Pyro-philes and party people, rejoice. Half the planets in the sky will be in Leo at some point during August. The rosy-cheeked optimism of fire comes sprinting onstage at the outset of the month in the form of a Jupiter-Sun trine. The Sun being in Leo, which it rules, and Jupiter being in Sagittarius, which it rules, means they’re each in their very favorite places to be. And anyone with planets around the tenth degree of Aries gets major bonus points: the trine in the sky will form a Grand Trine to your own natal placement, blessing you with a…

The Saturn-Neptune opposition, whose last shimmering exactitude1 hangs in the air as July begins, has made its goofy, ridiculous, tragic and potentially enlightening mark upon the consciousness of the world over the course of the last three years.  This tug-of-war between the planets of realism (Saturn) and surrealism (Neptune) has given us a fools’ paradise of disillusion2, meltdown and revelation. We saw water disasters wipe out villages in Southeast Asia and inundate a great historic city in the USA as if they were sand castles leveled by the tide. We saw flat-out fraud used to elect the leader of the most powerful country…

June opens with the electric heat of the Jupiter-Uranus square vibrating in the air. This aspect is one of the strongest patterns in the sky right now, setting the tone for these last several years of the ‘00s. Jupiter and Uranus began their showdown as the calendar year began. The dynamic between them expressed itself in the Virginia Tech shootings in April; it is going to be triggered again by Uranus’ station on the 23rd of this month; and it will reach exactitude for the last time in early October.

Astrologers are looking at the chart of the Virginia Tech shootings for hints about the mind and motivations of Cho Seung-hui, America’s latest Troubled Young Man (With a Gun). A dread new cultural archetype, the TYM(WAG) is a desperately attention-worthy sign of the times. We have come a long way from the 1950s’ Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. But the chart does not tell us just about Cho. It tells us about the season we are living through. The two transits which dominated the chart of April 17th were both just shy of reaching exactitude:  Mars exactly conjoined Uranus…

Saturn and Neptune have been opposing each other in the sky for the last couple of years, with an unmistakable impact upon the mass mood. In some ways blatantly obvious, in some ways extremely subtle, this aspect is an all-encompassing indicator of the feeling tone of what has been a very peculiar period.

The Equinox this month is astrology's New Year's Day. It represents the Sun's entry into the first minute of the first degree of the first sign; and it bursts upon the scene like buds splitting open in the sunlight. This is the chart we read to take the pulse of the whole zodiacal year. In the Northern hemisphere it signifies the first day of Spring, officially arriving this year on March 20th at 5:09 PDT.