The Astrology Of August 2019: Hyper-grooming

All the skeletons mashed into the storage closet and crammed tight then closed shut subject to maceration and marrow unguent emulsifiers to massage the moist inner medium out, bleaching the bones and rendering the material into mush, a thick off grey paste of coagulated mummy mire as obligated ejected out the hatch on the other side and flushed into the time wracked sewer system burst out the sidewall into the streets and exposed itself like an ectoplasmic epidemic episode, smearing the scarred and burned skins of tender July’s crab flesh free of shell, vulnerable and open to the elements like a nest of bald chicks in a hail of gravel, the stony hand of Time spanking our wounds maliciously like boulder clapping clockwork until our nerve endings retreated to outer space and checked themselves out of the hospital. Just rugged terrain left where baby bottom once rolled like soft hill mounds, glades rent and left pocked with meteorites and filled with shrapnel from previous conflicts delivered by municipal waste syndicates overtaken by the mob who turn their blind eyes to care or concern and just get the dirty job done. We escaped the horror by taking to the tunnels, engulfed in septic tubes and slithered and squeezed our bulk through with no thought of a promised land, simply out of survival instincts until after what seemed like a lifelong stretch we only a bit deflated and bruised from head to tow issued out the pipe like a sack of sad skin from a toothpaste nozzle orifice into glorious light, and then pouring ourselves into a pair of skin tight jeans and platform go go boots with florescent hair and rhinestone apparel, dangling with exotic feathers and bejeweled to our personal liking we pressed acid tab dispenser installed within the tip of our tongue and birthed like Phoenix permitted ourselves into the arena where we through a miracle of mirrors all take center stage and perform our desires to our hearts content. Like grapes in bunch the blood drops swell as uvulas swing and we sing our own songs which spark from our chests and call upon a God that appears in our own likeness and like a Genie from a Lamp is compelled to grant our wishes deep into the trip, our egos at the wheel, we rev our vehicles up to maximum overdrive and in a cascade of flaming chariots arc across the sky in transit while via satellite its all broadcast on the jumbo-tron. We are instantly recognized for our genius and beauty as the most unique and authentic person at the party amongst the millions and selected for an opportunity to enact our wildest dreams, and in the form of the celebrity that would play us in a movie we embark on adventures that transcend Hollywood and lend us a photograph plaque slot in the yearbook annals of mythological pantheons hall of fame. From elsewhere entirely we somehow hear a slight whisper amidst the applause and screams of fans and with keen sensory perception pick up a signal issuing forth from the forests edge, and heeding the beckoning beacon follow the beeping and discreet instructions of insects to the tree line where we find colonies of ants hard at work assembling an impossibly complex three dimensional puzzle which directly applies to the things we recently realized about ourselves while up all night partying and performing. With magnifying glass and microscope and notepad and reference materials we roll up our sleeves and shrink to minute proportions so we can get involved and lend a hand to the busy machinations of the marching creatures amidst a process of putting it all together. Finding it utterly fascinating we seek smaller and smaller sizes until with every iota of our interest we delve into deeper abstraction until we are at the threshold of finite particulars and issue on manifested as merely one tiny factor in the inner workings of the natural world.

BY MONTH

Everything in Fire signs

August feels much different from the dark tunnels, septic pressures and brutal purgations of much of June and July. After our forced march through the bowels and basements of our lives under sagging framing and threatening collapse and emergency removals driven on by both necessity and a need to return to our intuitive natures we emerge and ascend up into the blazing light where anything around with reflective ability whatsoever becomes a mirror and we amplify our own radiance in reflection as well as see our selves everywhere. With the confidence to speak and express ourselves, and who we are and what we are upto our MO’s get upgrades and are offered space on the larger stage where we can see the audience below lit up fully, and the illuminated landscape of personae expands before our eyes wondrously, as invitations to ascend in status abound and opportunities to advance our objectives and achieve our ultimate aims seem excitingly obtainable.

