Monday, August 30, 2010

Pluto Stationing Direct

Pluto is stationing direct at 2 degrees Capricorn for the next two weeks, so if you've noticed things getting a little dark and feisty, you'll know why.

Pluto goes direct September 13, the day after Mercury goes direct at 5 degrees Virgo, so both Mercury and Pluto will be almost stopped in the sky together around that time. The intensity builds, and there's not much wiggle room in these two signs. Yowtch.

The vibes don't really lighten grandscale any time soon, either. You'll recall that we're heading to a Ceres-Pluto conjunction October 19, enveloped within the Venus retrograde in Scorpio. This is an epic showdown of masculine and feminine, and neither is in the mood for any horseshit. There should be power struggles a-plenty as they make a long-term effort to get to a workable arrangement.

Venus-Mars-Eros in Scorpio beginning early next month ensure that we're all about keeping it real. Some deeply potent and alchemical situations are being spun up into conscious awareness for us to deal with.

This is going to be one witchy-ass Hallowe'en. And it's going to last about four months.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Venus, Eros and Mars in the Via Combusta and Karmic Love Cleansing Through the Alchemical Fires

And it burns, burns, burns...

Venus, Eros and Mars are currently travelling conjunct through an area of the zodiac called the Via Combusta, also known as the burning path or fiery way.

The combination of Venus, Eros and Mars travelling in tight conjunction through this area of the zodiac makes for a potent force starting a final strip-down in areas pertaining to love, sex, attraction, beauty, money and partnership - all the spicy stuff - as we end the astrological Piscean era.

There is an intense charge building here that will not be fully discharged until Venus enters Sagittarius January 7, 2011 designed to purge us of our baggage, our unhealthy attachments, and our sabotaging patterns and reactions in relationship so that we can truly move on, be propelled, even, into a new era.

The Via Combusta is the degrees of the zodiac from 15 Libra to 15 Scorpio, except for 23 through 24 degrees Libra, which are considered safe degrees due to the fixed stars Spica and Arcturus residing there. This area generally relates to running the gauntlet in certain areas of life - pushing through seemingly insurmountable odds, heavy collective karma, booby traps and weapons wielded, often in relationship dynamics (Libra and Scorpio territory). There is a fire with the Via Combusta (and within people with natal planets in the Via Combusta) that, when brought strongly into the cosmic mix, keeps us burning a path through life as you would imagine a shooting star burning an accelerated path through the night's sky. There's a feeling that you have to keep going, no matter what - that the only way past it is through it, and this is how we hit our marks.

Our evolutionary marks here relate, in part, to the release of mass collective love karma from the astrological Piscean era - processing and purging for the whole through our personal lives so as to bust through no-longer-vital collective dynamics and programming reinforced for millenia.

This Venus retrograde in Scorpio is the last Venus retrograde of the astrological Piscean era. How's that for a tall order? Layer upon layer of etheric unfinished business through time and space, coalescing with us at this time on this planet.

This is the vibe as we leave the cardinal t-square-dominated summer and enter the final quarter of 2010. We've parted the curtain and stepped inside. When we exit in the New Year, our relationships and we within those relationships will be forever changed. After an earnest and honest effort here, we can truly say: no more.

The Venus retrograde in Scorpio (October 8 - November 18) takes place within the Via Combusta, and Venus enters the degrees of its retrograde shadow September 5 at 27 degrees Libra. This marks our first real taste of Venus retro themes.

As Venus goes retrograde in Scorpio, our hearts go back - to love-related soul work we need to complete and connections we need to either make or let go of. We can trigger the release of younger versions of ourselves, other time-and-space versions of ourselves, from the aftermath of not-quite-right love dynamics we previously constructed, releasing others from the same. We can retrieve soul-bits of ourselves left behind with loves past and reintegrate after the bitter, hard-earned lessons we learned. Fusing the old wounds once and for all, healing them with a sweet and tender kiss. Blazing a trail out of tricky, sticky, entrapping karmic relationship dynamics for ourselves and for anyone who desires to do the same...

