Onward

Late last week, Mars exited its shadow, which means that for the first time in 7 months, Mars is covering new territory. When things go retrograde, it's an opportunity to re-visit whatever area of your chart is highlighted, or... energy goes dead in the water in whatever area of your life is highlighted by what house Mars is transiting. For those of us who are Aries or Scorpio rising, or ruled by Mars, Mars retrogrades are a clusterfuck where nothing seems to go right for an extended period of time until Mars picks up normal speed in a straightforward direction and we get up, dust ourselves off, and pretend it never happened. The same's true for Mercury retrogrades for Gemini and Virgo risings and Venus retrogrades for Libra and Taurus risings. Not so much for the rest of you. By the way, Venus goes retrograde in Leo this summer, but more to come on that later. My point: Mars is moving on, so we all finally get to do new and different things.

Also, and this is relevant for everyone, Mars is changing signs to Cancer at the end of this week, so if you're tired of running errands, having random conversations, and tinkering with things (all Mars in Gemini activities), how would you like to clean house, cook stuff, and tend to people and things (Mars in Cancer)? Honestly both Gemini and Cancer lend themselves to spring cleaning, but with Mars in Cancer, you're more sentimental.

Actually, both Mars and Pluto change signs within two days of each other, and Pluto is obviously the bigger, stronger energy, but Mars hasn't made a change in so long that it'll be palpable, too...AND they are in a 150° aspect to each other, called an inconjunct, which is an aspect of adjustment. If you happen to have a planet or point caught up in this energy, you actually will feel a sudden shift. (Social media is rife with promising shifts and changes because Pluto's changing to Aquarius, as well as telling you you'll finally get that pony you've always wanted and it's everything I can do not to yell SHUT UP and throw my phone.) What do Aquarius and Cancer have in common? Nothing. One's an intellectual sign that's stubbornly right about everything and the other one is an emotional water sign that you cannot pry out of its shell for the life of you, and if you're caught in the middle of this energy, you'll realize something you're doing isn't working and you've gotta shift your method of operating if you want to get different results: either thinking differently or learning to protect yourself by constructing a shell around your body and telling your loved ones that this is what you look like now for safety reasons. Seriously though, you could realize you have to be more self-protective or that what you're doing is hurting someone's feelings when you previously didn't know that. Alternately, someone could do something pretty heartless that causes you to grab your nearest pitchfork in defense. You'll probably see some evidence of that happening in the next week, since that's the energy that's out there.

The sun, Mercury, and Jupiter are all in Aries, which is a major HOOAH for those of you who love military exercises or Civil War recreation. Just sayin'.