This is all initiated with the Sun’s late July ingress into Leo followed by the New Moon in Lion’s 8th degree moments before August is initiated, abruptly ending eclipse season with the first regular lunation in safe distance from the nodes’ shadows. Things are not only in a much brighter and dignified condition, with Venus, Mars and then later Mercury copresent with the Sun strong in his own domicile and all planning to trine complete trines with Jupiter, the Greater Benefic, also in rulership and readying to turn direct, but they are so contrasted to the emotional pollution and material sickness and foul hauntings of the earlier Summer that more than a bit of mania is likely as spice flickering in the mix of excitement and inspiration. Like captives let loose or children released into a playground, we rush from our pens and prisons sugar-high and amphetamine laced and begin to fire all the pistons at once with no care for material maintenance or care for resource monitoring, speeding along on pure enthusiasm, probably forgetting to eat if we weren’t so busy feasting and taking it all in. Centrality, visibility, confidence, presence, and showcasing who we truly are and making our spirit’s volition loud and clear is likely to conjure the most attention from benefactors and patrons who come forward with exciting proposals to embark on adventures along exactly the lines you were looking for; its so crazy cuz its true, can’t believe our eyes kind of action with sequined sparks and acid tracers incendiary off the edges of spotlight perimeter as we do our in-zone victory dance with glass raised to our honor to the tune of our own theme song blasting from our boombox.

Interestingly this seems to kick right off after the full Moon when Venus squares Uranus on August 2nd, the sign ruler of Taurus checking in on her house and getting an energetic jolt that sets a radical tone and demanding we get a revolutionary makeover to appear in public more like ourselves. In a way this is us showing up as our avatars, as the idealized, cartoon, demigod, daimon, persona powered, mythological version of who we really are; its not untrue its just us with volume all the way up, in full saturation, unfiltered as a pure ego driven flaming creature. Our dreams and visions and desires and god sent destinies respond to the colorful flagging, signaling, wing flapping and ritual mating dance moves. Just keep in mind that everyone will be doing this simultaneously, so make sure to hydrate thoroughly for the three week rave.

Full Moon in Aquarius

The Full Moon in Aquarius catches us about a third of the way through the loud and proud and high as kites revelatory escapades of self fulfilling prophesies of fate and fortune, and is part of an interesting day which likely signals a kind of transition from the party to the after party. Before the culmination of a fresh and potent cycle of manifestation which concludes with us getting as far out as we can, going beyond normal limits, concocting many hypothesis, being experimental and cutting edge and avant garde and beyond status quo where we feel a need for like minded people or no one else at all, Venus overtakes the Sun and conjoins the diurnal luminary (in the early hours, 2am EST) where she is purified and cleaned of all the dross and dead skin clinging to her and is refreshed and revitalized and then reborn. Our very personal values and identity and outlook on what we love and lust after and how we see beauty and what we seek to bond with perfectly aligns with our objectives and intelligence and vision, and in a moment of pure self centered realization we set out after pleasures that are more in tune with our own truths and spiritual codes and image of ideal self. An hour later Mercury exits his retrograde shadow and the process of re-editing who we are and what we really need concludes, as we step forward into fresh thinking. Th following morning Mercury squares Uranus, the very aspect he seemed to turn and flee from just before his retrograde station, now ready to receive the electricity and conduct risky experiments in hot rodding his public speaking style.

Everything In Earth Signs

After the Aquarius Moon things seem to steadily shift. Mars, who is double dignified by face in the third decan of Leo leaves and crosses over into Virgo, as electric live wires start to seek grounding and the critical search for fuel to keep the fires burning begins. There is a sense that we need to tweak some details if we are going to keep the fight for being our selves alive; for hearts to remain throbbing to the beat of our own drums we might need to find more information to feel excited about, and seek out concrete processes to put ourselves through to actualize our inspired objectives. Getting roused up and ecstatic about our new reclamation of our selves in the context of our holy quests can only be celebrated for so long before we must get down to business and begin the initiation and engage with the work. There’s a week of overlap where we are all scrounging for kindling and whatever will burn to keep the lamps lit before we switch over to academic wildcrafting in earnest. With our big solo onstage complete, we dance off stage and immediately start pulling robes and working lights and mics, going behind the scenes to assist with whatever needs to happen to keep the production going. Interesting that since Regulus has moved into Virgo around 2011 or 12 we have seen the tech millionaire class really emerge and solidify and many of the most eminent people in the world are names unknown, rather than being documented on Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous. It’s worth noting when planets pass over this point of the zodiac, the first degree of Virgo, as there are opportunities to catch elections which can bring a considerable amount of attention to a variety of actions. This might also suggest that the “party’s over” signals are pretty visible and demand that we begin to look closer at the more pertinent details afoot rather than lose ourselves in the mirror attending to our make up and adjusting our image.

