Virgo 2008

The end of summer in the north, last of the three earth signs, a time of ripening, sorting and resolving in physicality. This year's historic reinforcement of earth power, the primal force of physical nature, is completing months of internalizing, charging us up with potential (and the sometimes unnerving feelings that come with it) which will, after September 8, start to turn forward into outflowing manifestation.

This year, expansive, creative, 12-year-cycle Jupiter and deep, heavy, 248-year-cycle Pluto have moved into the assertion of earthy physicality and constructive new beginnings, Capricorn. But they've been backtracking and internalizing (retrograde) for months, and are now going slower and slower, deeper and deeper, coming to a stop within us. This is good, charging us with power for grounded expression that will shift forward and start to come out very soon. But it can be unsettling, an intensified experience of physicality and the challenges of awareness amidst it. And even if we can handle it, we still have to deal with people who can't. Forget it. Ride it out. Retreat to simplicity and comfort for now, settled at the heart of whatever it's putting us through.

The Virgo new moon on Saturday August 30 is a peak of physical intensity. Then on September 7/8, both Jupiter and Pluto will complete their backtracking and internalizing and start to flow forward again, just as creative Jupiter in earthy Capricorn aligns supportively (trine) with grounding, centering, 30-year-cycle Saturn in the ripening practicality of Virgo. All the primal power that will be releasing is guided toward a truly fruitful new arrangement, a rewarding harvest we can share. With activating Mars, mental Mercury and beautiful Venus leading the way into Libra's loving awareness, where we're headed with the coming autumn, we are drawn toward the romantic color of celebration in the land of love, a sweet, magical, Indian summer garden party.

Right now we are getting charged-up with earthy energy, like a kid's toy car that you wind backwards and then let go, taking off as it releases. We're almost done with the wind-up part of the process, ready to launch into a historic autumn of progressive transformation. This is the internalizing midpoint in a big year of reinforced earth power. By late November, at Thanksgiving, we'll be living in a new world.