Dear Friend and Reader:

The Sun is now a few degrees into Cancer, and Mars is about to join it there tomorrow. The traffic light has turned green and is urging forward movement, yet you’ll still want to go easy on the gas pedal this week.

A misty summer sunrise on Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park, Maine; photo by Amanda Painter.

The reason is that Mercury, though direct, is still working its way through a tricksy shadow (or echo) phase in Gemini. And today it makes its third exact square to Neptune in Pisces as part of its retrograde process, at 2:08 pm EDT (18:08 UTC).

As Eric has noted, Mercury and Neptune have really been in one very long square, thanks to Mercury’s reversals of apparent motion. This is astrology that asks you to pay attention, particularly to how honest you’re being with yourself.

As a result of the square repeating, themes of integrity, honesty/denial and “knowing when you don’t know” keep presenting themselves for review and integration. This may include various emotional/cognitive patterns from the distant past, such as childhood or familial relationships — especially the more slippery ones.

If you like to track the peaks and patterns of repeated astrological events in your life, here are the dates of the three exact Mercury-Neptune squares so you can check your journal or calendar: May 9 (with Mercury direct); May 29 (Mercury retrograde); and today, June 23 (Mercury direct).

Eric will be covering the major events of this week’s sky in Planet Waves FM, though the program will post to the website tomorrow by 5:00 pm EDT, rather than today.

Photo by Amanda Painter.

He wrote about the “two-stage solstice” we’re experiencing in Monday’s Astrology Diary, noting that Mars ingressing Cancer tomorrow plus Mercury-Neptune today may come with “the sensation of slipping out of something, waking up or some drug wearing off — one you didn’t know you took.”

Elsewhere on the Planet Waves website, Fe Bongolan tries to work through the grief and ideas about American racism in the aftermath of last week’s church shooting in Charleston in her column this week.

In a similar vein, Amanda Moreno also notes that in the context of more collective tragedy, the need for a shared emotional container (provided by retrograde Saturn in Scorpio) is ever more clear.

Sarah Taylor’s tarot reading describes emerging from a place of (perceived) defeat and into the potential to build something that can support both you and others. And Judith Gayle affirms that if voices are being raised against one another, it means the thin veneer of falsehood that existed is disappearing, and we’re getting to the heart of the matter — though it’s a difficult road.

Note that depending on when you visit the website, you might need to click the “Older posts” link at the bottom of the page to get to some of these articles. To read them, you’ll need to be signed into the website. Email us at cs@planetwaves.net if you have questions.

Also, Saturday, we republished one of Eric’s classic articles on sex and relationships, titled Organic Love: An Ecology of Sustainable Relationship. In it, he offers a few ideas about how we might go about creating organic love. Later today, Len Wallick covers Mars ingressing Cancer in his column, which will publish after noon EDT.

Yours & truly,

Amanda Painter

P.S. If you were not able to attend Saturday’s live class with Eric, you can purchase the recording of Retrogrades, Reincarnation, Re-membering here (All-Access Pass members, watch your email for your specially priced offer).