Weekly Astrology Forecast for August 13–19, 2023* — Mighty Aphrodite!

It’s a glorious week, star-gazers — the week when Venus unites with Sol in her inferior conjunction, commencing the beginning of her new 584-day cycle. I hope you set aside time to itemize your wish list for the Alchemical Goddess, whose conjunction with the Sun occurs around 7:10 AM EDT, but check your local ephemeris listings!

You may want to roll out of bed extra early on August 13 to partake in this important morning meeting. The powerful astrological union, known by its Arabic term “cazimi” or by its Latin AKA, “in corde solis,” signals the moment when a planet is in the heart of the Sun. This is a place of planetary power: not only is a planet reborn, but, as Abraham Ibn-Ezra tells us, a planet in this state is “joined with the Sun is like a person sitting with the king in one chair.” This power is not long-lasting — not least because Venus enjoys no major essential dignity in Leo — but her benevolence is contingent upon the Sun in whose powerful sky temple she benefits, granting us a moment of luck, fortune and favour.

I give this just under a five-hour window, ending around 11:44 AM EDT, when Venus slips out of an orb of 17 minutes (yes, we’re getting all Medieval in our cazimi orbs today!), making the power-hour ripe between breakfast and brunch. Although Venus is still retrograde, she is conferred all the glory and riches of the Sun: a moment that I will customarily gamble with in matters of friendship, money and love. It’s almost as if Venus gets a tiny…