This week's astrology centers on Mercury in Cancer squaring a lineup in Aries (Vesta, Saturn, Athena) — a week-long tension between careful speech and urgent action, tended feeling and imperfect forward motion. Venus conjuncts Jupiter in Cancer for one of the sweetest moments of the summer. The myth of Chrysomallus the golden ram anchors Wednesday's pile-on in Aries. Venus enters Leo opposing Pluto, setting up a month of tension between adolescent joy and the forces that desecrate it. Sunday brings a New Moon in Gemini that requires a sense of humor.

In the descent: a global tour of low-tech timekeeping devices — the Egyptian clepsydra, the incense seal clocks of Song dynasty China, the Ethiopian Ge'ez calendar and clock (including the complexity of Ethiopia as a nation state and the history of internal colonialism toward the Oromo people), and the Marshall Islands stick charts of Micronesia. None of these devices try to control time. They're all just paying attention to it.

Links

Interactive Colonial Timekeeping Timeline — https://effortless-bavarois-314f8a.netlify.app/ Group Space Co-Design Poll — https://lively-marzipan-dfc058.netlify.app/ Join Group Space on Monday June 8 (free with code: IFWECANDREAMITWECANBUILDIT) — https://calendly.com/amaliathecoach/new-meeting?back=1&month=2026-06 Book a session — https://www.amaliathecoach.com/ Music by Charmie Chandler - https://www.instagram.com/charmie_chandler/

References

Apollodorus, Library Book I — https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus1.html Hyginus, Fabulae — https://www.theoi.com/Text/HyginusFabulae1.html Clepsydra of Karnak — https://egypt-museum.com/clepsydra-of-karnak/ Royal Museums Greenwich, dragon fire clock — https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-212049 Ancient Origins, incense clocks — https://www.ancient-origins.net/artifacts-ancient-technology/incense-clocks-0017419 Time in Ethiopia — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_Ethiopia Foreign Policy, Ethiopia and internal colonialism — https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/07/14/ethiopia-must-end-internal-colonialism-or-it-will-fall-apart-like-yugoslavia/ Smarthistory, Marshall Islands navigation chart — https://smarthistory.org/chart-marshall/

Chapters

00:00 — Opening 00:57 — Welcome & grounding ritual 02:18 — Announcements: timeline tool, Group Space 03:55 — Astrology: week overview 04:35 — Monday June 8: Mercury square Vesta, last quarter moon in Pisces 07:30 — Tuesday June 9: Venus conjunct Jupiter in Cancer 11:24 — Wednesday June 10: Chrysomallus and the pile-on in Aries 17:19 — Thursday June 11: Moon in Taurus square Pluto 17:56 — Friday June 12: Uranus square the nodes 19:37 — Saturday June 13: Venus enters Leo 22:30 — Sunday June 14: New Moon in Gemini 26:23 — Descent: low-tech timekeeping around the world 28:49 — The Clepsydra 32:04 — The Incense Clock 34:13 — The Ethiopian Ge'ez Calendar & Clock 38:09 — The Marshall Islands Stick Charts 40:42 — Summary & closing reflection questions

Something was lost in the rounding. A matriarch. A month. An hour that used to breathe with the seasons. This episode goes looking for all of it. The astrology section opens a summer-long invitation — Mercury in Cancer through August, with a retrograde built in — to understand and differentiate from the things that nurtured you. The week's maternal theme runs through Hera/Juno, whose pre-Hellenic story as a pilgrimage goddess and matriarchal mother got compressed into the jealous wife of Zeus by the same cultural machinery that rounded down the lunar calendar. The descent moves into ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to ask why Western timekeeping uses 12, not 13 — and finds that both numbers have body bases and cosmic bases, just different ones: one from the skeleton, one from the trading hand. The episode ends in 1967, when the second was officially decoupled from astronomical movement and handed to a cesium atom. Transits covered: Mercury into Cancer (retrograde June 29–July 23), Sun trine Juno, Mars square Juno, Uranus conjunct Ceres, Ceres square the Nodes, Neptune sextile Ceres.

