Pause—Sun in Cancer—June 21st.
Here in the north, the shimmer of summer sparkles across newly mown meadows of powered gold. We’re drunk with light, overwhelmed with a surfeit of beauty. Now the sun pauses at the zenith of the year. Something extra-ordinary is happening; we feel it viscerally. Old traditions return, threads of comfort as the earth’s axis shifts and the scent of dog rose wafts on a hot honeyed breeze. Perhaps in our own lives, there is a sense of returning to a familiar place as we come full circle in the wheel of the year.
In the south, things are still growing, still beautiful, less showy. Midwinter is a time to pause, to take stock, to look again at what seems dead and needs discarding. We think of Hallowe’en as a witching time, a time when the natural order is overturned, when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. Yet the Solstice accompanies that rush of heightened awareness when our mysterious hearts un-choose… or choose anew.
Astrology doesn’t cause events but offers us a container for understanding them. As ancient Sarsen stones drink the heat of the Midsummer sunrise we may not go back as our ancestors did at Stonehenge, Maeshowe, or Newgrange, to wait for the death and rebirth of the sun. We can still draw from the eternal circle of knowing that describes the mythic journey of the hero/heroine and fall into a new more revitalised rhythm in our own lives. After the enthusiastic departure, the blistering fire of initiation, we may still feel raw, burnt and bleeding, yet we may sense the worst is over. Now comes the Return as our feet learn to support us again, as our hearts open once more to a love we can trust. The world is so different to the world we have left. There may still be tears to shed, a deep throb of pain yet to be tended to. We may still brace ourselves against the confinement of those tight corners we have grown used to. Now as the Sun dips into the cool waters of Cancer, a sign that clasps us to the familiar breast of comfort and security, our hearts open like peonies. We dare to begin again.
Mercury is still moving in reverse, unravelling our usual ways of communication, unknotting travel plans, heightening our intuition and the desperate need for more sleep. Mercury stations direct (June 23rd) yet we may still feel remnants of Mercury’s mayhem as emails go awry, communication is clouded by misunderstanding. The disturbing alchemy of the Saturn/Uranus square perfected on June 14th, shortly after the Annular New Moon Solar Eclipse on June 10th delivering a potent smack of disruption to our lives that may have upended our careful plans, brought clarity to a situation that we had clung to for far too long.
Neale Donald Walshe writes “sometimes it looks like one thing after the other, but really it is Blessing after Blessing…if you think you are struggling, struggle is what you will experience…if you decide you are looking at a gift, even if you can’t see it clearly in this exact moment, a gift is what you will get.”
On June 24th, a sumptuous full Moon in pragmatic Capricorn animates the light-saturated strangeness with a clarity that may allow us to be truly in touch with those feelings, denied or disowned. This Full Moon may illuminate a new perception as the days of June shimmer in shades of green.
Mercury emerges from the shadows of this Retrograde period on July 7th and makes an ambiguous square with shape-shifting Neptune (July 6-7th) while corpulent Jupiter in Pisces (faith, long journeys, excess) switches backwards from June 20th-September 14th) and joins Neptune Retrograde in Pisces. It also can signify the tsunami of grief and loss at the ending of a relationship or the realisation that we have been unrealistic or too naïve concerning our finances or what we hold dear to our heart. We may sense something ancient and primal stirring within us as something comes to a natural end, as we begin to emerge from pain into pleasure, an expanded sense of our next self. This is our invitation to take off those rose-coloured glasses as we move fluidly through this time of stops and starts when nothing is clear or certain. Byron Katie, who has Jupiter Retrograde in Cancer, suggests pragmatically, “When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.”
A New Moon in Cancer (July 10th) is a potent time to find a safe space and allow our exhausted minds to rest. As we open ourselves to nourishing and tender connections we allow hope to power through us, we feel drawn to create again.
Now at this time of pause, of empty space, may we allow peace and contentment to enter in as the sun sinks molten into the sea spilling a phosphorescent flash of chartreuse followed by a tiny dot of honey to mark the day’s end. As the earth’s axis shifts, we’re dazed and dazzled with by the beauty of the flowers that tumble over walls and spill over meadows.
This is the time when fairies leave the sweet-scented hedgerows to make mischief amongst mortals. When wild flowers and fragrant herbs crown our heads and love potions placed beneath pillows call future lovers to dance with us in our dreams. This is the time to celebrate and make merry. For as long as the light holds.
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Faeries, come take me out of this dull world,
For I would ride with you upon the wind,
Run on the top of the dishevelled tide,
And dance upon the mountains like a flame―William Butler Yeats.
Sagittarius is the nomad, the pilgrim, the outlander, the foreigner. Those who are introverted by nature may feel like a foreigner or outsider amidst the noise and the laughter of a social gathering. Those of us who are in a place of transition, may feel like outsiders in our families or communities.
