Current Transits for June 2014 Current Transits for June 2014Here's some of the important astrological news this month ...
Ceres Direct Station at 18Li32, 6-1
Mercury Retrograde Station at 3Cn10, 6-7
Neptune Retrograde Station at 7Pi36, 6-9
Jupiter Trioctile Neptune, 6-11
Full Moon at 22Sa05, 6-12
Saturn Trine Chiron, 6-13
Juno enters Gemini, 6-17
Chiron Retrograde Station at 17Pi45, 6-20
New Moon at 5Cn37, 6-27
An online ephemeris for the month is available.
The long transition period following the 5 month Grand Cross storm continues all of June. It's like the sky is exhausted after all that action and can't whip up any energy anymore. Most of the time, the waveform patterns look weak, scattered and unfocused, with only occasional hints of even moderate power. I can't recall in recent years any month that looked this lifeless. This is OK -- we could certainly use some rest. All too many people are suffering from serious burnout of one form or another. We've been through some dramatic changes the first half of the year and need to assimilate it all somehow. This quiet time between major blows, when the heavy duty planets are gradually realigning themselves into the next cosmic lesson for us, gives us a chance to take in old challenges and prepare for new experiences that haven't really formed yet. Perhaps the big thing to look at are the 4 planets standing still this month, similar to last March (though with fewer fireworks). Such "logjam times" give the world a sluggish feeling, impeding progress and making us back up to take care of situations we thought were behind us. While many will freak out about Mercury going retrograde on the 7th for 3 weeks, that's not really the event that has me curious. Certainly, the dreaded Mercury retrograde messes up our thinking processes and scrambles communications between people, but that's usually something you can handle if you pay attention more. The station of Neptune on the 9th (and to a lesser extent, Chiron on the 20th) points to a deeper disturbance in our psyches. It's akin to a crisis or failing of the imagination and our subtle sensitivities rather than our thinking. Intuition itself is confused and we tend to misinterpret situations all around us. Most people aren't all that sensitive to Neptune in the first place (it operates unconsciously for the most part), so they may not notice extra confusion, but if you're aware of people's behavior (your own and others), things can feel not quite right somehow. It's a good time to question your own reactions to pretty much everything, but a lousy time to settle on any answers to those questions. Suspended belief is a really annoying state to be in for most people, but I think it's in order now. Clarity about where we're heading isn't on the horizon yet...
The big news this month are the four planetary stations, a kind of "logjam" effect that casts a sluggish air over everything. There are also a pair of "big aspects" and Juno changes signs.
Ceres reaches her direct station of 18Li32 on the 1st. This ends a retrograde cycle that began back on Feb 27, when she stood still at 1Sc53. Ceres was known as the Great Mother in ancient times, the symbol of the Great Web of Life that connects all living beings. The higher lesson here is that we are all dependent on each other on this planet, bound together by relationships of helping one another and receiving assistance from them in return. Retrograde cycles are a time to look at the issues of a planet more closely than usual, so this issue of our interconnectedness has loomed large in recent months. This cycle has been crisscrossing the border between Libra and Scorpio, signs with very different agendas. Libra is more of a social sign, emphasizing how best to get along with others, while Scorpio is a battleground for the ego, where questions of "what's in it for me?" often keep us from seeing the bigger picture. You'll get an idea of how well you've handled this cycle by seeing how healthy your social support network looks now. Who are the people you can rely on, who's drifted away, where are the tensions in your friendships? Since we are in Libra territory right now, it's probably easier to patch up some of those tensions and put relations back into balance than it was when Scorpio ruled. If you find certain people draining and the energies between you are all flowing one way, see if the balance can be restored. Unfortunately, not all relationships can be salvaged now. Sometimes we simply outgrow friends or people drift apart -- but that's more the Scorpio talking. More than likely, you just need to trim back on your ego and its demands to make room once more for your partner. It's hard on the ego to realize you need help instead of being "on top" and giving to others. Look beyond yourself and see how you fit in with the larger scene...
