The Astrology Podcast
Transcript of Episode 541, titled:
July Astrology Forecast 2026
With Chris Brennan and Austin Coppock
Episode originally released on June 29, 2026
Original episode URL:
https://theastrologypodcast.com/2026/06/29/july-astrology-forecast-2026/
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Note: This is a transcript of a spoken word podcast. If possible, we encourage you to listen to the audio or video version, since they include inflections that may not translate well when written out. Our transcripts are created by human transcribers, and the text may contain errors and differences from the spoken audio. If you find any errors then please send them to us by email: theastrologypodcast@gmail.com
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Transcribed by Teresa “Peri” Lardo
Transcription released July 15th, 2026
Copyright © 2026 TheAstrologyPodcast.com
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CHRIS BRENNAN: Hey. My name is Chris Brennan, and you’re listening to The Astrology Podcast. Joining me today is astrologer Austin Coppock, and we’re gonna be looking at the astrological forecast for July of 2026.
Hey Austin. Welcome back.
AUSTIN COPPOCK: Hey Chris. Nice to be here.
CB: Yeah, it’s very good to see you again. You had a month off, but I’m very glad that you came back because we’ve got a really big month of astrology to talk about – one of the more important months of 2026.
So in the first half of this episode, we’re gonna talk about news and events that happened since our last forecast episode and the astrology behind those news stories. Then in the second half of the episode, we’re gonna do a deep dive into the astrology of July. As always, there will be timestamps if you wanna jump ahead to the forecast section. But otherwise, before we get into the news, I wanna do a quick overview of the astrology of this month just to give you a preview of what we’re gonna be talking about later in this episode.
All right, so I’ve been experimenting with writing out an overview of the month in order to give people an idea of the sequence and some of the keywords that we’re looking at for these alignments. So here is my overview for July.
So the month opens on highly unstable ground dominated by a volatile Mars-Uranus conjunction that threatens sudden, unpredictable shifts and explosive turns. This erratic energy is ruled by a newly stationary retrograde Mercury, which has just backed away from a conjunction with Jupiter. This combination sets the stage for logistical snafus, technological difficulties, and widespread delays right out of the gate.
Then Jupiter, which has just entered Leo at the very end of June, begins to form a very tense opposition with Pluto, which goes exact around the middle of July. This highlights major power struggles and the tension between truth and control. And this opposition is part of a much larger more momentous pattern of simultaneous outer planet alignments that all peak this month and go exact throughout the month of July.
So what happens with this is that Uranus completes its very first exact trine with Pluto, and then these planets at the same time lock into a complex basket configuration alongside Jupiter and Neptune. So this really heavy planetary geometry indicates that very significant precursor events are unfolding in the background this month, particularly surrounding rapid technological or military innovations.
So later in the month, we finally see a more positive shift in the astrological weather during the second half of July where Mars separates from Uranus and then starts applying to a stabilizing constructive sextile with Saturn, which helps to ground some of the earlier chaos. And then also Mercury stations direct in Cancer, which begins to clear up some of the miscommunications, while the Sun makes its triumphant ingress into Leo and starts to form a very auspicious conjunction with Jupiter.
It’s not all great, because there’s a lingering Venus-Mars square operating in the background during the later part of the month which introduces this unwelcome element of creative friction, tension in partnerships, and pitting the forces of unification against the drive to sever and divide. And unfortunately in that configuration, Mars does have the upper hand in a superior square.
So finally this little lull later in July ultimately serves as a sort of temporary calm before the storm, and by early August we swiftly transition into eclipse season, which brings those major beginnings and endings to the forefront just as Venus enters the sign where it’s going to eventually retrograde back to, thus entering its shadow phase on some level by sign.
So that is the astrology of the month that we’re gonna be talking about later in this episode, and obviously we have a lot to talk about in the process of things.
All right, so that is the astrology that we’re gonna be talking about later in this episode, but first let’s talk about the news and things that have happened over the course of the past four weeks since our last forecast episode. Austin, welcome back; thanks for joining me. I’m glad you’re back this month.
AC: Yeah, me too. There’s a lot to talk about.
CB: Yeah. We knew in the year ahead forecast we talked about this month and how it would be momentous, and now we’re finally there and we can see all of the pieces falling into place. And today, for example, like, Mars just ingressed into Gemini, so it’s full-on heading towards that conjunction with Uranus.
AC: Yeah, we’re about an hour-ish into Mars in Gemini right now.
CB: Yeah. And already there’s been like, a major news story that came out today that I’ll talk about later related to that. But before we get there, let’s do some review of June and the astrology of June.
i wanted to start first by talking about the Venus-Jupiter conjunction which happened in the first half of June, basically, and some of the major news stories that came out surrounding that auspicious conjunction between Venus and Jupiter in Cancer, which it went exact around the 9th but was still in effect for at least a week before that and a week after.
All right, so one of the major news stories that happened is on June 12th, right after the conjunction went exact while Venus was still in Cancer with Jupiter, SpaceX launched its IPO. It went public. And the headlines all over that day were that Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in the world. And what was striking about this is that he was born with Cancer rising, as we learned a few years ago when his birth time was released in a biography. So the Venus-Jupiter conjunction was taking place in his first house. And when his birth time came out a few years ago, we had talked about his chart and some of the wealth indicators in it, and what was interesting is what I talked about at the time was that the primary wealth indicator in his chart was the position of the Lot of Fortune in Virgo and how it was ruled by Mercury, which is placed in the sign of Cancer in his rising sign. Because according to the second century astrologer Vettius Valens, the 11th house from Fortune is called “the place of acquisition,” and when it’s well-situated, it can indicate the acquisition of large amounts of wealth. And in this instance, we actually saw by transit an activation of his place of acquisition and that wealth signature in his chart making him basically the richest person in history at that time. And I thought that was a pretty striking alignment.
AC: Yeah. It’s a great example. And then also having the ruler of Fortune in the place of acquisition is by itself a wealth combination according to Valens. And then to have that literally be subject to basically the most positive transit imaginable is pretty good. Although Saturn is coming, and so he lost his trillionaire status shortly thereafter when Venus was no longer in Cancer.
CB: Yeah. Well, that was one of the funny things about, you know, we also last month we had the auspicious Venus-Jupiter conjunction early in the month, but then Mercury was also forming that conjunction with Jupiter, but then it slowed down and it stationed retrograde before completing it. So it was like, we delineated it – Leisa and I predicted last month – and it was like, something really positive looks like it’s coming up on the horizon, but then it gets canceled out kind of at the last minute because of not just that, not just the Mercury retrograde, but also the Mars-Uranus conjunction forming at the same time. And it was interesting that there was a version of that with him, there was a version of that with like, the Iran war peace negotiations and even Spielberg’s movie, basically, which initially launched to success but then declined really significantly after the first week.
AC: Yeah. There was, you know, as we noted in the year before, there was a bit of a cruel joke position at the end of June. Or one might see it as a cruel joke, or just that things reversed direction rather quickly and harshly. And that if you anticipated that the early, mid-June revelry would continue unabated, you’d be very surprised and disappointed.
CB: Yeah. Exactly. So yeah. So that was, like you said with Musk, there was the initial trillionaire status and then it dropped because like, the price of the IPO and the stock dropped a bit after that. So that was a thing.
Another thing that happened was Steven Spielberg on the same day on June 12th that Musk released his IPO released his big movie Disclosure Day. And I thought that was striking because it turns out that Steven Spielberg also has Cancer rising. So it was also in his rising sign. But further, Steven Spielberg was born with a Venus-Jupiter conjunction, so that means this was also a recurrence transit for him. And what I found when I was researching his biography is that his first two movies that he made, the first one was a made-for-TV movie and he released it on a Venus-Jupiter conjunction. And then his next movie was the first time he had a movie actually in theaters, and that was also on a Venus-Jupiter conjunction. So it’s funny that he also had one come out here, and that Venus-Jupiter conjunction in his chart, of course, is in the 5th house along with the Moon, which is the ruler of his Ascendant. So it’s like, the contrast is Spielberg has Cancer rising, had the Venus-Jupiter in his first house, but the ruler of his Ascendant and his Venus-Jupiter conjunction’s in the 5th in the place of creativity. And so he’s creating movies and doing creative products. But then Elon Musk has the ruler of the ascendant is the Moon in Virgo in the 3rd house of travel, and his thing is, you know, Tesla with cars and now SpaceX with space travel.
AC: Yeah. And the satellite system as well.
CB: Good point.
AC: Yeah. It’s interesting that you point out that Spielberg has this Venus-Jupiter signature and that he’s put out major works under Venus-Jupiter configurations, because that is – you know, a critique of Steven Spielberg is that his works are too benefic or they’re too sweet or they’re saccharine. You know, it’s like that the benefics are there, but what about the malefics? Right? That his works evidence that double benefic quality, but with insufficient challenge or darkness or shadowiness as life has.
CB: Yeah. I found – so here’s his chart. Cancer rising, and the Moon in Scorpio with that Venus-Jupiter conjunction. And I found a funny anecdote this month where he’s doing all these press tours, and somebody was asking him about his most iconic shot or they’re asking him about the logo of his production company. And it’s that iconic image of ET – like, Elliott and the alien ET from his movie E.T. – flying on a bike in the air across the Moon. And they said, like, where did that logo come from? And he said that shot in the movie, it came from Halloween and Halloween decorations where you would have a witch flying across the Moon. And he said he wanted to create something like that, but more wholesome.
AC: Yeah.
CB: And I thought that was an amazing manifestation of his like, Cancer rising and Moon ruling the Ascendant that his logo for his company is literally has the Moon on it.
AC: Yeah. Well, that and that like, the Moon with both benefics and that it was an attempt to take something negative or scary and find a positive variant of it.
CB: Exactly.
AC: But to his credit, he definitely did things that were darker in tone in order to offset I think some of that criticism. Like his World War II stuff like Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List, et cetera.
CB: Yeah. For sure.
Okay. And then the final thing there I’ll just mention in passing was with Musk, we mentioned the ruler of the ascendant with the Moon in the 3rd house. And I had contrasted him previously in my 3rd house episode with Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, who also had the ruler of the ascendant in the 3rd house. But now in the past year, Musk has launched this Wikipedia competitor called Grokipedia. And like, I’ve noticed recently it’s actually showing up in search results on Google. So Google is actually prioritizing pages from that. And Musk has the ruler of the ascendant in the 3rd house in Virgo, just like the founder of Wikipedia. So I think that’s also a bizarre weird correlation and repetition.
AC: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, though. Right? Like, that regular communication, something that’s normally consulted as part of one’s everyday as a sort of roadmap, or a map to local meanings and terms, et cetera, et cetera.
CB: Yeah. And that’s an entirely like, AI-based version of form of Wikipedia or Wikipedia rival. So those are things. Moving onto other things.
Another thing we said we were expecting with the Venus-Jupiter conjunction was like, prominent marriages around the Venus-Jupiter conjunction. And there was actually a notable surprise celebrity marriage. On May 31st, Dua Lipa got married basically, and that was like, all over the news for the next week, both of the marriage and then her honeymoon. So that was a striking Venus-Jupiter conjunction correlation.
And then there’s been a weird one with like, Taylor Swift where there was speculation she was gonna get married earlier in June, but now the tabloids are reporting that she’s booked out Madison Square Garden for like, July 3rd, and there’s a lot of speculation that she’s about to get married at the beginning of July. And I’m, for reasons we’ll talk about later in terms of alignments, hoping that’s not the case. And we’ll see if maybe the marriage took place already or is having some other time. But that’s kind of a weird thing that’s happening that’s still unfolding.
