The Warrior and the Obstacle: Astrology of 3/21 – 3/27

It’s Aries season, and our exact transits this week are all in cardinal signs – the mode of the zodiac that is an uprush of new energy. It’s beginning new projects, having new ideas, meeting new people, forming new agreements and plans, erecting new boundaries, and experiencing outpouring emotions of all kinds that get past the floodgate (or equally repressing/compartmentalizing). But Mercury in Aries is also retrograde – starting the 22nd, and squaring Saturn in Capricorn throughout its retrograde. We might experience delays, obstacles and setbacks, but on the other hand, we might become more thorough and conscientious in our pursuits.

What does the Aries-Capricorn square really mean? (We’ve got the Sun, Mercury and Venus in Aries and Mars, Saturn and Pluto in Capricorn). You might look for the tension and synergy between youthful, innocent, brash vitality and judicious, conservative, structured, boundaried maturity. Watch them sand each other’s edges. Identify too much with one, and you’ll find the shadow in confrontation.

There’s good push and energy this week to get smart about structures in your life (so that you might contain, facilitate, and engineer specific experiences). Much of this push might come from Aries (via the Sun, Mercury, and Venus) presenting us with all sorts of new impulses toward who we want to become. Aries wants its NOW/yesterday, while Capricorn knows that processes take time. You get a really good play between Aries and Capricorn when you start to draft up the gameplan (and I mean the long game) and you apply Aries’ athleticism and energy towards it.

When we start to figure out this integration between Capricorn and Aries, we realize the consequences (positive and negative) of our actions, both immediately and over time. We learn how to be vigorous, without driving ourselves into the ground. We learn how to get the most return as possible with our energy. We unlearn, through direct experience and often trial and error, conditioning about how the path forward is paved – because what works for others may or may not work for us. We learn about our inner authority, and we learn the art of maintaining a sense of urgency (enough tension to be motivated and to stay sharp), yet acting in good timing & honing a deep patience. We develop the courage to really live up to our potential.

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Here’s our week:

March 22

Mercury stations retrograde in 19 Aries: 5:18 PM PDT

Mercury will station direct in 4 degrees of Aries on the 15th, close to Chiron in the last degree of Pisces. Chiron enters Aries on April 17. Additionally, during this retrograde Mercury hovers in orb of squaring Saturn in Capricorn (exacting April 5 while in retrograde, and later April 25th once direct again.)

Image: New information, or a pursuer, attempting to get inside of a well-defended castle.

• This is a time to really reconsider the impulse or preference towards things just going a certain easy way, linear and immediate, without obstacle. When overly attached to, this would be a source of frustration under this transit. The opportunity more readily emerging under this slowing, then backwards-moving Mercury in square to Saturn is to really chew on our questions/puzzles and masticate them to a pulp! Excellence will emerge from considering the opposition and using it as resistance to better develop one’s goal in a well-rounded and matured fashion.
• It may be like time slows down to support our engagement with solving problems. A synergy can occur between fresh ideas and mental optimism, a can-do attitude, with a more solemn, judicious, or historical awareness of systemic constraints, limitations, and opportunities.
• Mental immaturity, and verbal aggression, may meet more resistance, more readily than usual. You might consider that from Saturn in Cap’s point of view, time and energy is a limited resource and it can be easier to just put up walls or limit the other than to engage the other’s perspective if not done in a respectable, well boundaried fashion. On the other hand, wherever it is that we have boundaries, we may experience messages (Mercury in Aries) coming in that clash with those boundaries. Beyond a simple layer of power struggle or domination/resistance between opposing perspectives and agendas and getting worked up on this level alone, some more introspective opportunities arise, such as the following:
• Is there a structural, embedded reason in the structure itself that makes way for constant opposition or challenge? Is the structure either not firm enough in its boundary (leaky), or is the structure overly rigid/dogmatic, imposing and/or out of touch?
• The energy that wants to get past the boundary and the boundary itself are mutually developing the evolution of the other. One does not have to defeat or annihilate the other, but they both are potentially revealing the other’s blindspots. Rather than making the struggle about the other party (as in it is their fault), the struggle might be an indicator of faculties of self that are wanting to emerge… or bridges that are wanting to be built.
• While social structures and relational dynamics have an affect upon us and are part of an impactful matrix, some of the most meaningful mutations and evolutions will occur by taking one’s reality personally and learning new skills of adaptation, rather than blaming the problem on the obstacle. Use the obstacle as a dream symbol and become a better person. Especially if the obstacle keeps reoccurring!

March 23

Venus in 21 Aries square Pluto in 21 Capricorn: 4:16 PM PDT

• Deep attractions; obsession in relationship; surges of primordial desire. A love of deep transformation; a love of the fractal death process that occurs in life as ego structures die when they are no longer necessary.
• The potential for projection in relationships. Coming more alive or more deeply in touch with aspects of oneself because of another.
• Where there is relationship tension, it would not be unlikely that it would have something to do one or any party feeling constrained and like they need more freedom but that the structure of the relationship is imposing upon that.
• The “freedom” here is in regards to the ability to emerge, to begin something new, to set out, to be impulsive, to be self-focused, etc. The constraint upon that freedom relates to the structure, boundaries, and rules of the relationship.
• Likewise, this can also relate to an entire relationship as an entity of its own feeling this creative tension to emerge, in that some structure or normal condition of the relationship has become outmoded, or that something new is coming forth which will alter and transmute the given structures.
• In your relationships at this time, consider the creativity and value of allowing transmutation to occur. It would be easy to become insecure or to have fears around this happening (change threatens our familiarity, and can trigger other fears and wounds), but consider that something meaningful is happening and consider midwifing it.
• This transit also relates to our relationships that we have with larger groups or forces, such as culture or even ‘the world’! Take care to not project more power than necessary onto these forces – which are, however, powerful forces! But the point can be to own your own unconscious pieces in the equation, parts of you that need to develop and come through to which you are holding the brake on it as much as anyone/anything else is.
• The synergy between boldness/courage and the depth/authority to back it up.
• When desire is stifled or blocked in meeting its chosen path, consider letting the essence of that desire fertilize the entire field of your life, rather than the specific location the desire was aimed. That way instead of repressing or turning inward, the energy of your desire can make your life more vital, even if it was not the way you initially imagined.

March 24

First Quarter Moon in 3 Cancer: 8:35 AM PDT

• It’s a hot time, with all these Aries planets (and Aries planets squaring Cap planets no less). This Moon in Cancer can reveal to us how much easier things get when we take care of our lunar reality: our emotions, our nurturance/nourishment, our home, our comfort, tender physical touch.
• It may be useful to consider the act of nesting or basking therein, in relationship to a new identity or goal. Does your life of routine, comforts, and home life echo and reflect the parts of you that are just becoming? Would it make a difference – would it be restorative and energizing?

Sun in 3 Aries square Mars in 3 Capricorn: 9:08 AM PDT

• While the Sun in Aries holds a resonance of just intending to become, to set-out, to initiate, to discover oneself through action and impulse – Mars in Capricorn holds a resonance of strategy, forming agenda, and acting out the plans on the agenda. This can be a very fruitful harmony between vision and go-getting, with however some potentials for certain types of distress. One being an excess amount of energy or tension, another being a militant kind of inner taskmaster driven to win and the potential for burnout or ego-clashing with others.
• Remember Aries and its ruling planet Mars each encompass the archetypes of champions, heros, warriors, athletes… and Capricorn is about discipline, the long-game, and reward over time. There is a possibility to be very energized around this time in terms of pursuing difficult goals which will forge or shape us into a version of ourself we are becoming by virtue of challenge. Use Mars in Capricorn’s strategic compartmentalization to view self-criticism or self-discontent with a cool head. It’s not really about that story. It’s about the accompanying underdog whose beginning to get fired up about their new mission. How can you support that emergent quality of self? How can you harmonize with structure and boundary to forge your new direction?

Thank you for meditating on the planets with me this week! Let me know how you’re doing in the comments and please share the love and share this article with your friends and on social media!

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Offerings

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With love,

Sabrina Monarch

Sabrina Monarch is a soul-centered Evolutionary Astrologer who publishes weekly astrological forecasts and teaches. She has been collecting astrological experience for over a decade. She is a novelist and is currently pursuing her masters in Philosophy. She also enjoys kundalini yoga, meditation and ashtanga yoga.