Week of March 27 - Mercury conjoins Jupiter

Mars trines Saturn, Venus conjoins Uranus

Timeline:

Tues, March 28

• ☿ ☌ ♃
  Mercury conjoins Jupiter
  2:50 am ET
  ♈︎ 18°13’ ♈︎

• ☽ ☐ ☉
  First Quarter Moon in Cancer
  10:32 pm ET
  ♋︎ 8°08’ ♈︎

Thurs, March 30

• ♂︎ Δ ♄
  Mars trines Saturn
  3:03 pm ET
  ♋︎ 2°36’ ♓︎

• ♀︎ ☌ ♅
  Venus conjoins Uranus
  6:26 pm ET
  ♉︎ 16°44’ ♉︎

Notes:

Just a quick note before I begin. Last week I wrote that the New Moon in Aries, which went exact last Tuesday at 0° Aries, would be the first of two consecutive New Moons that would happen in the sign of Aries, with the next one being an eclipse that will happen at 29° Aries on April 20.

I stated that this eclipse would be a total eclipse.

That is only partially true.

It will actually be a hybrid eclipse, which is even rarer than a total eclipse, but will be visible as a total eclipse briefly in parts of the southern hemisphere.¹

Last week I wrote about the rareness of the present moment, and the fact that the upcoming eclipse will be this rare kind of eclipse makes the moment even more exceptional.

Also note that—with the New Moon in Aries, the upcoming solar eclipse in Aries, and the subsequent lunar eclipse in Scorpio—we have a series of lunations ruled by Mars, with the latter two being ruled by Mars in Cancer, which will also be presiding over everything that happens in Aries for the remainder of Aries season.

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We have undergone a series of huge shifts in March.

Saturn ingressed into Pisces for a 2.5-year stay. We kicked off the new astrological year with a very potent New Moon at 0° Aries, the first degree of the first sign. Pluto moved into Aquarius after about 15 years in Capricorn. And Mars moved into Cancer after an extended stay in Gemini.

Mars normally spends only a couple months in a given sign, but because of its retrograde (which lasted from late October to mid-January), it was in the sign for seven months, first ingressing into Gemini on August 20 and leaving the mutable air sign this Saturday, March 25. Mars will be in Cancer until May 20.

Having undergone all these shifts in previous weeks, this week we might start getting more of a sense that these changes are starting to settle in and we may find that we are getting more of a feel for what all these new energies will be like. This week we have a Mercury-Jupiter conjunction, a First Quarter Moon in Cancer, a Mars-Saturn trine, and a Venus-Uranus conjunction.

In true Mercury-Jupiter fashion, this is a long-ass post (probably a record), but I have been feeling that Aries boldness, so I’m going for it. If I had another day to work on it, I’d perhaps edit it down, but I’ve decided to include text headers for each section to make the post more navigable. I’ve also included copious footnotes. Feel free to scroll through and read the bits and pieces that pique your interest and note that, while these are my own interpretations of the week ahead, you may feel things rather differently depending on your own situation and chart.

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An overview of Mars in Cancer

For many of us, Mars’ ingress into Cancer is a welcome shift. Mars retrogrades happen about every two years and can lead to a tumultuous time where Mars is in a sign for much longer than any of us actually want. Mars is known as the ‘lesser malefic,’ so it has a tendency to mess things up, and after being in a sign for seven months, it can feel like it’s overstayed its welcome.

Now Mars typically doesn’t have the easiest time in Cancer: the planet of war and aggression, of cutting and severing, doesn’t quite know what to do in Cancer, a sign that is about “the fostering of emotional bonds and the concern over emotional safety and security,” to quote Adam Elenbaas (himself a Cancerian). Having Mars in Cancer is like inviting the god of war into the home and anywhere that is supposed to feel intimate and safe. Mars in Cancer can show up as conflicts at home, with family members, roommates, or neighbors. Cancer is a watery, emotional sign, so Mars in Cancer can show up as passive-aggressiveness, emotional outbursts, and clinginess or emotional neediness.

