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Astrology

Free Will Astrology: Week of June 18, 2026

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by Rob Brezsny | June 16, 2026

Photo: Alex Guillaume

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Aries mathematician Paul Erdos lived without a permanent address, traveling the world to collaborate with other mathematicians. He owned little, claiming “property is a nuisance.” His life was structured around doing mathematics and helping others do mathematics. He published over 1,500 papers, more than any mathematician in history. Was his minimalism a form of deprivation? I prefer to think it was liberation from everything that didn’t serve his purpose. What would your life be like if you eliminated things that don’t serve your deepest purposes, Aries? In the coming weeks, you have permission to be ruthless about your priorities. What are you maintaining out of habit rather than conviction? What burdens masquerade as responsibilities?

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): A friend told me about the creative-writing class he took with renowned poet Brenda Hillman. “I recall being in class,” he says, “and having the thought, wow, this teacher works far harder at teaching than I do at learning.” Dear Taurus, please don’t indulge in a similar laziness anytime soon. Your educational opportunities are currently richer than usual. To extract the full benefit, you must match the verve and vigor of your teachers. (PS: The teachers may or may not think of themselves as teachers. They could even be animals, rainstorms or ancestors.)

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Eastern monarch butterflies migrate annually from the American Midwest to central Mexico. The individuals who start the journey from Nebraska or Wisconsin die long before they reach the oyamel fir trees of Mexico. So do their children and their grandchildren. Their great-grandchildren finish the trip, though they have never been to the destination. Somehow they know where to go, navigating thousands of miles to trees they’ve never seen. Let’s apply this as a metaphor for you, Gemini. I suspect you are carrying navigational wisdom you didn’t realize you possessed. Inherited knowledge, encoded deep in your secret places, is ready to guide you. So pay attention to inexplicable certainties. Trust the directions that arrive without logical explanation.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): A large earthquake doesn’t relieve stress evenly along a fault. Instead, it creates zones where stress is reduced and others where stress increases, making future ruptures more likely. So the stress is redistributed, but not uniformly. According to my reading of the omens, Cancerian, you recently experienced a metaphorical shake-up. I suggest you identify where stress has grown and where it has dissipated. Your next moves should account for this new distribution of pressure. Some areas of your life are now more vulnerable, while others have become more stable. Read the landscape accurately before proceeding.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Songbirds like zebra finches practice their melodies while asleep. Their vocal muscles move in ways that mirror daytime singing. These replay patterns help young birds learn their songs and adults maintain and refine their tunes over time. I suspect that you are engaged in a similar type of learning, Leo. You are enhancing skills and uncovering insights while asleep and dreaming. Bonus! Even when awake, you’re absorbing clues on a subconscious level. Your deeper intelligence is gathering information you will need for your upcoming breakthroughs. Hooray for mysterious help!

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Architects who design concert halls know that perfect sound isn’t achieved through perfect smoothness. The best acoustics come from strategic irregularities, textured walls and angled surfaces that distribute vibrations in pleasing ways. Too much uniformity creates dead zones and echoes; too much chaos creates muddle. Pleasing resonance arises from organized complexity. In my estimation, Virgo, your life is currently too smooth in some areas and too haphazard in others. You may need more strategic irregularity. Consider introducing productive unpredictability into relationships that have become too routine. Add inventive structure to efforts that have become shapeless. Don’t aim for either total order or complete randomness. What will generate maximum beauty?

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Have you ever been ambushed by unexpected bursts of gratification emerging from subtle miracles? Maybe a loved one finally grasps a truth you’ve been trying to convey for eons. Or you feel balanced in a situation that once made you feel lopsided. Or you grasp, with shivers of awe, that you got uncanny spiritual guidance at a key crossroads. I foresee at least three such blessings for you in the coming weeks. To ensure you recognize them, don’t get distracted in the pursuit of splashy bonanzas and gaudy prizes. Be nimbly alert for subtle breakthroughs.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Poet Emily Dickinson rarely left her family home but bequeathed us a marvelous body of lyrical work as she roamed through vast inner worlds. Sci-fi novelist Octavia Butler rose early to write before long shifts at low-paid jobs, imagining visionary futures during her limited hours to be creative. Lucille Clifton raised six children while shaping poems of distilled, luminous insight, showing us how to summon fierce originality from a life crowded with responsibilities. Moral of the story: Buoyant power can flourish even when circumstances are limited. This lesson may be relevant for you in the coming weeks. If conditions seem imperfect or incomplete, trust that your resilience and adaptability can compensate for external obstacles. I have faith in your ability to generate useful beauty.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Our tongues are primed to heal astonishingly fast thanks to dense blood vessels, saliva’s repair proteins, and a rapid immune response. Wounds that would take more patience elsewhere can heal here in days. I suspect that your psyche now possesses your tongue’s high level of healing power. So I hope you will launch a phase of accelerated repair. Call on every possible form of therapeutic assistance, please!

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Now is an ideal time to clear out old romantic karma from the past. Please consider performing a DIY ritual to release painful memories, leftover grudges and long-standing hurts that keep tugging at your intimate connections. The coming weeks will also be a favorable phase to discard rigid beliefs about gender and dismantle anything that blocks you from experiencing full-bodied sensual and sexual delight. Expect to be freed from at least some energies that have limited your ability to explore fun and vigorous ways of savoring your desires.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): I suggest you adopt a new honorary title like “Charm Weaver” or “Emissary of Radiance” or “Beauty Whisperer.” Why? Because I hope it will help inspire you to stir up delightful play and lyrical mystery wherever you wander. For instance: Infuse your conversations with sparkling harmony and sly, graceful humor. Burst into whimsical songs, fling out extravagant compliments, pose clever questions that spark fresh ideas, and call attention to systems and relationships in your world that are functioning wonderfully well. Many perks will flow your way as you do.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Is there a dream from childhood that you’re ready to revive on a higher octave? Think of something you longed for before the world told you to be boringly realistic: an art you wanted to practice, a way you wanted to live, or the kind of person you hoped to become. The question isn’t “Can I go back and do it exactly the same?” but “What is the mature, wiser, present-day version of that dream?” You might write in your journal: “The childhood dream I’m ready to lift to a higher octave is ______,” and then add, “If I took one concrete step toward it, what would it be?”