Mercury hits his retrograde station of 3Cn10 on the 7th. He'll be backing up the next 3 weeks, until he gets to his direct station of 24Gm22 on Jul 1. Many people go into a panic over "Mercury retrograde!", but this is actually less of a bogeyman than they realize. Mercury is the thinking, symbol using part of the psyche that tries to make sense of the world through language, stories and a common understanding of "how the world works". Normally, he's quite good at coming up with a workable narrative, but during his retrograde cycles, Mercury seems to fall flat. The problem is that no story or explanation captures all the details of the world and often we get things wrong. Most of the time, these little gaps in our understanding have little effect, but when Mercury is backing up, these gaps become quite obvious. The most common symptom is that the world seems crazy and unpredictable, situations just don't make sense. More to the point, the world is more complicated than your story can handle, so it's beyond your understanding. It also shows up in relationships as a breakdown in communications. You think you understand where the other person is coming from, only to find their behavior totally baffling instead. What-I-said and what-you-heard wind up being completely different, to everyone's surprise. This retrograde station is in early Cancer, trioctile (3 times) Saturn in Scorpio and also trine Neptune in Pisces. That's a lot of water energy! So-called rational thinking is overlaid with numerous emotional reactions, some of them operating below your awareness. This emotional fog clouds your thinking, makes you prone to irrational leaps of logic. Mercury makes few aspects to other planets during this cycle, so there's little opportunity for a "reality check" to your thinking. As always with Mercury in reverse gear, the task is to bring awareness to your own thought processes and the narrative you use to understand the world. Seek out all those crazy moments and see if you can change your story to make sense of the weirdness. Ultimately, you learn to see that logic and reason, as much as we deify them in our culture, are only one pathway to understanding our place in the world, a pathway that often leads us astray. There's more to being human than always knowing what's right. Anyway, much of June is under this mental haze, so keep your mental demands to a minimum. The thinking mind improves in July.
Neptune goes retrograde at 7Pi36 on the 9th. He'll back up for the next 5 months until he reaches his direct station of 4Pi48 on Nov 16. Of all the planets, I think Neptune is the hardest to understand. His effects are subtle and elusive, typically happening where we're not looking, out of conscious awareness. He can influence us a long time before we figure out something is going on and even then we might misjudge the message. There are several clues I've found over the years to tip you off that Neptune is working on you. First off, Neptune works primarily through the heart chakra, our emotional connections with other people and the world at large. As Neptune comes to a standstill and begins to back up, there can be a nagging instinct that something is a little strange in some of your relationships. It can feel mysterious and seductive, but also vaguely threatening. You may find yourself drawn to or repelled by someone for reasons you can't fathom. It's important to keep the heart center wide open and crystal clear during Neptune influences, but it's also important to use some discriminating wisdom to avoid deceiving yourself. Watch out for signs of ego inflation, that feeling of exaggerated importance or that the world revolves around you. The ego loves to be center stage in its stories, but to be honest about it, we're mostly bit players with perhaps a few good lines in these plots. We get puffed up, then we deflate when the world puts us in our place again. The quality of deception also comes through as an attachment to Glamour or feelings of intense, unreasonable attachment and importance. Glamour is usually a symptom that something is coming up from the unconscious and is demanding our attention. By cloaking its symbols in a veil of fascination, the unconscious draws the ego towards it. Unfortunately, we all too often become aware of these Neptune symbols by projecting them onto people or things in the outer world around us. It's confusing enough to be insanely attracted to another person and terribly awkward when they don't reciprocate the connection. Go very carefully with these relationships! Your unconscious is using this person as a mirror for you own psychic state, especially some problem that needs to be addressed; the outer reality is much different than you believe to be the case. Of course, Neptune can also attract people or situations to you for this mirroring purpose, sometimes mutually, sometimes in a one-sided manner. Neptune in Pisces is nothing but spiritual lessons for us. We learn from the confusion, the hurt feelings, the misunderstandings. Go slowly...
