Tonight’s Amazing New Moon in Virgo Features Triple Trine Action!

Happy birthday to my Virgo readers! September is one of the few months of the year that we get a break from the eclipse cycles, which kick up again in November. This is going to be a largely pleasurable and healing month given the planetary aspects, thanks in a huge part to the New Moon at 14° Virgo tonight: Monday, September 6 (Labor Day in the USA); it will be exact at 7:52 p.m. CDT (please adjust to your local time zone accordingly). If your Virgo birthday falls within a couple of days before or after this New Moon (mine does!), you’ll really want to pay attention: such a once-in-a-decade Birthday Lunation heralds the unfolding of a brand new life path (and the confidence to walk it!), major changes for the better! Read on, gentle reader…

“Proud to be a Virgo”: A Poem

Tomorrow Night’s Highly Hyped Friday the 13th Pisces Full Moon

Let’s talk about tomorrow’s highly hyped Friday the 13th Pisces Full Moon! It will be exact at 11:33 p.m. Central Daylight Time. Like all Pisces lunations, it’s going to pack an emotional wallop and will bring both unique opportunities and inherent challenges not just on its own but in relation to the other planets.

As you can see below, we have a LOT of dynamic activity, as the Moon at 21 degrees Pisces will be conjunct Neptune, Pisces’ ruler, within a 4-degree orbit. This Piscean duo will be opposing the stellium of planets in Earthy Virgo (Mars, the Sun, Venus, and Mercury). At one level, many of us will be highly challenged by not being able to feel grounded. The bigger threat, though, especially for people with a preponderance of Earth Sign planets in their charts, is FALLING PREY TO DELIBERATE DECEPTION FROM OTHERS. This can range from contending with liars and cheaters in interpersonal, especially romantic, relationships to being hoodwinked by misleading language in contracts, etc. DO NOT MAKE ANY MAJOR DECISIONS OVER THE WEEKEND. Pisces likes to cast spells of illusion on the unwary. Keep your BS detectors fine tuned and at the ready!

Movement & Momentum: The Astrology of September 2018

The golden-rod is yellow;

The corn is turning brown;

The trees in apple orchards

With fruit are bending down…

By all these lovely tokens

September days are here,

With summer’s best of weather,

And autumn’s best of cheer.

—Helen Hunt Jackson, “September” (1892)

September opens on an optimistic note, having us all breathe easier with the confidence that the Summer of Stagnation, largely caused by Mars Retrograde, is behind us. The Mutable Earth Sign of Virgo welcomes change and poises those of us in the Northern Hemisphere at the point of literal and symbolic harvest in our lives, asking us to reflect on how the year’s experiences, expected events or not, have compelled us to grow. Wisdom is the art of applying knowledge that was hard-won from experience, and the Sun’s annual transit in Virgo, which lasts until September 22, requires that we all operate from actionable insights aligned with our highest integrity (this is the “purity” of the Virgo archetype). This harvesting process is expedited by the fact that all personal planets in our zodiac are moving direct this month. As a Cosmic Bonus, Virgo’s Ruling Planet of Mercury makes His ingress into Virgo the night of September 5 (9:40 p.m. CDT) and transits until September 22, blessing us all with clarity of thought, precision in communications, and good fortune in travel. But wait—there’s more!

In a Holding Pattern: The Astrology of August 2018

The first three weeks of this month continue to carry over July’s eclipse- and Mars Retrograde-laden unpleasant, unstable, and erratic energies. With five planets in Retrograde as the month opens (Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto), soon to be joined by Uranus stationing Retrograde at 2° of Taurus on August 7, we are called to align ourselves with the cosmic sense of energetic ebb instead of flow during this time. It’s best if we try not to push our agendas too hard and that instead we find ways to relax, meditate, ground and heal ourselves in Nature, and lay the groundwork for the plans that will be much more cosmically amenable to executing starting in the final week of the month and throughout September.

Finding Calm Amidst the Chaos: The Astrology of July 2018

It’s fitting, I suppose, that such a monthly AstroCast post of mine falls on the holiday of the 4th of July here in the United States, a day whose theme of liberation from tyranny resounds strongly in the country’s current political climate. That theme is also echoed in the heavy Uranian cosmic footprint this month, which I’ll explore with you in a moment, adding combustion to the already-dramatic events of the ongoing Mars Retrograde in Aquarius and the two eclipses that will be happening this month. We’re talking major detonation events in the collective and in our personal lives, and clashes of belief systems and individual antagonistic wills shall serve as the ordinance. Are you ready? Take a deep breath from your diaphragm, hold it to a count of four, and exhale slowly before reading on. Here come July’s fireworks. (Photos below taken last night from my Chicago balcony of a neighborhood 4th of July fireworks display.)

Notes on the Virgo Full Moon, March 1, 2018

The Moon enters Virgo at 1 a.m. Thursday, March 1, and will be at 11°, 22 min. when She reaches Her apogee of fullness at 6:51 p.m. CST. The Master Numbers in the degree and minute-mark of this Virgo Moon placement signify a high-energy vibrational level for all of us, energy best applied towards the Virgo themes of Healing and Service. If you’re a Virgo Sun, Ascendant, or Moon person within a 5° orb of this 11° mark, you’re really going to feel the energies amplified.

Tomorrow Morning’s Penumbral Lunar Eclipse in Libra

If you live in the U.S. and you’re awake and facing the soon-to-be-setting full moon in the western pre-dawn skies, you’ll more than likely see tomorrow morning’s penumbral lunar eclipse in 3° Libra. It reaches its apex at 6:48 a.m. Central Daylight Time. Unlike the more visibly dramatic partial and total lunar eclipses, the visual effects will be subtle–a perceptible darkening of the moon’s surface. But the lack of visual appeal doesn’t in any way detract from the astrological intensity.

Stormy Seas: Navigating Next Week’s Total Solar Eclipse in Pisces with Challenging Planetary Aspects

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.

–Victor Hugo

Depending on where you live in the world, you will experience the new moon/total solar eclipse in 18° Pisces on either the night of Tuesday, March 8, or Wednesday, March 9. Here in the U.S., it will occur on the evening of the 8th: 5:54 p.m. PST, 7:54 p.m CST, 8:54 p.m. EST. The eclipse will not be visible to audiences in North America or Europe–unless, of course, you’re watching a real-time online streaming event. Audiences in southeast Asia and Oceania will be able to view it directly.

Eclipse chart for March 8/March 9 courtesy of planetwatcher.com

Blood Moon Rising: The Dynamic Dance of Self & Other Orchestrated by the Upcoming Total Lunar Eclipse in Aries Opposed the Libra Sun

“I dried my tears, and armed my fears

With ten thousand shields and spears.”

–William Blake, “The Angel” (1794)

I think of my body like a harp sometimes, one with finely tuned strings that get plucked days in advance of certain cosmic phenomena happening. For me, no cosmic phenomena register so viscerally like the energies surrounding eclipses. To quote T.S. Eliot’s magnum opus of Modernism, The Wasteland (1922), “My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad” (line 111).