Commonsense Almanac By Ben Commons | July 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.

July, already. So, the first half of the month starts us down multiple retrograde paths. There were a lot of big shifts this year with slow planets changing signs, and now they start to move back for the final undoing when they will revisit the previous zodiac signs. This means a lot of digesting, unfolding, and trimming of all this year’s developments. Then the second half of the month is more raucous with an extra gnarly New Moon in Leo that presents all sorts of fine lines to walk. It’s going to be extra all over the place depending on how the momentum of your life has been going, but it is very potent if used wisely. So, let us tend to the fires with care and stay open to grace.

Venus conjoins Uranus on Friday 7/4 at 5:44 am Pacific, pushing our tolerance levels down towards the bottom. This will find us itching desperately for something exciting, fun, and wild to infuse throughout our lives. If we can’t find some kind of stimulating change, then we could be on the grumpy side of life. So, try some new recipe, walk a new neighborhood or trail, call an old friend, or whatever gets your heart singing. Life needs fresh infusions to stay interesting.

Venus enters Gemini on Friday 7/4 at 8:31 am Pacific, until 7/30. This will find us all more eager for social connections, catching up with friends, and simply getting ourselves out in our communities. It’s a definite increase in mental and verbal energy that warrants sharing, listening, and laughing. We’re all a little threadbare and still integrating recent tumult, and that’s all the more reason to cultivate humor and reaffirm our social ties.

Neptune stations retrograde on Friday 7/4 at 2:33 pm Pacific, launching down another revision road. So much has been fomenting regarding identity, truth, what is real, and so much more, and now we can begin to process, trim, and revise all these developments. It is a brave new world we have entered so definitive answers may not be possible, but this does urge us to stay flexible and very aware of all the things visible, cloaked, and mysterious going on in our domains and the world at large. Keep your eyes open.

Venus sextiles Saturn and Neptune on Sunday 7/6 at 1:42 am and 7:46 am Pacific. This supports us talking through all these collective shifts and trying to figure out what we can about where we stand towards it all. However, this is also very important for having clear boundaries and not letting ourselves be washed over by the ongoing tidal shifts. But the focus is always on working towards something tangible even within the moras.

Uranus enters Gemini on Monday 7/7 at 12:46 am Pacific, until 11/7, then again from 4/25/26 until 8/3/32 and then done on 5/22/33. This is a monumental shift that will be a long process and have effects that go way further into time. The core is about how we think, communicate, and how we make our decisions. It’s challenging for many reasons, but especially because modern society finds us inundated with information both true, false, and misleading. Working towards separating the wheat from the chaff won’t be simple, but we don’t have much choice. Our minds must be made anew.

Venus trines Pluto on Monday 7/7 at 1:43 am Pacific, frothing up more undercurrents for processing. This brings up all sorts of issues involving clarity of communication. Ideally, we are taking our relationships down to new depths of understanding. But this could highlight all the ways in which things go awry; misunderstandings, unspoken layers, fear of sharing, et cetera. We should speak our truths, but selectively and with tact.

The Full Moon in Capricorn is on Thursday 7/10 at 1:36 pm Pacific. This is an interesting lunation; mellow because by itself it is, but ultra complicated because of all the other ongoing astrology. The simple strategy would be to focus on getting things crossed off the to-do list, organizing the home, and generally catching up on life. The challenge is getting distracted, discouraged, and depressed. It’s best to focus on one task at a time.

Saturn stations retrograde on Saturday 7/12 at 9:07 pm Pacific. Now we can begin to decompress all the changes in our worlds that have come about since 5/24; some of which were brewing well before that time frame. It’s very hard to explain this configuration because it would be a wake-up call to the toughness of reality, but is so heavily tinged with fantasy, confusion, and willful oblivion that nothing is straightforward. All we can really do is keep pushing for what we believe is right and keep taking care of ourselves and everyone else, within reason.

Mercury stations retrograde on Thursday 7/17 at 9:45 pm Pacific. Well, this retrograde will start off easier than most, but it will be all sorts of tangled webs by the end of it on 8/11 if we’re not super careful. The goal is to fully express our truest selves where appropriate and to scrape back more of that innocence. It’s challenging though because everyone is starring in their own show and may not be available as a supportive audience. Imagine being your own best audience.

Mercury sextiles Venus on Friday 7/18 at 6:36 am Pacific, urging us to talk it all out and keep the air clear. It’s times like these when we really need our co-travelers in life; an open ear with a warm heart. As always, it’s good to keep catching up with our people and to indulge in gentle humor prolifically. Have fun where you can.

The Sun enters Leo on Tuesday 7/22 at 6:30 am Pacific. Well, like all Leo seasons, we should be striving to have more fun, joy, laughter, and lightness. However, this one brings a very strong emphasis towards communication in general and finding better equity in those situations. We will all be swinging back and forth between feeling reclusive and being ready to immerse ourselves with people. Honor both these tendencies and it could be fun.

Sun sextiles Uranus on Tuesday 7/22 at 10:31 pm Pacific, throwing some curveballs into the mix. We may find ourselves in a strange and impatient mood. The trick is to let the wild hairs flow free without stepping on anybody’s toes. We need to shine as our true selves, but we don’t need unnecessary attention from disruptive influences.

Venus squares Mars on Wednesday 7/23 1:23 am Pacific, unleashing extra chili into this recipe. This is very spicy and dangerous if we allow ancient tendencies to seep into current situations where they don’t belong. It’s mostly about being careful with our word choices and not indulging in hyper-reactivity. A safe outlet would be getting the body moving, revisiting old studies, and, yes, cooking or eating something with copious chili content.

Sun trines Saturn and Neptune and opposes Pluto on Thursday 7/24 at 4:23 am 10:31 am and 11:32 pm Pacific. So, clearly this is going to be a tricky day. Let’s imagine that it’s as simple as staying true to ourselves, not over-reacting, and quietly rejecting the projections of others. If our momentum has been strong and positive, this could help us with new revelations about ourselves and how we respond to the world around us. But either way, focus on yourself and your development.

The New Moon in Leo is on Thursday 7/24 at 12:10 pm Pacific. So, this lunation is deep into the very intense side of things. And it’s also extremely contradictory. On one hand we should be reuniting with our innocence and giving the benefit of the doubt. On the other, we should be gearing up for an existential battle for the world at large. Realistically though, it should be about standing up for what we think is right, but mostly taking care of ourselves and our loved ones and putting the deluge aside from our consciousness. In the end, we can only control ourselves, and even that is challenging.

Venus enters Cancer on Wednesday 7/30 at 8:57 pm Pacific, until 8/25. This brings more emphasis onto the home, the family, and those in our inner circle. We all need to participate in relationships of mutual support to maintain sanity and our health. So, let us take care of our bodies, our sleep, our people, and all the little things that sustain us.

Sun conjoins Mercury on Thursday 7/31 at 4:41 pm Pacific. This is really about how independently we are on our growth journeys. Confirmation and support are nice, but needing the coaching leaves us vulnerable to the moods, whims, and projections of others. Now is when we can affirm our capacity to fly solo and get the confirmation our minds always seek from our hearts. We are social animals, but ultimately the most important relationship is the one with ourselves.

July¸ what a rollercoaster. Hopefully we’ve made it through with aplomb and a little help from our friends. These themes of navigating narrow straits with ample contradictory influences will continue for some time, so setting a productive momentum is of the utmost importance. And then we keep going…

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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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