TGIF — what’s left of it!

A recap of planetary weather for the weekend:

• FRIDAY. The Libra Moon enters Scorpio at 2:04 AM ET, shifting our focus from airy ideas to intense emotions. The workweek ends with gravitas, reflecting the square between the Moon and Saturn at 2:52 PM ET. A sense of urgency about arriving at a compromise may be in the air all day, as Venus is at the very end of Libra. At 4:39 PM ET, Venus leaves Libra for Scorpio, intensifying social expression until October 8th. Where Venus in Libra is inclined to compromise, Venus in Scorpio is fixed in its ways and is more likely to extract payback for a perceived slight. On the other hand, loyalty to a fault is one of Scorpio’s best qualities. I seem to recall stories of couples who’d been together for decades making headlines during one particular Venus in Scorpio passage.
• SATURDAY: the heaviness of Friday’s Moon-Saturn square is replaced by a jolt around 2:36 AM ET, as Moon opposes rebel Uranus. Balance is restored in the morning, as the Moon sextiles the Sun at 10:07 AM ET. No Moon void today means you can shop with confidence. The afternoon and evening reflect vision, resources, expansion, and assertion in matters of knowledge acquired for the sake of power and control.
• SUNDAY: Moon goes void at 1:32 AM ET and enters Sagittarius at 4:34 AM ET. Time for a gamble or a gambol in nature. Take in a foreign film or some other perspective that is not native. Yes, you can have a righteous opinion about it — gawd knows, everyone else will. By now we’ll be feeling the opposition between the Sun and Neptune, exact on Tuesday morning. That explains a desire to escape, to heal, to forgive — or the boundary-pushing rabbit hole that’s hot in the headlines.

No sleeping in on Monday. The Sag Moon will not be void and will have plenty to say in the morning as it sextiles Mercury at 10:30 AM ET. The First Quarter Moon happens at 4:39 PM ET, activating the horoscopes of anyone with planets around 21 degrees of Gemini, Virgo, Pisces, and especially Sagittarius. This includes the former guy, Robert E. Lee, the United States, and a truckload of famous Americans — especially politicians –who are idealized (for better or worse) by the general public. How so? Because anyone with a planet around those degrees is connected to the Mars-Neptune square in the U.S. horoscope, with its need for hero-worship of perceived cowboys and cowgirls.

And now, the news.

It was the U.S. Mars-Neptune square that was triggered on September 1st by transiting Mars in Virgo, having been eclipsed on June 10th. We expected a deluge of surreal initiatives that could not be put back in the bottle, especially with a Mars-Neptune opposition exact the next day:

• “Why NYC was so unprepared for Hurricane Ida’s flash flooding,” which also wiped out “millions of NYC rats.“
• A number of surreal laws took effect in Texas, including one permitting Texans to openly carry a firearm without a permit or a background check…but for some reason, they are still stopping and screening visitors to the State Capitol.  Then there is S.B. 8, which permits private citizens to sue anyone they think might have facilitated the termination of a pregnancy, collecting a bounty of $10,000 should their case be proven in court. Heather Cox Richardson has a fascinating take on how women’s reproductive health care became so politicized and noted that the day after the bill became law, it was mentioned only once on Fox News — in the 5 A.M. news hour. She has a fascinating take on that, too.
• Fun fact: Texas Governor Greg Abbott has an exact Mars-Neptune conjunction in Scorpio, as Avid Readers will recall from past mentions.  Last week he expressed a number of utterly fantastic misconceptions about human biology, which were then vehemently fact-checked on Anderson Cooper 360 by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Abbott’s thinking may not be so magical in the second half of 2022, when transiting Saturn squares his Scorpio Sun, suggesting a potential reality fact check just in time for the holidays. He’s up for re-election in November.
• “The Sacklers, who made billions from OxyContin, win immunity from opioid lawsuits.”
• “Animals are shapeshifting to stay cool” in response to climate change.
• “Grand jury indicts police officers and paramedics in 2019 death of Elijah McClain,” whose hobby was playing the violin for animals at local shelters with beauty and transcendence that could melt hearts.
• “Elderly woman (with dementia) bodyslammed by laughing cops gets $3 million” from Loveland, Colorado
• From the New York Times Magazine:  ‘I Helped Destroy People’ — a cover story about how Terry Albury, an idealistic F.B.I. agent, grew so disillusioned by the war on terror that he was willing to leak classified documents — and go to prison for doing it.

Meanwhile…

…plenty of hot TV shows also embody Mars-Neptune themes. Have you seen:

• Only Murders in the Building, starring Steve Martin, Martin Short & Selena Gomez. Last week’s prime suspect was Sting; this week’s is “Tie-Dye Guy.” Surreal!
• Nine Perfect Strangers — with Nicole Kidman playing a Svengali-type doyenne of a twisted New Age retreat serving up psychedelic smoothies.
• White Lotus — “Big Little Lies with two and a half turns of the screw, says The Guardian

In other news…

In the last forecast it was anticipated that we would see relatively speedy recoveries from the previous week’s chaos, likely with themes of power grids and aviation:

• Power is being restored in Louisiana faster than originally anticipated
• Biden calls for solar energy to power half the nation by 2050
• Yesterday a charter flight carrying 100 Americans & other citizens was finally able to depart Kabul — the first since the official U.S. departure from Afghanistan. A second flight left today.
• “A secretive Pentagon program that started on TFG’s last day in office just ended. The mystery has not.” Yes, it’s a big network story — and totally cloaked in fog.

In the last forecast, it was also anticipated that “Those in certain positions of power may decide they have all the resources they need to launch their clean-up plan, without support from any other, thank you very much.” (cue John Lennon and Yoko Ono now, please)

• “Analysis: Biden’s vaccine mandate signals a White House done with persuasion” (thank you very much). All federal employees must be vaccinated, and all employers with more than 100 employees must require Covid vaccinations or weekly testing. What’s cool about that last one is that an OSHA provision allows it — health and workers front and center, as we’d expect after a New Moon in Virgo.
• Oh, and to Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer (and others on the boards of our U.S. military academies): “You’re fired.”
• And yes, AG Merrick Garland is suing Texas for its “open defiance of the U.S. Constitution,” in re: S.B. 8

Finally…

Tomorrow is September 11th — a solemn day in the United States.  Last year I re-posted something  I wrote nine years ago —  about finding silver linings in the tragic and cathartic experience of 2001 — a day that Changed Everything. Here it is again, hopefully, none the worse for wear: