In between the last eclipse and an upcoming full moon eclipse (coming May 5) this week we have Mars in Cancer aspecting Chiron in Aries and then Uranus in Taurus, and Pluto will station retrograde from it’s very early degree (0) in Aquarius.
This is a very Martian and Plutonian eclipse season, given that our last eclipse was an Aries new moon (Aries is ruled by Mars) and our next eclipse is a full moon in Scorpio (Scorpio is traditionally ruled by Mars, and associated with Pluto in modern astrology). And that Mars and Pluto are our major players of this week, the theme is emphasized.
One thing that Mars and Pluto have in common is that they walk the edge. They are both penetrating and can both relate to destruction or severing. Sometimes we feel visited by these archetypes when we are facing a conflict we do not feel we asked for (and yet, here they are). Or we visit them on purpose when we intentionally face our fears and aversions, do shadow work, or face our pain instead of going to our avoidance mechanisms. Both planets also relate to the process of leaning into what is higher-sensation or connected to our fire and desire.
Mars in Cancer could relate to trouble that is stirring up in our comfort zone, where places we’ve gone to be safe are now pushing us out, like it’s no longer inhabitable. Kind of similar to gestating in the womb until birth becomes inevitable. This could be part of our own operating system, like where we’ve built our own comfort zones by specializing in what we’re good at or how we’ve learned to successfully cope, and avoiding places in life we feel more vulnerable or incompetent — only to have those neglected parts of our life knock at our door and demand attention and embodiment.
The combination of transiting Mars in Cancer and Pluto in Aquarius could relate to emerging from comfort zones that are deeply wired, like things we have picked up from childhood or culture and have been a deeper part of our subconscious.
Consider how you would midwife a challenging process so it could be a birth, an emergence. How you would bring aid or backup to the birth zone or the war zone. Where the goal isn’t staying comfortable exactly, but more being supported. Maybe there are ways to combine supportive influences with necessary facing of challenges right now, instead of using comfort to avoid necessary challenges. Think – nourishment or needed nutrients for the transformation that is happening and which we can no longer ‘comfortably’ avoid.
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.
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If it were just about fun, it’d be easy to do.
Peak experience and ecstasy is a fire that makes our being more malleable -
our rigid boundaries and perceptions change, quake beneath us.
Like a seed bursting out of its husk to grow and blossom, the life force that wants to grow, to become, to blossom, to shine, to EXIST, begins with an explosion that directly confronts its perimeter, its boundaries, its protection.
The seed husk remained until the conditions were right.
It’s not just about life gifting us this peak state randomly or through luck.
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Which is to say it’s about fun
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but we remembered the expansive, seemingly out of control ECSTASIS of that part of us who originally said yes to life?
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Here’s our week:
April 27, 2023
Mars in 17 Cancer square Chiron in 17 Aries: 6:34 AM PDT
- If there is a place in our lives where we are not bringing ourselves forward out of fear, this square might again be pressing the issue. Existing circumstances might increasingly feel smothering or oppressive — which is not exactly a reflection of how things are inherently, but how things are when we are not fully accounting for and/or expressing a need of ours and are thus participating within circumstances that have grown out of touch with our own emerging process.
- Chiron in Aries is surfacing wounding and also activating keys to meaningful initiations – specifically around bringing our individuality forward, expressing what is ours to bring to the table, and being the first in some way. Others may be available to help guide or advise us, but no one will do this emergence for us. There are specific places we alone are being called.
- The square from Mars in Cancer (Mars being Aries’ ruling planet, so also an expression of the ongoing Chiron in Aries transit) suggests there is an impasse around emotional courage, such as the courage to face deep or extreme emotions or the courage to face interpersonal conflict that would arise from asserting our own needs or independence (Aries) in a place we haven’t been.
- There could be some significant developmental steps forward happening right now and a simultaneous tug from the past – that is asking us or others to let go of who we or other people “used to be” and accept that things have changed, and that new normals are about to begin, whether or not existing bonds and relationships will evolve or separate.
- Note there is a difference from being called back or calling others back from a place of “hey, what happened to you? Are you okay? You seem not like yourself in an unwell way,” as opposed to calling others back or being called back from a place of “your newfound power or individuality scares and threatens me, and I don’t want to lose you.”
- This combination (Mars in Cancer and the square to Chiron) could relate to one who is aggressively smothering out of attachment and fear, and the counterpart that allows it out of the shame or sense of obligation or whatever else hooks them into the dynamic.
- Alternately, this combination could relate to leaning directly into emotional growth and taking personal responsibility instead of looping others into the role of making us feel safe ‘or else’ (demands, coercions, etc). It could also be the process of standing in our own truth and needs even if that makes others have to have their own emotional processes.
First quarter Moon in 7 Leo: 2:20 PM PDT
- A major evolutionary intention of Taurus (where the Sun is) is cultivating true self-worth and self love. With that as a base for the first quarter phase, the Leo development of that would be to express it outwardly. This is where we have the self-esteem and internal permission to share our creativity with the world.
- Before we make it to deeper and more authentic layers of our own heart, we can tend to be performative or mask in some way (Leo) to earn desired reflections from others that we then integrate into our self-concept (Taurus). When we do it in this way, we feel less penetrated by love because we’re getting loved for our act and not in the true revealing of self.
- Taurus Season is annually an invitation into coming into our bodies, senses, and really feeling ourselves and our own essence, which can also be a process of slowing down and just being with what is. This first quarter square suggests taking this dropped-in self-presence to a next level which is inviting others to see you in it and share it with you.
