Inaction!

Those of you who are more sensitive might have noticed a general lack of wherewithal recently: a usual get-up-and-go sensibility has been replaced with "I guess I could." Get a shirt that says Free Shrugs and wear that for the next 80+ days because our red friend Mars is going retrograde in Leo, and will move backward into Cancer. Really, we're passing Mars, so we're closer to it than normal, and it's a seed time for Mars-related things, which mostly involve taking action in some form. Seed times are not action times. You will notice that the Scorpio and Aries risings in your midst are out of sorts. Usually the weirdness is confined to a specific area of the chart where Mars is doing the retrograding, but Mars and Venus are the two least-retrograde planets in our solar system, so no one's used to the inversion of normally free-flowing energy, but people whose planetary rulers are Mars or Venus are especially caught off guard when this happens. So give us some space and grace, because I feel weird right now. (Right now it is just Mars--Venus is next, but that's in spring.)

It's really useful to understand where Mars is retrograding in your chart, because any snafus in that realm are not likely to come together in a cohesive way until spring, and pushing things forward will just make you angry and waste your energy simultaneously, and I think you would agree that there's not a lot of energy available to waste. My best-worst example is when Mars retrograded in my 7th house (relationships) and my then-husband had to have knee surgery for the second time, because he'd re-injured himself in the exact same way as the first time (sigh). I spent several months being Nurse Josie, working to help someone else, and there was really no way around it unless I wanted to be a huge jerk. So, for Mars retrogrades, either you want to do something and you can't, or you don't want to do something and you have to.

It's not my favorite.

In other news, Venus is entering Aquarius Saturday, and that brings us the energy of "Love is...Science." Break out your nerd glasses. The thing people new to astrology forget about Aquarius is that it's an air sign, despite its nickname "the water bearer." In that scenario, water is knowledge: try getting an Aquarian to fetch you water with any regularity. Also, the glyph (♒️) is SNAKES (not water), which also symbolize knowledge. The element of air is about (you guessed it) knowledge and the circulation of information.

Anyone with appreciable Aquarius (or Uranian) energy wants to be the smartest in the room. Either they are, or they think they are, so Venus in Aquarius likes to be patted on the head for having all the knowledge. It's kind of hard to tease apart Sagittarian knowledge and Aquarian knowledge because they look similar and love telling you how smart they are, but Sagittarius likes to be worldly and broad, and Aquarius knows what it's an expert in, and is usually smart enough to admit what it DOESN'T know (this also usually gets better with age, for the record). Sagittarius will BS when it doesn't know something. Aquarius will crack a book and come back to you with an answer. A caveat is that Aquarius will confidently state what they know, so if they have bad information, they will spread it with all the conviction in the world.

Anyway, Venus in Aquarius wants to be the smartest person in the room, so circulate some knowledge, give the gift of information, or involve your loved ones in a science experiment of some sort (please get permission first). Embrace quirkiness, be avant-garde, or do something off-beat. The world is your oyster.