Happy June, star babes,
Something about June, no matter how old I am, gets me singing, “Schools out for summmmmmer! Schools out forevveerrrr!" It doesn't matter that I have work tomorrow, and the day after that too. It doesn't matter that some of us nerds are in school indefinitely 'til the end of time. June is for celebrating freedom, for chasing butterflies and harebrained schemes (which I always thought were "hairbrained" schemes but alas, are not). Gemini is ruled by The Lovers card in the Tarot, and so I think it's fair to say June is for lovers!
Well, if not every June is for lovers, this June certainly is, what with the Grand Water Trine (Venus in Cancer, Jupiter in Scorpio, Neptune in Pisces) at the very beginning of the month. A romantic and sensuous aspect, the Grand Trine is sure to make our love come down in that '80s R&B kind of way, but, also, in that petal fall and rosebud kind of way. I'm ready for either one myself, and a dozen oysters in addition, if you please.
Mars is Rx and, honestly, so are four other planets, but I'm not interested in songs about how cruel summer can be. I suggest that, to avoid any difficulties with this aspect, you take your time and check everything that matters over twice before you make any big moves. If not, you might find yourself having to do some things twice that you'd have preferred to do once. Imagine that the second time around is a chance at refinement, at making what's already great even better. Send that watery love into everything you do, even when you make mistakes... especially when you make mistakes. After that, live and let lez.
ARIES
Happy summer, sunshine baby, I hope you’re feeling wild, powerful, and free as the days get longer and drip like ice cream down your hands. For anyone else, responsibilities bear little weight when the days get warm, but you are a worker bee, and the pollen of ideas and possibilities calls to you in a way that is part instinct, part emotional craving. To bring something meaningful into the world, to surpass your own possibilities, to initiate change, that is an Aries mission. Unfortunately, with Mars (your ruling planet) retrograde in Aquarius, you might find that starting something new or making major changes to your creative, financial, and emotional landscape proves harder than usual.
Mars retrograde in Aquarius wants you to reflect deeply on universal themes as they play out in your own life, to look with a keen eye toward your projects, partnerships, and communities in search of places where injustice and inequity are symptoms of larger, deeper-rooted causes.
Mars retrograde is an influence as strong as your bee cravings are strong, and it means business. The business of such a retrograde is that of re-enforcement, to strengthen what needs strengthening and sort through what weakens the foundation and jeopardizes your plans to build up. With Chiron (wounded healer) working his magic in your sign, don’t be surprised if what you find in all this sorting is indicative of past patterns or bad habits you’ve continued to enact based on personal or ancestral trauma. One can’t move forward while holding onto unnecessary weights, so I’m gonna tell you the same thing a very smart Aries told me once, “The weight that you inherited, the bags that you’re carrying, they’re not yours. You can take them on as your own or, you can put them down.” Just remember that putting someone else’s baggage (or your own) down is actually putting it down, not hauling it around stoically and getting mad about everything else but what’s got you mad. Speak the truth from your heart, dear Ram, instead of holding it down sputtering in the water. Truth floats no matter what.
TAURUS
Congratulations, Taurus, your birthday month is over, and so you can finally stop having to feel responsible for all your loved ones having a good time on your account and take some sweet deep restorative moments for yourself. I know Uranus’ shift into Taurus hasn’t been at all a rose garden and (lol) the truth is I never promised you one. While the lucky buffalo might stumble upon feeling of expansion, empowerment, and beautiful radical awakening, the rest of the herd might find itself falling off a cliff not unlike the famous photograph by David Wojnarowicz.
It might serve those not-so-likely Taurus to know that the photograph, meant to highlight the feeling of hopelessness and doom engendered by the AIDS crisis and America’s (lack of) response, was taken of a diorama in D.C. Feelings of hopelessness, of doom, attach themselves to the past and if they are brave then they can make new meanings. If you’re falling off a cliff, my love, then the death you feel is a spiritual death not a physical one and what lies on the other side is the life that’s in alignment with your sense of personal and ethical self. It’s the life that was waiting for you all along.
