Mars Stations Direct in Gemini: Astrology of 1/11 – 1/17

Surrounding a Mars station this week, Mercury & Venus each contact Chiron in Aries and at the end of the week Venus in Aquarius will square Uranus in Taurus.

Mars retrograde in Gemini has been bringing us to a mental dojo – experiencing or checking our own reactivity, and seeing how we are mentally aroused or depleted by various abstract ideas and anxieties (interesting how an idea in of itself can be so physical and create chemistry in the body). Mars retrograde is often a morale check: we find morale in very new ways, maybe we struggle to have morale, or we face situations that confront us with bigger questions of who we want to be through our actions.

It is possible that the Mars retrograde story has involved some kind of duality/multiplicity such as having two or more parallel conflicts or activations that we cannot help but build mental connections between, as though each drama is a foil for the other. The comparisons could have induced new insights, but potentially could have been overly abstracting from the deeper heart of the matter. We might allow ourselves to investigate the symbolism deeper.

As Mars stations direct, we start to find our footing, clarity, sense of agency return, in the spaces of having just grappled with some very novel conflicts/challenges that stretched us to new outer limits.

Venus and Mercury contacting Chiron suggest that maybe we will integrating some of our most recent activations through conversation and the attempt to answer the question of “who am I becoming?” when we both allow ourselves to take our life experiences as a mirror (so, personal) and also back up to get greater perspective than our personality by itself would even allow (so, impersonal).

Venus square Uranus at the end of the week offers some excitement in the realm of love and connection. On the lower end, our patterns get activated and we are in familiar trigger cycles. However, part of being on a personal development or spiritual path involves cyclical expansions of self-understanding and about the nature of life, others, reality itself. We also get to experience liberation in our direct experience in the form of radical joy, delight, feeling vibrantly connected – the freer we become from old stories and patterns, and the more access we gain to following the energy in the present moment. 

Venus square Uranus brings electricity, and perhaps our recent gems of self-awareness will light up the path of highest excitement, innovation, creativity. If we can create joy from wherever we are, we ought to go for it and see what unfolds from that seat of creator consciousness.

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 in more detail after an announcement:

Previously titled the Evolutionary Astrology Intensive, this course is being offered again under a new name, Dragon of the Moon: an Evolutionary Astrology Initiation. This program is designed to give students a footing in their own astrological intuition and literacy, and we journey specifically into a deeper understanding of Pluto and the lunar nodes, and how to read charts from the perspective of the soul. We learn how to decode the inherent meaning or value in every experience we’ve ever had (as the soul explicitly learns through experience), and with this insight, also gain the power to make new choices and tell new stories. An understanding of Pluto and the nodes in the natal chart leads to a profound meditation on our deepest desires and inclinations in this life, and the personality structures we’ve created to secure those desires. By examining this material in a grounded, mythopoetic, compassionate space (of the program) we get to uncover new ways that we might relate to our deepest motivations in more life-enhancing ways. The natal chart can guide us into discovering how the story we’ve been living as a soul wants to continue. I have found these teachings invaluable as I’ve grown up alongside them and built my life in relationship to them, and I’m honored to share it with the amazing, tight-knit communities that form around this alchemical fire.

Learn more and apply here.

Here’s our week:

January 11, 2023

Mercury retrograde in 12 Capricorn square Chiron in 12 Aries: 12:49 AM PST

• There could be some coming to terms or reflecting upon boundaries, specifically when they feel challenged or directly confronted.
• There might also be renegotiations around how we consciously or unconsciously protect wounded or sore spots. The function of a scab, for example, is to cover an area that is healing, but once the healing finishes the skin can return to a mostly normal state (if not for a little scar). To the degree that parts of our our personality are mechanisms to protect a part of ourselves that once felt wounded — we engage with life from the filter of our own wound-protection mechanisms. We can continue this program by reinforcing the need for protection, or we can heal a layer deeper underneath the scab.
• Where it feels important to keep enforcing the boundaries, it might also be time specific, like keeping ourselves out of a volatile environment when we are recuperating. In not every situation, however, do we feel we have that much freedom or control to not be bothered. We may be asked to adapt in new or innovative ways to the issue of our own irritation or wound patterns.

January 12, 2023

Venus in 12 Aquarius sextile Chiron in 12 Aries: 10:46 AM PST

• Venus in Aquarius can relate in a detached way, seeing the other as having their own unique set of realities and needs which are not necessarily a personal reflection upon oneself. Chiron in Aries on the other hand, has a penchant to take things very personally and to feel personally insulted or rejected.
• The harmonious aspect between the two may signify a greater capacity to soften what it is we take personally and to view it with more detachment. There may also be a recognition that this is universal, that everyone has their own struggles and therefore sensitive points.

Mars stations direct in 8 Gemini: 12:56 PM PST

Mars stationed retrograde on October 30, but has been in Gemini since August 20, and will be there until March 25. It’s been a long season of Mars in Gemini, and this station direct is a pivotal moment forward in a place of emphasized activation, unrest, and evolution.

For more on the Mars retrograde themes, read an article I shared a few months ago titled Mars Retrograde – Developing Themes to Consider & Mars Retrograde in Gemini 2022 – a Thematic Overview.

