Hey star-gazers! The TL;DR is that it’ll be a good week for continuing major projects and making headway on difficult initiatives. While the Aries Full Moon on October 9 will deliver much in terms of its original promise for new beginnings, a couple of crunchy aspects demand that we exercise patience as we muddle through the week.
With that, let’s dive in and baseline the sky.
***STRATEGIC FOCUS WON’T LAST LONG***
We start the week still under the influence of the beneficial trine between Mars and Saturn. This makes it a great week to continue any detailed work you could have recently initiated. It could also help you make headway with difficult projects that you might have been putting off. By next week Mars and Saturn will be separating; this focused energy will abate, so strike while the Martial iron is hot!
The other aspect worth noting this week is the square currently forming between Mars and retrograde Neptune.
Neptune can cause disorientation, confusion, chaos, disillusionment, and duplicity. In watery Pisces, we may lose sight of our goals, get easily sidetracked or avoid difficulties through escaping or day-dreaming. On the flip side, however, this could be a highly beneficial, introspective energy, leading us to reevaluate the reasons for our ambitiousness and drive in the world.
While some of the more disorienting effects of this transit could be held at bay by austere Saturn in a trine to Mars for now, heading into Mars retrograde season at the end of the month, the aspect between Mars and retrograde Neptune could remain intense up to the end of November.
Mars turning retrograde will already take some wind out of our sails. It could have us feeling as though there isn’t a great deal of forward momentum in our lives, and we could even lose some of the fighting spirit that we typically feel with a forward-moving Mars as we engage in internal questioning and re-visioning. The active aspect with retrograde Neptune could therefore compound Mars’ frustrations over the next several weeks, so be patient with yourself if you experience delayed outcomes or seem predisposed to getting off track.
***THE REACTIVATED SATURN-URANUS SQUARE PERSISTS***
While we’re on the topic of frustrating aspects lingering much longer than we’d like, we can’t ignore the fact that Uranus and Saturn reactivated their square last week.
As I mentioned in my previous forecast, this energy is dragging up any challenges we could have felt between obligation, responsibility, limitation and control in our lives, and a desire to break free and initiate earth-shattering changes. Alternatively, it could be back to teach us where we need to draw the line and set boundaries in order to achieve greater personal liberty from putting ourselves first.
The difference here is that both of these planets are retrograde, so we could either feel ourselves back in a similar predicament to one we experienced throughout most of last year, or we could simply be revisiting these issues internally.
However, not every intense or challenging aspect is necessarily bad. Both retrograde Saturn and Uranus are here to point out areas of our lives where we could feel stuck — either by circumstances or by our own outlook. The dramatic energy of Uranus within a weaker orb of influence to the North Node could invite in that dramatic energy, especially as it continues to hover over that sensitive degree where we saw Mars join up in the Triple Conjunction back in August.
If we trace the movement of Mars from Taurus — where sudden and dramatic upheavals might have been initiated in the areas of our foundations, values, the way we earn money and how we define security in your lives — to the airy sign of Gemini — where we are in the realm of ideas, but also the duality of situations — we are inevitably confronting energies that ask us where we can take action in our lives to break cycles of potential oppression and restriction.
Mars retrograde should be a helpful period for allowing us to review the facts, revisit possibilities, and start assembling a plan, which we could act on early next year when Mars turns direct.
***MERCURY JUMPS BACK INTO ACTION, BUT ITS FORWARD MOMENTUM COULD BE HAMPERED BY MIX-UPS***
A very positive development this week is Mercury’s direction change on October 2. We can all breathe a sigh of relief as we resume various undertakings that we might have parked owing to our slight retrograde trepidation.
Mercury begins the week opposing retrograde Neptune.
Mercury first opposed retrograde Neptune while it was direct back on August 21. It then re-activated this energy on September 24, while Mercury was retrograde, and it is holding this active energy through to October 6. It will slip out of a tight three-degree orb on October 7.
Depending on how you experienced this energy back in August, it could reactivate a similar energetic profile now.
In matters of business, this could have been a challenging transit for inking deals, getting clarity in terms and conditions, or negotiating favourable contracts. More generally, you may have struggled with clear communications, and, if you’ve been trying to learn anything, you could have found your thinking muddled.
The confusion that this energy reactivates might lead us to experience a lack of focus in the areas of our personal or professional communications. While I don’t think that this will be an especially significant transit this week, prepare yourself for minor hiccups where you may need to repeat yourself or clarify statements in correspondence or when conversing with others.
***RETROGRADE PLUTO OFFERS US A BRIEF CHANCE TO EXPLORE SOMETHING IN DEPTH***
We’re also entering the week under the influence of Mercury’s trine to retrograde Pluto.
Mercury first activated the trine to Pluto on September 27 and has been holding within an orb of influence since then. It will continue to be activated through to the close of the week.
