Mars is going retrograde at the 26th of June to the 27th of August, two months for this cycle that happens at a key time this year. This time includes three eclipses (2 in July, 1 in August) and a Mercury retrograde (7/23 – 8/18). The first word of advice from this corner is to have a lot of patience. The energy streams around this ole planet will be going in various directions and it is wise to take one’s time and cope with an ambiguity that makes this easier to say than to do. A pilot has to trust his/her instruments when going through the clouds and the same is true for this personal period of time. Trust deep instincts be cautious, watch for riptides in the metaphysical wind which challenges directions. Check temperaments as the days move on.

A second word of advice is to go to the old standard and very true skills of coping by using the big “re” principle. The “re” stands for the prefix of action, rethink, review, re-plan, reconnect, research,regroup,restore, reassess,rewrite, re-edit, redefine, reconsider goals . . . etc.These actions are time tested. Expect confusing speeding up only to have a slowing down.

For most people the energy goes inward as the desire is to look at internal and personal modes of acting and receiving. This leads to the overview of the self and where you are at this at this time. Boundaries may need repair to protect from being overrun by outside and challenging activities or seductions that should be firmed up so that this work on soul and self can have some internal core that is the working self with the tendency of the ego involvement is something that must be coped with.

The core of Mars is exposed during this time, there is ripple of passive aggressive. Sure, sometimes there will be anger that strikes out, yet most profound is that this slowing down, this realizing that the heat has been turned down. The old fight or flight in Mars at this time is in thinking about both fight and flight as a type of flux of vibrations that can be looked at with more dispassionate eye and heart.

The inner self can look at sex and the physical strength as being slower and easier to understand because the retrograde motion sends the planet back from Aquarius to Capricorn where it will pivot. First imagine Mars in the realm of Uranus: which is shaking up with its entry into Taurus) as bringing electric amperage in a level of spark and synapses which bring cracks in what is looked at from this fixed sign ethos of struggling with the status quo. Sensitive awareness to this energy, a person is like a seismograph. There will be quakes as old ideas crumble to new ideas which promise more success and growth.

I gave a lecture recently and advocated that the best way of dealing with this is to work with a notebook. What is going on? Write it down, think about the implications. Note the eclipses and Mercury rx times and see what spice they add to your dreams, both as an aspect in a goal, dream job, etc. and the dreams you have at night. Dreams should be taken as notes from the subconsciousness to consciousness – actually like a message from the realm of archetypes. Past moments, future projections as well as hints of past lives which lurk in the substrates of the instinctive self and soul in dialogue. Check out the aspects and houses in your chart. Remember this is the time to review, etc.

Look forward to this retrograde for while this retrograde starts in Aquarius, an exulted Mars will go direct in Capricorn and the pragmatic and practical will return with the plan to get things properly grounded with the energy field and growth worked out. Then Mars goes down the road to re-square Uranus and the spark plug will start integrating and expanding on the new/learning it has gone though and changes will come. It will be interesting.

Wow! After 7 years in Aries, Uranus enters Taurus. This will not be pretty, even though Venus rules Taurus, Uranus has the greater trump power. Two signs could not be fathomed more different, and both are fixed and stubborn.

In a game of chicken one loses by being a “chicken” swerving out of the way of the other car and there by having common sense and self interest. In the game of the gods, one trumpets the call for change, even rebellion, and then there is Taurus Venus, staid pragmatic and in love with the big, the pricey, but still not gauche or beyond the common rules of esthetic.

Uranus is nervous, the uncle who always tapped his foot when he visited for Thanksgiving. Cud chewing Taurus is an earth Venus sublimely sitting in a green pasture, grass to eat. Always lurking in this content is the power of Taurus, the bull. When angry the power of Taurus is born of horn and muscle and an attitude that is extremely volatile. It is this bull that will test Uranus the Aquarian. There will be collateral damage as the social dust blows away.

There is a bit of growing chaos in some of Uranus energies — all of which Venus will have to take awareness of, and sensitive to, for she is diplomatic and esthetic, socially skilled, masterful in the acts of love and art. Yet to the electricity and high voltage of Uranus there must be surrender, for the status quo cannot be sustained and a brittle point will mean there will be fissures on political and social allegiances that will precipitate an energy when the fear of what is happening?? A good question to ask, but who knows, really, The shock waves of the growing instability of profound democratic institutions is something that needs to be met with elasticity and willingness to pull the ropes of the contest to the side of Taurus. It will need to be flexible and still pull off the needed earthy stability. The bull is too strong to be just shunted away, even by Uranus.

Either way we look at it, the only thing we can bet on is that this transit of Taurus by Uranus will last seven years and then it is hello Gemini. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have, immediately facing us, is the knowledge that the year 2018 will be a politically hot one, not that it hasn’t been inconceivably hot enough at present with all the different fronts that are now blazing like little fires that are about to come together to create a huge blaze that sets new records. We have seen fires like that, coming together and becoming a monster of flames and doing some real, measurable damage, some of it quite painful. Seven years, remember, and we have ringside seats. Sit back and hold on.

Considering the total eclipse of August 21 2017, we have hardly recovered. Since that eclipse there has been a long list of huge natural disasters all across the United States, which, incidentally, was the course of the eclipse. I personally went to Oregon to see this one and it was like seeing another dimension. The sky darkened, wind started, dogs howled and at totality I had a vision of what a worm hole or black hole might look light. It made me filled with AWE.

