Tag Archives: Full Moon in Aquarius

Weekly Forecast July 27: Full Moon in Aquarius, Saturn Direct

Composite by Osk Ingad Alden, 2015.

Is anyone feeling like Mercury is retrograde? He’s not, but the combination of Venus and Uranus turning retrograde together came with its own unique blend of frustrations, delays, and computer glitches.

I’m sorry to report that this week could be even worse in that regard, with Saturn stationing on Sunday (August 2; late Saturday night in Western time zones). Financial transactions are particularly vulnerable to snafus, so plan ahead by having cash on hand. Last weekend, when a flood of tourists arrived on little Vashon for our annual Strawberry Festival, the supermarket was running out of cash and had to limit the amount customers could get back on debit-card purchases. That’s just a small example of the kind of situation that Continue reading →

Weekly Forecast August 19: Full Moon in Aquarius, Jupiter Squares Uranus

Monarch on Thistle. © Osk Ingad Alden, 2013.

Whatever little break we may have gotten last week, it’s over. Aspects are so tense that even astrologers are fighting with each other.

A professional astrology forum I participate in has become an online brawl. I swear, if these people were in the same room, they’d be smashing furniture over each other’s heads. The topic causing such a firestorm is Sun sign horoscopes. I can’t believe that people who are supposed to be enlightened (at least that’s my theory) are resorting to personal insults. It’s quite distressing.

Of course, that’s nothing compared to what’s going on in Egypt. Events there escalated right on cue, with the cardinal T-square formed by Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto peaking on August 7 and August 21 – this Wednesday. This is a symbolic battle, as the so-called Arab Spring was one of the earliest manifestations of the cardinal T-square in 2010 in the first degrees of cardinal signs Aries, Libra and Capricorn. Uranus, the planet of revolutions, was in the final degrees of Pisces at the time, but Jupiter was in Aries.

A reader e-mailed me recently with comments about the current administration in the United States, which has, among other things, voiced continued support for invasive government spying and unmanned drone attacks, even in countries with which we’re not at war. I agreed that a lot of campaign promises had not only been ignored but shockingly reversed, and yet, what might happen if we took to the streets as the Egyptian people did? Calling for the removal of an objectionable government acting in the interests of only a privileged few could have grave consequences in a Pluto-in-Capricorn world. I saw this coming and have written about it a lot in this blog. The Uranus-Pluto square was ripe for rebellion, but I knew that the response by authorities would be deadly.

Still, I do think there is some hope that the situation in Egypt and elsewhere can resolve. The current T-square is the first in a three-part aspect. The next critical periods extend from February to May of 2014, with Jupiter, Uranus, and Pluto in a square by exact degree in mid-April, with a lunar eclipse. What we’re seeing in this time period is setup for events to come. The crisis has been declared, and now it must intensify and then resolve. That’s the pattern of three-part outer planetary transits. That said, Uranus and Pluto remain in a square until 2015, and then there will be a ripple effect of two to three years. April 2014 will be an especially critical time in the United States, as the T-square falls at the same degree as the U.S. Sun and 1 degree from the U.S. Saturn. Venus crosses over the U.S. Saturn later this month, so we may get an idea then of what’s coming down the pike.

Click on image to enlarge

We also have the Full Moon this week, the second in a row in Aquarius. In modern astrology, Aquarius is ruled by Uranus. Anyone who knows an Aquarian is familiar with their innate rebelliousness against authority (unless they are the authority, and then it’s a different story). As you can see in the chart, this is potentially a difficult Full Moon. Not only is Jupiter in a near-exact square with Uranus, but Venus is about to form a grand cross. Now, this could in fact be a temporary stabilizing influence, as Venus in Libra strongly represents diplomacy, and a grand cross is more stable than a T-square. Still, we’re in a period of heightened global tension that is getting on everyone’s nerves. Even if you avoid news headlines in an attempt to protect yourself, you can’t avoid the tense vibration in the collective. The more psychically sensitive you are, the more you’ll feel it. The most you can do is to be kind to yourself, find moments of peace and beauty where you can (thus the image of the butterfly above), and do your best to give loved ones the benefit of the doubt. We’re all under enormous stress.

The Full Moon peaks late Tuesday (Wednesday in Europe and eastern time zones). It’s interesting to note that in the Full Moon chart, Uranus is conjunct the Ascendant by less than three degrees, with Pluto on the Midheaven and Jupiter on the IC. These are extremely sensitive points in a chart, and I can’t help but feel that Washington is in store for a big shock of some kind. In mundane astrology, Jupiter represents the federal justice system and the banks. Look for dramatic headlines (more than usual) involving the Federal Reserve, the country’s largest banks, and the Justice Department. Uranus represents uprisings and riots, and he’s also the planet of severe thunderstorms. If nothing else, the Eastern Seaboard may see some serious weather.

