✨The Cross-Quarter Day of Lammas, Mercury Cazimi & the Influence of Retreat
Your cosmic energy report for July 28-August 3, 2025
Cycles of Time is a weekly forecast that explores at the energies of the upcoming week through the lenses of astrology, the Pagan Wheel of the Year, the Daoist 5-Element Cycle, the Indigenous Medicine Wheel, and the 64 gates of the Human Design/Gene Keys/ I’Ching mandala.
Each of these ancient, cyclical systems have the potential to connect us deeply with the changing seasons and also with the wisdom of our global ancestors. Viewed together, they reveal the profound interconnectedness that human beings have always held with mother earth. Thanks for reading!
-Alison
Hi everyone,
First off, apologies for my delay- this is the first week I’ve missed a Monday forcast since starting this thing. I woke up a couple days ago with no voice, and the summertime sickness has been lingering longer than I’d like. Because of this, there will be no podcast/audio this week.
Due to being under the weather, I’m also rescheduling the Leo Season Workshop & Breathwork Journey to next Wednesday, August 6th at 5pm MST.
Register here for the Zoom session where we’ll dive into all things Leo, and experience a guided breathwork journey to connect with your inner radiance and courage.
Personally, I’ve been doing a LOT of breathwork lately. There’s a weight in the air right now that’s impossible to pinpoint on one particular thing. So many of us have felt it pressing inward on our hearts like a storm cloud that doesn’t quite want to break, a saturation of deep feeling that clings deeply - even during a summer pool day with the kids or in nights of melatonin-assisted slumber.
I’ve been moving through the days with a quiet intensity, more attuned to my own thresholds, more aware of what drains and what replenishes me, and more deliberate with when and how I show up. This project is still replenishing me, for certain… but in heart-wrenching times like this, self-imposed deadlines can be wobbly. Thanks for understanding.
This week’s vibes:
I’m feeling a definite change in the air this week, as we celebrate the Pagan holy-day of Lammas/Lughnassa. It’s the heart of Leo season and the summer days are still long, but something in the light has shifted. The heat feels heavier now…. it’s less playful, more ripened. The fire of this season doesn’t seem to be rising so much as it’s concentrating in golden embers, slowly burning off distraction, bringing everything closer to the bone.
In the Ojibwe Medicine Wheel, we’re in the process of transition from the direction of the South to the West, from the high blaze of the south’s summer Fire to the fertile emotionality of the West, represented by water. This is the place in the cycle where expression begins to turn inward again, where the extroverted pulse of youthful summer starts to sink into reflection, and where the brilliance of outward action begins to feed something quieter, more essential, more rooted in maturity.
In the elemental sequence of the Taoist Wuxing, or 5-Element Cycle, late summer is when the element of Fire settles and it’s ashes give rise to a period of Earth. After the expansive burn of inspiration, celebration, and output comes the turning toward nourishment, integration, and center. Earth doesn’t rush. It asks for patience. It reminds us that the fruit must be gathered, the lessons must be absorbed, the meaning must be made from what has grown.
So much has been happening in the world lately that feels hard to hold, much like the season of fire that we’ve been deep within. Leo is fixed fire, and the Wuxing and Medicine Wheel’s fire elements have also been all-encompassing for the past several months.
But now, as we approach the first of the harvest festivals known as Lammas in the Celtic world, the fire’s embers are slowly transmuting to earth and water, yin elements in the wheel. While the geometries of this moment’s skies (and the astrological writings that I’ve been consuming) are fixated on a hightened vibration of “holy shit, this has never happened before”, we can lean into the great turning of the earth around the sun and know that we can still expect a comforting shift away from the heat of the flame and toward the nourishing elements of earth and water.
This week in the Wheel of the Year:
MEDICINE WHEEL Direction: SOUTH > WEST
WUXING Element: FIRE > EARTH
PAGAN Season: LAMMAS/LUGHNASSA (Widely celebrated on Friday, August 1; Astrological Lammas is at 15 degrees of Leo (Gate 7)
ZODIAC Season: LEO (July 22-August 22)
I’CHING Hexagram/HUMAN DESIGN Gate:
Friday, July 25-Wednesday, July 30: Gate 31: Lake over Mountain “Influence (Change)”, aka the Gate of INFLUENCE
Thursday, July 31- Tuesday, August 6: Gate 33: Heaven over Mountain “Retreat”, aka the Gate of PRIVACY
MOON Phase: Waxing
PLANETARY Dances:
Wednesday, July 30
Venus enters Cancer
Chiron stations retrograde in Aries
Thursday, July 31
Mercury Cazimi in Leo
Gate 31: The Power of Influence
July 25–30
The week begins with the Sun in Gate 31, known in the I’Ching as Lake over Mountain, and in Human Design as the Gate of Influence. This is the gate where the new moon happened last week, and it carries a deeply Leo-coded energy, resonant with themes of voice, leadership, and the magnetic capacity to impact others through presence rather than pressure. As we wrap up gate 31’s energy this week, we are asked to consider the energetic quality of the words we speak and the intentions behind them. It’s important to act with a living inquiry into what our words serve and how they shape the field around us, rather than a black and white binary of right or wrong,
Gate 31 shows us that true influence arises from coherence, from a felt sense of alignment between what we believe, what we know, and what we express to eachother. This gate does not belong to the loudest voice in the room, nor to the most persuasive rhetoric. It belongs to the one who speaks from lived integration, whose direction has been earned through embodiment rather than inherited through status. There’s a tone of quiet authority in this gate, a reminder that presence alone can ripple far when anchored in truth.
