Astro Forecast 2.9.25: Not So Fast, Fascist Freaks...Mars is Making a Comeback
Venus just entered the ass-kicking sign of Aries. Saturn, Neptune, and Mercury will join her come March. Mars goes direct in a few weeks. Let the wallowing end, and the blood-letting begin.
What is happening?!
Unfortunately, Pluto’s slow, steady drip of perversion and disintegration continues, and while I focus mainly on domestic issues in the good old Yoo Ess Ay when it comes to collective astrology, it’s becoming obvious to all but the most fervently, idiotically isolationist among us that destructive stupidity in one part of the world exports pretty quickly to the rest of the globe in these foul, modern times. Where do we begin? So far, we are have been subject to a corporate sponsored American coup, several deadly plane crashes that bode poorly for the future of air travel safety due to regulation slashing, simmering, righteous unrest among the working class, and a chilling resurgence of nativism that doesn’t just recall Hitler’s obsession with herrenvolk, but which parrots the entire Nazi ethos - right down to their stupid little arm gestures. (Excuse me, roman salutes.) All of this to say, when scientists downgraded Pluto to ‘dwarf’ in 2006, they must have really, really pissed him off, because his dirty, monied Capricorn era from 2008 through 2023 pales in comparison to the geopolitical slash and burn he seems hellbent on executing while in Aquarius.
It would probably take a thousand more pages/hours/hard drugs for us to recite everything going wrong in the world at this moment, and a thousand more hours for astrologists the world over to say, “I told you so!” to every single person who berated our warnings and predictions from the past ten or so years as bunkum, but I think we’ve been steeping in that bitter miasma long enough. This week - and I hope you are sitting down for this - the astrology takes a small but important step toward improvement, resuscitating our vigor and pointing toward a light at the end of this twenty-year tunnel.
Venus ingressed into Aries on Tuesday, February 4th, and while that event alone will not shake apart our collective despair, it is the first tremor of an imminent celestial quake that will drastically impact the latter half of 2025. Our sexy lady planet will be tripling the time she normally spends in Aries due to her approaching retrograde; she remains direct in the sign of The Ram until March 1st, then backtracks through Aries until March 27th, and after dipping into Pisces to make a u-turn, will enter Aries directly again on April 30th. Venus will not leave Aries for good until June 5th, and by that time, Mercury, Saturn, and Neptune will also have clocked a ton of flight time in the initiatory, exuberant, and often violent chariot of The Ram. In fact, the entirety of March will subject us to a volatile planetary conflagration in Mars’ most masculine, conflict-driven iteration.
That might not sound great, especially if you’ve been listening to me shit on Mars for *checks notes* pretty much the entire time I’ve been publishing this news letter. I consider myself one of his loyal, murderous acolytes, given my Aries ascendant and Scorpio sun, which means that, like a teenager pointing out every questionable thing their well-meaning parent does to them, I feel obliged to pull no punches when describing my ruler. He’s a brash fuckboi who acts first and thinks later, if at all, and who influences human kind to favor aggression over diplomacy. In natal charts, Mars can indicate the area of our life wherein we endure accidents, violence, over-confidence, and acute misfortune, often in no small part due to our own immaturity. Crudely put, if Jupiter acts like the brain of humanity and Venus is our heart, Mars is our blood-engorged groin, the part of us responsible for ill-favored one night stands, unplanned professional resignations, and every punch thrown in stupid, nut-flexing bar fights. He is our suppressed desire for violent delights writ large and loud, and if someone has a problem with that, Mars will probably convince you to threaten that person with an axe. He is a big, fiery, dumb adrenaline boost, which, sometimes, can be exactly what we need.
Why would this affect me?
We have been in a very watery, woe-is-me astrological space since early January, because when Mars entered Cancer, Venus, Saturn and Neptune were already enjoying a trippy session in Pisces, and those two water signs love nothing more than a collective wallow. The full moon on January 13th was in Cancer right alongside the angry red shit stain, but instead of energizing our fighting spirit, as Mars-ruled moons normally would, our 2025 Wolf Moon essentially corked us up with frustration and despair. Mars, you see, is deeply uncomfortable in the sign of The Crab, which aligns with passive, lunar, and feminine-coded energy, (pussy shit, I imagine Ares would say) so despite his desire for action, he felt ill-equipped to see anything through, bogged down as he was in the mud of self-pity like a sad crustacean.
