A Week of Slowing Down For Reflection
July 14 - 20, 2025
Luna Wanes | A Reflection on Cancer Season’s Ebb & Flow
We begin the week with Luna in Pisces, inviting us to drift into dreamier realms. With the Moon in a waning gibbous phase—still full of light, yet turning inward—and attuned to the watery currents of Cancer Season, there’s a rhythm to this moment that feels both soft and quietly productive. Perhaps a technique arises in the art of your emotions, or you discover that rest is, in fact, purposeful. Maybe your tender heart is put to good use, offering care to those in need. Whatever your course, deeper meaning ripples beneath it.
By Wednesday, the Moon bursts into Aries, stirring the still waters with heat and motion. Reflection now arrives fast and fiery. Leave it to Cancer Season to steer Aries’ assertive energy toward emotional insight through a last quarter moon. Journal your anger. Speak your truths. Move your body to move through the feelings. Quick tempers may spark around fairness or unmet needs—try to stay grounded in softness and breath. Aries holds the summit of Cancer’s arc, so a little space may offer perspective: What form of independence do you now need in your relationships? What goals might bring fresh vitality to your connections?
Thursday through Saturday usher in the steady grace of the Taurus Moon—a grounding balm to the week’s rising tides. Let your emotions draw you toward beauty that empowers, pleasure that builds true worth, and artistry that refines your presence. Share what’s blooming within you. Let your inner richness ripple out into the collective. This is a moment to electrify value in the emotional realm and to demonstrate how steady joy can also be revolutionary.
By Sunday, the Moon moves into Gemini, trailing just behind the Sun. Something is closing, and something new stirs in the subtle field. You may feel an uncanny sense of direction—as if the breadcrumbs of intuition have lined a path that only now becomes visible. Let your emotions meet connection. Let connection open the portal to something more magical. You’re discovering where you belong—and the secret has been following you all along, humming softly in the background, waiting for you to listen. Take your place in the field of subtle and compassionate connection.
The Week in Transits
Mercury Retrograde in Leo
Thursday, July 17th - August 11th, 10:45 pm MT
Ready for the second Mercury Retrograde of the year?
The planet of the mind has been steadily rewiring our inner fire over the past year, and once again, it returns to show us where it’s time to update our mental programs—especially those related to spirited thought, energetic connection, and creative vision.
In Leo, this retrograde invites reflection on how we think about leadership, how we express ourselves as leaders, how we write and speak creatively, and how we connect through the heart. It’s a time to rework the circuitry of heart-mind coherence.
We’ve already been moving through the pre-shadow phase for a few weeks now, so the pace of ideas and communication may have felt slower, clunkier, or more complicated than we’d like—especially for summer. With the retrograde now in full swing, it’s time to slow down even more.
Try not to get discouraged by delays, detours, the need to redo plans or paperwork, last-minute schedule changes, scrapped campaigns, or the general feeling of mental fatigue. Leo—sign of heart, courage, and creative generosity—might remind us: we're all in this together.
Retrogrades aren’t inherently “bad.” They reflect a planet’s seasonal rhythm. Here’s how I like to frame it:
Pre-shadow is like early autumn: a time of reflection, refinement, and noticing emerging patterns.
The retrograde itself is late autumn into early winter: what’s been quietly cracking now reveals itself; comprehension deepens.
Post-retrograde is like late winter: quiet, incubating, filled with premonitions of what’s to come.
Seen this way, the retrograde process holds a quiet beauty. It slows us down to integrate, realign, and rewire.
In Leo, notice what begins to click into place around a heart-led mentality. At the same time, pay attention to where old constructs of heart and mind are being pulled apart. This process can be uncomfortable—but in the breakage, mastery is also emerging. New sparks are igniting that no longer fit inside your current mental frameworks. New wisdom is being born that needs time and space to settle into coherence.
Trust the process.
Let the breakthroughs come, even if they arrive in the middle of mental bottlenecks. Let go of the ideas, commitments, or communications that don’t resonate with your warmth, courage, and creative self. Leap toward new concepts that haven’t yet crystallized—ideas that are more like glowing seeds of potential, waiting for experience to help them grow.
Let your heart lead your mind toward a new kind of clarity.
Let courage guide the way.
Mars conjunct the South Node (19° Virgo)
Sunday, July 20th, 8:00 pm MT
Mars has been belligerent lately. Themes of aggression, militarization, and the push for a stricter order are unmistakable. ICE was recently approved for unprecedented funding, and armed forces—both official and unofficial—are increasingly being used against citizens, or to enforce a certain kind of “order.”
Seeing this transit arise prompted me to review when Mars last crossed the North Node—a point associated with hunger, impulse, and deeper motivation. That crossing occurred back in May 2024, in Aries—Mars’s home sign. Aries rules the military, the impulse to dominate, and the pursuit of a new order. There’s a “out with the old, in with the new” energy here. Mars in Aries, aligned with the North Node, is a volatile blend of following orders, enforcing hierarchies, and flirting with police-state mentalities. It tracks.
Earlier this year, Mars also began a new synodic cycle in Cancer—a sign concerned with home, protection, boundaries, and emotional safety. That’s not necessarily military in the traditional sense, but it is defensive. When you stir Cancer’s instinct to defend with Mars's Aries ignition, you get a highly reactive and emotionally volatile force. Some channel this energy into defending fellow humans as a chosen family. Others use it to justify nationalism, cheering for mass detention, militarized borders, and the brutal separation of families and communities. In my view, how someone expresses this blend often depends on how much fear they’ve internalized—whether inherited early in life, cultivated by media, or reinforced by their environment.
Now, Mars crosses the South Node, and a different tone begins to emerge. It’s a karmic mirror. We’re invited to look at our warrior archetype more clearly, more critically. Where have we acted without consideration, empathy, or relational intelligence?
Despite the intensity, I feel a cautious optimism here. This is not the Mars of blind action or brute force. It's a slightly wiser, more self-aware version—stepping into a new stage of individuation. Yes, there’s personal work to do. But collectively, this marks a shift.
Mars in Virgo brings discernment. It’s not rash—it analyzes. It critiques. The South Node obeys resonance over orders. It feels like the emergence of whistleblowers, or perhaps former enforcers of oppressive systems breaking ranks. We start to see cracks in conformity. Reflection begins to replace reaction.
As Mars moves into Libra in early August, I anticipate a renewed focus on justice around policing—perhaps even momentum within legal systems that have felt powerless or gridlocked. Is this a miracle moment for the U.S.? No. We’re still deep in our Pluto Return, grappling with systemic shadows and the slow churn of generational power reckoning. But it is something. A shift in the military-industrial wind. A new cadence in how we assert, protect, and organize.
This transit invites more wisdom, more empathy, and more critical thinking into the part of us—and the part of society—that craves direction and order. And that, at least, is a start.
Links for Mystically in Season members
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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:
Uranus in Gemini Through the Signs
Explore how this dynamic new transit may rewire your world. Be sure to read for both your Sun and Rising signs: Headlines of Summer
With Mercury moving into Rx, it’s a great time to jump into Summertime With the Personal Planets, an overview of Mercury’s archetypal story playing out as we enter a phase of heartfelt revisions.
In this last full week of Cancer Season, review your Cancer Season Horoscopes. I always get a ton out of horoscopes in reflection and hindsight. We often need time to see the themes of what we’ve been engaged in. Any one moment, action, or thought can easily feel isolated, but in reflection, we can see a clearer picture of the themes and threads that connect so much of what’s been on our minds and playing out in our lives.