On Thursday, the Sun enters Virgo, with Mercury following on Friday. Reasoned analysis becomes a bigger part of the discussion, both in the collective and in our private lives. Fortunately, with Venus in diplomatic Libra, we can catch ourselves before saying something insensitive or cruel – and remember, the threshold is low right now, given the amount of stress we’re under. If you have been indulging a bit too much to cope with everything coming at you (guilty here), then it’s time to start watching your diet and getting a little more exercise. The Moon is in Aries on Friday, offering a bit of “just do it.” The Sun and Mercury conjoin on Saturday. If you’ve got children, this is your day to shop for back-to-school supplies. Function trumps style.

On Sunday (August 25), Mercury opposes Neptune in Pisces. Keep a notebook by your bed and record your dreams. When life is moving fast and we’re doing all we can just to keep up, we sometimes have to ignore or stuff down feelings and desires, to the point that we may lose touch with ourselves. Here’s an opportunity to find it.

I’m going to try to post the weekly forecasts on Saturday from now on to give everyone a longer heads up. Astrology can’t make stressful events go away, but it can help us understand the forces over which we don’t have any control, and it can show us where we do have opportunities to make some important choices.

Much love and courage to you all,
Pat

Weekly Forecast July 30: Full Moon in Aquarius

This certainly is turning out to be a classic Mercury retrograde. I’ve lost more than half of the past week addressing corrupted files, lost data, and long waits getting through to tech support – just when I’m under a huge deadline for a film project. Of course.

It’s particularly ironic that my astrology software got corrupted. The good news is that I had my client data backed up, so for anyone who has ordered a report, I still have you in my database. The bad news is that, in reinstalling the program, I lost all of my custom settings, including weeks’ worth of programming charts and the cool graphs that are included in my StarGuide forecasts. In backing up my system, I never thought to back up all of the program files. It’s a painful lesson. It also means that it will be a week or so before I can fulfill new report orders. As I said … classic Mercury retrograde.

Then, I’ve been extremely unhappy with this program, so perhaps this is a “hint” that it’s time to upgrade to Solar Fire, the gold standard in astrology software. I chose another brand on the advice of a consultant and have put hundreds of dollars into add-ons, but I’ve been tearing my hair out over the unfriendly user interface and even unfriendlier customer support. I’ve been putting off switching to a different program, not only because of the expense, but because once I buy new software, I’ll likely have to revise my report offerings – typical excuses for avoiding making changes that ultimately will improve our lives. Mercury retrograde is so good at planting these pies in our faces, with extra whipped cream.

In the meantime, I’m madly pushing to edit a pitch piece to get funding for a documentary about professional astrologers. It’s actually a reconstruction, since I lost the final cut in a hard drive accident in mid-June (Mercury wasn’t even retrograde, go figure). Recreating the work has been the one thing that has gone relatively well during this retrograde cycle, as I expected it would. The challenge is dealing with all of the other problems, which has eaten up precious time that I could have spent in the editing room.

Everywhere I go, I’ve been hearing similar stories, and I’m sure you all have plenty of your own. It seems like no matter how much you try to be prepared, something unexpected goes wrong. It’s living proof that there are “bad” transits. I’m not one of the New Age-y astrologers who believe there’s no such thing as a bad transit, that it’s what you make of it, blahblah. Shit happens, and it tends to happen more during certain planetary configurations. Sure, we can use Mercury retrograde to our advantage (as with my film reconstruction), but we also need to be aware that delays, obstacles, and extremely inconvenient situations are likely to happen more frequently and without warning. The one thing we do have control over is how we communicate. Although we can’t help it if someone misunderstands us, we can give them some leeway and not blame them for the miscommunication.

We’ve got another week and half to go before Mercury returns direct, so just hang in there and do the best you can. In the meantime, Wednesday’s Full Moon in Aquarius promises to throw some good energy into the mix, further building on the positive vibe of the recent sextile from Jupiter to Uranus. At its peak, the Full Moon makes positive connections to both Uranus and Jupiter. Together, these giants make big sparks. This could be literal – as in more giant thunderstorms – or it could be symbolic, bringing sparks of excitement into your life. As surprising as events have been lately, it looks like there’s more in store for us.

I don’t know about you, but my life has been fast and furious with opportunities over the past couple of weeks – so many that I’m overstretched, exhausted, and stressed out by the possibility that passing on an invitation could cost me connections and work down the road. Normally, I’d gauge which opportunities to take based on the potential material returns, but this time I also considered which ones were the most fun and most in line with what I want to do, whether or not it’s financially sound. It seems like more and more people are making decisions based on what’s in their heart and not on what they think they should do or what others think they should do.

