Venus approaching Pluto ℞ in Aquarius · Venus sextile Uranus in Gemini

Venus is doing most of the talking today, and she is in mixed company. Freshly into Leo, she opposes Pluto in Aquarius while also pulling into trine with Neptune and just clearing a sextile to Uranus. The harmonious aspects are the smaller story — pretty, easy, the kind of contact you barely notice in the moment — and the Pluto opposition is the one that will leave a mark. Expect a relational or aesthetic situation to surface a control question, a jealousy question, a who-owes-whom question. Venus newly in her own procession is not inclined to back down.

The New Moon sits at the very end of Gemini, with the Moon combust and in mutual reception with Mercury in Cancer. I'd normally make more of that reception — it does soften the combustion somewhat, since each luminary is operating through a planet that treats it as a guest — but a Gemini-anaretic New Moon is essentially a threshold event, and the mansion of the Three Stars underlines it: Orion's belt, boundary-defending, martially tinged. Then by midday UTC the Moon ingresses Cancer and meets Jupiter, who is exalted there and sitting right on Procyon. Procyon's reputation is for swift rewards that arrive before you're quite ready for them — which is worth naming on a day when Jupiter is this strong and this fast.

Mars in Taurus is in detriment but moving quickly, which is a strange combination: friction expressed at speed. Saturn in fall in Aries I'll mostly leave alone; it's a condition of the year, not the day.

The outer planets are weaving their slow sextiles and trines in the background. Fine. They'll be there next week too.

What today actually is: a Venus-Pluto reckoning under a dark Moon, with Jupiter on a fixed star that promises more than it can hold.