Jupiter is trioctile Neptune on the 11th, the last of 3 such contacts. They met previously on 2013-9-28 and 2013-12-17. On the surface, a Jupiter-Neptune contact sounds pretty good. Jupiter is an optimistic fellow that reaches out to people and pursues the common good, while Neptune is a Dreamer and visionary searching for an ideal world. They both have spiritual leanings, given the right environment. The difficulty is the trioctile part, an aspect of subtle tensions and discord, a vague feeling that things are out of sorts somehow. This dis-ease stems from an internal conflict between these planets that we perceive in the outer world. Until we deal with the inner conflict, the situation simply festers. It's likely that all this optimism and high spirits are out of touch with the realities on the ground, that we need to get our heads out of the clouds and our feet back on the earth. The "problem" is perceived either in close relationships or in our more everyday contacts with people, so if these areas feel out of whack in some way, take a second look. Jupiter has important connections with the government, another arena for conflict. During the first contact last fall, we were heading into the federal government shutdown, a triumph of party ideology over sanity. In December, we were picking up the pieces and trying to get a budget compromise passed, just barely. This third contact, we are gearing up for the elections and the government is in full gridlock and finger pointing mode. Given that Neptune is standing still now, I don't expect that reason will come out on top. These two planets make nothing but difficult aspects for the next few years, so don't expect the mood to get any clearer for some time. Sigh...
It's going to be hard to make sense of the full and new moon charts this month, as they have very little in the way of a coherent theme about them. This is especially the case for the full moon chart, which breaks down into a number of small groups of planets with little connection (unless you use very large orbs). The most prominent group is clustered around 17 degrees: Venus, Vesta, Ceres, Saturn, Chiron and Uranus. Next is the 22 degree group: Sun, Jupiter and the Moon. At 12 degrees are Mars and Pluto; at 7, Pallas opposite Neptune. Mercury and Juno are loners. How to pull all this together?
The part of this chart we are most aware of is probably the 22 degree planets. We always respond viscerally to the Sun and Moon, the core planets of anybody's psychology. They are paired up with Jupiter, which puts us in a very upbeat frame of mind on the surface. Since the Moon and Jupiter are also in mutual reception (each planet is in a zodiac sign ruled by the other planet), this optimistic mood is quite strong. This is somewhat at odds with the 17 degree planets, which paint a darker mood. Venus is opposite Saturn, generally a downer of an aspect, though it does ground Venus' flightiness and lightens up Saturn's dour attitude. Chiron can make us feel insecure, just as Uranus makes us feel like we don't fit in. Mars square Pluto is a mixed bag. It can motivate you to great efforts despite the problems you encounter along the way, but it's just as likely to rile up people's egos and set their tempers flaring. As for the remaining planets, it's hard for them to contribute much. Does this make sense? Not really. I suppose what you feel during this time depends on which of these various forces you focus on. There's no one theme that applies to everybody. You have to check your own birth chart and see if your own planets line up with one or more of these many groups. Mainly though, this is a very confused and directionless chart. Muddle through as best you can until the picture becomes clearer.
Saturn is trine Chiron on the 13th, about an hour after the full moon, the 4th of 5 such contacts. They met before on 2012-11-16, 2013-3-21 and 2013-10-2 and have one more connection this summer on Aug. 5. Saturn is about how we make ourselves at home on the material plane, coming to terms with reality and its limitations along the way. We need to learn how to be among others in a respectful fashion and take responsibility for our actions. Not fun stuff, perhaps, but vitally useful. In the process, you tend to stuff a lot of your exuberance and spontaneity as you learn what is acceptable and proper in the eyes of others around you. Stuffing all this into your emotional closet is Chiron's job. In the second half of life, Chiron's role changes as he gingerly opens up that closet door and starts rummaging through all the spiritual gifts that have been tossed in there. These lost bits of yourself probably carry a huge emotional charge after all these years, so reintegrating them into daily life can be tricky. It's important when the unconscious delivers old material to your awareness to make space for it in your day to day living, though you may need to redefine it somewhat from its original form. Fortunately, this is a trine aspect, which makes the process go more smoothly, especially if you put in some effort on your part. Notice that the first two contacts were during the lead up and aftermath of the 2012 Winter Solstice event, a time of great spiritual overhaul. We're still dealing with these changes in our lives and have much work yet to accomplish. Hunker down and make it happen...
