Dear Friend and Reader:
This week I’m reluctantly going to forego a weekly horoscope, in service of making steady progress on the Midyear Reading. For those wanting a horoscope — thank you for the week off. Writing the horoscope takes a tremendous amount of energy and I am eager to get the Midyear Reading to you — which as you may know is called Your Future. Your Life.
I’ll describe the solstice chart in this letter, and then read the chart for the 12 signs and rising signs in the long-form July monthly horoscope the following week.
As for the Your Future. Your Life midyear, I am proceeding apace — as of this writing, I’m half-done, with two preview videos also published — a longer introduction, and a shorter progress report.
Six of the readings are done, and we will deliver them as soon as we have the technology in order. There are also six free previews for those readings. Here are: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo and Scorpio.
Spiritual and Astrological Themes
The preview videos speak both of the spiritual themes informing my perspective, and the astrological events I am delineating. I learn a lot doing these readings; for me they are a personal master class taught directly by the planets.
As well, it’s an interesting thought experiment to explore the same transits and placements 12 times, from as many viewpoints. You get a demonstration of how important context is. Moving from sign-to-sign, what changes is the reference point — the first house. Every other house changes with it, and it’s a whole new song. Same planets, same signs, different houses, different stories.
My goal with these readings is to prepare you for the nearly simultaneous sign changes of Saturn and Pluto. I will start there in the 2023 annual edition, which will be called some version of “Claim Your Humanity.” The initiation on the way to those transits is the retrograde of Mars in Gemini, which by the long measure spans from this coming August to the following March.
You might say the theme of that is “claim your projections.” Inner conflict will be projected outward. It will be easier to work out prior to doing so.
Sun Aligns with the Tropic of Cancer — and the Body Electric
First — the alignment of the Sun with the Tropic of Cancer is on June 21 at 5:13 am EDT. Cancer is the cardinal water sign. I believe it has been entirely misrepresented by both classical and modern astrology. While there is a strong need to have a home-base, it is one of the most ambitious signs.
It is also able to take responsibility for transactions that involve public trust. Doing this well is of course dependent on the slippery factor of ethics, which must be considered for every sign. What I am saying is that under the right conditions, Cancerians would excel in a position like executive or financial officer.
This involves the positions of Aries (10th house), which confers drive and aspiration, and of Aquarius (8th house), which confers collective responsibility and a sense of social and financial structure.
The Geometry: The Tropic of Cancer
As for how we find this sign in the course of the year: its moment begins when the Sun forms a square to the Tropic of Cancer. I will break that down a bit. Because the Earth’s axis is at an angle of 23.4 degrees to the orbital plane, the Sun rises at a slightly different point on the horizon every day. From late December through mid-June, sunrise creeps north.
That’s when the Sun’s rays are at a 90-degree angle to the Tropic of Cancer. This solstice is also when the Sun enters the tropical sign Cancer. Solstice means “still Sun.” It appears to rise in the same place for about a week.
After solstice, the point of sunrise creeps south along the horizon, till mid-December, when its progress pauses as it aligns with the Tropic of Capricorn. That is the Capricorn solstice. It’s the same for both hemispheres; but when the Sun is in your hemisphere, you get the longest days kind of solstice, and when it’s in the other one, you get the shortest days kind of solstice.
This is what makes up both the seasons and also what is called the tropical zodiac — the one most astrologers you read use.
Once you align these ideas with your observation of the motion with the feeling in your body, you can actually sense and understand what is happening. It’s pretty easy, though you need to observe nature, consider an idea, and experience the feeling physically. Do this with the phases of the Moon and add the eclipses, and you’re well on the way to being an astrologer.
For those curious about the influence of the seasons on astrology, check the last few paragraphs of this article for a long quotation by Rob Hand.
Themes of the Chart: Pisces
In tune with the times, this chart is loaded with Pisces, Aries and Taurus planets. This is a sweet and pungent blend of energies. Pisces is the longterm home of Neptune, which is the feeling of one reality imposed on another: it’s as if we live in two worlds at once (which is true enough).
Asteroids Juno and Vesta, plus centaur Nessus, are pushing the question of integrity in relationships. Nessus and Neptune are hazy even on a clear day. Juno is often a blaming influence. You might use the opportunity to sort out “consent dramas.” Where there is blame, there is not responsibility.
Vesta is holding space for the right thing to happen. She is asking: what do you really want from this situation? What is the intent of this ritual? What is the flame you are tending? What do you feel you must give up, in order for the right thing to happen?
Pisces describes the territory where forms dissolve and where one must work to see reality in any objective way.
The Aries Angle: Moon Conjunct Jupiter
There’s a lot of Aries in this chart: in order, the Moon, Jupiter, Chiron, Mars and Eris. This amount of self-centered energy could blot out the subtle questions being asked next door in Pisces.
Any self-actualization process needs an interior journey, and in the context of Aries, that comes from Pisces. Aries in this chart wants everything out in the open, and everything to seem simple, plain and clear. But there are a lot of questions. There is nothing simple about Chiron in Aries, and it’s calling for a lot more personal responsibility than most people are comfortable with.
Mars in Aries is a question of confidence. Where there seems to be some, it can all be a front. The solution here is to directly confront insecurities and figure out what they are about. Admit them and do something to challenge them.
Eris in Aries has its picture in the post office as the perpetrator of digital disembodiment, which goes so far back as to span the entire age of electrical mass communication. The whole Aries angle of this chart describes the multiple personality syndrome of digital. And we must be conscious of this profound sense of disorientation because it often leads to seeking identity through violence.
Taurus: The Body Electric
I am finally starting to figure out Uranus in Taurus. The phrase “the body electric” was first used by poet Walt Whitman in his 1855 book Leaves of Grass. Considering that the only electrical technology of the time was the telegraph, invented 11 years prior, Walt was (as usual) ahead of his times. If you see a copy of this book, flip it open — or rewatch the marvelous film Dead Poets Society.
Whitman’s phrase (used many times, beautifully in the rock musical The Me Nobody Knows) has all new meaning today, in our electrical and digital world. The physical body is electrified by numerous technologies in our environment to which we are constantly exposed. This is yet another factor describing out of body experience, meaning the prevailing condition of our day. My observation is that we barely remember what it means to be embodied.
What exactly do we do about all this graphene oxide contamination entering the body from so many sources, which is a powerful magnetic substance that amplifies electromagnetic fields? Talk about the body electric.
Here is what we are facing. In the words of media philosopher Eric McLuhan:
“At electric speeds, we, not messages, are sent. It is an old observation that on the phone or on the air you are in more than one place at a time, minus the physical body that you once used to define identity. The cybernaut [meaning internet user] abandons his [or her] body and physical identity and self (including gender) whenever he embarks on each trek into cyberspace. The conditions for disorientation are complete: out of body, out of time, out of space.”
Venus in late Taurus (in the anaretic degrees) is clinging to physical reality, making and exact trine to Pluto in Capricorn. The body, as the primary vehicle of incarnated learning, is the seat of the soul. From our viewpoint on Earth, it has to be: without the body, we are not “here” in any meaningful sense of the word.
If I do a program — I am still not sure — I’ll take a closer look at this chart on Friday’s Planet Waves FM. If not, I will have a STARCAST early next week.Between now and then, I’ll be in the Broadway Lights diner doing the rest of the readings for Your Future. Your Life.
You will like those previews, and the readings are even better.
Faithfully,
