This is a week of last stretches. Mercury finishes the closing degrees of Cancer, Venus the closing degrees of Virgo, Mars the closing degrees of Gemini — three planets ending their sign within the same seven days, each on the final leg of the road it had been walking. The Sun runs through the middle of Leo, in its own house, and is the only one travelling with room to spare. The rest of the sky is coming to the end of a stage, and the end of a stage always carries the same weight: it is not that the load has grown, it is that it has been carried a long way.

Saturn says the same, and says it with its body. It remains all but stationary in Aries after stationing retrograde, and across these seven days it covers a little over six minutes of arc — less than the Moon covers in twelve minutes. It is the thing that will not move however hard it is pushed. And yet, before dawn on 7 August, the Sun comes to its exact trine: the one meeting of the week between the greater light and the weight, and it is a good meeting. Fire with fire. What is being borne has structure beneath it and holds; only the structure is tired too, for Saturn in Aries is far from home.

Midweek the Moon reaches the last quarter. It is the phase that closes, not the one that opens. The light diminishes, and what stays in view is what was actually built, without the enthusiasm of the beginning lending it a shine. It is not a sad phase; it is a phase of accounts. It serves to see what one is carrying, and since when.

And here is what makes this week treacherous. On Monday the Moon passes over Neptune and over Saturn, both in Aries: the same day brings the mist and brings the weight, in that order. After that, and through all seven days, Venus tightens toward its opposition to Neptune, which only becomes exact the following week but is already felt. And Jupiter, which entered the heart of the Sun last week, remains invisible beneath the beams, sinking deeper. The greatest help in the sky is there and cannot be pointed to. The difficulty of these days is not the load. It is that one walks with it by night.

Because mist adds no weight, whoever has carried something a long time and cannot see the end begins to conclude there is no end, and these days offer material enough for that conclusion: Mercury runs fast through the waters of Cancer, through memory, going back over everything that was said and giving it whatever shape the hour suggests. A shape at the roadside is a shape. It may be a stone, it may be a man, and in the dark one cannot settle which. The mistake is not being afraid, it is deciding as though one already knew.

The week's relief comes with Venus leaving Virgo, where it stands in its fall, for Libra, its own house. It is not a relief that takes the load off, it is a relief that gives the load a measure. Libra is the scales, what is shared out, what is asked for, what is settled with someone. The weight carried alone and the weight divided are not the same weight, even when they are the same kilos. And on 9 August, Mercury leaves Cancer for Leo, and speech leaves the tide and finds a voice, if there is something to say to someone, the end of the week says it better than the beginning.

The same figure may be read on the world's stage. There is a table set for midweek while the weapons are paused, and no one knows whether the pause is the start of an agreement or merely a breath. There are those who have carried for months a war they no longer choose, and there are contradictory accounts which, from outside, there is no way to verify. Mist and load again, and the same temptation to decide in the dark. The stars, however, do not compel, they incline. The question of the week remains: of what I carry on my back, how much is truly mine to carry alone, and how much of its weight is the load, and how much is what I imagine in the dark?