Sagittarius Horoscope for August 2016

You are excited and hopeful this month, Sagittarius, while feeling somewhat shut down as well, so that your arc of rapid development is far from straightforward. Nevertheless, in spite of the seeming contradictions, this month represents an important segment of your learning curve over the course of a powerful summer season. You are very invested in making your way in the world, and in doing so with style, grace, and élan, thinking your way through. However, your journey into greater wholeness and integration also leads you to spaces within, which have a far greater influence on your outer world behavior than is normally supposed. The accolades and financial rewards of all your efforts seem muted until you recognize that you are simultaneously making important progress in another direction altogether, taking a voyage to the interior spaces of your mind and heart.

As the month begins, the Moon is in Cancer, her own sign, corresponding, for you, to the sector of your solar chart that references the deeper areas of emotion. The outer planet Neptune, highlighted this month, also corresponds to these areas of dark and hidden spaces that lie within your being that have less currency in the surface thoughts of your normal waking consciousness, so that your deeper feelings are emphasized throughout this current month. The New Moon that begins the thirty-day lunation cycle of August actually takes place on the afternoon of the very next day, the 2nd. This New Moon makes close aspects with Neptune and with Saturn, in square, so that an interesting tug-of-war exists all month long between these antithetical energies. Their placements are prominent in your solar chart, being angular, with Saturn in your first or identity sector, and you might find that you alternate between practicality and ethereal vibrations of otherworldly depth, where you might wind up feeling somewhat unmoored and at sea. The trick is to choose not to choose between them, and, as you navigate your course through another interesting and rather intense month, to allow for goals that partake of both an outer and an inner nature.

The timing of the mid-month Full Moon is also amazing, for your sign in particular. Mercury is then in close conjunction with Jupiter, with both opposed to Chiron, the Wounded Healer, the planetoid only discovered and named as recently as 1977, symbolizing the residual effects of early trauma not properly addressed at the time of the original event. These have the power to re-ignite as unexplained painful feelings, of which you may be largely unconscious, except as manifesting in reactivity. In the entire third week of August you are thus more aware than usual of these complexes within you that have become walled away behind barriers of shame and non-attention. If such awareness does arise, you have the opportunity to get to know yourself better in these dark places, and to sooth them by loving, non-judgmental, and compassionate acceptance.