Venus enters Scorpio September 8 and stations retrograde October 8 at 13 Scorpio. Interesting numbers, aren't they? Eight and 13 showing up generally mean...this ain't play time. And I must say, it really isn't. Highly karmic energy dynamics and scenarios, especially in relationship, with root causes going far beyond these individual lifetimes. Grandscale collective karmic love clean-up, aisle Planet Earth!

Bring the mop bucket, Al. This is a messy one.

Purification through the alchemical fires is putting it mildly. Deep initiations through relationship, love, sex are possible.

The sexual element is strongly involved here, and sexual expression gets the same purifying treatment in an attempt to bring it back to a fully loving, respectful and energetically-responsible merger and exchange.

A process of deepening emotional authenticity and layer-peeling, resulting in a new honesty around sex, money, and relationship dynamics.

The intimacy of sharing the raw truth about our experience of being human on Planet Earth in relation to another and receiving the same.

Squirmy territory, but exciting.

At this point of tail-end Pisces, it's not just two individuals in relationship. We've got imprints involved of lovers through the ages in every possible circumstance and every possible combination - with separations, cruel twists of fate, ill timings, and disappointments all adding up to a collective haunting by heartbreak, longing, and a faded soul-memory of a love we are not even sure ever existed on this planet.

Scorpio is a sign that does not like sharing its bed or its partner, including with the ghosts of loves past. Venus in Scorpio, in particular, needs to be the only one. She's loyal, devoted, passionate, sexy, committed, but she requires the same in return. And all this tail-end Piscean era layering is energetically disturbing and irritating as hell for Venus-Eros-Mars in Scorpio. It can't continue. We can't do what we need to do within relationship under these clouded, noisy circumstances, so with this retro process, we kick the ghosts out of bed, out of our partnerships, and get back to one-on-one.

Liberation of the soul. That's the real goal of the sign of Scorpio.

Burning away crystallized layers that keep us stultified, constricted, unsatisfied in old, ingrained patterns, dynamics, habits, reactions. With old wounds perpetually reopened by a revolving cast of characters.

With the Venus in Scorpio retrograde, the first of the Saturn transit of Libra, we're liberating our love, our hearts, each other, ourselves by restructuring and transforming the ways in which we relate, how we show our love, how we receive love. Digging through the sticky tar wrapped around our hearts - regret, anger, resentment, disappointment, pain, sadness. Dropping them in a heap of ash. To get to that person and that feeling and that love that holds you, all of you, the way you need to be held.

In Scorpio, it's never easy, though. Scorpio asks us: how badly do you want it, this liberation? Show me. Yeah? You think you want it badly enough? Enough to be dragged through the muck and the betrayals and the pits of hell to get to it? Yes? All right then.

Do you want it enough to let go of every single non-essential thing, person, place, self? To be stripped to the absolute bone? To the point that it will terrify you at times because you do not recognize the person you see in the mirror?

Do you want it enough to admit you may not even get it in your lifetime on this planet? To break your own heart by accepting that the entire process might exist for a goal and an end that is beyond this physical life? An energy more than a someone. Will you keep going even then? For your liberation?

Because to go all the way, that is what's asked.

And you just know we're going all the way this time.

Let's be honest. There's some sadism with this sign Scorpio. It'll fool you and trip you and then once you're down on the ground, it'll grind your face into the dirt to reinforce the point. It'll laugh in your face that you thought it was going to be that easy, that you were going to get away with carrying that much illusion and baggage and non-essential desire and want and human will through the checkpoints. That you would be allowed through while that out of line with what is demanded of you by transformational collective progress, by God's will, the universe's will, the will of life itself.

But the vision. The beauty. The highest spiritual highs. The memory of that which truly feels right. The quiet of the eagle soaring over beautiful, idyllic settings. The peace. The other side of the coin. The soul memory of how it once was and how it maybe can be again. The liberation. That's what keeps you moving through it. Even when all you want to do is stop and rest or give up and spontaneously combust. When you would do almost anything to get out of it. When you're a trapped animal about to gnaw its own leg off to get out. When the desire to not experience what you are experiencing is the strongest thing - except for that. Except for the desire to get it just right - the merger and alignment of personal will with what is willed for you. And to experience the results of that, especially with another.