Homework: Beam unconditional acceptance at a part of yourself you often criticize. tinyurl.com/777vvv777

Astrology

Chiron Enters Taurus – Healing Worth, Money and What Matters

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(Astrobutterfly.com)

The body knows long before the mind understands.

We were born with an inner barometer that tells us, through the body, what is good for us and what isn’t. Most of us have simply forgotten how to read it.

That inner barometer – call it sensing, instinct, deeper knowing, – is the ‘front line’ of truth, and everything builds on it.

Ignore it, and our whole life becomes a lie.

Chiron’s ingress into Taurus on June 19th, 2026, opens the door to restoring it.

chiron enters taurus

With Chiron in Taurus, there’s no more hiding, distracting ourselves, or keeping busy. The time has come to finally come to terms with that part of us that is Taurus.

In a way, we HAVE to do it. We have no choice. In the past 7 years, Uranus has been savaging the Taurus area of our chart, sending electric shocks through it, burning it down, pulling the ground beneath our feet.

Whether our mind agrees with this or not (yet), we needed this shakeup. Like everything that is alive, Taurus cannot survive on stagnation.

Uranus left us with the ashes – and this is from where Chiron is taking over.

Chiron orbits closer to the Sun than Uranus – which makes its energy more accessible to us. Not easy, but workable.

Where Uranus overwhelms, Chiron can actually be met and worked with.

Chiron’s orbit takes around 50 years, which means its return arrives just after the midlife transits – at the point in life when we’re finally ready to face what it asks of us. Something fundamental becomes available to shift.

It makes sense if we look at Chiron’s symbolism: half-horse and half-man, half-animal and half-god, Chiron represents the ongoing process of making nature and consciousness work together.

Without Chiron, we can only live half lives and half truths. Chiron pushes our buttons – he’s called the Wounded Healer, after all – so that we finally address what we’ve been avoiding. The result is not ‘healing’ in a therapeutic sense, but alignment. Restoration. Evolutionary relief.

So how will Chiron express itself during its upcoming 7-year stay in Taurus?

First, this is a rare transit – not the kind we get every other year, where we have the luxury to try and learn.

The last time Chiron was in Taurus was around 50 years ago, from 1976 to 1983. Some of us might remember it, but most of us were either too young or not yet born.

And what is rare is significant. Unless we live for another 50 years, we won’t get another opportunity to heal that part of us that is Taurus.

If there is one thing that the world – and every one of us – desperately needs right now, it’s healing the animal within us.

The Taurus wound is the exile from the body, from the knowing, from the primal trust that it’s safe to be here.

When that primal trust is broken – through early experiences of scarcity, conditional love, having to earn our place, being too much or not enough – the body stops feeling safe – and the knowing goes offline.

When the knowing goes offline, we end up not fully living – running on autopilot, going through the motions.

When Taurus knowing is restored, we just KNOW what is good for us, what makes sense, and what helps us grow. We make good choices. And then all the things we normally associate Taurus with – self-worth, pleasure, money, productivity – follow downstream from there.

Restoring Taurus can be an almost impossible task – that is, if we approach it with psychologizing, affirmations, emotional processing, or in any other non-Taurean way.

OR it can be the most natural thing in the world – if we approach it the way Taurus itself works.

“Chiron in Taurus – Healing Worth, Money, and What Matters” is the framework for restoring our Taurus function.

Here are the details:

→ Chiron in Taurus – Healing Worth, Money, and What Matters

Astrology

Free Will Astrology: Week of June 11, 2026

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by Rob Brezsny | June 9, 2026 (NewCity.com)

