• The New Moon was August 4 – This month’s theme is “Expressing Your Creativity”
• The Last Quarter Moon is Wednesday, Aug 28 at 2:35 am PDT
• Sun is 6° Virgo, Moon is 6° Gemini
• Next New Moon is Thurs, Sept 5
• Sun entered Virgo on Thurs, Aug 22
• Fall Equinox is Sun, Sept 22

 Current Lunar Cycle

The Last Quarter Moon supports integration as well as letting go, especially in terms of the gifts and lessons you have received in the last 3 weeks. What new awareness will you carry forward? What old beliefs and habits will you release? Your decisions and actions this week will help you to prepare for the manifesting wave that arrives with next week’s New Moon.

Going Deeper with Venus and Mars

This week’s astrology offers a special opportunity to connect with your inner vitality and creativity, and at the same time release old habits of identifying with external circumstances.

The relationship between Venus and Mars is the keynote of this week’s chart . These planets are normally complementary, however this week they are out of sync. Their relationship this week will raise circumstances of contrast and conflict that require you to go within. This is because internally, they are still working in harmony. It’s only in the external world that they are seemingly in conflict.

A Summary of the Contrast

• Venus is giving us the urge to sustain ourselves through the value of relaxing.
• Mars is contradicting this urge through the desire for action by rushing into new situations.

These two contrasting forces will require you to make a choice. The decision you face this week may be a choice to let go of some deeply needed relaxation in order to pursue a great opportunity. On the other hand, perhaps you will be called to let go of activity and over-extension in order to rest up and recharge.

Either way, this decision represents the opportunity to choose from within – to re-sync these two ways of being at a deeper level within yourself. The opportunity of Venus is for self care and honoring your limitations. The opportunity of Mars is to release patterns of over-extension and to work with more subtle form of energy that come from within.

Going Within

Deep inside, your vital energies, your chi or prana, are active and waiting for an opportunity to be creatively expressed. During this coming week, Venus and Mars may be conflicting externally, but they will sync and work together at the deeper levels of your being.

It’s often mistakenly thought that vital life force can only be accessed through crisis, or unconsciously in life and death situations. Some have also learned to access it intentionally during deep meditation or possibly through an intense yoga practice.

It is time to let go of these limiting ideas. It’s time to learn to consciously access our inner life force. Your vital chi is inseparable from your creativity, and what enables you to revitalize and regenerate. When you learn to operate from within you can merge self care with creative activity in the world.

This week you have a special opportunity to practice this skill, by using your vital life force for your own creative expression.

In Closing

It is our deepest privilege to share these thoughts with you. Thank you again for your participation in The Lunar Matrix community.

Have a wonderful week,
Steven Shroyer