Juno moves from Taurus into Gemini on the 17th. She'll remain in this sign until Aug. 8, when she drifts into Cancer. Juno is the Queen of Intimate Relationships, the woman who loves to be in love. These relationships have to be built on deep love, mutual respect and a trust in each other in order to satisfy her needs. Gemini is a light hearted sign, giving this placement a trend towards light banter and playful, flirtatious interactions. In a good relation, it helps partners relax and enjoy each other's presence. In more difficult or strained relations, where Juno is less happy, such playfulness may be hard to find. If you can find any problem, even a minor one, that the two of you can discuss without raising strong feelings, that can go a long ways to rebuilding trust. After all, Juno needs to know she's being heard. Some relations can't be salvaged and no amount of talking past each other can make a positive difference. Gemini's flirtatiousness and need to roam free can backfire here. The motto here is if the skirt looks greener on the other side of the fence, you might want to chase it. Not a good idea, perhaps, but it's a possibility. Anyway, relationships don't have to be "work" if your heart is light and open. Have some fun together!
Chiron is the last body this month to go retrograde, stopping at 17Pi45 on the 20th. He'll be in reverse gear until Nov 23, when he goes direct at 13Pi05. Chiron is the keeper of the psychic closet we mentioned earlier, the place where you hide away all those bits and pieces of your personality that others didn't approve of. Since Chiron is standing still, you can probably hear a faint knocking on the closet door as some of these buried traits desire to break free. Chiron is in Pisces, a deeply emotional sign, so expect to feel your share of pain, shame and guilt as these parts of you come back into the light. This kind of shadow work is not easy. It takes a lot of courage to face up to qualities in yourself that nobody appreciated in the past. Working through those old feelings of hurt as you reintegrate these shadow qualities is rather liberating, however. There's nothing more freeing than to leave behind negative emotions that you must constantly suppress. The best part of the second half of life is a relative freedom from having to look good in the eyes of others. It's quite a relief to realize finally you don't have to look normal anymore. In fact, as you pull all the pieces back together and reclaim your idiosyncrasy, you become a much more genuine person and others seem to respond well to it. It was all a big misunderstanding, in a sense. Maybe we'll go easier on the next generation growing up. It's a tragic mistake to load up our psychic closets like this. Happy digging!
The new moon chart is somewhat livelier and more coherent than the full moon was. At the very least, there seem to be fewer small groups of planets to consider. The Sun, Moon, Venus, Juno and Neptune all fall around 5 degrees more or less. At 16 degrees are a rather familiar mob of Mars, Vesta, Ceres Saturn, Chiron and Uranus. Mercury and Jupiter are semisextile at 25 degrees. Pluto is trine Pallas, but otherwise isolated, falling between groups.
Once more, the question is whether this chart speaks with one voice or many. The 5 degree committee is a clear comment about relationships and emotions. Venus conjunct Juno is stressing the importance of having a cheerful and open heart with your loved ones, letting them know that you care for them. Neptune in Pisces also helps open the heart, though it's in square to Venus-Juno, a somewhat mixed message. The new moon is in another water sign, Cancer, which brings all these emotions to the surface. That much makes sense. The 16 degree group seems to be a bag of conflicting messages. Some stress spontaneity, drive and daring, while others speak of caution and a tendency to withdraw. Apparently, people are unsure how they should behave, shifting back and forth between these approaches depending upon the feedback from others. Mercury is about to stand still again (it goes direct on Jul 1), so despite support from a friendly Jupiter, it's easy to misinterpret the intentions of others. Check the details carefully instead of relying solely on "the big picture" in such cases. Jupiter expects situations to go well, so he's not always the best person to ask for critical advice. Pluto is surprisingly one of the weakest planets in the chart (been a long time since we could say that!). It's nice to have him back off for awhile instead of pressuring us to change and grow constantly. He's a good spiritual guide, but not someone you want to hang out with. Again, I'm not sure this all comes together into a single story. But it does seem to reflect the confusion and inner conflicts we're feeling post Grand Cross. Hang in there...
Curiously, the new moon point is very close to the US Jupiter, a point in our country's birth chart that rules over business, the economy and government institutions. This lunar month could affect US financial markets in strange ways.