Venus and Eros trine Neptune and Chiron as they enter the retrograde shadow, and the wounding of our shattered hopes and dreams, the innocence that opened us to scalding hurt, is a big part of the retrograde process. If we have the inner resources and the courage to really look, we can peel illusion from reality here and release an older Piscean version of love, especially spiritual love, which then liberates us.

But it's sticky, tricky, highly karmic territory demanding our full commitment.

Venus, Eros and soon Mars in Scorpio are here as our friends: the ones who will tell you the truth about your new amour when you are too love-blinded to see the major faults or red flags.

You might hate it with a passion that this friend is telling you these things, but in the end, it saves a world of hurt - not to mention time.

Saturn's in Libra, and we don't have time to waste within the maturing and restructuring process relationships are going through. A sober eye is a beautiful thing now, and with the planets in Scorpio along with the Sun and Mercury retrograde in practically analytical, no-nonsense Virgo, we've got just that - as long as we are willing to listen.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Uranus Rx Re-Enters Pisces Just in Time For More Neptunian Slumber

The Great Awakener (Uranus) certainly has its work cut out for it. I'm not sure even Jupiter Rx re-entering the mix September 8 can make the issues big enough to create any real, lasting lucidity at this tail-end Piscean era.

So many dark secrets twisted up in watery graves that most seem willing to allow, to keep buried, rather than bringing them to the surface and letting them do their catalytic work...

It's been five days since Matt Simmons was found dead in his Maine home (8/8/10), and the cleansing of the mainstream media of nasty details about the Gulf has been swift, simultaneous and very nearly complete.

On Friday, August 6, the United States Food and Drug Administration declared Gulf seafood safe to eat.

Then the reports started coming about Obama serving Gulf seafood at his birthday party to show people just how safe it really is. The date of the big birthday bash? August 8.

These announcements despite conclusive tainting of blue crab larvae with oil and despite the fact that tests done by Tulane University researchers have not even been completed to determine whether the larvae have also been tainted with Corexit.

But the tests don't really matter.

The trajectory was set. The orders came down.

Show's over, folks! Crisis averted. The well's capped. Tens of millions but more likely hundreds of millions of gallons of oil have miraculously disappeared. Two million gallons of Corexit are but a memory. Everyone can go home! It was all just a bad dream.

"There is no information at this time to indicate that they (dispersants) pose a public health threat from exposure through the consumption of seafood," says the FDA.

Simmons' death was overshadowed in mainstream media outlets by the death of former U.S. senator Ted Stevens in an Alaska airplane crash August 9. Like Simmons, Stevens had a connection to the Gulf catastrophe. Stevens was involved in a probe related to whistleblower information that BP was fully aware of cheating on blowout preventer tests conducted at oil wells they owned.

"Mike Mason, who worked on oil rigs in Alaska for 18 years, says that he observed cheating on blowout preventer tests at least 100 times, including on many wells owned by BP...

Mason was interviewed by the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission in 2005 during a probe into allegations that Nabors Drilling, a subcontractor to BP, falsified such tests, among other claims that BP failed to report blowouts at the massive Prudhoe Bay oil field. The probe was spurred by oil industry critic Charles Hamel, who forwarded his allegation to then-Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska."

Also interesting is the fact that Hamel had previously been spyed on by a Wackenhut security firm after his investigations into a BP-owned Alaska pipeline forced BP to spend $1 billion on safety-related improvements. Wackenhut was hired by the pipeline company that operated the pipeline for BP. Hamel won a lawsuit against the company as well as a full-page newspaper ad apology. Of that, Hamel said:

"These oil interests are very powerful - they will stop at nothing to stop you."

But roll on over now, darlings. Go back to sleep. Stuff your heads back in celebrity gossip and sports scores and shopping and Blackberries and your friend score on Facebook. That quiz on what chakra you are or which Muppet you're most like isn't exactly going to do itself. Pour your energy into ascension and love and light and New Earth and looking the other way. Nestle in and take a big old hit of ether for Mama. Just forget all about this whole mess. It's nothing you have to worry your pretty little heads over.

