I want to tell you how August is going to feel, but I also want to tell you what it means. What came before it, and what it is building toward. August, after all, did not just fall out of a coconut tree! No moment, event, or being ever does. August is astrologically busy, and much of the action rehashes last month’s Mars Uranus conjunction, which brought us a political assassination attempt and long, nail-biting, representative-phoning weeks of wondering whether Joe Biden would step down. These moments of rehashing and rhyming with July will unsurprisingly take place across the Leo-Aquarius axis, which we could say is the “leader v. the people” axis. Much of it is going to be Uranus-flavored, so expect the unexpected. And in this context of building upon big shakeups, we’ll be making real progress on a much longer and more impactful leadership cycle. Every 20 years, Jupiter and Saturn come together to reset how we enact things like government, law, and other leadership systems and structures. And every 200 years or so, these regular 20 year cycles shift modailty--from earth to air in this case. Most of our lives we’ve been in an age of earth perhaps best defined by the Industrial Revolution. Then, in December 2020, Jupiter and Saturn came together in the sign of Aquarius, and brought us the dawn of a new “age of air.” What we’ll be living through quite intensely in August, and to a lesser degree most of 2025, is a burst of action that makes this “age of air” less of an idea, and more of a fact on the ground.
August is going to be big and intense. It’s also going to be historically meaningful. August is all about leaders and the people they serve. It’s about the spirit of the law and the letter of the law. If you’re in the United States, it’s about the prosecutor v. the convict, and whether you want to live in a democracy or a dictatorship. And democracy, as we witnessed in July, is messy and demands both our participation and our ability to bear uncertainty. Democracy working can feel like the ground itself shifting all around you. Democracy working in the United States after so many years of prioritizing the freedom to not give a shit about politics is likely to feel surprising or upsetting. It will be effortful, and it might even get violent. And if you’re in the United States, I want you to be vulnerable to it. I want you to show up for it, and work your ass off for it. Get your hopes up, and fight like hell to keep your hope alive.
Most of the time, it makes sense to cringe at how mediocre the collective response to an astrological moment is, step away from the news, and turn to your own life, where you have more agency and can make better choices. August is not one of those times! Everything about this month works well if it’s not all about you, and it blows up in your face if you make it all about you. So be one of the people this August. When you are given the opportunity to do so, be a good leader and speak your truth, persuasively, in ways that can be heard. Participate in this messy, human, imperfect democratic experiment if you live in the US. Be thoughtful, listen, and attempt to bridge difference instead of amplify it. Give your money and your time freely. And examine yourself! Uproot all of your old thinking that used to make sense in the way we used to be “the people,” because "the people" is a basic building block of this age of air. In the United States, by "old thinking," I mean needing to fall in love with or drink beers with candidates, although Kamala is certainly brat; withholding participation as a way to virtue signal; and the privileged political stances that folks can only hold inside the safe wombs of social media bubbles and University campuses because they’re ahistoric and have zero skin in the game. All these habits are forgivable! And they’re the old way. In August, it is my sincere hope that you will get swept up in the new way.
Of course, a political campaign in one country is certainly not the only thing going on in August. These themes of power, leadership, society, management, rules, effort, and the law will show up in your life in all sorts of ways. You might live very far away from the United States, but still find that it is productive to get swept up in something larger than yourself, and work to empower this larger cause instead of endlessly working on yourself. You might find yourself in power dynamics that are difficult personally, or wonder how to get your needs met in relationships. You might find yourself finally finishing, and then having to defend, a dissertation that is about these important social structures. Wherever you are, and whatever your proximity to the US Presidential election, I recommend keeping an eye on it as a symbolic barometer. It’s a great story that enacts the themes we are supposed to pay attention to this month! It pits the leader who gave up power for the people against the leader who will stop at nothing to hold on to power that he lost fair and square. It is about choosing freedom and hope and joy over fear and lies and very outmoded definitions of "strength." It is about taking back a responsibility that we all abdicated. It is about defining our future together as a people. We are not meant to dissociate from this moment. We’re meant to shake off some substantial patterns of learned helplessness and rise up. Because in large and small ways, what we do this month sets the trajectory, not just for the next couple of decades, but for the next couple hundred years.
Comments