Astrology of 3/1 – 3/7: Venus Retrograde Begins

We begin another big week as we leave Eclipse Season. The Jupiter in Libra – Uranus in Aries opposition has been an electrifying force in our cultural concepts of justice: it is the transit I most associate right now with the revolutionary quality and mass-awakening theme in the air. This transit goes exact again on March 2. On March 4, Venus in Aries retrogrades. The Venus retrograde is a profound cycle in which many people will notice the status quo of their relationship lives shifting. It’s also common for past connections to come back into the picture for a revisit. An accelerated evolution around our values and our love languages is also accessed at Venus retrograde. I’m excited to delve into these themes with you this week and provide some celestial context for what’s going on to support our playing with these transits co-creatively. Always, I am so grateful to share this meditative space with you, so thank you for being here!

Annoncements

• The blog is filling up with articles about all sorts of things, including the Saturn-Chiron square of 2017 and the Uranus in Taurus transit of 2018-2026! Check the homepage at www.monarchastrology.com to stay updated, or follow me on Facebook. Under the “Follow” option, you can choose to see my posts first there if you want to stay updated more reliably.
• Personal astrology readings with me are only $30, read about it here and take me up on it!
• I did a talk last week on the connection of Psyche and Spirit, and the Neptune-Pluto sextile which most of us were born with. You can watch it here. This is a topic I’m super passionate about – it truly defines an undercurrent of what compels me about astrology and how astrology can be utilized to evolve consciousness.
• I would love support for my Patreon page. Donors at the $5/month level or more get an astrology reading just for signing up. It has been so fun to meet and speak with people who have been reading the forecasts week to week through Patreon and the other astrology readings! I really appreciate your participation and enthusiasm.
• If you are new here, these forecasts come out every single week. You can sign up for my mailing list here to receive them straight to your inbox.

March 1

Sun in Pisces conjunct Neptune in Pisces: 6:45 PM PST

• The combination of Leo (Sun) and Pisces (Neptune) is readily seen in the world of fame and glamour. It is the way in which beings who are compelled to self-actualize in dramatic ways can become transpersonal figures who inspire the self-development and self-reflection of others. This phenomenon takes place in any arena in which a person’s self-actualization becomes inspiration for others.
• The Sun is like a lights-on or lights-off phenomena in regards to our self-actualization. With Neptune conjunct the Sun this week, we may feel a magic around our self-expression that is palpable, or we may feel confused about identity or feel like we are not seen or understood.
• A humility accessed with these combinations of archetypes is to radiate ones transpersonal, spiritual, magical, special, etc. essence with full knowledge that this brings attention or heightened experience. The individual may relate to that attention however they need to. The purpose is that a person is lit up, shining, and knows that this is a birthright. This brightness is innate: everyone possesses it. One is not in control of how they are received: they will inspire, spark jealousy, or any number of things. The radiance is the act: what it lights up in the world is the gift which takes flight of its own. Its reception varies by each receiver.
• A delusion that can come up here is to have too defined an idea of what one’s purpose is to the extent that it distracts a person from what is really happening or what the real truth is. Some inspirations are just stepping stones along the greater storyline. It is important to listen to and actualize our dreams; as well as to be flexible when those dreams change, like an ever-changing river that is never the same.
• This can imply creativity in action, or it might be creativity in meditation: touching the space of divine inspiration within. Soaking in the essence.

March 2

Jupiter in Libra opposite Uranus in Aries: 5:19 PM PST

I have been talking about this transit – it is a background drum in the storyline of mass awakening of consciousness; which is happening on all spheres: somatic, cultural, spiritual, etc. We see it so heavily in the political upheavals and mass demonstrations as well. In this storyline, our concept of Justice is being radicalized and accelerated. This applies to our vision of Justice in the world, as well as in ourselves and our relational lives. I originally wrote about it in A Philosophical Map of the Revolution, and I am going to add a few more current points and reflections.