Photo: Amy Lister

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Many of you have a fraught relationship with discipline. You recognize you need it if you want a life rich with epic adventures. Yet you sometimes resist planning ahead or organizing your resources, fearing it might dampen your immediate pleasures. The problem is that when you skip the planning and organizing, the short-term fun you default to may turn out to be unsatisfying. That’s the challenging news. The encouraging news is that you’re now in a cycle when you can transform how you relate to discipline. I bet you can render some of those old patterns obsolete.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Gemologists evaluate opals less for flawless uniformity than for their mesmerizing play-of-color. They study how light interacts with a stone’s microscopic internal structure to produce vivid, shifting hues. The most prized opals aren’t necessarily the most perfect in shape, but the ones whose internal pattern and rainbow-like displays are most vibrant, varied and alive. This is a marvelous metaphor for you in the coming weeks. I hope you don’t obsess on consistency or smooth away your complications. Let the world see your play-of-color.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “Dear Oracle: Why do we always have to start at the beginning? I’d much prefer just jumping into the middle of things. Right now, I would love to bypass all the tedious baby steps I’m being forced to take as I try to get some momentum going. Please slip me a few clues about how to fast-forward directly to the fun stuff. —Bored with the Groundwork.” Dear Bored: Your timing is perfect. The planetary omens say you are now authorized to vault over the preludes and prologues and dive right into the heart of the action.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Restoration ecologists work to revive damaged prairies. They’ve discovered that seeds of many native plants can lie dormant in the soil for years, waiting for the right conditions to germinate. If they remove invasive species and restore the land’s natural cycle of controlled fire, wildflowers long absent from the landscape spring back to life. With this metaphor in mind, Cancerian, consider what dormant possibilities may lie buried in your own psyche. What seeds did you plant long ago and then forget? What dreams or talents are waiting for you to clear away the choking overgrowth and create space for them to emerge? Old potentials may be patient, not dead.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Better than any other sign, you understand that ego and generosity can be collaborators rather than enemies. Your charismatic radiance is often a public service. When you express your interesting beauty, you give others permission to tap into their own luminosity. The world always craves your unique flavor of audacious joy, and especially now. The rest of us need your intense insistence that flair and flamboyance are forms of resistance against the forces that would diminish life’s splendor.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Many people struggle with what could be called “imagined ugliness,” a condition clinicians refer to as body dysmorphic disorder. It usually involves fixating on a supposed physical defect, or even on a flaw that exists only in one’s mind. I suspect that almost everyone carries a trace of this tendency, including you and me. The good news, though, is that the current astrological climate is ideal for you to at least partially shatter its spell. You are poised to transform your self-image so vigorously that you begin to regard yourself as a flawless exemplar of quirky, one-of-a-kind beauty.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The Golden Gate Bridge, which is a few miles from my home, is painted continuously. Painters start at one end, work their way across, and by the time they reach the other side, it’s time to start over. The job is never finished; maintenance is the permanent condition. Some people find this depressing, but I find it oddly liberating. It means the bridge doesn’t have to achieve some final, perfect state. It just has to be tended. Similarly, you don’t have to fix everything once and for all, Libra. The relationships, projects and internal states you’re concerned about aren’t meant to reach completion. You shouldn’t worry about trying to finish what’s meant to be an ongoing practice. Just keep starting the cycle again.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Innovative theater director Viola Spolin was a Scorpio. She taught that the best scenes emerge when the actors avoid trying to control outcomes. Instead, they fully commit to the reality they’re creating together. Spontaneous responses are their gold standard. Let’s make this a keynote for you in the coming weeks. Your assignment is to give yourself heartily to improvisation. The most interesting magic will happen as you relax into the collaborative process, trusting it to guide you toward beauty and meanings none of you could have scripted alone.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Musicologists distinguish between “perfect pitch” and “relative pitch.” A person with perfect pitch can sing or identify a specific note without hearing any other music beforehand. Relative pitch is the ability to recognize musical notes in relation to other notes. In the coming weeks, Sagittarius, relative pitch will be a more useful metaphor for you than perfect pitch. Don’t insist on perfect clarity about what’s right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, worthy and unworthy. Instead of obsessing on fixed standards, practice relational discernment.  How does this choice feel compared to that one? How does a person behave in this context versus another? For you right now, truth lives in the intervals and connections.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The best way to eliminate a bad habit is to replace it with a good one. Now is an excellent time to acquire more expertise in this art. Start by choosing a specific habit that drains your energy, time or self-respect. Then identify what that habit is secretly trying to give you, like comfort, distraction or a sense of control. Your mission is to find a healthier behavior that offers a similar payoff without the damage. For example, maybe you go online and binge-scroll through bad news because you imagine it soothes your anxiety. Instead of that, read an uplifting book or listen to serene music for a while. Be concrete: When the itchy habit hits, what exactly will you do as an alternative?

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): In 1905, twenty-six-year-old Albert Einstein worked full-time as a clerk in a Swiss patent office. During his off-hours, he wrote four audacious papers that fundamentally changed how physics understood space, time, light and matter. He accomplished his revolution without the sponsorship of a renowned university or laboratory. His example suggests that we can perhaps re-imagine and recreate the world even if we’re not supported by glamorous circumstances. I suspect this principle applies to you these days. Breakthrough insights and earth-shaking realizations may arrive while you’re doing ordinary tasks. Be alert for the flashes that arise in seemingly routine and modest situations.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): For linguists, “untranslatable” words are concepts that exist in one language but have no equivalent in others. One example is mono no aware, which in Japanese refers to the tender poignance and appreciation you feel in the presence of fleeting beauty, like cherry blossoms falling. I bring this to your attention, Pisces, because I suspect that you, too, are untranslatable right now. My advice is to forget about trying to get others to grasp what’s going on with you. Here’s a suggestion that might help: Find soulful artists and emotionally intelligent creatives who speak the language of your mystery.

Homework: What gifts do you have that you have never yet given with fullness? tinyurl.com/33ss33ss

Astrology

Uranus Square The Lunar Nodes – The Skipped Step

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(Astrobutterfly.com)

On June 12th, 2026, Uranus exactly squares the Nodal axis. 

While this aspect might easily get overlooked in an already eventful June – with Venus conjunct Jupiter, and both Chiron and Jupiter changing signs – it might actually be the big elephant in the room. 

When a planet is square the Nodal axis – which means it is simultaneously square the North Node and the South Node – astrologers call it a “skipped step”.

uranus is square the lunar nodes

The Skipped Step

The skipped step is usually understood as unresolved developmental material from the past that needs to be addressed before a person can fully move forward.

“Unresolved” here is not to be confused with feeling stuck. Instead, it points to a dynamic where the conflict of the nodal opposition gets resolved through an outlet (the planet squaring it).

Just like in a T-square, we can look at the planet that squares the Nodes as the outside catalyst that resolves the tension of the opposition.

Oppositions and squares, while both classified as “hard aspects,” have very different functions.

An opposition is a “number 2” aspect – it divides the circle in 2: either, or. It’s internal, a constant pendulum between options. The tension is never resolved because this tension is exactly what makes the opposition an opposition: “either, or” – “this or that.”

The square, instead, is a “number 4” aspect – it divides the circle by 4, and 4 is the number of matter. This is why squares make things happen. They bring matters into the material world. 

So in a T-square, or a skipped-step type of dynamic, the planet that squares the opposition axis acts as the catalyst that makes things happen (like for real, in the 3D world). It’s like a fuse that suddenly goes off – and the tension of the opposition is finally addressed.

And this reframe of the square invites a slightly different way of thinking about the skipped step itself. 

Perhaps we’ve been taking the skipped step metaphor too seriously – but not literally enough.

And perhaps the easiest way to understand a skipped step is through an actual skipped step.

When you skip a step and stumble upon something, the script gets interrupted.

The skipped step not as something you’ve missed. But literally, as what happens when something occurs on the outside – the square – that resolves the problem of the opposition.

The Skipped Step And Snow White

And this takes us to the Snow White fairytale. 

Snow White grows up under the shadow of a jealous stepmother, the Queen. Unable to reconcile with the passing of her own beauty, the Queen poisons Snow White with an apple, sending her into a death-like sleep.