Since that time (August 21) the list of natural disasters, record setting at that, has become a list that has defied the imagination while I was up in Oregon going ooh with awe at the eclipse.
Fires in California, three hurricanes, Puerto Rico laid waste, level 7 earthquakes around the world. I live in LA and worry about our “big one” coming. The weather has gone wacky and new high temperatures have emerged as well as record low temperatures. And the record fires yielded record and deadly mud slides.

February 15 2018 Eclipse is the brother/sister, choose your gender, of the August 21 2017 eclipse. The August was at 28 degrees of Leo, this February 15th is at 27 Aquarius. This opposition is something to be taken seriously. The same acupuncture area is hit with a new needle.

Hopefully when there is another eclipse that follows the preceding one, we try to see if we can fully understand the preceding and possibilities for a change in the upcoming. However in this case the power of August 21 was so strong that we would be crazy not to put some mental energy into trying to figure out what the impact of February 15 might be.

One of the things that worries me is that this eclipse quincunxes the Mercury of the USA chart (Aquarius-Cancer). I point this out as this can’t help but make the difficulty of fake news and honest news increasingly puzzling and not only in terms of the President and the collusion investigation,but all the other news on the diplomatic area, as well as the “me too” and other social events, as well as the way the congress has become more divided than even recently could have been thought of. The world politics are not much better with deep issues as climate change, increasing water shortages and drought. The issues of the haves and have not will come into sharper focus. The 99 percent will have even more to grumble about and this issue will add more weight to social tension. Look for more street marches on a larger scale.

Speaking of drought, The July 12th eclipse at 20 degrees of Cancer opposes the transiting Pluto which is slowly creeping its way to a Pluto return of the USA Pluto at 27 Capricorn, beginning orb in 2022–an supplying a topper to all the events of the Saturn Pluto conjunction at the end of 2020. These are evolutionary times my friends. The yelling of warnings in the last couple of decades about the reality of climate change will become acute–and the drought in Asia, African, Australia, SW US, and parts of Russia will bear witness of what the great Cardinal Cross foreshadowed in the beginning of the century. The focus at that time was around 20 degrees of Cancer and now we have an eclipse hitting that point. Wow. There will be huge immigration problems starting down the road as people parched for water will head to borders where there is something to drink. Lets hope that I have been taking too many critical and cynical pills, so I will stop on this eclipse for the time being.

Looking at the August 11th eclipse at 18 Leo is exactly opposite the US Moon at 18 Aqueous. This eclipse definitely points to some serious strain on the institutions of our country, especially as we will be in the heat of the 2018 election campaigns. One might hope that this points to a bringing of new emotional and nurturing changes in our country. It could, however point to serious challenges to the fabric of our democracy. It could point to some attempts to clean things up. I will need more time to consider this eclipse and will write more specifically about it after the July 12 eclipse.

In the meantime wait until I write about Uranus entering Taurus in May. That will bring challenges to fixed concepts and institutions as well. When two fixed signs collide, the fall out will be immense.

The August 21 2017 total eclipse has proven to a time marker in that after it, things get dicier. Hurricanes,fires, North Korea, the expanding research into the Russian connection. And today in LA we had our first earthquake in a long long time. Not that this would be any news, except this is the first quake within the city. There have been quakes in Palm Springs, Big Bear the Salton Sea, but not one in LA. The last big one was Jan. 1994. and it was preceded a series of smaller one up to the big one in North Ridge. Could this be a foreshadowing of something? I don’t know. But I do know this: This August 21 eclipse is not done doing what has already been started.

There is this theory in Eclipse Lore that it ain’t over until the bending. There are two bending points that occur when the sun is at 45 or 90 degrees from the nodal point of the eclipse, or, when a planet crosses the nodal point or if a major planet, the slower moving Saturn Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus or Pluto make a hard aspect to that point withing that six month time when the attention is turned to the new eclipse coming up (at 180 degrees). That being said, if the new eclipse is a weak one not a total one, or anular whatever the power of this one holds on.

This means that the 180 bending will occur at 17 February 2018. And the 90 degree bending will be at 22 November 2017. Mars will hit the bending in January 19, 2018.

What this means to me is that we still have a lot of energy from the August 21 totality. I fear it will mean more rough weather, an quake somewhere that will affect LA and political problems way beyond what we are having now. Not to mention that the damages from the two hurricanes we have already had may well bankrupt the insurance companies will all the damage claims from the disasters.

Some of my astrologer friends are really worried. But let me tell you the clue to getting by. 1) make your place as safe as possible, quake kits, water and food to last awhile (I have 30 days), repair anything that needs repairing 2) have batteries,a flash light or two, candles and matches, a radio and a large four recharge battery for the phone. 3) ration yourself on the news. 4) be mindful. That is all you can do. The rest is out of our control, so control the things we can. Notice the good things in the neighborhood. The trees, the young kids getting out of elementary school — life.

This may sound cynical and I suppose in one way it is. But allows one to breath simply and fully, to stay sane in an increasingly insane world.

The Nodes have changed signs to Leo/Aquarius, leaving the axis of Virgo/Pisces behind. This will change a lot of things. More direct energy for inventiveness and leadership coming our way. More to come on this shift. Where are your nodes? What aspects do they make to this new shift? Look it up!