The Sun forms an exact trine with Uranus on Tuesday and an exact sextile with Jupiter on Thursday, so the excitement should last for much of the week.

Click on image to enlarge

Of course, the Uranus-Pluto square is also active in this Full Moon chart. It almost feels like old news by now, but with Uranus, surprises happen. As the ruler of Aquarius, Uranus rules this Full Moon, so it’s quite possible that we’ll get a Uranus-Pluto “jolt” out of the blue.

Venus remains in a trine with Saturn. Although it’s waning, it’s still close enough to use its energy for improving communications and commitment in relationships, be they personal or professional. And with Saturn heading into the final degrees of Libra, we’re finally wrapping up the lesson we thought we learned earlier this year. For me, personally, it has been painful, but there have been very noticeable improvements, mostly in my understanding and acceptance.

On Friday, Mercury and Neptune are inconjunct (technically, quincunx, but I hate that word because it’s too hard to say). Dreams could be jarring or totally incomprehensible. If you can’t figure out a particularly bizarre or disturbing dream, don’t worry about it. It’s possible that it has nothing to do with you.

Wishing you all much love and courage,
Pat

Full Moon in Aquarius, July 25

There’s a certain exuberance to the Full Moon in Aquarius this Sunday that suggests movement, and lots of it. It could be the out that we’ve all been looking for, the “open sesame” that magically creates a door in the brick wall we’ve been hitting for so long.

The Sun in Leo opposite the Moon in Aquarius forms one axis of a mystical rectangle. The crossing axis has Saturn in Libra and Mars in late Virgo in one corner, opposite Jupiter and Uranus in Aries in the other. And so, while this Full Moon isn’t part of the cardinal T-square, it connects with it directly via sextiles and trines — soft aspects that create a path for the blocked energies of oppositions to flow.

Uranus is the ruler of this Full Moon, and he’s less than a day away from an exact opposition with Saturn, the fifth and last pass of this contentious pairing. Uranus is the rebel who bucks convention, the freedom fighter, the innovator, the spark of genius, the awakener.

Saturn, conversely, is the authoritarian, the disciplinarian, the lord of time and the material world, the enforcer of structure and order. With Saturn and Uranus in opposition since Nov. 4, 2008 — Election Day in the United States — many of us have felt solidly stuck, while certain elements in society have become increasingly polarized. The Full Moon in Aquarius provides a release for the pent-up rebellious energies of Uranus.

What will be unleashed? And what will we find on the other side of that door? Many of us are going to experience an awakening of some sort, and that could open the door to solutions that have eluded us so far. Indeed, when we expand our point of view and see problems from a broader perspective, we can come up with creative new ways of solving them.

While the Moon in Aquarius represents detached, cool reason, the Sun in Leo symbolizes the heart, joy, and the celebration of life. It is who we are at our core, where our higher mind shines through us. When the challenges facing us are so tough that we throw our hands up in defeat, that’s often the moment when we break through to the knowledge of who we are and what we’re here for. That, in turn, gives us renewed hope and the will to keep pushing ahead.

Saturn, Uranus and Jupiter form a T-square with Pluto in Capricorn. As I noted in this week’s forecast, we’re on the final ascent to the peak of the T-square, which is at its most powerful during the last week of July and the first week of August. Climbing is hard work, and we’ve got a bit more to go. Hopefully, we’ll be able to rest at the top and take in an awesome view, but I think it’s possible that the awe may have some shock to it.

This also means that the Sun is inconjunct Pluto, which is not a happy arrangement. An informed, knowledgeable, enlightened, and empowered populace is a threat to government corruption and corporate greed.

There is one other opposition in the Full Moon chart, between Mercury in late Leo and Neptune and Chiron in late Aquarius. When those in power are challenged by the truth, the response is often to confuse the situation by overwhelming the public with meaningless facts and to deliberately pit their opponents against each other. Our collective wound makes us susceptible to this kind of cynical manipulation, so it is all the more imperative that we work to heal our hearts and minds.

Venus at 17 degrees Virgo is square Ceres at 21 degrees Sagittarius. I’m not sure how this might play out, but it seems sad, somehow. Venus, the planet of love and desire, is in her fall in Virgo, and the square with Earth Mother Ceres represents a conflict between two archetypal feminine figures. We’ll just have to watch the headlines to figure this one out.

The Sabian Symbol** for the Moon at 2°59′ Aquarius is a deserter from the navy, with the keyword DEFIANCE. For once, Marc Edmond Jones doesn’t need any translation. He wrote, “This is a symbol of human independence carried to a point of extreme rebellion against things as they are, here emphasized in a disregard of all consequence for the sake of immediate liberation of the spirit.” This image might apply equally well to the Saturn-Uranus opposition. Once we awaken to the truth, living under the old rules becomes suffocating, and we’ll take radical steps to extricate ourselves.