But Mars in Cancer can also show up as a fierce protective streak, advocacy and defense of that which is near and dear, and a tendency to act on intuition or out of a sense of compassion. I work with an acupuncturist who has Mars in Cancer natally and I think that fits the archetype very well: using something sharp and made of metal (Mars) to heal (Cancer). We can also think of surgeons or of cutting the umbilical cord with Mars in Cancer. We can think of midwives, death doulas, lifeguards, or anyone rushing in to care for others in dangerous situations. And as others have pointed out, Mars in Cancer has some Big Mama Bear energy.

We’ll see how this Mars-in-Cancer period pans out, but for now I’m glad for the change, but typically, when Mars moves into Cancer (which is the sign of its fall, or depression), it isn’t that much of a cause for celebration. It can be an uneasy, paradoxical energy. But after seven scattered months in Gemini with Mars square to Neptune for a good part of it, many of us are looking forward to a Mars that feels less, well, diffuse.²

The time is ripe for a different kind of Mars energy.

Being the planet of drive and action, you may have felt yourself pulled in multiple directions with Mars in Gemini. You may have felt that you couldn’t focus your energies on any single thing for too long and that you were easily distractable. Mars can have an impulsive quality and we might have felt moved on impulse to switch between things constantly. We could see this impulsive quality of Mars being tempered by Mars in Cancer, which tends to feel its way into things and scuttle up to them sideways like a crab, much less direct than the headfirst quality of Mars in its home sign of Aries (and this lack of directness could be the reason for Mars in Cancer’s reputation for passive-aggressiveness).

When Mars moved into Cancer on Saturday morning, I felt the return of my old trusty sense of hyperfocus, where I wanted to stay on task, making it difficult for me to pull away from what I was doing (though a shadow side of hyperfocus can be the neglect of other things, and with Mars in Gemini, I never felt like I was neglecting anything important for too long). This could be due to the vice-grip of Cancer’s crab claws, but I think it’s probably mostly because Mars is no longer in Gemini: anything is going to feel focused and steady after this long period of Mars in Gemini.³

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Mars in Cancer, Aries season, and the First Quarter Moon

Right now we’re at the beginning of Aries season, with the Sun spending much of this week in the first decan of Aries (that is, the first third of the sign of Aries), moving into the second decan (the second third) on Thursday evening. So we got quite a bit of Aries season ahead of us.

Because Mars rules the sign of Aries, Mars’ shift into Cancer means a shift in the tone and flavor of what’s going on in Aries.

When we had the New Moon in Aries last Tuesday, Mars was in Gemini. This New Moon went exact less than 24 hours after the Sun’s ingress into Aries and it happened at 0° Aries, the first degree of the first sign, so there was a strong sense of beginning anew. This made for a particularly potent New Moon.

But because the New Moon was ruled by Mars in Gemini, this seed moment that began the current 29.5-day lunation cycle was infused with this kind of scattered Mars-in-Gemini energy: we were wanting to initiate things right out the gate once Aries season began (Aries likes to rush headfirst into things), but we might have felt (particularly due to Mars’ square to Neptune) flooded with possibilities and not quite knowing where to begin and where to put our focus. Gemini is good for diversifying, so this New Moon might have found us initiating or setting our aspirations toward a whole host of things.⁴

With the ruler of Aries now in Cancer, there is still going to be a strong initiatory quality to the season, but that is going to shift to a slower, more intuitive way of initiating things, a different kind of cardinality. Both Aries and Cancer are cardinal signs, which means that when the Sun enters them, it’s the beginning of a new season. So when we are talking about cardinality, we are talking about the capacity to initiate things.

With Aries, it marks the beginning of spring (the light half of the year) in the northern hemisphere. Cancer marks the beginning of summer, which is still within the light half of the year, but it’s a time when the days begin to get shorter. Because the system of tropical astrology that we use was developed in the northern hemisphere, the meanings of the signs derive from seasonal characteristics, which is why the sign of Aries has a quality of springing forward into things headfirst.

But with Mars now in the cardinal water sign of Cancer, we get a slower, less impulsive Mars that likes to feel its way into things and approach them in roundabout, oblique, and sidelong ways.

