Rewind—Mercury Retrograde—July 18th-August 11th.
There is always a risk in increasing your awareness. You risk seeing things you might rather not notice. You risk feelings you might rather avoid. You risk having to change what you think and worse—having to change what you do. Betty Martin.
July’s green days stretch drowsily into the endless arc of a china-blue sky. School’s out here in the North. Families flock to golden beaches, children make hearts and angels in the sand. Stunned by the glut of sunlight, hordes of visitors amble slowly along promenades, slump in deck chairs, grateful for any distraction from the ache of the world.
A brave new moon in Leo on July 24th accompanies Mercury Retrograde passage in Leo. This lunation accents the powerful emotions we cradle in our hearts; what we love, and the anticipatory clench of what we fear. Leo rules the heart in medical astrology, so clasped within the darkness of this new moon lie heart-directed choices, opportunities to begin again. Pluto (irrevocable endings), opposes this lunation, adding a charge of potency to what we initiate this week as every bright promise of a beginning requires a little death.
Pluto demands honest soul searching. If you have planets or angles in early degrees Taurus, Leo, Scorpio or Aquarius, you will be unable to avoid having to change course, you will be compelled to increase your awareness. Change will be an evolutionary imperative. And for us all, this is a year of life-changing ingresses―Pluto in Aquarius, Jupiter in Cancer, Neptune and Saturn now moving in tandem through Aries―an uncomfortable medley of distinctly different energies swirling through the collective and impacting on our own lives in some way.
Disruptive, inventive Uranus entered changeable Gemini on July 7th agitating the frequency around us all, ushering sudden change and chaos to societies, as borders and boundaries are shattered. As our children play in the sunshine, our thoughts may turn to the children who endure the unspeakable terror of war.
Uranus is associated with innovation, civil unrest, revolution, and those shocking “wake up calls” that jolt us from our complacency. Uranus will hurtle through the sign of Gemini over the next eight years, accompanied by an unprecedented acceleration of technical momentum as AI appropriates our autonomy, requisitions our work, presses—unbidden—into our awareness.
This week, as Mercury (intellect, nervous system, transport, and communication) backtracks through Leo, the Trump administration signs executive orders to take the guard rails off AI, dismantling safeguards and standards that will protect us from hate speak and othering. The “Build Baby Build” also plan dismantles environmental and land use regulations to bolster the vast AI infrastructure, and the energy needed to power it.
Dharna Noor sounds the alarm in an article in The Guardian, “the AI sector is already depleting land and water rescources and taking a massive toll on climate, with AI-powered large language models such as ChatGPT taking up to 10 times more energy than a regular Google search, according to an estimate by the Electric Power Research Institute.” Good news for the Billionaire Tech Bros. An accelerant for global warming.
We know that when fear curls tightly in our nervous system it hooks us in anticipation of what lies ahead. When we feel the awful squeeze of fear, we become self-centred, we lose our capacity for caring and empathy. We are locked in developmental arrest.
They’re calling it the age of anxiety, says Kristen Lee, author of Worth the Risk: how to micro-dose bravery and grow resilience. Yet, amidst the overwhelming pain and chaos of it all, we may be moved to do something noble, gracious, kind today.
As the sun shines brightly and our children make sand angels on the beach, we may be reminded of what Mark Twain famously said: The worse things in my life never actually happened.
Mercury Rx periods so often bring to our awareness those thoughts that are entryways into a state of fear. We may linger in the past, fret about the future.
Spiritual teachers ask that we bring our fear to our awareness and tend to it like a timid wild creature. The shamans say that when we name a fear, it loses its power over us. Science corroborates this. We activate the pre-frontal cortex, calm the limbic system, when we can gently name and turn towards our fear.
The vibratory signature of this regenerative New Moon may light the way, even if dimly at first, to a flowering of purpose, a deeper way of listening, a different way of seeing, an outward rush of a life force that floods through us even in the darkness. “Despair is our chance to wrestle with fire and come through,” writes Christina Baldwin.
Today, let’s risk seeing things we might rather not notice. Bring to our awareness those feelings we would much rather avoid. Practice wishful thinking.
Please get in touch if you would like a personal astrology reading: ingrid@trueheartwork.com
To survive, to avert what we have termed future shock, the individual must become infinitely more adaptable and capable than ever before.
Venus aligns with Uranus between July 2nd and July 7th, highlighting this cosmic turning point and perhaps bringing to our attention those places where we feel bruised and vulnerable, which are so often triggered by those we are closest to.
The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned—Maya Angelou.
Jupiter travelled through Cancer from June 2013—July 2014 and will be moving through Cancer from June 9th June 30th, 2026.
She encouraged herself to see her very small presence in the world as a good thing, a power, something that a hero might possess―Helen Oyeyemi.

It isn’t too late. Time is not running out. Your life is here and now. And the moment has arrived at which you are finally ready to change―Cheryl Strayed.
Aries is the beginning, Pisces the end. Libra is midway, a crossroads where the old converges with the new, where the winds of change blow across our lives, exposing the roots, bringing us closer to ourselves, and to others in safe relationships where oxytocin and vasopressin activate parts of the brain associated with calm.
There is no sense talking about “being true to yourself” until you are sure what voice you are being true to—Marion Woodman.
Neptune was in Aries in 1861—1874 along with Uranus in Gemini, when the US Civil War fortified divisions between north and south. The abolition of slavery was one of the contested issues, underpinned by ideology and the human want for more territory. As Neptune mirrored discontent, bold view visions and an unquenchable thirst for change, Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address on November 19th, 1863, proclaimed that all men are created equal. In 1862, the Homestead Act invited white settlers to go west, settle and exploit the prairies, expelling first nations people from their ancestral homelands.
You can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both—Brené Brown. 

Life turns on little things. The momentous events in history can leave us untouched, while small events may shape our destinies―Jennifer Worth.



Venus’s Retrograde passage may expose our vulnerabilities, our blind spots, and our lack of self-compassion.
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes and denies us the present by promising the future. What are you looking at? To what goal are you straining? The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately. Lucius Annaeus Seneca 4Bc to 65 AD.
If you are poised to travel or make a commitment that concerns a relationship or money, there may be delays or setbacks as Venus and Mercury go retrograde in Aries back into Pisces in March. March 14th to April 7th for Mercury. March 1st to April 12th for Venus.
In March, a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune nudges close to the North Node in the very last decan of Pisces, moving within half a degree orb at 0° Aries in July. As Saturn and Neptune dance together all through 2025 what we knew to be safe and sure may become untethered. Neptune breaches, erodes and undermines the steadfast structure of Saturn, which release a tsunami of disillusionment and disorientation. We may be called to make sacrifices for the greater good. We may discover qualities of resilience, steadfastness and courage as we draw from our inner reserves of strength and passion.