For the Sun at 2°59′ Leo, the Sabian Symbol is a woman having her hair bobbed, with the keyword DECISION. When a woman drastically changes her hairstyle, it’s usually because she has gone through a personal transformation. The haircut is a conscious decision, a means of showing the world that she is a different person. What could be more Leo than that?

We’re becoming different people as new doors open in our hearts and minds. I have a feeling we’ll be changing a lot more than just our hair.

Pat

** From The Sabian Symbols in Astrology, by Dr. Marc Edmond Jones. The author, an astrologer, channeled this work in the early 1920s. There’s one symbol one for each degree of the zodiac, and we can use them to gain insight into charts.

Weekly Forecast July 19: Saturn Enters Libra, Full Moon in Aquarius

Got your crampons on? Fastened tight? Good, because this week we begin our climb straight up the face of the cardinal T-square.

We’ve been waiting for Saturn, the leader of our party. He had to return to Virgo for a few supplies, but he’s due back at base camp Libra on Wednesday, when we’ll get further instructions — specifically, who we’ll be climbing with and how we’re going to share the load.

As I mentioned in my Saturday Extra! post, Saturn will be on the Ascendant in Washington, D.C., the moment of his ingress. It remains to be seen whether this manifests in the short-term, or whether it represents what the United States will experience during the two years that Saturn is in Libra.

On Thursday, the Sun enters his home sign of Leo, ruler of the heart. The Latin root for “heart” and “center” are the same, and it also is the root of the word “courage.” Thus, to encourage someone is to give them heart. It’s one of my favorite words, and we’re all going to need to give each other a lot of encouragement as this T-square unfolds.

The last aspect that the Sun and Saturn make before entering their respective new signs is an inconjunct with Chiron, who as of Tuesday is back in Aquarius, sign of the collective. This places Chiron at the apex of a Yod with the Sun and Saturn at the base. To be able to set our sights high and encourage each other to keep climbing, we’ll have to confront our wounds, collectively and individually.

Most of us are wounded in some way. As I was re-reading Eckhart Tolle last week, I came across his comment about how the human mind is inherently dysfunctional. Our egos essentially make us an insane species, he says. He talks about the “pain body” and the ego’s investment in remaining wounded.

Some of us are more wounded than others, which means that the load isn’t going to be distributed evenly on this trip to the top. We want as many of us to make the climb as possible, so those who can carry more will have to do so. Conversely, those who really do need help will need to ask, and in a clear, direct manner, without whining. Some people don’t like to ask for help, because they think they might be perceived as weak. To avoid that impression, they sometimes resort to manipulative tactics to get others to carry their load for them. That won’t work anymore.

If you truly are doing your best, no one can ask more of you, but the point is that we’re climbing to a field of higher consciousness, where our best is far beyond anything we could ever have imagined. We need to stretch and grow. If we were climbing a mountain for real, we’d accept sore muscles and fatigue as a given. So it is with the climb to your higher mind.

Some people are so wounded that they won’t be able to make this trip, and that’s going to be extremely painful for all concerned. We don’t want to leave loved ones behind, and yet we can’t hold ourselves back. It’s an excruciating choice to have to make, but that’s part of what the conflicting energies of this T-square are all about. And we’re probably not going to have the luxury of time to weigh all the pros and cons. The climbing party leaves at the crack of dawn. You’re either geared up and ready to go, or you’re not.

On Friday, the Sun in Leo trines Uranus, who’s retrograde and somewhat diminished but still feisty enough in Aries to create a crisis or two. “Fires to put out,” we might say. Or maybe “shock and awe.”

At the same time, Jupiter is stationed to turn retrograde in Aries on Friday. We’re going to feel this shift, possibly as a financial event of some kind. The Big Guy squares Pluto on Saturday, the first of three exact squares between these two, both of which are associated with money, power, and influence. Corporate giants like BP definitely fall in this category, so we may see major developments in the Gulf of Mexico at this time, perhaps as a result of government enforcement or legal action. But, as I’ve repeated several times, there are so many variables in this equation that predicting with any confidence is simply impossible.

Sunday is the Full Moon in Aquarius, which forms a mystical rectangle with Saturn and Mars on one leg and Jupiter and Uranus on the other. This could be the magic “release point” of the Saturn-Uranus opposition. In addition, the previous Full Moon coincided with a lunar eclipse, so this lunation is the 30-day marker, which sometimes is the trigger point for delayed eclipse-related events. I’ll have a detailed analysis of the Full Moon later this week.

In the meantime, I’d like to leave you with a lovely image of Venus aligning with Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, taken at Point Venus in Tahiti. You’ll need to squint at your screen a bit to see them all (Venus is the brightest object) but it’s still an amazing photo.

Wishing you all limitless love and courage,
Pat

RealAstrologers

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