Commonsense Almanac By Ben Commons | August 2025

Tips for almanac use: All the aspects can be felt in advance. It is good policy to view these as due dates for various energies and prepare accordingly for your context. It’s akin to bringing an umbrella with you when rain is expected, but it also helps us to not take the weather personally. When we proactively manifest these symbols then the world doesn’t have to do it for us. Choose to be con(with)-siderate(the stars). Reach out to me for personal explorations of these times.

August. This month is ramping us up, preparing us for greater and greater clashes between the public shenanigans and our private worlds that we always imagined were fairly bubble-like enclaves. The first third of the month is still more focused on our personal relations, as the specter of the world looms. Then it starts getting weirder and weirder. We have a doozy of a New Moon in Virgo and a couple of aspects between the big outer planets. This amplifies the dichotomy between the peace, tranquility, comradery, safety, and ease that most everybody on this planet wants versus the big institutional forces that upend, compromise, and challenge our ideals. We need to find a balance between caring for our bubbles while still pushing against the tides of erasure.

Venus squares Saturn and Neptune on Friday 8/1 at 6:33 am and 1:48 pm Pacific. This furthers the push for self-affirmation. Everybody is distracted and wrapped up with their own stuff and what’s happening in the wider world, so the validation and mellow companionship is much harder to come by. The emphasis is clearly on our worlds and keeping ourselves connected to people and purposes we care about. However, everything is amorphous right now, so don’t pay attention to any sort of endgame. Just work with what is now.

Mars enters Libra on Wednesday 8/6 at 4:24 pm Pacific, until 9/22. This will be a very dynamic month and a half with many possible fireworks towards the beginning. It’s essentially about confronting what we believe to be wrong, especially when it’s encountered in our families and communities. Of course, because it’s in Libra, it’s supposed to be done judiciously and diplomatically, but that doesn’t mean it has to be all sugar and cream. Consistency is always key and remember to choose functionality over emotional release. It’s going to be fierce.

Mars trines Uranus, opposes Saturn and Neptune, and trines Pluto on Friday 8/8 at 11:44 am and 7:51 pm and on Saturday 8/9 at 3:12 pm and on Sunday 8/10 at 5:28 am Pacific. These are wild days and it’s hard to say what could pop up. However, we know that we should be poised, positioned, and ready to express our passions regarding the state of our worlds and the world at large. The trick is to not spend all this energy where it will have no reward, no results, and no reception. And it will feel like things are at a precipice, because they probably are, but don’t take that symbology any more personally than is required, because it’s always a long haul. Reality checks need ongoing effort, and it’s hard to know what is real, unless we dig past our own hangups.

The Full Moon in Aquarius is on 8/9 at 12:54 am Pacific. This is a curious lunation. It’s somewhat isolated from the tumult throughout the rest of the planetary configurations. So, it’s supporting us figuring out our plans of action, growth, merriment, expansion, and renewal despite, in contrast, but also fully within the context of the collective changes. We can be certain that we are always far more connected than is easily understood and, somehow, we need to be fully ourselves within this matrix and maelstrom of the masses. And, somehow, we should enrich ourselves with whatever joy and amusement we can capture.

Mercury stations direct on Monday 8/11 at 12:30 am Pacific. This resolution phase after the retrograde is all about figuring out who we would like to be going forward. Or, more importantly, how we would like to show up, share, and shine. This push is brushing up against all the external momentum, which is a lot and deserves our attention. However, we still need to keep planning for our own lives and how to make the most of it all. It’s not simple, but it definitely emphasizes excitement over the uselessness of anxiety. We need to look forward to something shifting for the better, or a plan for a nice respite from it all.

Saturn sixtiles Uranus on Monday 8/11 at 8:31 pm Pacific. This is more of a collective happening than a personal one, but we have all felt it coming. At its simplest it’s about the potential in a burgeoning new way for society versus the stuck-in-the-mud status quo that restricts change out of fear, complacency, or selfishness. For us, this will be about maintaining what works but pushing towards innovation in our lives, streamlining in our homes, pickiness and boundaries regarding our interactions, and trust that, at times, wild shifts are needed and we need to work with them.

