Week of Aug 24 to 30
This morning I woke up heavy, carrying what came in last night. A friend of mine, an HR director for a local city government, told me she'd been called into a meeting with her boss and the assistant city manager at the end of last week and fired on the spot, effective immediately. Another friend texted too, rattled by a power outage that had just hit her block and anxious about testifying in court today, and worried, in the middle of all of it, about how she'd manage to straighten her hair before she had to show up and be believed. She and her husband are suing our city after his bike accident, and even mid-fight for real accountability, she's still doing the math on how a woman is supposed to look before anyone will take her seriously.
Lying there this morning, all I could feel was how cold we've become, disconnected from love, from each other, from the planet that's been asked to carry all of it without complaint. That power outage almost certainly traces back to the same heat that's been baking the West this month, the same grid straining under data centers built to serve everything except the earth that hosts them, and none of it feels separate: the boss who fires without warning, the city that won't take responsibility, the woman calculating her hair before she calculates her testimony, the planet running hotter than the systems built to hold it. We are exhausted, all of us, by how far we've drifted from love and from the ground under our feet.
That exhaustion has a deadline this week. Thursday night, the second eclipse of this month arrives: a Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Pisces, conjunct the North Node in Aquarius, at 9:12 pm PT. The Leo eclipse two weeks ago challenged the ego:
Does it need an audience to feel real, or does it hide so well it never risks being seen at all? Which one are you?
This eclipse Thursday is where the answer gets released, or at least it's supposed to be. Feeling it is up to you.
It's landing on the same axis that's been surfacing all month, and will keep surfacing for the next year and a half. The old, five-thousand-year story that leadership means wealth and spotlight and being obeyed rather than heard is not leaving without a fight, and it's up to you and me to reverse it.
In the days leading up to the eclipse, the Sun and Mercury in Virgo tighten their grip on facts, on logic, on getting it right. That instinct wants clean answers and tidy explanations, something it can categorize and file away, and this week won't offer many. Then Uranus in Gemini squares the Sun and Mercury directly, the aspect most likely to crack something open this week. Uranus moves through disruption: a message, a shock, a sudden turn nobody asked for. My friend's firing landed exactly like that, a jolt, unwanted and unannounced, that's already looking like it will move her closer to the life she's actually meant for. Don't be surprised if something similar finds you this week, sudden and unasked for. The same day the eclipse lands, the Sun and Mercury also sit cazimi each other, Mercury pulled so close to the Sun's light that the analytical mind gets one last, sharp burst of clarity right as all this fact-focused Virgo energy peaks. That's a lot of logic stacked up against a Full Moon in Pisces this deep, and it's worth naming plainly: the mind may try to reason its way through a feeling that's actually asking to move through the body instead, the grief, the tenderness, the ache of finally letting something go.
For me, this Full Moon lands almost exactly on my Midheaven in Pisces, the point in the chart that represents career and public calling, the same point that's been lit since I left federal law enforcement, trading a career built on hierarchy and national security for one built on healing. This eclipse feels like the closing argument in that transition. It's also showing up in how I want to build community rather than lead it from a podium. A few neighbors and I just started Porch Cats of Long Beach, and one of them happens to bring real marketing and social media experience to the table, so together we're figuring out how to get more of these cats adopted, starting with the right photo or video of a cat named, appropriately enough, Leo. It's small, local, unglamorous work. It's also exactly the kind of collective, humanitarian building this Age of Aquarius keeps asking us for.
Community was the bedrock long before any of this convinced us we could do life alone, and our ancestors knew this work intimately, generations of it. This week asks for the full release: the sadness, the grief, the suffering that's been sitting underneath everything else, given real room to move instead of managed from a safe distance. Some of that grief is for what we've done to this earth, the heat, the strain, the grid failing under the weight of things that never should have outranked people in the first place. Feel it all the way through, and then let it turn into something. Get outside, put your hands in the dirt, your feet on the ground, and let tending the earth become a real practice this week. Slow down enough to ask the real question underneath it all: what is your Aquarian life's calling, the one built for the collective you're actually here to serve? This is the reckoning this eclipse is asking for: feel it first, and then build with it, so that something less divided and more humane can actually take root.
A couple of questions to carry into Thursday:
• What is this eclipse asking you to finally release, the anger, the fear, the old proof of worth, so a more Aquarian way of leading can take root?
• Where is this week asking you to show up for your community instead of your own spotlight?
This Week's Transits (lunation times PT)
August 25 (Tuesday)
Mercury conjoins the South Node in Leo \ Mercury enters Virgo \ Mercury in Virgo trines Chiron Rx in Taurus
Tuesday opens with Mercury conjunct the South Node in Leo, echoing Saturday's placement of the Sun on that same karmic point four days earlier, the mind now walking the identical ground the heart already crossed. This is the solar hero myth surfacing again: the old, five-thousand-year story that leadership means wealth, spotlight, and being obeyed rather than heard. Whatever thought pattern insists it must perform, dazzle, or dominate to be worth listening to, let it surface fully so it can be witnessed and released rather than carried forward unexamined. Hours later, Mercury enters Virgo, and the mind shifts from performance to service, from needing an audience to simply being useful. In that same stretch, Mercury in Virgo trines Chiron retrograde in Taurus, offering an easier route toward tending whatever wound has been exposed: practical, grounded, unhurried care rather than urgent self-correction.
August 26 (Wednesday)
The Sun in Virgo forms a yod with Pluto Rx in Aquarius and Neptune Rx in Aries
The Sun in Virgo forms a yod with Pluto retrograde in Aquarius and Neptune retrograde in Aries, both planets reaching toward the Sun by quincunx, an awkward, adjustment-demanding angle that asks the practical Virgo mind to bend toward something it cannot quite categorize. Pluto and Neptune are pulling back a veil together: there is more happening beneath this week's surface than logic alone will explain. Watch for the mind's habit of hiding inside the mundane, the to-do list, the correction, the critique, when what's actually being asked is to notice the depth underneath. This same yod gathers Mercury into its structure the following day, so whatever surfaces today is only the opening note.
August 27 (Thursday)
The Sun conjoins Mercury (cazimi) in Virgo \ Neptune Rx in Aries and Pluto Rx in Aquarius sextile Mercury in Virgo \ Uranus in Gemini squares the Sun and Mercury in Virgo \ The Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Pisces, near the North Node, occurs at 9:12 pm PT
The Sun conjoins Mercury in what's called a cazimi, Mercury sitting so close to the Sun's heart that the mind becomes, briefly, as clear as it can get. This cazimi is still separating from Tuesday's South Node conjunction and Wednesday's yod, carrying the residue of both: whatever old story surfaced, whatever depth got exposed, arrives now in its clearest possible light. Neptune retrograde in Aries and Pluto retrograde in Aquarius sextile Mercury in Virgo, offering easy, supportive access to imagination and transformation, provided the mind is willing to receive rather than manage them. Then Uranus in Gemini squares both Mercury and the Sun in Virgo, the week's most important angle, and the one to actually feel. Uranus works through disruption: a message, a shock, a sudden turn nobody asked for. Where the mind has been stuck, this is the jolt that moves it, and it rarely arrives with warning. That night, the Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Pisces, near the North Node, occurs at 9:12 pm PT. The Moon here asks for feeling over thinking: a full surrender into emotion, intuition, and the collective, in service of a destiny none of us reach alone.
