The Sun enters Aries I, which Austin Coppock called “the double-edged axe”, today at 11:50 pm. With the Ascendant in Scorpio, we can expect a fair bit of intense interplay between the powers of life and death in the next ten days, but with the situation largely unchanged between the beginning and end of this time. The lord of this period, Mars, is in a strange state of exaltation and debility — an honored guest in Capricorn where Saturn is encouraging his tendency toward violence, he’s nonetheless cadent in the third house where his poor impulse control is restrained, and joined to the benefic Jupiter who urges division and separation for judicious and strategic aims.

One of the unusual things about this chart is how much of the planetary weight is settled in the lower (northern) and western parts of the chart. Houses 12-11-10 and 4-5-6 are often called the masculine or active quadrants, and in 4-5-6 we have a lot of weight — both luminaries (Sun and Moon), Mercury, and dreamy Neptune. However, the opposite quadrants (Houses 7-8-9 and 1-2-3) are weighted in the opposite direction, with Mars, Jupiter, Pluto and Saturn in House 3 (all of us cooped up at home and generally prohibited from travel), and Venus and Uranus in the seventh house (all of us cooped up with our partners or statistically significant others).

Let’s take a look at the Planetary Placements, and then consider the Horoscopes.

Planetary Placements

As already noted, The Sun is in the sign of Aries, where it’s exalted — a fancy way of saying he’s like an honored guest in the house of his best friend. He gets to do what he wants, and gets the best of everything. But in the sixth house, the Sun is cadent: relatively weak and out-of-sorts, and spending a lot of time thinking about his health and the risk of illness. The Decan, “The Double Edged Axe” as Austin calls it, indicates that he’s spending a lot of time dividing the sick from the healthy, and the quick from the dead. Sound familiar?

In the Seventh House, the place of relationships, Venus and Uranus bring both coziness and surprise to a sudden shut-in situation: both planets are below the Descendant (DS), indicating a lack of public life together, but rather a hyggelit (a Swedish or Danish word for something like “homebound comfort in wintertime”) experience, magically conjured out of thin air.

The North Node in Cancer in the Ninth House invites us to partake in long-distance travel and self-directed education and writing projects, to study hidden matters in some detail (like astrology), and to do so in a nurturing environment. However, the ruler of Cancer, The Moon, is in the Fourth House. We’re going to have to do all of that at home, under the weight of a lot of official orders from higher up the chain of command. We can read the Moon’s presence (tropically) in the Twenty-Fifth Mansion, “the Lucky Star of Hidden Things”, as an indicator that it is a time of preservation and sinking roots deeply into one place. Yet by another (sidereal) reading, The Moon is in the Twenty-Third Mansion, “The Devourer” — and we are likely to see the wasting of our substance and the devastation of what we possess. The Moon thus invites us to ride the balance between rootedness and hardship.

In the Third House, we find most of the weight of this span of days: the South Node, the Lot of Fortune, Mars, Jupiter, Pluto, and Saturn. Spread across all three Decans, these potent symbols herald great difficulties for those who choose celebration (South Node in Capricorn I), good fortune and wealth for those who establish and maintain structures, and who manage hierarchy well (Lot of Fortune in Capricorn II), and threats of violence, legal action, contamination, and illness for those who wander about (the remaining planets in Capricorn III).

The remaining planets, Mercury and Uranus, are found in the Fifth House with the Imum Coeli (IC), which means “the bottom of the sky” (where our dreams manifest). It’s a time to verbalize and plan out your goals, with a magician’s sense of timing and a trickster’s sense of the inevitable. We all are likely to find plenty of ways that “we are all interconnected” during the next ten days, in surprising and unpredictable ways. At the same time, we may find that our most-fondly-wished-for dreams have room to move toward fulfillment, if we but redefine our ideas about how they ‘should’ look and feel.

Rising Sign Horoscopes

Scorpio: The change begins to settle in at last,
for one and all, as your realm locks its gates.
Desire lays a sumptuous repast,
with prospects of the menaces of fates.

Sagittarius: You can make bank, if you do it yourself,
conscious of limits in the present age.
Contrary thoughts, confine to some back shelf;
answer what you’re asked, like an honest sage.

Capricorn: Some kin are sheep: so define their pasture,
by crook and hound hem in their straying ways;
for now, adopt a more-armored vesture —
bring home no bugs to the places they graze.

Aquarius: Staying at home may eat all your substance,
as you cocoon in a hermit’s tight cell;
Yet creative comfort, in this instance,
might be the thing that makes you whole and well.

Pisces: racing around, without limitation,
checking in on all your more-shuttered friends,
might be a way to win adulation —
or bring them trouble, or difficult ends.

Aries: Career on hold and allies all locked down,
the worst is learning who you are, alone;
With income challenged, your spouse’s renown
earns your keep — still, keep answering your phone.

Taurus: Open up to your own gentlest spirit,
the seed of you that learns to root and grow;
Got plans for a quest? Go ahead, queer it —
There’s more to yourself you have yet to know.

Gemini: Old legacies under modern pressure,
with public options beginning to sprawl…
your skills may need some focused refresher,
ere the world completes its slow to a crawl.

Cancer: More learning, more travel, appear needed,
but close to home, perhaps with native guides —
your partner’s garden is tilled and weeded,
yet study is where your dreaming abides.

Leo: The next ten days provide time for good rest,
though legacy plans haunt your job’s demands,
and fierce limits stalk your workaday best:
nurture the work that grows from just your hands.

Virgo: A spouse now dreams with a clearer vision,
Yet you have much to do in local grind;
water and plant and lay down nutrition,
and record what comes from creative mind.

Libra: Lonely endeavors crowd out ‘family time’
and a ‘home garden’ attracts attention;
some comforting heirlooms, released from grime,
bring a partner honorable mention.

Colophon

You may have noticed, this column was late. I’m currently serving a term as a District leader for Toastmasters International, an all-“in person” organization for experiential education in public speaking and leadership. I did… quite a lot of public speaking and leadership this week, as our part of the Toastmasters world went from exclusively “face-to-face in the same physical place”, to exclusively online. It’s been a interesting transition, and my writing time has suffered. I’ll try not to be late on columns again.

I use iPhemeris for my charting software, and screenshot it to make charts. I use Christopher Warnock‘s The Mansions of the Moon as the basis of my Moon placement delineations, and Austin Coppock‘s 36 Faces as the basis of some of my planetary delineations. Neither gentleman endorses me.

Any errors in these columns are my own.

If you’d like to schedule a consultation with me, you can find additional information on the Services and Classes page.

If you want to read some of my other astrologically-oriented poetry, To the Mansions of the Moon is a collection of hymns to the angels of the Mansions mentioned in these columns. For the Behenian Stars is a collection of hymns to the first/brightest sixteen stars. The Sun’s Paces are hymns to the thirty-six Hellenistic-era deities and ascended souls of the Greco-Egyptian Decans-calendar. While not astrological, Festae contains hymns to some of the older Roman gods and spirits from the calendar created by Numa Pompilius, the second ancient King of Rome.