The Powerfully Active and Subtle Month of July

The astrology of July has on offer a slow-moving Mercury in recovery from its recent retrograde, and as well an interesting Saturn-Uranus aspect that lasts throughout the month. Many planets are also changing signs, to include Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter. This is therefore a volatile and yet subtle time of continued change, in the wake of an intense springtime that featured Uranus and Pluto in their fifth of seven exact hits. The changes that have come down upon us during this earlier period are perhaps only now making themselves really felt and truly understood in their total impact on our lives.

The Cancer New Moon from the last weekend of June, that kicks off the current monthly cycle, had a dynamic configuration that possessed several aspects of interest, including the trine that it makes to numinous Neptune, plus Mars opposite Uranus, Saturn trine Chiron and Saturn inconjunct Uranus. This latter aspect is fascinating in that it stays with us all summer long. The outer planet combinations, with Mars included, serve to remind us of the energy for change that is swirling around us now, intensified in the springtime, bringing still more ideas and reactions from the developing storm of our new understanding of the process that we have long been engaged in. This is especially so in view of the reflective and introspective more of the Mercury Retrograde period of time. Mercury is now in direct motion and still recovering its lost Zodiacal longitude, as the energy of the retrograde continues to wind down.

Neptune, being so strongly configured now as well, speaks to us this month in subtle ways, directly from inner realms that are discoverable through our earnest inquiry. Neptune is symbolic of otherworldly dimensions intuitively sensed; a reality that is orthogonal to the everyday one, and that yet gives this world its very substance.

Saturn, the emblem of a restrictive and conservative sense of limitation, also highlighted in this interesting monthly cycle, makes an inconjunct aspect to the antithetical energy of trickster and volatile Uranus that is active, exact to within less than a degree, at the time of the recent New Moon and during the first week of July. This presents us with a stifling of the powerfully innovative energy of a prominent Uranus. Because Saturn is preparing to station to direct motion on Sunday, July 20th, this critical and nay-saying planet barely moves throughout the month, and neither does Uranus, which stations retrograde on the 21st. The aspect gets down to a mere quarter of a degree by the time of these stations at the beginning of the fourth week of July. There is thus a strong urge for change and for holding back from change, both, that continues throughout the entire monthly cycle of July and on into August.

In this context, which also has as stimulant Mars in opposition with Uranus as the month begins, we are in some sense recapping the powerful emotions wrought by the transformational impact of Uranus and Pluto in combination, a strong factor in these fractious times which are also terrific time of learning, as environmental and political as well as personal issues continue to challenge us.