The troublesome Saturn (rules, restrictions, delays) /Uranus (electric, iconoclastic) square infuses 2021 with drama, violence, plans upended, sudden shocks and serendipities. The waning square is in effect throughout 2021, with the final square on December 24th. It came up close on February 17th, and again delivers a concentrated clout on June 14th shaken, not stirred, by the Solar Annular Eclipse on June 10th as police prepare for mass protests in the UK. Priti Patel’s “digitise the border” project alters the UK’s asylum and immigration system that separates human beings into “them and us”—cast adrift, shut out. Strangers in a foreign land. This is the motif of Sagittarius as the wanderer, walled and shut out by Saturn’s bureaucratic boundaries and the unpredictable omnipotence of Uranus.
“To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journeying is to be a pilgrim,” poet Mark Nepo writes.
I had embraced you… long before I hugged you—Sanober Khan.
Twins in myth and fairy tale, are similar at first glance, then reveal themselves to be fundamentally different. The story of Castor and Pollux, and their beautiful twin sisters, Helen and Clytemnestra is a brutal story of theft and revenge, kidnapping, murder, and loss. Maya Angelou once said, “I don’t believe an accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings, gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.”
Yet, whether we’re twinned, a resourceful only child, a pioneering first born, a cossetted baby, or the lost child in a family too big or too poor to give nurture, we’re engaged with the mythic story of the Twins in our everyday human encounters with friends and colleagues, lovers and husbands. Those sympathetic similarities that draw us in; those polarised differences that repel. As the Sun moves through Gemini expect these themes to be highlighted as our Gemini planets are nudged to think a little differently about finding a twin flame or a Soulmate. The well-worn sweaty T-shirt study by Claus Wedekind showed that the pheromones that attract us most are from people who are genetically very different from us. As the magic sparkles begin to flutter and the golden glow fades, we may find that our Soulmate is both our Jekyll and our Hyde.
As many countries ease restrictions, Mercury and Venus move through sociable Gemini this month as we make space for new relationships, new family configurations; as we move through our grief after months spent shepherding someone through illness, after the loneliness of confinement. We’re reminded that Gemini rules the lungs and the hands as we breathe new energy into those parts of our lives that may still feel cling-wrapped in fear and we re-connect with those vital, resilient parts of ourselves that press up against the warm urgency of longing to touch again. When our world has become precarious, when our natural impulses coil tightly inside us, it may be hard to feel connected to each other as we did before. The old ways of living on this earth have become harder to justify as the long shadow of the pandemic stretches across shrinking glaciers and warming skies.
Mercury backtracks at the end of this month, (May 29 – June 22) symbolising a turning point and a time when a protective chrysalis is shaped around an area of our psyche, depending on where these planets are moving through our birth chart. Pluto moves Retrograde (April 27 – October 6) stirring toxicity in our relationships, dredging secrets, exposing misuse of power, drawing our attention to those anemic areas of our lives that need a transfusion. Jupiter dips into familiar Piscean waters on May 14th amplifying our longing to escape into fantasy or denial, perhaps inflating empathy fatigue, addictive behaviour, or pain. Saturn and Uranus are still in square, a sky story that speaks of liberties curtailed as the old ways of living on this earth become harder to justify, and as the long shadow of the global pandemic stretches across shrinking glaciers and warming skies.
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No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions, he had money as well—Margaret Thatcher.
Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue, and a silver sixpence in her shoe… money makes the world go around and silver sixpences have morphed into cryptocurrency, symbolised by the seven-year transit of Uranus through Taurus, (2018-2026.) Uranus in Taurus has highlighted the climate crisis and accelerated the power-hungry cryptocurrency bull run which leaves such a heavy carbon footprint. China is now minting its own digital cash, “in a re-imagination of money that could shake a pillar of American power,” writes James T. Areddy in the Wall Street Journal. As Uranus shakes and shatters Taurean ground, this archetypal force of chaos and disruption reminds us that we are standing on the rim of the widening gyre between rich and poor. That even wealthy Samaritans with the best intentions can lose it all in what Joan Didion calls this “ordinary instant”. That for most of us there is no settling feeling of security when work is patchy; that money and a gig economy are incompatible bedfellows.
The Age of Taurus (4,000-2,000 BCE) coincided with the prosperous river civilizations of Egypt and Mesopotamia; and for eons, the Bull and the Cow have been associated with wealth, with the flooding of the great rivers, the rich black sediments of the earth. Taurus, despite its association with the muscular bull, is associated with “the feminine”, which has been denigrated, distorted, disowned for thousands of years. Yet she is still there in the sharp green scent of green growing things, in the soft contours of the land, the artists brush that sweeps turquoise and violet across the tangerine skies at sunset. We know her indomitable presence that emerges in the daisies that turn their faces to the sun from cracks in the pavements, in sluggish city rivers filled with plastic, in filthy alleyways strewn with syringes and layered with human detritus where bright yellow dandelions grow.
If your nerve deny you, go above your nerve—Emily Dickinson.
As Venus (relationships, what we hold dear to our hearts) moves into Aries on March 21st and makes her annual appointment with the Sun (March 24th), the words of author Isabel Allende may resonate as we burn for something new “we don’t even know how strong we are until we are forced to bring that hidden strength forward…” Venus and the Sun conjoin Chiron on March 28–30th—an indication that for most of us, the road ahead may not be easy.
