Thoughts for June 2008

1 June 2008

Graphic Ephemeris June 2008

New Moon 3 June 2008

1st Quarter Moon 10 June 2008

Full Moon 18 June 2008

3rd Quarter Moon 26 June 2008

Cancer Ingress 2008

I've come down to earth with a bit of a bump after a fantastic time at UAC. Always a bit of a shock to come back to normality. There were some fabulous lectures from some amazing speakers and they're going to be available to buy very soon. Go to the main page and follow the links for shopping. My talk was on Solar Eclipse Symbolism and I think it went very well. If you want to find out, then maybe you can get the tape?

Lecturers and lectures I highly recommend are Rob Hand on the Picatrix and Giordano Bruno, Baris Ilhan on The Astrology of Nasir al-Din al-Tusi and Ben Dykes on Medieval Dream Interpretation. A lecture I heard good things about and will be getting myself is Diana K Rosenburg on Secrets of the Ancient Skies: Fixed Stars and Constellations. Deborah Houlding's lecture The Healing Power of Horary was extremely well received and the room was so full that those of us going along to support her couldn't get in!

I enjoyed Chris Turner's lecture, In the Shadow of Man, about a colony of chimps in Sydney Zoo and how the astrology played out was amazing but I'm not sure how much you'd get without the accompanying Powerpoint. If you like the the idea then Chris is doing her other "chimp lecture" at the Lodge on 16th June. She's also taking part in our Astrology and Healing Day. Hope to see you there.

So what's happening this month?

Mercury is still retrograde and will be until 19th so we need to pay attention to make sure that what we meant to say continues to match what we actually said. Communication misunderstanding are likely but not compulsory. Remember to take a minute to check that what you're hearing is what you expect the other person to have said. These things are double ended; it takes two to tango remember.

Mercury is between the Sun and the Earth while it is retrograde, it's at its closest distance to us. Is there something about the retrograde period which allows us to communicate more effectively? Does Mercury have to be retrograde in order for us to look at him full in the face?

I've just opened a magazine at this quote, which I feel is extremely apposite:

Even when we do speak the truth, are we able to listen without an agenda or obsessing about what we're going to say next?

Talk like a Buddha, Tricycle Magazine, Summer 2008

A direct Mercury supports linear thinking. It allows us to push forward without paying due regard to the consequences, without having to look at what is coming back at us. A retrograde Mercury means we have to pay attention to what is coming back to us. That, I believe, is real communication.

The calendar and the lunar cycle are running closely together at the moment. The New Moon takes place on 3rd June, conjunct Venus at 13 Gemini. Venus follows the Sun very closely this month and there's a lot of aspects made by the faster moving planets. Sometimes the positions of the outer planets give rise to lots of activity during certain periods and relatively little during others.

Due to the proximity of the planets we have the following aspects:

4th Sun sextile Mars
6th Venus sextile Mars
7th Sun conjunct Mercury and Mercury conjunct Venus
8th Mercury sextile Mars

then we have a few days rest and we two days where Uranus and Neptune are involved:

12th Venus square Uranus
13th Sun square Uranus and Venus trine Neptune
14th Sun trine Neptune

then they catch up with Pluto and Saturn:

18th Venus opposite Pluto
20th Sun opposite Pluto
21st Venus sextile Saturn and Mars opposite Neptune
25th Sun sextile Saturn

You can see that the distance between Venus and the Sun is lengthening and so this rapid fire aspecting is ending.

On 26th we have Jupiter sesquiquadrate (135°) Saturn. This is the second of these aspects we'll see this year, the previous one was in March. This is in the middle of an extended series of Jupiter Saturn trines which don't complete until the autumn. I've written about this is some detail but would like to point out that this is likely to be one of the more economically challenging periods. The hard aspects signify crisis, the soft easy flow of ideas. This is a hard point within an easy phase. It's likely to get out attention.

Pluto takes his last peak back into Sagittarius on 14th. This gives us the last chance to resolve and round up all those Sag ideas that we hadn't quite nailed. In the UK I think this is quite a significant time as Pluto will be angular for the Cancer Ingress, on the MC opposite the Sun and Venus in London. At the same time Mars is opposite Neptune and conjunct the 1801 Saturn at 23 Leo. Uranus isn't far from the ascendant, continuing the story he started at the Vernal Equinox. I don't think the surprises are over.