June opens magnificently with a Grand Trine (three major planets in the water signs make a triangular pattern in the zodiac wheel) and since Venus is part of that Grand Trine, expect the influence to have its way with you. What kind of influence is that? Emotional resonance, the deepening of bonds, the insistence of beauty. Make yourself an offering, Taurus, make yourself a dozen offerings. Summer is a sensuous time, and where one rose loses her scent, another one opens to you for your appreciation. Venus (your ruling planet) is in Cancer, after all, and there are candles that need lighting and birds that demand your attention.
GEMINI
With the Sun and Mercury (your ruling planet) in Gemini, you might be feeling like your words are your golden ticket this month, admitting you to the factory of chocolate delights. Never-ending gobstoppers and golden eggs, the information you want comes in every flavor imaginable and all you have to do to collect it is lean over and taste everything that calls your name—or your mouth for that matter! I want you to feel expansive, always growing, Twin Star, and I want you to carry that feeling forward as you walk toward your ambitions—your summer journey of the mind.
Summer journey of the mind? You may ask, with excitement and caution. Yes, summer journey of the mind, my love! The new moon in Gemini mid-month is a moon interested in perception, in challenging you to refine what you seek, and what you allow yourself to see as the seeker.
We understand what we’re ready to understand, we learn to integrate information by way of relating to it and making it ours. How will you integrate what you’ve learned already? How will you string your loom to make room for new threads, new understandings, as they call to you, as they demand to be part of the greater picture? I think you need to travel by yourself more, Gemini, I think you need to keep a travel journal and free associate. Spend some time investigating your meaning-making: What words are always in your mouth? Whose words move you to tears? When do you have trouble keeping your word? Under the auspices of the new moon, imagine your word as impeccable—as having weight, direction, and unlimited potential.
CANCER
I know you might feel like every month is the month of relationships for you, dear Cancer, but I swear to you this month is really the month of relationships! Specifically, this is the month when the stars will ask you to interrogate the way you facilitate your relationships to others and strategize to deepen those connections through intentional acts of openness and reciprocity. There’s an emphasis on communication, on asking directly for what you need to feel nurtured and being candid about what you’ve got to offer. With the Sagittarius full moon behind you, you’re sure to be brimming with new philosophies, wanting to practice different forms of mindfulness and empathy. Go ahead and try them, Cancer.
The first few days of this month will have you wading in silt and algae, filmy with desire and satiated by the yummy offerings of the sea. That’s because with Venus in Cancer forming a trine to Neptune in Pisces and Jupiter in Scorpio, eros is abundant and love is all you need. Grand Trines can be a dreamy time, so it’s important to take note of dreams, how they come upon you at your most restful, how to they can make you cum or sweat or even cry. With the influence of Jupiter still Rx in Scorpio, there’s information underneath all those dreams and big feelings, there’s a deep shadowy truth about what your heart yearns for and whose job it is to feed it.
When someone is a moon baby, a crabby crab floating on multiple waves toward multiple shores, it’s hard to separate the feelings one experiences from the feelings one is responsible for. Can’t blame a crab for riding the tides, can you? You can’t. But, you also can’t blame the body of water you get into for how watery it gets. After the influence of the Grand Trine begins to ebb, and you’re left at the shore staring up at the dark Gemini new moon with all her connective possibilities, it’ll be on you to map the path back to the places where you know you’ll be fed. It’s on you, moon baby, to seek and secure connections to creatures that give you resonance and comfort.
LEO
When the Sun (your ruling Planet, of course) is in Gemini Decan 2—the part of Gemini ruled by Venus—information flows through every open channel and makes itself known sensuously. It floods you with smells, textures, tastes, colors, a personal archive of drive and desire for knowing and being known. It aims to recognize what resonates and initiate a new kind of understanding. It aims to draw a beautiful map to the buried treasure of your ambitions so that the search is almost as pleasurable as the reward. Just as the Sun moves into Cancer, you’ll find the influence of Venus continuing as the planet itself moves into your sign.
