Sun in proud, passionate Leo, Mars in assertive, insistent Aries, a nation under pandemic siege divided between compliant believers and defiant deniers, and a once-friendly world turning its back on a recalcitrant government hell-bent on enforcing a skewed, partisan reality while desperately grasping rapidly diminishing power—what could go wrong? The personal inner planets—Mercury, Venus, and Mars—insist we take insults to our collective intelligence and offenses against our communities very, very personally during the long, hot, dog days of summer.
August begins with a bang at Mercury's opposition to Pluto on the 1st. Explosive public revelations rock the already crumbling foundations of stability. Pride goeth before a fall when Leo Sun square Uranus in Taurus August 2; the Full Aquarius Moon August 3 with Mercury opposite Saturn and Mars square Jupiter August 4 demands justice be delivered in the court of public opinion. Closed door deliberations and back-room deal makers find their doors kicked in and back room overturned. Compromise of ideals brings scathing criticism by August 13's inflammatory square of Mars to Pluto: nobody is going to be in the mood to cut the status quo any slack.
Revolutionary Uranus stations retrograde August 15, ensuring collective cultural consequences until the harsh lessons of our communal history we should have absorbed by now are internalized. Sun and Mercury trine Mars August 16, introducing a powerful new security communications initiative. Sun enters rational, analytic Virgo by August 22, begging for cooler heads to prevail, but Mars square to Saturn August 24 resists compromise. Ideological purity tests don't pass muster August 30 at Mercury's opposition to Neptune. Discovering individual moments of pleasure, personal creativity, meaning, and significance while letting go of things we can't control helps takes the edge off what surely promises to be the summer of our communal discontent.
