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July '14
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by Terry Lamb

Things are getting clearer. May took us through various, perhaps routine, exercises to establish our new foundations. June showed us the depth of the problems we’ve been dealing with for at least three years—why they are there and why they have persisted—and launched us on a journey to heal them, finally. July takes us further down the road of our new reality, putting a few bricks on the foundation.

These are the logistics, but this paints an ordinary face on a very dramatic process. We are making a big passage, a transition that involves life changes. Relationships are being born and dying; children are taking their first breath, jobs are being replaced by fulfilling business and career paths.

We have a lot going on, and if you’re watching the planets as they move through your chart and your life, you may notice some of them going by and “nothing happens”. What happens to all those aspects? Did we just miss out? Were we cheated of their bounty, did we avoid the need (miss out on the opportunity) to change?

There are so many layers of activity—one for each planet—and it’s a lot to keep track of in consciousness. Fortunately, they rise and fall in significance in a rhythm that we learn to make sense of. But periodically they present an extra challenge, as they do now, when the most challenging planetary energies come athwart each other.

These connections, which last years, intensify the shorter-term connections, and that’s what’s happening now. Uranus and Pluto are locked in a square that will be a fertile source of growth and creativity for decades to come. Their current translators are Jupiter and Mars.

Jupiter has given us a dream to focus on. Jupiter’s sojourn in Cancer (begun last June) has been a saving grace, even if it has seemed like what we want could be passing us by.

Mars has taken us on a fierce journey through the inner realms of relationship during its retrograde (March 1–May 19). These have become highly charged with ions of unfulfilled love and ego-laced infatuations. Mars has taken us to layer of meaning beneath these surface dissatisfactions, to the source of our longing. This lies in ghost stories created in the depths of memory, sometimes that of our parents and ancestors.

In particular, we are placed in contact with the ghosts of relationships from 1981-83 (the most recent Saturn-Pluto conjunction), and more recently, those of June 2012 (the Venus Transit/Lunar Eclipse). What did we (mis)learn in 1982 that took us on a side trip for the past two years?

Now Mars is releasing that energy and giving us the chance to heal it with the assistance of Chiron, which is also activating the Venus Transit Point at 16 Gemini. Look at the life chapter you embarked on in June 2012. There is something that is bringing this back to you now, to be reworked. We get a do-over, if we are willing to take on the difficult task of finding the meaning in our most recent relationship journey.

This is an example of how stored energy is released. Something we have been holding inside that feels incomplete, perhaps causing pain, comes back into focus. We revisit the past, reshape our memories with new insight, and create a new story about it that clarifies who we love and why.

Mars’s translation of these complex energies is rough on the skin, but it expunges the wound quickly and efficiently. The pain is acute and then it goes. If we stifle it, we suffer until its release. We may feel overwhelmed in the process, because when we expand the convoluted emotional math, we find many nested factors (one for each involved planet) that must be solved before a final solution is derived.

This is why we have to proceed step by step, often without knowing what the next step is until we’re making it. Slowly, our relationships are morphing into meaningful and fulfilling connections, or they are leaving our world.

There is one more agent of change in this scenario. Mercury started its new 122-day cycle on June 19 (29 Gemini). This will be a transition period, when old wounds are healed and a new life is brought into form as those old obstacles are removed. Take note of where you are as July opens, and do so again when Mercury’s next cycle starts on October 16. You may find yourself in dramatically transformed circumstances, in a good way.

July sees us return slowly to what will become a new normal. Mars is picking up speed and finally moves into Scorpio on July 25, after eight months in Libra. After Mercury’s station on July 1, it gets back up to speed by the time it clears its retrograde zone, on July 14.

But what brings the biggest relief is Saturn’s return to forward motion on July 20. This planet of restructuring and responsibility turned retrograde at the same time as Mars (early March), creating a fertile resistance that has made it very clear what we don’t want in our lives. While we have made great progress to alleviate the feeling of being stuck since Saturn passed its mid-cycle on May 10, we will feel like greased lightning in comparison after July 20. Now we will be able to move forward unfettered, and equipped to make wise decisions by what we’ve learned in the past five months.

Jupiter enters Leo on July 16 and starts a new yearly cycle on July 24. This renews our optimism as we reconnect with our soul. Leo takes us in a more creative and outgoing direction, after working with our desire to belong and include others during its year in Cancer.

Amidst all of these featured events, we get another of our quarterly contacts with the Cardinal Grand Cross. This is the last time we will meet these planets in this configuration; by the time the Sun reaches Libra (the next quarter, in September-October), Mars and Jupiter will have moved out of the pattern, signaling a profound shift in our focus and approach to the long-term challenges the Cardinal Cross has been presenting to us.

Uranus and Pluto are highlighted as they pass the usual yearly milestones: We experience the culmination (“Full Pluto”) on July 4 (for a few extra fireworks!), and Uranus makes its retrograde station on July 21.
These two planets are working in tandem through their Aries-Capricorn square, which we associate with dynamic global-cultural changes. With Full Pluto, whatever intensity has been building since mid-April is partially released. It provides the grist for the mill of growth for the second half of its cycle of deep transformation, which ends January 3, 2015.

Uranus has been activating us in a new way since April 2, the start of its yearly cycle. At its Station Retrograde, we know more about what it is about this time, the challenges and focus for our growth through quantum change. Uranus brings accidents and miracles, those events that wake us up to the ways we have strayed from our best path forward.

July brings us more satisfaction. The loosening of Mercury, Mars, and Saturn, the tightening of Uranus, and the revelations of Full Pluto—all these serve to help us make the shift in our desired direction. The overwhelm starts to feel more contained, even manageable, and our feet find something to stand on. With our focus confirmed and new circumstances to inspire us, may wisdom shape what we desire and move us joyfully into our fulfillment.

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