Framed by a void moon on either side, the weekend’s Full Sturgeon Moon in Aquarius saw tension between self and other highlighted in frictional ways, as the solar system’s center illuminated Luna in the sign of the periphery, the pariah, the outsider, the outcast.  Whichever end of the Leo/Aquarius polarity playground seemed to hold your primary vantage, the taut cord between fiery conviction and a cool outside perch from which to witness was felt…  and still can be, as the dance of any sign axis is within each of us at all times.

Since waning to a more tender repose in Pisces, the Moon is in mutual reception with the Jupiter it rules until entering Aries on Tuesday morning.  There is a flourish amidst the tumult as Venus exacts her conjunction with our exalted Jupiter any moment, a few hours before the east coast sunrise.

And yet we are not done with the lessons the full moon brought.  Peaks and valleys between us, the gold and gilded, music and the spaces between the notes for the benefics to reach through, seeking to bind with ever transient song.

What of the lunar cycle’s climax, its fullness, the trying worldly landscape?

Flesh and blood alongside an ever microplastic-mired future… impotent kings floundering in front of the camera, their opposition drugged… uprisings fooled by the fleeting allusion of their whims catered to; chauffeured about by foreigners, poisonous food couriered by other wage slaves helping preserve the illusion of each human’s personal sovereignty as the pillars keep crumbling, the curtain torn, everyone waving their piece of it and calling it gospel.  Vehicles zipping about from consumer to consumer, distracting us from our own damaged chariots.

With the Full Moon in Aquarius having exacted on the morning of Saturday, August 9th, some potent and challenging planetary aspects preceded and flow beyond it still, with the void moons having provided a strange vacuum around… before that wane into Pisces, before Venus and Jupiter’s perfection today, mere minutes from now as we made mention.

Mars entered its detriment of Libra last week, still in lingering opposition to the conjunction of Saturn and Neptune in Aries which it rules — the Mars sign of ‘I’m willing to fight, but not with you’ as Adam Sommer put it years ago, presently in debilitated opposition to a pair of planets charged with doing some heavy lifting and sifting through harmful illusions.

Now on the other side of this lunar cycle’s peak, we have Venus conjunct Jupiter in Cancer and emanating through most of the week — bringing the benefics together in a place of connection and increase.  While this is a beautiful balm and boost for human relating, and one amplifying that jovian seesaw of excess and excellence, Mars and Saturn staring each other down across the Aries/Libra axis, square by sign to the benefics, are sometimes only so soothed.

Venus and Jupiter meet in Cancer decan II.  The second face of Cancer (its middle ten degrees) suggests a kind of ‘passive abundance’ — but can also reveal the frailty of a bond not properly nurtured, as Austin Coppock wrote of in ’36 Faces.’  It is among the discord and mediation, the ideological tension and awareness that maybe something has to give… that we come back to the table of human communion as our primary purpose — yet work is needed where insufficient nurture is revealed.

Where we might otherwise reap blessing without much effort, areas for conscious improvement are pointed to amidst the benefic rays of effortless connection augured by this week’s reverberating union of Venus and Jupiter.

Just some of the themes to feel around for…

* belonging and alienation
* conflict and reconciliation
* dominance and peacemaking
* ideological fervor and sectarian behavior
* ”I’m willing to fight, but not with you”
* sifting through harmful illusions
* recognizing common ground as not just a survival tool, but something you’ve been standing on it the whole time
* connection and communion
* beauty and bonding amidst uncertain futures
* moments of ease, experienced without much effort
* still, focus falling on where we will have to expend energy in the near future to nourish greater understanding
* remembering love and human connection as the whole point

We can enjoy fruitful moments that arise of organic beauty… but remember, things grow where you water them.  Swim well stargazers!

—A.B.