things) will be implicitly in thrall to Neptune, inferring both a trend and your part in service for at least a month. Your role is to be an intentionally conscientious governor of your own inspirations and impulses alike. It will be up to you not to get carried away.
Even if it seems like a good idea at the time, excess and extremism will almost certainly not serve the greater good. For every ounce of enthusiasm flowing through you, it will be advisable to bring an equal weight of intention and discretion. Such cautions will apply particularly to any situation where alcohol and fireworks come together this weekend. Interestingly, the Moon appears to be part of the solution.
Usually, it’s the Moon that’s associated with unconscious impulses. Given a Sun in emotional Cancer opposed by a Full Moon in Capricorn, it’s very possible the tables might be turned. Such a possibility is enhanced by the Capricorn Full Moon’s exact (to the degree) sextile to Neptune.
Sextiles, just like trines, do have a sense of reciprocation. Unlike trines, however, the flow implied by a sextile is more deliberate and conditional. Sort of like a grant or scholarship, sextiles tend to correspond with rewards based on merit, encouraging further effort (as opposed to the trine being analogous to winning a lottery).
Hence, let your own sense of whether something feels right (or wrong) inform your service in July. Also, if possible, allow things to develop at their own organic pace. The idea is that you can then be present to phases as part of a whole, rather than allowing a passing phase to be construed as conclusive and holistic.
After their concurrent reciprocal aspects to Neptune at the time of their opposition to each other, the Sun and Moon will move on to spend the first part of July moving through similarly significant aspects to Pluto and Uranus. As such, it looks to be a month when history will be served in such a way as to rival or exceed the events of June.
As part of the defining theme we call the Art of Service, Planet Waves will be there for you. We will be there with hard information. We will be there with astrological perspective. Were will be there with support for your best choices and with encouragement for your best outcomes.
What we ask in return for our conscientious practice of the Art of Service to history — and to you — is some reciprocation on your part. We pledge that, insofar as you are capable, becoming a Core Community member or giving the gift of a Planet Waves subscription to somebody you care about will go a long way to put you on the upside of history.
Even if you cannot provide financial support at this time, some encouragement and morale support for the service Planet Waves provides to the world as an advertisement-free oasis would sure be appreciated. Refer somebody else to us for a read of the wealth of materials we provide gratis — and perhaps a peek at the for-pay services that support the whole endeavor.
Given that you will implicitly have to serve somebody in July, you could do a lot worse than to devote part of your service to Planet Waves. Make July the month you make the difference you were born to make. Help us help you.
Offered In Service
Paris-based photographer Danielle Voirin travels the world and documents her experiences in photographs. She takes street photography and photojournalism a shade beyond even art, to the level of mysticism. You may see more of her work on her website DanielleVoirin.com, or her alt website, DaniVoirin.com.
The sun reflected through a steamy window. Temperatures are rising in Paris this week.
Paris-based photographer Danielle Voirin travels the world and documents her experiences in photographs. She takes street photography and photojournalism a shade beyond even art, to the level of mysticism. You may see more of her work on her website DanielleVoirin.com, or her alt website, DaniVoirin.com.
When I stumbled upon Planet Waves sometime in 2010 I realized I had essentially found my soul mate in a website. The fact that I could find intelligent, honest, sensitive and shrewd writing that covered current events (the ones that truly matter and that are often ignored), sex and relationships, and politics all ensconced in the astrological paradigm was kind of like a wet dream come true.
Photo by graywacke/A Landing a Day
Since then, I’ve set out to follow my passion: healing myself and helping others to heal themselves through what I fondly refer to as “practical woo.” The gratitude and sense of incredible fortune I feel to be able to follow this path cannot be understated.
I also feel a great deal of frustration at how difficult it can be to be of service in this way, although I am careful not to sink into bitterness. There are times when it seems like our cultural infrastructures are not only impossible to work with when trying to establish oneself in a business model using a modality that is outside the norm, but that they are somehow actually trying to prevent it.
I feel quite strongly that apprenticeship and community work are important to the growth of a healer/therapist/social-service type. It’s an integral part of learning the craft as well as contributing to community. I struggled at first to ask for money for astrology readings and coaching services, and was reminded time and again that the exchange of value is an important part of spiritual services — and that that container is worth having, and that being compensated for it is necessary.