We could go on and on about the rich symbolism of this fairytale – from the mother-daughter dynamics and the little-discussed jealousy that can coexist with love, yet still poison the next generation with the regret of one’s own unfulfilled potential.

If we look at it through the lens of the Lunar Nodes, the poisoned apple becomes the generational heritage (this could include past-life content if we choose to look at the Nodes this way) that someone is born into.

We all have a North Node and a South Node – this is the one aspect, the one opposition, that regardless of the rest of the natal chart, everyone is born with.

We are all born into some sort of story, heritage, or unprocessed material (South Node) which exists in polarity with our North Node – a symbol of future directions and possibilities. 

The past and the future are continuously renegotiated, but unless a planet comes to activate this axis, nothing happens.

Astrology

Astrology Without Doom

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. . . but not without shadow Rob Brezsny Jun 9, 2026
I’ve been an astrologer since I began studying astrology at Goddard College at age 19.But I’ve never been a traditional astrologer. I love the ancient art too much to keep peddling its most fearful inheritances. Over the centuries, astrology has absorbed a heavy cargo of dread, including curses, afflictions, exiles, and warnings of cosmic bad luck.I’ve spent years reading the same sky that the dread-ridden practitioners read, and I’ve arrived at different conclusions about what it’s trying to tell us.On this Freedom from Fear holiday, I will offer disclaimers to refute the doom-mongering and uphold the zoom-and-boom approach to living our magical lives.
1. I don’t use any version of astrology that claims some planets and some houses are “malefic.” There are no villains in the solar system. There is no celestial body whose essential job is to ambush or ruin you.So, for example, Saturn isn’t a hooded executioner; it teaches discipline, patient structure, the dignity of limits. Mars isn’t a brute; it grants courage, drive, and the holy capacity to fight for what we love.To brand a planet or a house as evil is to misread the gift inside the intense packaging.Read more about my understanding of Saturn: tinyurl.com/BlessingsOfSaturnRead more about my understanding of Mars: tinyurl.com/MarsWithinUs
2. I don’t believe that planets are in “detriment” or “fall” in particular signs. The notion that a planet is crippled, demoted, or exiled simply because of which signs it happens to occupy strikes me as an astrological caste system: as if Venus in Scorpio were a broken instrument, or the Moon in Capricorn a wounded animal. I know people with Venus in Scorpio and Moon in Capricorn, and I guarantee you that those placements don’t hobble or torment them.No to all that noise. In fact, I relish the hypothesis that every placement is a particular intelligence—a specific flavor of power, a distinctive way of getting things done—not a defect to apologize for.
3. I don’t regard planetary retrogrades as inherently problematic. Mercury retrograde, in particular, has become pop culture’s favorite scapegoat, blamed for every dropped call and missed text.But a retrograde isn’t a malfunction. It’s a different mode: a turning-inward, a season for review, revision, recapitulation, and second looks. The backward-seeming motion isn’t the universe glitching. It’s the universe inviting us to circle back and finish what we left unfinished.My understanding of Mercury Retrograde: tinyurl.com/RetrogradeMercuryRead more about retrograde planets in general: https://tinyurl.com/y89kuwa6
4. I don’t think we should do anything differently when the moon is “void of course.” I won’t tiptoe through my life, postpone my decisions, or hold my breath because tradition warns that “nothing will come of” what I begin during those hours.I start my projects whenever the spirit moves me. The cosmos isn’t waiting to penalize my timing.Read more about my understanding: tinyurl.com/PraiseMoonVoidOfCourse
5. I don’t treat the aspects of square and opposition as being inherently negative and troublesome. The so-called “hard aspects” are engines of growth, not glitches in the wiring. Tension isn’t the enemy of a vivid life; it’s one of its primary creative forces.A square denotes friction that strikes a spark. An opposition is the dynamic, generative tug between two truths that both deserve to be honored. Smooth and easy is lovely, but it’s less likely to make us braver, deeper, or more alive.
6. I don’t believe that solar or lunar eclipses portend peril or distress. Eclipses are thresholds, hinges, and dramatic punctuation marks in the ongoing narrative of our lives.They’re portals: moments when energies can be released and new modes born. To greet them with anxiety is to mistake intensity for worrisome twists.More about my understanding of eclipses: tinyurl.com/EclipsesAreInvitations
When I periodically lay out my approach to astrology on social media, some readers are alarmed, even angry, as if they imagine I’m a first-class spiritual bypasser. One sneered, “So you practice astrology that strips away negative aspects and shadow?”That’s a big, unjustified leap from what I actually say.The answer is no, I’m not stripping away shadow. I’m not saying everything that ever happens is cheerful, positive, and easy. What I’m refusing is far more specific: the assignment of fixed, fatalistic, fear-based verdicts to the phenomena of the sky. I’m questioning the medieval bookkeeping that decides in advance which configurations are curses and which are blessings, before we’ve even had the chance to live them.Shadow is real. Difficulty is real. Grief, loss, struggle, and the long dark passages of a human life are real, all worthy of our intense attention. As a chaos magician and dreamworker, I am on intimate terms with what’s unresolved, wounded, and not-yet-redeemed. I work with the shadow every single day and have for years. It’s one of my deepest callings. It’s an important reason why I am such a diligent dreamworker.The difference is this: I don’t believe the shadow is a punishment handed down by malefic planets. I believe it’s raw material: teachings that invite us to grow into a more beautiful and resilient version of ourselves. The squares that grind against us and the transits that jolt us out of our habits are the curriculum. They’re not sentences pronounced by a hostile universeTo strip away shadow would commit the grave error of toxic positivity. I have zero interest in that. PRONOIA—my conviction that the whole of creation is conspiring to move us in the direction of liberation—isn’t the denial of pain. It’s the radical trust that even our pain is conspiring to liberate us.
So here’s the core of how I practice:All omens deserve to be interpreted in ways that provide guidance and teaching. All configurations deserve to be read as messages about how to live more skillfully, love more fiercely, and wake up more fully: including the comfortable and the uncomfortable aspects, the flowing trines and the disruptive squares, the new moons and the eclipses.All omens are revelations about how to successfully wrangle with our problems, perpetrate liberation, ameliorate suffering, find redemption, and perform the tricky maneuvers and ingenious tweaks that enable us to slip free of our mind-forged manacles and discover the deeper meanings beneath our experiences.Those manacles, as William Blake understood, are often forged in our own imaginations. They are made of our fears, inherited superstitions, and half-conscious agreements about what we’re allowed to become.And astrology at its best is a locksmith’s art, not a fortune-teller’s racket. It hands us the picks and shims and skeleton keys. It shows us where the lock is, and how the mechanism turns.An omen isn’t a verdict handed down from on high. It doesn’t tell us what will be done to us. It’s an invitation that reveals what might be done by us and through us and with us if we’re cunning and brave and generous enough to read it as a teaching rather than a threat.I read the same sky every other astrologer reads. I refuse to read it as a rap sheet. To me, it’s a love letter that includes, among its tender passages, the hard and holy lessons we need to learn.
MORE FROM ME ABOUT ASTROLOGY:
For more of my thoughts about astrology, read my book ASTROLOGY IS REAL and/or read free excerpts from the book here: tinyurl.com/BraveBliss
Read my Love Letters to You, oracles for your sign: tinyurl.com/OraclesForYou