AC: Yeah. From what I understand, it’s pretty unconfirmed. One thing I would —
CB: Yeah.
AC: — say about doing it that next weekend, like, once Jupiter’s crossed into Leo, is that does put transiting Jupiter in configuration with her early Aquarius Venus, whereas Jupiter in Cancer is not configured to the natal Venus.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’s like, one of the things I’ll say is like, they did – they got together originally during I think Venus was like, in Leo or it was part of the Venus retrograde in Leo or something like that a few years ago. So they have a Venus in Leo signature, and that is one of the positive things that’s happening this month briefly is that when Jupiter, now that it’s gone into Leo, it’s temporary formed a sign-based conjunction with Venus again. So it’s possible that that’s being activated. But you know, I don’t know. The Mars-Uranus is so volatile that that’s a really tricky aspect in early July.
AC: Yeah. It’s not a stay together forever configuration.
CB: Well, we’ll see what happens.
So another weird celebrity one was Tom Holland in the middle of June in an interview, he was doing press tours for movies and stuff, and he said for the first time that he and Zendaya – he confirmed that they had gotten married last year already. So it was a weird like, confirmation that a really prominent celebrity marriage had taken place in the past that they’d kind of like, kept private up to that point, apparently.
AC: Yeah, that’s a good example.
CB: Yeah. So all right, so those are some of the Venus-Jupiters. Another Venus-Jupiter is, you know, we talked about and I kind of went out on a limb on the last forecast episode and talked about how Venus-Jupiter conjunctions can be good for peacekeeping efforts, and that we expected some things regarding like, a peacekeeping deal that looked temporarily good, but then we could see that things would unravel later in the month due to the Mercury retrograde and the Mars-Uranus conjunction. And that’s basically what happened where on June 14th, on Trump’s birthday, he announced that some sort of major peace deal had been worked out with Iran. And this was when Venus was at one degree of Leo, still pretty closely conjunct Jupiter at 26 degrees of Cancer. So Venus had changed signs, but it was still very close to a degree-based aspect that you could still like, see visually in the sky. And they eventually signed some sort of memorandum of understanding within the next few days after that. If I understand correctly, I believe that signing took place on June 17th, which was wild because that was the actual day of the Moon-Venus conjunction in Leo, although it was almost exactly opposing Pluto at the same time, which was already indicating some of the issues underlying that, even though it seemed like something on the surface.
So already now that we’re at the end of June, we’re recording this actually – today it’s June 28th, 2026. It’s Sunday just before three PM, and already with the Mercury going retrograde and canceling the conjunction with Jupiter, and with the Mars-Uranus conjunction moving into alignment, things are already starting to unravel at this point, it seems like.
AC: Yeah. I thought that that was a pretty classic example of Mercury appearing to be on its way to conjunction with Jupiter, Mercury therefore announcing things that were peaceful and just and high-minded and positive and provoking optimism, at least in the market, that were not going to pan out because Mercury was gonna station retrograde. And as I mentioned to you the other day, it’s very interesting that a lot of the important provisions in that deal had a 60-day time limit where both sides have to fulfill certain conditions by 60 days. And that 60 days puts us within one day of our first solar eclipse in Leo in the middle of August. As if there —
CB: Right.
AC: — was not enough within the deal to provoke skepticism, as if there was not enough astrology between here and there to provoke skepticism. Even that 60-day timeline lands at a point where the Sun disappears in the middle of the day and an eerie darkness shall reign.
CB: Yeah. So if it, it’s like, if it even makes it that far, because it’s like —
AC: Right.
CB: — on June 25th, 26th, things started escalating already when Iran struck an oil tanker in the Strait of Hormuz, and then the US did direct military strikes on Iran, and then Iran shot back. And it keeps escalating back and forth over the past few days. And we’re heading like, right into that Mars-Uranus conjunction which had been restrained; it was being held back somewhat because while Mars was still in late Taurus, it was applying to the sextile with Jupiter which was still in late Cancer. But then now that Mars has moved into Gemini, it’s just directly applying to Uranus at this point, which is so volatile and unstable and like, violent and unexpected.
AC: Yeah. And that deal has to get through all of July. And I’m willing to go out on a limb and say that based on the astrology, I’m very skeptical that this is a deal that will hold and that peace will reign.
CB: Yeah. So we’ll circle back to that. The last two Venus-Jupiter stories – one really quickly, it happened on the very day of the conjunction. Nintendo announced that it was going to release a long-awaited remake of the 1998 game Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. And I thought that was really funny, because not because I’m like, a gamer or Nintendo fanboy, but because of Leisa on the last episode had noted that in the Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer around 2001, like, two Jupiter cycles ago, the Hallmark channel was announced. And it was very much about like, nostalgia and family programming and things like that. And this launch by Nintendo was funny, because it’s literally targeting the nostalgia, basically, of millennials who like, grew up with that as one of the most popular video games of the last ‘90s and doing a remake of it that a bunch of millennials are stoked about due to the nostalgia of their childhood, basically.
AC: Yeah. So one thing to add to that – I looked up the chart for the release of the very first Legend of Zelda, which was in 1986. And of course, it has a Venus-Jupiter copresence in Pisces. Right?
CB: Oh wow.
AC: Yeah. And so and the Sun is there and Mercury is there. And so yeah. And so that is unsurprising. Also it has the Moon in Cancer, probably in late Cancer. And so that first release chart is lit up by the Venus-Jupiter conjunction.
I have one more Venus-Jupiter story that we haven’t written down, if there’s time for that.
CB: Yeah, that was the last one I was gonna end with; I thought it was a funny story.
AC: Oh yeah, it’s great. I think even funnier is that literally as the Venus-Jupiter conjunction was forming and as it perfects and in the days afterward, bars in Boston experienced a massive beer shortage after an estimated 50,000 Scottish fans came to the city for the 2026 World Cup. And so there were all these posts and stories about bars just being drunk dry. And like, the Venus-Jupiter revelry of traveling across the world, like, seeing your team, having an amazing time and just drinking a city dry in the process – like, that’s very Venus-Jupiter, and especially Venus-Jupiter in a water sign. Right? Like, you’re literally, “We drank all the happy liquid.”
And so I thought that was like, a lot of fun. I wish I had that much fun. My Venus-Jupiter conjunction was nice, but it was not “drank a city dry of beer” fun.
CB: Yeah. That is pretty fun, pretty excessive. Drinking. That’s funny, because excess came up actually in the episode I just did with Patrick just now where – what was it? Who was the director of Wolf of Wall Street? Scorsese, Martin Scorsese had Jupiter in Cancer, and then he had a recurrence, a goal year 71-year recurrence, when he did The Wolf of Wall Street of Jupiter in Cancer. And like, one of the core themes of that movie was literally like, excess. Like, a life lived to excess in every possible area or every possible way.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good point.
CB: Yeah. All right. So that is the Venus-Jupiter segment.
So with Venus-Pluto, there was only one major like, headline story I noted that day around the time of the Venus-Pluto opposition that happened in June where there was some sort of like, hack, and there was this weird list of a secret society that held meetings was leaked, and it had a bunch of celebrities on it. And so over the course of the next few days, a bunch of celebrities had to make issues – like, statements downplaying it or other things like that. And I thought it was a really interesting combination of Venus, which is like, associations and friendship and coming together with people, but then it’s opposite Pluto, and there was something about it being behind-the-scenes or hidden or underworldly or something like that that sort of came to the forefront at that time, at least in terms of the public’s discussion of it, you know, whatever the reality of that was.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, I think I accidentally watched an incredibly Venus opposite Pluto movie right when that opposition hit. Have you seen The Drama starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson?
CB: No, I wanted to see that, though. I love both of them.
AC: Okay, so no spoilers – it’s about a couple who are engaged to be married, and everything’s going well, but then a terrible secret from one of their pasts emerges, and the movie is really all about trying to grapple with that terrible secret and can the relationship survive the emergence of this terrible secret? Like, Venus – we’re happy, we love each other, we’re gonna get married – but then can it survive the opposition by Pluto? So yeah, oops!
CB: Wow. Yeah. That’s pretty good. I’ll have to check that out; I’ve been meaning to watch that.
That reminds me, there was a story like that I just read; it was from like, 2011 or something like that, but it went viral – re-viral – again recently where it was like, this couple in their late 90s, and they got a divorce. And they were like, the oldest couple with the longest marriage of like, 70 years, that’d ever gotten a divorce in history, and it was because of like, something came up from one of their pasts that shocked the other, and they decided to get a divorce basically in their late 90s, which is pretty crazy.
AC: Yeah, that’s brutal.
CB: Yeah. I couldn’t find birth data for anybody involved, so it was like, a couple from Italy. But if anybody happens to know the story I’m talking about and their birth data, let me know.
AC: Yeah, you’d hope that after 70 years, you’d kind of worked a lot of things out.
CB: Yeah, you would hope so. But I don’t know. People are people.
All right, so moving on. Last section of news was the Mars-Uranus stories, which just started to heat up over the past week especially as the Mars-Uranus conjunction came within 10 degrees. And the major and central one was that there was this major set of earthquakes and especially there were twin – two earthquakes, a 7.2 and a 7.5 magnitude earthquakes that struck northern Venezuela. And as of last night, it was like, it crumbled a ton of buildings and high-rises it was so powerful. And the numbers I was reading last night were around 15 hundred people are known to have died, basically, and over 3,000 are injured. But a bunch of rescue operations are still desperately underway right now. So a lot of those numbers may go up. And in the last forecast episode, Leisa and I noted that Venezuela was one of the countries we were keeping our eye on, because they were one of the countries born with a Mars-Uranus conjunction. So we were expecting a major turning point for Venezuela, for the US, for Lebanon was the other one we mentioned, and there was like, one more; I can’t remember what the fourth one was at the moment.
AC: Cuba, right?
CB: Cuba, yeah. Cuba is the other one that we’re expecting or we’re waiting on as well. But this – so it meant that this huge earthquake, part of it was that because it was a Mars-Uranus recurrence transit for Venezuela, basically, dating back to their revolution that started in 1810 around that Mars-Uranus conjunction.
AC: Yeah, Venezuela can’t catch a break.
CB: Yeah, it’s just been a string of really bad things, basically, for the past six months. So probably other significant things will come out of this still and we’ll have to pay attention, especially over the next few weeks while Mars is moving through Gemini, that that’s really gonna be activating something central about the birth chart of Venezuela. And Leisa actually pointed out that when the earthquake happened, that Mars was at like, 27 degrees of Taurus, and so it was activating the eclipse from February, which was back in Aquarius at I think 26, 27 degrees of Aquarius squaring Uranus at 27 degrees of Taurus. So that may be part of the timing surrounding this as well besides the Mars-Uranus recurrence was also that eclipse being a precursor.
AC: Yeah. And not only that, but within half a degree of 27 Taurus, you have the fixed star Caput Algol, which has a deservedly fearsome reputation.
CB: Absolutely.
All right, so moving onto the next news story. Another thing that’s developing right now is on June 26th – I think this is tied in with the Mars-Uranus conjunction – the Trump administration had been putting some sort of like, gag order on some of the AI companies that they couldn’t share their newly developed, high profile artificial intelligences because they were deemed to be too dangerous and too powerful in detecting vulnerabilities in websites and other programs and things like that. But on June 26th, the Trump administration announced that they struck a deal with Anthropic which granted the company permission to release its new Mythos Five model to a group of 100 companies and federal agencies, according to CNBC. And I think this is really important because I think this is one of the main signatures of not just this Mars-Uranus conjunction, but also potentially some of the subsequent conjunctions of Mars and Uranus in Gemini over the next seven years, which is the military use and development of artificial intelligence as well as the attempts to control it by the government, basically, similar to what was happening the last time Uranus was in Gemini in the 1940s and you had the Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb, which was deployed for the first time on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini in 1945.