The relief within the collective that they've been let off the hook by mass media and government agencies and Mr. Obama, that they no longer have to concern themselves with the Gulf horror, is palpable.

You see how potent the media-driven Neptunian fog is at this tail-end Piscean era, how quickly people will latch back onto the teat as if nothing had ever happened to jolt them out of their haze. This much Neptunian delusion is most certainly toxic to the system(s). But it feels oh so good, oh so easy, after a long and drawn out confrontation with planetary reality.

A quick glance at the New Orleans daily paper online, the Times Picayune, and you would barely know the Gulf catastrophe even existed, let alone that it continues to this day. (To recap: they haven't capped the main gusher - just the one the public had its eyes trained on.)

"New Orleans Saints defense was less than stellar." "Man shot dead at apartment complex." "MTV Real World New Orleans episode review."

An advertisement for a Save the Gulf T-shirt is the only mention of the Gulf at all.

And now Obama is planning a trip to New Orleans August 29 for the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. This Uranian-Neptunian character, designed and moulded just to divert and diffuse during these cross-over times, continues the spin. He'll put forth a big Leonine show of the King visiting his people, not forgetting them after their time of (purposefully-inflicted) tragedy. And with his carefully-crafted words, he will drop the veil on the Gulf.

And most will be more than willing to grab and pull and help it drop.

Lest we forget?

Lest we remember.

Uranus Rx re-enters Pisces tonight. It will re-enter Aries moving direct March 11, 2011.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

8.8

Matt Simmons, the man who has been speaking out in the mainstream media about the true extent of BP's catastrophe in the Gulf, was found dead in his home on 8/8/10. It is being reported as an accidental drowning due to heart attack.

Simmons had spoken in the media since May about multiple oil leaks in the Gulf of Mexico, including the real gusher which is reported to be about 10 kilometres away from the much smaller leak on which BP and the media have been training the eyes of the public.

Simmons was highly recognized in the industry and owned a company (Simmons & Co.) that provided financial services to oil and gas firms, facilitating billions of dollars in mergers. He was well-connected to say the least - an energy advisor to George W. Bush and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Simmons spoke out about the BP cover-up, calling it "the biggest environmental cover-up ever," as well as the attempted shifting of blame to Transocean. Simmons placed responsibility squarely on BP and said that the real cost of cleaning up the Gulf would cost well over a trillion dollars, bankrupting the company.

"Unfortunately, we now have killed the Gulf of Mexico."

Revelation 8:8 - The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Ceres Direct in Sagittarius on Its Way to Pluto in Capricorn and Benefitting Financially From the Starvation of the People

Asteroid Goddess of agriculture and grains Ceres has just completed a retrograde period and turned direct in Sagittarius. From this point, she hitches up her skirt and starts on a steely-eyed mission to conjunct (and confront) Pluto Rx in early Capricorn October 19, during this fall's Venus in Scorpio retrograde.

The dirty Pluto in Capricorn dealings being pushed up into collective awareness related to Ceres' territory of grains, cereals and food production are enough to make her hair stand on end, let me tell you. And we've only just begun.

Ceres came within one degree of a conjunction to Pluto in Capricorn in April of this year. Getting that much of a whiff of what Pluto was uncovering in that sign was all the nefariousness she could stomach at the time, going retrograde for three months and re-entering Sagittarius to get some distance. Now at 20 degrees, Ceres turns direct and gathers all the Sagittarian faith and courage about her she can for the unpleasant trek and meeting with Pluto this October.

One of the things coming to light under this transit is how food has become part of the derivatives scheme, creating a massive speculation bubble based on wild gambling on agricultural commodities prices. In 2008, this speculation drove food prices up (wheat by 80 percent, maize by 90 percent, rice by 320 percent) driving 200 million more people into starvation.

Finance schmucks are gambling on the price of food rising which fuels rabid speculation. And as their money games and various manipulations cause food prices to rise unnaturally, people around the world starve, suffer horribly, watch their children and loved ones withering and dying - all to keep the scam going and the bucks rolling after the mortgage scheme crashed and burned.

This is the world we're living in.

A lot of things have been blamed for the rising cost of food - fuel costs, supply problems, overpopulation, cash crops, diverting food crops to create ethanol. These all contribute.

