June 2021: Frederick Woodruff’s Horoscopes for Moderns

A treat! Frederick’s writing provokes thought, laughter, a gasp of delight—or all three. Here’s a tiny taste, for June. Find more on Frederick’s thought-provoking Substack site. ~Susan

♈️ ARIES (MAR 21-APR 20): People like taking recreational substances not so much for the effect of the drug but because the shift from one state of consciousness to another is a thrill. Something similar is at work this month. Your world takes on a regal glow when Mars enters Leo and replenishes your waning pizzazz. Time to reawaken with your innate ingenuity and chutzpah. But don’t squander the rush—reality (Saturn) is waiting to kick your tires and test the reliability of your vehicle towards the end of June. Regardless, know that your quota of courage is up a notch—don’t waste the opportunity to surmount obstacles, reformulate strategies or devise the perfect win-win compromise. 

CONSIDER: “All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.”—Mark Twain

♉️ TAURUS (APR 21-MAY 21): The month is clouded by the New Moon’s square to Neptune in Pisces. The conventional reading is one of confusion or misdirection, although given your seat in the hot spot of the Saturn/Uranus alignment I’ll suggest you allow for an oblique take. There is a mysterious passage in the Tao Te Ching where Lao Tsu says: “I alone am clouded, everyone else is clear.” She is addressing the natural condition. At birth babies emerge from the cloudy realm and so begins their process of orienting to the new world. Divination requires an acceptance of foggy states, a going off-line, out to the periphery of consensus reality—when the mind leans into not knowing. A willingness to be guided through the mist. Try this approach in June. 

CONSIDER: “Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same no-thing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.” —Eckhart Tolle

♊️ GEMINI (MAY 22-JUN 21): Jungian dream master Arnold Mindellwrites, “To be in contact with what is going to appear next in life, you need to be lucid about what is within you, about sentient experience.” But as I note in yesterday’s Zeitgeist Report, our (understandable but) unnecessary recapitulation of our story (be it personal history or an event that happened five minutes ago) clogs our aperture. The larger narrative—the arc of Time—is composed and resolved continuously simultaneously. Every moment is fresh, fulfilled, and then instantly terminated into freshness. Play with the puzzle but ride light in the saddle. The theme: lucidity. What complicates the simplicity of your lucidity? That’s your ‘work in progress’ project for June.

CONSIDER: “Teach us to care and not to care. Teach us to sit still.” —T.S. Eliot

♋️ CANCER (JUN 22-JUL 22): In James Dickey’s poem the Owl King we read:

I swore to myself I would see
When all but my seeing had failed. 
Every light was too feeble to show
My world as I knew it must be.
At the top of the staring night
I sat on the oak in my shape
With my claws growing deep into wood
And my sight going slowly out
Inch by inch, as into a stone,
Disclosing the rabbits running
Beneath my bent, growing throne,
And the foxes lighting their hair,
And the serpent taking the shape
Of the stream of life as it slept.

So if I had to take a guess I’m gonna say it’s the line: “And my sight going slowly out/inch by inch as into stone.” Am I right? The philosopher’s stone, oh the places it will reveal. At first, stone-blocked and blinded but then liberated by intensity and precision. Do the math on this equation. That’s your assignment for June. 

CONSIDER: “Honour thy error as a hidden intention.” —Brian Eno

♌️ LEO (JUL 23-AUG 23): So, you’ve crossed the rubicon and you’re standing on a foreign shore. One part of this tale involves reaching a point of no return. While the rest is more literal: The word rubicon is from Latin rubicundus—meaning ruddy, in reference to the color of the soil on the river’s banks. Psychic feng shui is in order. Mars enters Leo just hours after the New Moon eclipse on the 10th. This swaps the eyepiece of your kaleidoscope in a startling way. Consider zhuzhing up your world with reddish hues. Allow bright colors to influence your presentation. To ‘zhuzh’ is to enhance your presence with a rearrangement. Arranging is an art form generally consigned to interior decorators. But it’s so much more. Arranging is a powerful form of communication that does away with language and touches through impression. It’s showing versus telling, a perfect complement to Mercury’s retrograde back into the nexus of the eclipse. 

CONSIDER: “…sometimes blocked in, sometimes reaching out, one moment your life is a stone in you, the next a star.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

♍️ VIRGO (AUG 24-SEP 23): We take language and the words that comprise language for granted. Rarely do we stop and consider who (or what) assigned meaning to any given word. But this month you’d benefit by making way for some earnest revaluations. What’s going on right now is what I call the “Who says?” predicament. Free-thinkers mine this state all of the time, it keeps them sharp. Taken to an extreme this condition is referred to as philosophizing, but there’s no need to get caught up in thattar baby. The point isn’t to deconstruct language but to detangle from the too-tight grip of its conceptual constructs. And the first phase of that movement involves “Who says?” A worthy inquiry. Its aftereffects are many. You’re reminded of the silent power of humility. Too, you become ‘clouded’ (see Taurus’ horoscope above.) There’s sweet relief when you perceive insights beyond description. 

CONSIDER: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”—Wittgenstein

♎️ LIBRA (SEP 24-OCT 23): You have a secret strategy that, oddly, isn’t deployed often enough. And that’s your innate understanding of agendas. You know in your heart that everyone has an agenda and what we call ‘socializing’ (or more officially ‘politics’) is basically people maneuvering through life in ways that best meet or fulfill their agenda. There’s nothing nefarious about agendas, I mean, when you’re hungry, getting something to eat is your program of the moment. Logical, yes? In the spirit of the New Moon in Gemini this month experiment with showing your cards a bit more. Announce your agenda early in an exchange and see how it changes up the dynamics between you and the other person. Even more fun: Announce your agenda to yourself. This sounds corny but you’ll be surprised to discover what you’re suppressing. 

