Venus in Aquarius square Mars in Taurus: Astrology of 2/17 – 2/23

The Saturn-Uranus square (a characterizing influence of 2021) exacts this week, the Sun will enter Pisces, and Venus in Aquarius will square Mars in Taurus. It would not be surprising to feel tense this week, and/or to notice that others are. Longer-standing patterns in our personal psychologies, our relationships, in social and collective history, are coming to a head.

Keep reading the forecast below, or watch on YouTube (with added commentary):

Inwardly, the things that may carry significant charge at the moment may reveal the places within us where we battle between conserving the past out of habit or wisdom, versus moving forward into the unknown out of naïveté or wisdom. It’s not so simple that one is better than the other. Both have their shadows and higher potentials.

This week’s transits have me reflecting on the creative possibilities of tension. It isn’t the best for our health to be tense all of the time, or tense unnecessarily. Sometimes though, when contemplating paradox or an impasse, or a seemingly impossible situation, tension has a way of unraveling us into a process of surrender. To put in the effort of trying to understand the nature of the impasse, and then to sleep on it (perhaps literally) and wake up with a new insight that was born from the pressure.

Welcome back! Or in case this is your first time here, I’m Sabrina Monarch and I’m a soul-centered astrologer. I love providing perspectives on the opportunities of transits and putting into words what the zeitgeist feels like at this moment in time, to support you on your path & open a dialogue between us and the cosmos. If you would like to receive these weekly forecasts to your inbox and be notified of upcoming educational opportunities, sign up for my mailing list here.

Here’s our week after a few announcements:

No new episode of Magic of the Spheres this week. I’m on the road! But new episodes coming soon. In the meantime, check the archives for tons of magical conversations, available where you listen to podcasts.

Astrology Reading Bookings Closed: My books are currently closed, but I am still taking new clients for ongoing mentorship/coaching (6 month – 1 year commitment). If you’re interested in working with me in that capacity, send me an email at sabrina@monarchastrology.com. And make sure you’re on my mailing list if you’d like to be informed of when my books open again!

Next Evolutionary Astrology Intensive: The intensive is currently in session. I will announce the dates for the next one in the coming months.

Here’s our week:

February 17, 2020

Saturn in 7 Aquarius square Uranus in 7 Taurus: 11:07 AM PST

This transit is active/in orb for all of 2021, and its exact hits are today and December 23, 2021. Watch my video on it here.

February 18, 2020

Sun enters Pisces: 2:44 AM PST

The Sun will stay in Pisces until March 20, 2021, the equinox.

• The water signs of the zodiac (Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces) relate to our emotions and feelings, our emotional security, and our soul.
• Pisces is the third water sign, following Cancer and Scorpio. We develop an ego in Cancer and our basic emotional imprinting from early childhood, our attachment style and our relationship with nourishment and safety. 
• In Scorpio, we risk who we are to bond and merge deeply with another or with something other than ourselves, and through these bonds we experience a third thing to which we may not be aware of how to find within ourselves without sharing resources or codes with that which is other. Thus, Scorpio puts us in touch with our most profound psychological needs and compulsions, our development of power and our power plays and power exchanges, as well as our capacity to manipulate, and the possibility of loss, betrayal, or abandonment.
• By the time we get to Pisces we are challenged to let it all go and dissolve back into the Source from which all the particular and ephemeral things of this world emerged. While at once this provides us an opportunity for spiritual union, this dissolving can be bittersweet. We can feel less in control, less effectual, and more challenged to surrender. Sailors and surfers do not fight the sea and win, but their successful navigation resides in their capacity to harmonize with the flow. While at harmony with the flow however, we have a lot more capacity than we do as individuals.
• The mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces) come at the end of a season and are transitional energies. The solidified fullness or peak of the season begins to make way for the next.
• With Pisces as a mutable water sign, it is easy for one emotion to quickly mutate into the next. We become more emotionally sensitive and impressionable under the influence of Pisces, and without other forms of emotional regulation at our disposal, it’s possible to tailspin. One thing goes wrong (in our subjective judgement of it) and in a few beats we’re wondering what the purpose of life is or why we’re even bothering.
• On the opposite side of this tailspin down, there is the opposing opportunity to spiral upward. Utilizing techniques like positive thinking, following our highest excitement, or visualization could help us find a thought or image that lifts us up, and by continually resourcing these elevated places within us and weaving them into our reality through our words and choices, we have some agency to “create our reality”.
• And yet, we often have to be challenged to let go of both the downward tailspin and the upward spiral, for both are dreams (one arguably more pleasant, beneficial and productive than the other). There are inevitably forces beyond our conscious awareness, control, or agency that also have a say in the grand drama of life. With Pisces, we can do our absolute best to co-create, but must also learn the art of surrender.
• The divine and exquisite challenge of Pisces is that we have one foot in the realm of ultimate possibility and one foot in the realm of reality as it already is. One foot in the dream, one foot in the waking life. These realms are meant to be in communication, or else we tend to suffer. If our fantasy life exceeds the fulfillment we manage to feel in our ‘real’ life, we become prone toward escapism or numbing, anything to enter the fantasy and escape the monotony and drudgery of life. If we are too mired in ‘real’ life, we feel a vague yearning for something more satisfying or meaningful. The art of Pisces is weaving the dream into this reality, and recognizing that everything that exists in this reality that we experience as real was at one point a dream that someone or many someones anchored into form through what we can call “inspired action”.
• When the Sun is in Pisces, our emotional lives are more permeable, we can feel more sensitive and impressionable, and elements of our lives may be in flux and confronting us with the unknown and thus, often challenges of faith and surrender. On the positive side, we may be more open to enchantment and magic, more open to dreams and visions, and we may dissolve old emotional patterns in a way that feels truly healing.