Catherine Urban has a nice description of Mars in Cancer over on her YouTube channel, which I’d like to quote at length:

Mars in Cancer has a little bit of hesitation because Mars in Cancer is motivated by security, safety, and how whatever it’s getting into is going to make it feel: how comfortable am I going to be?

Cancer is a sign that is ruled by the Moon. The Moon, of course, deals with our safety net. It is our natural rhythm. It’s what we’re used to doing. It’s what feels comfortable or at-home for us.

So Mars (this planet that is supposed to be impulsive and reactive) in this emotional sign [Cancer] can get kind of a caught-in-a-net sort of feeling: we’re sort of meandering around our target — we’re circling around that target and just waiting for that right moment to strike.

It feels like a game of strategy where we’re really feeling it out but if you’re too careful you’re going to miss your chance.

This is significant because this Tuesday we will have a First Quarter Moon in Cancer and First Quarter Moons have a tendency to goad us into action. First Quarter Moons are all about choosing the opportunity to act, so this isn’t a time for timidity. A First Quarter Moon happens when the Moon is square to the Sun and the square aspect (being of the nature of Mars) is all about doing things.⁵

With the First Quarter Moon happening in the Moon’s sign of Cancer and with the Moon conjoining Mars earlier in the day, this First Quarter Moon might find us asking (or receiving very clear answers to the question), “Well, what are we going to do with this Mars-in-Cancer energy?”⁶

Urban notes that there is a hesitant or “wimpy” quality to Mars in Cancer. Where Mars (particularly in its fiery home sign of Aries) typically has a very yang, go-get-em, pedal-to-the-metal, off-to-the-races kind of energy, its presence in Cancer can have the effect of attenuating or diminishing this energy, tempering the Martial vibe of Aries season overall.

The water signs tend to slow things down, so in Cancer we’re dealing with a Mars that likes to feel its way into situations. You might have wanted to leap out the gate and run around in multiple directions with the New Moon in Aries ruled by Mars in Gemini, but Mars in Cancer is now making you think more about what (out of a multiplicity of possibilities) feels most right to you and what you most deeply want to actualize during this lunation cycle.

For me, the First Quarter Moon has a shit-or-get-off-the-pot kind of energy.⁷ At the New Moon, there might be a heightened sense of possibility. We might build massive castles in the sky with regard to what we might want to accomplish, but at the New Moon we are operating more with potentiality than actuality, with the ideal rather than the real.⁸

If we’ve been feeling things out ever since Mars moved into Cancer over the weekend, this First Quarter Moon might ask us to commit to a course of action, to narrow down the vast array of possibilities represented by the New Moon and lean into that which most deserves our attention.

And with the First Quarter Moon under its own rulership in Cancer, we are well disposed to home in on what matters most. This kind of Cancerian discernment can help show us what we need to nurture, what we need to protect, what we need to defend, and what we need to envelop and enclose in warmth.

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A couple of charts

I’d like to bring your attention to the side-by-side charts of the New Moon and First Quarter Moon below.

We see that, in the chart of the New Moon on the left, Mars (♂︎) is in Gemini (♊︎). Remember, Mars rules the sign of Aries (♈︎) and as such it was the ruler of this New Moon and anything else going on in Aries. By the time we get to the First Quarter Moon, the chart on the right, Mars had moved onto Cancer (♋︎), so everything going on in Aries is ruled by a Mars that is now operating quite differently than it had been at the time of the New Moon.

On the left is the chart of the New Moon in Aries, which was ruled by a Mars in Gemini that was square Neptune in Pisces. On the right is a chart of the First Quarter Moon in Cancer, which has the Moon in its home sign conjunct Mars and trine Saturn. Charts generated using Astro Gold for iOS.

Now look at the Moon (☽) in the New Moon chart and how much it has moved in the time between the New Moon and First Quarter Moon, from Aries to Cancer. The Moon is the fastest moving of these bodies, after all.⁹

Next look at Mercury (☿), the next fastest body, which during the New Moon was hanging out in the first decan of Aries with the luminaries. By the time of the First Quarter Moon, Mercury will have just moved past Chiron (⚷) and Jupiter (♃). And that’s what I’d like to focus on next: Mercury-Chiron-Jupiter.

