Summer Solstice and Mars Retrograde: Astrology of 6/20 – 6/26
As we approach Mars retrograde I’ve been thinking a lot about the image of an athletic competition; and the athlete’s time divided between game time and time on the bench – and then how similar this is to times we are incredibly busy living out the theater of our most personal dramas versus moments of down time, reflection and recuperation. Perhaps we find ourselves swept up in a season of a new love (we’re in the game). Or we find ourselves binging Netflix and for those hours observing lives rather than focusing on our own, maybe downloading insight about the human condition while we restore our energy for the next play (we’re on the bench). Or perhaps it is in the realm of our victories and defeats in life – we are in the throes of challenges, in our moment-to-moment experience, versus being in a season of glancing back, analyzing what happened play by play, whilst planning our next steps & our comeback!
This week while Venus in Leo opposes Mars in Aquarius, and this summer as Mars is retrograde – I invite you to continually tune in where your soul is authentically calling you: is to the game or to the bench; to the heat of living or to the sidelines where you have some time to think and assess? It is not as though one blanketly applies for each situation or each moment. The gestalt of the game holds both simultaneously. But in a linear experience of time, we may walk through each distinctly. Perhaps you feel both at the same time, in moments of exciting activity and heightened awareness.
And you know how an extreme on one end calls you to the other — you get overheated and you get called out of the game. Or you’ve been sitting out too long, or you’ve been waiting — and the call to action appears. These are not necessarily premeditated or planned cycles on our part, but a responsiveness to what life is drawing out of us. Have peace with your calling, and allow both your mind and your heart to hear it.
An ease at this time of conjuring inspired ideas, some of which we do not even recognize as inspired (though they are!). Pay attention to your pleasant daydreams.
Every person has some kind of struggle between their ideals and the limitations of their reality – though even these limitations we are not always lucid about, sometimes distorting them with our imagination. Rather than dismissing dreams and fantasy (…if you catch yourself doing this), consider nebulous and mysterious thoughts/visions as opportunities to engage with spirit and to develop your discernment.
June 21, 2018
Sun enters Cancer: 3:07 AM PDT
This marks the summer solstice, (or winter solstice, on the Southern Hemisphere.)
Cancer Season signifies a time where our family, close intimates, and home become central in our attention. Or at least, this is where the Sun shines and pours its vitality, and to get a solar boost you can engage the Cancerian area of life.
The Cancer archetype has simultaneous drives to be cozy, safe and nourished in what is precious and to protect that which is precious.
As the Sun will be opposing either Saturn or Pluto in Capricorn for the duration of its stay in Cancer, there can be some challenges and opportunities around our emotional development. Consider the words of Clarissa Pinkole Estes: “The difference between comfort and nurture is this: if you have a plant that is sick because you keep it in a dark closet, and you say soothing words to it, that is comfort. If you take out of the closet and put in the sun, give it something to drink, and then talk to it, that is nurture.”
In our own lives, the archetype of nurture is universally important. But when we don’t know of other options and are just getting by, we do ‘comfort’ ourselves (aligning to to Estes’ definition). Be aware of opportunities this Cancer Season to practice nurture where you have been practicing comfort.
Our moment-to-moment sense of happiness and ease can be in a really dynamic relationship this season with life structures, the architecture of our lives. So again, rather than practicing comfort in the midst of a dysfunctional or non-resonant situation, consider structural constructive shifts within your reach, that you can make that foster your moment-to-moment sense of wellbeing.
Additionally, continuing to make these within-reach constructive shifts to our lives opens up more and more of the same, and a domino effect can occur where we begin to shift our creativity energy toward enhancing life where we were before only coping. These shifts don’t even have to come from a place of already having it together – it’s more like being a plant who moves toward the Sun; that which will help it grow.
Venus in 9 Leo opposite Mars in 9 Aquarius: 9:53 AM PDT
This aspect signifies tensions and frictions within our relationships which are coming to a head. While this transit manifests uniquely for different individuals, relationships, and situations, a few underlying themes can be present:
A re-balancing can be a harvest at this time in terms of how we relate to anger inwardly. Those who do not often get angry or have internalized conditioning that they should not be angry and be ‘chill’ might feel a rising of anger that is healthy and healing to express. Those who tend to be angry a lot of the time may be considering ways of tempering that.
An opening, or a need for, ways of expressing anger and upset with others; the pouring of love into conflict; conflict opening up receptivity between individuals (rather than things staying buried).
Anger or the desire to separate from others because one does not feel seen or recognized – and simultaneously this signifies an opening for a person to invest more energy into the manifestation of their own creativity.
The possibility that anger informs us of a desire or a need and even helps re-direct our manifestation – for example, someone who suddenly gets fed up of being mistreated (such as at a workplace or in a relationship) realizes that they would actually like to be respected and that they will move toward situations that support that desire rather than staying somewhere where they are feeling oppressed. A sense of recognition of one’s own worth and resourcefulness can be rising.
