A Complex and Internally Rewarding Month of June

The astrology of June is quite interesting, and includes a potent Mercury Retrograde period as well a huge helping of Neptune. The May 28th New Moon in Gemini that began the current monthly cycle was exactly square to numinous Neptune, located in his own sign of Pisces. This aspect, exact to within a mere few arc-minutes of zodiacal longitude, implies a kind of dreamy world running alongside of more ordinary reality and intersecting with it in mystical ways. Synchronicity is on the rise once again, and a sense of foggy numinousity that brings out the otherworldly dimensions of our everyday experience. This month therefore invites interior investigations leading to a better understanding of ourselves at the deepest levels of our being.

The strange nature of this current symbolism is revealed by the contrast between Gemini and Pisces. We do well to note that Gemini is an airy sign, symbolizing logical analysis and mental curiosity, while Pisces is feeling-oriented and sponsors soul-level paradox, the right-brained opposite of mere logic. The current skies are further complexified by the station of Mercury to retrograde motion that takes place in the early morning hours of Saturday, June 7th. This is another symbol of interior process. With our mentality running backward there is a distinct turn to inner contemplation as opposed to outer thinking and doing. Mercury remains in retrograde throughout the remainder of the month, stationing to direct motion on July 1st, and only escaping its retrograde shadow on July 16th. During this entire period it is best to refine and restructure existing arrangements rather than launching unexpectedly into new ones.

Within this monthly cycle there are also important chimes to the major sky-connection of this entire decade, namely Uranus and Pluto in square. The New Moon precisely aspects Pluto, again to within just a few arc-minutes, of a degree, reminding us once more of this forceful push for evolutionary progress in our lives, as we further our discovery of what we need to leave behind and make our transition toward a better fit with what we, at the deepest level of our being, truly want and as we continue to create a better integration with Spirit. The square that Pluto makes to Uranus remains within close orb this month. When this alignment recently peaked, at the time of the cardinal cross event of late April, Mars in retrograde participated by opposition and square. Mars has now returned to direct motion, in the tenth degree of Libra and still roughly opposite Uranus in Aries, and closely trined by the New Moon. The energy is there for bringing our most chErished relationships, as symbolized by Libra, into better balance with our own push for autonomy and soul growth.

Finally, there also persists into June the grand trine in Water signs between expansive and positive Jupiter, cranky Saturn and Chiron, the Wounded Healer. These planets are now separating from their closest alignment by several degrees, but they remain within orb. The symbolism is indicative of bringing into concrete manifestation all our dreams, together with our fears also, and including the need to heal in the deeper places within us. As we attempt to integrate the pressure of outer events that are coming down in these transformational times, as a part of a climactic year of change, we are thus enjoined to look to the inside of ourselves for some of the answers that we cannot obtain anywhere else but there, at what seminal 20th century poet T.S. Eliot called "the still point of the turning world."