(Contributed by John Atwater, H.W.)

Astrology

Uranus Square The Lunar Nodes – The Skipped Step

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(Astrobutterfly.com)

On June 12th, 2026, Uranus exactly squares the Nodal axis. 

While this aspect might easily get overlooked in an already eventful June – with Venus conjunct Jupiter, and both Chiron and Jupiter changing signs – it might actually be the big elephant in the room. 

When a planet is square the Nodal axis – which means it is simultaneously square the North Node and the South Node – astrologers call it a “skipped step”.

uranus is square the lunar nodes

The Skipped Step

The skipped step is usually understood as unresolved developmental material from the past that needs to be addressed before a person can fully move forward.

“Unresolved” here is not to be confused with feeling stuck. Instead, it points to a dynamic where the conflict of the nodal opposition gets resolved through an outlet (the planet squaring it).

Just like in a T-square, we can look at the planet that squares the Nodes as the outside catalyst that resolves the tension of the opposition.

Oppositions and squares, while both classified as “hard aspects,” have very different functions.

An opposition is a “number 2” aspect – it divides the circle in 2: either, or. It’s internal, a constant pendulum between options. The tension is never resolved because this tension is exactly what makes the opposition an opposition: “either, or” – “this or that.”

The square, instead, is a “number 4” aspect – it divides the circle by 4, and 4 is the number of matter. This is why squares make things happen. They bring matters into the material world. 

So in a T-square, or a skipped-step type of dynamic, the planet that squares the opposition axis acts as the catalyst that makes things happen (like for real, in the 3D world). It’s like a fuse that suddenly goes off – and the tension of the opposition is finally addressed.

And this reframe of the square invites a slightly different way of thinking about the skipped step itself. 

Perhaps we’ve been taking the skipped step metaphor too seriously – but not literally enough.

And perhaps the easiest way to understand a skipped step is through an actual skipped step.

When you skip a step and stumble upon something, the script gets interrupted.

The skipped step not as something you’ve missed. But literally, as what happens when something occurs on the outside – the square – that resolves the problem of the opposition.

The Skipped Step And Snow White

And this takes us to the Snow White fairytale. 

Snow White grows up under the shadow of a jealous stepmother, the Queen. Unable to reconcile with the passing of her own beauty, the Queen poisons Snow White with an apple, sending her into a death-like sleep.

We could go on and on about the rich symbolism of this fairytale – from the mother-daughter dynamics and the little-discussed jealousy that can coexist with love, yet still poison the next generation with the regret of one’s own unfulfilled potential.

If we look at it through the lens of the Lunar Nodes, the poisoned apple becomes the generational heritage (this could include past-life content if we choose to look at the Nodes this way) that someone is born into.

We all have a North Node and a South Node – this is the one aspect, the one opposition, that regardless of the rest of the natal chart, everyone is born with.

We are all born into some sort of story, heritage, or unprocessed material (South Node) which exists in polarity with our North Node – a symbol of future directions and possibilities. 

The past and the future are continuously renegotiated, but unless a planet comes to activate this axis, nothing happens.

Uranus Square The Lunar Nodes – The Skipped Step

When Uranus squares the Nodes, something will happen. 

It might come as an accident, an unforeseen circumstance, a coincidence, or an unexpected development that somehow changes the trajectory of the story.

In Snow White, one of the prince’s servants skips a step while carrying Snow White’s coffin.

–> The jolt causes the piece of poisoned apple lodged in Snow White’s throat to get expelled. The poison leaves her body, she comes to life, and the spell is broken.

This was not something that Snow White, the prince, or anyone else in the story “did.” It was not some sort of reward for hard work.

It was an accident. A skipped step. An interruption of the script. The servant literally skipped a step. And the problem of the Nodal axis got resolved.

The skipped step is not the problem. It is the solution. 

Uranus square the Nodes is the catalyst that interrupts the looping narrative – and in doing so, frees it.

With Uranus squaring the Nodal axis, nothing “causes” the awakening in a linear sense. Instead, there is a sudden disruption of the existing situation. An unexpected event. A break in the pattern. 

If we look back at our lives, many of our most life-changing moments were not planned or ‘worked through’. They happened by chance – or by what later felt like the mysterious pull of fate.

And while this transit may not require us to ‘do more’, it does require recognition.

What first appears as an interruption may in fact be the thing that resolves a tension that could not otherwise be resolved.

Sometimes the solution to a an “either, or” is not to take another step. Sometimes the solution is to skip a step. 

