Astrology for Wednesday, 8 July 2020:

Today Mercury retrograde in Cancer squares Mars in Aries. Conflict may arise and confrontation may be necessary, particularly if actions being taken compromise your sense of safety or well-being. In Hellenistic astrology, this is a condition of maltreatment, with Mars overcoming Mercury. With Mercury already retrograde, we may feel impaired in our ability to speak up and advocate for our own needs or the needs of those who are most vulnerable. But as Audre Lorde writes in “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action,” “We can learn to work and speak when we are afraid in the same way we have learned to work and speak when we are tired. For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for that final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us.” Despite our fear—of retaliation, of being misunderstood—despite feeling silenced, we must learn to come to voice and speak back to our aggressors. The Moon then ingresses into Pisces with reception from Jupiter. Jupiter is not in ideal condition—retrograde and fallen in Capricorn—but will offer whatever support and resources that it can. In Pisces, these resources may move us toward deep sensitivity, abundant compassion, and affirmative responsiveness. What becomes possible if we start from a place of validating and affirming feelings—our own and one another’s?