• Mars in Gemini has generally related to arousal connected to language, ideas, communication. This has been connected to the way that our thoughts can motivate us or drain the life force out of us alike. It’s been connected to the way that communications can inspire reactivity, that conversations can be volatile and can escalate, that words can be weapons or easily interpreted as weapons.
• Speaking before thinking in certain moments may have felt costly because of the level of heat and reactivity in the situation.
• Harboring thoughts or concepts that drain our life force or morale may also have felt burdensome.
• So, we may have been challenged to communicate better under pressure (and innovate how to do that) or generate perspectives about ourselves, our lives, and our situation that increase our morale rather than deplete it.
• The issue with morale and Mars in Gemini is that certain thoughts connected to low morale (a tinted, negative perception of ourselves or our circumstances) had enough power or sway over us to legitimately challenge us, like a nightmare. We have been facing our fears perhaps whether or not we asked for it, through the form of our anxieties.
• So perhaps we have also had to discover how to persevere or keep our spirit alive in the face of having fears which have deeply challenged us at a new level.
• The direct station signifies a turning point, perhaps a return of personal agency that felt obscured in the retrograde. Like if a person were to be thinking, “I know I’m tripping but I can’t stop” and now we’re returning to the capacity to stop or feel the bad dream lift. What did we learn about ourselves however in that other space?
• I’ve generally come to interpret nightmares as having some connection to a return of power in the body. Like when we’re being chased again and again by some monster, only to face it and finally wake up and stop having that nightmare. In a nightmare, we easily feel tormented by what is around us but what happens when we learn to relate in a new way to that which we’ve felt unable to integrate with or face (and have been terrified of)?
• May we experience new clarity, integration, and understanding, in the space of our recent deepest conflicts – to get to see it as a kind of mirror and to receive the teaching as to what is has been confronting us to face or develop.

January 13, 2023

Mercury retrograde in 10 Capricorn trine the north node in 10 Taurus: 3:08 AM PST

• The lunar nodes in Scorpio (south) and Taurus (north) have been bringing up themes around purging, destruction, composting, transformation (Scorpio) and the opposing principle of stabilization and homeostasis (Taurus). Uranus has been on the north node in Taurus for a while, however, which brings a pretty disruptive and de-stabilizing energy into the story also. While security can be obtained in moments, the spector of insecurity (and what could bring de-stabilization) is often also present.
• So if we are to understand that simultaneously – obtaining and holding resources necessary to survival, and having a relationship with nourishment is both appropriate and not guaranteed – how do we relate to life? What might there be beyond the basic anxieties and basic survival anxieties? I ask because even people who have enough are worried that something could jeopardize that and they could lose it all. Basic anxieties take up a lot of space in our brains (especially the parts hardwired to survive) but it’s not necessarily *how we want to live while we’re living*.
• The retrograde Mercury in Capricorn trine to the north node suggests re-thinking some of the ways we have become closed off to life in the face of trying to manage or control basic anxieties, and becoming realistic about the cost of that kind of mental investment, and more pragmatic about the kinds of expenditures we want to make. A work-life balance, but existential.
• In spaces where we are feeling imminently deficient (we don’t have enough) there may also be re-strategizing how to change this situation or new creative ways to be resourceful/resourced (Uranus on the north node in Taurus).
• In either case, Mercury in Capricorn could lend a type of pragmatism to either relaxing and releasing basic fear because it’s about things beyond one’s control, and/or making productive choices or actions to ensure a better present & future but minimizing the expense of extra emotional drama around the topic to just ‘get to work’. Mental conservation. Capricorn is cold and dry, after all. After acceptance of difficult realities or facts, there is just being with what is & the expanses of imagination from there.

Sun in 23 Capricorn sextile Neptune in 23 Pisces: 6:11 AM PST

January 14, 2023

Venus in 14 Aquarius square Uranus retrograde in 14 Taurus: 5:22 PM PST

(Image source)

• Venus-Uranus contacts bring change and an erratic quality (like flashes of lightning) into our relational lives, whether that means something novel emerges in our existing connections and/or we have sparkling encounters with new people & strangers in passing.
• Part of the delight of connecting with strangers is that there is no context or backstory necessarily (of the history of the relationship) and we experience the other with fresh ears and eyes perhaps. In existing connections, it is a virtue or an ethic to consider the other as a mystery perpetually, to abandon the idea that we “know” them fully – in which case we lose the capacity to be surprised by them. This can be an attitude or stance, but it can also present in being in new situations or new levels of intimacy with another person and through circumstance, seeing them differently because you are in new terrain together.

Thank you for meditating on the transits with me! If you would like further guidance, I have been increasingly focused on longer-term experiences in the form of Dragon of the Moon: an Evolutionary Astrology Initiation and my higher level course METEORITE for alumni – helping people form a depth relationship to their natal chart and personal transits over time, to develop themselves, to be in their power, and to reach their goals, all through the soul-making lens of evolutionary astrology. I would love to support you in building your relationship with astrology. Dragon of the Moon is currently open for applications and METEORITE 2022 is currently in session.

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

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With love,

Sabrina Monarch