Venus enters next where she finds her traditional fall and we might here seek the depths of initiation and darkness of caves and put ourselves and our attractions through a thorough creative process and attempt an alchemy of desire. This oversensitivity to detail and intense sorting and filtering of beauty seems fitting after having such vivid self realizations. Its in fact quite urgent and even agitated as Venus comes to meet and conjoin with Mars shortly after their ingress, receptivity and action blending, penetration and yearning taking physical space together we arrive at a kind of rotational dynamic and sexual tension that can be put to many purposes, creativity being an obvious one, and in this case the fixated nature of Virgo implies locating exacting kinks and playing out convoluted erotic operations might be a good alternative to waring over aesthetic decisions in detail like how many centimeters a picture should be moved over on the wall. Venus and Mars both trine Uranus in tandem following their conjunction, so feeling itchy to get radical and experimental around this time seems to jive, whether it’s in the laboratory or in the bedroom, or, depending on your kink vis versa. There’s a kind of being horny to get in there and get working and get your hands dirty and love the actions of the work that you do, getting off on being in the physical activity of whatever is your focus, and via Uranus, getting a little wild with it and bringing in new and unpredictable elements.

The Sun moves into Virgo on the 22nd and late in the month Mercury enters rulership in Virgo on the 29th, bringing with him dignity and aid to Venus, the Sun and Mars who have already arrived. We’ll have all the precision and patience and access to information we need to do the procedures or research we have to do at our disposal so we can count on being efficient and effective. Mercury being pretty combust by this point means our out in the public eye letting it all hang out and getting funky vibes from a few weeks prior has certainly come to a close, as we are descending into the lab and hitting the books with gusto here, things that require hermetic attention and likely isolation and activity playing out beneath the surface, unshared or unnoticed. The New Moon then takes place in Virgo, tightly configured to Mars, and seeds are sown directly into the urgency to attend to the critical details of the process. We’re deep down in the stuff, and with Mercury, Venus, Mars, The Sun, Saturn, Uranus and Pluto all in earth signs we are heavily and securely on the material plain by September, so prepare for stuff, things, details, time, and physical manipulations to matter most. As there is so much Mercury rulership in the house at this point this may come via abstractions and representations, and alphabets and integers, words and numbers playing primary roles. It would appear that these investigations and alchemical operations bring some real epiphanies as the Sun conjoins Mars and is then caught up by Mercury by the first few days of September all trining Uranus first, continuing the theme of finding fresh dimensions.

BY WEEK

Monday July 29 - Sunday August 4th

Monday August 5th - Sunday August 11th

Monday August 12th - Sunday August 18th

Mercuryday 8/14/19: 2am: Venus Superior Conjunction w/ the Sun

-3am: Mercury exits shadow of Retrograde

-8:30 am Full Moon in Aquarius

Venusday 8/16/19: 1pm: Mercury square Uranus

Sunday 8/18/19: 1am: Mars ingress Virgo

On Wednesday this week thine eyes cerulean bright are also the eyes of right, eternal eyes which are the objects of delight both fertile and famed to fix thine blessed abode; the immortal gaze of the steady Sun rejoices in foaming billows, beauteous nymphs and banquets and as a lucid steed glides forward in glittering car on errand of harmonious and prosperous deeds; we receive the superior conjunction of Venus and the Sun, the mid point of her combustion, the end of her synodic cycle when she is purified by radiating clarity that blow torches the crust and dross from us and centers us back in our values and desires in alignment with our drives and aims. We want to pay attention to this moment and see what we can decipher and what kind of attractions reverberate with our spirits, what we truly resonate with and what kind of nudity we are bold to bare, what kind of truth we delight in, what kind of art brings us pleasure and what aesthetics and deliciousness we strive to receive. For those on the East Coast of the US this occurs at 5am just before sunrise on Mercury's day with Mercury copresent Leo but not combust so Hermes may be called upon to deliver the update and translate it into language which suits our own personal logic and language style. I'd suggest automatic writing here that's aloud to become doodles, drawings, sketches or more in the process. Just let your mind, ego, desires and central self tell you what you really want for a change rather than trying to boss yourself around and put external constraints on your activity. Just listen to what your heart is telling you and take heed. The focus and realization of our true and most central desires will likely send us into some withdrawn states, being both visible, present yet processing within, as we face some rearrangements to our objectives born of this realization and can toss aside tired garments and incinerate old art moving forward into brighter nights, Venus making her way back to the evening skies and visibility in weeks to come.

An hour later Mercury exits retrograde shadow, the place he turned tail back on July 8th, and we appropriately move into fresh patterns of thinking about ourselves and what we want to express and how we want to be heard. It seems it took our values and desire drives to get cleaned and refreshed for us to be able to appropriately articulate who we really are. Not surprising that it is only a couple hours after that when the Moon reaches fullest light in Aquarius, on the opposite end of the spectrum, we are drawn to wash up on the shores of intellectual and social territory which most resonates with our shared concepts and hypotheses and what kind of cutting edge we need to be on and what avant garde can nurture our new visions of creativity, love, pleasure and image; out of what box do we need to climb and from what parameters do we need to escape to actualize these realizations in the manifest world.

