I’ve cast a chart for Wednesday, June 25th when the Moon and Sun come together in Cancer. While we will focus on the Saturn/Neptune conjunction, I want to lay out the astrological context. This New Moon is putting pressure on the USA 7th House of relationship. We’re all aware that we have entered yet another Middle East war. In a rash, naïve and oxymoronic act, we bombed three nuclear sites in Iran over the weekend, and our president proudly announced that we now can have peace. Peace by aggression, peace by violence, enforced peace.
No, that bombing was not the beginning of peace. It was the beginning of yet another costly, unnecessary war for our nation. Already Iran has responded with a missile attack on a U.S. military base in Qatar. Our president has what he has always wanted. Now he can throw his weight around as Commander in Chief. Egad!
In less than six months our government has bullied our allies with tariff threats, reduced our safety by firing government workers whose job it is to protect us, pulled out of alliances, isolated our population and released a pack of wolves to terrorize our most vulnerable citizens, while the real criminals dream up more abuse from the comfort of the White House. And now a war.
On Monday King Charles sent a message to the world and spoke directly to our president reminding him that his actions affect millions of people. I doubt he cares.
What Does Our Chart Reveal?
The New Moon takes place in Cancer, home of our Sun, the nurturing mother who gathers and comforts those who are afraid, wounded, suffering. But now, we have a regime that prefers to terrorize the very people it has vowed to protect: immigrants who serve us for the privilege of freedom, trans-gender adolescents who are in the midst of an identity crisis, women who are dying because they are denied pregnancy care, children who have lost their school lunches and are being fed religious and political dogma, the elderly who rely on Social Security and Medicaid. And that’s just at home. We cut off funding to USAID. Vulnerable people, living in poverty, are dying gruesome deaths around the world because we have denied them pharmaceuticals. No one is safe from the wrath of our government.
On Wednesday, the Sun and Moon come together at 4+ degrees of Cancer, right between natal Venus and natal Jupiter which sit at 3 and 5 degrees respectively. We’re going to have a Jupiter return on July 5th and it’s looking like our nation will be celebrating our birthday with embarrassing bombast. That’s unfortunate, because Jupiter brings good will, growth potential and spiritual faith, while it also blows up inflated egos.
We need to let the world know we don’t approve of our bully government. Keep protesting, bring your friends. We want the world to know this is not our will. We are not evil. We are a nation of peace and love and we’re working our way through a “Coming of Age Crisis.” We, the people, do not choose this dark path.
Jupiter is within one degree of the New Moon in the early degrees of Cancer. Ironically it is conjunct our natal Venus, planet of love, beauty, harmony and peace. Here’s an opportunity to grow our love, to return to our true identity as a safe harbor for the great experiment in democracy.
We all know that Jupiter expands things, blows them up to poster size so we can see them. We’re getting a good look at how we behave on the world stage and hopefully we’ll recognize our shame. We’ll have ample opportunity to witness who we have become, how far off the spiritual path we have strayed. This energy will be building all though the summer as Jupiter approaches its conjunction with our natal Sun on August 8th.
I want to mention that the USA Sun is conjunct Sirius, literally our guiding star, the spiritual sun of our solar system. There is speculation that Sirius is one of the original extraterrestrial sources of those who populated our planet and taught skills to our ancestors. We have a potential destiny – a profound one – to take democracy to the next level, to found a society of actual equality and cooperation, to birth a new paradigm that recognizes humanity as One, to grow beyond the ego stage of consciousness into a wholistic vision. That is the potential of the Aquarian Age.
To realize it, we must release the drag of the past and overcome our sheer laziness. Ukraine has shown us what courage looks like, how one stands up to a bully, how a nation can believe in itself and its values enough to endure deprivation and keep resisting.
This New Moon energy will be strongest for 30 days, but becomes part of the collective context for at least the next six months. While Jupiter is expanding our awareness of ourselves and our dysfunctional relationships, Uranus is poised on the threshold of Gemini.
The Unmaking of a Paradigm
Uranus enters Gemini on July 7th. This explosive planet is a game changer. It is also the higher octave of Mercury, taking information to form insights that flash through our minds from time to time. Gemini is the sign of the intellect, thoughts, concepts, ideas. It is curious and hungry for information that it will use to create a belief system which will ripen in its opposite sign Sagittarius.
When the USA was born, Uranus was in the 9th degree of Gemini. A full Uranus cycle will come to a close two years from now in July of 2027. We’re having our 3rd Uranus return. The first return was in 1860 to 1861, concluding on April 1st. On April 12th Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter and the Civil War began. Our second Uranus return occurred on May 30th, 1944, in the midst of WWII, fighting the last battles on two fronts. In both cases, events brought about change. We ended slavery and defeated Fascism. Now these abominations are threatening a comeback. If we lose our democracy, what will be all become but slaves?
This is our 3rd Uranus return. Let’s hope the adage applies, “Third time’s a charm.” Uranus will be in the 6th House until 2041. The 6th House is below the horizon. It’s the house of service, of daily routines, of habits and lifestyle, health and work. We’ll all be reassessing how we manage our time, live through our days. It’s an opportunity to find our way to serve. This house is associated with the sign of Virgo, the great analyzer, the organizer, the efficiency expert.
It seems too late to avoid a war, but maybe we can end it quickly if we make our disgust known. We can call our Congress-people and protest the war, join public protests, speak up, take a stand. We will not have our tax dollars used to wreak havoc and destroy the lives of millions in foreign wars.
Uranus was a star on the world stage in the 18th century. The American Revolution inspired the French and an epidemic of democratic hope seized the world. We can foster hope again, we can be part of a peaceful people’s revolt. We have enormous consumer power. It hurts this administration most when we threaten its wallet. And we have the power of humor. Serious autocrats loath being the brunt of jokes.