Astrology

Free Will Astrology: Week of June 4, 2026

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by Rob Brezsny | June 2, 2026 (NewCity.com)

Photo: Mitya Ivanov

ARIES (March 21-April 19): You are often the best possible remedy for stale, unoriginal thinking that’s festering in your vicinity. And you are especially so these days. Others might have the gall to disrupt the deadening status quo, but you have the charm to do it without scorching every bridge and laying waste to the land. So I invite you to step into the role of cheerful troublemaker. Unleash your iconoclastic sparks with the intention of making life friskier and more imaginative, not more tangled and irritating.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): In many farming cultures, including parts of India, growers speak or sing to their crops as they walk through the fields. It’s a gesture of personal care that mirrors growing scientific interest in how plants respond to sound and vibration. Some studies suggest that plants exposed to sustained speech and song may grow more vigorously. Your assignment in the coming weeks, Taurus, is to speak to the growing things in your life with similar devotion. Talk to your projects. Sing to your relationships. Tell jokes to your dreams. The universe is extra responsive to your sweet voice.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Neurologist Oliver Sacks said, “I am haunted by the density of experience.” He meant that every moment contains far more richness than we can fully register or remember. This observation will be especially relevant for you in the coming weeks. Your mind (and heart!) will be flooded with an abundance of stimuli, ideas, feelings and impressions. It might initially feel overwhelming, but will ultimately be a boon—especially if you prepare yourself for the intensity and abundance. Imagine yourself standing next to a fountain and feeling cheerful about getting soaked.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): You have superpowers that hardened hearts and tough guys can’t fathom. Receptivity is a key part of your genius, for example. Emotional fluency is at the root of your intelligence. Your ability to feel so much and so deeply makes you dangerous to status quos managed by people who overthink everything. Wait! There’s more. You can nurture without smothering and protect without imprisoning. You wield the powers of memory without being enslaved by nostalgia. You make home a verb, not a noun, as you build shelter for yourself and your tribe. I hope you will express these gorgeous talents to the max in the coming weeks and months.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): An astrologer rooted in older traditions might claim that now is an ideal time to promote your personal agenda through sly, gossipy maneuvering. But since I am devoted to building a new culture grounded in compassionate values that nourish the soul, my message is different. I’m pleased to tell you that the coming weeks will be a potent phase to engage in elevating gossip that serves the greater good, to celebrate unsung heroes, and to call attention to everything that is thriving. For practical dreamers like you and me, carelessly speaking ill of others undermines our own aspirations. One of the most effective ways to expand our own possibilities is to use the power of language to boost other people’s chances for joy and success.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): The ancient Library of Alexandria contained over half a million scrolls. If you devoted eight hours a day to reading, you could finish about 5,000 books over the course of your life. The librarians back then knew they would never read all the texts they managed and protected. Their job wasn’t to consume all knowledge but to be stewards of abundance. They’re good role models for you, Virgo. The wonderful fact is that you don’t have to master every single thing that attracts your attention. Your far more relaxing task is to curate with care and wisdom. Your growing edge is to know what to preserve and what to release. One of your noblest projects is to commune pleasurably with the intriguing mysteries that life brings you, not obsess on them.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Libra psychologist Carol Dweck distinguishes between fixed mindsets (“I’m not smart enough”) and growth mindsets (“I can become smarter”). When you have a fixed mindset, obstacles weigh you down. With a growth mindset, they motivate you to develop. What determines your trajectory isn’t your current skill level but how you relate to your edge. With this in mind, Libra, I invite you to monitor your self-talk as you encounter challenges. Are you prone to thinking that limitations are permanent, or do you see them as temporary states you can use as opportunities? You now have a good chance to instill the latter as a root habit.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): What’s something you wish you could change about yourself? Is it a trait, pattern, fear or story about your body? And what exactly tells you that this can never change? Is it loyalty to old expectations or a rotting prophecy someone laid on you? Consider the possibility that maybe the “can’t” is really a “won’t,” or a “don’t know how yet,” or “I’m afraid of who I’d be without this.” Then imagine that you don’t have to transform this thing instantly, but, for starters, need only shift it by ten percent in the direction of mercy and freedom. What small, specific action would generate that ten percent?

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): What’s your most vital relationship? I dare you to surprise each other in the coming weeks. Refresh your bond with playful experimentation. Here are adventures you two could explore: 1. Take a walk together with no destination in mind, letting curiosity guide you. Talk about the paths you have not yet taken in life but might like to. 2. Describe the most beautiful future you can imagine for each other. Share practical steps you could take to make these scenarios happen. 3. Choose a food treat you both love, speak a blessing over it, then eat it slowly together as you name what you are most grateful for in your connection.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Chess masters and accomplished musicians practice differently from amateurs. They focus most intensely on their weak points, less so on rehearsing what they already do well. It’s uncomfortable to confront inadequacy, but they’re better for it. In my astrological opinion, Capricorn, you should specialize in a similar courage during the coming weeks. I invite you to direct your generous attention toward your shakiest skills and most uncertain territories. Glorious growth will happen at the edge of your competence.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Be more like a lightning storm over a green meadow and less like a porch light attracting moths. Be more like a spiritual riddle in an ecstatic poem and less like a slogan printed on a T-shirt. Be more like a Miles Davis improvisation and less like a tune played note-for-note from the sheet music for a formulaic pop song. Can you stretch yourself into more fertile wildness, Aquarius? Will you expand your future with adventures that thrill your imagination? I believe you can and should. For bonus magic, be more like a dream of wandering in a rowdy paradise and less like the old version of yourself. Trust the frontier signals that make your pulse quicken, and speak less about the obvious truths that make everyone nod in agreement.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Are you ready to assess the state of your emotional pain? Every few years, I invite you to take stock. I ask you to reflect on how well you’ve been cultivating meaningful stress while avoiding useless pain and misery. So, how’s your progress since our last check-in? Have you improved at sidestepping dull torments you’ve relived a thousand times? Are you less vulnerable to being wounded by ignorant or thoughtless people? Can you more swiftly shake off the sting of minor troubles? Most importantly, are you increasingly magnetized to the intriguing dilemmas that challenge you to grow wiser and more resourceful?

