Leo Season comes to a close, as the Sun and Mercury enter Virgo. This week, Mars in Aries squares Saturn in Capricorn, and Venus in Cancer opposes Jupiter in Capricorn.
Watch this forecast on YouTube, or continue reading below!
We can think of Virgo as a devotional energy – Virgo is associated with service too. Virgo also corresponds with anxiety, criticism, crisis, and focusing on what is wrong. We can all have a better experience of Virgo’s energy when we decide conscientiously what want to focus on and what we are willing to return our energy to time and time again.
This last week I happened to pick up a book called Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson that delves into the neuroscience and pragmatic techniques of hardwiring the brain for happiness. This involves a practice of “taking in the good” and making a point to sit with positive moments that occur throughout the day for fifteen seconds or more – storing them in a sense, instead of letting them pass. It’s often more likely that these moments pass us by (they don’t stick) whereas when something upsetting happens we fixate on it. Over time, if we have allowed ourselves to only fixate on the negative, we become increasingly negative, unhappy and reactive. Likewise, if we make a practice around happiness, over time we experience the positive consequences of that!
How does Virgo play into this? Virgo has two basic ways of accomplishing its agenda of creating order/organization: scan for imperfection and fix problems OR align with a chosen value and organize reality around that value. For example, we could either make sure we are not fucked up, self-probe, and make sure we fix all of our psychological problems, OR we could attune to the energy of self-worth and live in accordance with it. See how they are both aimed at improvement, but one is more negative and the other is more positive?
Tuning into flaws and self-correcting isn’t necessarily negative – it just depends on the greater context and motivation at play. We can self-correct from a place of self-hatred or self-worth, and the latter is obviously going to be more pleasurable to experience.
For more understanding of the Virgo process/Virgo psychology, tune into a podcast I did with Mark Jones about Virgo and the Pluto in Virgo generation (gems in here regardless of being part of that generation or not!). It’s episode #48 of Magic of the Spheres if you want to find it on your podcast app.
Welcome back! Or in case this is your first time here, I’m Sabrina Monarch and I’m a soul-centered astrologer. I love providing perspectives on the opportunities of transits and putting into words what the vibe feels like at this moment in time, to support you on your path & open a dialogue between us and the cosmos. If you would like to receive these weekly forecasts to your inbox and be notified of upcoming educational opportunities, sign up for my mailing list here.
Here’s our week after a few announcements!
New episode of Magic of the Spheres! Drew Levanti @anthrosophist and I discuss electional astrology (selecting optimal timing for events like launches) and the planet Mercury and Mercury’s correlation to naming, oracle, moving beyond the mundane, and more. Mercury is a planet that can help us make connections, and relates to the quality of how language can both name existing realities and create/evoke new ones. You may have caught Drew andI at the Fresh Voices in Astrology Summit this last weekend!
Drew is a consulting astrologer who works with electional astrology to bring aligned timing into the natal chart. Coming from a background in Hellenistic astrology, Drew works with individuals who want help navigating astrological cycles by timing their important decisions and next steps. Drew lives in Chicago, where he finished college in 2018 with a background in anthropology. Together astrology and anthropology fuel Drew’s interest in cultural understandings of fate, agency, and the power of prediction. Visit his website at https://archeastrology.com.
Tune in where you listen to podcasts! Or on your browser here.
NEXT EVOLUTIONARY ASTROLOGY INTENSIVE
We’ve just begun the current intensive, but I’m going to announce the dates for the upcoming one sooner than I normally do, so you have time to plan. I’m also going to make the next one friendlier to European time zones. Stay tuned, and make sure you’re on my mailing list to be informed. View the course page here for more information on this amazing learning opportunity.
Here’s our week:
August 19, 2020
Mercury enters Virgo: 6:30 PM PDT
Mercury will stay in Virgo until September 5.
- Mercury rules both Gemini and Virgo and is at home in these signs. Mercury in Virgo can bring finesse to matters of clear communication (parcelling out just the right message), discernment, and alignment.
