multimedia image of a lion, planet, sun and stars for the August Energy Report by Rebecca Conran

The Inside+Out August Energy Report

By Rebecca Conran | August 1, 2024

AUGUST ENERGY REPORT: Self-Worth + Service

This month, Venus is transiting overtime behind the scenes to get us to approach life in a much more down-to-earth, pragmatic, and service-oriented way. Moving away from the pitfalls of our past experiences into a hopeful new chapter. We each have masculine and feminine energies within. Our feminine qualities of creating, feeling, being, and receiving are often steamrolled by our internalized toxic masculinity, which seeks to gratify itself rather than serve. Divine masculine energy is of service to our emotions and creativity. It wants to be helpful and provide the very necessary caregiving inwardly for the divine feminine needs. This month is a special time when we are called to focus on regulating these energies within. We are invited to create real self-worth from a place of balance and respect for oneself over outer approval.

multimedia image of a woman and the Sun with fire for the August Energy Report by Rebecca Conran

AUG 4: NEW MOON LEO + MERCURY STATIONS RETROGRADE

Leo Season has been connecting us with our passion, enthusiasm, and creativity – and, on the flip side, a lack thereof! Some of us may feel we are living in Groundhog’s Day at the moment; it’s not terrible; nothing bad is necessarily happening to us directly, but it’s certainly difficult to feel excited about our goals or projects as we continue in a holding pattern of uncertainty. This period is unearthing what is stuck so that our garden can grow anew. Leo connects us to our hearts and courage. We must not forget that we have gifts to offer this world vibrationally and must give ourselves permission to use and share them. Life might feel like a slog right now, but there is much beauty and love to be shared regardless.

This New Moon is a great time to:

Be unequivocally yourself, follow the impulse to be genuine
Use your voice to express yourself, the good, the bad and the ugly
Make time for play, fan the flames of your creativity
Go on an adventure, explore new arenas
Be a generous leader
Embrace passionate love and friendship
Open your heart! Be more loving in word and action.

It might not feel like it, but Mercury Retrograde, beginning in Virgo, is here to help, too. Virgo season is approaching, and this is a very detail oriented and realistic sign that helps us to temper our extremes and focus on the practical tasks ahead. Virgo season always helps us with our duties, like properly taking care of our bodies. Virgo generates lots of useful and helpful ideas. This is great energy for managing your finances, setting small goals, cleaning the house, etc. This review period begins with a focus on that before it moves back into Mercury in Leo.

The degree of a transit for me holds the theme, and the theme of this Mercury RX is to stop living in fear of recreating past negative experiences which hinder you from choosing with optimism in each present moment. We each have had bad things that have happened to us, it’s okay to be cautious, but where does that caution stop us from truly living? Where does it make us more focused on not recreating the past than living open-heartedly?

Virgo enters its shadow when it becomes perfectionist, negative and overly skeptical. Personally, I believe in being a skeptic, I don’t think it’s all bad. My faith in life was born from roots in skepticism, but at some point, we also need to be aware of the subtle lines of closed-mindedness. Be prepared to change your mind, your beliefs and how you are perceiving your experience now. Tempering extremes in criticism when you feel let down or like you have let yourself down. Everyone is doing their best from their level of perception – including you.

AUG 5: VENUS ENTERS VIRGO

When Venus, the planet of love, romance, and values, is in Virgo, our love language becomes one of the acts of service. This placement loves a fixer-upper and shows love by helping. Virgo rules all things health and hygiene, so this is a great time to kick-start habits and behaviors that serve wellness. Venus in Virgo will remind us for the next month that practicality can be sexy, too. Get your finances in order, get your home organized, roll up your sleeves, and do the dishes, so to speak. Perhaps you feel called to participate in some way in helping others or being of service. Love isn’t just in the dramatic or gooey aspects; it’s also about being considerate of the day-to-day minutiae of one another. Over the next few weeks, we will make practical care a priority.

AUG 8: MERCURY CONJUNCT VENUS BOTH IN VIRGO

When two planets are conjunct, they create a new superplanet. They draw on each other’s strengths but can also exacerbate one another’s shadows. In any case, it means there’s a whole lot of THAT energy going on. Mercury, our minds, thoughts, perceptions, and communications work alongside how we give and receive love and what we value. This degree is about how we “fit in” and the lengths we might go to attain approval from conventional avenues at the expense of our own authenticity. The world doesn’t know how to accept the genius, the maverick, the mad scientist, so we dull ourselves down to make ourselves palatable to the world. So, the advice here? Don’t do it! Don’t sacrifice your life force to be one of the crowd. Be your own wonderful, weird self, and others will soon follow suit.

sun rising up from the mountains

AUG 14: MARS CONJUNCT JUPITER BOTH IN GEMINI

Mars, anger, energy, impulse – working alongside our spiritual expansion. Jupiter is an exuberant planet; its optimism can soften the intensity of Mars, but the combination of these two can also blow things out of proportion. Finding temperance and disengagement from self-righteous arguments or lose/lose debates will be important today. This transit is all about mental metamorphosis. The head is doing all of the processing right now; our aggression, our motivation, and our spirituality are all being intellectualized, and hopefully, wisdom is being solidified. We are being asked to mature, and our behaviors are a reflection of our spiritual maturity. Are there ways you express your energy that need to be leveled up? Today, there is energy to make healthy adjustments.