So this is also happening in connection to and reminds me that in February, on the last Mars-Uranus square that led into this conjunction, the day before the Iran war began, remember there was that whole news story with Anthropic about them supposedly like, standing up to the government and saying that the government couldn’t use their program for military purposes. But then it led to this whole power struggle with the government at the time about them cutting off funding or something like that. So I think this is like, a major, major theme that’s emerging with this and some of that’s gonna be accelerated this month not just with the Mars-Uranus conjunction, but also with Uranus moving into and trining Pluto in Aquarius for the first time.
AC: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And to strengthen your example of last time Uranus was in Gemini, although the Manhattan Project was certainly the most famous big government project that produced military technology, all around the world nations were doing, were putting huge amounts of money into producing and improving military technology in what was in no case a sort of open free market with no regulation, right? Like, that is the nature of military technology is it’s not for your opponent. And so, like, the whole world was doing that, was rushing to do that last time. And so yeah, not very far into Uranus’s time in Gemini, and with Mars just getting in there, we are – yeah, we’re glimpsing that pattern. And as I said, I could not agree more. I think that’s a very safe call.
CB: Yeah. And that’s one of the things that makes me less optimistic about some of the outer planet alignments this month that’s happening is just the prominence of that Mars-Uranus conjunction is probably adding in a weapons or like, a military component that’ll be probably a large part of the focal point more than anything else.
AC: Yeah. And I don’t remember whether it was this year yearly or the one before, but we talked quite a bit about the last time that Uranus was in Gemini and Neptune was in Aries, which was around the US Civil War, and there was a – like, that sextile between those two planets produced a quantum leap in weapons technology. You know, people don’t usually discuss the Civil War in the United States as a time of nearly unprecedented military technological evolution, but it absolutely was. And so we also, you know, we have Neptune in that Mars-ruled sign this time again.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Sidenote – patron Rachel in our live chat points out that the movie Obsession, which is a horror movie about a girl wishing to love a guy that went wrong, came out in theaters on June 15th, and that was like, right on very close to the Venus-Pluto opposition. That’s a great example; I’m glad you mentioned that.
AC: Yeah. Like, wishing – not merely pining, but doing a magic so that this person would fall in love with them and then living out the dire consequences of —
CB: Okay.
AC: — compelled affection.
CB: I haven’t seen it. You saw it? I haven’t seen the movie yet.
AC: No, but I know about it.
CB: Okay. I’m dying to see it, but I’m waiting until it’s – I can rent. Okay, that’s a good example. Good. Very good.
All right, so moving on. Other Mars-Uranus conjunction things. On June 26th, some sort of agreement was signed between Lebanon, US, and Israel. I’m not sure how serious that is, but it was one of the things we were paying attention to because, as Leisa pointed out on the last forecast, Lebanon was one of those countries that was born on a Mars-Uranus conjunction recently, at least in terms of the current government and when it was breaking free of previous colonial powers in the same way that so many of those other countries were born on Mars-Uranus conjunction like the US, Venezuela, and Cuba also on Mars-Uranus conjunctions. So I don’t know how serious or how far that agreement’s gonna go, but I did note that immediately after the agreement was signed, there was like, protests that broke out on the streets of Lebanon over the agreement of people being angry about it. And I think in general, Lebanon has been a main sticking point that’s been causing issues with the peace negotiations over the past few weeks. So that continues to be one of the main things we’re gonna be focusing on as this Mars-Uranus conjunction culminates in July.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
CB: All right. And the very last news story I had, it just happened today. You and I delayed this – recording this forecast – basically as far as we could go into the month in order to see what would happen. And today, the day that Mars ingressed into Gemini and began the full-on conjunction with Uranus, I just saw a news story where some places were reporting that an Iranian government-affilitated Fars news agency published a commentary piece that was titled – that said that, “There was no choice but to build the atomic bomb.” And the article was outlining – or arguing, basically, that Iran must acquire nuclear deterrents to ensure that the military option of occupying and dividing the country was completely taken off the table. And also in response to some of the threats earlier this year that Trump made to quote – that he said, “a whole civilization will die tonight,” or elsewhere in May he said, “There would be one big glow coming out of Iran.”
So shortly after the article came out and started getting international attention, the Fars news agency issued a statement claiming that the piece was published by its user-generated content section and that it did not represent the agency’s official opinion or position. But I think it’s incredibly notable and sort of ominous still that there was any sort of story about nuclear weapons coming out when that’s something that we really had been nervous about and speculating and predicting would become more prominent with Uranus in Gemini and especially around the time of the Mars-Uranus conjunctions because of that precedent of the only time that a nuclear weapon’s ever been used in war was in 1945 right on a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini.
AC: Yeah. And Uranus in Gemini leading up to that was when the nuclear weapon was developed. So we have the development with just Uranus, and then the deployment with Mars-Uranus. And so yeah, ominous but completely in line with the astrology.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely.
All right, I think that’s it for news section. Are you good? Or is there anything we missed?
AC: I don’t think there was anything in particular. You know, June played out much as I thought it would and as much as I think you thought it would, as well. Like, there were some really nice moments, some of which were known to be temporary. Like, World Cup games – you know that that’s not going to set the tone for the rest of the year. But like, oh, that was fun, if you’re a fan. And there are a number of things I saw both in the world and in my little world where there were some great moments and positive developments, but that window closed, and you know, we’re not approaching the cruel twist part of June and things are moving in that direction. You know, Elon got his trillionaire status, and then it was gone. We’ve got a very – a peace deal that is almost certainly not going to hold up, right? Like, if you were inclined to wear rose-colored spectacles, there were some moments in June where you could almost imagine that everything was gonna be just fine. And a number of financial markets also temporarily decided to believe that everything was gonna be just fine.
CB: Yeah. I mean, one of the things we’ve gotten pretty good about by just doing it for more than a decade now is figuring out what the sequence is going be of the month through like, an overview and then kind of getting a sense for what the beats or the rhythm is gonna be. And last month, it was like, cleaner than usual because it was clear that we had this really positive alignment early in the month, but then things would start to go awry by later in the month and heading into July. And so sometimes by just like, articulating that, the sequence, you sometimes can get really close to describing the general theme of the month, and that’s something I’ve been really excited about lately.
AC: Yeah. I think it’s crucial.
CB: Yeah. So we’ll see – that’s why I did the overview at the beginning of this month. Although this month is trickier, because it’s like, if you look at the planetary alignments calendar, it looks like somebody sneezed on the calendar. There’s so many different like, exact aspects going on all over the month.
AC: Yeah, we both agreed that this month couldn’t be nearly as easily summarized as June, and that it was a bit of a mess. It’s a bit of a mess in the sense that like, there were – well, a dramatic mess in that there are multiple important things happening, and some of them had nothing to do with each other, yet nonetheless occupied the same points in time. Much harder to summarize.
CB: Yeah. Totally. Well, why don’t we transition to talking about that? But first, let’s take a little break.
I wanted to give a quick shoutout to our sponsor for this episode, which is the United Astrology Conference which is happening September 3rd through the 9th, 2026, in Chicago. The United Astrology Conference, also known as UAC, is the biggest astrological conference in the world. It’s typically been held every four years since the 1980s, but this time it’s back for the first time in eight years with the last one being all the way back in 2018. Join thousands of fellow astrologers from around the world to talk astrology, deepen your insights, and be part of the community’s biggest reunion in nearly a decade. Whether you’re looking to sharpen your skills, connect with your peers, or grow your astrology business, UAC is the place to be.
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All right, that’s gonna be a great conference, and you are going to be there, I hear, Austin?
AC: Yeah, I will. I’m gonna be giving two lectures and a post-conference workshop. And Kait will also be there; Sphere and Sundry will be vending for the first time ever. There’ll be a booth. And so it’s gonna – I mean, it’s a big deal. Even when it is not artificially delayed by plague, UACs are always a big deal, and then this one, which represents the – this is the longest gap between two UACs since they began, isn’t it? Is doubly important. Like, how much has happened in both the world and in more particularly int he astrological world since 2018? Quite a bit! So —
CB: Yeah.
AC: — it’s a great thing.
CB: And because UAC is such a big community thing – because it’s the biggest astrology conference. Like, all the astrologers there bring their A game in terms of lectures. Like, I know Leisa is like, really putting a lot into preparing for her lectures right now. So is Patrick Watson. Basically every astrologer I know is spending the summer putting together some fantastic presentations. And I’m glad you mentioned the trade show, because that’s one of my favorite parts with all the different astrology vendors, but also there’s always a massive astrology bookstore there. Because it’s like, most astrologers like, don’t have a good local bookstore where you can go and like, browse actually good titles, more than a dozen titles, but it’s usually like, this huge thing that’s put on by Greg from Astrology Et Al, and it always ends up having just like, hundreds and hundreds of different astrology books.
AC: Yeah, it’s a really unique resource.
CB: Yeah. All right. Well, everyone should check that out. I’ll put a link to their website in the description below this video or on the podcast website for this episode. But otherwise visit UACAstrology.com.
AC: Yeah, please do. It’s really, it’s an irreplaceable event. It’s not – you can’t just be like, “eh, I’ll catch the next one.” Like, maybe in six years. Maybe. Assuming nothing goes wrong in the world to interfere with it. Yeah, it’s not something you could decide to do again next year or even the rest of this decade.
CB: All right, my friend. Let’s transition into talking about the astrology of July and doing a deep dive into the different aspects that are happening over the course of the next few weeks.
So I already gave the overview at the beginning, so I won’t reiterate that. But I will say that basically we’re opening the month with those three things that just happen at the very end of June, which is that Mercury just stationed retrograde in Cancer, so we’re dealing with a Mercury retrograde for the first three weeks of July. Mars has just moved into Gemini, where it’s forming that conjunction with Uranus which is so volatile, which is gonna go exact around July 3rd and 4th. And then finally, Jupiter has just entered Leo, and it’s gonna be building up to this opposition with Pluto that’s gonna go exact mid-month. So right out of the gate, we just have stuff that like, we’re off to an explosive start right at the beginning of July.
AC: Yeah. Absolutely. These are big moves. Which one of those would you like to begin with?
CB: Let’s talk about the Mars-Uranus and reiterate some of that, just because I think that’s so much of the focal point of the first week of the month. But we’re still gonna be having lingering aftereffects the rest of the month since Mars will continue to be copresent with Uranus by sign or conjunct Uranus by sign. But really, you know, usually around Mars-Uranus conjunctions, one of the things we always see is just a bunch of stuff starts happening at once, and all of a sudden there’s all these momentous, unexpected, stark, sometimes like, violent events that start happening around Mars-Uranus conjunctions. And this one’s especially important for the US, just because the US was born with a Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini during the Declaration of Independence. And of course, this July 4th is gonna be celebrating or will be the anniversary of 250 years of the existence of the country. So all the astrologers have noted that this conjunction is happening right on that, and that seems very symbolically significant.
AC: Yeah, not only that, but it locks the Mars-Uranus conjunction into the solar return for the United States.
CB: Yeah. And that’s so —
AC: Meaning that like, the United States will carry that energy all year in a way that it wouldn’t otherwise if it occurred on March 3rd or something, whereas, you know, coinciding with that important date is – it’s symbolic, but it’s also like, has practical implications with the astrology.
