If you want to go straight to the columns here are the links for the weekly and monthly horoscopes:
http://www.avonconnects.co.uk/docs/DOC-5930
http://www.networkshe.co.uk/category/horoscope
What’s happening this week?
Thanks to everyone who’s told me about their own retrograde Mercury stories, and a special thanks to Di H who wrote that “the forewarning made a real difference to solving the various issues that arose”. There’s a lot of things that we simply have no control over during these periods but certainly forewarned is forearmed, and I like to think that I may have avoided some calamities over the years…
The last word on Mercury is that there is a “shadow period” as well as the actual retrograde period. This is how it works, with the current phase as the example:
· 10 June – Mercury reaches 13.21 (13 degrees, 21 minutes) of Cancer. This is the degree at which Mercury will eventually turn direct and this is the beginning of the Shadow period.
· 26 June – Mercury turns retrograde at 23.07 Cancer
· 20 July – Mercury turns direct at 13.22 Cancer
· 4 August – Mercury reaches 23.07 Cancer, the degree at which it turned retrograde and this is the end of the Shadow period.
So if you notice that a couple of weeks after Mercury turning direct that things take a while to sort and settle, that is the astrological explanation.
Moving on, you may remember that I was talking about aspect patterns a couple of weeks ago when we had the Grand Trine formed by Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune. I described it as a huge equilateral triangle stretched across the heavens. For me this brought a pointer from friend and colleague Sally Kirkman to register with my sites with a couple of horoscope directories (the links above), one of which is American and my readership figures shot up as a result. So, for me, this was literally stretching out across an ocean and connecting with another continent.
Today we have an exceptionally rare aspect pattern, which is not just one Grand Trine but two, laid over each other. If you joined the dots between the six planets you would find a hexagon, and this pattern is called a Star of David. To give you an idea of how rare this is I have never, in nearly 30 years of astrological practice, come across one in a natal chart!
The distance between the dots has to be less than 6 degrees (an aspect known as a sextile) and this Star of David is in the feminine water and earth signs:
· Mars and Jupiter at 7 Cancer
· Venus at 8 Virgo
· Saturn at 5 Scorpio
· Pluto at 9 Capricorn
· Neptune at 4 Pisces
These are the first five points of the hexagon and the 6th is created today when the Moon reaches 3 degrees of Taurus at about 11.30 BST (which is incidentally the Moon’s degree of exaltation, in others words this is her best sign and 3 degrees of Taurus is her best degree) and will stay within orb until midnight BST tonight.
Of course, as this aspect pattern is so rare who’s to say what it means? It’s not like retrograde Mercury which happens unerringly three or four times a year, giving us the chance to study the event and to amass empirical information. However if we go with the “as above, so below” my eyes were drawn today to: Mid East peace talks to resume, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators are to resume stalled peace talks in Washington on Monday, the US State Department has announced. (BBC)
What else? Venus is trine Pluto tomorrow, and sextile Mars on Friday, great for love stuff. Unions created or cemented tick all the right boxes. Simultaneously we have Mars square Uranus early Thursday, and Sun trine Uranus on Sunday, the same day that Mercury finally closes this latest retrograde cycle. Look out for settlements, agreements or news, especially related to a new order.