Heightened pleasure/vivaciousness around being expressive and weird; of manifesting one’s uniqueness.
It is an act of balance with this transit to discover how to be in tune with our individuality while also in relationship, rather than going from extremes of isolating/separating and then enmeshment/codependency. The extremes might occur (at varying gradients) until balance is struck. Even so, balance is an ongoing attunement and not a static arrival.
June 22, 2018
Sun in 1 Cancer sextile Uranus in 1 Taurus: 10:57 PM PDT
As we spoke earlier of making constructive life shifts, this transit opens up a portal for electric creativity between our emotional intuition and leveling up in terms of resources, money, abundance, pleasure, etc.
If you want to be more satisfied with what you already have and/or open to receiving more, check your ego and all of its scripts/stories. These are just the scripts/stories that you identify with and you can change them. The ego is like a house for your experience – it consolidates your identity; it’s not just this bad, non-spiritual thing. But it can constrict us when we don’t have a creative or lucid relationship to it.
As Sun-Uranus contacts signify self-invention, you can think of the feeling of who you’d like to be in the future, and begin aligning with that in your actions/feelings/habits now, and pull that stream of possibility toward you. You can do the same thing by thinking of how you would like to feel right now, and in the resourceful ways you know how… attuning.
June 23, 2018
Mercury in 20 Cancer opposite Pluto in 20 Capricorn: 2:26 AM PDT
This transit may signify a ripening/harvest phase in evolving our thoughts: mental scripts which pose friction with our emotional wellbeing can come to a head. Anxiousness, paranoia, fear, etc. are all possible feelings within that.
Our minds are very powerful, and turned inwardly or upon ourselves our thoughts/minds can disempower us, such as when we overly identify or believe certain thoughts or mental loops which do not actually serve us to be entangled with. Or, when fear dominates consciousness, we make decisions that engender negative feedback loops in our lives.
One way to get a better handle on this relationship with mental power is to spend more time with attractive, resonant ideas and to be aware that mental addictions to fear, anxiety, suffering, judgement, etc exist, and are not necessarily more noble or in touch. When you are seeking transformation (like you don’t want anxiety in a given area of your life anymore) give yourself permission to dig for sweeter thoughts and perceptions you overlook in the tunnel of anxiety.
Mercury-Pluto contacts do relate to taboo interests, or obsessive fascinations, being mentally compelled, and research rabbit holes, too, and a way that we psychically merge with these information streams. It’s the same energy that has to do with getting lost in conspiracy theory or locking yourself away to spend hours teaching yourself how to do graphic design and then having a new career. We might get attached/enmeshed with what we’re focusing on, but we just can remember our agency in the process when it comes to sensing what kind of media we are drawn to consume and why.
June 25, 2018
Venus in 13 Leo square Jupiter in 13 Scorpio: 10:18 AM PDT
The tensions, discord and new creative energy swirling around at this time can be propelling development of our philosophies – a deepened or evolved sense of how to live our values and how to be in relationship to others.
Perhaps the ways that we’ve seen love and sexuality work in the past (for both ourselves and those who modeled it to us) is reaching a juncture wherein those old ideas and practices don’t meet the demands of the current situation – we have to expand our paradigm.
Leo-Scorpio squares – here expressed through the dynamic expansion of our relationships and relationship to self – can be hot and sharp. Negatively, there are themes of jealousy, vindictiveness, cruelty, cutting reflection, all in the extra kind of vibe. But positively, there is a deep empowerment through recognition/validation, playful depths, sexual prowess, deep attentiveness, spiciness. Attune as needed to evolve your sense and radiance of true nobility.
June 26, 2018
Mars stations retrograde in 9 Aquarius: 2:04 PM PDT
Stay tuned for an additional write-up on this transit which lasts for our entire summer! Some of its key characteristics are that Mars will be on the karmic South Node of the Moon the whole time, and also squaring Uranus in Taurus the whole time. I have archetypal perspectives and practical strategies to offer you, so I’m stoked to write up a broader piece on it. Sign up for my mailing list to get it emailed to you later in the week. (It is for list subscribers only, and will not be posted here.)
With love,
Sabrina Monarch
Offerings
Personalized forecast reading: Want to know how the transits specifically affect you? This reading is focused on how the current transits of now to six months out are personally impacting your natal chart. We’ll look at longer-acting outer planetary transits as well as significant transit events that exact their alignment in this six month window.
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Soulwork Sessions: Astrological consultations geared to answer your most pressing/difficult questions. Soulwork is a means through which I can provide guidance to anyone working with a challenging situation, paradox, yearning or existential question – something unresolved in your experience that you want to transform or have breakthrough with.
Sabrina Monarch is a soul-centered Evolutionary Astrologer who publishes weekly astrological forecasts and teaches. She has been collecting astrological experience for over a decade. She is a novelist and is currently pursuing her masters in Philosophy. She also enjoys kundalini yoga, meditation and ashtanga yoga.
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