CONSIDER: “The road to hell is paved with works-in-progress.” —Philip Roth

♏️ SCORPIO (OCT 24th-NOV 22nd): Internet porn exploded in the late 90s not because the technology was in place to goad it forward, (well, that was part of the momentum)—but because the life force that sustains a culture demanded it. It’s almost like porn invented the internet so sensuality could escape from its confinement. James Hillman called the porn explosion ‘pink madness’—where Aphrodite, furious after eons of weird sex repression, exploded into society and tainted the human imagination with every possible permutation of her magic. Viewed metaphorically, the criterion of ‘hardcore’ content (of any sort) is concrete presence. In other words, there is nothing hidden, nothing absent—it’s about all-access availability. After porn came gay liberation (and marriage), and then #metoo, and after #metoo came—well, that’s where you come in. What’s coming next? Ask yourself, what’s been hobbled by repression in your life? Find the release valve, go ‘all access’—regain your mojo and reveal the most sensuous parts of your imagination.

CONSIDER: “Laughter is wine for the soul—laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness—the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living.” —Sean O’Casey

♐️ SAGITTARIUS (NOV 23rd-DEC 21st): Your momentum starts out slow and steady this month and hits a zippy gallop on the 10th during the New Moon eclipse—that’s the ‘ah-ha’ moment you’ve been waiting for. A new kind of independence is available, but it involves teasing out and solving some of the niggling issues related to others. Because you love the new and exciting it’s easy to overlook the dull patina of the past. And its influence. This might read like Psych-101 pablum, but if you’re earnest about establishing harmony in life you’ll need to wrestle a bit with your history. Make progress by reconsidering the dynamics you witnessed as a child between your parents. We underestimate the imprints and the overlays we inherited from our family matrix, and yet so many of those impressions become reenacted in our present-day commitments. Consider working with an ally that will support your effort to compose a new love song. 

CONSIDER: “The mind cannot long act the role of the heart.” —Francois de La Rochefoucauld

♑️ CAPRICORN (DEC 22nd-JAN 20th): As Uranus moves towards its midpoint in Taurus you’re starting to bask in a peculiar sort of electronic juju that has the potential to reignite dormant parts of your personality. Think back to the chutzpah of your youth. Recall the power you exercised by locking your sights on a goal and moving towards it. Heights didn’t matter, in fact, the higher the better—right? Where did that go? I’m not saying you’ve lost it, but time tricks us into thinking we’re just ‘getting on’ (or ‘getting by’). And that those days—that sort of vitality—is behind us. True, it is behind you but as a foundation and wellspring of support. Time brings fruition, too, and has seasoned and streamlined your innate gifts. You’re a professional now—true. But you need to actively recall your status. Tap into your resources again on the 10th when the solar eclipse in Gemini illuminates the trickster/charmer part of your nature. 

CONSIDER: “Anything beautiful is difficult” —Plato

♒️ AQUARIUS (JAN 21st-FEB 19th): 
This is for the afternoon we lay in the leaves
After it had been winter for half a year,
And I kissed you and unbuttoned your jeans
And touched you and made you smile, my dear.
—C.B. Trail
The theme this month is ‘contact’. Understanding your need for it and then making the first move, reaching out to achieve it. But of course, to start, you’ll need to acknowledge the need. Your need. Look, emotions, especially powerful ones often befuddle you. They usher in too many variables, too much potential for the unexpected—the uncontrollable. Well, get over it. Prime your pump. Read a classic romantic novel. Rewatch Love Actually. Picture yourself as a pup or a kitten. Everyone loves dogs and cats (or at least one over the other). Walk into the pet store of life and find your emotional support animal. Prepare to make a mess, to appear foolish—or goddess forbids: eager and horny.

CONSIDER: “Everything in my life was luck. The key to having an interesting life is to always say ‘yes’ to anything crazy.” —Freeman Dyson

♓️ PISCES (FEB 20th-MAR 20th): Remember your sign’s symbol. Two fish with their tails tied but swimming in opposite directions. One fish travels the day-to-day world of mundane reality, while the other is lost somewhere in the ocean of the imagination. June is about uniting both sides of your nature into accordance. Although the catch (sorry) is that the imaginative fish rebels against boundaries. While the realist fish worries about the impracticality of (possibly) doing something that isn’t perfect. There’s no easy way to resolve this paradox, although here’s a hint. Start simply (and literally). Exam your environment and remove unnecessary clutter. Keep only what’s essential to your life and that provides inspiration. This month is about streamlining and creating a space that can accommodate both sides of your nature. One room is for your creative work, another room is for the nuts and bolts part of your brain. Provide a proper pool for each fish.

CONSIDER: “If you’re not actively involved in getting what you want, you don’t really want it.” —Peter McWilliams

Opening collage: by Trash Riot, © 2020

Frederick Woodruff

I’m honored to share that my teacher was Ivy Goldstein-Jacobson, an Aries dynamo who convinced me when I was a teenager that astrology was a worthy subject to consider as my life’s vocation; and so I’ve worked professionally as a counseling astrologer for the past 45 years. I write regularly on the merger of astrology and popular culture on my WOODRUFF Substack. My two published books, Secrets of a Telephone Psychic
and Skywriter: Notes on Modern Astrology are are both available through my e-book publisher. You can arrange a session with me here.

woodruff.substack.com/