September 14 - October 31, 2021
As my Mars return approaches, I feel called to honor the timestamp with a nod to the god who, for my entire life, has driven me to make art. Mars in Libra, you will read, or hear, is a planet in detriment, stuck languishing in a strange zodiacal space. I can attest that this is indeed the case, as my Mars lives and breathes it every day. But though paradoxical, such placements need not be problematic; they are the rich, complex stuff that humans are made of, and can be our greatest teachers. In my case, Mars is conjoined to the asteroid goddess Athena, in the 5th house of delights. With Saturn not far off, you could say I take my fun very seriously. There is a King of Swords that lives inside of me, full ideas and ideals, passion and prudence, and only the most righteous rage.
Mars symbolizes will, the Masculine complex, and the ability to make things happen; and where in the chart he falls becomes the proving ground for all of those things. For the next month and a half, the Red Planet will be transiting through the Libran parts of all our lives, and will have to learn the Venusian rules of romance and diplomacy, and to play politics, in order to enact his will. All anger and activation will have to pass and process through the airy channels of words, customs and etiquette, played out in the mirror of those who sit opposite us. We flare up, only to cool down; we sever, only to reconnect again; we pierce, but then we pacify. But—while we hesitate, and deliberate, we also boldly create, and bravely relate. With Venus next door in Scorpio until early October, each will be getting a taste of the other’s medicine, and hopefully coming out the better for it. And come Libra season, Mars will encounter the fiery rays of an equally bemused Sun, and tango with a retrograde Mercury, all fanned by the favorable winds of Jupiter in Aquarius. Renewed and graceful, measured and strategic, Mars in Libra takes an idea and pursues it, fights even, to realize it. What will you champion in the coming weeks?
Astrology is the study of cycles in time and in the life. Are you curious about which cycles are ending and beginning for you? Or which planets are needing tending or wanting to be heard at the moment? Send me a message to schedule a natal chart consultation, and let’s start digging out and polishing those diamonds in the rough, so that they too get their time to shine.
Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she’s got the Mercedes bends. She’s got a lot of pretty pretty boys that she calls friends. Today, Venus descends from on high in Libra, into the catacombs of Scorpio, where spirits and shadowplay tempt her around corners and down the alleyways of her mind. She has a date with the dystopian, and these are her notes from the underground. Beyond the veil, she transcends, and transforms—a glamorous apparition, full of mystique and macabre, her joys and her sorrows tattooed on her body as well as her heart. She comes alive at night, in the house of the rising sun. Our evening star shines in her film noir—no colors anymore, she wants to paint it black.
Federico García Lorca described the spirit of duende—that emo feeling of raw, authentic passion and pathos that comes through certain art forms—as comprised of four elements: “irrationality, earthiness, a heightened awareness of death, and a dash of the diabolical.” As Venus moves through Mars’s sign, she will encounter a square to Saturn, an opposition to Uranus, and a trine to Neptune, and we can expect the presence of the duende, and of the daemon, to be heightened. And, as Mars will be in Venus’s home sign of Libra for most of this transit, the two lovers in mutual exile become star-crossed, or crossed stars rather, full of both enmity and longing. An existentialist wave washes over us. We play with pain, we dance with complexity, we weigh dark and light. We feel the kundalini serpent awaking, twisting our guts and plucking at our heartstrings, running along our spines and up from the depths of our loins. And we stab it with our steely knives but we just can’t kill the beast.
Tonight, the Moon is renewing itself in Virgo, the sign of the initiate, who oversees health, service and young women. Under the rulership of Mercury in Libra, the arbitrator, we are all called on to reconcile our natural desire for autonomy with our equally natural desire to be in relationship with others. Prodded by Uranus’s spark, we are restless to invent, to improve, and to evolve, in the Virgo sector of our lives. And under the co-present influence of the Mars-Neptune opposition, we may be fighting the good fight or tilting at windmills, and will need a dose of objectivity to decide which is the case. We may also be torn between the sacred and the profane, between our dreams and our duties, and will need to feel a sense of redemption or inspiration in order to maintain both. The archetype of Virgo calls to mind both wildness and innocence, both emancipation and dedication, both independence and responsibility. It is rich and complex in its mythology, and has many faces and names. This New Moon, all the above considered, I consecrate to Libera, the ancient Roman goddess of freedom, women’s fertility, and the commonwealth of the people. I imagine her, before she became Proserpina, bedecked in ivy and grapevines, filling all of our cups with wine and well-wishes, a testimony that a good life, and prosperity, is deserved by all—a reward of life on earth.
For now, while we toast, and make our oaths, the fields lie fallow in preparation for a new work; for the sowing, not of wild oats so much as saved seeds, carefully conserved, and planted in due time. The New Moon in Virgo points to a paradox, which is that to be a creator is also to be a sacrificer, and to know well the dance of give-and-take. And thus this lunation is both a giver and a gatekeeper. In this lull is an opportunity to cull: to use discernment with the ways in which we are used and utilized, with the expenditure of our creativity and our generosity, with the people to whom we give our energy, with what we share and what we keep, and with where we toe the line and where we rebel. “Hands off my sacred womb space,” in other words, says the placard of the modern-day Artemis, or Hestia, or Athena, our other Virgoan patronesses, who remind us all that we are “whole unto ourselves.” From now on, it’s out with the old and in with the consensual, the agreed-upon, the meaningful, and the worthy of our time and effort.