Gate 33: The Sanctuary of Memory
July 31–August 6
On Thursday the 31st, the Sun enters Gate 33, the Gate of Privacy, encoded in the I’Ching as Heaven over Mountain. This movement marks a subtle but meaningful shift from the outward posture of guidance and influence into a more inward, introspective space. This is the time within Leo season when the king of the jungle retreats back into his den, and takes time to contemplate their leadership, honor their memories, and take time to step back and rest before moving out into the limelight again. This gate holds the energy of the historian, the keeper of stories, the one who tends the past in order to make meaning of the present.
In this part of the year’s cycle, we are invited to pause and metabolize, to take time for integration rather than immediate response. There is a wisdom in this gate that understands the value of retreat, a time of fertile stillness where clarity becomes possible and real insight begins to take form. This is a beautiful energy for journaling, for storytelling, for listening inward, and for protecting what has not yet fully ripened enough to share.
Gate 31 says, “Here is what I know,” and then Gate 33 whispers, “Let me sit with what I’ve seen.” And sometimes, that quiet whisper carries more resonance than a thousand declarations shouted into the void.
Lammas: The First Harvest
Friday, August 1
At this turning point in the year, we arrive at the Pagan cross-quarter day of Lammas, the ancient Celtic festival of Lughnasadh, which falls at the midpoint between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox.
Lammas marks the first harvest, traditionally when the grain is cut and gathered, and the first loaves of bread are baked from the newly milled flour. The word Lammas comes from the Old English hlaf-mas, meaning “loaf-mass,” a name that reflects both the physical sustenance of bread and the spiritual significance of offering the first yield back to the land, or to the divine.
In agrarian cultures, this holiday was no small threshold. It was a sacred tension between abundance and mortality, between the joy of harvest and the sobering reality that the year was turning, the light was waning, and nothing lasts forever. The first cutting of the grain was both celebration and sacrifice.
In some traditions, the spirit of the grain was believed to live within the stalks, and so the first sheaf was treated with reverence. It was sometimes kept in the home, sometimes burned or buried, sometimes woven into a Corn Mother or carried into ritual procession. What was reaped was never taken lightly. At Lammas, gratitude and grief were bound together in ritual.
The name Lughnasadh connects the festival to the Celtic solar god Lugh, a deity of many talents: craftsmanship, artistry, warriorship, and poetic skill. It’s said that Lugh established the festival in honor of his foster mother Tailtiu, who cleared the plains of Ireland for agriculture and died from the labor. Lughnasadh was thus both a funerary feast and a communal fair, a time to honor the dead, share the bounty, and prepare for the slow descent into the darker half of the year.
Games were held, contracts were made, temporary handfastings were performed, and offerings were left at wells, stones, and harvest altars. There was dancing, music, feasting, and always, some form of release.
Today, this holiday invites a reckoning with the cyclical nature of creation: everything we birth into the world -whether a child, a work of art, a business, a home -will also require a kind of maintenance, sacrifice, or surrender. Lammas reminds us that the beginning of the harvest is also the beginning of the letting go. What is gathered will sustain us, but what is cut down clears the field for what comes next.
In the modern wheel of the year, Lammas can be celebrated with bread-baking, gratitude rituals, harvesting from your garden, writing acknowledgments of what you’ve built, or simply pausing to notice what in your life has come full circle since spring. The ritual doesn’t need to be grand. Even a quiet meal with intention can mark the shift.
This year, Lammas falls on Friday, August 1, but the astrological cross-quarter moment comes when the Sun reaches 15° Leo, closely aligned with Gate 7 in Human Design: the Gate of the Chosen Leader. Here we’re reminded that personal power ripens within the context of shared responsibility, and that sovereignty matures through service and right relationship with the whole.
If the fire of this summer has been intense, if your inner fields feel scorched or overworked, Lammas is an invitation to gather what still nourishes and to honor what must now be laid to rest.
