Part I is HERE, Part II is HERE, Part III is HERE
I have to set my "cup" analogy aside for a bit because the astrology community has become immensely enamored by the idea of a BASKET, and I like basket better then 'cradle' (the ancient's word for it) and certainly astrologer Andre Barbault who noted this whole configuration some years back - well his name illiterates well with basket. Barbault's Basket!
Let's unpack this because I think something gets lost when we talk about these beautiful planetary patterns. The geometry is beautiful. The experience well ...
The BASKET itself exists because of multiple interactions happening simultaneously - all at 4-degrees:
Jupiter opposite Pluto (the spine) and as Jupiter moves out, the Sun moves in
Jupiter trine Neptune
Jupiter sextile Uranus
Pluto sextile Neptune
Pluto trine Uranus
Uranus sextile Neptune
The outer planets have already built this beautiful container and now Jupiter steps in and completes the circuit. What is the chance of all this happening at once?? Nearly zero I would suspect and yet here we are!
(Mars also activated the structure from June 29th-July7th via his own conjunction to Uranus - this will re-activate in September and then even more strongly in November)
For the last year or so we've had this remarkably cooperative outer-planet configuration of Pluto in Aquarius working with Neptune in Aries (and we had Saturn aligned here, too but before Uranus got into Gemini) and Uranus in Gemini. These are enormous collective evolutionary forces that are surprisingly well-aligned with one another. Revolution (Uranus), transformation (Pluto) and vision (Neptune) are speaking the same language.
(is it the beeps and clicks of AI agents chatting each other up? I hope not! and here is where I will toss in that Neptune is sitting EXACTLY conjunct asteroid Borasisi who you will remember from the Saturn/Neptune conjunction of February is the Sun God of Kurt Vonnegut's tech dytopia novel Cat's Cradle and asteroid 666!)
And now in late July, 2026, the middle planet, Jupiter, arrives.
This is where I think some are romanticizing the basket into a Golden Age/Jupiter's beneficence launching this whole thing into the stratsophere and I am certainly not a bubble-burster (well, my Mercury in Capriocrn is known to be a little bit of a bubble burster), but we have to remember that if we take away the opposition ... there is no basket. The entire shape depends on TENSION. The opposition - something working against something else. Something opposing.
The opposition is literally the string pulling the basket tight. Without it the whole thing collapses into some pleasant outer-planetary aspects quietly humming along. Nothing is super strong. Nothing makes history. History is never made by harmony alone. It requires POLARITY (which is - warning shameless plug ahead - also the name of one of my Etsy shops, check it out HERE).
Jupiter says - expand. Pluto says - strip away. Jupiter says - trust. Pluto says - control. Jupiter in royal Leo says the king while Pluto in Aquarius says the kingdom/the people. Jupiter says - tell the best/most uplifting story. Pluto says - reveal the truth underneath the story Jupiter!
Only when these two face each other does the collective have to negotiate between them. Jupiter and Pluto are brothers, but almost mythological opposites.
1. THIS WHOLE THING (the oppositon part) STARTED IN 2020 as a conjunction. Everything starts as a conjunction/a meeting and back in 2020 Jupiter and Pluto met three times in sober Capricorn. The visible story was COVID. The invisible story was acceleration. Governments and corporations centralized. Remote work and remote socializing exploded. Cloud computing exploded. AI research accelerated. Digital identity accelerated. The conjunction wasn't just about the disease. IT RE-ORGANIZED CIVILIZATION around TECH.
(note Jupiter and Pluto won't meet again until February 4th, 2033 in Aquarius when they will be right on Elon Musk's North Node of Fate - maybe he will get to Mars, Palantir's Neptune/Mars exact conjunction, Anthropic's Moon, Chat's Saturn, Altman's Jupiter - exact, ugh).
2. Then in the SPRING OF 2023 we had the Jupiter/Pluto opening square just as Pluto walked into Aquarius for the first time.