You might find this hard to believe, if you are like most Leos I know—by which I mean a lion in the shape of a human with a lion’s heart thumping achingly in your human body—but this June holds a great deal of easy romance for you. Perhaps you are invested in being single this month, perhaps you have a beau with whom “romance” isn’t exactly the right word; rest assured that when I say romance I don’t mean to limit myself, and I definitely don’t mean to limit you. I offer, instead, the experience of romance as something that refuses to remain behind bounds of our sexual partnerships. I offer you the romance of looking out at the same moon with a friend you love and saying nothing. I offer you the romance of misty summer days that teach you the eros of the air—how it’s always touching you, how it wets your skin, how it fills your lungs.
Look again at the community you’ve called in around you, the trust you’ve built, the mutuality of care. Be proud of that wealth. There’s so much sweetness in June that’s aching to be witnessed by you. A relief, since Mars retrograding in Aquarius might have you wrestling with doubt regarding your own ability to keep your eyes on the bigger picture. Keep your eyes on the bigger picture, even if the bigger picture keeps changing shape. Change is not untrustworthy, change is the truest thing in this world.
VIRGO
It’s okay to have a secret, it’s okay to be your own best-kept secret, especially if keeping yourself secret is what’s keeping you safe. Human beings are complex, after all, and we’re not meant to share all our many selves with everyone we know; some things are private, and some things are just for us. But Virgo, having a secret or many secret parts, is not the same as keeping your loved ones at a distance. Especially when what you need most is to feel them close and supporting you.
This year has not been all pies and rainbows for you. In fact, I would venture to say that, despite the opportunities you’ve been offered and some validating wins, this year has been downright difficult. Perhaps it was the very presence of abundance—of its possibility—that allowed you to recognize the places in yourself where negative self-belief roots and where it thrives. You might have a seat at the table, you might have a prominent place, but it’s hard to enjoy what’s on the table and who’s dining with you when you don’t believe you deserve to eat. The new moon mid-month will offer you the chance to sharpen your perception.
Look again, Virgo, at the daily world you inhabit and try to see the many ways in which you play an integral part in the great machine. Investigate the ways your outer life sustains your inner world. If you pride yourself on your work and your accomplishments, in what ways do you uplift your own voice and talent? Investigate the barricades you have built around your inner world. Does the energy you spend on keeping powerful parts of yourself hidden deplete the energy with which you might build the outer life you envision and crave? With Mercury in Gemini switching to Mercury in Cancer mid-month, you might find yourself yearning for moments of connection and mutual care. Mutuality is built with openness stripped of manipulation, and it can’t be forced. Let people see you where you are, not where you want them to see you, so that they might know where to find you and how to support you. To uphold each other, we’ve got to trust each other, and trust is built over time.
LIBRA
While Mars Rx in Aquarius might seem obtrusive to some of us, requiring us to be mindful of new endeavors and the risks we take, Libras everywhere will gladly examine the various choices and possible outcomes. What’s important for those born under the sign of the scale is recognizing when hesitancy has less to do with justice, and what one believes is “right,” and more to do with learning (over and over) that there’s more power in trust and surrender than there is in the illusion of control. As is often the case, the more you believe in what’s available to you, the more empowered you feel to reach for it and make it yours.
Trust and surrender can be a beautiful thing when it’s mixed with the auspices of Venus, and with June’s Grand Trine activating your ruling planet and sign, it’s unlikely that you will begin this month without experiencing the trine’s benefic influence. Venus in Cancer is devoted, nurturing, and sentimental. Guided by dreamy Neptune in Pisces and emboldened by Jupiter in Scorpio, Venus in Cancer will have a hard time hiding in her shell. The amount of affection flowing through her will be greater than her fear of loss or getting hurt. When Venus moves into Leo mid-month, this river of affection will take a generous and proud form. It will command attention and recognition.
