New Moon 6/6/24
New Moon and Venus cazimi all square Saturn
Wow, what a gross chart for tomorrow’s New Moon. The Sun, the Moon, and Venus are all square Saturn, the planet of frustrations and restrictions. What a damper on vitality, comfort, and pleasure!
I’m studying to be a consulting astrologer, though, and I’m realizing that being a consulting astrologer often involves reading solar return charts. Anyone who has a birthday around June 6, no matter how old they are, now has a solar return chart that looks about like this governing their year ahead.
How would I interpret such a difficult solar return chart so that the client wasn’t horrified?
I suppose I’d focus on the Venus cazimi, the conjunction between Venus and the Sun that was exact on June 4, 2024, at 14° Gemini. These conjunctions recur in a particular sign on a four-year cycle, so Chris Brennan recently put out a video compiling viewers’ personal stories about events from the 2016 and 2020 Venus-Sun conjunctions in Gemini that are being revisited now.
I would therefore tell my client that, even if something upsetting happens this year, that’s not necessarily the end of the story. Whatever is going on now could be revisited in a more favorable light at the next Venus-Sun conjunction in Gemini, which will take place on June 1, 2028. That time, the Venus-Sun conjunction at 11° Gemini will be conjunct Uranus at 10° Gemini and Mercury at 12° Gemini — quite a different experience!
Venus Cazimi and Cryptocurrency
Venus is associated with romance and relationships, and many of the stories that people shared with Chris Brennan involved those themes. However, Venus also has to do with money.
I began buying cryptocurrency in late April 2020, which I think counts as close enough to the Venus cazimi of June 3, 2020. It seemed like a lot of people who hadn’t previously been involved with cryptocurrency got in around that time. I remember looking at the chart of Bitcoin in late 2013 and passing it on to Johanna Mitchell to see if she’d mention it in her 2014 annual lecture, but I don’t think either of us knew what to do with it then. In 2013, there weren’t loads of well-known mobile apps making it possible to easily buy and sell cryptocurrencies. The process then seemed intimidating and shrouded in mystery.
I wasn’t aware of Coinbase prior to spring 2020, but Wikipedia reports that Coinbase was founded in June 2012. Unfortunately, the exact date is not given, but there was a Venus cazimi that month on June 5, 2012, at 15° Gemini.
The cryptocurrency market was exciting in 2020 and 2021, but then it crashed in 2022. A lot of major cryptocurrencies have significant natal placements in late Aquarius/Leo or early Pisces/Virgo, and transiting Saturn hit the Aquarius-Pisces end of that in 2022-2023.
At this point, I don’t know whether it was a good thing that I got involved with cryptocurrency, but it is what happened. If I suddenly have funding to recruit writers for Changing of the Guards: Pluto on the Precipice, you’ll know one of my crypto investments finally took off.
New Moon Charts for Washington, D.C., and London
The New Moon chart for Washington, D.C., has Venus, the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Jupiter, and Uranus all in the 11th house. The 11th house’s associations include technology, community, and social networking. When London had a similarly prominent 11th house for the New Moon of March 10, 2024, the British royal family was rocked by controversy over the release of a photo of Princess Kate and her children that had obviously been digitally altered. Perhaps it is now America’s turn for that type of weird scandal.
Speaking of Princess Kate, London’s chart for the New Moon has princess-reminiscent Venus near the Midheaven (though not quite as closely conjunct the Midheaven as the chart’s packed 9th house makes it look). I just saw another round of chatter starting up about her on social media. I can imagine that, when I am an old woman sitting in a senior center in the 2060s or 2070s, the trash TV program on offer will be, “What REALLY Happened to Princess Kate?” We may not know for sure much sooner than that, but it is potentially significant that Princess Kate’s March 2024 video statement disclosing her cancer diagnosis was released with Venus conjunct Saturn in Pisces, and now Venus in Gemini is square Saturn in Pisces. Saturn is in this chart’s health-related 6th house.
I hadn't realized today was the New Moon, so read your comments after half the day was gone. The new Moon is conjunct my Moon, so a lunar return too! I was already right on target for the aspects. Making investment decisions that will last a year. Acting on an impulse, though I'd thought about it months ago, and sent money help to a cousin, a gift. But perhaps a greater representation of the Gemini-Pisces square is an hour talking with my therapist about how much I/we want someone to know our life stories and recognize/appreciate that our lives did make a difference before we die. We got to talking how writing down my life stories for purposes of sharing what was important to me with friends (some family) would be gratifying. Saturn bringing into form the totality of a life, with a view of end-of-life (Pisces), and the energy to do so supped by the collossal push of Gemini planets. I see the chart, too, through whole house signs, so the Gemini stellium lands in the first house. More mandate to act on ideas, writings, than if in the 12th. Squares can push the need to act front and center. Can't put off of another day. Thanks, Eva.
This is the problem of adhering too tightly to old rules and omens handed down from traditional astrology, they are centuries old and don't have the same application to cultures that have moved on from the times these rules were constructed. Nothing is static in life, all is evolving, imagine if medicine held true to the remedies it applied 100 years ago, when say, blood letting or leech applications were considered the defacto way to 'heal' someone's maladies.
Considered via mundane astrology, I see the the Gemini placements squaring Saturn as a much needed reality check (Saturn) to the discursive explosion of alternative facts (Gemini) and tabloid-like reporting that have proliferated in the build up to November's election.
Also Saturn (sobriety) entered the public discourse big time in yesterday's WSJ mega-article about Biden's diminishing mental capacities (no attack meant in that statement, but it's simply a Saturnian initiation we will all move through in our egress from this life. And was finally acknowledged in non-partisan ways in the article).
As I encourage my students: Yes, learn all of the rules and laws and ancient techniques, but then set them aside and shift into the new paradigm that opened for astrology when psychology became the new weltanschauung for the culture--which offered astrologers an entirely new humanistic language to communicate their insights.