AUG 19: FULL MOON AQUARIUS

This full moon rules our friendships, business contacts, and all things community. As a point of release, we are realizing the types of community that don’t work for us. Are your friends and lovers growing with you? Are they growing at all? If the people you associate with don’t help you shine your best self or match the values you have today, you’ll feel that you need to move on today. This applies to business and work-related connections, too.

The full moon in Aquarius will also highlight all of those places where we don’t feel emotionally free. If you’ve made someone or something your higher power, and if someone or something else holds the keys to your self-worth, you’ll want independence from that today. Don’t let your loyalties (Sun in Leo) keep you tied to sinking ships. Because we are also in our Mercury RX journey, these endings may also come with some emotional communication.

AUG 23: SUN ENTERS VIRGO

The tone of our collective being is now coming into alignment with the tone of the collective mind. The above advice regarding Virgo counts here, too. With this transit, we invite in the energy of service, intelligence, and helpfulness to be imperative to the collective vitality. This is a great time to work on improving your physical health. Virgo season says, “Okay, summer is fun and all, but let’s get organized, eat better, and focus on better habits.” Use this energy to cross tasks off lists, but be aware of overloading yourself or expecting too much. Find that life/work balance that gives equal time to all your priorities. Virgo can exacerbate neurosis, so this next month may be a time when you get some therapy or healing work booked in. We all need some support sometimes and now is a good time to get down to brass tacks.

psychedelic image of a sun

AUG 28: MERCURY STATIONS DIRECT

What did you learn about your communication style, internally and externally, these last three weeks? How has your internal dialogue shifted? What changed in the way you communicate with others? What was revealed to you? Mercury now turns to forward motion again, going back over the degrees of this past retrograde. There is more to be revealed! We can have less miscommunication with others now, by expressing ourselves and thinking more clearly.

The degree this transit shifts back directly in Leo asks us to be a big boisterous beacon of light and express our love with intensity. Don’t pick and choose who is worthy of your love and light; shine it all around with generosity; there is more than enough. Let your love be so enduring that people who cannot handle your beauty naturally just fade into the background until they are ready to receive such gifts.

AUG 29: VENUS ENTERS LIBRA

Venus rules Libra, so Libra is coming home. Venus symbolizes what our collective is working on right now to feel loved, lovable, and loving. During this transit, working with Libra’s positive traits will bring satisfaction, and experiencing the shadow elements will bring up self-worth issues and differences in values.

In Libra, we need diplomacy, fairness, and harmony in order to feel comfortable. We value communication more, and we need to work through things on an intellectual level. This is a good time to communicate our needs with tact and kindness. This is a time for greater depth in our artistry. In general, it’s also a social time where we should focus on showing affection, especially through our words. This is the time to focus on partnerships of all kinds.

The shadow side of Libra can be people pleasing, indecision, superficiality, idealization, and self-indulgence. There can be issues here with not listening to our emotional, intuitive senses by instead valuing what’s “good on paper.” This transit could also amplify some of Neptune’s (currently in the last degree of Pisces) negative traits, seeing things as we want them to be, not as they are, and over-romanticizing situations where we need to be realistic. Libra’s darker side can also run extremes in gossip and judgment. We are here to love one another and to access deep compassion and empathy. If how we hold one another accountable doesn’t include that at our core, it’s just a bunch of self-righteous crap.

Sometimes, when we love others, we allow them to cross lines that don’t serve either of us. Love that doesn’t honor our boundaries or those of others is not loving. Love that is co-dependent is addiction, not loving. We cannot experience our own wholeness through others, and the energy of this transit may motivate us to act in ways that protect our self-esteem and self-worth from inappropriate ties that bind us. Venus in Libra says “I want to connect with others in harmony and create peace in my relationships, but not at the cost of my self-care.” Today, you may experience a realignment of what works best for your self-worth in relationships.

Each energy season touches us in a unique area of our lives. We each have every zodiac sign somewhere in our personal astrology. This report examines the collective themes or “mundane astrology” that will mark this period. If you are interested in learning more about your own astrology, a Soul Astrology one-on-one session or a personal Astrology Forecast may be for you.

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REBECCA CONRAN CHHC | INSIDE+OUT Spotlight Member