Highlights for Aug. 9-15, 2021: Stay Curious, Not Judgmental

Stay Curious, Not Judgmental

Dates and times are given for U.S. Pacific Time zone.

What’s not so lovely

We want to believe the best about the people we love. But no one is perfect, however much we love them. And this week’s Venus opposition to Neptune (Aug. 9, 2021, 5:20 pm PDT) prompts us to consider whether we can still love those closest to us even after we see what isn’t so lovely about them.

Even if your relationships are doing just fine, this aspect can reveal uncomfortable truths about our basic values. Our politics, figures of inspiration, our approach to earning and managing money… any of these can suddenly be revealed as naïve or wrong-headed.

Venus moves quickly, so this transit has only a glancing influence, no more than a couple of days. But if Neptune has been leaning on planets in your chart around 22-23 degrees of Pisces or Virgo, this transit could trigger a larger shift in how and whom you cherish. Walking away is not always the right response to disillusionment. But sometimes, it’s the only one.

Closer than they appear

As a kid, I was puzzled by the message that appeared on our car’s rear-view mirrors: Objects in mirror are closer than they appear. It still takes my brain a moment or two to adjust to what I’m being told, there, which I guess is… things look far but they’re close? I think?

It’s a Mercury-opposed-Jupiter kind of dilemma, this concept of near vs. far, detailed vs. abstract. “You can’t see the forest for the trees,” we might tell a Mercury-oriented person, who focuses exclusively on details and misses the big picture. Like getting too close to a Monet landscape and complaining that it’s a bunch of little paint daubs.Or, “Your optimism is writing checks that your income level can’t cash,” to an incurable optimist who tends to get financial overextended.

Mercury is finishing its trek through Leo as it opposes Jupiter in Aquarius this week (Aug. 10, 2021, 6:20 pm PDT). Leo’s a sign in which Mercury tends to think it’s got all the answers, and behaves so confidently that others may think so, too. But Jupiter in Aquarius’ vision is very long-range, like that view of earth taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders. And it has a way of putting the limitations of our knowledge, and our Mercury in Leo myopia, into perspective. The challenge of this week is to keep your hands on the wheel, but your eyes on the future.

Stay curious, not judgmental

My friend and podcasting comrade, Jen, gave me a delightful coffee mug for my birthday. It features our mutual TV hero Ted Lasso and the motto, “Stay curious, not judgmental” – a Lassoism that perfectly sums up the curious North Node in Gemini and the (at its worst) judgmental South Node in Sagittarius.

Mars (Aug. 11, 1:59 am PDT) and Mercury (Aug. 15, 7:45 pm PDT) both square the Lunar Nodes this week. As we try to leave behind our South Node safety zone and move toward the open-mindedness of the North Node, planets that square the nodal axis give us a little push, hopefully in the direction of growth. Mars does this a bit roughly, with a little kick in the shins, while Mercury will try to badger us into it. We can either take the hint and move forward toward curiosity, or double down on judgment – the choice is ours.

Extraordinary

Peer through a microscope at something ordinary. Removed from its larger context, something like pollen or cells taken from your cheek becomes art. You lose the bigger picture as you zoom in, but isn’t it amazing to see its individual components in such detail?

Mercury, the planet of perception, puts on its magnifying glass when it enters Virgo (Aug. 11, 2021, 2:57 pm PDT). While it’s in this detail-loving sign (through Aug. 31), the everyday becomes extraordinary.

What you have left

This story really spoke to me when I ran across it. I haven’t found a better metaphor for Venus/Pluto transits – transits that often make us feel that too much has been taken from us. Perhaps, in light of this week’s Venus trine to Pluto (Aug. 11, 2021, 3:45 pm PDT), it will speak to you too.

Violinist Itzhak Perlman was crippled by polio in childhood and walks with the aid of braces on his legs and a pair of crutches. At a concert on the night of November 18, 1995, at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City, one of the strings of his violin suddenly snapped during the performance. Stunned, the audience held their collective breath, expecting Perlman to stop and leave the stage. Instead he paused, then continued playing – adjusting, creating, compensating as he went along, and when he put down his bow at the end of the concert, a mighty roar of applause filled the hall. When it had died down, he spoke to the audience: “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”

Story excerpted from Gardening for a Lifetime. Copyright 2010 by Sydney Eddison.

Balancing out

My Libran husband is a wonderful cook. He’s from the culinary school of “if a little bit of an ingredient is good, then certainly four times as much must be better.” And usually, the results are stupendous. But now and then, things go off balance and there’s a vegetable and rice dish with too little rice, or a pasta salad with so much lemon that it’s almost inedible.

Balance is best in cooking and in most things. But is that also true of love, ruled by Venus? And can one ever have too much money or beauty, also ruled by Venus?

Well, yes, actually. And while Venus is in Libra (Aug. 15, 2021, 9:27 pm PDT through Sep. 11), it’s important to seek balance in even those things. A relationship may comprise one person who loves more, or is vastly more beautiful, or brings far more wealth to the table than the other. But we don’t all have to bring the same qualities to a relationship, just as long as the sides of the scale balance out in the end.

A tiny moment

At the First Quarter Moon (Aug. 15, 2021, 8:19 am PDT, 23.00 Scorpio), the Moon in Scorpio – a simmering water Moon, warmed by Mars, Scorpio’s ancient ruler – is tempering the Sun in fiery, joyful Leo.

A joyful toddler (Leo) runs through the backyard yelling “Mama! Look at me!” His normally kind, loving Scorpio mother has had a tough day. At that very moment she’s on the phone with the assisted living facility where her ailing, aging mother lives; she is receiving the news that her mother will require skilled nursing, and wondering how they will afford it. Her nerves strained, she snaps at her son: “NOT NOW!” He stops in his tracks. Tears begin streaming from his eyes. It’s a tiny moment; years later, most likely neither he nor his mother will remember it. But his heart will never forget. Forever, expressing himself will require tremendous bravery – because now he’s learned that there won’t always be applause. His courage, though, will make his light shine even brighter.