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Mercury-Chiron-Jupiter

Mercury’s contact with Chiron and Jupiter is very important to the beginning of this week, with its conjunction to Chiron having gone exact yesterday (Sunday) and its conjunction with Jupiter going exact on Tuesday at 2:50 am Eastern Time.

Jupiter and Chiron have been travelling together in Aries for a good part of Mars’ time in Gemini. The two conjoined on March 12. Chiron is known archetypally as the wounded healer and Jupiter is all about growth and expansion. The sign of Aries is a sign that is about the self and about new beginnings, so with the two travelling together in Aries, this period has been about healing and growth, particularly with regard to our sense of self.

As Mercury (the planet of thought and communication) makes contact with Chiron and Jupiter, it brings a microphone to them, allowing them to speak, bringing them to the forefront of consciousness.

If you look at the side-by-side charts above, you see how slowly Chiron and Jupiter are moving in comparison to Mercury, with Chiron and Jupiter each moving no more than a couple of degrees in the span between the New and First Quarter Moon and fleet-footed Mercury moving more than 14 degrees in that period.

Overall, the past month or so has been an important time for Jupiter and Chiron. Spanning from March until mid April, we not only had Jupiter and Chiron conjoining each other, but we also have Venus, then Mercury, and then the Sun conjoining them.

When Venus was back in Aries, it conjoined Jupiter on March 2 and Chiron on March 3, so the part of our chart containing Aries has already been receiving blessings and early March might have found you connecting with people or forging new relationships in ways that felt healing, or perhaps as a bold outgrowth of healing that has been underway. And on March 12, while Venus was still in Aries, Jupiter conjoined Chiron.

And this was all before the Sun moved into Aries, bringing another round of blessings and renewal to that part of the zodiac: on April 5, the Sun will conjoin Chiron and on April 11, the Sun will conjoin Jupiter.

So this is a busy time for Chiron and Jupiter and a key point in each body’s respective time in Aries.

Chiron has been in Aries for about five years and won’t leave the sign for good until 2027.

Jupiter spends about a year in a sign, but its time in Aries has been broken up. It entered Aries in May of last year and then retrograded back into Pisces in late October. After stationing direct, it moved back into Aries in December. Personally, I feel that its initial foray into Aries last year was a wash, or that its potentialities were latent: I only really began to feel the kind of bold expansiveness of Jupiter in Aries after it left its retrograde shadow at 8°43’ Aries on February 14 of this year.

Jupiter in Aries invites us to grow and expand through boldness, through taking risks and not being afraid to be ourselves. The slogan of Jupiter in Aries is, “Just do it!”

Chiron in Aries is about healing around our sense of self, and conjoined with Jupiter, it all feels very expansive and growth promoting, a sense that we can finally be ourselves, that we can drop the old baggage and the old story lines that kept us afraid and hidden, that kept us from taking up space and getting out into the world. Jupiter is a planet of exploration, a planet of the hero’s journey, so we might find ourselves emerging from a kind of dark night of the soul with these transits, able to come into the light, particularly with the Sun in Aries at the beginning of spring. We might find ourselves, in Jupiterian fashion, able to spiritualize and situate our trials and tribulations within a larger whole and in a way that can be healing for our sense of who we are.¹⁰

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Mercury and the Moon in Gemini (the very beginning of the week)

I’ve discussed the First Quarter Moon in Cancer, which goes exact on Tuesday, but the week begins with the Moon in Gemini, and this is important to this Mercury-Chiron-Jupiter story.

The Moon has been in Gemini since 8:42 pm Eastern Time on Saturday and it will be in Gemini until Tuesday at 6:22 am.¹¹

When the Moon is in Gemini, it’s like a mini-Gemini season, where we might feel more curious and outgoing than usual. Did you feel particularly social this weekend?