CB: Yeah. So there’s both like, a localized thing of all the stuff that happens this month, but then there’s also gonna be broader implications for that being the signature then for the entire next year of the US’s birth chart and that principle we saw really starkly last year when you pointed out that in the Aries ingress chart for Iran that Mars was like, right on the Ascendant. And so when the initial war happened last June, the initial strikes on Iran in June of 2025, we noted that like, this wasn’t over yet because that Aries ingress chart was still gonna be applicable for the rest of the year, which lasted all the way through until March of 2026. And then the full war began in February.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it doesn’t, when you have something on a solar return or on an Aries ingress or any, yeah, either of those, sure, you’ll have something – you’ll have effects at one point or during that. But the flavor is sealed in, and it can come leaking out again as other planets retrigger that. Like when Mars makes three squares with Uranus before, during, and after its retrograde.
CB: Yeah. Exactly.
AC: So yeah. It’s a big Mars return year for the United States. Big Mars-Uranus return year.
CB: Okay. And here is a diagram that shows the – this is the three-degree range, which is gonna be the most intense range which really comes into orb by June 29th, peaks around July 4th, and then moves outside of the three-degree orb by July 8th. But I’ll try to find the other 10-degree orb one, because I think that one’s really relevant as well because this is not just gonna like, cut off completely on July 8th. But we’re gonna see a lot of lingering stuff after that. And why don’t we talk about and reiterate some keywords for Mars-Uranus so as to not take things for granted?
You know, volatility and instability are major keywords for this alignment where there’s often sudden, unpredictable shifts and really highly erratic conditions just in the most general phrase or general way that you can describe that. There’s also really explosive turns and sudden ruptures and unexpected events that rapidly change the landscape of things. And to give you, you know, a reference to that, the last time this happened was two years ago in the summer of 2024 right in the middle of the US presidential election where we just had that crazy week where everything happened at once. And it really got kicked off with the assasination attempt that happened on Trump’s life in Pennsylvania, and then like, later that week, Trump accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention in a stunning political turnaround, becoming the nominee of his party again after being out of office for four years. That same week, he picked JD Vance as his running mate to be vice president. And the same day, Trump had some really serious court cases dismissed basically in a surprising turnaround the same day. And then later that week, Biden announced that he was sick with covid, and then dropped out of the presidential race, suddenly making Kamala Harris the nominee, basically, for the Democrats. So it was just this like, crazy week where all of this really momentous, critical stuff happened at once, and because that was the last Mars-Uranus conjunction in Taurus, that was somehow one of the precursor events for a bunch of the stuff that’s about to take place with this conjunction in Gemini.
AC: Yeah, that’s a nice summary. I like “rupture” in particular as a word, because Mars-Uranus gives you things that are unprecedented or things that – and this is just a basic Uranus thing, but it’s important to reiterate here – factors become important or critical very swiftly that you didn’t expect to be relevant. Mars-Uranus gives game-changing or game-breaking developments, whereas something that you thought was a sure thing or a safe bet suddenly becomes very risky or completely untenable. There’s a tendency during these to sort of overturn – well, I think of people playing chess and then suddenly it becomes a fistfight or it doesn’t matter what the position of the pieces relative to each other on the board is, because now it’s a completely different game. And that like, the game switching with very little warning is part of the, yeah, is an important part of the Mars-Uranus energy.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Unexpected strife and surprise attacks have been a major signature over the past year where we saw the surprise attack where Israel and the US struck Iran in June of 2025 was a Mars-Uranus square. And then the very next Mars-Uranus square happened in late February of 2026 where the US and Iran again launched a full-fledged war on Iran or the US and Israel did. And those are like, the other precursor events that directly then feed into this conjunction because we’ve seen those two hard aspects that led up to this really tie into that war. So we gotta keep those keywords in mind as well as things like accidents, localized conflicts, severe disruptions that seem to come out of nowhere. There’s also military innovation as we were talking about earlier in this episode in the news section and in the 1940s but also in other periods like during the Civil War, the rapid development or even deployment of new military technologies and weapons has been a really common theme that we’ve seen over the past few hundred years. There’s also a very strong theme of rebellions and liberation that historically comes up with these. I mentioned earlier a bunch of the countries who had their start, basically, through military revolutions basically in order to form their countries, including the US, Cuba, Lebanon, and one more – I’m spacing out. But —
AC: Venezuela.
CB: Venezuela, yeah. But uprisings, radical structural changes, and intense struggles for freedom. And yeah, those are some of the major themes we’ve talked about a lot. But I just wanted to make sure we reiterated for this conjunction now that we’re finally there.
AC: Yeah. Mars catalyzes a capacity for change that Uranus represents that was latent. And that dynamic looks like a powder keg being lit or a large fuel supply suddenly going up in flames. We literally have gotten plenty of just literal explosions during Mars-Uranus conjunctions and squares. But that dynamic also is also illustrative, educative, useful for thinking about how it works on a psychological level and a macro level where some things, you know, there’s some sort of fuel supply; there’s some sort of latent capacity for rapid change, but it needs a spark. And Mars provides the spark. And that’s why this pairing is very often so explosive.
CB: Yeah. And then it also acts, oftentimes, at the beginning of a seven-year Uranus in Gemini transit as a precursor event or as the initial trigger event that then eventually escalates into a major historical conflict or turning point down the line. And like I said, usually a major – in US history, usually either the first or the second Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini in a cycle will be the start of a major conflict. Like the Civil War happening, I think, on was it the second conjunction, I think, in the 1800s of Mars in Uranus like, literally to the day; Fort Sumter happens on this Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini. So we have that as a precedent in addition to the Revolutionary War and World War II.
AC: Yeah, and the Civil War precedent’s interesting because it really forefronts the divisive symbolism of Gemini, of where once there were one, suddenly there are two. Like, suddenly exposing divisions in a supposed unity.
CB: Yeah, that’s a really great point, because that’s – even though we’re so focused on the external conflict version, which is what we got during World War II when Uranus was in Gemini the last time, the one before that was the internal conflict that was the Civil War when Uranus was in Gemini the previous cycle. And we can see the heightening tensions happening both internally and externally as we’re starting this first conjunction there.
AC: Yeah. And then back to the Revolutionary War, it’s not that everybody who lived on the North American continent was all in on fighting the British. Like, there were stark divisions within what was becoming the United States at that time. And the intensity and swiftness and potential violence of events served to exacerbate already existing polarization. And so seeing that not just within the United States but not only between nations but also within nations is something that we’ll definitely keep an eye on.
CB: Yeah, that’s a great point, that the Revolutionary War was both an internal conflict as well as an external conflict at the same time. All right.
AC: Good times.
CB: Good times! So yeah. Mars-Uranus conjunction. On top of that, it’s like, then we have something really basic, which is like, a Mercury retrograde. But when you throw that on top of it, you know, we gotta reiterate some of our normal Mercury retrograde keywords, which is like, technological difficulties and snafus like internet glitches and outages, software crashes. We get delays and do-overs and false starts to something, or when you do something but then you have to go back and re-do it. Sometimes it can be travel disruptions and transit breakdown and general logistical errors and things like that, as well as sometimes personally or internally a period of going back and looking at the past, people or situations from the past coming back into the present and sometimes having to review things that happened before the present time basically.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, the capacity for oopsies, which Mercury retrograde brings, become much more, I don’t know, they become much more significant when we consider that Mercury is ruling the Mars-Uranus conjunction. And Mercury is also in like, a perfect antiscial relationship with that Mars-Uranus conjunction too. And so it has like, a little shadowy aspect that links the Mercury and the Mars-Uranus more than it looks like. And so it’s, you know, if we’re talking about, if we’re looking at the one precedent where nuclear weapons were deployed, if we’re talking about super weapons, and Mars-Uranus does bring this idea of like, overwhelming force, right? If we have a capacity for overwhelming force, we don’t want that to be in the hands of Mercury retrograde. Right? We don’t want tremendous, awe-inspiring power being deployed by, “oops, I didn’t read the last email; I guess we weren’t supposed to do that,” or “I don’t know; I skimmed. I had an AI summary and it gave me the wrong targets for this overwhelming, godlike power.” Right? The little oopsies that happen with every Mercury retrograde are magnified significantly by this conjunction and Mercury’s very strong relationship to it.
CB: Yeah. And especially with Uranus also hitting the exact trine with Pluto for the first time and how much we’ve seen the emergence of artificial intelligence as this thing that’s been changing the world and getting integrated or like, shoved into all of our lives ever since Pluto went into Aquarius in the 2022, 2023 timeframe, and now to have Uranus go into Gemini where it always accelerates communications and transportation and then accelerating that through a trine with Pluto. You know, a lot of the stuff this month I guess that we’ll talk about with the outer planet alignments that could be interpreted positively; I just have a much more skeptical and somewhat negative take on because I think that’s accelerating the developments with AI and military technologies and probably the confluence of those two things. And while there may be, like, positive things that come out of that, there’s also gonna be some challenging stuff that come out of that as well.
AC: Yeah, there are a lot of perfect alignments, but perfect for who and perfect for what?
CB: Right. And momentous in terms of humanity and a turning point for humanity in terms of what is one of the questions.
AC: Yeah.
CB: So let me show the chart to show what we’re looking at in terms of some of these alignments. So here is today – like, June 28th – but by the time the month opens on July 1st, this is what we’re looking at and this is where we’re at where Mars is already at like, two Gemini and Uranus is there at three. So we have that conjunction forming. But then we see that Pluto is down here at four degrees of Aquarius, so both of those are trining and forming a sort of synergistic relationship with that planet, which I think accelerates what Pluto’s already doing. And then a lot of astrologers have been noting that there’s this outer planet alignment where eventually in the month, Jupiter will come up to that opposition with Pluto mid-month, and then Jupiter is sextiling Uranus from four degrees of Leo to four degrees of Gemini, and then Uranus is sextile Neptune at four degrees of Aries and Neptune is sextile Pluto at four degrees of Aquarius so that it creates a bucket pattern, what modern astrologers, I think ever since not Alan Leo, Marc Edmund Jones have called like, a bucket pattern because you have this shape basically that forms on the bottom half of the chart. And yeah. So that’s one of the alignments that we’re looking at this month.
AC: Yeah, the trapezoid of trouble.
CB: Yeah. Well, it’s like, you and I were talking about it yesterday in the prep meeting, because a lot of people are calling it Barbault’s bucket —
AC: Basket.
CB: Basket? Okay. Basket formation, not a bucket. But and he did say some positive things about that, but I feel like —
AC: He said some wildly out of character positive things.
CB: Yeah. I don’t know why people are hyping that as much, though, as it is, and I feel like it’s going too far, because I think that like, one of his premises was that when all the planets come together in conjunctions, he could see that those were often major times of trouble and conflict and plagues or pandemics, such as for example the 2020 conjunctions that coincided with the covid pandemic, and that he thought sometimes when the planets then conversely were more spread out that things were more calm. But while this alignment does indicate some notable momentous stuff that’s happening in terms of long-term planetary cycles, there’s a lot of really tense stuff happening this month. So I think that astrologers might be going a little too far in some instances in like, over-idealizing how great this is gonna be, especially when some of the combination is like, this tense Jupiter-Pluto opposition that’s taking place. Or the Mars-Uranus conjunction and how that ties in with the US birth chart in terms of the Uranus returns always coinciding with a major conflict. And I think that’s an element that he wasn’t necessarily looking at or emphasizing as much.
