Astro Review August 2024: Hermes HATES J.D. Vance
Every planet served spice last month, but no retrograde has ever attacked one human the way Mercury's latest moonwalk attacked this couch fucker.
What Has Happened So Far?
We have emerged, some of us unscathed, from an August that clearly saw the soap opera insanity of July and told somebody to hold his beer, because damn. Waves of tragedy and hilarity keep coming at us that seem machinated, or at least coaxed along by the planetary aspects that will have humanity by the throat for the next few months. A fast approaching American election of unprecedented importance certainly isn’t helping; the volume on everything vitriolic has been cranked past our hearing capabilities and is only adding to our heightened anxiety. In moments of transition and uncertainty, combating devastation with morbid humor feels like the appropriate response to a ruling class that commits gross atrocities while simultaneously speaking and behaving like crass, feral, paste-eaters.
The Greek and Roman gods that are woven into Hellenistic astrology exerted palpable influence over our bumbling ‘leaders of men’ this August; you could almost see the outline of a pissy, restrained Mars in U.S. Presidential candidate Donald Trump’s slouching bulk at his recalcitrant press conferences, as well as the ‘will-they-won’t-they’ saber rattling from countries like Russia and Iran. This was classic Mars/Saturn conflict; an urge to fight, stab, tear, and destroy enemies by any means necessary that gets painfully checked by more reserved, mature forces.
Saturn doesn’t always have a handle on his bloodthirsty grandson, however - on 8.16, the Turkish Parliament decided they had enough of diplomacy and governance and instead chose violence, specifically the violence of a bar brawl between elderly mailmen drunk on Jim Crow. (Nothing is more hilarious than watching sedentary, middle-aged suits cosplay Liam Neeson in Taken.) It wasn’t just Turkey - punches were thrown the world over due to the Mars/Saturn square that peaked at 0 degrees on that day, including more gut-wrenching death in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Kronos, the father of time and decay, continues his dark influence in the Middle East by destroying his own children in order to hold power.
The real V.I.P. planet for clear and noticeable influence these past few weeks, however, has to be tricky little Mercury. Our messenger Hermes has been a busy bee as they tip toed back through the houses of Virgo and Leo, revealing all kinds of speech, contracts, and behavior from the past that demand to be autopsied and reviewed. This is what Mercury excels at when they are in retrograde, because to the analytical mind of Hermes, all information requires review and assessment, regardless of possible judgement or outcome. For some unfortunate souls, that means revisiting words and deeds never meant to see the light of public discussion, which they are now having to temper or defend, and…it’s not going well. Let’s break down where the worst astrology has exposed the worst people and have a good chuckle. We deserve it.
8.14.24 -8.16.24 Mercury Shuffled Backwards Into Leo + Mars and Jupiter Squared Saturn
This transit was a screamer! The house of Leo is a much louder place than Virgo; it’s full of preening drama queens who will do just about anything for admiration or attention. Jupiter acts mostly as an amplifier in his conjunction to Mars and square to Saturn, which is why we witnessed so much barely restrained anger on the world stage. Concurrently, when Mercury hit rewind in Leo, they unearthed juicy bits of data that invite public dissection. Two huge takeaways from this…
J.D. Vance is a fucking sociopath and Mercury wants us to know it.
Where does one even start with this guy? He was announced as the Vice Presidential pick for the Republican Party in the middle of July, and the entirety of his press cycle is so fantastic and mercurial that it beggars belief, even without rumors of questionable connections to furniture. This retrograde has excavated Vance recordings wherein he berates childless people and suggests that they shouldn’t be able to vote, as well his odious written work and suspicious connections to white supremacists. Once Hermes hopped into Leo, we also learned that Vance thinks older women without grandchildren are unnatural, and that he launched two charities in 2016 that shuttered after 5 years of little progress and shady financial statements. It’s looking like we can count on new, repulsive audio of Vance saying something wildly misogynistic every day, like a sexist advent calendar. Thanks to Mercury we know that Vance believes:
a. His wife is a good mother, even though she’s Indian.
b. Women should stay in abusive relationships and just buy a lot of guns, like his Mawmaw.
c. Children should have their genitals obliterated giving birth to their rapists baby and not cry due to the ‘inconvenience’.
d. Truly intelligent women do not care about their bodily autonomy, only dumb sluts
Of course, anybody with half a brain suspected that these medieval attitudes were alive and well within our political class, but it is still fascinating and exhausting to greet each new day and think, “How disgusted will I be by this four dimensional Garbage Pail Kid today? What sort of media will emerge within the next hour that displays this ogre’s tangible hatred of women? And most frighteningly, how many people walking around my country actually believe this horseshit?” The answer to that question, unfortunately, is many - but Mercury believes it is better for us to know about it and to have all that information at our disposal than to remain in the complicit darkness. Thanks, Hermes.
The closets of our hallowed institutions are FULL of skeletons and hypocrites.
We could be forgiven for thinking that Mercury had their hands full with Mr. Vance, but that would be underestimating the amount of foolery Hermes can get up to. When they paused in anticipation of changing directions, several gruesome and tragic truths were telegraphed to the world after having been purposely obfuscated or erased from the public eye. This happens with retrogrades - the direction change makes the planet look like it’s barely moving, so these transition moments are much stickier than the bulk of the retrograde.
There is a lot of damning information about those aforementioned ‘leaders of men’ emerging, and the institutions they demand we worship and venerate seem to be in an accelerated state of decay, if Mercury’s little chest of secrets is anything to go by. So far, we’ve discovered the following:
a. The FBI doesn’t thoroughly investigate child molesters, even when they’re tipped off.
b. U.S. Armed Forces massacred Iraqi civilians for fun in 2005 and took pictures.
c. Project 2025 is just as wacky as it sounds, and there is ample video of the people who built it admitting to their own nefarious, batshit plans for the world.
d. As normal people have suspected for some time, those who scream about babies being ‘murdered’ have no problem making the same choices for themselves that they aim to take away from the general population.
e. Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez have actually been separated since June?! And he might have cheated on her with RFK Jr’s daughter?!? Let the asteroid come.
Now What?
Venus is in Libra and our communication retrograde is over, which means we have room to examine every secret and every piece of evidence that was discovered last month, and perhaps we can pull something meaningful from them. The upcoming eclipse season will probably contain more uncomfortable revelations, so let’s take it easy for a while; enjoy the Virgo new moon next week and the last of our summer weather. Take advantage of the astrological ‘down time’, especially when Venus is dominant in the sky - put on a face mask, maybe a cute outfit for dinner, and get your partner some flowers, or whatever they’re into. Enjoy life for a moment, even if that means a cookie, a couch, and a cat, i.e. the three C’s that guarantee a happy existence. Unless you’re J.D. Vance.