Now the sign of Gemini is ruled by Mercury, so whatever is going on with Mercury very much informs how the Moon in Gemini feels. So with Mercury conjoining both Chiron and Jupiter while the Moon is in Gemini, this Mercury-Chiron-Jupiter energy is very much a part of the Moon’s present transit through Mercury’s sign.¹² Mercury made a conjunction with Chiron yesterday afternoon and will conjoin Jupiter overnight at 2:50 am (Tuesday), so you are probably feeling Mercury-Jupiter especially strong today (Monday).

On top of this, the Moon in Gemini is sextile to planets in Aries, with its sextile with Mercury having gone exact Monday overnight at 1:41 am, it sextile with Chiron at 3:39 am, and its sextile with Jupiter this morning before sunrise at 6:57 am.

So we’re feeling this vibe a lot.

With Mercury in Aries there’s a boldness to these transits. Mercury in Aries is known for bold, fearless (but also brash and foolhardy) speech. When the Mercury-Chiron conjunction went exact, the CHANI app sent out a nice notification that said, “Be brazen with the truth. Fearless honesty heals.”

CHANI app for iOS

Now with Mercury conjunct Jupiter in Aries, one manifestation of this energy could be talking a big talk (Jupiter likes things big and Mercury-Jupiter can make us prone to exaggeration). And things could very much show up for you this way. You could simply find yourself having a lot to say, like I do in this present blog post: Jupiter can be a tad excessive and extravagant. But with Chiron in the mix, things feel deeper and more transformative than any kind of superficial big talk. There is a depth, tenderness, and elevated quality that subverts any kind of crass brashness.

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Mercury-Jupiter

But in order to get a better sense of the vibe of the moment, we have to think about the special relationship between Mercury and Jupiter, two planets that are often antagonistic toward each other.

Catherine Urban did a wonderful video about Mercury-Chiron-Jupiter. Mercury and Jupiter, in particular, might find us receiving a “big-picture message from the universe.” Both planets deal with understanding, but in different ways:

Mercury (the planet of data and intake of information and logic and understanding) is mixing with Jupiter (another planet that deals with understanding, but broad-strokes, big-picture, philosophical sort of look at everything).

A lot of times when these two planets meet up we’re getting inspired, we’re getting a big idea, or things are making sense: the pieces are fitting together in a new way.

Mercury and Jupiter are often at odds with each other. Jupiter likes big, inspiring pictures and Mercury revels in the details, questioning and picking things apart, which can be kind of annoying to Jupiter, who just wants to inspire.

But when the two planets merge or are in harmonious aspect to each other, their relationship is more friendly. When Mercury and Jupiter align harmoniously, I find that Mercury takes on a Jupiterian abundance, and I write my longest posts. A key phrase I like to use for Mercury-Jupiter is a ‘profusion of words.’

Mercury is the messenger of the gods and is associated with the Greek god Hermes. Jupiter is associated with the Greek god Zeus, the king of the gods. Jupiter is also a planet that is associated with wisdom, philosophy, faith, and hope. Jupiter is associated with religion, and Mercury can be the heretic (or kid in Sunday school) that is always questioning things. But when the two planets are getting along or when their energies merge, as in the case of a conjunction, it can feel like we a recieving messages from a divine source, like a font of inspiration.

It can feel like things are clicking, like “the pieces are fitting together in a new way.” Mercury represents our capacity to cognize the pieces bit by bit, while the understanding that Jupiter provides shows us the larger unity, how those pieces fit together. The two can be at odds with each other when Jupiter’s grand visions don’t hold up to greater scrutiny or when Mercury’s hyperattention to details, fascination with tidbits, and tendencies toward reductionism make it difficult for us to see the forest for the trees.

But this week, the two planets conjoin and it is like we get the best of both worlds and are able to see how all the pieces fit within the totality.

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Mars-Saturn and Venus-Uranus

On Thursday we will see a Mars-Saturn trine and a Venus-Uranus conjunction both go exact. The graph below shows the periods in which this week’s transits will be within a 3-degree engagement range, with the peaks representing when they will go exact. Since Mars moves more slowly than Mercury or Venus, it will be within a 3-degree range longer than Mercury-Jupiter or Venus-Uranus.

