Salamander Tongue Wrestling and Ladder Burning

Tonight at 8:10 pm, during the Moon’s hour, Venus waltzes into Gemini with the Moon nearly opposite in the final degrees of Scorpio. Luna achieves direct signaling position in 0 Sagittarius just after 1 am, in her hour once more, out of the sulfur cave of intoxicating primordial fluid and into the fire of imagination. The waxing Moon in sight of a trickster Venus intent on playing artful mindgames might keep some people up tonight, or at least lace their dreams with the intellectual beauty of quickly diverging philosophies that speed toward shapeshifting targets. Venus’ separating sextile from Chiron which the Moon trines (trining also Mercury in her sign while Venus enters the androgyn’s) from Scorpio where she experiences mutual reception with Mars suggests the shift will not be without pain, but it is the fading pains of healing that signal oncoming wellness, the tail end of a harsh hangover, the burning broth that soothes a sore throat, the wasabi that clears the sinuses; this is an almost exceedingly effervescent threshold cross; the plunge in a cold pool after stepping out of the sauna on a moonlit night lively with stimulating conversation and artful wordplay. We are inspired to stave off glass after glass of wine for the sake of best articulation, the most dexterous tongues are able to wrestle longest and lock deepest with the Salamanders of imagination, as well as ear probe and tango with the speech organs that reside in other people’s mouths. Some might become inspired to kiss the smoothest talker, especially as the Moon stands on the edge of ingress between lusty Scorpio and spirit soaring and searching Sagittarius, who is wont toward theriocephalic synthesis with Peregrine Falcons. If your Mood swings earn you a bird head, and you emotionally feel like Thoth, naturally record it. Write it down, you might hit on something profound, and just might pen the poetic openings of the speech you can slip into your back pocket for when the time comes, if your inauguration be imminent. I think most of us miss a little of the Geminiic breezes, and will be grateful for the breath of beautiful speech as planets move into Leo’s royal court and palace affairs light up for various coronations and regality dramas. A much more social period is on its way, where the heart pumps the blood of sanguine into our mouths. This is the beginning of the process to ready your Lions for confrontation with the Dragon later in the month, as the serpent will be swallowing the Sun. Mercury enters Leo on the 6th, where we begin to fuck with the lights in foreshadowing of the upcoming eclipse. Mercury performs intellectually in Leo, but what he shows is not the whole of the matter, the trickster also casts illusions in the intermittence of light and shadow. Now you see it now you don’t, and there it is again, pulled from behind your ear. Colorful heraldic flags unfurl from cavernous hats as Venus rolls them out like scrolls and decks the halls in joyous investigation of all of mankind’s knowledge in search of the Universe’s secrets. There again is a bit of the Falcon here, as she throes herself this way and that over the fields and oceans of information and/or alchemical manuscripts; but this is not Virgo, she hasn’t the plethora of acute cone cells to find the needle in the haystack, but she loves academia enough to attempt multiple PHD’s at once, even if she never finishes any of them by the time she reaches Cancer’s cool lagoon and strolls the beach in only a sarong with her umbrella and Piña Colada reading material collecting saltwater ripples and pages filling with sand as it shares a beach bag with the Coppertone girl, her posterior nipped by Hermanubis, as Mercury will be in rulership in Virgo by then and readying to retrograde, so despite the physical vacation the book is still a thousand pages long of dense material, whether its Bonatti, Gaddis, Bloom or a Clymer manuel. You can schedule that with your travel agent for sometime after July 31st.

