If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget it. This is real astrology. See the section above. Please note: this forecast is expressed in terms of Universal Time (UT).
August is bound to be a tale of extremes, looking over some of the celestial alignments looming in the night sky this month. On the one hand, for example, there's the beautiful Venus-Jupiter conjunction in Cancer - exact on the 5th, and within a couple degrees from the 4th to the 8th. This one you can see for yourself, if you're a very early riser: look to the east in the last couple hours before sunrise, you can't miss it. For a few thousand years at least, the alignment of these two planets has been considered a wonderfully fortunate omen.
Let's hope it is, because on the very same day there's an alignment of quite the opposite reputation: Saturn opposing Pluto from Gemini to Sagittarius - with Pluto in turn conjunct Mars. All this Saturn-Pluto stuff tends to suggest sheep to the slaughter in the financial markets. We've seen plenty of that in late July, as these two planets hovered within a couple degrees from their exact opposition. August is bound to bring plenty more, as Saturn and Pluto never get more than two degrees from exact opposition all month - with Pluto all the while hovering just minutes of arc from its August 23 direct station. At least, with Venus and Jupiter lined up early in the month, we'll have close to a week at the outset when hope remains alive in the markets. (A great selling opportunity, perhaps - fools rush in to buy what the wise hope to dump.) Markets in Japan, France and Germany look better than London and New York around the time of the Saturn-Pluto opposition and Venus-Jupiter conjunction on the 5th. (Somehow, seeing the full moon conjunct Neptune on the 4th, I suspect market manipulation by institutions as well as key individuals is producing warped results around then.)
Likewise, a temporary peace breakthrough in some of the world's hot spots - including Israel - is in store while August is still new. In some ways this may be one instance where things do tend to get better as the month wears on. Belligerence fades as Mars pulls away from its opposition to Saturn. While this is hardly a sign of peace breaking out all over the world, it does suggest at least a temporary cooling of conflicts in the Middle East, the Balkans, Spain, Northern Ireland, etc. This one's a tough call: the patterns of peace are present, but so are those for war. The cynic says negotiations break out with bullets still flying: a little window dressing, a lot of bandages. Or this could be a case where one long-time hot spot cools off - say, the India-Pakistan skirmish over Kashmir - while others intensify (e.g. Israel, Iraq, etc.). On balance, I'd call it a toss-up: peace breaks out here, conflict intensifies there.
Those August 5 alignments (the Saturn-Pluto opposition and Venus-Jupiter conjunction) are spot-on with regard to the US Declaration of Independence chart, incidentally. This adds to indications for a period of risk where US equity markets are concerned, and points to American foreign policy putting the nation at risk due to an aggressive ally - or one who feels slighted for one reason or another.
Major seismic and weather upheaval is in store this month, as July's SuperMoon gets followed up by another one in August - on the 19th, to be exact. Quite exact, in fact: this particular new moon occurs just a couple hours before Luna reaches exact perigee (closest approach to Earth). Regulars know what to expect, and everyone else can look back to July and see for themselves the kind of thing looming ahead: moderate to severe earthquakes (Richter 5 and greater) and volcanic eruptions, very strong storms with high winds and heavy precipitation, and flooding due to higher than normal tides along the coast (as well as inland flooding due to extreme rainfall). August 16-22 is a peak period for risks of this sort, thanks to the SuperMoon. (To which I would add the 15th as well, thanks to the Moon reaching greatest north declination on the 16th; also the 23rd, after the lunar equatorial crossing on the 22nd.) But that's not the only such risk window this month. Others include August 1-7 (Moon reaches maximum declination south of the celestial equator on the 1st, followed by the August 4 full moon in effect from the 1st through the 7th); August 8-10 (Luna's northward crossing of the celestial equator); and the 27th through the end of the month, as the lunar south declination maximum of the 28th blends into the full moon of September 2nd. All in all a stormy month, a time when hurricanes and typhoons and just plain great big thunderstorms tend to make headlines all over the place.
It's important to recognize that all of these geophysical risk windows are associated with events on a planetary and astronomical scale. By this measure, it's easy to see that virtually no place on Planet Earth is immune from elevated seismic and storm potential during the indicated periods. If there are zones of special risk, they're likely to be suggested in the astro-locality maps for these various geophysical phenomena. For example, all of Japan and the entire eastern half of Australia are chief among the West Pacific targets for the August 19 SuperMoon alignment (in effect August 16-22). The India-Pakistan border region and much of the Middle East comes under the gun as well - figuratively in terms of the storm and seismic susceptibility factor, and likely literally as well. In the New World, eastern Brazil and the Pacific coast of North America are likely target zones.
SPECIAL FEATURE: This month's birthdays of the famous and infamous (with astrological birth charts)
