Click here for supplemental material to Planet Waves Thursday Edition with short video on the basket pattern + and background charts
Who’s the Influencer?
This week the astrology is like a deep exhale after the more fiery and confrontational aspects at the end of June and first week of July.
Two fast but interesting events are Venus moving into Virgo (today) and into conjunction with the south node, as well as Mercury retrograding back into a conjunction with the Sun, marking the midway point of the retrograde cycle.
True to its nature, the opposition of Jupiter and Pluto is taking all of the attention this week. There’s even a new name for an old aspect pattern! Lots of hype that as usual serves to focus attention outside ourselves and obfuscate the personal potential in this very special couple of weeks.
Jupiter-Pluto summed up could be called the “super-size-me” aspect, calling in about every allusion you can think of to big money, big business, big power, big egos, and big secrets. For those of us living our everyday lives, tending the garden, playing with the children and making music, all while doing the cleaning, the shopping, the bill-paying, or rather, everything we can to keep “it” together, it can feel a little hard to relate to. Within this very busy place we are often left feeling subject to the whim of these seeming bigger-than-life forces and personalities.
With this opposition, connected by degree to the other outer planets, there is a lot of speculation about humanity’s new “Golden Age” finally beginning. André Barbault, the French astrologer who in 2011 predicted that there might be a pandemic in 2020, even said as much. (Unfortunately, he passed away in 2019 and did not get to see his prediction come true or his name rise to fame.) This is where the name viraling on the internet, “Barbault’s Basket,” comes from. This pattern does indeed look like a basket, and when it shows up is always interesting, which was true long before the internet gave it its new name.
Eric has written a lot about the concept of “mass awakening” and recommends letting go of the very hope. He suggests that mass awakening as such may not even exist, being one of an infinite number of distractions that keep humanity perpetually waiting in limbo for some kind of savior or big change, and thus, waiting our lives away.
Barbault’s Basket and Beyond
Eric has also said that awakening is an inherently personal process, that of each individual awakening to their true nature. This rarely happens all at once and usually happens gradually, over time. The charts for the next couple of weeks certainly show an opportunity for coming more into yourself, and the portal is now open.
This will become more obvious as the opposition perfects on July 20, but looking ahead, I suspect that we will see this aspect pattern bear its first fruits in a more personal way near the Full Moon on July 29. However, this is an ongoing story, developing with the waxing of the Moon, and now is a great time to be paying attention to what’s happening on the inner planes.
There are several other interesting conversations in the sky this week that not only are far more relatable, but are available to help us better understand and potentially integrate some of this big and more difficult to access energy.
Incredibly, all of the inner planets along with the Sun and Moon are in conversation while the slower movers are having their moment.
At the time of the opposition, Mercury is nearly stationary, traveling just barely faster than Jupiter. On July 20, it is already in the degree where it will turn direct three days later.
This is known as the “Mercury storm” phase and is the time just before stuck situations, dialogues and deals find resolution, which means things can often get worse before they get better. It’s a moment of static that’s best to ride through, knowing well that the storm will be clearing.
A Storm in the Heart
This particular storm phase has a deep emotional flavor, happening in the heart-hearth space of Cancer. Yes, Leo is associated with the fire of the heart and its masculine-flavored courage, but I propose that Cancer is the water of the heart, where we find the source spring of the feminine qualities of deep connection, belonging and nourishment. This is how the Sun and Moon represent the deep integration of our whole nature, the mysterious alchemical blending of fire and water.
Mercury is square Saturn, who is also moving extremely slowly, getting ready to turn retrograde on July 26. So, while the square does not perfect this time, there is a special weight to it.
Saturn’s deep, dark, dense nature is opposite that of Aries and its Cardinal Fire, the source of the life spark that keeps the whole wheel of creation going. Saturn in Aries compresses (and pressurizes) the spark of life and makes it work harder to express itself, which can show up as a feeling of being “less than” or “inferior to” or more hesitant to risk self-expression, all while internal pressure is building.
