Aug. 6-7: a hot and steamy dog days’ night, a cardinal grand cross of Mars/Venus/Saturn, Jupiter/Uranus, Pluto, and  Moon.

By John Townley, July 2010

For months now I’ve been looking at the climax of the Uranus/Jupiter-Saturn opposition in August, where Venus and Mars join in with the Moon and Pluto to make one of the more massive cardinal grand crosses in history. What will it bring? Where does all that pent-up energy of powerful opposing planets with opposing natures find a final, explosive outlet? Certainly the ongoing Gulf oil spill has many of the characteristics of all these, as did the Haiti earthquake disaster before it, all under similar aspect. But what happens when you add in a very seductive Mars-Venus conjunction at the height of the celestial seizure?

And, besides, that Venus, Saturn, Pluto, Moon all at early cardinals -- hadn’t I seen that somewhere before? What was it? I couldn’t remember. I had to go a long way back to the days when I was collecting S&M birth charts in the early days of The Eulenspiegel Society (the results appeared in Planets In Love, 1978) and doing layout for the first issue of their Prometheus, during my time as editor of a national sex/crime tabloid, and well before my stint as managing editor of Sexology magazine. It was something sexual…very much so, and then it finally hit me. It was the chart of a first full orgasm, where I happened to be on the spot as combination witness, aiding participant, and astrological observer with clock in hand. It had four of this August’s planets lined up almost exactly where they will be then, just switched around, in close to the very same early cardinal degrees.

Left: a first-ever orgasm blasts its way through a cardinal grand cross. Right:  August sky looks like more of the same

Actually, once the memory came back, I recalled I used to use it as an example in workshops on sexual astrology. So much of what sex is about is the building and blocking of inner tensions and desires until the dam bursts and everything lets go in a sudden climax of released desire, uncontrolled spasms rolling the length of the body, the ego washed away as the unleashed energy rips along the kundalini, from the bottom chakra upwards and blowing right out the top. And, of course, the first time that really happens is the most memorable and is likely to come under the most intense aspects.

The participants’ personal details needn’t get too specific, as this was an intensely private occasion, but suffice it to say it also involved that paragon of early sexual technology, the first Panasonic vibrator (yes, you go higher when it’s your own finger on the trigger, though a partner can definitely help), and it began a long life of sexual exploration for both better and worse for its winsome, dark-haired sexual protagonist. Indeed the event chart typifies the kind of sexual strain you see in natal charts as well, where the planets of desire, emotion, repression, death and sexual force are all in play, but pushing and pulling against each other. All in all, with Sun in Scorpio and Scorpio rising, and an array of supporting sextiles, it all came together at the appropriate instant just before dawn, difficult and uncertain at first, until the final moment of unexpected and unprecedented release.

Now although this coming August 6-7 lacks the Scorpio element, its cross involves seven instead of just four planets (and both charts have the nodes close by), so there may be some considerable sexual potential in this one, particularly with the glitteringly sexy Mars-Venus conjunction bottled up by Saturn and waiting for the spark of opposing Jupiter and Uranus, a blowout in the making (as it was in the Gulf) when the right degree rises or culminates. 

What will you be doing that evening and the following day, and with whom? Time to make plans now for a rare window of opportunity that won't repeat any time soon…

Post Script, August 2010. Around this noteable cross the world was afflicted with record floods in Pakistan, Kashmir, and Europe, as well as horrendous fires that smoked out Moscow. But, true to form, it was indeed operating at the personal level as it had before, at least in the case of this woman who wrote us to confirm it:

Thanks for the article, read it today. I happened to be with my new Dom of 6 weeks at an extreme fetish party. We ended up doing a 4 hour scene that was the heart of the party, and video taped. Literally it was if we were channeling the Divine masculine and Divine feminine in the sacred dance leading to union, completely unplanned but in the flow at the center of the universe. It felt as though the space/time continuum definitely shifted! And fits right in with your interpretation. Feel free to use the example. Who thought the cardinal cross was going to be SO beautiful and full of bliss and ecstasy? I am riding the wave and loving it!!! 

-- Firehorse (yes I was born in 1966, maybe that has something to do with it). 

And, as reader David Smolker writes, the Sun was flipping out at the time, as well...

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