February 19, 2020

Venus in 23 Aquarius square Mars in 23 Taurus: 3:04 PM PST

(Image: Bjork)

• Squares or oppositions between Venus and Mars tend to correlate with discord in relationships, or at a mundane level conflicts between men and women. Issues around justice can also spike during these times.
• In the channeled text The Hathor Material by Tom Kenyon, there is a concept (in chapter 5) that there are four cornerstones necessary to achieve a balanced higher state of awareness.

“These four cornerstones are:

1. Your relationship to your physical body as well as your other subtle bodies, including your KA.
2. Your relationship with your self and others.
3. Your relationship to the service you give to the universe, to the world and to your community, which often takes the form of a career, though not always exclusively.
4. Your conscious relationship with the sacred elements that make up the world in which you live. These Sacred Elements are Earth, Fire, Water, and Air/Space.”

The channel further elaborates:

“Today, on Earth, some people believe that relationships are superfluous, that they are not really needed and that positive interaction and relationships with other humans can be bypassed. From our understanding, this belief is an error. What is required is to relate to other humans in a clear, honest fashion. And it is important for you to be truthful about your experience and forthcoming about your needs and desires.

As your consciousness expresses itself through relationships you are given a powerful mirror that reflects back to you, your own unresolved issues.

It is easy to delude yourself into believing that you have attained a certain level of awareness and compassion when you do not interact with other humans. But as as soon as you choose to interact, if you are honest and clearly aware, those places in yourself that are not loving and compassionate will come clearly into your awareness. Why? The other person or persons will rub you the wrong way. So relating to others can create friction and considerable discomfort, even pain.

It is our observation that most humans avoid these times of uncomfortable situations by abandoning themselves emotionally, by not speaking their truth, and by hiding their true intentions from both themselves and others. Then, in that moment of opportunity where awareness could have become crystalline and clear, it becomes muddied and unclear. Unfortunately, this is a condition that is frequently experienced in relationships.

There are many reasons why this imbalance occurs, but without going into all the various reasons, we offer you a solution. The essence of our solution is that in relationship with other humans, strive to be more direct, more honest, and more truthful with yourself about your needs and desires, and then communicate these more clearly to others.”

• As a society, we still have a lot of punitive forms of justice as opposed to restorative justice, and this also takes the form in the microcosm in the ways that individuals deal with conflict. When we other or demonize another person, it can be a way to put them in a box and avoid the complexity of our relationship to them and the feelings that arise within us as a result. Often even a negative experience can further clarify our own direction or value systems, if we are willing to do the work of digesting and interpreting our experiences consciously.
• I’ve personally been meditating a lot lately on the concept of treating others with dignity. If we were to take the attitude that we are all sparks of the divine – to affirm our own magic/divinity as well as the magic and divinity of others – we might see more opportunities for positive creativity in all of our interactions. It is certainly not always true, at the personality/ego level, to be friends with everyone. There is a place for disconnection and for boundaries. However, we might consider how often our interactions with others come from an actually noble place, versus a combative/defensive or even disassociated place.
• An opening for Venus-Mars contacts is to stay in connection while being in disagreement. The Hathor Material speaks of emotional self-abandonment, and as I interpret it this could have to do with being peaceable when it is dishonest, to stuff away our preferences and not negotiate. Disagreement and discord is a much different sensation in the nervous system that peace and agreement. Honest disagreement does not necessarily feel like connection, and yet it also is.
• With this square happening in the contemplative Aquarius and the hermetic Taurus, it may be useful to reflect in moments where we are alone about what our preferences and desires are. Then to form the bridge, to make these preferences and desires known to others.

February 20, 2021

Mercury stations direct in 11 Aquarius: 4:52 PM PST

You may notice effects/changes immediately, but Mercury will leave retrograde shadow officially on March 12, 2021 (this is when Mercury reaches the degree of Aquarius where Mercury originally stationed retrograde). Mercury will exit Aquarius on March 15.

Thank you for meditating on the planets with me this week! If you would like further guidance, I have been increasingly focused on longer-term 1:1 work with my students and clients, in the form of mentorship – helping people form a depth relationship to their natal chart and personal transits over time, to develop themselves, to heal, and to reach their goals, all through the soul-making lens of evolutionary astrology. If you’re interested in working together in that capacity, I am currently accepting new clients. Send me an email at sabrina@monarchastrology.com to start a conversation and set up a free consultation call.

Find me on Instagram @sabrinamonarch, get on my mailing list to stay apprised of all upcoming offerings and events, and I’ll see you next week!

With love,

Sabrina Monarch

(Top Image: Teiji Furuhashi “LOVERS” 1994)