June Astrology Forecast

Sag Lunar Eclipse, Venus Occultation and More

June brings a profound wind of change to the planet. Before I go on, I want to let you know that:

• My EDGE monthlies for each sign for the month of June are posted.
• I cover June’s astrology in expanded detail for each sign in the June Expanded Audio Horoscopes.
• I’ll be riffing on the astrology ahead (and taking your calls) Wednesday, June 6 at 7p EST/6p CST/4p PST on EDGE Astrology with DK Brainard.

Sagittarius Lunar Eclipse

The month kicks off with a big bang with the Sagittarius Lunar Eclipse (Monday, 6/4 at 7:12 a.m. New York City time). This eclipse falls at 14 Sag 14 conjunct a mysterious black hole named the Great Attractor. Black holes, at the risk of stating the obvious, are weird. And the Great Attractor ranks pretty high up on the weirdness scale. It seems to inspire visions of potential futures but some of the premonitions one gets with the G.A. are not always easily translated into our current version of reality. One of the challenges with this eclipse may be sifting through the psychic information we’re receiving to determine what is actually relevant and what constitutes bleed-through from other time tracks.

Sagittarius is concerned with truth, wisdom and belief and Sag energy tends to accept without question the beliefs or truths it downloads that happen to ‘feel right’. This eclipse can show us our personal (and collective) truth very forcefully but the strong square from the eclipsed Moon to Mars in Virgo – the sign of discrimination – suggests we do need to apply our rational minds to the spiritual information we are receiving. Fundamentalism (of any stripe, be it Christian, Muslim, Mormon or scientific) is an example of the Sagittarius truth/belief energy applied (with typical Sagittarian fiery optimism) without the balance of rationality and intellectual curiosity supplied by Sagittarius’ opposing sign Gemini.

One of the core findings of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) is that the subconscious mind will often reject suggestions or directives for change if the new thought patterns violate the ecology of an individual’s belief system and environment. For example, say your goal is to lose weight or stop smoking. But you’re an extremely empathic person living in a family of people who are walking around with unresolved trauma and therefore bleeding negative emotions. Or you’re working in an office surrounded by coworkers who are constantly dumping their emotional baggage on you. No matter how much you want to drop those extra pounds or lose those cigarettes, your subconscious mind may reject this request because it would upset your personal ecology. Until you leave that work environment for a saner one or establish healthier boundaries with your family, the subconscious considers your vices ‘necessary’ for protecting you and keeping your energy up.

One helpful way of looking at what we download during this eclipse might be evaluating it along the lines of the Mutable Cross. For our truth to be ecologically valid, it needs to pass not only the belief test (Sagittarius), but it also needs to be able to be understood intellectually (Gemini). It must be able to be integrated into our life practically (Virgo) and it must meet the test of compassion (Pisces) – a test that fundamentalism fails miserably.

Venus Occultation of the Sun and Venus Rx

Venus stationed retrograde at 24 Gemini on May 15 and Venus remains retrograde until June 27, when she returns to direct motion at 7 Gemini 29. Venus normally spends only a few weeks in any given sign but she is spending a whopping four months in Gemini, from the beginning of April to the beginning of August. Gemini is the sign that deals with the rational mind: how we think and how we communicate. Venus is the archetype of beauty, love, balance, and sensuality and, along with the Moon, one of the two feminine planetary energies in traditional astrology.

On June 5/6, Venus will make a rare pass directly across the disc of the Sun, called an occultation. This rare transit happens roughly in cycles of 121 years between occultations and then 8 years between occultations. The last transit happened in June 2004 so it would be helpful to review where you were at mentally in 2004. I see the current transit bringing a culmination in a process of healing that began in the summer of ’04. Because of the nature of Venus, this isn’t likely to strike us as a lightning bolt of ‘enlightenment’ or a thunderous pronouncement from the gods. But if we are willing to look back over the last eight years at the life area of your chart symbolized by Gemini and the houses in your chart ruled by Venus, you should be able to get a strong sense of what this healing energy is about.

I do believe that this Venus event, which coincides rather eerily with the end of the Mayan Calendar (the Mayans were very big on Venus), symbolizes the return of the Divine Feminine into our consciousness. But this is also likely to happen in a feminine way, i.e. by an increasing ability to see the world – and the contents of our own mind – holistically. How might this manifest? Within the Gemini framework of duality (see the post on the May 20 Gemini Solar Eclipse), this mental healing might manifest in an increased capacity for recognizing ‘negative’ thoughts without feeling the egoic compulsion either to attach to them or to destroy them. Negative thoughts or viewpoints expressed by others are seen as manifestations of the inherent duality of the mind and accepted as such. Once we accept them as being “in the world” or “in the mind” we have options. We can choose to purify or purge the self in order to bring our mind to a higher vibration or we can integrate the parts of these viewpoints that make sense (Virgo). We can choose to see these negative currents as part of the great Cosmic Ocean and swim away to clearer waters or simply practice compassion for the parts of the whole that have chosen to suffer under such illusions (Pisces).

All healing begins with self-healing, though, and one of the great gifts I see coming from the current Venus transit is the ability to view ourselves and the contents of our minds with less attachment and more curiosity. It’s amazing how powerfully healing curiosity can be when properly channeled – and this is the gift of Gemini. When we stop rejecting and start asking questions, we tend to find that everything that expresses in the mind has its uses. It is never the thoughts themselves, but only our attachments (to a certain outcome, to needing not to have negative thoughts, to a moral judgment of a thought as good or bad, to needing other people to think the way we think) that cause us suffering.

The Uranus-Pluto Square

We’ll have plenty of opportunities this month to practice non-attachment and to exercise curiosity about our thoughts and the reactions they provoke within the psyche. On Sunday, June 24 Uranus and Pluto make the first of seven exact squares happening between now and 2015. Uranus-Pluto is one of the central archetypal configurations of the 1960s and this month is the first exact hit of that pattern since that famous decade. We got a taste of the power of Uranus-Pluto last summer when a wave of revolution swept the globe as the two powerhouse outer planets came within about a degree of the exact square. We can anticipate more of the same over the next few years. Uranus represents the force of revolution, sudden change, progressive elements in the world and the swift destruction of that which is old and outmoded in order to make room for the new. Pluto represents the deep forces within the soul, that which has been repressed or denied, a ruthless ‘outing’ of all that we have pushed into the Shadow.

Together these archetypes tend to bring periods of volcanic upheaval as the old, stuck ways crack at the seams and begin to disintegrate. Remember that in order to create the new world we want to live in, the old one must give way. The choice we have is whether we choose to embrace the new and roll with the changes as best we can or whether we try to cling on to what represents safety and continuity – even though this will prove illusory in the long run. Faced with all of the chaos and confusion unfolding on a global level, what can we do? We can work with our thoughts (Gemini), trust our higher self (Sagittarius), practice compassion (Pisces) and do our best to be useful and to bring healing (Virgo).