The Missing Girls of Camp Mystic: Neptune Stations Retrograde, The Sun Squares Ceres

The Return of Persephone by Frederick Leighton, 1891

Today, July 4 2025, flooding of the Guadalupe River in Kerrville, Texas started around 4 a.m. according to news reports. This is about an hour and half drive from where I live.

Many areas are devastated, and expecting more torrential rain, but the most tragic circumstances so far happened at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp.

As I write this at 9:40 p.m. CST July 4, thirteen young girls are dead and at least twenty girls are missing.

I’m pretty moved by this event, so following the impulse to get all this down and dig into this moment in Time is happening quickly.

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Two very significant astrological events occurred today: Venus conjoined Uranus at the final degree of Taurus before moving into Gemini (then Uranus on July 7) and Neptune stationed retrograde.

There are more than a few things I find really striking about this event chart. Neptune, god of the Sea and ravaging Waters, turning retrograde today — this is the loudest.

When planets are stationing, they are as close to earth in their orbit as they get. This creates the illusion of the planet slowing, stopping, then reversing from our earthly point of view. When this is in process, the intensity of symbolic significations intensify and become much more palpable; as if the stationing planet is staring whatever it’s in relationship with deeply, directly in the face. Stationing planets are loud on the surface as well as beneath it.

Neptune, stationing, is in Aries conjunct Saturn, and Saturn is extremely slow right now as well, almost at a stand still. Saturn stations retrograde on July 13.

Neptune/Saturn in Aries are dominating the sky during this Time because of their entrenching stillness. Frozen Fire, Raging Water.

This complex of archetypes alone — water destroying (Neptune/Aries) structures taking lives (Saturn/Aries) — is enough to confirm astrological correlation to an event like this. Add on a few more archetypal layers, and it’s really quite astonishing the depth of this chart.

Neptune’s stationing retrograde is the symbolic catalyst today. The planet/sign represents mysticism, spiritual longing, the impulse to blend with Source or with imagination itself. The Christian girls’ summer camp this flood overtook is called Camp Mystic. I don’t think I really need to explain the connection to Neptune any further.

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Today, July 4, is also the day Venus conjoins Uranus at the last degree of Taurus and then moves into Gemini — Venus now, Uranus on July 7.

Ingresses, like retrograde stations, are often powerfully significant in that they both mark major shifts and moments of noticeable, felt change.

Gemini is related to young groups in communication, close communities of exchange, schoolmates, places like church groups or summer camps; and Venus, among many other things, signifies women, girls. Venus moving into Gemini adds an aspect of schoolyard girlhood to the overall picture as the picture itself moves into mercurial uncertainty.

Uranus is typically an omen of sudden events, sometimes catastrophic and wildly disruptive ones. The two conjoined ignite the possibilities of how a blend of these archetypes might manifest. A sudden, disruptive event involving a group of young girls is one of them it turns out, tragically.

Jupiter is in Cancer, and this also speaks of summer camps.

So yeah, what of Jupiter? Isn’t it supposed to be exalted?

Yes, but not quite yet.

Jupiter is still combust, under the beams of the Sun since they conjoined a week or so ago. Jupiter can’t be seen in the night sky yet, so its exaltation hasn’t been announced, so to speak.

Around mid-July, early in the morning before sunrise, Jupiter will become visible again for a few hours before the Sun washes it away with light. Until then, Jupiter is debilitated and held back from its typical benevolence. In a way, this currently “weakened” Jupiter resembles the Helpless Father archetype in the temple of Mother, Cancer.

Another layer in this event chart is Jupiter combust in Cancer (sign of safe places and mother, and a water sign) is square stationing Neptune. It’s as if the condition of Jupiter, unable to aid the situation, is increasing the magnitude of rainfall and force of flooding; expanding the consequences of the event deeper into the Cancerian part of the chart.

The mother (Cancer) element of this tragic chart is also striking when you look at Ceres. Ceres, in Aries co-present with Neptune, Saturn and Chiron, is exactly square the Sun at 12 Cancer.

And Mercury, ruler of Gemini where Venus has just entered, is slowing down in Leo having crossed into retrograde shadow on June 30. Leo of course is ruled by the Sun — the Sun in Cancer square Ceres in Aries.

Ceres (Demeter) is, in one incarnation of the archetype, the Grieving Mother. When her daughter Persephone went missing (died), Demeter, Earth Mother, grieved so intensely all crops and vegetation wilted and died as well. Such is the grief a mother endures who has lost a child.

And what of Mars, ruler of Aries where Ceres, Neptune, Saturn and Chiron are visiting? The god of war has a tendency to remove or cut things away from us, sometimes violently and quickly with great force. Mars is in Virgo — sign of the maiden, virgin, purity, young girls — approaching the South Node where the tide seems to go out and disappear what falls into its void.

The lunar eclipse on September 7 I imagine will be especially difficult for these Ceres and diminished Jupiter-like parents. The Moon will be on the North Node in Pisces, pushing emotions into the dissolving waters of grace and release; and Ceres will be retrograde in Aries, reliving a re-intensified wave of brutal mourning. Mars, host of Ceres, will be in Libra, far from home and square Jupiter in Cancer, yet hopefully not wrecking family relationships too much as often happens in the wake of massive, unexpected loss.

At 4 a.m. — when news reports say the flooding really began and water rose in some places 22 feet in 30 minutes — Mars in Virgo was directly below the earth, if you were in Kerrville, Texas, in the 4th house of endings and square Gemini on the eastern horizon where Venus and Uranus were poised to shockingly enter.

And then they did.