The Future Looking Back
Some relationships exist purely for pleasure. You might enjoy the occasional lunch with a casual acquaintance, wish them a happy birthday, compliment their latest selfie on Instagram. In some special cases, you enjoy sensual escapades together without the desire for anything more serious. Relationships built on pleasure are Venus in its simplest form.
But there are a few times in life when you look into another’s eyes and see the future staring back at you. You realize that you could build something with this person. It might be a band, a business, or a family. But whatever it is, they draw you toward a future you’d never have imagined on your own.
This is what it’s like when Venus trines Saturn (June 25, 2026, 5:02 am PDT, 13º55’ Leo-Aries), and the personal becomes eternal. Commitment doesn’t preclude pleasure, but in Venus/Saturn relationships it’s no longer the only thing that matters.
Homesick
To understand the Sun’s square to Neptune (June 25, 2026, 3:38 pm PDT, at 4º22’ Cancer-Aries), imagine you’ve traveled far from home, to a place where you don’t speak the language and you’re not sure you’re dressed quite right, or that your natural personality is acceptable. Your usual persona has become a bit melty; the sense of self shifts, and confidence is a bit low. It’s uncomfortable, being a stranger.
But when you don’t have your usual bag of tricks to fall back on, when the construction of who and what you are doesn’t fit with your surroundings, you have the unique opportunity to figure out who you are without those constructions. Turns out, the real you has little to do with those things.
If you find yourself feeling a sort of yearning homesickness in the days surrounding this transit, consider that what you’re homesick for is not necessarily a different place or other people. What you’re homesick for is you.
Dream a Big Dream
If a task needs doing, Taurus will stop at nothing until it’s done. And as Mars in Taurus makes a sextile to Jupiter (June 27, 2026, 9:50 pm PDT, 29º33′ Taurus-Cancer), there is no soulful adventure Jupiter in Cancer can propose that Mars in Taurus cannot help us achieve.
For example, Jupiter in Cancer might want to build an addition on your house, and Mars in Taurus is exactly the guy you want for that job. Jupiter in Cancer has dreams of the heart, and Mars in Taurus can weigh in on the practical viability of those dreams. “We want the house to be bigger, but also cozier,” a homeowner might say. And Mars in Taurus somehow knows exactly how to translate that vague wish into square footage, lumber, nails, and permits.
This sextile comes just as both Mars and Jupiter are at the very last, finishing-up degrees of their signs, lending a do-or-die quality to ideas whose time has finally come. So, go ahead and dream a big dream this week. Mars in Taurus is standing by, ready to help make it come true.
Navigating the Main Drag
I live a few blocks from a busy thoroughfare that connects three mid-town neighborhoods with busy retail areas. The avenue was designed a century ago as a trolley route that serviced what were, at that time, bedroom communities for downtown workers.
By the 1930s, the trolleys were increasingly replaced by buses, and later automobiles. Consequently, while there are many things I love about my neighborhood, the congestion along the avenue is not one of them.
Unless you’re the patient type, which I confess that I am not, navigating our main drag is an exercise in frustration at most hours of the day. It’s the embodiment of Mars’ transit through leisurely Taurus, which ends this week.
As Mars moves into Gemini (June 28, 2026, 12:29 pm PDT, until August 11), we may feel much happier on a faster highway. But even if a Gemini type lives in a busy place, like Los Angeles, they find ways to adapt to their lengthy, frustrating commutes. When I lived in the Pasadena area and commuted to my office near downtown, my seven-mile morning commute could easily take an hour. Blessed with the Moon in Gemini, I spent that time sitting still in traffic eating my breakfast, drinking my coffee, finishing my makeup, and occasionally writing a song. Gemini will go to any lengths to avoid boredom.
As hard-driving Mars moves through easily bored Gemini, we’ll find its light, zippy quality is terrific for, say, catching up on correspondence or fighting speeding tickets. But trying to do too many things at once can be perilous; and while focus will be challenging while Mars is in Gemini, it’s not impossible. Just work for awhile on one thing, move onto another, then circle around to the first one again, like a hummingbird busily pollinating.
