Starcodes July 12, 2019 Heather Roan Robbins

The mood is slow and emotional. If life gets hectic, sit still, if just for a minute. Summer’s heat and five planets retrograde ask us to take our time, think through everything we’re doing. Catch up and reconnect with our past, work on old projects, and handle life right here right now. Tend to the woes of the world, and there are so many right now. Deal with what’s already on the plate, and that’s a lot this week the major planetary patterns and process. Speeding up will be counterproductive. If we start up brand-new project it will probably have to be redone, the basic ideas can be sketched out and researched. Mercury, Jupiter, Chiron, Saturn, Neptune, Pluto, all now appear to head backwards against the zodiac.

Unfortunately, this slowness also applies to storm systems, weather patterns can get stuck in a rut, too much water in one place and not enough in another, which is worrisome as a storm bears down on already waterlogged New Orleans as the Sun comes to oppose Pluto this weekend. On January 13, June 16, Sept 21, Jupiter (abundance) and Neptune (water) square exactly, each strong in their own sign, though we feel it all year long. The pragmatic effect is uneven water, a surplus of water, floods, in some places, droughts in others, exacerbating climate change. Jupiter and Neptune were opposite in the great Mississippi flood of Dec 1926, square at the New England flood of March 1936 (exact during the winter before- whose great snow melt caused the flood), and trine during hurricane Katrina. Be careful out there.

The Sun and Venus are now in watery Cancer and ask us to stay in touch with our emotions, tend our family and the family of humankind. Pay attention to our responsibilities to this extended global family. Because so many people are experiencing a major shift this summer, shedding one cycle but not quite ready to start the next one.

Last week’s solar eclipse and this coming Tuesday’s lunar eclipse catalyze these changes, and people need support. The eclipses energize this year’s Saturn-Pluto conjunction in earthy Capricorn, an aspect astrologers predict will shift, however slightly or significantly, our foundations, both geologically and metaphorically. This conjunction started late last winter and continues through the year, flaring up as the faster moving personal planets resonate with it and give it energy.

Mercury and Mars now run close together in Leo, which can add bravado to our thinking and hyperbole to our arguments. Great stories can be told, but…