I worked through those blockages pretty quickly, but also felt the need to keep my services accessible to people who exist outside of the normal demographic that can afford something like an astrology reading. There is such value in astrology and I’m hard-pressed to contribute to a society where that knowledge is locked up in the middle and upper classes, especially as I increasingly find myself to be part of the lower class.
Just recently I reached out for help from a practitioner whose work I value greatly and learned that they could not see me because they did not have room for sliding scale clients. On the one hand I understand the business model, but on the other hand it’s frustrating to feel that desire for assistance, reach out for help, and know that you can’t have it because someone else can pay more. Ah well, these are the experiences that help us learn how to heal ourselves, right?
Balancing the desire to be of service and the desire to afford life can be tricky at times. Finding Planet Waves has not only provided me with an incomparable resource for growth and knowledge, it has helped me to understand the Art of Service, which very much has to do with finding that balance. Knowing that what goes on in these pages is accessible — memberships come at a variety of accessible and reasonable prices — is hugely important to me. Ensuring that the website remains sustainable is also hugely important to me.
I am consistently humbled by the dedication, loyalty and passion that flows through these pages — and how much I’ve come to rely on this forum for a dose of reality and a sense of stability and sanity in a world that feels increasingly chaotic and insane. Being able to participate in the form of a weekly offering is an honor and also brings me in close contact with the incredible effort it takes to keep this community going.
In the interest of full disclosure, it is perhaps important to note that my contributions here are part of my community work and are not monetarily compensated. But the value I receive from participating is huge, and as I say in this space so frequently — I truly believe that claiming responsibility for the wellbeing of our communities is vital to shifting our paradigm into something that supports life.
The kind of service provided by the folks at Planet Waves is truly an art form and one that tends to be undervalued in the ways that can keep it sustainable. So, if you’re able and haven’t done so already, please do consider one of the membership options here. In the true ethos of accessibility, Eric’s fantastic team is willing to work with you if you need the monthly fee to be lowered a bit, once again showing that the priority here is, in fact, service — but we all need to claim membership in order to keep it viable.
Before you read this week’s tarot reading, which, itself, is about service, I wanted to speak a little to a phrase you might have encountered on Planet Waves if you’ve been visiting recently: the Art of Service.
Planet Waves is small enough to embody that most precious of experiences in this vast, often impersonal, place called the World Wide Web: community. It was community that drew me in when I visited some eight years ago; it was community that encouraged me to take part in many of the post discussions; it has been community that has helped me find and enjoy many friendships, online and off; and it is community today that feels critical when so much is telling us that we, individually and collectively, are not important, and that we have no voice.
We do. We all matter. Planet Waves matters in the lives of those, both vocal and silent, who come here to find meaning and a sense of place. That is community and the Art of Service in action.
Community supports us; and it continues to thrive in turn through the support of its members. We who write here could not do what we do without you — and I know that this relationship is reciprocal, as one who has come here, not knowing what to do, and finding the guidance I needed at just the right time.
So, please, consider taking out a membership if you haven’t already. If you have, then consider introducing someone else to a Planet Waves subscription. Community is dependent on its existing members, and also has the potential to expand its support base through the welcoming of new ones, their ideas and their contributions. The more we weave the web (Web), the greater the support available.
Today, left, centre, right: past, present, future. The Hermit, Five of Disks, Ace of Cups.
This is a chronological reading, telling you what is passed and forms the foundation to your reading this week; what you are currently experiencing; and what you are moving towards and into. It is an evolution, from self-contained and isolated seeking, to the radiation of what you have found in your inner Soul travels.
The Hermit, Five of Disks, Ace of Cups from The Röhrig Tarot deck, created by Carl-W. Röhrig. Click on the image for a larger version.
You don’t have to worry. Or — rather — feel free to acknowledge that there is something weighing upon you, and it is not the full story of your travels and travails.
It is leading you from something and to something. Your worry is the waypoint between two states, where you feel left, holding the world on your shoulders, with no apparent way forward. You feel held in place by something that is both so big that you cannot easily see it, and perhaps so consuming of your time and energy that the challenge is incumbent on you merely to stay upright through it all. You may feel you are not up to the task.