Cranky and cynical as I am, even I have to admit that Mars can galvanize us to greatness just as easily as he might turn us into bullies. (Aphrodite couldn’t stop sleeping with him after she married someone else, so he had to have something going for him, no?) Ares is the god of war, sure, but he’s also the god of courage, righteous anger, and strategy. There is no planet better for smiting your enemies and cracking bawdy jokes whilst doing so, or for ginning up the chutzpah to risk physical safety defending people or ideals close to our hearts.
Venus is the first gal in a veritable chorus line of planets to leave the patient, teary realm of Pisces, so the events that occur during her initial sojourn in Aries will give us a taste of what we can expect in late spring. (Spiciness and angry screaming, most likely.) The poster child for assertiveness, Ares will be exerting influence over his lover, Aphrodite, making her a bit more quick-tempered and action oriented. Given that Venus rules femmes, money, beauty, and social connection, those are the areas likely to feel the heat first, both personally and collectively. One example of this could be observed at The Grammy awards on Sunday, just two days before the Venus ingress to Aries, at which no less than five female musicians used time on stage to platform social justice issues, instead of just thanking their agents and their mothers and teetering off to butt chug champagne.
That sort of energy - energy that compels us to take action and yell at other people until they take action, will ramp up, albeit quietly, throughout February. Once Mars is out of retrograde and March hits, though, our combined screaming about financial security, justice, equality, and relationship drama is going to bear fruit.
When do I have to deal with this?
Improvements and bright spots within this completely dumb historical moment will be so slow to accelerate through February that we’ll barely notice, but March steps on the gas and burns rubber, so brace yourself for whiplash and overwhelm. I cannot stress how batshit crazy March and late spring will be. We will have a lovely reprieve in June once Venus enters Taurus, but don’t buy that house or plant that victory garden quite yet - Uranus enters Gemini on July 7th, and that could make for a late summer assaulted by various forms of unrest and upheaval. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
2.4.25 - 6.9.25 Venus Ingresses in and out of Aries, Jupiter Stations Direct in Gemini and Won’t Shut Up
THE LIGHT
A pissed off Venus can be pretty effective at forcing change, especially with Jupiter spreading her message far and wide. Issues intrinsic to women, money, and social connectivity will likely pull focus during this time on media channels, and new plans or ideas about empowering the specifically Venusian parts of society may be born.
THE SHADOW
Interpersonal relationships could go a couple ways with Venus in her detriment; those of us who typically fall into the role of ‘pleaser’ will start asserting ourselves and planting seeds of confidence that might bloom into drastic change by June. For some relationships this will be an improvement, but for others, it could increase friction and combativeness, leading to abuse or separations. Venus in Aries alone makes for confident astrology, and a direct Jupiter has the ability to juice up egos in an unhealthy way. Jupiter in Mercury’s domicile of Gemini guarantees a constant stream of chatter, spats, and declarations, yet it is the foundational nature of our relationships which swill determine whether that communication stream is productive or destructive.
2.5.25 - 2.9.25 Venus in Aries Sextiles Pluto in Aquarius for Deep Excavation of Our Relationships
THE LIGHT
In addition to being the planet that kicked off the absolute worst fucking timeline to live through, Pluto is also often referred to as the detective of the sky; he wants to know everything he can about specialized subjects, like a twisted mechanic popping our car hoods, which in this case are the peaks and valleys in our significant relationships. This is not a week for shallow hook-ups; partnerships with solid foundations will likely grow deeper and more devoted, but anyone building on a faulty or unhealthy plot of land is going to uncover rot, and the resulting odor might be unpleasant.
THE SHADOW
Sometimes we uncover gross things when we go playing in the dirt, and sometimes we uncover treasure. The quality of the soil beforehand is going to determine which one you find yourself touching with grubby fingers - healthy relationships can be strengthened through an excavation of the past, but unhealthy or imbalanced partnerships have a greater chance of implosion with signatures like this one. Either way, planets in Aries foretell a lot of yelling; what begins this week as a quiet, snappish retort with build in volume to become a collective, primal shriek by April.