Because your ruling planet is Venus, don’t be surprised if this river of affection flows through you, if the current is so powerful it compels you to step out of your comfort zone and take big courageous steps. When it’s clear that love is abundant, that the universe—for all its heartache—is capable of surprising us with sweetness, it’s easier to take chances on ourselves. For some of you, this will mean your creative work finding its way into the public sphere: submitting for publication, making a SoundCloud, setting up a Tinyletter, working on a grant proposal for a project you’ve secretly dreamed of. For others, this will show up in your partnerships, a desire to experience new things together, to walk in the streaming morning light hand in hand. However it shows up for you, Libra, get on your back and float down the river. Count the stars, send each of them your love.
SCORPIO
After a year like 2017, any year might feel like smooth sailing, but there’s something to be said for Jupiter retrograde in your sign activated by a Grand Trine to Neptune in Pisces and Venus in Cancer. Whatever’s stuck, whatever shadows cling to your sense of self, they’re no match for this flow of emotional resonance, this world that washes over you with sweetness. In fact, this Grand Trine might be exactly what the doctor ordered. Abundance, dream states, a pouring out of light, Jupiter’s last full month Rx promises to be a month when your hidden potential rises to the surface like a bird that dove down for a long time and came up with a really big fish.
I know what you’re thinking, Scorpio, you’ve already mapped the stars and you know that Mars Rx in Aquarius is bound to have a way with you, seeing as how the planet Mars still has some claim to Scorpios. And, if you’re paying attention, you might also have some questions about Pluto Rx in Capricorn, since Pluto just so happens to be the other planet you’re apparently ruled by. While some of these transits are not new to you, your concerns are valid and not without weight. So much retrograde influence is sure to get in the way of any big forward movements.
Rest assured, Scorpio, when you take your sweet time, the destination you’re gaining toward is no less sweet. June has gorgeous insights for you and generous offerings, too. There’s a different way to engage what you want this time around, and this difference should excite you. What feels small now, what’s only a seed, has a lot of life and seeks your attention. Let the sweetness of the stars, and the sun that’s flowing over you, flow through you and toward what you seek to nurture. What grows from your effort is a mystery that will be more powerful and sustain you longer than you can imagine at this moment. I know you love a mystery.
SAGITTARIUS
Are you riding high off of the full moon in your sign, Sagittarius? Did it slip like a large coin into pinball machine slot of your heart and leave you pinging with realizations, bells, and ideas like flashing '80s lights? If you’re lucky, and Sagittarians almost always are, this is the kind of pinball game that never ends, a life that seeks your readiness and agility, a world the offers you ball after ball and plenty of ways to win. While the full moon gave you a glimpse of what all your hard work has earned you so far, this month’s new moon is sure to give you a deeper sense of what you’re capable of doing with what you’ve earned.
What’s important, in these weeks between, is reckoning with the limitations you have placed on your own imagination. The bridge between resource and right action is a substantial one, and crossing it is an intentional and steady kind of personal work.
Once, you had a vision for your life, a space that you imagined taking up in this world. When your world shifted, your visions adjusted in turn. To shift and change is a natural part of growing into ourselves, and letting go of dreams we’ve outgrown is a necessary part of dreaming up something new. Too bad so many of us spend all our time getting used to the adjustments we’ve made and mourning all the dreams we outgrew that we find ourselves with less and less time to attend to our future visions. Sagittarius, this month make time for dreaming, allow yourself visions of a life you once thought was impossible. Make an office in your heart for the architect in you, the creative one who knows that a fantastic structure is a matter of materials and math. The creative one who refuses the word "impossible" out of sheer principle.
CAPRICORN
“My mother was a Capricorn, a saturnine January woman, for whom it was always winter,” wrote Jeanette Winterson in her recent New Yorker essay "Anyone Can Milk a Rubber Glove." “We lived in the North of England, so perhaps the climate was to blame for her melancholy, or perhaps it was the certain knowledge that her life would never change. In fact, it had changed, because she had adopted me, and I could have been the springtime if she had trusted the sun.”