AC: Yeah. You know, I’ve been rereading Barbault, and I’m honestly pretty confused by his excessively positive statements. Because in the, I don’t know, hundred pages in that book leading up to that very brief and very rosy paragraph, he’s very grounded and not prone to flights of fantasy. He notes positive things and hopeful configurations, and then immediately details how those things didn’t work out so well or how they failed completely and achieved opposite results. He’s very grounded in history. And so it’s a little strange that this one paragraph from a couple hundred page book is basically, you know, has become such a famous thing. I mean, part of it is that’s really – it’s a really appealing idea, because nothing about this time period is full – inspires a transcendent hope for a better world and a better humanity and for, as he literally says, “civilizations reinventing themselves for the better.” And so the idea that that might be possible I can see being appealing on an emotional level, but it’s very strange.
CB: Yeah. Well, I don’t think we need to —
AC: In the context of the rest of his work.
CB: Yeah. Well, I don’t think – I think we can focus on like, because I think that’s the mistake is everyone’s just like, hyping up one sentence or something, one paragraph which is something that happens, but I think for our purposes, we can just say like, I’m not on board with that necessarily and to focus on —
AC: No, not at all.
CB: — what our own delineation is where, yeah. We should get into some of these things and —
AC: Yeah, let’s take apart the basket, or let’s look at what constructs it and what we see happening.
CB: Yeah. So we talked a little bit already about the Uranus-Pluto trine and how I feel like that’s gonna accelerate some of the stuff with AI and tie it in with probably unfortunately with drones and robotics and things like that. But then —
AC: Hundred percent.
CB: — one of the major alignments that happens this month, and it’s the only time this alignment will go exact even though it will stay in aspect by sign over the course of the next year, but we have the Jupiter-Pluto opposition, which is gonna go exact in the middle of July, I think by July 19th. And this is one of our major outer planet alignments this month that is kind of tricky, because historically it tends to coincide with kind of tricky things, because Jupiter is the planet of expansion and truth and travel and growth and the confirmation of good things, whereas Pluto tends to indicate issues involving control and manipulation and power and things that happen behind the scenes or underneath the surface. And when you put some of those two principles in opposition as I’ve talked about in recent forecasts, sometimes you get issues with the manipulation of the truth or the control of information. Like Leisa pointed out, for example, that Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, bought The Washington Post on the last Jupiter-Pluto opposition over a decade ago, I think, in 2013 pretty close to the exact opposition. And so all of a sudden, you have like, a billionaire, one of the richest people in the world, buying this major media organization which subsequently he would then influence what they could and could not cover. Not just with his own company, but also in terms of politics and different things like that. And that’s like, one instance as well as I’ve seen other instances where like, Mussolini, for example, very close to a Jupiter-Pluto opposition completely dispensed with the last vestiges of the democracy and basically took over as part of the fascist taking over Italy, basically, in the 1920s as another example of a Jupiter-Pluto opposition. So sometimes you get these power grabs that happen somewhat openly or nakedly.
AC: Yeah. Well, and there’s a fundamental opposition or friction between what Jupiter and Pluto signify. Jupiter, as you alluded to, it’s about high-mindedness, it’s about principle; if you were to imagine its motion, it’s buoyant. Jupiter is about trying to rise up above a circumstance, trying to stay true to principle. Trying to go for win-win situations. And so Pluto, you know, Pluto is the catonian, subterranean, magmic, id-infused power from the shadows beneath the earth. And so there’s very often with Jupiter-Pluto, and especially when they’re in opposition, you have a subversion of the high-minded or an undermining of the aspirational and principle or a manipulation of it to serve that more subterranean end. And as you mentioned with Bezos, we very, very often see tight Jupiter-Pluto configurations in the charts of those who become billionaires or who rise to very influential and shadowy positions of power. Where like, you can see the Jupiter, but you can also imagine the Pluto just behind it. And it’s worth noting that Jupiter having just entered Leo – it’s left Cancer at this point, and so Jupiter has gone from being more or less unimpeded at the end of Cancer in the sign of its exaltation to a sign, Leo, where it is has some dignity and power, is somewhat at home, but is by no means its exaltation and has to contend with an opposition with Pluto, which is in and of itself starkly opposed in meaning and principle to what Jupiter means. And so the Jupiterian is, at this point, we’re a day before the movement into Leo. The Jupiterian current is about to take a nosedive. Jupiter’s stock will drop very soon. And we’ve talked about – I have expressed concern about how much, about what happens when Jupiter isn’t in its exaltation holding things together, because this is Jupiter’s ability to hold things together which is one of Jupiter’s big jobs; its capacity to do that is significantly negated very soon. And we first see that in July. Although it will be interfered with again by Mars and by eclipses afterwards.
CB: Right. Yeah. And it’s like, one of the things is that in the same way that Jupiter in Cancer brought – and the Venus-Jupiter conjunction at the end of that – brought the aggrandizement of some of the Cancer rising people like Elon Musk becoming the richest person in history at that time, Jupiter in Leo is going to aggrandize some of the Leo rising celebrities that we know and that are prominent in the news cycle, as well as in some instances bring some positive things for some of the Leo placement people. But then there’s like, something that starts happening not long after this, which is we get that solar eclipse in Leo – the first solar eclipse in Leo – in August, and then later in the year, Mars moves into Leo and begins getting ready for a Mars retrograde in Leo, which is really gonna bring some problems and some challenges in the Leo sectors of our charts. So this Jupiter going into Leo and this Jupiter-Pluto opposition is the opening of a sequence of events that’s gonna play out over the course of the next year where while there will be some positive things being imported for those with Leo placements and in the Leo sector of our chart, it’s opening up the sequence of some challenging stuff that’s gonna come up as well.
AC: And the good that is inspired by Jupiter’s movement through Leo will be tested and challenged by multiple planets at multiple times through the year. Which doesn’t mean that none of those challenges can be overcome, especially on an individual level, but it means that they will exist. That it’s not a straightforward growth improvement arc. There are multiple things which may subvert it or turn that arc back upon itself.
CB: Yeah. And that’s different than with Cancer and our Cancer placements; we had the Mars retrograde in Cancer before, and then Jupiter came up and then tried to clean things up in that sign afterwards. But here it’s kind of like, reversed where Jupiter goes in before, but then Mars comes in and starts kind of causing problems and wrecking things after, which is an interesting dynamic.
In terms of other Jupiter-Pluto oppositions, I was researching ones in history, and these are important because it means that this upcoming opposition is gonna be a recurrence transit of these foundational events. But one of them I found was that the US Bill of Rights, that the first congress of the United States passed the Bill of Rights in 1789 on a Jupiter-Pluto opposition. And I think this is really interesting in terms of granting the, you know, American citizens certain rights and certain freedoms and ensuring certain freedoms like freedom of speech, of assembly and religion. And so in some ways, that foundation will be coming up again and up for like, a critical review in some ways, especially in July.
AC: Yeah, that’s an excellent example, right? And like, the Bill of Rights is there because Jupiter can be opposed by Pluto, right? All the things that we hope for, that we’re trying to enshrine will come under fire, and so you need safeguards in effect, right? And this is absolutely a point where those are going to be reexamined and tested.
Also what happened in 1789 with Jupiter-Pluto almost exactly opposite and exactly the same sign, the US treasury was established.
CB: Nice.
AC: Right? And so if we’re —
CB: That’s really good.
AC: — if we have any thoughts about the status of the dollar, about inflation, about the dollar as the world’s reserve currency – if we’re interested in any – if we think that this is a very interesting point to think about, the dollar and its future, this is the first Jupiter-Pluto in exactly the same sign that has occurred since the founding of the treasury.
CB: That’s really good, because in 2020 during the Jupiter-Pluto conjunction, it was such a striking transfer of wealth that was taking place, especially when like, covid hits, the stock market crashes. But then all of these really rich and powerful people started investing a ton of money and then just made wild amounts of money at that time from some of those investments once the stock market bounced back. It’s like, you had things like that, or you also had people abusing the grants that the government was giving for covid at that time and using those inappropriately and just like, massive transfers of wealth basically or the accumulation of massive amounts of wealth. We know that that’s a signature in natal charts as well.
AC: Yeah, the preponderance of Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions in the charts of the ultra-wealthy is very striking. You know, it really seems to astrologically underscore the saying that behind every great fortune is a great crime, which isn’t gonna be true in every single case, but when you look at most of the list of top five richest people in the world, it’s I think four out of five have Jupiter-Pluto conjunctions. It’s pretty wild. You got Bill Gates, you got Warren Buffet. You’ve got Carlos Slim, and then there are a couple others I can’t remember offhand. But it’s pretty wild.
CB: Yeah. So that’s a major theme; I’m glad you brought up the financial stuff. Another one in history I found was like, four days after an exact opposition between Jupiter and Pluto on November 19th, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. And this is a really important turning point during the Civil War, because he changed the narrative, and this is the point where he made the war about ending slavery, and he tried to elevate the purpose of the war and the purpose of all of the carnage, of the thousands and thousands of people that were dying, and to reframe it as this crusade for human equality and liberty and also democratic self-governance. So I thought that was a really important turning point as well in terms of US history and sometimes how it can be positive things. But it’s something that’s extremely negative. Like, it was, you know, Gettysburg and just the number of people that were dying. But the idea of fighting for a higher cause and fighting to transform the country and move it away from a dark past and inheritance into something more Jupiterian and high-minded.
AC: Yeah. And that really exemplifies the struggle between Jupiter-Pluto.
CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. Where it’s like, you have sometimes these deeply entrenched sides of the government or society or what have you trying to hold onto some very dark things. And then you have this other effort to do something more liberatory or profound or confirming, and the extreme tension between those two.
AC: Yeah. And —
CB: So.
AC: You go ahead.
CB: So I’m just gonna rattle off a few more that I found. So 1937, Roosevelt attempted Supreme Court packing, and that was a major thing around the time of the Jupiter-Pluto opposition. We got a major – the birth of McCarthyism in February of 1950 was a Jupiter-Pluto opposition. The Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s was also Jupiter-Pluto. So these are some of the reasons why, in terms of this opposition and viewing that as part of the focal point of this month, there are some outlets where that opposition has those connections with Uranus and Neptune which may provide some creative outlet for that opposition or a way to resolve it that might not have happened if those configurations didn’t take place. But nonetheless, it’s still focused on something that is kind of a difficult opposition to reconcile.
AC: Yeah. And the two sides of that opposition being reinforced by Uranus in Gemini and Neptune in Aries does not, in my mind, make them reconcilable or easily reconcilable. If anything, Neptune in Aries and Uranus in Gemini seem to be both individually and as a pair a very kinetic and disruptive set of influences rather than, you know, a pair of diplomatic emissaries who are going to reconcile Pluto and Jupiter.
CB: Right. So yeah, and then the last thing just with respect to that is just Pluto’s at four degrees of Aquarius and so it has that trine with Uranus at four degrees of Gemini, and then the opposition with Pluto as well as the sextile from Neptune at four degrees of Aries. And that actually brings up something – the Saturn-Neptune opposition is now 10 degrees away, so it’s actually like, the furthest this month in July that it’s gonna get apart. And then both of those planets are gonna station retrograde. So that’s really crucial during the course of July, because whenever a planet retrograde, it tends to act as like, an exclamation mark next to the planet and whatever configuration it’s tied into at the time. So that means this is also gonna be an important month for the Saturn-Neptune conjunction and some of the themes that we’ve been seeing arise from that over the course of the past year especially ever since Saturn and Neptune have started meeting up in Aries, and especially the blurring of boundaries between seeming opposites. We’ve had the blurring of reality and the inability to tell what’s real versus what’s true. Sometimes we’ve had disclosures over hidden things and of conspiracies that were happening behind the scenes that suddenly became known or made public. I’ve also noted in the last forecast like, sometimes anti-astrology things or skeptical things coming up on Saturn-Neptune conjunctions. It’s such a wide range of different things, but this month is – if like, the other aspects weren’t enough already, we also have an important turning point with respect to that conjunction.
