A Week of Deeper Cultural Dreams
Image| Gary Butterfield
August 11 - 17, 2025
Lunar Goodness | The Refinement of Heart
After a full moon weekend, we enter the week with the moon reflecting Leo’s solar radiance with a little more shine from the inside out. The command of our hearts becomes more juicy and enchanting. Moving into the week, our shine finds refinement as heart energy integrates with more purpose, humility, and balance. It’s time to accept the spotlight. Romantic dramas may feel interesting, and we may see real ones play out around us.
We start the week under the sensitive Pisces moon in a luminous waning gibbous phase. This moon reflects Leo’s courage with softness, helping us to feel it all and compose something to share with mystical insight. Dare to show your art to the world.
Tuesday and Wednesday live under the Aries moon, still ripening our hearts under the waning gibbous phase, but with a little more directness and assertive responses that help us to clarify the duty and true purpose of our heart and light. Notice a shift in what really matters to you. That fame you thought was the goal, is it now not caring what others think as you claim your heart’s path?
Thursday and Friday bring a Taurus moon, squaring off to the Leo Sun in a last quarter phase. This moon can help us find balance and respond to life with our heart tuned into and being accountable for, and to, our values. What is being mirrored to you about allowing your light and heart to feel pleasure or indulging in overly hedonistic tendencies? What is the middle path with the contexts you are becoming aware of?
Late Saturday morning (MT) and through Sunday, as the moon moves into Gemini, our hearts and light face more intensity. We may feel things that are under the surface. Use rising curiosity to dig into the information that your heart contains. We may have to witness how emotions and the mind have blocked aspects of our light, as able to feel truly powerful. That thought that you aren’t smart enough or informed enough to shine or be loved—squash it. We are so often told that the heart is silly or that stars lack intelligence (starlettes). It’s just not true. It’s designed to belittle.
Retrograde News
Monday finally brings the end of Mercury Retrograde! Yay. Speaking for myself, this retrograde didn’t bring too many detours, delays, and confusion to the point that I felt frazzled. However, being my sun’s ruler, it always brings a greater sense of pressure, like there’s just a little too much on my mind or my plate, and I tend to feel a bit more removed.
Over the next couple of weeks, Mercury is still in post-retrograde shadow, retracing the degrees it reversed over. My experience of this is like a hangover. We aren’t out of the woods with confusion and complexity, but the pressure eases up. It’s Mercury’s own winter phase, and it needs a bit of space to decompress, rejuvenate, and dream. It’s not yet the time to jump into new ideas, but to let fresh insights incubate. It may feel like grasping at mist if you pull the trigger with new ideas. One minute, a fresh idea might seem exciting and tangible, but the next minute, it’s disappeared like a mirage. The end of August will finally give us some green lights for more connective ideas and traction.
In other retrograde news, also on Monday, Ceres, planet of maturing projects and life in general, stations retrograde until November 21st. We now enter a time for feedback and refinement rather than new growth and developments in ongoing projects and ways in which you are creating harvests and ripeness in life. In Aries, very new projects are likely in the works, but it’s time to see where impulsivity has skipped steps or not properly thought things through. Don’t be scared of edits, revisions, and more cooperative considerations.
Highlighted Transits
Venus conjunct Jupiter
Monday, August 11th (11:30 pm MT)
This transit is a welcome reprieve from the ongoing tension of Mars squaring Saturn and Neptune. Here, the two great benefics—Venus, the planet of love, and Jupiter, the planet of expansion—meet in Cancer, a sign Jupiter is exalted in.
These two planets, though different, share a love for idealism and culture. Venus is about the present moment, sensuality, and relationships; she wants to hold on to what's good and beautiful. Jupiter is about the future, abstraction, and meaning; he wants to inspire. When they unite, we're offered the chance to feel what's meaningful and make the meaningful feel good, infusing culture with fresh life.
Image | Hannes Richter (of a Banksy)
The Last Journey: A Look Back
The last Venus-Jupiter conjunction occurred in Taurus in the spring of 2024. Together, they became gardeners—Venus creating beautiful things, and Jupiter exploring the moral dimensions of what's good and beautiful. However, shortly after this meeting, Jupiter moved into Gemini, scattering and destabilizing our sense of meaning. Conversations around truth and beauty became louder, but not necessarily deeper. Venus kept crafting, but Jupiter kept questioning.
During this time, the north node was in Aries, adding a layer of individualism to their shared goal. Venus’s sense of beauty became more personal, while Jupiter’s pursuit of higher values could be dogmatic. This tension was reflected in culture, from Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad, which some saw as a self-centered expression of beauty, to Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter, which offered a more complex and meaningful reclamation of heritage. The album wasn’t just beautiful; it asked what stories beauty has erased, and who gets to claim the crown.
Seeding a New Mission in Cancer
This week, the end of that last journey is upon us, and Venus and Jupiter are trying to hold on to what they’ve sown. As they meet again, a new mission begins. In Cancer, the new seed of their shared goal is to bring meaning to belonging and loving devotion to nurturance.
Cancer is a softer, more nurturing sign than Taurus. This new seed, while still concerned with survival and new beginnings (in the way I read draconic astrology, this seed is, again, under the influence of Aries nodal energy), emphasizes heritage, safety, and protection. This focus can be interpreted in different ways—for some, it means protecting only their own; for others, it means protecting all of humanity.
As we move forward, consider what new, beautiful, high-minded, meaningful, loving culture you want to seed and infuse with fresh energy in the coming 14 months.
Links for Mystically in Season members
If you are not yet a member, you can peruse the membership HERE.
Hello to all of my Mystically in Season members! As always, thank you all for your support. Below are links to exclusive content that you might want to tap into in the coming week, that you’ll only find through your membership:
Leo Season Horoscopes will be live early Monday afternoon! See what part of your chart the Sun will newly highlight, what archetype within you this will pull forward, how the Earth in Aquarius is stabilizing you, what your chart ruler and personal archetype is up to, and where your yearly new moon seeds are in their yearly growth process.