One of the great benefits of astrology is you can look ahead to see what energies will be in play and then use them to advance your objectives and goals.

Today there is a grand trine in the Earth signs.
Sun in Virgo is trine Pluto in Capricorn and both are trined by the Moon.
A grand trine in Earth is a grounding, stabilizing influence, quite welcome in this tumultuous summer.

So, today you may find it wise to take advantage and make use of the relative calm and quiet to focus on mundane day-to-day details, catch up with gardening, catch up with household chores…

Because Mercury is retrograde, focusing in back-burner projects, reviewing plans, records, catching up with bookkeeping, will pay large dividends. Cleaning up the minutia (Virgo just loves getting minutia in order) will make you feel cleaner and lighter.

While accomplishing this, do it with an eye of throwing out and releasing what no longer serves you. This can be as basic as throwing out unneeded items cluttering up the household. After all, Saturn is still squaring Pluto; Saturn’s energy works by constricting and getting smaller (one reason why Saturn transits to your birth chart are excellent times for dieting) and Pluto works by exposing decay then elimination, the first steps in transformation.

The point here is that today is a fabulous opportunity to clear up and clean up details and clutter which will give you a strong foundation to begin the new workweek.

In the Northern hemisphere, the days are noticeably shorter. Above average temps coupled with humidity to match still blankets much of the continental US while Russia bakes and Pakistan drowns.

This has been a summer to remember both meteorologically as well as astrologically.

Days of high intensity are not over this season. Not by a long shot. Not when Saturn’s square to Pluto is still reaching for exactitude.

But the tide is beginning to turn.

Tomorrow Mercury will begin its backward retrograde dance, something it does performs three to four times a year. Uranus, Jupiter, and Pluto are already dancing backwards and Uranus reentered Pisces last week.

This summer has been one of high intensity–even if you haven’t been living in the Swat Valley or Moscow. With outer planets covering new ground, new issues have come to the fore so that you can look them in the eye and deal with them.

But you don’t have to do this all at once.

This summer you have been introduced to Uranus and Jupiter breaking ground in Aries. The ultimate answer to your quandary is in going towards the new and innovative. The good ol’ days of 1999 are gone forever.

The good news is that you don’t have all of the answers all at once.

The Universe has some mercy; we are coming into a period where forward movement slows and you get to mull over and digest the new events, new feelings, new changes. That is the point to retrograde motion – the backward dance – that is beginning to take place.

Through the end of 2015 we are in a concentrated period of high intensity, realignment, and transition. Ever since we woke up to the news that Lehman Brothers went bust, the world as you know it, from the global level all the way down to your personal day-to-day has irrevocably changed and there is no going back.

But nature moves in rhythm and the celestial tides ebb and flow.

So you get to take a breath once in a while.

What was going on in your life, say from this past Halloween to early April of this year?
Did anyone new come into your life? Did the pattern of your life change? A new challenge or complication…

Approximately a week ago, Saturn entered Libra for a two year stay. And if you want to get a taste of what is in store for you, take a look at that period when Saturn first dipped its toe into the sign–from last Halloween to the first week of April 2010.

Issues, people, relationships, changes that came into your life then will play a large part in your life now, until it leaves to enter Scorpio in 2012.

The slower moving planets closer to the perimeter of the solar system tend to go back and forth over a point more than once. In the case of Pluto, it can run over the same degree as much as five times(!)

Until we thick-headed humans get the point.

In their back-and-forth motion, it is common for a slower moving planet to enter a sign then retrograde out of it only to enter for a longer stay later on.

Their initial entry is an important time. Consider it a dress rehearsal for their longer visit. If you pay careful attention to the issues, challenges, opportunities that appear then, you get an important heads up on what’s to come later.

So that you can prepare and make the best use of the longer visit.

As an astrologer it is easy for me to pontificate about conditions in the heavens and how they are going to affect everybody else. And I have certainly long and hard about the current conditions in the cosmos. And, if you listen to me long enough, I’ll even tell you what to do.

An occupational hazard of astrologers is that we can get so caught up in telling folks what is going to happen to them, that we lose sight of the fact that we are subject to the very same cosmic laws ourselves.

So, every so often the Universe gives me a taste of my own medicine.

Case in point–I have been talking quite a bit lately about yesterday’s about face by Uranus on my blogs and Blogtalkradio.

My intent was benevolent enough–I wanted to give my readers a heads up that current astrological conditions are unsettled. We are in a no-man’s land between two eclipses and, then, to cap it off, Uranus, itself the planet of unpredictability was making a station. The latter has the effect of emphasizing Uranus’ erratic influence.