AC: Yeah.
CB: All right. Now that we’ve got some of the big picture stuff out of the way, I want to animate the chart for the video watchers and just go through sequentially so that we can get more of a sense of the final details of the month and what the order is in which we’re gonna encounter things. Does that sound good to you?
AC: It does.
CB: All right. Here is the animated chart starting July 1st. So all right. Top of the month is really just, as we said, the Mars-Uranus conjunction going exact on the 3rd and the 4th. And then after that, a couple days later, the Sun squares Saturn where the Sun hits about 14 degrees of Cancer and squares Saturn at 14 degrees of Aries. That’s a little kind of a setback day in terms of some obstacles or responsibilities or especial surmountable difficulties often come up in hard aspects with the Sun and Saturn.
AC: Yeah. Sun-Saturn’s a little bit of a bummer. Things can seem harder than they normally do. You can feel oppressed by necessity.
CB: Yeah. And the Mars-Uranus I meant to show this diagram with the 10-degree orb, because I think that’s gonna be more evocative of the actual range, especially of the most intense range where it peaks around July 4th but it’s still within 10 degrees all the way through July 19th. So keep that in mind as I’m going through and animating here.
Then on July 7th, we get Neptune stationing retrograde in Aries. So we’re gonna get an exclamation mark next to Neptune and some of its issues in terms of lack of clarity or focus or truthfulness can come up in terms of that first station in Aries reactivating the Saturn-Neptune conjunction.
AC: Yeah, and bringing into question what have you or what have we been pursuing with this strange new vision, right? Because Neptune is pretty freshly in Aries and provides a sort of enclosing narrative or dream. Like, what are we trying to do, and what is the story that everyone’s working within without even realizing what its framing is? And so the station is a time to naturally become aware of that and maybe to think critically about how you’ve been following the current of that larger dream as it unfolds without meaning to.
CB: Yeah. And it harkens back to the exact Saturn-Neptune conjunction of like, February and March and says, “We’re not done with that.” And so it’s gonna start bringing us back to some of those things, both personally but also geopolitically in terms of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction being tied in with the war in Iran, things happening with Russia and Ukraine that are still continuing to escalate at this point. Things with oil, for example; I had discovered that Saturn-Neptune conjunction signature for the history of oil in the past 200 years. So that’s our first step towards that, and then the second station of Saturn later in the month will be even more of an acceleration of that.
AC: Yeah, that’s a great point. There’s plenty of Saturn-Neptune left. Like, just because the exact conjunction is gone doesn’t mean we’re not doing this for another two years. Like, they’re still copresent. And the paired stations this month will absolutely get back to work on those things which are augered by Saturn-Neptune but haven’t yet fully come to pass.
CB: Yeah. And one of the positive things I will say about the first week of July, aside from the volatility of Mars-Uranus, is like I said earlier, Venus and Jupiter are in the same sign again after for a while they hadn’t been once Venus had moved into Leo and Saturn was still hanging out in Cancer. But we do have a sign-based copresence of those two planets, which is probably gonna be positive for the first week of July in the Leo sector of each of our charts, and especially whatever whole sign house Leo is for each of us is looking pretty good. But then unfortunately, that changes after the first week of July when we get Venus moving into Virgo and into the sign of her fall or depression starting around July 9th. And this begins kind of a tricky period for Venus that lasts and eventually culminates later in the month, because from this point forward, Venus first conjoins the South Node in Virgo, and then it has to like, square Uranus and then eventually it builds up to a square with Mars with Mars in the superior position that goes exact late in the month, which is one of my least favorite aspects towards the end of July in what is otherwise like, a lull and a period of things not being as chaotic and tense as the beginning of the month.
AC: Yeah. After Venus leaves Leo on the 9th, there’s a lot of kind of miserable aspects. And one of the things I see in people’s lives when Venus is just in general having problems in the sky is that it’s often harder to find joy in everyday things. Like, not only are there – not only does Venus’s affliction bring problems in specific areas or difficulties in specific areas like romance or in trying to create something beautiful. But Venus also speaks to our capacity to find joy in the everyday. And so it’s a little – Venus is giving a little miserable at several points during this month after the 9th.
CB: Okay. Yeah. And I’ll mention more about that later and some of the other exact aspects. But after this point, the next major turning point we get is around July 12th when a retrograde Mercury conjoins the Sun and forms a cazimi where Mercury enters into the heart of the Sun, and it hits the halfway point in Mercury’s retrograde cycle. So at this point, some of the problems and the delays and the technological snafus that were set up at the beginning of the Mercury retrograde in late June and early July start to turn towards resolution at this point in the month. And they’re not fully fixed until later when Mercury stations direct, but this is usually the point where the crossover happens and you can start to see things take a turn for the better.
AC: Yeah. The storm is not over, but it is literally hitting – it is coming to that eye of the hurricane point where the momentary clarity afforded by the precise conjunction with the Sun allows you to understand what’s going on in a way that’s much more difficult when the wind’s blowing things in your face. And —
CB: Yeah.
AC: — you can often see and begin the implementation of solutions to problems that have arisen in that temporarily clear space.
CB: Yeah. For sure. The moment of clarity and the moment of internal truth and resolution during the dark night of the soul sort of reflection period that Mercury retrograde can sometimes be.
AC: Yeah.
CB: All right. So two days after that, we get our actually first lunation of the month, which is this New Moon in the sign of Cancer, which occurs around 22 degrees of Cancer. Let me move the chart so we can fully see that. There it is. 22 degrees – actually, late 21 degrees of Cancer technically is where that New Moon is located. And we can see by this point, Mars is about six degrees off of the conjunction with Uranus, so that’s still present and still playing a role. But we’re firmly on the downslope of that at this point. Venus is just coming off of a square with Uranus the previous day, which can sometimes be some unexpected disruptions in relationships or sometimes just an unexpected new relationship that’s somehow disruptive in your life. But this New Moon in Cancer happens just after the Mercury cazimi, which I kind of like because then we’re in the heading towards resolution phase of the Mercury retrograde rather than the other first half of it.
AC: Yeah. And it also doubles down on the rethinking of what the Cancer area of your life or of a given chart is, because Jupiter’s not there anymore. Right? Mercury spends this retrograde treading backwards along the same topics and territory that Jupiter spent all of this year in, right? It’s like, rethinking like, what did Jupiter did, what does Jupiter not here anymore mean, and then the resetting of the month with the Sun and Moon conjunction in that same space I think reaffirms that same rethinking. What is this space like now, and how should I change my expectations from how they’ve been last six months, last year, for this part of my life?
CB: Yeah. That’s a really excellent point, because there’s been so much activity in the Cancer sector of the chart over the past year or two that this is really capping things off with this Mercury retrograde in Cancer that’s forcing us to go – asking us to go back and review some of the things that have been happening in that sector of our chart, but also maybe take stock of some of the positive and challenging things and bring some sort of end or closure to that since a New Moon is also the end of a lunar cycle and probably putting a cap or a bookend to some of those themes as we’re taking stock of them.
AC: Yeah. Totally. Right, because during the previous New Moon a month ago, Jupiter was still in Cancer.
CB: Right. Yeah, exactly. All right. So we get that New Moon. And then moving on, we start getting some of our weirdly some of our outer planet stuff starts going exact around this time over the next couple of days. So one of them that goes exact on the very next day is that Uranus sextiles Neptune exactly on July 15th. And then three days later on July 18th, Uranus trines Pluto exactly. So all of a sudden in the middle of the month, we just start getting these outer planet alignments around four degrees of these different signs going exact in very quick succession. And I do think that is indicating some major things, but for me, the major thing is – in this one – is the Uranus trine Pluto and just the massive acceleration of technologies, of communications, and of travel that we’ve seen be core themes with that alignment.
AC: Yeah. It’s really – I think we’re really gonna see the coming into fruition of technologies that have been in development for a little bit. And if we think about the last time – if this is the waxing trine of the Uranus-Pluto cycle, our conjunction was right in the mid-’60s when we first really had computers. Right? The Uranus-Pluto conjunction is like, okay, humans have computers. And they were giant and hot and not particularly powerful. But we are now exactly one-third of the Pluto-Uranus cycle away from that. And so this is that like, waxing, developing, implementing point in the cycle, or it’s a big one of those.
CB: That’s a great point, yeah. Because Kent Bye – I talked to him in a previous episode – and he pointed out how very close to the Uranus-Pluto conjunction in the ‘60s at one point there was this thing called the master of all tech demos or something like that. And there was like, a professor who demonstrated 10 different technologies all in one lecture, all related to the computer, which are things that are commonplace nowadays, but at the time was wild to tie all of those things together at one single time. So that’s a good point that we’re seeing the full fruition of some of those technological trends that were only started around the ‘60s and whatever the next level of development is that will represent a progression of those things at this time.
AC: Yeah. Yeah, and what’s interesting is the next aspect in the sequence would be the opposition, which would be like, the Full Moon which is full of tension, but this is the trine, right? Where Uranus and Pluto are in as much harmony and as working in concert for their respective ends as possible. Whether —
CB: Right.
AC: — we’ll love that or not, it’s up to we the humans individually and collectively to give it a boo or a hurray. But Uranus and Pluto are as happy with each other as they’re gonna get.
CB: Right. Okay. So let me get things back here to July where we’ve got those outer planet alignments going exact. And after this in terms of our chronological sequence, we have this aspect I really like on July 19th as well, the day after the Uranus-Pluto trine, Mars sextiles Saturn. And I really like this, because I think this is gonna be a stabilizing aspect and configuration and alignment that will help us as we’re coming out of the volatility and the uncertainty and unpredictableness and erraticness of the Mars-Uranus conjunction towards the beginning of July. I think this Mars-Saturn sextile which is strengthened because it has reception, because Saturn is in Mars’s sign and Mars is applying to an exact aspect with Saturn, will really help to stabilize and balance some things out coming off of that conjunction at this point around July 19th.
AC: Yeah. A little restraint and discipline and organization, which is what Mars-Saturn in sextile can bring, I think will be very helpful for sort of counterpointing the, I don’t know how to put it, like, kinetic, chaotic, windy nature of the month.
CB: Yeah. Because Mars-Uranus is very much like, shoot first, ask questions later, whereas Saturn is asking there to be some restraint or some restrictions or some forethought into what Mars is doing.
AC: Yeah, it’s great for, in some way, Mars can really benefit from the planning that Saturn brings, the restraining things over time into an effective shape.
CB: Right. So the very next day is striking because on July 20th, the Jupiter-Pluto opposition goes exact, which we talked about already, but the same day, Jupiter trines Neptune exactly also at the same time on July 20th. And then the very next day after that, Jupiter exactly sextiles Uranus on July 21st.
So we have a very quick succession of exact outer planet aspects. We’ve talked about Jupiter-Pluto extensively, but you know, one of the positive aspects this month is that Jupiter-Uranus sextile. And again, that’s another one of the reasons why I think that this is especially technologically oriented in terms of what some of the massive indications could be that could be groundbreaking in terms of humanity or could set a foundation that’s different is a lot of stuff keeps coming back to Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius and those themes getting accelerated and magnified and blown even larger out of proportion than they already were.