Again, I don’t think that this will be a particularly significant transit overall, though it could lead us to obsess over certain issues in our lives. This could range from the smallest of details that are not especially material, to larger issues concerning our health and wellness.
One possible signature that I really like about this transit is the possibility for considering where we could be of service. Given that strong Virgoan flavour of this Mercury, an early idea around volunteering, getting more involved in your community, or pitching in with those closest to you could be intensified under this transit, and this is a very positive possibility given Pluto’s current transit through Capricorn, which has an element of hard work and responsibility to it.
The other possibility that I like the opportunity for initiating that health routine that many of us have likely been putting off. Pluto can lend an intensity to our efforts, and, in Capricorn, it could also have a restructuring energy. Pluto can also rule detoxification, purifying and shedding unnecessary waste. I do think that this could be a great transit for going deep into our health and wellness routines, researching clean eating and digging into truly transformative initiatives and approaches.
***VENUS ASPECTING RETROGRADE JUPITER COULD HELP US BETTER DEFINE OUR OWN WORTH***
Under this transit, I like the possibility of a Venus that’s helping us better orient towards our own intrinsic value. Especially since leaving the more scrutinizing sign of Virgo, we may find ourselves softening this week, cutting ourselves a bit more slack, and focusing more on the things that are going right in our lives.
This could therefore be an empowering aspect, concerned with finding our inner beauty and developing our confidence, especially as this Venus, still invisible, may feel more vulnerable in the area of personal relationships.
***ARIES FULL MOON DELIVERS ON SPRING HOPES AND DREAMS***
Now, let’s talk about the Full Moon, occurring at 16 degrees 32 minutes of Aries on October 9. Although this is technically part of next week’s forecast, I like to absorb the lunations into the current forecasts for the week so people have time to prepare to work with the energies.
What the New Moon promises, the Full Moon delivers and so we’re briefly going to look at the chart for the April 1 lunation of the New Moon that occurred in the sign of Aries.
Transit chart for the April 1, 2022 New Moon in Aries. Created using AstroGold for Android.
This was the first New Moon of the astrological year, and so we might have felt an amplified sense of awakening new seed potentials in our lives.
Back in April, things could have felt like they were quite swift-moving. All the planets were direct and Aries is, of course, the sign of moving-and-shaking Mars.
This New Moon was ruled by Mars sextiling it from the sign of Aquarius, within an applying conjunction to Saturn. This likely imbued us with a tremendous confidence in our capacity to achieve our goals, recognizing that our vision needed to be long-term, but could also require hard work.
Although I don’t typically work with the semi-sextile, it’s impossible to ignore that the ruler of this New Moon and Saturn were closely configured to the Jupiter-Neptune conjunction, thereby offering us a possibility to bring cohesion to disparate aspects of our lives.
At this time, the New Moon seed potential could have been about unifying our hopes and aspirations with a strong theme of service to ourselves and our personal truth. With Venus in a sign-based conjunction to Mars and Saturn, this could have been about truly understanding our values, our self-worth, and what we place importance on. This is also a configuration that could have asked us what we’re prepared to work for.
Finally, the New Moon was closely conjunct a Mercury that was combust. This Mercury was likely entrenched in its own hidden ideas and quiet agenda of personal contemplation, trying to figure out the skills that it needed to acquire over the course of the year. It could have also been trying to put the pieces in place to figure out how to help deliver on the big dream we had under this New Moon.
At the later stage of Mercury’s direct and retrograde motion between the signs of Taurus and Gemini back in May and early June, we likely spent the time consolidating the first phase of this plan, trying to figure out how we might make good on this New Moon promise. Now, at the time of this Full Moon, our celestial chickens are coming home to roost, letting us see the fruits of our Herculean labours.
Transit chart for the October 9, 2022 Full Moon in Aries. Created using AstroGold for Android.
Venus, empowered by being in the sign of her rulership, is in an operative conjunction with the Sun and so, this is a very lovely signature allowing us an opportunity to see some very positive effects from our April efforts.
Mercury, now direct moving, has separated from that opposition to retrograde Neptune, giving us clarity in our affairs for the next leg of this closing journey to the next Aries New Moon.
Having just turned direct, Mercury is fast-moving and bold in its purpose, and so I really like what could be coming up around this Full Moon, signalling a very positive next chapter in our stories toward personal fulfillment and growth.
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That’s all I’ve got for you this week. If you found this helpful, don’t forget to like or subscribe to my mailing list so that you can get these forecasts delivered to your inbox!
Also, if you’re beginning your astro planning for 2023, then you should know that I’ve started releasing some 2023 forecast videos and the first two out right now are about Saturn in Pisces — one is on the global trends we can expect and the other is rising sign previews — so make sure you check those out!
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