• Have you noticed a conversation shift on how it’s no longer considered socially polite to not talk politics? (Some environments ask for not). The social conditioning of propriety is shifting – when the stage of Justice involves triggers that threaten people’s actual lives, more people are willing to be “rude”, to interrupt the status quo. As a symbol, this applies to more than just political life. There are ways in which peace has been kept, that Uranus in Aries is shaking up because it’s no longer in resonance. It’s off-key.
• This is a great transit for sparking the desire for, or embarking on the actual path of, conflict resolution. Our higher understanding of what constitutes peace can no longer be about control mechanisms which maintain status quo, which require individual parties to repress parts of themselves. We may come to understand that conflict is part of peace; that there is a love language around conflict. If we are not equipped for conflict resolution, this may be where we shut down, point fingers, or entrench divisions even further.
• On the other hand, those far on the scale already of anger, confrontation and fire, may benefit from higher knowledge around listening, being receptive, and weighing choices instead of making impulsive decisions. This is a transit about balance; and impulses are naturally things which we balance. The question is again around Justice: have our impulses ruled us or have we suppressed our impulses in damaging ways?
• Friendship across barriers: finding friendship where it is unexpected is revolutionary and expansive.
• There are certain universal techniques that inspire love and friendship, as well as ways we overlook these things. Finding out how to love humanity, how to love people who have different beliefs, is an act of personal transformation as much as it is an act of humanitarianism.
• Setting boundaries and saying no to people, no longer tolerating abuse (or just ways we don’t want to be treated) by extricating oneself from it, frees everyone involved. If not immediately, it plants a seed. Oppressors oppress themselves and they need the roleplay on the other side to continue to do as they do. Challenging or disengaging from these roleplays by being aware of them and of knowing a new option is high spiritual work!
• Relational traumas are reenacted over and over again until we free ourselves. We have personal and interpersonal karmas. Luckily these can change; and if we are really committed to that change we can really study these dynamics as well as potential alternatives. Think of all the books alone that have been written about human relationship!

March 4

Venus in Aries stations retrograde: 1:08 AM PST (starts out squaring Juno and Pluto in Capricorn, will move into Pisces April 2 and go direct April 15 in 26 degrees of Pisces. It will re-enter Aries April 28 at 6:13 AM PST, and leave retrograde shadow May 18, 2017. Mark your calendars, adjusted to your timezone. This is a transit to watch!)

(Image: Le sang d’un poète 1930 – Jean Cocteau)

• It is not uncommon for the relationship landscape to shift during Venus in retrograde. It’s also not uncommon to meet people who accelerate our evolution, people who end up playing an important role in our lives, or to be that for someone else, or mutually.
• While Libra (ruled by Venus) is a sign of exploring oneself through the mirror of other – learning how to relate – Aries is about discovering oneself by initiating new impulses and embarking on a special destiny. Venus transiting through Aries highlights the way in which relationships support or get in the way of destiny.
• Venus in Aries can blast through the ways in which people manipulate one another in relationship, or the ways in which people have designs on one another, such as for the other to mirror what that individual wants them to, regardless of who they actually are. Venus in Aries wants total freedom to do what it wants: it relates to others on that basis of freedom. It values autonomy and personal space.
• Confrontation and impulsive communication can be valued within Venus in Aries. The downside is that this kind of fire can… backfire. Being confrontational in harmonious ways is a language that one can become fluent in by practice.
• Venus in Aries speaks of the value of agreeable combat: parties agreeing to combat with one another, to call each other out, to be honest even when it’s hard or not pleasant. It speaks to the values that are in place when we engage in combat with one another not out of being pushed to our limits and reacting impulsively, but actually knowing how to engage with fire. Think martial arts.
• Defensiveness is a likely experience within relationship through Venus in Aries, as well as relating defensively to what one values. One way to take this deeper is to ask what is the value of the thing being defended? Defensiveness exists for a reason. It is helpful to disarm ourselves where our defenses keep love out; but sometimes our defenses keep the love flowing. Venus is the scales – so weighing the reasons behind our defensiveness could be really useful psychic material at this time.
• In general, love is flowing along the channels of arming ourselves or disarming ourselves, according to what it is we really value and what the situation calls for. Aries is a masculine sign, but retrogrades are interior-gazing: the knowing, while also sparked and influenced by external symbols, is found within. Venus in Aries may place value in one’s internal battles as an arena in which love and evolution can be found.
• When there is not a fight to be had – it doesn’t always have to be about fighting 😉 – Venus in Aries can be expressed through active love, the act of taking initiative for the sake of love.

Mercury in Pisces conjunct Neptune in Pisces: 3:10 AM PST

• Messages come through of inspiration, or of disillusionment. Messages may not be what they seem, yet they still spark a spiritual or creative process.
• This is a beautiful time for inspiration and art, and right-brained logical structures (the mapping of the ethereal).
• Finding the way to express oneself may come through indirectly, through meditation, or through image.

