It's all happening

My friends, everything I've mentioned in the past weeks/months is upon us. In no particular order:

1. Mars is slowing down. Meaning that if it's making an aspect to one of your planets/angles, it will do so for longer. This is nice if it's a sextile or trine: you get an energy boost in the area indicated. But if it's any other angle, *things are irritating*. That's the main issue with Mars retrograde, in my opinion: sustained aspects from a slow Mars make most people more temperamental.

2. Mercury is slowing to go retrograde. Please review the retrograde rules. Last week, it was opposing Neptune, and miscommunications abounded. This week, it opposes Jupiter. Beware too much optimism or having eyes that are bigger than your stomach.

3. Saturn and Uranus are in close aspect, bringing up our pressure vs. freedom debacle once again.

Check out astro-seek's planetary speed ephemeris: gray means retrograde (here are some of my general musings on retrogrades) and for September we have a slow Mars and 6 planets retrograde for most of the month. Mars normal speed is about 0°44', in case you are curious.

My basic assessment is that--if you would like to retain your sanity--you are going to be going with the flow in September, and 'the flow' may be in a surprising, abnormal direction. With all of everything retrograde or slow except the sun, moon, and Venus, you'll notice many people in stuck situations, like when cats get themselves tangled in window blinds and need to be extracted: they can't untangle themselves and they just have to sit and wait for their owner to come home (and by then that cat is pissed).

My bias is always trying to make things happen or achieve forward motion in life, but with a sky like this, literal or metaphorical traffic jams are inevitable. So you have two options: you can fall all over yourself trying to move an immovable object, or you can try kinda hard and if your efforts go nowhere, do something else that does work. The people who suffer the most at times like these are the people who need one specific thing to happen that ain't happening right now, and then they rail against reality. You'll see them all over the place if you look.

It's improvisation time. Stay loose as much as possible.

XO,J