Planetary Dances of the Week: Emotion, Reflection, and Radiant Thought
Venus enters Cancer
Wednesday, July 30
On July 30, Venus slips into the sign of Cancer, bringing the soft waters of emotional intimacy into focus. With Venus in Cancer, love becomes more intuitive, more protective, and more rooted in safety and shared memory. This transit invites us to prioritize nourishment in our relationships, both in how we give and how we allow ourselves to receive. Venus in Cancer shows up in the rituals of care, the meals cooked with tenderness, and the homes we build with our hearts.
Chiron stations retrograde in Aries
Also on July 30, Chiron, the wounded healer, stations retrograde in the sign of Aries, initiating a deep inner review of the ways we’ve carried our individuality, our anger, and our need to do it all alone. Old stories around abandonment, self-reliance, and unexpressed pain may come to the surface as an invitation to hold ourselves with greater compassion. This retrograde cycle offers a space to reclaim softness without surrendering strength.
Mercury Cazimi in Leo
Thursday, July 31
On Thursday, Mercury enters the heart of the Sun in Leo in a moment the ancients called Cazimi, which means "in the heart" in Arabic. This is one of the most clarifying, potent phases in Mercury’s entire cycle, a short window when the mind is seated at the center of solar truth, illuminated rather than overwhelmed by the Sun’s brilliance. It’s a moment of pure transmission, when the noise falls away and the signal sharpens.
In Leo, this Cazimi brings a burst of radiance to thought, speech, creativity, and self-expression. Leo is ruled by the Sun, so Mercury in Leo Cazimi becomes doubly infused with themes of identity, pride, courage, and integrity. Ideas may arise that feel more like revelations than thoughts, like they’ve been waiting for you to grow into them.
This transit supports declarations, initiations, and creative articulation that comes from the center of your being. Not what you think you should say, but what has been trying to speak through you for some time now. It’s a moment to put the crown on your thoughts and let them walk the world with dignity.
You may feel a strong urge to write, speak, share, or name something that has lived in the liminal. Conversations during this transit can cut through confusion. Plans can be clarified. Personal truths may crystallize. There’s a golden clarity available here, though it doesn’t usually come from effort. It comes from listening inward long enough to recognize the shape of what wants to emerge.
Cazimi moments are brief (usually only a few hours) so it’s worth marking the day and giving yourself a pocket of time to journal, voice note, sit in silence, or open a dialogue that’s been waiting for the right moment. This is a good day to make announcements, write affirmations, or even speak to yourself aloud in a way that reaffirms your direction.
The Pulse of the Week
This is a week that pulses with layered meaning, where the energies of transition, harvest, reflection, surrender and inner leadership all converge in a quiet symphony. The Moon is waxing, gathering light. The Earth is holding, digesting summer’s fire, preparing for the seasonal changes. The Sun is still strong, but its light is beginning to feel more distilled, asking us: What matters now? What must be harvested? What will you carry across the next threshold?
If your body is tired, if your spirit feels stretched, or if your clarity seems to be taking the long way home, let this week be a sanctuary rather than a sprint. Let your wisdom arrive in its own time, and let your voice emerge when it’s ready. Let your grief have room to breathe beside your joy.
Trust the slowness. Trust that your fire has fed something beautiful, and that it’s ashes as they settle will create fertile soil for the next phase in the cycle.
I’ll be back on the air next week- see you then.
and…
Click here to register for the Leo Season Workshop & Breathwork Journey next Wednesday! <3
Stay in touch!
You can find me at astrosomatics.com, @cyclesoftimepodcast and @astro.somatics on Instagram, or subscribe at cyclesoftime.substack.com to get the pod in your inbox every Monday.
Current Offerings »
Leo Season Astro-Breathwork Journey (RESCHEDULED: Wednesday, August 6 @ 5pm mst)
These monthly sessions are a great way to learn about the upcoming transits, integrate the themes of Leo season in your body, and release emotions that are no longer serving you.
Click here to register!
Walk the Wheel of the year with the Embody the Revolution Membership: only $8/month
If you want to support my work, you can become a paid subscriber here on Substack to join the EMBODY THE REVOLUTION membership for just $8/month!
Cycles o fTime is a labor of love! To support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber to the Embody the Revolution membership and get all the goodies listed below.
The Embody the Revolution membership includes:
a detailed guidebook for each Zodiac season delivered to your inbox
a monthly live breathwork journey on Zoom to tap into the energies of the season,
a calendar of all the astrology and human design transits of 2025/2026
access to the chat to ask questions and share in community
To join, click the button below to become a paid subscriber for just $8/month.
Thanks so much for reading, y’all!
xox,
Alison