- Alignment is a type of accuracy. When we know what we are devoted to, we can use this as a center point to return to. The meditator who is focusing on their breath continues to re-align by remembering their breath. Alignment involves straying and coming back – or in a more loaded sense, error and perfection. We can take this to mean that alignment is not a process in which there is always perfection. It is the act of coming back to the desired frequency that one is aligning with, that is the magic. The more we practice, the quicker we come back and the more naturally we inhabit the desired state in the first place.
- What are you loyal to? How do you come back to it as a practice?
August 22, 2020
Sun enters Virgo: 8:44 AM PDT
(This and top image: Samantha Mash)
- All the mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces) mark the transition of one season to the next. With Virgo, summer is coming to an end (in the northern hemisphere at least) and we start to prepare for the transition by getting organized – organization is of course a key Virgo concept. Many of us have routinely experienced this time of year being the beginning of a school year, where we start to prepare and organize for new classes and a new schedule.
- Organizing, aligning, and orienting are all relative – there is something we are organizing ourselves with, a value we are aligning to. Because of how our brains have evolved to protect us from danger (and to survive), our brains are more naturally wired to focus on the negative and to be vigilant than our brains are more naturally wired to feel blissful and grateful by default. (Read Hardwiring Happiness by Rick Hanson for further research.) With Virgo, we can definitely be hypervigilant and develop a fixation on the negative, like what is wrong and what needs fixing. Surely you may recognize this capacity within yourself to be perpetually on edge, reactive, and unhappy. Once one problem is resolved, three other problems crop up in its place. The solution does not lie in fixing all the problems, but re-orienting the type of reality that one is aligned to. When we live in anxiety, we will always find things to be anxious about. If we choose to live in peace, or trust, etc. we will experience a more miraculous universe.
- Paradoxically enough, entering a more aligned state of mind can help us more easily solve problems that were otherwise difficult to handle in a more taxed state of mind.
- Most people don’t have to develop a practice around being more negative or reactive. These are resting defaults which unfortunately offer negative and reactive returns. The practice is about cultivating happiness, positivity, or awe/gratitude, so that these mental habits can grow and become easier and easier to feel on command.
- The best way to find your alignment is to pick a life-enhancing value (bliss, enchantment, happiness, excitement, grace, etc.) and keep returning your focus to it and the cultivation of it. This isn’t about denying your true emotions. It’s about building new neural pathways and making these life-enhancing states more accessible in your everyday experience. Not only do these small positive actions compound over time, but we end up making choices from these elevated states that further anchor us in more expansive, harmonic realities.
August 24, 2020
Mars in 26 Aries square Saturn retrograde in 26 Capricorn: 11:19 AM PDT
(Image: Joe Bruha)
We explored Mars square Pluto last week, and noted that Mars is effectively squaring Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn in Capricorn for months to come! Mars will station retrograde in Aries, and for several months be locked in this square dynamic. Review here.
- There is quite likely a frustrating element to Mars square these Capricorn planets. It’s Mars, who loves uninhibited freedom and mobility, squaring off with planets in a sign (Capricorn) related to limitations. Mars-Saturn can be like a person jolting up too fast in a small room and hitting their head on the ceiling and then being visibly irritated and angry.
- The greater opportunity here is around slowing down and becoming more intimately aware of the nature of a challenge or impasse – finding wisdom through reflection.
- At a basic level, yes we can be frustrated with our circumstances or the limitations within our reality. But this is a time for experimenting with new strategies and making choices that empower our sense of agency when it comes to cultivating our own destiny.
- There is also some wisdom here in that the fastest track anywhere might not be the best one. Sometimes limitations aren’t just against us, but actually for us. Imagine if some notably less mature dreams of yours had come true just because you wanted them to. But they didn’t, and you learned a lot of other important things along the way and discovered more important priorities.
- Inhibition and courage are also notable themes right now. Saturn in Capricorn is cautious – Mars in Aries, not so much. Some inhibitions are wise, and others are just fearful – fearful of the unknown, fearful of making a mistake, fearful of looking ridiculous. Sometimes we find ourselves at the impasse of really not knowing the consequence of a choice we want to make (Will it work out? Will it be successful?) but we also have to ask ourselves if we are willing to live with the consequences of not having taken risks in life, either.
- If we do decide to be courageous, we can get in contact with the facilitation and supportive energies of Saturn. People say affirmations for a reason! Every place we have fear or resistance can also be a place to tap into what a wiser, more expansive/loving version of yourself would have to say to encourage and coach you.
