You Know What Term I'm a Little Sick Of? Cardinal T-Square.

Baseball-sized hail wreaked havoc in southeastern Saskatchewan this past Saturday, July 31. Since just before the Full Moon Capricorn eclipse on June 26, Saskatchewan has experienced the wildest weather in memory, being pounded by storm after storm of hail, mass quantities of rain causing flooding, and tornadoes. One hundred fourteen communities have declared themselves disaster areas this summer due to flooding, and there has been massive crop failure due to both a cold, wet spring and now flooding. I'm not a person who believes most weather patterns are natural at this point (an earthquake AND a tornado just before the G8/G20 Summits?), but this is quite symbolic of the astro energies we're dealing with currently.

We're getting hammered. Tempered on all fronts by the weight and pressure of the cardinal t-square configuration.

Action planet Mars in Libra completes its grind through this uber tight t-square late tonight with an opposition to Jupiter in Aries and a square to Pluto in Capricorn. Heavy is understatement.

Mars is still within range of its conjunction to Saturn, and our actions carry an extreme amount of weight. We're in a time frame when the decisions we make and actions we take (or don't make and take) have such broad, long-term effect that if we were fully aware of the possibilities, we would probably freeze and curl into a little ball. All four seasons are changing in our lives simultaneously.

Luckily, we're humans, and we're never 100% aware of the stakes. Also luckily, the amount of pressure involved here makes it nearly impossible NOT to take some sort of action. To curl up into a little ball would probably mean being crushed under the weight of it all. At this point, it's difficult if we do and difficult if we don't, but the cardinal impetus squeezing the crap out of us says we have to go. Things have crumbled all around us, and taking the next step and then the next, even when we're dragging ourselves through it, is the only way to forge our way out of the wreckage.

"Tipping the scales moments" is putting it mildly. These are the types of energies where the fate of humanity on this planet lies in our skill (or lack thereof) in dealing responsibly. The weight of a billion interactions that have preceded us hangs in the air, and this is where things are decided.

Feeling pressured is understandable. The responsibility is pressing. The stakes are high. The complexity is incomprehensible. But again, we can't think about that. We just have to carefully determine what is right, what our souls tell us is right, and do it.

It's going to be tight. There's only so much we can do at this point with insanity being unleashed all around us. There is only the thinnest of threads to follow through it. But we're doing it. We knew we could, and we're doing it. We had the best chance of getting it right. The right mix of finely-honed skills, fire, determination and experience for these times. So we were called in, elected as the ones best able to take a shot. To take the shot for all those who came before, who wait in the etheric wings with bated breath. As we crawl on bleeding elbows through barbed wire and thistles to get to the release point.

As of midnight tonight, some of the pressure breaks as Mars slowly starts to pull out of the t-square formation. It will be fully out of orb by the time of the third and final square of Saturn in Libra and Pluto in Capricorn August 21.

Don't be too relieved just yet, though. Venus enters Libra Friday, August 6 (9:47 p.m. Mountain) in tight conjunction with Eros, and those two run the cardinal t-square gauntlet, too, August 7-9. This won't be a relaxing weekend, so the Monday to Friday-ers hoping to escape the pressure with a weekend trip out of town will be out of luck.

Just to add to the fun, as of 3:50 p.m. Friday, the Moon will be in Cancer, becoming the fourth cardinal leg. For just over six hours, we have a full, exact Cardinal Grand Cross in our sky. (Pulling out of range by the early morning of Saturday, August 7.)

Venus and Eros finish their last aspects and start to pull out of the t-square late August 9, the same day of the Leo New Moon. This is the release point of the previous Cancer New Moon solar eclipse July 11, so this New Moon is going to be a relief in more ways than one.

As of August 10, we have released the most potent aspects of the recent eclipse season and personal planets Mars and Venus will have made it through the cardinal t-square gauntlet - the only personal planets (other than the Moon) that will take part in this cardinal t-square.

As of August 21, Saturn will have completed it's final square to Pluto in Capricorn from Libra, and we are past the most potent and constricting point of the cardinal t-square.

With Saturn involved, taking this stuff in chunks of time can really be helpful. Saturn transits often feel as if they will go on forever. So even though things may feel insane right now, a major layer lightens after the August 9 Leo New Moon. And by September, things really start to ease.

Sure, we'll be into the retrograde shadow degrees of a massively potent Venus retrograde in Scorpio by then, but honestly, at this point even a Venus retro in Scorpio will feel like something we're better able to handle.