Graph generated using Archetypal Explorer. Unfortunately, Archetypal Explorer doesn’t provide Chiron transits, otherwise you would see Mercury-Chiron in this graph.

Graphs like this are helpful, but they don’t tell us the whole story about when and how we might feel these transits. For example, Mercury-Jupiter entered the 3-degree range Sunday and will go exact on Tuesday, but perhaps you felt it most going into Monday, with the Moon in Gemini sextiling Mercury and Jupiter.

Or with Mars-Saturn, you might have been feeling it the second Mars moved into Cancer on Saturday, and with Saturn at 2° Pisces during Mars’ ingress into Cancer, this trine was already within a 3-degree engagement range during the ingress. But you might really be feeling the Mars-Saturn trine (a very disciplined, productive vibe) the most when the Moon moves into Cancer on Tuesday morning and conjoins Mars and trines Saturn shortly after its ingress.

So we can say that the First Quarter Moon will be very much colored by Mars’ trine to Saturn. If this First Quarter Moon is about discerning what we are supposed to do with Mars in Cancer, Mars’ trine to Saturn provides a sense of dedication, as Saturn is the planet of discipline and time, which helps us see things through over the long haul.¹³

With Venus-Uranus, you might have felt inklings of it last week (Thursday through Saturday) when the Moon was in Taurus, particularly on Friday when it conjoined Venus in the morning and Uranus in the evening. But also note that the Moon will enter Leo at 6:31 pm Eastern Time on Thursday, five minutes after Venus-Uranus goes exact. The Moon in Leo will square both Uranus and Venus on Saturday morning while the two are still within 3 degrees of each other, so you may feel Venus-Uranus strongly on Saturday as well.

Venus-Uranus can be quite electric. Uranus is the rebel, the revolutionary, the innovator. Uranus is about sudden upheavals and disruptions, but also enlightenment and breakthrough. It is about breaking the mold. There is nothing conventional about Uranus and when Venus and Uranus conjoin, there is a sense of letting one’s freak flag fly. One might approach artistic matters with an innovative, eccentric, or avant-garde flair. This transit is about disrupting the status quo when it comes to matters Venusian, whether in love or in art. You might find yourself changing up your aesthetic or suddenly falling in love. You might find yourself crushing on someone unexpected, or someone who’s considered odd. You may find yourself in a romance that is outside the bounds of conventionality. Or you may find some kind of rupture or breakthrough in a pre-existing relationship.

Uranus first entered Taurus in 2018 and for the past couple of years (in 2021 and 2022) every time Venus conjoined Uranus, both planets were square (to some degree or another) Saturn in Aquarius. Saturn has a conservative streak, so it served as a kind of damper or counterweight to the freaky Venus-Uranus vibe, but with Saturn now in Pisces, we might find ourselves more inclined to build upon Venus-Uranus, perhaps allowing the breakthroughs and innovations more of a space and structure to last.

Venus and Uranus, are interestingly conjoining at 16° Taurus, which is where they conjoined last year, so this conjunction may be about something that happened in June of last year, when that conjunction happened. But with Saturn a little less uptight and more inclined to work with Venus-Uranus now that it’s in Pisces, we might find ourselves better able to fulfill what was seeded in last year’s conjunction.

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Wrapping it up

That’s about it for this week.

The Moon will enter Virgo on Sunday morning at 6:57 am, perhaps making us want to get organized as the weekend comes to a close. When Mars was in Gemini, every time the Moon entered Virgo it formed a square with Mars, making for an agitated feeling where I felt frustrated by people and things that got in the way of my sense of order. I think that the Moon’s time in Virgo will be easier now that Mars has left Gemini, though now, it will be opposing Saturn as soon as it enters Virgo, so that adds a different kind of tension.

Next week, we will have a Full Moon in Libra opposite Chiron and Jupiter, which will invite us to take the inner wealth that comes from healing our sense of self and share that wealth with others.

Here’s to the week ahead!