But a major factor, probably the major factor, not often mentioned is the derivatives scheme on food and resulting price jumps. It was really this that spiked prices to the point that 200 million more people could not afford to fill their stomachs. This was the basis for the 2008 food riots in 30 countries. Haiti, Mexico, Egypt, Bangladesh, Mozambique...

When Haitians were eating biscuits made from clay and lard to stop their gnawing hunger, they had these speculators, their clients and the people who allowed (and continue to allow) the deregulation of the financial system to thank.

The helplessness of being starved for the financial gain of other people. The cruelty of it. The injustice. It makes me go weak. I have a hard time wrapping my head around this level of corruption. I can never quite get myself to that level of deviousness, and I'm sure I'm not doing this subject justice. I was never a fan of economic theory.

From an article by Johann Hari "How Goldman Sachs gambled on starving the world's poor - and won":

"Here's how it happened. In 2006, financial speculators like Goldman's pulled out of the collapsing US real estate market, and they were looking for somewhere else to make their stash of cash swell. They started to buy massive amounts of derivatives based on food: they reckoned that food prices would stay steady or rise while the rest of the economy tanked. Suddenly, the world's frightened investors stampeded onto this ground and decided to buy, buy, buy.

So while the supply and demand of food stayed pretty much the same, the supply and demand for contracts based on food massively rose - which meant the all-rolled-into-one price for food on people's plates massively rose. The starvation began.

The food price was now being set by speculation, rather than by real food. The hedge fund manager Michael Masters estimated that even on the regulated exchanges in the US - which take up a small part of the business - 64 percent of all wheat contracts were held by speculators with no interest whatever in real wheat. They owned it solely to inflate the price and sell it on."

The idea originally behind the futures market for crops was a hedging of investment for farmers and others directly involved in agricultural production. A farmer could agree to sell his crop in a future month at a certain price, thus locking in a price. If the farmer had a great year and the price was very high, he might lose some money. But if he had a poor year, the contract ensured that he would still earn a certain price, hedging his investment.

Because of an absolutely criminal level of deregulation, people who have no stake in agriculture at all - Wall Street suits who have never gotten a speck of dirt under their manicured fingers - can now buy these contracts, then upselling them to someone else who then upsells them to someone else, etc.

Once the mortgage scam collapsed, the ticks had to go looking for a new dog. They found one with our food supply. These speculators bet on the price of food rising, and the higher the price of staple goods like wheat, rice, corn, soybeans the bigger the profits for the speculators and their clients.

Floods, droughts and hailed-out crops create further shortages in supply, and although there seems to be only the slightest connection between the real, physical supply of food and the pricing schemes (apparently, only about two percent of commodities futures now end with a real exchange of goods), this also causes prices to rise.

If you are a person who believes weather is being manipulated, it is not much of a stretch to see a connection between so-called natural disasters and the manipulation of food supply and pricing, ensuring the speculation pays off - at least for now.

Pakistan's breadbasket has now been flooded. Sixteen hundred people are confirmed dead, and 650,000 homes have been destroyed. Four million people now face homelessness.

On a smaller scale, Saskatchewan and Alberta (Canada's breadbasket) have been flooded and hailed this summer causing massive crop failures.

By artificially inflating food prices through speculation and manipulations of supply, the price for the crop no longer has any relation to what it is worth in a real-world marketplace - or to what people can pay. There is no consideration of the fact that these are staples that people need to live.

And it sounds as if the food derivatives game has been pushed to its limits at this point.

Paul B. Farrell at MarketWatch is warning that this bubble is going to burst in the very near future:

"Commodity ETFs are rapidly becoming a malicious virus breeding chaos in the global markets pricing all commodities: food, farm lands, metals, oil, natural gas, livestock, water and other natural resources are the assets under commodity derivatives and their ETFs, pricing that's now controlled more by Wall Street speculators than the weather, adding wild swings in volatility and trillions in global derivative risks."

As is generally the case these days, there is a "get your's while the getting's good" ethic. This is a parasitic system that has been designed to collapse after the speculators have made their money and drained their host. The fact that they are playing with people's lives never enters the equation.