The motif of the Saturn/Uranus square—a cycle that began in 1988 with a Saturn/Uranus conjunction in Capricorn—infuses our lives with defining moments as regulations tighten, people push back. This year, three waning squares define the zeitgeist of disruption—the first was February 17th, June 14th is the second. In tandem and working in the darkness, the ominous Pluto/Eris square dredges up all that is putrid in our societies, as we wade through what Eckhardt Tolle calls “the pain body.”
As new lockdown measures are imposed in many countries, Mercury muscled into Aries on April 4th. Frustration simmers. The passage of Venus (April 23rd) sensitises the destabilising Saturn/Uranus square, followed by the Sun (April 30th-May 4th) and Mars adds fuel to the flames this year and next. (July/November 2021; March/April/July/ 2022.)
So, this is how you swim inward. So, this is how you flow outwards. So, this is how you pray―Mary Oliver. 
Love is fearlessness in the midst of the sea of fear
Venus and Jupiter in Aquarius, meet on February 11th for a sweet caress in the apricot light of dawn. This brief union happens only once a year, yet it carries the promise of serendipitous meetings, joy-filled celebrations, favourable outcomes. For birthdays and weddings, for the fruitful budding of professional or intimate relationships, this day is incandescent. Aquarius encompasses our friendship circle, those anam cara, soul friends, who hold our hands tightly when we’re broken hearted. Mercury in Aquarius, still travelling Retrograde, encounters the sweetness of Venus and the optimism of Jupiter this week, draping our dreams in silken images that sparkle and inspire, offering us an opportunity to re-write the narrative of our lives and move toward “what if” … “what could be”…
wrapped in the sweetness of Love’s beginning is also the sorrow of it’s ending. Anais Nin wrote so poignantly, “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we do not know how to replenish its source.” So how do we replenish Love’s source? David Schnarch writes, love and desire are “not a matter of peeling away the layers but of developing them—growing ourselves up to be mature and resourceful adults who can solve our current problems.”
The Sun enters Pisces on February 18th. In the archetypal journey around the zodiac, we’re invited to wear our mermaid tails and adorn our hair with seashells. Perceptions may shift, new insights may wash to the shore of our consciousness, or ambiguity, uncertainty and confusion may swirl around us as we swim in uncharted waters. In Pisces, we dive deep into opaque waters where music and poetry melt walls that divide. We may experience, in the words of Eckhardt Tolle, “all things that truly matter―beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace―arise from beyond the mind.”
The birds they sang
The torrent of Tweets has stopped. In the silent space between chaos and something new, there is the descent into the unknown. Joe Biden has answered the call. He has worked and waited and prepared for this day’s dawning. He gazes out at a map of shifting possibilities. If he is to succeed, it will be as a Shaman, a Wounded Healer, not a problem-solving politician. January 20th is the first anniversary of the first case of Covid in America. As the death toll rises, it may soon surpass the 405,000 Americans who died in the chaos of WW II.
Mercury turns Retrograde on January 30th (square Joe Biden’s Scorpio Sun). There is so much to be healed and repaired. The slow retrieval of what has been lost or captive will be painful. As Pluto opposes the US Mercury from 2017–2024 there will be walls to dismantle, bridges to build, digital communications to reform, and Silicon Valley Titans to tame.
To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of Fate is strength undefeatable—Helen Keller
Venus moves into Capricorn on January 9th, where she can become despondent and leaden unless we rework rhythm and routine into the days of our lives. Venus symbolises what we truly value and hold dear to our hearts.
The future of humanity and indeed all life on earth depends on us—Sir David Attenborough
If we look to the West, we may see two bright “stars,” Jupiter and Saturn glittering in a tangerine sweep of evening sky. The sky script reflects the heaviness and exhaustion so many of us are feeling as this year of austerity and confinement draws to an end. For the first time in 20 years Saturn (restraint, contraction, and realism) and Jupiter (faith, expansion, and optimism) come together to symbolise the destruction of the old and the birth of something new. The cameo of Saturn and Jupiter in the skies depicts an age-old conflict between the old order and the new. What this “new” will be depends, as Sir David Attenborough is famously quoted, entirely on us.
The Jupiter/Saturn conjunction will also square Uranus throughout 2021; coming close in January and February, September, and October, accompanying an economic rupture that follows this year of lockdowns and stimulus packages.
At the threshold of a new age on this over-populated planet, what are we paying attention to? What is the future we envision? Greta Thunberg (Sun, Moon and Mercury Retrograde in Capricorn) says, “this is not the time and place for dreams. This is the time to wake up. This is a moment in history where we need to be wide awake.” As the ghost of Jacob Marley brings us glimpses of Christmases past and present, and still yet to come, we may awaken this Solstice with more awareness and more integrity, sobered by the spectre of climate change, strengthened by hope and the will to imagine another way to live.