CORRECTION: I had originally written that the Moon would conjoin Mars about an hour prior to the First Quarter Moon going exact. This was in error. This conjunction will actually happen about 13 hours before the First Quarter Moon. I have since corrected the error. I don’t think that this will change the interpretation of the First Quarter Moon, but it’s good to have the timing correct.

1. You can read about hybrid eclipses here (via NASA) and here (via timeanddate.com, a great resource with some wonderful graphs that show how hybrid eclipses work and some information about the April 20 eclipse). The YouTube channel Totality Town also has a really good video breaking down the different eclipse types, with a specific focus on the upcoming hybrid eclipse. It really helped clarify things for me. Also space.com has some good resources on the upcoming hybrid eclipse, including this article here and this video on their YouTube channel. One thing that’s cool about learning astrology is that you learn more about astronomy in the process. Astronomy is the science that tracks the movements of bodies in space and astrology is the art of discerning the meaning of those movements in relation to our lives.

2. This period of Mars in Gemini might have felt like a period of constant multitasking, of having multiple balls in the air or having multiple pots on the stove, whatever metaphor you like best. It was as if you have had multiple browser tabs open at once and you were constantly flipping between them. Gemini is a sign that likes to diversify and switch its attention (often gleefully) from one thing to another. And with the planet of drive and action in this sign, our actions took on this quality, giving them a kind of on-the-fly, improvisatory (but also distracted) quality. It was a transit that called on us to be flexible and go with the flow, particularly given that Mars was square to Neptune during much of the transit, which had a tendency to dissolve all of our best laid plans into something mushy.

3. We went from a period of Mars in Gemini, an air sign which is all about communication, meaning that with Mars there, our words might have gotten a little spicy and charged, leading us to get into arguments, or bringing about the circulation of “inflamed pieces of information,” to borrow a phrase from Leisa Schaim. Now we find Mars moving from something more airy and intellectual into something more watery and heartfelt. To quote from chaninicholas.com, Mars in Cancer finds Mars “[l]eaving behind the extra-barbed battles in the comments section” and moving into a place (to this “protective water sign”) where “our fighting words come from the heart.”

4. This New Moon happened on Tuesday last week. From midday Tuesday until Thursday afternoon, the Moon travelled through Aries, a sign that gets its impulsivity from Mars. In Aries, the Moon formed conjunctions with the Sun, Mercury, Chiron, and Jupiter. Perhaps we felt the scattered, distractable Mars-in-Gemini energy quite strongly during this period, with it settling down somewhat with the Moon’s ingress into the fixed earth sign of Taurus, which is where the Moon was when Mars ingressed into Cancer on Saturday.

5. The First Quarter Moon is a crucial time in the Moon’s 29.5-day cycle with the Sun. The word ‘crucial’ is related to the words ‘crisis’ and ‘cross,’ so there is a sense of being at a crossroads: with all of the potentials embedded in the New Moon, how do I narrow down those potentials and choose the path that will lead things to fruition? This cross motif is also accentuated by the fact that the First Quarter Moon, this crisis point or crossroads, is when the Moon is square to the Sun. The four lunation phases (New Moon, First Quarter, Full Moon, and Last Quarter) happen when the Moon is at 0°, 90°, 180°, and 270° from the Sun, respectively, suggesting the image of a cross.

6. Riffing on Urban, the lesson of this First Quarter Moon might be that it’s fine to feel your way into things, but don’t meander for too long and don’t get caught in the net.

Note the various semantic resonances to this idea of ‘feeling our way into’ something. There is a sense of going at something gingerly, where we put out feelers before committing, but also a sense of being guided by one’s intuition and feelings. Both notions could very much be at play during this Mars-in-Cancer period, but this First Quarter Moon is about commitment to a chosen course, so we would do best to find ways of integrating Aries’ drive and Cancer’s intuitive sense of things.

7. Now this New Moon, because it was at the first degree of Aries, might have found us energized and wound up after a long winter, wanting to spring forward into action. But oftentimes, New Moons are more subdued. While I felt pretty ready to go out the gate with the New Moon in Aries (such is the nature of Aries), oftentimes I sit on my ass until the First Quarter Moon, at which point I will write a to-do list of what I can actually accomplish and begin ticking things off.