AC: Yeah. In many ways, Jupiter is going to be supporting what Uranus is doing and supporting what Neptune is doing. One of the things that comes to mind for the Jupiter-Uranus sextile on a more individual level is with Jupiter in Leo, we often have growth; growth often proceeds in terms of becoming more one’s self, becoming more authentic, becoming more confident and willing to express who and what one is and to follow that with greater faith. And the individuation that Uranus brings – on an individual level, Uranus often pushes people to admit that they’re not like other people, right? To accept both the rewards and the consequences of being an individual, of not just being one of many. And so those two things, that greater confidence and authenticity as well as that greater individuality as defined by difference from other people, can also very easily synergize.
CB: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. I mean, Jupiter’s basic function is to affirm and say “yes” to what other planets wanna signify. And when I’m looking at that sextile, I’m thinking about what Jupiter is affirming or saying yes to that Uranus is doing. It makes me think about how during the Revolutionary War period when Uranus was in Gemini, a lot of the war was partially being ramped up and excited and motivated by writers like Thomas Paine, for example, who were outlining and writing about these really radical doctrines of like, freedom and liberation and equality and all of this other stuff, and the rejection of monarchy and these themes that were really groundbreaking and edgy at the time. But it was something that a lot of the people at the time that were involved in the actual war effort were drawing inspiration from in terms of having a guiding idea that was pushing things. And that’s kind of what that Jupiter sextile to Uranus makes me think about is like, what are some of the writers or the creators or the people that are sharing words and ideas and thoughts that are new and exciting and liberatory in their orientation, and how is that being affirmed or said “yes” to at this time during the course of July?
AC: Yeah, I think that’s a great point. Yeah. And Uranus in Gemini has this very strong history of association with those type of values, the value of the individual, of individual freedom, yeah. And the individual as valuable unto themselves regardless of whether they are or are not contributing to a larger collective project. And so, yeah, I can – yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me that we would see Jupiter supporting liberatory doctrine.
CB: Right. And how that’s resolving the opposition between the Jupiter in Leo and the individual versus Pluto in Aquarius and the collective and the tension that’s gonna be drawn out by that opposition forming perhaps having some sort of resolution through Uranus in Gemini, but then also you mentioned faith. And I think that’s a really good keyword for Jupiter at four degrees of Leo trining Neptune at four degrees of Aries while Neptune has just stationed retrograde, because so much of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction, one of the like, very core archetypal themes that comes up is like, science versus faith or like belief versus concrete reality. And sometimes that comes into play in religious notions and religious communities and different things like that. But both, you know, Jupiter has some traditional associations with faith and religious belief and things like that, and in modern astrology, Neptune also has some associations with that. So I think for some people, especially if four degrees of these signs is personal for you, some of this could be an orientation more towards faith or getting more in touch with themes of faith and belief, whatever that means to an individual person in terms of how they find purpose and meaning in life, whether that’s in a religious context or a scientific context or what have you. But just that one’s beliefs and ideals can be a huge unseen motivating factor that can sometimes change the course of history in different ways.
AC: Yeah. There’s something fiery and affirmative about this configuration. You know, with Neptune I always come back to the dream with Neptune. Because sometimes you can make the dream real, and then sometimes the story ends with, “Oh, it was all a dream.” But some dreams become real; some dreams unrealized become points of bitterness and discontent. But I see – Jupiter here is, I think, very profoundly affirming that maybe this dream could be real. Right? Like, you know, like sure it’s a vision, but maybe it’s not just an idle fantasy. Maybe you are capable of this. You know? And Aries and Leo together are very empowering, especially in combination. Like, you can do this; it is possible; maybe it’s real. And that is, I guess, a nice counterpoint to the Plutonian opposition and negation of Jupiter that’s also happening at the same time.
CB: Right. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Well, that probably will actually confirm some religious communities. Like, I saw historically over the past 2,000 years that Saturn-Neptune conjunctions are often the foundation of religious communities. And if you put Jupiter in Leo affirming that, that’s probably ones that are especially centered around a central figure, for example, as opposed to something more collective. Although Pluto’s causing tensions there with the collective, so that’ll be interesting to watch during the course of July emerge.
AC: Yeah. And one counterpoint to the point I just made. All those things happen during Jupiter-Neptune trines and conjunctions, and then some of them – sometimes that belief in the dream is justified later, and then sometimes it looks very silly. But the Jupiter-Neptune contacts are the points where it does seem possible. And for some people and for some institutions and entities, like, that’ll be true. It’s an injection of seeing how it might be possible and believing that it might be possible, but the longer cycles need to play out to see whether that was true. You know, Neptune almost always promises more than is delivered, you know, because it’s anything you can imagine is the sphere of Neptune. And there will always be casualties on the way into the real.
CB: Yeah. Well, and also, you know, the challenging side sometimes can be if you structure a religious community around a singular individual, like Jupiter in Leo, then sometimes that’s the creation of a cult or cult-like dynamics if it was manifested in a negative way.
AC: For sure.
CB: All right. Moving on. There’s a tone shift that starts happening around July 22nd and July 23rd, because two things start happening simultaneously. One of them is that the Sun ingresses into Leo where it starts building up to a very auspicious conjunction with Jupiter which is in early Leo, although it has to contend with and it has to pass through the opposition to Pluto first.
But the other thing that happens around the same time that’s positive is the very next day on July 23rd, Mercury slows down and stations direct at 16 degrees of Cancer. And this is an interesting station, because on the one hand, Mercury has retrograded all the way back to 16 degrees of Cancer where it’s almost connecting with a square with Saturn, which is somewhat pessimistic or difficult or challenging or imposing rules and restrictions, but – especially with Saturn in the superior position – but it doesn’t quite connect. And instead at the same time, Venus swoops into about 15, 16 degrees of Virgo and completes a sextile with Mercury on July 24th. So there’s like, a positive resolution to the Mercury retrograde, and there’s probably still some themes of like, slowness or surmountable difficulties that are happening around that time due to Saturn overcoming. But Venus is helping to smooth things out and clear the way and make that station and the resolutions associated with it go much better than it might otherwise.
AC: Yeah. It’s really nice. It’s a really nice endpoint for this Mercury retrograde, which I would note is unusually long, right? This one’s like, 26 days, whereas usually they’re only about three weeks. But yeah, it’s very nice that Mercury comes to rest more or less in perfect aspect with Venus and doesn’t complete the square with Saturn. Because there’s a goodly portion of this Mercury retrograde that feels like it’s going to end on a more negative square Saturn note than it actually does.
CB: Yeah. Absolutely. Funny sidenote on that Venus-Mercury sextile is like, the other day, I was watching old videos on like, the Kendrick Lamar thing from the Super Bowl and stuff like that. And then YouTube started recommending me other old rap videos, and it recommended me old Eminem videos. And it just reminded me, I was like, what was his chart again that was good for rapping that made him stand out as one of the biggest rappers in the world? And it was Mercury in Scorpio almost exactly sextile Venus in Virgo with reception. And then he started rapping at the age of 14, where by secondary progression the slow-moving Mercury-Venus sextile profected in that year. And I thought that was a really brilliant image in terms of like, Mercury sextile Venus in Virgo with reception and just somebody who has a great facility with words and ability to rhyme and match different wording schemes with that combination might be a good —
AC: Yeah.
CB: — here.
AC: Yeah. But again, it’s Mercury in Cancer rather than Mercury in Scorpio, so this is, you know, if we’re rapping, it’s sweeter than Eminem.
CB: Yeah. It’s not about like, murdering people with Mercury in Scorpio. It’s about like, baking a pie or like, nostalgia or taking care of your family or something like that.
AC: Yeah. Rapid fire wholesome bars.
CB: Exactly. All right. So moving on after that, Neptune-Pluto sextile goes exact on July 25th. There’s that. So that’s the completion of one of the last aspects of that basket or that bucket is the Neptune-Pluto sextile going exact on the 25th. And then the very next day on July 26th, Saturn stations retrograde in Aries. So that’s the second shoe to drop in terms of the Saturn-Neptune conjunction becoming reactivated with the station of those two planets. And again, that’s gonna be important not just for Saturn-Neptune purposes and the reactivation of the seed moment that exact conjunction, but also each of us, wherever Aries is in our chart, that’s gonna be a real check-in about the progress of Saturn and for example some of the people that have been having Saturn returns in Aries are gonna get a major turning point when it comes to their Saturn return at that station just because a station is always an intensification of whatever that transit’s about.
AC: Yeah, absolutely.
CB: All right, so that’s that station. The very same day, the nodes change sign. The true node moves into the next set of signs and moves into – the North Node moves into Aquarius and the South Node moves into Leo. And this is significant, of course, because this is setting us up for our next eclipse season, which is gonna start in early August with a solar eclipse in the sign of Leo – the first of the Leo eclipse series, although we got a first taste of that almost with the solar eclipse in Aquarius six month earlier.
AC: Yeah. And so our eclipses will be half Leo/Aquarius and half Virgo/Pisces for the next while. Right? August gives us our very first solar eclipse in Leo, as you just said, but then we’ll get our last eclipse in Pisces. And then six months later, we’ll get our last eclipse in Virgo, and another eclipse in Aquarius.
CB: Yeah. So people should pay attention to any major beginnings or major endings that start happening in the Aquarius-Leo sector of your chart, especially those whole sign houses, because what may seem small at first, it will actually become part of a larger series of events that’ll play out over a couple of year period in that sector of your chart.
AC: Yeah. Don’t get hopeful and then disappointed that we’re done with eclipses in Pisces and Virgo, because we’ve still got another pair to go.
CB: Yeah. All right. The next day on July 27th, the Sun exactly opposes Pluto. So that’s just gonna reheighten some of those tensions between we’ve already talked about extensively with the Jupiter-Pluto opposition to a certain extent. But it’s gonna focalize them probably with like, an individual and notions of self and me and contrasting that with more collective implications in terms of Pluto. And usually oppositions are sometimes externalized as having a tension or a conflict or feelings of control and manipulation playing out with another person. So it could be like, a singular day event where that really comes into focus for some people individually.
AC: Yeah. That’s a good articulation. And it’s also worth noting that although the opposition to Pluto is the most dramatic of the aspects, over that day, the Sun also trines Neptune just like Jupiter did, also sextiles Uranus just like Jupiter did. So Jupiter lit up Pluto, Neptune, Uranus earlier in the month, and then now the Sun is doing exactly the same thing.
CB: Nice. So there’s some potential resolution for that, for the opposition.
AC: Yeah, or just further activation.
CB: Right. All right. So the next day, July 28th, Venus exactly squares Mars around 20, 21 degrees of Virgo squaring Mars around 21 degrees of Gemini. And this is a tricky aspect, because Mars is actually in the superior position, so Mars is able to dictate more of the terms of that relationship. And we’ve seen things come up a lot in the past over the past few years when it comes to Venus-Mars hard aspects having to do with things like gender and gender roles and especially tensions between the sexes or somethings we’ve seen specific themes having to do with negative stories in the news involving sex and sexuality or like, inappropriate things related to that basically coming up in the news. And I think that’s gonna be heightened at that time with Mars being the one in the superior position.
AC: Yeah, hundred percent. Just sex scandals and Mars-Venus hard aspects is such a consistent thing. And to be fair, it’s almost nice that we finally get this square, because it’s been applying – it’s been so close and getting closer for weeks at this point. And so actually getting the square means that we’re going to start moving beyond it very soon.
