#323-"Telling You What You Knew Already"--Week of July 28, 2025

This Week's Core Alchemical Cycles Themes:

1. Chiron Retrograde in Aries

• A six-month inner initiation to reclaim courage from past wounds of rejection, failure, or not being "enough."
• Aries themes: agency, identity, anger, self-assertion.
• Time to apprentice to your own healing fire: how do you lead yourself forward when the pain speaks loudest?

Reflection Prompts: 
🌀 What unacknowledged fire in you is ready to become a forge, not a burn?
🌀 What pain from my past feels like it’s knocking again—this time for healing?

2. Sun conjunct Mercury (Cazimi) in Leo

• Marks the start of a new Mercury cycle, a time of seeding new intentions for your voice, perception, and creative mind.
• In Leo: themes of sovereignty, bold self-expression, and heart-centered visioning.
• Pair this with Mercury retrograde’s descent and you get “the solar mind in the underworld”—clarity emerging from the compost.

Reflection Prompts:
🌀 What new story wants to rise from your heart’s truth, not your history?
🌀 What courageous truth wants to be spoken from my heart?

3. Venus in Cancer Squares Saturn & Neptune Retrograde in Aries

Venus in Cancer wants connection, nurturing, and belonging—but hits two realities in Aries:

• Saturn’s limits (can’t emotionally bypass what needs boundaries)
• Neptune’s illusions/dreams (what are you projecting or idealizing in relationships?)
• This square invites a compassionate yet courageous reckoning: Where are you overgiving out of fear of disconnection?

Reflection Prompts: 
🌀 What dream of love or belonging needs to die so a deeper nourishment can be born?
🌀 Where in my relationships do I give away my needs to keep the peace?


Podcast Poem: Summer by Robin Coste Lewis

For information on the 4-month Mercury cycle, check out: https://astrobutterfly.com/2017/04/19/a-new-mercury-cycle-begins-time-to-start-a-new-project/