An Amazing and Somewhat Confusing Month of August

The astrology of August features Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, and presents us with yet another thoughtful and thought-provoking month. The optimistic expansionism of Jupiter — along with Uranus and the epiphanies it brings — are greatly emphasized. While Mercury no longer has even a hint of retrograde, the mental planet does aspect Neptune and also Saturn at the time of the New Moon from the final weekend of July. Everything, even our thought process, is moving more slowly than we would like, and is tinged with a confusion of multiple reflections. We will be looking within and finding, if not the answers to the puzzle of our very existence, at least further and more enlightened questions. We might also expect to remain somewhat stymied as we attempt to move forward with new vision in the midst of an interesting and somewhat paradoxical monthly cycle.

The July 26th New Moon that began the current August lunation was conjunct Jupiter, so that we begin the month with a wave of positivity that can be so progressive as to become overdone. When we throw caution to the wind we could get ahead of ourselves, so that the equally prominent nay-saying side of existence represented by Saturn, also emphasized at the time of the New Moon, might come as a welcome cautionary factor, a counter-balance to this natural and bubbly sense of optimism entirely running away with us.

The Full Moon of Sunday, August 10th, is powerful in its own way, making a T-square to Saturn and aspecting Uranus and transformative Pluto. We are getting a touch of the revolutionary energy for change that has been with us all year, as we head into the remainder of 2014. There is yet another exact hit of Uranus in square to Pluto in the offing by year's end. This implies further dramatic changes still to come. Saturn, antithetical to Jupiter, and as well to Uranus and Neptune, wants us to slow down and take everything in. Just as farmers know that to best irrigate a field you must let the water move over the soil quite slowly, so also Saturn insists that to find the truest understanding of any situation, you must allow that truth to gradually sink in.

Neptune, being so strongly configured in these August configurations as well, speaks to us this month in subtle ways, directly from inner realms that are only perhaps discoverable through our earnest inquiry. Neptune is symbolic of otherworldly dimensions intuitively sensed; a reality that is orthogonal to the everyday one of getting and spending, and which yet gives this world its very substance. In addition to an exciting month of new possibilities, this is therefore yet a relatively subtle month as well, full of nuance, and for the potential for greater understanding of our own inner depths.