Venus conjoins Jupiter on Monday 8/11 at 10:29 pm Pacific. This is textbook astrology for indulging in hopium for the world or wanting desperately to seek refuge and hide in a cave until we hear the all-clear. A wiser strategy is to really focus on those whose wisdom you value, whose ear is available, and who is able to understand you better than most. But, as per usual, we should always be cultivating our internal relationship with ourselves and listening to the wisdom of the bodies; our instincts.

The Sun enters Virgo on 8/22 at 1:34 pm Pacific. Virgo season is always a good time to focus on our health and recommit to various healthful practices and caring for our physical vessels. This version has extra emphasis on smiling and humor as health strategies. Cardio is also super supported. But ultimately, it’s about being able to laugh at the state of the world and the absurdity of being an animal in a strange body that is largely self-governing while having an oversized frontal cortex. Trust your gut.

The New Moon in Virgo is on 8/22 at 11:06 pm Pacific. This could be a very intense lunation. We’ll really be feeling the itch towards radical and life-altering changes, but we could easily get confused by the reverberations of collective tumult pushing into our bubble. The key is to take a stand where appropriate, but mostly have strong boundaries and mental-attention editing capabilities from the endless news cycle of hype, hope, and fear. It’s truly a noisy world compared to what we evolved for and we need to have practical strategies to keep nervous systems from running off the rails. Conscious breathing, conscious eating, and conscious everything is recommended.

Sun squares Uranus on Sunday 8/24 at 12:14 am Pacific, finding us chomping at the bit. This is where we would like to be 20 steps further ahead then we could possibly be. Let us use that drive sustainably to grow our aspirations and efforts instead of feeling cheated by the reality of time and life. Trust in the process instead of over-stimulating the nervous system.

Venus enters Leo on Monday 8/25 at 9:27 am Pacific, until 9/19. These few weeks are asking us to get back to frivolity and innocence as a counterbalance to the weight of the world. As is repeated, we need to have fun, lightness, laughter, and companionship to make it through this strange world. And we will be confronted with the external pressures in the early phases of this period, but we must push through and find what we thought was lost.

Venus trines Saturn and Neptune and opposes Pluto on Monday 8/25 at 5:55 pm and Tuesday 8/26 at 3:18 pm and 10:53 pm Pacific. This isn’t just complicated, it’s supercharged. Of course, there are all the collective happenings, but this definitely shines a light on our personal relationships and how they can also grow into greater authenticity, clarity, depth, and openness. But we should be choosing our levels of reveal to whom very wisely because there is definitely a dangerous cauldron brewing. All in all, just keep it real without jumping on people’s toes; if they get stepped on a little bit, maybe they were too close to your dance moves.

Uranus sixtiles Neptune on Thursday 8/28 at 5:08 pm Pacific. This is a huge collective interaction between the forces that like to stay hidden out of sight, behind closed doors, and generally obfuscated versus the push towards radical transparency, open dialogue, and free exchange of information. But, of course, we have never been in times like these before, with all the intricacies and exaggerations created by our technological developments. For our personal strategies; make sure to question everything and everyone, because all will not be as it appears, and may never be again, unless you’re sitting with that person right there and then. It is a brave new world and may we shape into something decent at least.

Who knows where August will have left us, but it will surely have been a surrealistic scene worthy of a Dadaist’s fascination. Hopefully, we have started to begin commencing to initiate finding a teeter tottering balance between our lives and those in our communities and the larger forces normally beyond our control. And hopefully we have found whatever comfort and joy we could on this confounding confluence of universal themes, institutional pushes, and personal prerogatives.

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  Ben Commons

ASTROLOGER | Ben has been studying astrology since 1994 and started doing readings professionally in 2002. He is also a practicing Reiki master, and works with stones for healing. He uses astrology as a strategic tool and calls himself an Astro-strategist.

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