We're seeing the same speculation bubbles being overinflated to their ultimate conclusions that we saw sustained for so long during Pluto in Sagittarius.

This speculation in food (Ceres) will more than likely build during Ceres' transit of the last ten degrees of Sagittarius, but once it re-enters Capricorn and conjuncts Pluto in October, things will be stripped to the bare reality on this front.

I'm thinking about the Ethiopian woman in the Johann Hari article who said her children stopped growing and she felt that someone had poured battery acid in her stomach as she starved.

"We can't go through that another time. Please - do anything you can to make sure they never, never do that to us again."

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

You Know What Term I'm a Little Sick Of? Cardinal T-Square.


Baseball-sized hail wreaked havoc in southeastern Saskatchewan this past Saturday, July 31. Since just before the Full Moon Capricorn eclipse on June 26, Saskatchewan has experienced the wildest weather in memory, being pounded by storm after storm of hail, mass quantities of rain causing flooding, and tornadoes. One hundred fourteen communities have declared themselves disaster areas this summer due to flooding, and there has been massive crop failure due to both a cold, wet spring and now flooding. I'm not a person who believes most weather patterns are natural at this point (an earthquake AND a tornado just before the G8/G20 Summits?), but this is quite symbolic of the astro energies we're dealing with currently.

We're getting hammered. Tempered on all fronts by the weight and pressure of the cardinal t-square configuration.

Action planet Mars in Libra completes its grind through this uber tight t-square late tonight with an opposition to Jupiter in Aries and a square to Pluto in Capricorn. Heavy is understatement.

Mars is still within range of its conjunction to Saturn, and our actions carry an extreme amount of weight. We're in a time frame when the decisions we make and actions we take (or don't make and take) have such broad, long-term effect that if we were fully aware of the possibilities, we would probably freeze and curl into a little ball. All four seasons are changing in our lives simultaneously.

Luckily, we're humans, and we're never 100% aware of the stakes. Also luckily, the amount of pressure involved here makes it nearly impossible NOT to take some sort of action. To curl up into a little ball would probably mean being crushed under the weight of it all. At this point, it's difficult if we do and difficult if we don't, but the cardinal impetus squeezing the crap out of us says we have to go. Things have crumbled all around us, and taking the next step and then the next, even when we're dragging ourselves through it, is the only way to forge our way out of the wreckage.

"Tipping the scales moments" is putting it mildly. These are the types of energies where the fate of humanity on this planet lies in our skill (or lack thereof) in dealing responsibly. The weight of a billion interactions that have preceded us hangs in the air, and this is where things are decided.

Feeling pressured is understandable. The responsibility is pressing. The stakes are high. The complexity is incomprehensible. But again, we can't think about that. We just have to carefully determine what is right, what our souls tell us is right, and do it.

It's going to be tight. There's only so much we can do at this point with insanity being unleashed all around us. There is only the thinnest of threads to follow through it. But we're doing it. We knew we could, and we're doing it. We had the best chance of getting it right. The right mix of finely-honed skills, fire, determination and experience for these times. So we were called in, elected as the ones best able to take a shot. To take the shot for all those who came before, who wait in the etheric wings with bated breath. As we crawl on bleeding elbows through barbed wire and thistles to get to the release point.

As of midnight tonight, some of the pressure breaks as Mars slowly starts to pull out of the t-square formation. It will be fully out of orb by the time of the third and final square of Saturn in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn August 21.

Don't be too relieved just yet, though. Venus enters Libra Friday, August 6 (9:47 p.m. Mountain) in tight conjunction with Eros, and those two run the cardinal t-square gauntlet, too, August 7-9. This won't be a relaxing weekend, so the Monday to Friday-ers hoping to escape the pressure with a weekend trip out of town will be out of luck.

Just to add to the fun, as of 3:50 p.m. Friday, the Moon will be in Cancer, becoming the fourth cardinal leg. For just over six hours, we have a full, exact Cardinal Grand Cross in our sky. (Pulling out of range by the early morning of Saturday, August 7.)

Venus and Eros finish their last aspects and start to pull out of the t-square late August 9, the same day of the Leo New Moon. This is the release point of the previous Cancer New Moon solar eclipse July 11, so this New Moon is going to be a relief in more ways than one.

