"A crisis is made by men, who enter into the crisis with their own prejudices, propensities, and predispositions. A crisis is the sum of intuition and blind spots, a blend of facts noted and facts ignored."

— Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain

We begin to glimpse an entirely new landscape this week — intellectually inspirational but unfamiliar. The retrograde Mercury square Neptune has produced a sense that we are suddenly in a different place. This week's atmosphere is unsteady and subject to quick changes. A fog bank of sorts has descended and we may be prone to see only what we want to see in that fog. We are suddenly awash in new perspectives, new ideas, and new influences that seem to develop out of this new environment. Our pressing challenge is to stay in touch with the inspiration that we have been fostering since the May 11th Taurus New Moon (11:59 AM PDT 21° Taurus) even though we may feel as if we are suddenly on an entirely different track and find ourselves in danger of [...]

"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

— Vaclav Havel

The Sun's arrival in Gemini this week, joining Venus and Mercury, places a great deal of focus on a curious pursuit of new information. The Sun trines Pluto early in the week, deepening our search for answers — the truth. However, the Gemini influences are challenged by the Sun's square to Jupiter, now in Pisces and Mercury's square to Neptune, also in Pisces. The Pisces-Gemini 'axis' explores the challenges of 'describing the indescribable'. The flow of information may be overwhelming or, alternatively, exhilarating this week. However, we have difficulty clearly articulating what we are seeing and learning. We may find ourselves floundering in vague and confusing [...]

"We cannot think of being acceptable to others until we have first proven acceptable to ourselves."

— Malcolm X

A great deal of this week's journey is focused directly on understanding the lessons of this year's overarching Saturn-Uranus square. We can begin to recognize that this pressurized atmosphere is forcing us to look within ourselves and deal with our basic sense of self-worth. Pluto is now retrograde, encouraging us to look within ourselves to see what needs changing — or what needs healing. Last week's Scorpio Full Moon may have revealed uncomfortable truths related to our limitations. There is an increased imperative this week produced by the involvement of Chiron in Aries, sextiling Saturn, that is now ruled by Mars in the protective —and sensitive — sign of Cancer. The waning lunar cycle sends us through a series of [...]