Homework: Identify ten of your best blessings. tinyurl.com/77ww77

Astrology

Astrology Of June 2026 – Chiron In Taurus, Jupiter In Leo

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(Astrobutterfly.com)

June 2026 features 2 dramatic ingresses: Chiron completes its 8-year journey through Aries and enters Taurus, and Jupiter makes its annual ingress, entering Leo.

These are very important transits that will completely shift our priorities and overall direction. Things are shifting at a fundamental level.

Another highlight of the month is the much-anticipated Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer on June 9th. This is a beautiful emotional culmination before Venus and Jupiter shift into Leo in the 2nd part of June. 

Mercury goes retrograde at the end of the month at the exact degree of the Venus-Jupiter conjunction. There’s more to the story!

But let’s take a look at the most important transits of the month:

chiron enters taurus, jupiter enters Leo

June 9th, 2026 – Venus Conjunct Jupiter

June 9th, 2026, Venus is conjunct Jupiter at 25° Cancer.

Everyone is getting excited about this conjunction, and for good reasons. Venus and Jupiter are the 2 ‘benefics’ and their conjunctions are classically considered the luckiest and most joyful.

What makes this special is the sign it occurs. Jupiter is exalted in Cancer, so this conjunction is even more potent – even more flooded with abundance and emotional truth. 

This is a time to rewrite our relationship to what matters – to be guided not only by what we believe is right, but also by what feels true. This distinction might sound like empty words, but let’s sit with it a bit. 

We can become convinced we know what’s good for us when, in reality, much of our worldview is built on assumptions, expectations, and stories we inherited from family, culture, or the world around us. We adopt them so early that they start to feel like our own.

Venus conjunct Jupiter in Cancer invites us to reconnect with a more personal source of knowing.

Like a river instinctively finding its way to the sea, there is a part of us that already knows what matters. The task is not to figure it out, but to trust it – and then align our life with it.

June 15th, 2026 – New Moon In Gemini

On June 15th, 2026, we have a New Moon at 24° Gemini. Apart from a loose square to Neptune, this lunation is pretty much unaspected.

This is also the first New Moon in Gemini with Uranus in the sign. Once the realization dawns that things may not be the way we thought they were, a space opens up.

Because this New Moon is largely unaspected, there is no strong planetary storyline filling that space or telling us what to do with it.

This blank, unwritten space can feel disorienting, but there’s something about the ‘not knowing’ that paradoxically triggers the ‘deeper knowing’ inside of us – beyond society narratives and ‘that’s just how things are’ assumptions.

The New Moon in Gemini invites us to consciously seed that space with a genuinely new possibility.

June 19th, 2026 – Chiron Enters Taurus

On June 19th, 2026, Chiron enters Taurus. Chiron changing signs is one of the most important astrological events of the year. 

Chiron has spent 8 years in Aries, digging into and healing the rawest themes of identity and self-expression. The process that began in 2018 has not been easy, but it has been necessary. Our relationship to ourselves will never go back to the way it was before.

The same process now begins with Chiron in Taurus. Taurus (together with Aries) are the 2 signs where Chiron – with its otherwise very eccentric orbit – spends the most time. 

There is something about the relationship between identity – the abstract “who am I” (Aries) – and the embodiment of that identity (Taurus) that Chiron has to work on with its sharpest skills. 

This is not a wound that heals overnight. It will take 8 years. But at the end of it, the core Taurus themes – like feeling safe in this world, feeling that we matter, manifesting, giving and receiving – will have received the healing they so deeply need. 

We tend to see the Taurus types of dysfunction as an unhealthy relationship with our body or money – but that’s just the tip of the iceberg, what shows on the surface when something has been long unrooted. 

But it goes much deeper than that. The good news is that if there’s a planetary archetype that has the tools, the patience and the empathetic understanding to guide this healing, that is Chiron.

Whether you were born with Chiron in Taurus (and you’ll have your Chiron return), have planets in Taurus, or simply an area of your life ruled by Taurus – and we all do, that’s our Taurus house – Chiron in Taurus will open a new chapter of healing and integration.

June 21st, 2026 – Sun Enters Cancer

Happy Solstice and happy b-day, Cancers! On June 21st, 2026, the Sun enters Cancer. 

Solstices and equinoxes are the 4 turning points of the year, when the balance between light and darkness changes direction. We call them seasons, but they are really transitions into a different psychological and energetic atmosphere.

Each turning point introduces the qualities of one of the 4 elements. The Libra equinox brings air. The Capricorn solstice, earth. The Aries equinox, fire. 

With Cancer, we enter the season of water – a season of intuition, feelings, belonging, and leaning into what feels right.

June 28th, 2026 – Mars Enters Gemini

On June 28th, 2026, Mars enters Gemini and that’s going to be an immediate change in pace! 

After grazing, ruminating and gathering the resources needed in Taurus, Mars is leaving the familiar ground to step into the Territory, Gemini’s field of information, exchange, and discovery.

Uranus, for the first time in Gemini since almost 8 decades, will awaken Mars to something that it has never experienced before.

In Gemini, Mars will discover new ways of working with information, data, thoughts, and ideas – operating less on autopilot and with more awareness of what is actually happening.

June 29th, 2026 – Full Moon In Capricorn

On June 29th (or June 30th), we have a Full Moon at 8° Capricorn. 

The Full Moon is separating from a square to Neptune and applying to square Saturn in Aries. Now that a dream or a possibility has been awakened, the Capricorn question becomes: how do we make it real?

The answer may not be obvious, and the road ahead may not be easy. Yet Capricorn is less interested in obstacles and more in solutions. This is a Full Moon to stress-test what matters, separate wishful thinking from commitment, and take responsibility for the next step. 

A detailed Full Moon report will follow closer to the date.

June 30th, 2026 – Mercury Goes Retrograde

On June 30th, 2026, Mercury goes retrograde at 26° Cancer, for a 3-week journey into our emotional memory. 

Why do we react the way we do? Why do certain situations affect us more than others? Mercury retrograde in Cancer traces our feelings back to their source, helping us understand the emotional logic underneath our choices and actions.

