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The merry, lion-lamb month of March is here.
We begin March under the influence of Mercury retrograde in Pisces. The trickster planet of the mind and the mouth, currency and texts from your wayward ex, will station direct on March 20 but shan’t clear its post-retrograde shadow until April 9.
On March 3rd, we welcome a Blood Moon Lunar eclipse in Virgo. Eclipses amplify the effects of a full moon and operate as both a mirror and an accelerant, showing us things we’d rather not see and taking us places we need, but don’t necessarily want to go.
Rarely easy, always necessary is the name of the game, folks, and the best you can do is take that shaky trust fall into the abyss.
On March 6, Venus, our planet of attraction, assets, and aesthetics, leaves the glitter drain of Pisces for the driver’s seat of Aries.
I liken this transition between signs to floating in the warm embrace of an ambient sound bath when all of a sudden someone cuts the lights, enters wearing a flame-throwing codpiece, and cues “Kick Out the Jams.”
It’s jarring, it’s energizing, it’s extra, it’s Aries.
Aries in Venus has no confusion about what it wants and no chill in chasing it. No longer satisfied to write our crush’s name in bubble letters and whisper love spells into the night air, Venus in Aries shows us that fortune favors the bold and desire demands the direct.
You have nothing to lose.
Getting lucky takes on a new meaning on March 10, when Jupiter, our planet of deep pockets, goodwill, and placing bets, finally ends its retrograde in the smother/mother/lover sign of Cancer, clearing the way for riches of every kind to reach us.
Then, on March 18, the ultra potent new moon in Pisces offers us an apex opportunity to make the intangible tangible and till our dreams into pay dirt.
Here, here.
On March 20, we welcome the spring/vernal equinox, the onset of a new astrological year, and pry open the hell mouth of Aries season.
Fresh blood, new buds, and the visceral violence of renewal, here, here.
Remember, folks, March is a command.
Step to it.
ARIES (March 21 – April 19)
Ahoy, Aries!
The heavy and heady influence of Pisces activates your twelfth house of endings, hauntings, the hidden, and the unconscious mind this month.
In a recent letter to a young widower, the musician Nick Cave writes,
“We are made of ghosts, we grievers, and those spirits are forever beside us, as a protective force, part of the web of consciousness that interconnects all things. We can find strength in our collective losses, as long as we can free ourselves from the gravitational pull of the trauma and move forward, all our ghosts in tow, into this beautiful waiting world.”
As you prepare for your solar return and the fresh turn of the wheel of the year, I hope you will count your ghosts and count yourself lucky to have them, and allow the presence of death to give breath to your sails as you greet life again and again.
TAURUS (April 20 – May 20)
How goes it, team Taurus?
This month, the focus is on your inner circle and extended network. With Mercury retrograde in Pisces, you may be reevaluating your friendships or grappling with discord or disappointment in your closest relationships.
The Buddhist scholar Chang-an writes, “If one befriends another person but lacks the mercy to correct him, one is in fact his enemy.”
While bull folk are more inclined to excommunicate than educate, you have the rare opportunity to deepen an existing connection by addressing an issue or injury.
In calling someone out, you call them into your confidence and closer to their true potential.
GEMINI (May 21 – June 20)
During coffee with one of my top three favorite Geminis, we discovered that the origin of ‘resting on your laurels’ comes from the Greek, and later Roman tradition of crowning victorious athletes and military commanders with a wreath of laurels, a plant sacred to Apollo, the god of competition and conflict.
In time, resting on your laurels came to mean complacency in the wake of success.
As the Pisces season highlights your tenth house of legacy and aspiration, I wish you the kind of glory that you can coast on, the wisdom to appreciate your moment in the sun when it comes, and the fire to find it again.
CANCER (June 21 – July 22)
At long last, Jupiter, our planet of luck and levity, has gone direct in your sign, Cancer, and Pisces season is activating your ninth house of expansion and integration.
As a sign that teaches others the critical need for connection, you can sometimes wade into the waters of codependence.
To combat that habit and honor Jupiter at its highest ocatave I bring you the words of Alexis McElroy from her essay, “The Art of Being Unreachable.”
“When you disappear into your craft, your ritual, your obsession, people notice. They feel it, the way your attention shifts away from them and toward something they cannot touch. It creates hunger. They want to know where you go when you are not with them…This is not about withholding or playing hard to get. It is about genuinely having a life that interests you more than constant validation,” McElroy wrote.
“The more interest you cultivate in your own life, the less you feel compelled to seek it from others. When your days are full—when you have projects that excite you, skills you are honing, worlds you are building—other people become optional rather than essential.”