A New Moon is dark and invisible, so it might feel like an empty battery and as the Moon grows in size and light, it might feel like our batteries are starting to juice up. Visually the Moon getting bigger can be much like a battery graphic indicating how much juice is in a device. With the Moon growing in size, there is a visual manifestation of things coming into form and taking shape. If you found yourself jumping out the gate with the New Moon in Aries, you might at the First Quarter Moon in Cancer find what was scattered and amorphous congealing and taking a more definite form.

8. At the New Moon, the Sun and Moon are conjoined, so it is like their identities are blended, but as the Moon moves away from the Sun and starts to grow, it begins to individuate itself. The New Moon is a period where we kind of hold an ideal vision for how we’d like things to pan out, but when the Moon (which brings things down to earth) separates from the Sun, we have to find ways to concretely manifest our desires, and that means working with reality as it is. The Sun represents the ideal form of things (the Platonic ideal, so to speak), where the Moon represents concrete manifestation, that is, the actual embodiment of something in an imperfect world of coming and going. In order to bring possibility into actuality, we have to narrow our focus. We are all finite beings, and in order to actualize some possibilities, we have to eliminate others. It is impossible for us to have it all.

9. Because the Moon rules the sign of Cancer, it means that Mars (for the remainder of its time in Cancer) will be ruled by a Moon that shift signs every few days.

10. An appropriate keyword for Chiron-Jupiter is ‘healing journey,’ which Catherine Urban uses in discussing Mercury-Jupiter-Chiron:

Jupiter’s been moving with Chiron pretty much this entire month of March and I know a lot of people are clearing off major shelves in their subconscious skeleton closet, basically. This is helping us make sweeping leaps in our healing journey, you know.

Chiron in Aries is all about loving ourselves basically and loving our journey and understanding that the different little benchmarks and struggles and triumphs along our journey make us who we are and it’s about sort of cultivating an appreciation for that that can be so, so healing when we put everything into the full picture of our story.

I like to think about Chiron as the story. I see Chiron showing up in a big way for a lot of writers and storytellers, so I think Chiron in Aries is all about cultivating a deeper appreciation for our story. And with Jupiter dealing with freedom and perspective and philosophy, it helps us to sort of understand the context of our own struggle or our own existence in the context of a greater whole or in the context of a higher power or in the context of being a part of this fabric of life or our soul’s journey through different incarnations, whatever it is for you.

It may not be that at all. You know, Mercury conjunct Jupiter, you might not notice it too much if this isn’t happening in like an important place in your chart or these planets aren’t important for you at this time in your life, …but if the pieces are clicking together, notice the perspective, the big idea, the awareness, the AHA! Or it could even be an opportunity in the form of writing or speaking or media or podcasting or whatever it may be. It might even be as mundane as discovering a new podcast that is like really inspiring for you. So note where that is coming from in your life, where we’re getting a big idea, a fresh perspective.

So this could be really important for some people. It might not be that important for other people, but it’s an important one to have on our radar.

11. This week’s lunar ingresses:

Sat, March 25
☽ → ♊︎
8:42 pm ET

Tues, March 28
☽ → ♋︎
6:22 am ET

Thurs, March 30
☽ → ♌︎
6:31 pm ET

Sun, April 2
☽ → ♍︎
6:57 am ET

12. When the Moon moved into Gemini on Saturday evening, Mars had just left that morning, over twelve hours earlier, so the Moon was entering a newly empty sign of Gemini.

13. Mars and Saturn, when they are working in harmony with each other (as in the case of a trine), have a very disciplined, get-shit-done kind of quality. And even though both planets are considered malefics in traditional astrology, their combination can be quite beneficial. In The Archetypal Universe, Renn Butler lists some of the positive qualities of the Mars-Saturn planetary dyad:

Focused and disciplined action, deliberate and determined outputs of energy, qualities of hard work and persistence, the capacity to complete projects, active forbearance.