Key sources: Karl Kerenyi on Hera's pre-Hellenic origins; Sylvia Wynter on colonial language and humanization; Anishnaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Cree turtle calendar traditions; NIST published history of atomic timekeeping; Victor Warring on grief and the erotic (rewilderos.com); Alexis Pauline Gumbs, ed., Revolutionary Motherhood.

CHAPTER MARKERS:

00:00 — Opening 00:47 — Grounding ritual 01:56 — Week overview: a gentler sky, themes for all summer 02:25 — Monday: Mercury enters Cancer / what do we mean by mothers 07:54 — Tuesday: Mars squares Juno / Hera before she was a wife 14:19 — Wednesday through Sunday 19:27 — Midway: algorithms operate in time 20:06 — Descent begins: orienting the project / colonial time 21:23 — In the tradition of Sylvia Wynter / Patois as genius breakage 25:47 — Why 12? Ancient Sumeria’s lunar calendar 28:23 — 12 and the body: Babylonian hand-counting 30:27 — Two algorithms for the same reality 30:38 — The turtle shell: Anishnaabe, Haudenosaunee, Cree lunar calendars 34:45 — Rounding down: 12 vs 13 and the menstruating body 36:38 — Egyptian hours that breathe with the seasons 37:47 — 1967: the cesium atom takes over from the stars 41:16 — Recap and closing questions

Episode Description:

This week we’re talking about language as armor, language as weapon, and language as time travel.

Jane Goodall spent 60 years figuring out what makes humans different from chimpanzees. Her answer: we can speak of things that are absent — the past, the future, ideas that don't exist in any room we're standing in. I explore how whoever gives you the words gets to give you the time.

This episode traces what happens when someone uses that power against you — and what it takes to get your timeline back.

On the astrology side: a Sagittarius Full Moon asking where your hard-won knowledge actually belongs, Athena as feminist sleeper agent, Vesta making way for ecstatic chaos, and the Arachne story as a case study in truth-telling strategy. Plus Mars square Pluto, Ceres entering Gemini, and a week that wants you to get strategic about how you apply what you know.

Content warning: sexual trauma.

References:

• Jane Goodall, "What Separates Us from Chimpanzees?" TED 2003
• Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow (2010)
• Audre Lorde, "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," Sister Outsider (1984)\

Music by Charmie Chandler Group space, 2nd and 4th Mondays 5:30pm CT: sign up here Book sessions: calendly.com/amaliathecoach

Keywords: astrology podcast, Sagittarius full moon May 2026, epistemology and trauma, language and power, Jane Goodall human language time travel, Athena Arachne myth, Vesta asteroid astrology, sleeper agents mythology, knowledge production, sexual trauma healing, somatic healing, Michelle Alexander injustice system, IFS astrology, Mars Pluto square May 2026, Ceres Gemini 2026, this erotic timeline

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 — Cold open: how do you know what you know?

00:54 — Welcome + grounding ritual

01:48 — Astrology of the week

02:33 — Monday May 25: Squaring up with the dark

04:46 — Tuesday May 26: Athena — feminist sleeper agent

09:02 — Vesta — the invisible hearth keeper who made way for ecstatic chaos

11:18 — Thursday May 28: Ceres enters Gemini — talk about the grief

13:04 — Sunday May 31: Sagittarius Full Moon — how do you apply your hard-won knowledge?

15:16 — Athena and Arachne: a case study in truth-telling

21:03 — Midway: Jane Goodall, language, and time travel

23:27 — Descent: the word epistemology and what it cost me

31:00 — Leaving academia, learning to walk on the ground

38:06 — Survivors of sexual abuse and the power institutions don't want us to have

41:17 — Holy shit! your body has been time traveling all this time

45:50 — What this podcast is actually for

49:01 — Weekly recap + closing questions