March 5

First Quarter Moon in Gemini: 3:32 AM PST – Adding to the Conversation

(Image: Daniel Kukla)

• Relative to the Sun in Pisces, this first Quarter Moon speaks to the second cardinal point in the moon cycle with the New Moon being the first. It can imply a time that we take action relative to what our intentions were at the New Moon.
• There is much rhetoric about what cannot be expressed – even in the Tao Te Ching, a beautiful spiritual text, it speaks to the way essence evaporates once it is put into language. However, this only reflects the personal ideology of these spiritual teachers. Essence can be created, evoked and floated through communication, though it will change forms. One can’t control this, it’s an illusion to try to control the airwaves of Mercury. But the opposite – to say nothing and call that enlightenment or wisdom (“those who know don’t speak”), strikes me as an error in logic. Pisces is that ineffable essence, and Gemini is the articulator, the magician. This First Quarter Moon in Gemini rings to me of adding to the conversation, rather than being disillusioned by the limitations of the existing conversation or of communication itself and therefore doing/saying nothing.
• Gemini is a shapeshifter and a wearer of masks: the most flexible (mutable) of the air element. It can use its flexibility to conform to what already is, or it can perceive the missing part of what is and add it in. Gemini’s boredom with what exists is an impetus for adding magic into the world.
• Say it, talk it out! Tell your friends what your wishes are, what you’re wanting to create. Invite the messengers of Mercury to float your intentions into the world so that they can become real and so that other minds can collaborate with you.

Mars in Aries trine Saturn in Sagittarius: 12:45 PM PST

• This tempers Mars in Aries: either with the illusion/reality of consequence; or the support of considering foundations and the long game.
• Mars and Saturn are a tricky energy together; they evoke a sense of agitation with limitation, or of formidable military power and its palpable capacity for destruction. This transit invites us to consider those forces within ourselves; the way that boundary can set us up to direct our energy; as well as that it is not always wise to over-scorch or over-reach when we act. This transit can ask for our wisdom in how much force or will is enough; and how we can apply our willpower to the long game.
• Another possibility for this transit is to get an idea of where the limits are and where the limits can be transcended. If we are to try to exceed our boundaries, due diligence still applies (Saturn). I think of a gymnast doing a routine they have done 1,000 times, but each time they do it, they still have to get in the zone to do it right. Arrogance, to the extent that one overlooks diligence, can backfire.
• Think confidence (Mars in Aries) that has the proof to back it up (Saturn in Sagittarius). Here I do mean proof in the language of authority is real to you, not just some conditioned or sanctioned vision of authority which would be another expression of Saturn, an expression that has validity in its own ways but is not the ultimate source of credibility.
• The vitality of time-management or having barriers in time to certain experiences that otherwise could stretch on until burnout. Burning out could be a conditioning activity to discover or expand ones limits, but setting boundaries to prevent burnout may be a longer term strategy – like a series of controlled sprints.
• Action planning! Acting like a military commander, but of your own goals and missions relative to your special destiny (Mars in Aries). Identifying the bigger picture and the small tasks on the way, especially wherever the plan drops off into chaos. This kind of extreme action planning is for anyone who is bent on their vision of success & it needs to be personalized. Tropes are fun costumes to experiment in if the authentic vision is not yet accessible.

March 6

Sun in Pisces conjunct Mercury in Pisces: 4:29 PM PST

• A beautiful time to express one’s inspirations and give communication to that which has been too magical or out-there for expression. It does not need to be perfect, but this transit can support beginnings and blossoming of such a venture. Even if it’s just a brainstorm. The Sun supports the creation of life on this planet, and Mercury is our language and tools of expression. Engaging in expression in whatever form you do may be especially creatively fruitful, perhaps not in the most obvious of ways.
• Messages that dissolve veils, seeing past a series of veils.

March 7

Mercury in Pisces sextile Pluto in Capricorn: 9:23 PM PST

• Languages of compassion which give space to love and liberate the shadow. Being able to navigate shadowy content of self or others with love.
• Feeling disillusioned or overwhelmed by shadow content as a result of misinterpretation.
• Nebulous feelings of discontent or exhaustion which come into clarity and inspiration when investigated; such as by writing it out in a diary, talking it out on a voice note and re-listening to it, or watching an inspiring film in which a main character is going through the same thing you are and it unlocks things in your mind, etc. Labyrinths of mystery and inspiration, twinkling, seductive, mesmerizing, clarity-inducing.
• Having to dig for clarity. Confusion is just a sign there is a treasure to be found in the riches of Psyche or Spirit. Or both.

That’s our week! Thanks for being here with me and please leave a comment here or on Facebook, and share this article on social media!

Much love,

Sabrina Monarch

(Top Image: Vogue Japan September 2016)

Sabrina Monarch is a soul-centered Evolutionary Astrologer who publishes weekly astrological forecasts. She has been collecting astrological experience for over a decade. She also enjoys yoga, hiking and creative writing. You can subscribe to receive her weekly forecasts by email here.

---