As of August 10, we have released the most potent aspects of the recent eclipse season and personal planets Mars and Venus will have made it through the cardinal t-square gauntlet - the only personal planets (other than the Moon) that will take part in this cardinal t-square.

As of August 21, Saturn will have completed it's final square to Pluto in Capricorn from Libra, and we are past the most potent and constricting point of the cardinal t-square.

With Saturn involved, taking this stuff in chunks of time can really be helpful. Saturn transits often feel as if they will go on forever. So even though things may feel insane right now, a major layer lightens after the August 9 Leo New Moon. And by September, things really start to ease.

Sure, we'll be into the retrograde shadow degrees of a massively potent Venus retrograde in Scorpio by then, but honestly, at this point even a Venus retro in Scorpio will feel like something we're better able to handle.

Sunday, August 1, 2010

Do The Dishes, Baby. That Really Turns Me On.

Relationship planet and cosmic lover Venus is currently coming together with asteroids Vesta (tending the sacred flames we're personally invested in) and Eros (sexual love and beauty) in a late Virgo conjunction, and cleaning out the fridge has never been hotter.

Dusting the blinds or cleaning the shower grout (and doing a realllly good job) is a major turn-on. Little details like adding sprouts to a salad or using an exceptionally well-placed semi-obscure word can really get the motor running. Applying some elbow grease and showing that you're not afraid of a little hard work? Highly attractive.

And someone who flosses regularly? Forget about it. Total babe/dude magnet.

Daily work, words, personal investment, love and sexual undertone are all intermeshed with this conjunction at tail-end Virgo.

Venus and Eros are in almost exact conjunction all this month and up until this fall's Venus retrograde (October 8 - November 18), adding a spicy undertone to the proceedings. Venus has just entered a 27-month period of prominence as the dispositor of Saturn in Libra. This means whatever is going on in Venus' world becomes a major factor in our Saturn in Libra relationship structuring and restructuring work. Paying attention and integrating what we need to from Venus' movement is a major key to Saturnine success.

So at the moment, that means working those Virgoan details and showing off what we've mastered from the Saturn in Virgo transit.

Venus and Eros join Mars in Libra August 6/7 and immediately oppose Uranus-Jupiter in Aries, conjunct Saturn in Libra and square Pluto in Capricorn within the big cardinal t-square. At that point and into early September, being fair and mannered with a refined aesthetic sense really starts to do it for people. A keen awareness of social justice issues? Very sexy. And if you're easy on the eyes, all the better.

With Saturn in Libra's influence, a certain level of restraint and a cultured sense of formality in our relations are suddenly very appealing. Displaying fine breeding and then making potential suitors work for it a bit becomes an integral part of the mating ritual dance. Think Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. All that simmering love and sexual attraction smoking up their stuffy meetings in formal sitting rooms surrounded by sisters and cousins and old aunts and such. Hot.

The conjunctions with Saturn on the early degrees of Libra are an initial maturing checkpoint setting the tone for our relationship work over the next 27 months. With Eros in the mix, the sexual form of our relating and expression of love is right at the forefront. Saturn will give us an initial status report on how we need to become more mature, more respectful or more balanced here. Any ways that loving human relating, especially sexually, has gotten undignified, unequal, unrefined or just plain unlovely will be areas we need to work diligently on while Saturn transits Libra. The current mainstream media-enforced version of human sexuality is pretty much the definition of undignified, unequal, unrefined and unlovely, so we've got a lot of work to do here.

These themes deepen this fall with Venus' retrograde in Scorpio, the sign of, among other things, sex, death, core-level soul connection, spirituality, and deep energy exchange and merger. We've got some brass tacks to get to as far as the interactions between men and women (and men and men, and women and women) and the fair and equitable energy exchange and merger of the feminine and masculine.

This will involve many hidden dynamics generally kept firmly under the collective rug being brought to the surface, often in confronting ways, so expect some volcanic activity - personally, if not on the world stage.

Until then, eat your leafy greens and hang some art to woo the apple of your eye - or to become someone's apple.