It is my sincere hope that you will find something to disappear into and to emerge from with a discerning desire rather than a desperate need for company.
LEO (July 23 – August 22)
Hello, Leo.
I recently read the novel “Inferno,” by Eileen Myles, where she writes that for her, “sex was a disordered prayer.”
I thought this description was apt, given the heavy influence of Pisces this month, which activates your eighth house of sex, death, and other people’s resources.
I wonder what prayers you could recite on and through the skin of another, and, if prayers are at best, protestant spells, what liminal magic can you find in the union of shape and shadow?
VIRGO (August 23 – September 22)
Hello, Virgo!
I recently read the novel “Delphi” by Clare Pollard.
Reflecting on a lover, the protagonist recalls,
“I remember the first time I met Jay, they said, ‘Don’t tell me, you’re a Libra on the cusp of Scorpio,’ and I felt very seen. That’s the trick, isn’t it? You don’t even have to see the right thing; people are just so thrilled you’re looking.”
As the Pisces season highlights your seventh house of trusted partnerships and the lunar eclipse in your sign throws a light on your first house of identity, I hope you will seek to see the other in and through your self without judgment or prescription.
As Pollard tells us, you don’t have to be right or provide a remedy; you just have to keep looking.
LIBRA (September 23 – October 22)
Ahoy, Libra!
This month throws a lamp on your sixth house of routine, ritual, and the sacred maintenance of the body.
In a letter to a friend battling the tide of depression, Flannery O’ Conner wrote,
“Time is very dangerous without a rigid routine. If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you’ll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival.”
I hope you will find similar salvation through scheduling. Whether your same thing is 25 jumping jacks, masturbation, meditation, steeping tea, or boiling an egg, may all repetition reap peace.
SCORPIO (October 23 – November 21)
The sun in Pisces lights a fire in your fifth house of pleasure, play, and the inner child, Scorpio.
I recently had coffee with an artist friend of mine who was struggling to direct her energy toward new work.
She told me that she just needed to make something, whether it was good or bad was of little consequence.
“Sometimes bad art is more pivotal,” she shared.
In the interest of the momentum of making, I hope you will permit yourself to create without concern for good or bad.
Let your failures be your footholds.
SAGITTARIUS (November 22 – December 21)
In her book “The Language of Houses,” Pulitzer Prize-winner Alison Laurie writes, “A building is an inanimate object but not an inarticulate one.”
As the Pisces season and Mercury retrograde activate your fourth house of home and history, Sagittarius, I suspect you might find richness in returning, literally or metaphorically, to your ancestral home.
Try to remember what your childhood bedroom smelled like and what you dreamed when you slept, what stories are painted on the walls, what words haunt the hallways, what you held and lost, what you are still holding.
Can these remnants be refashioned into a new foundation or put to the pyre?
CAPRICORN (December 22 – January 19)
Ahoy, Capricorn!
This Mercury retrograde is activating your third house of communication and exchange.
In discussing a brilliant but at times inarticulate acquaintance, my friend Mary said, “He’s learning to thread the needle of his genius so that it can be received.”
I trust you will be engaging with information in a similar way this month.
How can you honor what you know by delivering it with humility? Learn to lend light without limit.
AQUARIUS (January 20 – February 18)
Hello, Aquarius!
The focus for you this month is wealth and worth, what you make and what you are made of.
How have you been spending your time, water bearer? Is the work you’re doing something that makes you proud or merely makes you a profit? Any discord between your values and your velocity will become impossible to ignore in the weeks to come.
It might get worse, but it is designed to make you better.
There can be no breakthrough without breaking down.
If you are looking to pivot or quit but are planning more of a long-game exit strategy, bear in mind that how you spend your money is as reflective of your value system as how you make it.
PISCES (February 19 – March 20)
Happy return of the sun to you, Pisces!
Combing through a free library last month, I found a handmade zine that espoused, “The most abusive relationship we have is with ourselves.”
I don’t know if this is expressly true, but I do think it is possible, and with the sun shining in your sign and onto your first house of self-concept, I encourage you to subvert this possibility by being wildly and wholly humane to yourself.
Tell your reflection that you are safe and whole, and that you’ll never leave you. Silence (and block) those who would add to any detrimental chorus you may be singing about yourself. Hold your own hand.
Astrologer Reda Wigle researches and irreverently reports on planetary configurations and their effect on each zodiac sign. Her horoscopes integrate history, poetry, pop culture, and personal experience. To book a reading, visit her website.
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