Mercury traveling through the hearth space of Cancer, retrograde and very, very slowly, opens the door to deeper memories and feelings about our sense of history and belonging.
Mercury and Saturn and Stopping the Blood
Mercury and Saturn together in a very slow square, also in aspect to the Family Constellation pattern in Capricorn, reminds me of a technique in Thai massage called “stopping the blood.” This is where the therapist places all of her weight right into the groin of the recipient, effectively “stopping the blood” to the lower extremities.
This is held for a few breaths and upon release, the sudden release of the blood is highly invigorating, refreshing and pain relieving. The specific purpose of this technique is to move out the stagnation that tends to pool in the places farthest from the heart.
So this week feels like a “stopping the blood” moment. It may feel like a long and uncomfortable pause that allows all of our negative self-talk —all those internalized voices that come from deep within the family system— to come closer to the surface of our consciousness. We may even feel like something is dying inside. There is an invitation now to pay attention to those voices and follow them to their origin; most likely we are not dying, but rather these are old voices and patterns that are ready to surface and release.
What makes this week even more remarkable is that as the Jupiter-Pluto opposition is perfecting, the Moon, the planet that gives us the most information about our emotional body and its complex thought-feelings, is moving through Libra, weaving together the movement of all the major planets.
The Healing Has Already Begun
Just ahead of the opposition, The Moon will be in a harmonious sextile to the Sun and Jupiter, trine Pluto and Uranus, and opposite Neptune (and conjunct one of Eric’s favorite galactic points, the Super Galactic Center). The Moon will fill with the energy and information in this pattern and by the time the Jupiter-Pluto aspect perfects early in the morning of July 20, the Moon will be in opposition to Saturn, square Mercury and the Family Constellation pattern, and just past a trine to Mars in Gemini (to whom Venus is applying to square).
This is a lot of information! Primarily though, the Moon will be adding the mirror of relationships to the Mercury-Saturn-Family Constellation. This serves to briefly intensify the experience and indicates a good time to be even more attuned to thoughts and feelings about oneself and others that may surface.
This line from the almanack is worth repeating, “Every healer knows that once the symptoms appear, the healing has already begun.” What surfaces this week and into the next are things that, if allowed to, are ready to move out. The moving out process can be very uncomfortable and a little scary; in the body this can show up as what we call an infection.
It’s up to each of us not to suppress what’s coming through, not to get hooked on to its subject matter and get dragged through the downward spiral of obsessive rumination about it. Indeed, it is the obsessive thinking that gives us information about what it is moving through.
An Invitation
This is where trust comes in. Trusting Nature, trusting the body’s own healing wisdom to do what must be done. Most often our job is to get out of the way.
The peak of this entire process and the final movement of this week’s pattern will culminate with the Full Moon on July 29. Sun conjunct Jupiter, Moon conjunct Pluto, which looks to me like the channel through which some of the big Jupiter-Pluto energy can be brought down to Earth and into the body, where we may have the opportunity to reclaim and integrate some aspect of our own bigness.
The caution is to not get swept up into the realm of delusions of grandeur, messiah fantasies or super-size victim stories. Coming down into the body and into our own mind, an even more exciting opportunity unfolds, making space for greater access to more of our own power: to choose, to act, to dream, to gather, to throw out, to attract, to create, to speak, and yes to influence. In other words, for more of ourselves.
The cosmos is generous. This is not the only opportunity for personal awakening that will ever come our way, and certainly, awakening is most often a gradual, spiral path as rhythmic as the soli-lunar cycle. However, this week’s sky clock is telling us that it’s choice time: time to decide how, where and with whom we spend our time (and money), how we use the power we have, and notice how much of it is used up in unfruitful and tantalizing paths of distraction and endless bifurcation. Can you hear the homing signal calling you back, not to the galactic federation, but to your true nature?