The sequence proceeds with logical eloquence as it is only two days later that Mercury squares Uranus. With our mojo primed, our spirits roused, our creativity preoccupied with getting out of the glare and onto the stage, our pleasure centers fresh from the seaside solar spa, salted, cleansed and tanned, our freshly forming thoughts get a jolt of electricity and in the excitement our brains go into hyperdrive at the prospects. This is one of the radical upgrades of the year and it has to do with who we think we are, how we communicate our true thoughts and have a more honest frame of mind. This is revolutionary stuff, and it may sound radical to others, so we might prepare to rock the boat, but everyone is doing it to some capacity, so we meet other maniacs on the street, raving about their personal trips, and forming bands of extremists and radicals who are focused on the same projects, as Mars enters Virgo on the 18th, and we go from being brave enough to do something about it and take a stand for what's right to rolling up our sleeves and taking as many little stabs as possible at the pinpoint which requires our most acute attention. Amidst all these exalted states of spirit and inflated ego drives and attention to our aesthetics and attractions we reach out for a scalpel and begin to turn steadily toward the sculpture, the self portrait before us that requires surgery, and all the minor corrections that have to be made and modified in the physical dimension, where pliers can pince snips can clip and needles can prick and penetrate through the surface to the dark space beneath where shadow meets material and somewhere in the celestial Ceres holds the spike of life which keeps the cosmos tethered together and the narrative on track, and it is these very machinations behind the scenes and on the other side of the veil which Wizard Of Oz the whole production from not kicking too far off kilter and losing the world we know. The Devil is in the details, or so they say, and The Devil is real and wants into your homes as Christians everywhere fear, and from the crossroad he comes, fork in hand, trying to be helpful where he can be, and for a price, yes, as everything comes to an end, but its the beginning of the process that so often maters most, and the fertile receptivity to the tiny signals that call our attention and incite us to attack in time, before insects overwhelm our gardens. Time to get critical, to get our hands dirty and sort this shit out.

Monday August 19th - Sunday August 25th

Moonday 8/19/19, 8am: Mercury under the beams

Mercuryday 8/21/19, 5am: Venus ingress Virgo

6am: Mercury trine Jupiter

Jupiterday8/22/19, 6am: Sun ingress Virgo

-upon Regulus

Saturnday 8/24/19, 1pm: Venus conjunct Mars

The grass curls over the sunlit patch and like a canine rooting into a blanket we follow the bleary blur of soft and smeared verdant hues into the dispatched bay of crescent light left by the moving and roving eye of Apollo scanning the landscape and finding within its curvature envelopes and cradles to rock our languid bodies into daydream reverie. Our minds wander, but pulled along by the lure, a long stem of grass and a clicking insect, crickets and grasshoppers and moths beckon our attention and we respond like an actor after the spotlight, stumbling from a saunter to a hesitant gait out of step with our stage mates that continue the scene as if nothing has occurred while we move into the motions of our soliloquy delivered to ourself from ourself behind a semi transparent screen. The camera catches it and it can be replayed, but in real time we experience it only as a fond memory savored in the moment it is made.

Mercury on Monday moves under the beams and we may experience this subtle shift in relation to Mars' ingress into Mercury's sign of Virgo the day before, as we now begin to pay more attention to ourself as we do what we came to do right in front of our face. We may begin to talk to ourself, give ourselves encouragement, pep talks and huddles as we move into task mode, whether that's in our journals or out loud or to our counterparts, acquaintances and split personalities, the topic is what we think about what we're doing, and we are likely doing most of this at least semi alone, or within our interior monologue, figuring it, ourselves and what we want to say as well as what work we want to exhibit as we go.