At the moment, Mercury passes a square to Uranus as he heads toward Leo, so our emotional antennas accidentally become lightening rods for a night, whether or not the outer planet will hurl a bolt in our personal direction or not is unknown as usual, as it is with the ruler of surprises. this might temporarily fry some circuits, but with Mercury operating at his current clip it shouldn’t sink our battleships. For some this will be motivational friction, the proverbial torch under the ass, probably needed in sluggish Cancer where our moods and needs are given a prominent promotion. A bit of thunder rumble and a Uranian wake up slap might come just in time to rouse us from our Scorpio Moon stupors over the weekend, where many might have succumbed to hedonism and overindulgences that do anything other than support quickness and clarity of the mind. As the Moon transitions to Sagittarius synapse sinews tighten our imaginations and lead us to aiming the culmination of our chi at goals. Feeling in the mood to wax philosophical, falcon out truth and saddle up to summon our power reinvigorates a desire for mental routines, which of course require some soundness of body. This comes to a happy culmination by the 7th as Mercury and Venus complete a sextile in the early afternoon, despite our emotions getting a bit choked off as the Moon is separating from Saturn in Sagittarius, who reminds us that foreign lands and exotic experiences are geographically out of reach, for travel takes both time and planning. The upcoming opposition of the Sun and Pluto conjuncting the Moon in Capricorn (coinciding with Luna’s fullness at 1am on the early morning of the 9th (experienced as Mercury night) furthers the ‘revolution of routines’ sentiment, as the Sun gets a full view of the Void that the Moon is capable of creating, heavily foreshadowing the upcoming eclipse. With the Sun in the Moon’s sign, Mercury in the Sun’s sign on Mercury-night, and the Moon in Saturn’s sign opposing the Sun full and conjunct Pluto, there is nuanced planetary interplay that looks like a Moon full of hierarchical law that wields the power and ability to drop a black hole right on top of our Solar Luminary. This is akin to the Proskynesis of covering the right eye before a chthonian deity, a void vision, a staring directly into the gaping maw of Ammit, or perhaps out from the crocodile jaws at the Sun, as if to say to the king from an opposite turret tower with a foreboding pointing finger, “You’re going to get yours, your highness. You’re going down.” Under such royal stress and the excitement of intrigue our wits sharpen and we inspire to be on our games. Keep your eyes and ears peeled as the mystery unfolds. On a mundane level it might be experienced as the grave reality of how our feelings for responsibility differ from our barest needs. What we feel we need to succeed and what we have a need to achieve glows from within us, somehow mysteriously from the utter depths of our subconscious, making us aware of those strategies that we’ll never return to, and ladders that we no longer need to climb get discarded as new ones emerge from out of draconian coils. This opposition separates from a square to Jupiter in Libra on either side, suggesting that the ladders connecting stations of outdated alliances might be what are broken up to burn during Full Moon bonfires as we celebrate our more diabolic contracts, those deals with the Devil that look a bit more promising than your allegiance to your current boss, who is really working for himself and not you. I can give no further advice on this particular matter (unless you hire me to do so), for ultimately you must go to the crossroads meeting alone, but obviously, that’s not compulsory.

The knowledge of our needs and emotions trembles from the glimpse of the all devouring darkness over the 10th and 11th, but the Moon continues into abstract Aquarius, waving to Mercury who is alone with the Sleeping Dragon in the castle courtyard, they exchange conspirators signals, hand signs of secretive initiatory orders that portend espionage, then Luna continues on to trine Jupiter, appealing to the Judge behind the scales, she spills her story, which of course has all come out in the wash as she wanes. Saturn quincunx to the Sun marching Mars out of Cancer and retrograde Neptune quincunx to Jupiter suggests a lot of unbalanced issues, like the unequal distribution of treasure, spreading as rumors within the court and greater kingdom. Someone talked, and now the royal business is known by the vassals. The near antiscia of Jupiter and Neptune looks like the paparazzi snapped an incriminating shot of the Judge weighing the scales toward an overly optimistic verdict. Life becomes a kind of HBO historical drama series for a stretch of the summer, which is fun if you don’t get tangled in the intrigue and tripped. As heads could roll later in the season, consider who you want on your side and who you might want some distance from. Consider that this requires a combination of good old fashioned diplomacy, being in touch with your heart and upkeeping a stable of effective sentinels and assassins.