Big Sky This Week – June 1-7, 2020: Open

Open

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Equitable exchange

When was the last time you had a conversation? An actual, equitable exchange of ideas? When was the last time you sat for a moment with what another person said, and just let it sink in instead of planning your response?

In today’s world, we’re all expected to be experts and to have opinions on any and all matters of the day. We spend time with those who speak our language and reinforce our opinions, so that when it’s time to have difficult, even painful discussions with people who see things differently, all we can do is present our prepackaged opinions.

As Venus squares Mars this week (June 2, 2020, 5:41 pm PDT), it’s on the Sabian symbol, Two Dutch children talking. A cozy dyad, presumably speaking in their native language, possible unintelligible to those around them. Venus is in Gemini, the sign of language, and it’s retrograde; this is well-traveled conversational ground. But Mars in Pisces is on An officer preparing to drill his men. It’s time for difficult discussions about sensitive areas of disagreement. To question our beliefs, and to try to become conversant in different languages.

Telepathy

As the Sun and Venus swoon together in a conjunction this week (June 3, 2020, 10:43 am PDT), they converge on the Sabian symbol A conversation by telepathy. In contrast to yesterday’s Venus on Two Dutch children talking, today we have to reach each other on a level even deeper than conversation. We have to meet each other at the heart, wide-open, empathetic. We’re at the beginning of a new Venus cycle that will stretch out over the next year and a half; how do we want our connections with one another to look then? What do we want to get out of our relationships, and what do we have to bring to them?

Waiting and watching

This Sagittarius Full Moon (June 5, 2020, 12:12 pm PDT, 15.34 Sagittarius) marks the first in a series of eclipses that will fall in Gemini and Sagittarius through Dec. 4, 2021.

The challenge during this series of eclipses will be to awaken to the ways that our preconceptions and certainty blind us to other ways of seeing the world – and other people. Lunar eclipses are always powerful moments of truth in relationships, and never more than now, when so many of us feel as though we’re living on a different planet than those around us. How could they possibly think those things, we wonder; how could they say what they do, or fail to say what they must?

Words and ideas are Gemini/Sagittarius’ world, and on the surface that would seem to be much more dispassionate territory than that of Cancer/Capricorn, where eclipses have danced for the past two years. But as this eclipse’s Sabian symbols eloquently remind us, scarcity of resources (Cancer, and the Moon’s Sabian symbol is Sea gulls watching a ship) and ambition for safety and power (Cancer/Capricorn) may provide the motivation behind much of the world’s warfare, but it’s words, religion, and beliefs (Gemini/Sagittarius; the Sun on A woman suffragist orating) that are used to make the case for it. (Look to past eclipses near this degree to for insights into how this eclipse will impact your birth chart: Dec. 4, 1983, June 4, 1993, Dec. 4, 2002, June 4, 2012.)

Open

The Sun and Mars – both fairly willful symbols – meet in a square aspect this week (June 6, 2020, 12:11 pm PDT). When our very sense of self – the Sun – perceives it’s under attack from Mars, it’s the rare person who can think rationally. Appeals to emotion (Mars/Neptune in Pisces) are so strong that the impulse toward critical thinking is not only overwhelmed, but can even feel like an antiquated and tone-deaf response.

As I write this, many of our cities are burning. What’s manifesting as Mars and Neptune come together in Pisces is rage and grief over systemic, disparate treatment. The square from the Sun in cool, logical Gemini offers a unique moment: Can we keep our hearts open to those messages and listen, while at the same time refining our ability to speak about these things in a way that can lead to constructive change?