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Astrology Highlights for Aug. 7-13, 2023: Intoxicated

A Girl’s Gotta Eat

I’ll say this for my mother: she was unfailingly supportive of my dreams. When I begged for a guitar, she scrounged up the money and ferried me over to White Front department store to buy a cheap little 6-string acoustic. When I was determined to win the weekly talent contest at a local country-western club, she took me every Tuesday night until I succeeded. She believed in my singing and music and helped me in every way.

But she was also a Taurus with the Moon in Virgo, who had grown up on a farm during the Depression. She knew that dreams don’t always come true and a girl’s gotta eat. So she insisted that I take secretarial courses in high school, and those typing, shorthand, and bookkeeping skills paid the rent throughout my 20s, between the end of the music dream and the beginning of my astrology career. And they’ve served me well in my astrology business, too.

This week’s powerful Taurus Last Quarter Moon (August 8, 2023, 3:28 am PDT) is the phase for reviewing past efforts and bringing projects to a conclusion. This Last Quarter Moon is in a supportive conjunction with Jupiter (big dreams) and Uranus (unexpected turns of events), and trine to earthy Mars (determined effort) in Virgo; iIf we’ve been working diligently toward practical goals, this trine will bring rewards of some kind. But there’s nothing wrong with having skills to fall back on, just in case they aren’t the kind of rewards that pay the rent.

All that Glitters Isn’t Gold

This week’s square between Venus retrograde and Uranus (Aug. 9, 2023, 4:08 am PDT, 22º54’ Leo and Taurus) is the second in a series of three (the others on July 2 and Sep. 29). Taken as a group, these aspects remind us that all that glitters is not gold, and that it might be time to leave a once-promising situation that has left you feeling unappreciated.

That includes relationships, and this week could bring surprising developments on that front. When Venus and Uranus connect by square, tensions arise around the appropriate balance between togetherness and independence. But this aspect can also awaken us to look at our partner with new eyes, or to take a second look at someone we’d previously overlooked – including, possibly, someone from the past.

The Embroidery and the Silk Hat

For forty-five minutes on the morning of August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit walked, danced, and lay on a high wire suspended between the unfinished towers of the World Trade Center – a quarter of a mile above the streets of Manhattan.

Like all astonishing acts, this one was years in the making. It required hours of research, a team of compatriots, and the refinement of Petit’s natural grace and balance through hours of practice.

Even in down-to-earth Taurus, Jupiter pulls us toward the clouds, urging us on to spectacular adventures and impossible dreams. But nearly every dazzling Jupiterian undertaking begins with Mercury, which asks: How is it to be done? What do I have to learn, and what skills must I acquire, to accomplish this audacious feat?

This week, Mercury trines Jupiter (Aug. 9, 2023, 5:47 pm PDT, 14º31’ Virgo-Taurus) on the Sabian symbols 15 Virgo, Ornamental handkerchief and 15 Taurus, A man muffled up with a rakish silk hat. Take away the embroidery and the silk hat, and you’re left with an ordinary, utilitarian handkerchief and muffler. Stripped of the high wire and the sensational setting, there are hours and hours of precise, exacting work.

As Mercury meets up with Jupiter, breathtaking performance achieves the miraculous: Making hours of perfecting and planning disappear, so that all we see are the embroidery and the silk hat.

Intoxicated

On August 13th at 4:15 AM Pacific Time, the Sun and Venus come together in a conjunction at 20º28’ Leo. The exact moment of the conjunction between another planet and the Sun is called cazimi, and when a planet is in that condition, it is extraordinarily strong. Like the Sun suddenly breaking through the clouds, the cazimi planet shines in its most brilliant form.

This is a moment in Venus’ cycle when the heart of the Sun combines with the beauty of Venus. Even the Sabian symbol for this conjunction, 21 Leo, Chickens intoxicated speaks to me of being out of our minds, intoxicated with love.

With Venus retrograde in Leo, this conjunction is an invitation to fall in love with ourselves all over again. As we let go of negative inner chatter, the ways we criticize ourselves as unworthy or unlovable – all that is unloving – cazimi Venus opens the heart space to make room for the things you truly love.

The conjunction of the Sun and Venus repeats near the same degree of the same sign about every eight years. The Sun and Venus last joined near this degree on August 15th, 2015 at 22º39’ Leo. Something connects this time with that one, and connects what the heart wants now with what it wanted then.

Writing and images © 2017-23 by April Elliott Kent

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