Also worth noting, this is very close to the United States’s Mars return. United States in the Sibley chart has Mars at 21 Gemini.
CB: Yeah, that’s a good point.
AC: And also if we are interested in the status of attempts at peace, like, Venus is very much one of the peace-bringers amongst the planets. And so this is maximally difficult for peace with Venus squaring Mars and Mars in the stronger position.
CB: Yeah. In January when there was the Venus-Mars conjunction, those themes of war and peace and unification represented by Venus versus the desire to sever and separate represented by Mars becoming very prominent, which included NATO and stuff with NATO was coming up because it was like, a major – it was the world’s largest military alliance. And so themes having to do with that dynamic of the forces of unification sort of losing out compared to the forces of division with Mars in the upper hand and the dynamic of tension between those two drives. In individual lives, probably severing of relationships would be a major delineation of Mars overcoming Venus, and that notion sometimes of having to cut or separate from a relationship or making a decision to break up a partnership or an alliance.
Oh yeah, treaties was a major Venus-Mars one that came up. And then finally probably like, creative friction, which sometimes can be productive, but yeah. I think as you were saying it’ll be nice once that has started to pass and move into the past once it separates, just because that will be building up as a major theme all month.
AC: Yeah. And we have a not inconsiderable Full Moon which takes place right about the same time.
CB: Yeah. So two things happen. One positive thing – the Sun finally connects with Jupiter, and we get the completion of a pretty auspicious Jupiter cazimi when the Sun conjoins Jupiter at six degrees of Leo on July 29th. And one of the things that I like about this is that when that conjunction between the Sun and Jupiter goes exact, both planets are finally fully separating from Pluto, which is at 14 degrees of Aquarius. And it’s still very, very close, but I’m glad that the cazimi goes exact after that opposition has completed rather than before. And then this gets highlighted the same day when the Moon goes into Aquarius on July 29th and then hits the opposition with the Sun and Jupiter, creating a Full Moon.
AC: Yeah. And what a Full Moon. Like, almost perfectly positioned to highlight the dynamics of the trapezoid that we have been dealing with and thinking about and talking about all month and for the last few hours, right? Because we have the Sun over there with Jupiter and then the bright and Full Moon over there with Pluto. Right? The central opposition that really defines that structure is both energized and highlighted by the Full Moon.
CB: Right. So it’s like, it really is reactivating that whole configuration because the Sun-Jupiter conjunction is not just opposite Pluto and having the Full Moon conjunct that in Aquarius, but then it’s also sextile Uranus in early Gemini, and it’s trining Neptune in early Aries. So you’re getting that technological and liberating and innovative piece from Uranus, and you’re getting that more spiritual or faith-based or sometimes illusory sort of influence coming from Neptune.
AC: Yeah, the dream is strong.
CB: Yeah. The dream is very strong.
So in terms of electional astrology, this is like, one of the charts that Leisa and I – we were basically like, struggling. We recorded and released the electional astrology podcast a few days ago through our page on Patreon where we picked out a bunch of charts throughout the course of the month. And there weren’t a lot of great charts that we could recommend that were completely clean, unfortunately. But one of the alignments that we did like is that we thought that the electional charts were much better later in the month than they were earlier in the month when Mars was still very close to the conjunction with Uranus due to the volatility of that alignment.
So later in the month when Mercury stations direct and the Sun starts conjoining Jupiter, I do think some of the elections around this time are better than earlier in the month. And so this date you could use a sunrise chart on July 29th at about 6:05 AM local time, whatever local time is for you, just shortly after sunrise. And in our location, that puts the Sun still applying to that conjunction with Jupiter exactly while making the Sun the ruler of the Ascendant. So and in our location, the Moon is heading towards that Full Moon exactly with the Sun and Jupiter.
So the downside is that does put the Full Moon conjunct Pluto very closely, which is a pretty intense aspect to bake into things. But on the other hand, in terms of trying to take advantage and find what some of the more auspicious alignments are this month, one of the most auspicious ones is that Sun-Jupiter cazimi. And so if you were trying to advantage of it, then this would be one way to do that.
So we did find other charts as well, which you can find on the electional astrology podcast through our page on Patreon at Patreon.com/AstrologyPodcast if you want some charts earlier in the month. But then you have to contend with the Mercury retrograde, for example, as well as the Mars-Uranus conjunction. So this is the best we could come up with in terms of that.
AC: Yeah, July’s really tricky to find good elections. This is a wild chart. I really want to hear what happens for those of you who choose to use this chart, because there’s just so much going on. Again, it pings that entire magical trapezoid, which has so much energy that can go in so many directions. I’m really curious about this one.
CB: Yeah. Well, and it depends how it’s hitting your natal chart, since the electional weather is only 50 percent of things, and the other 50 percent is like, is this chart as a transit chart hitting your own natal chart well? And that’s really gonna be the deciding factor that sometimes gets left out when people are talking about like, what the best configurations are of the month or other things like that with the Venus-Jupiter conjunction discussions that were happening last month.
AC: Yeah, for sure.
CB: All right. So moving on, we are at the final days of the month here. And that’s actually it. That’s the last major aspect, because we’re already at July 29th. And so that’s the last major aspect of the month, and at this point it just takes us into August where – just to give a brief preview – eclipse season is gonna begin around August 5th already, which is about a week before the solar eclipse in Leo when the Moon hits the square with the Sun. That’s my definition of eclipse season officially starting. And then that first week of August is also gonna see Venus ingress into Libra, which is gonna be the sign that it retrogrades back to in the coming months. So that means it’s the beginning of a very long transit of Venus through Libra and Scorpio that’s gonna dominate the later months of the year.
Yeah. So that’s taking us already into August, but that means that brings us to the end of July.
AC: Yeah. It’s a big month, and August is another big month. It’s… Yeah. Let’s see. I don’t have anything – I’m gonna back away from summarizing right now.
CB: Yeah.
AC: There’s a lot that’s gonna happen this summer, or this season, and July is absolutely a huge, powerful part of it. But July is probably less than half the story.
CB: Yeah. I mean, what we can say is that we know eclipse season in August is gonna be the next development that will take place six months after the eclipse season that happened in February and early March. And we know, for example, then that that’s especially gonna be a huge turning point in terms of the war in Iran, because the war started under that eclipse season. And every eclipse season in six month increments over the past three years built up to that and kept escalating. So whatever the next escalation is should start happening in August especially. But with that said, it’s like, July obviously is a really momentous month as well, especially with the Mars-Uranus conjunction at the beginning of July. But then we can see that with all of these major outer planet alignments, there’s something more significant happening that will impact the long term as well, especially in terms of technology probably. Although we’ll be paying attention to what other developments come out of the Jupiter-Pluto opposition and some of those other outer planet trines and sextiles as well.
AC: Yeah, there’s so much that takes shape or comes together in July, and that which takes shape in July heads right into August, which contains not only a pair of eclipses, but also a very unfortunate-looking square between the malefics. August has teeth. And so it’ll be really interesting to see what comes out of July, and then therefore goes into August, and how things look on the other side. What’s made it through those clashing rocks and disappearing lights intact.
CB: Yeah. And whatever happens this month is gonna be the preview of what the rest of this Uranus transit in Gemini is gonna be about for the next seven years, both because of this being the first of four Mars-Uranus conjunctions in Gemini that will take place very two years from here on out until 2032, but also because of this being the first time that Uranus connects with Pluto. So whatever happens, both good things that happen in the news, but also challenging things that happen, it’s gonna set some sort of foundation for the next seven years. So in that way, you know, I agree with some of the predictions that it’s gonna be extremely crucial in terms of world events. And we’ll be paying close attention to see what sort of like, omens happen that we know will be indicative of the next seven years.
AC: Yeah. If we’re paying attention, by the end of July, we’ll have seen a lot of things that are – yeah, agree. We’re gonna be able to see a lot about the next seven years in July.
CB: Yeah. All right, my friend. I think that’s it for this forecast episode. Thanks so much for joining me and for – it’s great to have you back.
AC: Yeah, it’s great to be back.
CB: Yeah. Especially for such a momentous month. What are you working on? I know you’ve been away working on the decans book. How’s that going? Is writing going well?
AC: It’s good. It’s good. Making a lot of progress. No promises, but making a lot of progress, closing in on it. I have to say, it’s really nice to be putting decan after decan into the actually completely ready for print done pile. Because I’ve been building up layers and layers of work on them for literally years, and to put the final touches on each of them, have it go through the editor, integrate or reject the edits, and like, put things in the finished pile is really gratifying. So that’s going well.
This month, I have – I’m gonna put up some lectures that I did at NORWAC this year so people can buy those. I did, I think, a pretty cool workshop looking at all of the seven visible planets when they are paired with the nodes, natally in particular, but also looking at world events. What world and personal events when you have Mars and the South Node, Jupiter and the North Node, et cetera, et cetera. There’s a big five-hour workshop on that. I also did a lecture on lunar days or tithis and lunariums, et cetera, et cetera, that’s shorter and a lot of fun. And so I’ll be sending out a newsletter about that, but I’ll also just have updated the website. That material will be available.
I am doing another enrollment in my Fundamentals of Astrology program; that’s not until August 7th, but mark your calendar. If you’d like to be updated about these things, then just subscribe to my mailing list. I send out maybe one or two emails a quarter; it’s not spammy.
And then with Sphere and Sundry, Kait just about two weeks ago finally released a project that was eight years in the making. It was the Magnum mundi project, inspired by the pattern of the Thema mundi where 12 individual workings were combined to replicate the Thema mundi – the planets all in their domiciles at the beginning of creation. And so this was 12 individual projects, each of which has its own power and majesty and utility that were ritually combined over like, a 10-month process into this one series. And it’s really, it’s a stunning achievement, and it is powerful stuff. So people should check that out at SphereAndSundry.com. And there’s also, you know, Sphere and Sundry’s a library of many of the best moments for the planets over the last eight years. And those series are available individually as well as in the crazy magnum opus, combinatory form.
CB: Nice. Awesome. I’ll put a link to your website, AustinCoppock.com, in the description below this video and on the podcast website.
As for myself, I’m gonna keep working on the podcast and teaching my Hellenistic astrology course. And I’m working on an episode on gnosticism right now that’s gonna be really good later in the month. And I’m also doing some work finally bringing together the – like, I released a little animation about the Thema mundi that gave this old Persian myth about it that is from a text from the Middle Ages. But I’ve really been working on the philosophy of ancient astrology and piecing together the ways in which the Thema mundi and other related structures fit together to form some sort of coherent, conceptual or theoretical construct in Hellenistic astrology. And I think one of my goals this month is I really wanna do a lecture pulling together everything I know about how those different pieces fit into a whole during the course of this month. And I think that’s part of my like, Mercury retrograde in Cancer and the rising sign of the Thema mundi journey that I’m gonna be going through over the next few weeks.
So as soon as I record those episodes, I’m gonna release them for early access to patrons immediately. So you can get early access to those through my page on Patreon.com. And otherwise, I’m just gonna be like, kind of following the news and documenting what happens and seeing how the Mars-Uranus conjunction plays out over the course of the first month and kind of like, laying low as we all witness the unfolding of some of those events.
AC: Yeah. Yeah. I too will be bearing witness amongst my other activities.
CB: Yeah. All right, my friend. Well, thanks a lot for joining me today.
AC: Yeah. My pleasure. Let’s do it again next month.
CB: All right, yeah. Let’s check in and we’ll see how it went.
All right, thanks everyone for watching or listening to this episode of The Astrology Podcast, and we’ll see you again next time.
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