Mercury's day holds Venus' ingress into the Virgin's sign and where Venus finds her Fall. This is an awkward place for Venus, explicit in the very description: the Goddess of Love and Pleasure, the Venereal one, enters into the role of the Virgin. There is a more selective, apprehensive and hesitant Venus moving through late August and much of September, one that wields a more critical eye and feels a bit of anxiety around her functions, narrowing down her significations and trying to keep busy so as not lose control over her faculties. In another light this Venus wants things a certain way, is very specific and finds accuracy attractive, takes pleasure in precision and wants to complete things, heeding the needs of particular processes. The parts of us that seek lovemaking, libation and relaxation may prefer conducting menial tasks in a way that is as nice as possible and sprucing up the sequence so it is alluring and well received. She enters this modality ready to conjunct Mars and under a considerable amount of sexual tension, where we might be very itchy to do what we want, to attack the most attractive art project or get very tightly kinked and satisfy that particular craving, work through that itch that has long needed scratching and apply our pressure to the point and delight in vigorously working it out. Both elation and irritation are likely here, so direct your pincers as well as your receptors toward something healthy and rewarding so no matter how hot under the collar you become, you can take pride in the experience later. As the ruler of the sign is plunging deeper into being outshined as he sidles up to the radiant Sun, we may seek sanctuary behind closed doors to do our thing exactly how we want it to get done in relative privacy and away from disturbances. But as Mercury does linger behind in Leo the longest, there is likely some over arching context of what we are focusing our attentions at even behind the curtain being exhibited eventually. We are ultimately trying to communicate something, even if we have to go in to come out at a later date.

Wednesday is also host to Mercury's trine to Jupiter, now direct, where he gets to ring the bell of sonorous and glorious optimism and coherence and inspiration that the planets before him rung a couple weeks back. This might echo a passing flavor of enthusiasm much needed as we descend into the earthy particulars and sort through all the small parts and investigate every nodule and reverse engineer something so that we understand how its put together, how it works and exactly what it does. We are likely correcting something, streamlining some part of ourselves or our lives and its in this aspect with Jupiter that we are filled with why this process of self attention and self refinement and self correction applies to the bigger picture of what is ultimately possible and where we are most excited to go and achieve. To get to this we have to express this about ourselves and for that to function we first have to adjust this and finish up that so all hands on deck until we realign these very real things here and here so we can go big and wide with where we are headed and hit the targets we ultimately set out to nail, bringing the best of our spiritual trips and philosophical agendas with us. This is a really great moment to try to understand a lot about what we are doing, what we think, who we are, what is going on in the world and how we can fit into it all as best we can and succeed, somehow or other.

Thursday the Sun ingresses Virgo and then we are really and officially all up in there. What ever we were getting messed up in and focused on its what its all about now, we're tied up and tangled in it and intently listening for knocks and ticks and sniffing and smelling and applying pressure and taking temperature and tasting the secretions and figuring for the differentials and direction of the wind. We are fully paying attention, we got turned on by it once, we got irritated by it a couple times, we desire it and it pisses us off and now it really means business and our eyes fill with all the endless small parts of the engine taken apart before us, the patient on the table, the document half composed, the project requiring our intelligence and abilities to sovereignty that we might manage this operation once and for all. So off we go, we make not of the time, we set the lights and temperature, we sharpen our pencils, we put our phone on vibrate, we cancel superfluous distractions, we close the door, we roll up our sleeves, we get the tea set up and put a timer on and set an alarm so we know when its lunch time and send a text that we'll be a little late and then lay out the blue prints and unroll the old scrolls and review the plan and make sure we have all the pieces we need to complete the puzzle and count the fasteners and crack our knuckles and get our bearings and get ready to real dig in and begin thinking about how we are going to actually do this thing in earnest. I.E. The opening stages, the prep phase, the getting our ducks in a row. This is an inherent first step in doing things right. A surgeon prefers to have things pre-planned, and not attempt radical improvisation. But in this case we may need to go in there and penetrate the seal and swashbuckle our opening moves as Venus conjoins Mars on Saturday and then she trines Uranus on Monday. A bit of introducing our experimental and radically new methodologies, especially in the context of the way we are most attracted to working and how we want to revolutionize our practices so that we enjoy them the most may be what we lead with initially. There's been some big shifts along these lines since Uranus enetered Taurus in May of 2018 and they are referenced here in a smooth yet tense sense after being referenced back on August 1st in an impulsive and exhilarating way. Then we were being deliciously brash and rocking the boat, probably on purpose and enjoying the attention, where as now we are using the same or similar stuff while assuring everyone "No, look, I think these things actually work and no joking aside are probably really what we need now to solve the problem and deal with this issue". Drastic times call for drastic measures and as we update how we make art and feel the world with our bodies and provide food for ourselves and prepare things for fertility and attempt stabilize the pace and acclimate to the rhythm of a turbulent earth we stumble upon new and cutting edge ways to craft our reality into something sustainable as we move forward sorting out our practical affairs. Some of the crazy shit we've been forced to do or crazy ways we've been forced to live as of recent just to get by has already revealed some useful techniques and unearthed some very intriguing information.

Monday August 26th - Sunday September 1st