Astro Forecast 7.26.24: Leo Season Means Business
This moment is a bridge between the old and the new; new season, new vibes, new outfits, and a new presidential candidate.
What is happening?!
*dunks head in ice water, emerges, and screams, shaking droplets from face*
Well, that was bracing! After a remarkable couple of weeks, we seem to be experiencing a series of aftershocks and collective, full-body shudders. This week has been quiet on the celestial aspect front, and for that, our nervous systems are grateful, because July 21st was a legitimate conflagration of astrological activity. Mars and Uranus formed a square, Mars and Pluto formed a trine, the sun and Neptune formed a trine, Venus formed a sextile with Jupiter, and our sun opposed Pluto. Oh, and a blue moon in Capricorn hit its peak right before the U.S. President bowed out as the incumbent for our next election(!). Then the sun moved into Leo and anointed this moment Hot Kamala Summer.
The shift from Cancer to Leo is always a flirty head fuck. Cancer season is usually family time; kids are out of school when the summer solstice rolls around, so people are vacationing, lounging by water, barbecuing in the backyard and being generally chill with their families. As the traditional caretaker of the 4th house, (one of the ‘pillars’ of a natal chart, horoscope wheel, etc.) it makes sense for us to re-center roots, family, and connection during the sun’s sojourn in Cancer, because those are the pillars that bear the weight of our human experience. Late July really does a number on people, though - it gets hotter, drier, and more abrasive, rubbing off June’s mild patina and revealing the strange alloy that was dying to get out and be garish. And goddamn can Leo season be garish. If you’ve ever been subjected to lengthy stays with family, especially as an adult, you can understand this late summer transition from water to fire; like Amish teenagers on Rumspringa, suddenly everyone is blonde, slutty, wearing maximalist accessories, and over-enunciating loudly during drunken public conversation. The natural energy of such a transition combined with kinetic astrology from 7.15 through 7.21 has, for many of us, deeply underscored the difference between before and after.
I’ve written previously about our congested star traffic acting as a precipice, but we haven’t really had a calm moment to assess our current, newly revised reality. We have brand spanking new election calculus in the U.S., and, fair or not, everything socio-political in our country affects the well being of the rest of the world. Individual and communal attitudes have been bleak and cynical for almost a decade thanks to the constant bickering of a few geriatric overlords, but we now find ourselves dramatically untethered to the old status quo. (Well, sort of. We’re still encumbered with a global oligarchy that pretends it isn’t, but I digress.) Despite an intrinsically dated bureaucratic framework, it feels like we’re being offered the chance to cross a precipice and try to land in a better place.
In personal ways, recent astrology has probably been clarifying, if painful. Worldly circumstances of the past few years have forced many of us to examine our lives and autopsy our successes and failures. Are we living the way we want to, or have we fallen into the complacency of external pressures? One of the words I’ve used before to encompass 2024 is discernment; we have so much information and so many possibilities at our fingertips that the real work is in parsing everything. So parse it we shall.
How did this affect us?
The loudest aspect last week was definitely the Mars/Uranus square in Taurus, whose explosive, game changing influence brought us an attempted presidential assassination. (It doesn’t get more martial than trying to shoot government officials, IMO.) On the micro level, some of us experienced work shake-ups, house accidents, and wild levels of road rage thanks to the violent streak in our angry red planet. Conflicts were tinged with shades of weirdness, too, thanks to rebel Uranus messing with power grids, technology, and electronics. Uranian chaos usually facilitates improvements to old systems, and we’re seeing that in real time as Congress examines Secret Service procedure and tries to determine why it was so easy for a 20 year-old kid to shoot at a government official. We’re also seeing concerned reassessment in the tech sector after Cyberstrike screwed the pooch on an update and grounded planes domestically and internationally, prompting people to wonder if relying on one security company for so many essential global functions is such a hot idea. It becomes clearer as we gain perspective that Mars acted as the catalyst; the breaker, severer, and pissed off young gun who was willing to break thousands of computers with one key stroke. Once time passes and things cool off, Uranus will be the guy examining results, asking hard questions, and showing where we have room for improvement.