August 25, 2020
Mercury in 10 Virgo trine Uranus retrograde in 10 Taurus: 8:18 AM PDT
(Image: Josh E. Wylie)
- We’ve already spoken of alignment with Mercury in Virgo. Considering Uranus is related to the higher mind, the soul’s memories of all its past lives (whether this enters conscious, current incarnation awareness or not), the Akashic records, brilliance, and all ideas past present future ever possible — the question now is what radio station of consciousness are you aligning with?
- We live far too reductively if we assume that the state of consciousness that we are in or the experience that we are having is just that objectively, at face value. We are always tuned into frequencies or states of consciousness, that influence our moods, choices, and circumstances. If we can mentally detach from the appearances of life enough to not take them as “all that there is”, we can tap into what we’d like to create.
- Give yourself some space to back up from the circumstances and appearances of life and tune into what kind of station you would like to be dialed into. Work with that frequency, and see the circumstances and appearances of life shift.
Venus in 17 Cancer opposite Jupiter retrograde in 17 Capricorn: 3:26 PM PDT
(Image: Kay Neilsen)
There may be some restoration brought to crestfallen, disillusioned, or ‘broken’ places with this transit. But not just so simply! Some thoughts…
- There is a kind of love that reaches into ‘broken’ places. This can happen internally when we decide to or discover how to offer grace to parts of ourselves that we have refused to love. We care for ourselves in a way that we have not before.
- In relationship, giving and offering love to places in another where they have not felt loved can be immensely healing and bonding. And, it can also be a place where power dynamics or deeply unconscious motivations like rescuer/savior stuff gets played out.
- This may sound judgmental, but I’m gonna drop it… Sometimes unresolved feelings of neediness or unworthiness takes on the mask of being a provider – “I’ll take care of you!” “Nothing you could say would ever turn me away. You can tell me anything. You can be vulnerable with me.” In these cases, the needy-feeling or unworthy-feeling person feels like they are getting something out of another person’s need, or hooking into another person’s pain points and being like, “I accept you – you’re safe with me.”
- Coming from a place of need can involve ‘giving to get’ – need can make people more prone toward manipulative behavior. Being in need is a difficult space. Often our healing work or personal development work is around fulfilling basic needs that we have, in increasingly aligned/healthy ways.
- Someone experiencing healthier attachment and who has relatively stable self-worth might exhibit similar behaviors, like being trustworthy with sensitive information and making themselves available to be with another’s vulnerability. The difference is that as they provide emotional care, they aren’t motivated by lack or possessiveness, but by love, loyalty and respect.
- There is a quality with Venus-Jupiter contacts of “big” love. Expansive love. Having a big heart. Having a lot of love to give. When it comes to these themes above, it can be a kind of love that sees past limitations. It is those moments with ourselves when we overcome one of our resistances to loving a part of ourselves, because it’s like we can see our value more clearly – the clouds have parted and the sun has come out. In relationship, it is hearing someone’s fear or insecurity and just loving them so much more than that that it’s almost sweet/cute that they are hung up about a little thing like that.
- Speaking of alignment from earlier 😉 big love can be aligned with, too! You can imagine how your higher self loves you, or how Source loves you, and draw that self-love to yourself.
- Early experiments with expansive love tend to relate to poor boundaries, so once we’ve learned that lesson and we don’t want to repeat it again, we must also imagine a kind of “big love” that is discerning and self-valuing enough to make healthy choices.
Thank you for meditating on the planets with me this week! If you would like further guidance, I have been increasingly focused on longer-term 1:1 work with my students and clients, in the form of mentorship – helping people form a depth relationship to their natal chart and personal transits over time, to develop themselves, to heal, and to reach their goals, all through the soul-making lens of evolutionary astrology. If you’re interested in working together in that capacity, I am currently accepting new clients. Send me an email at sabrina@monarchastrology.com to start a conversation and set up a free consultation call.
Find me on Instagram @sabrinamonarch and Twitter @Sabrina_monarch, get on my mailing list to stay apprised of all upcoming offerings and events, and I’ll see you next week!
With love,
Sabrina Monarch
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