Today is Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2011. The Moon is in Libra all day, having just made a square to Pluto and an opposition to Uranus overnight. You may have felt that energy as some sort of challenge or surprise to your relationships or a surge in your sense of justice/injustice, if you happened to be awake for it. Today the Moon makes a conjunction to Saturn at 2:43 pm EDT and then a square to Mars at about 8:28 pm EDT.
Given the Moon’s tendency to act as a relay runner, passing the baton of energy from one planet to another, its aspects to Saturn and Mars bring an echo of the Mars-Saturn square of last week. For many of us that aspect was pretty painful and fraught with emotional landmines, and Mercury’s retrograde status at that time did not help in untangling interpersonal conflict gracefully. Again today communication is the key to resolving difficulties, as the Moon makes a sextile to the now-direct Mercury just after its square to Mars. A sextile tends to be a supportive and flowing aspect, so keeping any mutual goals in mind as you work through tension in a relationship may help keep you oriented on where you actually want to be in a way that gets you there.
Gary Caton recently explored another factor to keep in mind as you thread your way through interpersonal communication in these days: the relationship between Jungian communication “functions” or channels and the four elements of astrology. He writes:
Have you noticed how some people are just harder for you to relate to or communicate with? Is there someone at work or a friend of a friend whom, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t seem to reach? Have you ever replied with what seems like a perfectly reasonable and maybe even extremely thoughtful response to a question or idea for a project and you get no reaction? Sometimes this has nothing to do with the quality of your communication, but rather the ‘channel’ you are sending it on.