Highlights for May 31-June 6, 2021: Choose Your Battles

Choose Your Battles

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

Doors and windows

I‘m not sure I can explain why, but sometimes I find myself awash in nostalgia for some of the least wonderful moments of my life. Not the truly tragic ones, mind you. Just snapshots from an unhappy relationship or a vexing job, perhaps, or from a financially strained youth.

I find this weird wistfulness a pretty good analogy for the Pisces Last Quarter Moon (June 2, 2021, 0:24 am PDT). Each month, the Moon’s Last Quarter phase directs our gaze backward, and the Pisces Last Quarter heart remembers every hurt as well as every moment of ecstasy. Over time, when past pain dominates the story we tell about ourselves, it prevents us moving forward.

The Sun in Gemini rules with the head, but the Moon in Pisces rules with the heart. It’s the sign of letting go, of faith and forgiveness. Maybe that nostalgia I feel is just a final step in processing – of assimilating all the psychic nutrients from an experience before letting it go.

This Last Quarter marks the midpoint between the May 26 Lunar and the June 10 Solar Eclipse. Eclipses have a way of closing doors, in order to encourage us to move through newly-opened windows. Find the old feelings that are holding you back (the March 2019 Pisces New Moon offers a clue). Bow to them, then let them go.

No place like home

Venus enters Cancer (June 2, 2021, 6:19 am PDT), bringing beauty and pleasure to this home-loving sign through June 28. Cancer is a cozy sign for Venus, and it might be that just as quarantine restrictions are loosening up in some places, many of us are realizing just how much we’ve enjoyed the comfy quiet of being at home.

Venus trines Jupiter in Pisces almost immediately after changing signs (June 3, 2021, 4:33 pm PDT), so watch your spending, especially when it comes to household luxuries – or even households. (My husband and I once almost bought a house after over-indulging in a big Mexican lunch with a couple of margaritas!) With Jupiter casting inhibitions to the wind and Mercury retrograde, it’s a dicey time for major purchases. But sometimes you have no choice – so at least buy the extended warranty!

Wind at your back

Have you been working hard on some creative project since May 3, when the Sun was square Saturn? This week, as the Sun trines Saturn (June 3, 2021, 12:05 pm PDT), your efforts begin to pay off. Perhaps someone in a position of influence, perhaps someone you knew or worked with in the past, offers praise, or you receive an offer to do more but on a larger scale. There will still be plenty of hard work involved – that’s Saturn for you! – but that’s a lot easier to do when you feel the wind is at your back.

Come out pinching

This week brings the second of three squares between Mercury and Neptune (June 5, 2021, 12:05 pm PDT). Perhaps at the first there was a sudden awareness that all was not what it seemed. Now, a little more information comes to light. But don’t make any final decisions yet; there’s one more square to come, on July 6, that will reveal the entire story.

Within the hour, Mars opposes Pluto (June 5, 12:45 pm PDT). Mars in Cancer is not overtly aggressive. It believes that the best offense is a good defense, and its strategy is to zig when you expect it to zag, making it an elusive target.

But when it’s backed into a corner, as it is when it opposes mighty Pluto, Mars in Cancer comes out pinching. This planetary face-off actually has its origins in their March 22, 2020 conjunction; now that we’ve come 180 degrees, we see many things a lot more clearly than we did in the beginning. Control – a Pluto word – has been the watchword since lockdown began here in the United States in early 2020, and all the strong feelings about how best to handle the pandemic really boil down to that. As we begin peeking out of our homes and cautiously mingling, we’ll be coping with the fallout from these disagreements and power struggles. Whenever Mars meets Pluto, we ultimately learn the limits of our personal power is limited, and to conserve our energy for the battles we can win.