Leo, the sign of creativity, play, fun, excitement, encouragement, love of life, entertainment, is also the sign that can degenerate into inflated egos, self-centeredness, and narcissism. The only sign which can claim the Sun as its ruling planet, Leos are irresistible when they are given to shine their light upon you, and infuriating if you find that that light was only meant as fuel to give them back their own reflection. Leo’s exuberance can be co-opted by an ego gone astray, and use that mesmerizing energy to create  corruption and horrendous conduct. Donald Trump has Leo rising and also has Mars in Leo conjoined his rising sign. An incorrigible narcissism is always the danger with such an aspect.

But Leo as an influence does brighten up things a bit, and we certainly could use some brightening. However, the New Moon’s Leonine nature has some unpredictable challenges to it, as Uranus, the revolutionary, forms a 90˚ angle to the Sun/Moon, making that joyful glee somewhat unstable, a bit too forced, short-lived, or perhaps even manic in its nature.

Three-quarters of an hour after this New Moon, Mercury stations and goes direct. Clarity does not immediately return after Mercury’s direct motion, in fact until it gets back to the degree where it went retro (August 14th), things are usually just pulling themselves back together. However we can expect an uptick in a more externalized mental energy in about 3 or 4 days.

Meanwhile, on August 11th, Uranus, which is seen as the higher octave of Mercury (hence its unpredictability and trickster nature) turns retrograde and won’t go direct until January 10th, 2020 just 2 days before that fateful day when Saturn and Pluto make their rare conjunction in Capricorn, joined with the Sun and Mercury.  Not since the year 1518 have these two conjoined in Capricorn, the sign which rules governments. (This was the year Cortez reached the Yucatan peninsula which led to the collapse of the Aztec empire in 1521.) What revolution Uranus is planning when it goes direct is anyone’s guess, but for sure, that energy will seed itself and be felt in the months following. Meanwhile, Uranus retrograde stirs up the deeper contents of our psyches, strengthening the imperative to find new ways of self-expression, ones that are more sincere and authentic.

That same date, August 11th, Jupiter will finally end its retrograde and turn direct within hours of Uranus’s retrograde. Jupiter’s passage in hopeful Sagittarius will come to a close when it goes into the sign of Capricorn December 2nd. With expansive Jupiter in the contractive sign of Capricorn, 2020 will be a year in which the belt begins to tighten on our optimism, or let’s say, our ability to ignore the plain truth before us, and perhaps we can really officially begin to get down to changing our approach to our fast approaching planetary catastrophe.

Meanwhile, this Leo New Moon chart at it best brings us a sense of the power of love as a truly practical and potent force to create change around us both personally and globally. With Venus conjunct this New Moon, and all three planetary bodies in trine to Chiron, we are in a position to heal the long standing propaganda that love and the feminine is a weak and powerless force, and that masculine energy should rule. Truly we need both, and healing one also heals the other. The systematic decimation and denigration of all that fosters sensitivity in both men and women leaves us in a world of violence, struggle and brutality. When our inherent human sensitivity is programmed out of us, we are brutalized and are able to brutalize others. Chiron holds that woundedness for all of us on this planet, and asks us to heal that wound to our loss of soul, by fostering loving connections with others, to let ourselves grieve together what has been lost, and through that grieving find our way to the present.

Remember that Jupiter and Neptune are continuing their 90˚ standoff with each other this year, asking us all to refine our sense of what is true for us, despite what we consider our “normal” or habitual view of the world might be. Jupiter’s optimistic passage through Sagittarius is being tested to see if it stands up to our understanding of the deepest moral and spiritual imperatives, such as “do unto others.” Neptune now is asking us to dispel the illusions we’ve lived under, that have perhaps kept us safe in the past, but with our head in the sand. We’re being asked to mature, to grow in ways we’ve perhaps resisted, but for which our soul longs and yearns for. The next (and third) exact Jupiter/Neptune square occurs just before Equinox in September. We can prepare now to use the doorway of this timing to shed old outworn habits and beliefs and to practice entering into a life lived from the heart, which is at the core of this month’s Leonine creativity and power.