The other, most palpable celestial happening turned out to be our Capricorn blue moon. The phrase ‘blue moon’ has multiple connotations depending on whether you are an astronomer or an astrologer, which we can informally define as follows:
astronomer(noun) - an expert or student of astronomy
astronomy(noun) - branch of science that deals with celestial objects, space, and the physical universe
astrologer(noun) - purveyor of vibes, bullshit
astrology(noun) - all that bullshit and vibes I told you about up there
An astronomical blue moon, or really, a calendrical blue moon, is based off of our calendar system and connotes the second full moon in the same month as ‘blue’. It actually doesn’t mean anything to astronomers, and the second full moon in one month wasn’t given any sort of special treatment until Maine Farmer’s Almanac coined the term in 1937. That sort of blue moon doesn’t matter to astrologers either, because the Romans devised our calendar system and fuck those guys. Astrologers use celestial bodies for timekeeping, so a blue moon in astrology refers to a second full moon in one solar astrological season. Normally, our full moon changes signs when the sun does, but this past Cancer season we had back to back full moons in Capricorn. Hence, a Capricorn Blue Moon.
This is all to say that Capricorn deals with matters of maturity that only come to fruition with the passage of time, and full moons tend to force clarity and transitions upon us by virtue of illumination and magnification. As Capricorn’s ruler, Saturn made maturity, consequences, and endings the focal points of the past two lunar cycles, leading many people to take stock of their personal habits and aspirations. It seems only fitting that POTUS made his announcement on the morning of the second Capricorn full moon; Saturn is the lord of boundaries and bummers, and he loves to tell us when our time is up.
Cool, what does the Tarot say about this?
On Monday, 7.22, we were all trying to screw our heads back on and the 7 of Wands reversed gave us two options; we could get combative or we could let the opposition wash over us for a bit. This card is a bit like reshuffling the battlefield and changing priorities mid-stream in an effort to turn the tides of war, and the outcome will be different for each side. Some of us honed our focus, as evidenced by the complimentary pull of tiger’s eye, and leaned even further into battle, while some of us packed it in.
The 4 of Pentacles on Tuesday, 7.23, put baseline security and necessary resources back in the spotlight. This indicates a sudden need to pool energy and money as part 2 of whatever battle we are fighting.
On Wednesday, 7.24, The Lovers pops up with some smokey quartz to stress discernment. Yes, we have been given more information and more choices, but we don’t need to jump at the first shiny object. Gemini acts as the zodiacal parallel to this card, and Gemini wants to have as much information as possible before making a decision. Smoky quartz is used for clarity and detoxification in fraught circumstances, and it’s presence hints at a need to sift through information rationally and calmly.
Temperance shows up on Thursday, 7.25., like a fiery avenging angel, and she speaks to the idea of divine timing or kismet. Temperance is the being that pulls us from the crevasse and offers to add meaning to our lives in the form of a plan, an action, or an idea. Co-present chalcopyrite indicates positivity and confidence as a result of this common sense addition, and while we are not out of the existential woods quite yet, Temperance shows us the first sliver of hope after getting our asses handed to us by the transformation of the Death card. Something good and useful could come into our lives today that could help us achieve our goals, and we might have uncanny luck in physical endeavors and travel.
Friday, 7.26, I pulled the Feral card from the Devil’s oracle deck along with a desert jasper, which looks like the sunset from my B.F.F’s house in Tucson, AZ - warm, multi-chromatic, and awe-inspiring. There is a grounded courage to desert jasper as well as energized focus that ties into the Leo energy of our late summer sun, and it indicates a need to follow our own primal path. This is a good day for athleticism and competition that pushes us past our own boundaries…what the kids refer to as ‘beast mode’, I believe. Of course, Leo season kicks everyone’s sportsmanship into high gear.
Our moon moves into Taurus for the weekend, further grounding the collective energy and focusing on the practical steps we take to secure our goals. The 8 of Cups shows us searching for higher meaning on 7.27 and rejecting shallowness that detracts from our experience. It takes a ton of bravery to suggest The Emperor has no clothes, particularly when everyone else is going along with the ruse, but it is something we increasingly feel we must do. Weirdly enough, a partner pull of pyrite shows that our rejection of the status quo might yield material abundance, i.e. we may be rewarded for our higher pursuit. On Sunday, 7.28, Temperance makes a second appearance and underscores our need to take a breath and gather resources with a level head. This Temperance pull differs from Thursday’s Temperance pull via mode of exploration; Thursday depicted a kinetic angel, but on Sunday our savior is cerebral. We may discover a new book, new theory, or new perspective that both soothes and energizes us, which is desperately needed after the whirlwind of July.
Visit @alectochaos on IG for the full, wordy breakdown and video of each card pull, and to get the jump on the Mon - Wed card pulls. If you are into that sort of thing.