You are up to the task. More than that: this is the task. This is your work right now, a progression from a particular role that you took on some time ago — one where you committed yourself to the practice of a skill of how to be in the world. Whether a formal commitment or one that may have felt thrust on you by circumstances, Disks describe a tangible way of operating in the world. Think back to a moment where these words may have come to you, either consciously or just beyond the level of everyday perception:
“If not now, when? If not you, who?”
It’s an old ‘un, but a good ‘un. And, whether you know it or not, you are the embodiment of this in a specific form and expression.
As The Hermit, you were recently living in a mode of separation — from others, from the world. The Hermit is not the most uplifting of cards at times, especially if you are someone who relies on or feels more comfort in the company of others. Not that you were completely alone, all of the time. That’s not The Hermit — not most of the time, anyway. But what The Hermit is is that time of personal integration after the expansion of The Lovers, the forward motion it leads to (The Chariot), and the leonine ROARRRR! of the discovery of your animal instinct.
After this delving into the other and the erotic, it has been time to close the door on the outside world of distraction — and the potential to squander your new-found eros on pursuits that merely have you running in circles — and to take what you have been given, and use it. Own it. Be it. Live it. Dive under the surface and find the deeper gift — the one of service, both to yourself, others, and the divine.
As The Hermit, you have had the opportunity to become discipline, embodied. As The Hermit, you turn away from sexual power as distraction and learn about sexual power as the extraction of that elixir within that serves everyone and everything.
In psychological terms, you learn to sublimate: the act of channelling eros towards creativity — one that has its roots in a Will that is larger than your own will. This Will is unconcerned with individual wants and needs. This Will is the drive to become more fully yourself, and by doing this you hold the key to bringing something of value into the world.
The frustration inherent in this is that you may have little idea of the “what” and “why” of your specific role. Surrender to Will means surrender to a higher wisdom. Surrender to a higher wisdom means not always knowing what the process or the outcome will be. Surrender to the process means the surrender of the trappings that you thought were the final story in your animal-driven, instinctual experience of yourself as a sensual body in a sensual world.
After Lust, the laundry.
So, this burden that you feel you are carrying may indeed feel worrisome.
“Where is my support?”
“Why is this all starting to feel a little heavy?”
“Do I know what I’m doing?”
“Am I able to find balance at a time where it seems others, or my faculties, have deserted me?”
But through this, you are finding and refining an equilibrium in the physical world.
Think of it this way, intrepid traveller: when you learn new skills, you also bring in the opportunities to try them out. As a unicycle juggler (you, the figure in the Five of Disks), you got your three-ball routine down pat … and now the clown on the sidelines has just thrown you a couple of new balls. Whoa! Wobble, wobble! Back-and-forward on that unicycle you dance, the wheel searching for that midpoint that will bring you fully upright again.
It is nothing you didn’t ask for. It is nothing that wasn’t asked from you.
Keep going. You’re in that ring. You might feel alone, but there are others around you, witnessing your work. Yours is a performance that is part of a greater performance. What you are holding is not the final point of it all, but it gets you there: to the moment when you know why it was that you are doing what you are doing. And the paradox of that moment is that, then, the juggling act will no longer be necessary.
Because what you are moving into is connection. The Ace of Cups. Pure and simple. The point is not to complete your task; the point is to connect through its endeavour.
Your juggling is simply the doorway to the Ace. It is the tangible method through which you begin to feel what balance is. You lock into what lies at the Heart of you. You re-member. The three-ring circus disappears. There is no separation between you, those around you, and the roles that each of you have assumed.
You throw the balls into the air in a round of riotous applause, your arms spread open. It is then that you understand that you’ve never needed anyone’s applause. The joy of who you are is its own ecstatic reward.
“I stand in golden rays radiantly
I burn a fire of love over and over
Reflecting endless light relentlessly
I have embraced the flame forever and ever.”
Astrology/Elemental correspondences: The Hermit (Virgo), Five of Disks (Mercury in Taurus), Ace of Cups (the purest, infinite potential of water)
If you want to experiment with tarot cards and don’t have any, we provide a free tarot spread generator using the Celtic Wings spread, which is based on the traditional Celtic Cross spread. This article explains how to use the spread.