Mercury turns retrograde at the degree of the Venus-Jupiter conjunction earlier this month.

Whatever that conjunction has awakened or promised, Mercury retrograde in Cancer will initiate the necessary emotional processing to bring it fully into consciousness.

Mercury goes direct on July 24th at 16° Cancer. If you have planets or angles between 16°-26° Cancer, you will be especially influenced by this retrograde.

June 30th, 2026 – Jupiter Enters Leo

On June 30th, 2026, Jupiter leaves Cancer and enters Leo.

Jupiter spends approx 1 year in a sign, so when it changes signs, there’s an immediate change in the atmosphere. Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system, so these shifts are always noticeable.

At a collective level, the atmosphere shifts from Cancer – emotional, protective, inward – to Leo: bold, brave, straightforward. 

At a personal level, Jupiter moves away from one sector of your life and begins expanding another. At the time of the ingress, pay attention to what comes up for you – especially how your interests shift, how you become drawn to a certain topic, or a particular area of your life comes into focus.

During its 1-year stay in Leo, Jupiter will form supportive aspects with Neptune and Saturn in Aries – however, the very first aspect it makes will be a square to Chiron (at 0° Taurus). 

So the first encounter with the bold, confidence-driven energy of Leo will also – paradoxically – trigger deeper, forgotten wounds around security and trusting our instincts.

A detailed report of the Jupiter-Chiron square will follow closer to the date.

Astrology

June Astrology Forecast 2026

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The Astrology Podcast Jun 2, 2026 Monthly Astrology Forecasts A deep dive into the astrology forecast for June 2026, with astrologers Chris Brennan and Leisa Schaim. We spend the first hour talking about the astrology behind news and events that happened since our last forecast, and then in the second hour we get into the astrology of June. The month opens with one of the most auspicious planetary alignments of the year: a Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer that remains active for the first two weeks. Venus-Jupiter conjunctions are excellent for relationships, marriages, and partnerships, as well as peacekeeping efforts and the confirmation of good things. In the middle of the month, there is a distinct tone shift when Venus enters Leo and begins opposing Pluto. This aspect can bring up issues related to power, manipulation, and control within the context of partnerships and relationships. At the same time, Mercury enters its shadow period, slowing down and preparing to station retrograde, while Mars moves within a 10-degree orb of a volatile conjunction with Uranus. The latter part of the month takes an unexpected and explosive turn, especially once Mars officially enters Gemini and the conjunction with Uranus tightens. On the final day of the month, Jupiter enters Leo, beginning a one-year transit through that sign. However, this transit starts with an opposition to Pluto that will culminate in July, highlighting themes involving the manipulation of truth and attempts to control knowledge. Simultaneously, Mercury stations retrograde just before it can reach a conjunction with Jupiter, effectively revoking and delaying a beneficent alignment just as the much more malefic Mars-Uranus configuration is forming. This is episode 538 of The Astrology Podcast.

Astrology

Full Moon in Sagittarius – This Is It

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(Astrobutterfly.com)

On May 30th, 2026 (or May 31st, depending on where you live), we have a Full Moon at 9° Sagittarius.

The Full Moon is opposite Uranus in Gemini, trine Saturn and Neptune in Aries, and sextile Pluto in Aquarius.

This Full Moon connects all the outer planets into a rare, coherent configuration that will come to expose, in the way only a Full Moon in Sagittarius does – the truth of the matter.

full moon in sagittarius

What is truth? 

This is the question that philosophers – and philosophers are ruled by Sagittarius – have wrestled with since the beginning of time.

Seeking answers is the very essence of the fire, mutable nature of Sagittarius. We read the books. We travel the world. We explore different perspectives – all in the hope that somewhere, hidden beneath the complexity of life, there is a principle that makes sense of it all.

At its core, Sagittarius is about trying to find a sense of coherence – the “big picture”, a governing principle that ties it all together.

And this process cannot be rushed. 

There’s a reason why Sagittarius is the nomad of the zodiac. The man on a horse – always riding, always looking, always searching – never quite settling. 

The constant movement can look like aimless wandering. That’s why it’s tempting to reduce Sagittarius to someone who ‘likes adventure’, ‘cannot commit’.  But this misses the sacredness of the process of search, which is the pursuit of truth. 

The search is not an escape from commitment – it is a commitment to finding the truth.

The reason the rider cannot stop is that they haven’t found (yet) the truth. So they have to keep going – not from restlessness, but from integrity.

And when the truth is eventually found, then and only then is the rider ready to graduate to the Capricorn, committed, make-things-happen state of consciousness.

Rush the Sagittarius process, and we settle for half answers, or linger into restlessness and a feeling that “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”. Or simply convince ourselves that the search is exhausting and the road leads to nowhere anyway.

The Full Moon in Sagittarius will challenge that part of our psyche that hasn’t yet graduated in Sagittarius.

Full Moon In Sagittarius – This Is It

At its deepest level, Sagittarius is the realization that there is a deeper coherence to our life, and that we are living the life we are supposed to be living. 

It is the moment when we can finally say: “This is it“.

“This is it” is the answer to the Sagittarius search. It’s the moment when the rider gets off the horse because the answer has finally been found, and the search has come to its inevitable end.

“This is it” is not an intellectual exercise. We don’t find it by testing hypotheses, making lists of things we like, ‘being intentional’, asking the experts, or weighing the pros and cons.

It is a deeper knowing that only emerges when everything falls into place, into what feels like an effortless choreography.

Our relationship with this Sagittarius principle reveals whether we live our life with integrity – in alignment with our own personal truth – or not.

In that sense, the Full Moon in Sagittarius can be the “yes or no” answer to the “This is it?” question.

It can be the striking realization that “none of this is really me” and maybe our entire life is built on a version of the truth that no longer applies.

The Full Moon in Sagittarius can also bring the assurance that – at least in some areas of our life – we are doing exactly what we are supposed to be doing. That our search for meaning, the striving, the searching have been worth the effort, and that things are finally clicking into place.

At the Full Moon in Sagittarius, the rider pauses:

Is this it?