April 29, 2023
Mars in 18 Cancer sextile Uranus in 18 Taurus: 1:04 PM PDT
- Typically the Taurus-Cancer sextile (just considering the signs alone) has a cozy energy, like cooking at home in a beautiful kitchen, being warm and wrapped up in pleasurable fabrics, or any combination of sensuality and comfort you might imagine.
- Here, the planets involved, Mars and Uranus, are both pretty activating, energetic, and at times aggravating. This could mean that our comfort or preferences are being challenged, that we’re feeling emotionally activated, and maybe even feeling reactive or tantrum-y.
- If we are beholden to our ego in this moment, we may feel huffy and entitled and like we want to do what’s in our power to control the external situation go the way we want so that we can feel okay.
- Alternately, expanding our capacity to be with the discomfort or activation, to be able to hold ourselves there with compassion – we might access new or more creative/inventive pathways to relate to the situation at hand beyond how we might immediately reach for comfort.
May 1, 2023
Pluto stations retrograde in 0 Aquarius: 10:08 AM PDT
This will bring Pluto back into late Capricorn on June 12, 2023. Pluto will station direct on October 10, 2023 and re-enter Aquarius for good on January 20, 2024.
- We’ve just had a little dip of Pluto in Aquarius but so far what I’ve noticed is that there’s been a shift in awareness from how we are part of world structures (government, cultural and social norms, institutions, etc) with Pluto in Capricorn, to how our minds and nervous systems are part of paradigms or matrices or programs (Pluto in Aquarius).
- In other words, where we are not free because our minds are not free.
- Subscribing to a particular paradigm or way of thinking that is promoted or we promote it as freedom does not necessarily mean it is freedom, if we can’t see beyond the bounds of that paradigm anyway. If we are mentally dogmatic or mentally rigid, it’s not necessarily made better just because our particular dogma appears to be the right set of ideas.
- We might have incredibly strong nervous system patterns that also relate to keeping our thoughts and behavior within certain confines, and we might be at the edge of that when we desire to transcend those particular limitations (i.e. break out of scarcity trauma or experience intimacy beyond our fear and distrust, as example).
- Pluto is raw energy, it is a rippling force of nature that wants to express itself or express itself through us. The nature of the game with Pluto in Aquarius is that this raw energy often wants to dismantle our rigid programming and open our sight to what we could see beyond that powerful filter.
- Part of the game is that the programs themselves are also powerful (think… the Matrix). It is a time to become more aware of the hidden rules and architecture of the game, and learn how to see through the resistance patterns that show up on the verge of transformation.
- In my experience, when I have sought to transform the most embedded patterns in my nervous system, it’s not like those embedded patterns don’t put up a fight. These patterns may have come into being as a strong protective mechanism related to survival.
- In this example, for me it hasn’t been about ‘killing’ my embedded patterns or making them an enemy but learning how to reroute that raw, vital life force that is feeding into those patterns. Often conscious awareness (Aquarius sight) becomes an empowering force that allows me to see the pattern is coming up and not go on the same, habitual ride — but to free up the energy to explore whole new ways of experiencing life that are more authentic and resonant in the moment. Awakening (Aquarius) itself makes way for change (Pluto).
- We might be honest with ourselves about where we are resisting awakening itself because a part of us wants to live in illusion or wants to maintain the architecture of how things already are?
- With Pluto in Aquarius, it would be important for us to find frameworks and ways of seeing systems and patterns in a way that enables us to transform meaningfully, as opposed to finding frameworks that we collapse all of our power into, because the frameworks themselves give us a false sense of arrival or of things just being static circumstances.
- Pluto stationing suggests there is energy/intensification around these themes at the moment and we may be feeling more available energy to break free from the places we have allowed ourselves to be inside of a program.
Sun in 11 Taurus conjunct Mercury retrograde in 11 Taurus: 4:27 PM PDT
- Mercury’s retrograde in Taurus could be having us think more reflectively on where we value putting our mental energy – what we would want to learn about or research for pleasure, or for a utility/purpose that really matters to us?
- Alternately, Mercury retrograde in Taurus could also be about a new layer of getting to know our own internal body language. For example, we may have specific sensations like our heart rate increasing or our face heating up, or a heaviness, or a fuzzy/foggy feeling in our head, but be in the process of opening our understanding of what these sensations are about.
- I remember a classmate in college telling me that when she’s about to speak and her heart rate starts going up, she recognizes that as transformation – that her words are going to transform her life or someone else’s, and she leans in! I was really surprised and inspired to hear this because I had an unchecked belief before then that I should wait to speak until I felt calm and regulated, and because of that I wasn’t allowing myself to play more with fire. Sensations just *are* – and how we then interpret them or allow ourselves to be curious about them, counts.
- Mercury relates to curiosity, and with regards to sensations (Taurus) it could be loosening up our concepts of what our sensations are about or mean and exploring them in a different way.
- The Mercury cazimi tends to bring messages – whether communications from the outside world, or here perhaps directly from the body. Or, we might notice more our body’s response to messages from the outside world.
Thank you for meditating on the transits with me! Stay in my community – in addition to providing forecasts I like these, I teach astrology programs and support people in forming a depth relationship to their natal chart and personal transits over time, to develop themselves, all through the soul-making lens of evolutionary astrology. I would love to support you, too, in building your relationship with astrology. Dragon of the Moon: an Evolutionary Astrology Intensive is currently in session and alumni programs like METEORITE (a yearlong program where participants developed their own creative works) will be offered again soon.
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With love,
Sabrina Monarch
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