Over the next seven years, Uranus will shake our beliefs, challenge our complacency, taser our paradigm. We have reached the depths of degradation, evident in our current administration where key positions of responsibility were handed out as favors for loyalty. We’re being governed by incompetents – an alcoholic Fox News host in charge of our military! An oil man running our energy department. Education determined by a cofounder of WWE, a fake sport that rakes in millions by spotlighting muscled men pretending violence. It’s the phony equivalent of gladiators in the Colosseum in the declining years of the Roman Empire. And then there’s the guy with a worm eating his brain, disabling our health care. We need a bigger clown car.
Nodal Activation
This summer looks to be a hot one on all levels. It kicks off with a New Moon in cahoots with Jupiter and Uranus at its most intense degree at the end of Taurus. Taurus is an Earth sign and currently there are 47 active volcanos, some of them quite spectacular in geyser form. Uranus is leaving a dramatic warning before shifting abodes.
The transiting Nodes of the Moon are activating our natal Neptune at the same time that our Natal Nodes are under the influence of Pluto. In both cases the South Node is the focus. Pluto is about three degrees away from our natal South Node in the second house, already casting its influence, bringing up unfinished business and reminding us or our values. The exact conjunction happens in March of 2027, but between now and then, the issues of our unresolved past will rise to haunt us.
When Pluto comes to visit, it’s time for a reckoning. Pluto doesn’t negotiate. We better clean up our act and make reparations for our past transgressions. War is only one of the themes. We have genocide and slavery to account for. And then there’s the history of male domination and abuse, not to mention the rape of our planet’s resources.
On June 14th, of all days – a birthday parade and the largest protests in history – the transiting South Node hit our natal Neptune. How’s that for timing? Knowing what we do about Neptune, consider the theme of hundreds of thousands of people coming together to stand up for democracy. It was a spiritual act, and if we’re counting attendance, I’d say the people won.
Natal Neptune is in our 9th House, at 22+ degrees of Virgo. Someone once asked me why I was so passionate about our country. Well, my natal Sun is conjunct the USA Neptune. I’m dreaming his dreams of a higher state of consciousness, of a compassionate nation, of goodwill and generosity, peace and love. The 9th House is where we formulate our attitudes, where we turn our beliefs into concrete principles. Neptune in that house is telling us that our highest value lies in our spiritual union. We were born as the UNITED States and our stated goal was to form a more perfect union.
Neptune has been a celestial focus in our charts throughout this transition. From 2021 to 2022, transiting Neptune was opposing our natal Neptune – a peak moment in its cycle involving an insurrection – and throughout the past decade it has been working with both Uranus and Pluto. Currently, at 2+ degrees of Aries, it is sextile Pluto at 3+ Aquarius and Uranus on the cusp of Gemini, in cosmic cooperation to pressure the evolution of our consciousness.
Saturn/Neptune in Aries
Everything I’ve written so far concerns the cosmic context in which our current drama is playing out. It seems that the tension between Saturn and Neptune triggers conflict. Aries is the sign of the warrior, ruled by Mars, the god of war, which is the youthful response to discomfort and uncertainty. This is a difficult conjunction of opposites. It is natural in our world to take sides, vote for one or the other, but the whole point is to bring the purest qualities of both into resonance so that they work together rather that repel one another.
In the USA chart, Saturn and Neptune are transiting our 4th House. Saturn will move through this house in about three years, covering the entire sign of Aries from 1 degree to the 29th. On the one hand, if we allow our current paradigm to continue, we could be looking at endless war, even a nuclear holocaust. On the other, we could finally grow up, learn to live together in harmony and redefine the meaning of masculinity. In our adolescent ego state, masculinity now means being tough, winning, flexing muscles and exercising domination. The Divine Masculine, however, would never harm or dominate. It is an energy of protection, support and responsibility. The maturing of the masculine energy is one of the key themes of this conjunction.
The 4th House is at the bottom of our chart, marking our foundation. It represents our conditioned collective consciousness, with all its wounds, disinformation, and pressure to conform that has damaged our psyches. The 4th house brings in our ancestors and the themes they struggled with. It’s where the impressionable mind is warped by lies, shaped by propaganda, enforced by our legal system. It’s the source of our pain.
On a personal level, the 4th House represents the environment in which we grew up, our childhood homes, our interactions with parents. This is the realm of our early wounds, physical or emotional abuse, family pressure to conform. It’s the source of much needed psychotherapy to free ourselves from oppression and the mistaken conclusions we drew about our worth.
Apply that to a whole population controlled by a dysfunctional paradigm that is leading us toward extinction. Saturn will be in this house and sign until April 11, 2028. Neptune will remain until May 15, 2038. This is where we need to look back at our checkered past, heal our collective wounds, our neuroses and psychoses. America needs therapy to sift through the illusion of its self-image, to see it clearly and take responsibility for it. We’re going to need a bigger couch.
When Uranus enters the first degree of Gemini on July 7th, it will increasingly activate the Saturn/Neptune conjunction with its restless need for freedom, with its insights and revelations, shocks and surprises. Pluto is also sextile the conjunction from Aquarius, bringing up issues of independence, rebellion, advances in technology, awakening the genius within each of us. It will also bring up more shadow material, as if we don’t have enough examples right now.
It is more important than ever for us to find a way to integrate the highest qualities of these planets. Saturn brings the opportunity to mature, take responsibility, face hard facts and right the wrongs of our past. Neptune brings us unlimited possibility, connection, increased compassion and a higher purpose.
Previously I mentioned the Spiritual Warrior, the one who serves others by protecting and defending our values. Many of us are rising to the occasion. But there is another option – the Sacred Artist. What might we create with the compassion and transcendent energies of Neptune when we apply the intention and discipline of Saturn?
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