In other words, stay loose and flexible, because we are navigating through rapidly shifting conditions.

So wouldn’t you know it? My area of the country has been suffering through one of the most extreme heat waves ever in a summer that has been unusually hot. And when temperatures climb, people turn on their a/c stressing out the electric utilities.

You have probably figured out where this is going…

My own a/c system had been acting up. Even though I had just had it serviced last week and it had gotten a clean bill of health, it more or less quit this weekend, when the HVAC folks were enjoying a much needed holiday weekend.

Then its minuscule output came to a sudden halt at 7:40 pm even though temperatures were well above the comfort zone.

I walked outside and saw some neighbors–yes, their power was out, also. There were no lights on the block and beyond.

Did I say that Uranus is associated with lightning and electricity–among other things?

Thoughts of New York’s city-wide power outage of 1977 danced through my head. Yes, I was living there then and, yes, I am that old. Er, back then I was young <smile>.

I had coasted into an elevated stop on NYC’s subway system on my way home from a blind date when we received the announcement. We could see out among the buildings. Aside from hospitals who had their own backup generators, all was black.

In that phenomenon seen in urban settings, stoic subway riders suddenly began talking to each other. It was like a giant block party.

Police armed with flashlights guided us down the dark stairwell to the street.

I made it back to my building where neighbors were hanging out and sharing candles. The power was out well into the next day. And, yes, it was bloody hot.

The neighbors on my block also started talking to each other. My neighbor from across the street, a young man who runs a community organization to plant trees in the neighborhood pruned some dead branches and gave me watering tips about mine.

About four hours later, the lights returned and neighbors shouted in joy and relief.

Now I just have to get a hold of the a/c repairman…

It is with poignancy, that I gaze at the setting sun at this time of year.

I love the long beautiful days of early summer. And the hour of twilight is a magical time. The sky’s colors change from vibrant oranges and reds to more subdued pinks and violets.

I feel kissed by the goodness of the Universe–and I’m humbled by this example of nature’s grace.

And as uplifted as I am by the beauty around me, as well as the sounds of summer–the ice cream trucks, the children playing in the street… I also feel a little sad.

The summer solstice, just recently passed, carries within it the seeds of the upcoming winter. For now on until December, the hours of  daylight will diminish. Slowly at first. Almost imperceptible at first.

Just as the lush, lazy days of the summer season begins, the long hours of daylight that makes summer’s profusion of greenery possible, is already starting to diminish.

So the launch of the summer season begins the six month period of contraction as the Earth’s northern hemisphere turns away from the Sun. And likewise, the launch of the winter season carries within it the seeds of summer even as it is also a harbinger of winter’s cold, harsh weather.

Of course, I consciously understand that the rays of the Sun are not beneficent when you are exposed to them in an unlimited basis. The Earth would heat up too much and eventually conditions would become unlivable.

The rhythm of nature is an automatic corrective keeping the Earth in balance. The seeds of the coming winter are the ballast that propel the change in direction and change in momentum. There is a comfort in knowing that when you reach one extreme that the Universe has a mechanism to bring you back.

So like the tides and the ocean waves, back and forth, nature’s rhythms result in a dynamic balance.

As an astrologer I am an observer of the Universe’s rhythms. Unlike astronomers, who also observe nature’s rhythms, we, astrologers, go further and find meaning in  seemingly random back and forth motion.

And with that we find balance and a ballast to ground ourselves to face the challenges posed by seemingly random events that face us on a daily basis.

The two week period between a lunar and solar eclipse is a pregnant time of limbo.

Currently, we stand between two eclipses, last Saturday’s lunar eclipse and July 11th’s solar eclipse.

Eclipses generally come in pairs and this is no exception. Eclipses also act as astrological triggers–that is, they precipitate events by activating slower, powerful astrological configurations. Those events can occur both globally and in your personal life.

And if either eclipse is touching your birth chart, your life will change in some way. The lunar eclipse, tight with Pluto, was at 5 degrees Cancer. The coming solar is at 20 degrees of Cancer.

What makes this interval so important is that they activate the current powerful T-square configuration featuring our good friends Pluto in Capricorn, Uranus and Jupiter in Aries, and Saturn in late Virgo.

Lunar eclipses involve letting go while solar eclipses are new beginnings. In this they are like full moons and new moons, but only much, more powerful.

These eclipses are part of the kickoff celebration for an event-filled summer.

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This will be an event-filled summer and many people are already feeling the heat. If you are one of them, consider joining me on a journey to explore how the most unusual, current conditions will unfold and touch you.