ALMOST OVERNIGHT the conversation changed from 'can we build this' to 'should we build this'?!
Public conversations become about - AI ethics, AI danger, regulation, deepfakes, labor disruption, copyright infringement, surveillance, universal income, crypto regulation. Meanwhile Britain crowned a new King almost to the day. That couldn't be more literal. Jupiter (kingship), Pluto (institutional transformation) as Pluto crosses into Aquarius (the people).
3. Now here we are in the Summer of 2026 with the one-time Jupiter/Pluto OPPOSITION (that will be followed almost immediately by our annual Sun/Pluto opposition).
This is why I don't actually see a "Golden Age" although I am sure we will have golden moments. A basket isn't a destination. It's a carrying device. It lets civilization transport something. So maybe the question becomes - What are we carrying?!
Technology? Power? Creativity? Collective intelligence? Artificial intelligence? Ancient intelligence with its own agenda??
The basket doesn't answer. It simply HOLDS.
And because nothing is ever happening in isolation when Jupiter opposes Pluto, forming this amazing basket, we also have, at the same time, the Moon in Libra forming a Cardinal T-Square with Mercury and Saturn - THIS IS UBER IMPORTANT (although we all know I shout sometimes just to use my Caps Lock key). Mercury Retrograde in Cancer is asking us - Where is our home? What makes us feel safe? WHAT STORY HAVE WE BEEN TELLING OURSELVES?!
The Moon in Libra seeks agreement, fairness and relationship. Saturn in Aries insists on responsibility, boundaries and decisive action. Neither can fully prevail because both are forced to answer to Mercury who is retrograde in Cancer, where the real work is not action but reflection.
Before we decide where we're going, we may have to reconsider the story we've been telling ourselves about where we've been!
The outer planets have spent years constructing an enormous suspension bridge. Beautiful engineering. Perfect balance. Everything finally connected. Then Jupiter walks onto it. The bridge begins to move. Is it failing or is it finally being used for what it was built for?!
After Jupiter moves on, the Sun steps in and the basket keeps going. The Sun is making all these smooth aspects, too, but also has to face his annual opposition to Pluto. This is where KINGS/fathers/egos FALL. Death will not be cheated. This will be exact on July 27th, but the good news for the Sun (and us) is that the Sun will catch up with Jupiter just a couple days later. This is truly miracle-making astrology people. We will talk about this in the weeklies.
I have mostly written about tech here because I think it's something we can all agree 2020 has pushed on us/us toward. It's not the only thing. My family has been very splintered since 2020 and this summer with Mercury retrograde in Cancer - I am really feeling it/feeling very nostalgic. I have two planets at 4-degrees - my Moon in Cancer (8th house) and Uranus in Virgo (10th house). The outer planets are giving us this amazing support in fire and air and although I am an Aquarius Sun, my planets in water and earth are STANDING OUTSIDE the configuration. So, the current fire-air basket is spectacular, collective ... and not mine. I don't get to be inside it. Maybe this is a good place to be to analyze it though? I will have to think/overthink this one :)
Since 2020, we've watched power become increasingly concentrated through technologies that paradoxically disconnect and connect us. The opposition with all its support doesn't necessarily choose between the throne and the crowd. Maybe it asks whether a civilization can hold both - authentic leadership without domination AND collective intelligence without dissolving responsibility.
It looks like a fast and slippery road ahead to me ...
The basket may not be carrying us away from conflict. But, it may be carrying us through.
xo all - back next with the weekly that takes us into the BASKET. Too tired to re-read this post, please excuse typos and nonsense.
(note two summers from now, in June 2028 we will have the Saturn/Pluto square from their own meeting - time ran out - in 2020 - that will come from Taurus/Aquarius so likely about finances, resources, the Earth vs tech/the future/liberation/the people - there are rallys scheduled around the country next week to demand moratoriums on data centers, action on this is going to be very important as we move forward - the summer of 2028 looks like the time when the bill for this fast-tracked life comes due)
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