I read this essay the night before I began writing this and, although it is short, it has stayed with me. It’s true that Winterson’s voice is important to me and that I’m the kind of fan who will sit with almost any body of work she produces. Still, what resonated deeper than the essay itself is my understanding that Capricorns have a long and exacting influence on those with whom they build intimate ties, the people that they recognize as their own. Such an influence is a kind of superpower, and superpowers, as we know, can be used to do great good or accomplish great evil. What we hear less about, but is just as important, is the toll that superpowers take on those who have not learned how to harness them.
With this month’s moon cycle, a new moon in Gemini leading up to a full moon in Capricorn, it would do you good to note the instances and reasons you summon your superpower. Is your anger a vehicle for change or does it stand like a fortress in the way of your empathy? Note your influence, the space your opinion takes up in the minds of others. Practice becoming aware of how it functions, who it benefits and who it hurts. This information will be vital to you when the full moon arrives at June’s end. With the Sun in Cancer and the full moon in Capricorn, you will be asked to examine the places where your energy leaks, where you hide yourself away in your work, or where the relationships you run maintenance on take precedence over the work you’re here to do. You’ll have the chance to figure out how to use your superpowers wisely so that they don’t keep ending up using you.
AQUARIUS
June might open with sumptuous offerings for some, dear Aquarius, but it’s not a month that has you feeling like you’re walking down an easy street. With Uranus shifting for the first time in years into earthy, obstinate Taurus, and Mars Rx in your sign, the world has not felt very dependable to you lately. Aquarians are fixed like Taurus are fixed but they want to live in the world they dreamed up, not in the imperfect world Taurus finds a way to love every day despite all evidence to the contrary.
Mars Rx in Aquarius wants innovation, wants to begin again and differently, wants to believe that love is all we need to spin the Earth. Mars Rx in Aquarius wants a lot of things it just can’t manage to get up off the ground, and this has probably left a good deal of Aquarians feeling stymied, thwarted, and overall disappointed in the results of their optimistic efforts. In fact, if you’re like most Aquarians I know, the world has been giving you all sorts of hoops to jump through.
Forgive me for extending this basketball metaphor much further than is necessary but, it might feel like the hoop just keeps getting higher and the game is beginning to feel like there’s a lot more at stake. Aquarius, you are more than equipped to step out on the court and make the winning shot. Or, if winning isn’t exactly the outcome you’re hoping for, then consider your hoop dreams a kind of vision. Where what you’ve got to offer requires your faith and steady eye to find its most receptive and satisfying vessel.
PISCES
Breathe deep, gentle Pisces, and don’t condemn your heart. Let the powerful Grand Water Trine shift the currents of the water you’re in so that the river you swim is a river of sweetness and deep replenishing care. Let Venus in Cancer give you her nurturance and her devotion, let Jupiter in Scorpio empower your psychic self, let the shadows shift around you so that they make beautiful shapes you can witness and appreciate.
These past few months might have had you reckoning with lots of past hurt but June, in all its aspects, gives you the chance to see your memory of pain for what it is: a teacher, a wound like a doorway, and seed from which gorgeous magic grows in you. Healer magic, storyteller magic, the kind of magic that can save an ecosystem or right a baby in the birth canal.
The Grand Trine isn’t the only influence that will have holding your heart tenderly in your own hands. June’s new moon in Gemini is a moon that promises to strip us of illusions. Powered by Gemini and affecting mutable signs especially, this new moon is a curious moon that aims to get to the truth of the matter. It’s the kind of moon that wants us to change the way we process information and how we deal with what we know. It’s the kind of moon that wants you to acknowledge the way trauma makes patterns of your life while simultaneously recognizing that your pain is not integral to your humanity. Your grief is a teacher, but it isn’t who you are. There was a human that existed before every joy and every sorrow you ever experienced, a human that walks with you and wants to care for you, a human that wants deeply to be taken care of.