My 4 week workshop is a guided exploration–and we’ll be using the lens of your birth chart to explore these unusual skies.

It begins Wednesday, June 30 at 9:00 pm Eastern. Click here for more information and to register.

There are enough energy changes this weekend to keep even the most know-it-all astrologer reeling.

This evening the full moon becomes exact at 7:17 pm ET and a couple hours after that Uranus enters Aries. If that’s not enough, Saturn, now motionless in the sky pivots and begins to move direct on Sunday and Neptune turns retrograde on Monday.

What I can tell you for certain is that it is about to get a lot more interesting.

Good thing that the moon is in Sag for a couple days to give us a sense of humor.

A great deal of pent up energy is about to be released and, this weekend, with Neptune stationary, there is apt to be confusion.

Good thing it’s Memorial Day weekend and most of us (in the US) have a break.

This is when it is handy to have some techniques to use to center you and relieve stress when the going gets crazy.

One I like is Mindfulness Meditation. Mindfulness Meditation, widely promoted in this country by Jon Kabat-Zinn  is an easy to use technique. I found an excellent description in the appendix of Catharine MacCoun’s book On Becoming an Alchemist.

Briefly, you sit in a straight-backed chair with your feet on the floor or a lotus position and relax your muscles. Then you follow the movement of your breath. Loosely pay attention as breath comes in and as it leaves.

You will have all kinds of thoughts running through your brain–mind chatter–many call it. Just let the thoughts be. Note that you are having such a thought and then gently brush it away and return to your breath.

Over time you realize through the ongoing experience of a consistent meditation practice that you are not your mind and you reach a stillness within.

Being able to access your stillness, your center, will be invaluable when it feels like there is a hurricane going on.

Go in peace.

For more insight into this week’s primary upsets read Matt Bai’s NY Times article. His point? The natives are restless–voters are not passively going along with their party establishments and neither are their candidates.

Given the sheer magnitude of the increasing economic pressures that rank and file citizens have been subjected to in recent years and their increasing anger and frustration, there has been an amazingly low amount of push back.

Voter behavior may indicate that voters are not as passive as they once were. Before the intense series of outer planet squares and oppositions ends at the end of 2015, you’ll be hearing much more from the grassroots–and maybe you ‘ll be part of the action.

Watching the headlines is a wonderful way to learn astrology. And there was a lot to learn if you followed yesterday’s primaries. Analyzing the results shows the impact of the ongoing Saturn-Uranus opposition.

In the races that drew the most media attention, Arlen Specter vs. Joe Sestak for Democratic nomination to the US Senate in Pennsylvania, Blanche Lincoln vs. Bill Halter for Democratic nomination to the US Senate in Arkansas, and Rand Paul running for the Republican Senate primary against Trey Grayson in Kentucky, the establishment–and the center–lost.

In more normal times, the incumbents and the establishment candidates would have won easily.

Saturn, the planet of the status quo, the establishment, conservatism with a small ‘c’, tradition, has been opposing Uranus, planet of change, revolution, break up, breakthrough, and upset since the fall of 2008.

The extreme polarization and partisanship is one result. Flip flops in the party in power is another.

In the Kentucky race, the tea party candidate won, in the Pennsylvania race, a 30 year incumbent, Arlen Specter lost his bid against a more left-wing Democrat.

That race is particularly interesting. Arlen Specter was a moderate Republican throughout his Senatorial career. His voting record tended to be quirky and undependable. But as the Republican party moved right-ward he became more isolated.

His vote, one of only three Republican votes to support Obama’s stimulus bill may have kept the country from falling into an economic abyss, but it nailed his doom with the Republican party.

Shortly thereafter, he joined the Democratic party and has since voted reliably along Democratic party lines. Although enjoying staunch backing from the Democratic establishment from President Obama on down, many rank and file Democrats did not trust him and were unable to forgive him for his votes advancing the Republican agenda during the Bush years.

In Arkansas, the challenger, Bill Halter, also coming from the left, ran strongly enough to force that race to a runoff.

The upshot is when these candidates run in November, voters’ choices will be highly contrasted. In Pennsylvania, for example, Arlen Specter’s departure from the Republican party cleared the way for hardcore right-wing Pat Toomey to win the Republican nomination where he faces off against liberal Joe Sestak.

Rank and file citizens who have felt that their interests have been sold out in favor of the financial establishment and the well-connected are increasingly frustrated. The winner of that race will tell us a great deal about the direction that growing grassroots anger and discontent is playing out.

To be continued.