2.9.25 thru 2.13.25: Mercury Cazimi in Aquarius and Mars Hits Another Water Trine with Saturn…Plus All That Uranus Energy Slams Us with Squares to Mercury and the Sun
THE LIGHT
Aquarius is very comfortable with deeply strange, untested ideas, and his modern ruler, Uranus, loves upsetting tradition. When Mercury gets illuminated and scorched by our Aquarius sun, they’re going to start telegraphing those ideas to the collective in a very bombastic, word-vomit-on-the-radio kind of way - due not only to the influence of The Water Bearer, but to Uranus, who is getting ready to square off with both Helios and Hermes next week. This can introduce unique hot takes to people who may otherwise never have entertained them, kicking off cool, nerdy discussions and feisty intellectual debate. When Uranus squares the sun, we’ll all have bees in our bonnets about radical life changes - it might suddenly seem like a good idea to move to the Yukon (valid) or flip to a nocturnal sleep schedule in order to join a night owl hacking consortium (also kind of valid).
On the same day, our malefic planets will find themselves in a harmonic trine, the very nature of which might confuse and astound them with its mellifluous good nature. One of my teachers likened Mars in Cancer to our emotional gas pedal and Saturn in Pisces to our emotional brake pedal; a trine will allow them to work in complementary fashion that not only gets us where we want to go, but does it safely and in record time. This aspect is awesome for any one of the following situations:
Forcing completion of a long-term project that was derailed due to immaturity or procrastination
Finally committing to a decision, likely a tough one, that we’ve avoided up until now
Allowing some time to pass before reacting to someone or something that deserves our unfettered ire, i.e. maturely taking the high road in combative moments as a matter of strategy
THE SHADOW
I love risqué thought experiments as much as the next guy, but a Uranus-touched Mercury cazimi may also subject us to the sort of paradoxical immaturity and brilliance elevated by technocrats like streaked underwear up a flag pole. Simply being caustic and unpopular doesn’t make you smart - it makes you an asshole. Sadly, the assholes have free rein over our eyes and ears right now, and I suspect they’ll use it to their full advantage this upcoming week texting out dumb, unworkable solutions to problems they probably caused. Embody Venus in Aries and yell at them about it.
In addition to spouting crazy theories, we ourselves may be prone to rash decisions as a way to forcefully upend areas of our lives, likely the places causing us distress or frustration. We run into trouble when we make major decisions under duress, however, and Uranian chaos is not always going to be positive chaos. If friends or family are saying, “What the fuck?!” in response to some of your wrecking ball strategies, it might behoove you to slow down and wait for reactive emotions to subside before, say, blowing up your apartment and playing deceased in order to skirt federal taxes. Not that I’ve considered such a thing.
A Tarot Snapshot…
On Monday, 2.3, the Queen of Pentacles challenged us to overcome restriction with good habits, generosity and nurturing skills. Peach agate accompanied this motherly card and reminded us to heal ourselves - in both body and mind - to improve our material situation, which…ugh, FINE.
Tuesday, 2.4 continued the theme of familial support via the Ten of Cups. We can always find strength in existing relationships, as long as we are not too proud or emotionally volatile to appreciate them, which is where our soothing sodalite crystal can help. Blue crystals are naturally calming, and they help lower the emotional stakes in family discussions and interpersonal arguments.
The Seven of Cups usually shows up to tell us our standards are unrealistic and we’re veering toward delusional entitlement, or worse, maudlin, unhelpful despair, which was exactly the message on Wednesday, 2.5. Since we are vacillating between extremes, moonstone helps calm our ego and can remind us to balance expectations with reality.
Thursday, 2.6 trapped us beneath the spilled Two of Bottles reversed, indicating a break in some important emotional connection. Either someone isn’t listening to a necessary message, or we are shaping an emotional plea too crudely. Amazonite can soften harsh speech, harmonizing the way our intentions or feelings are spoken to others, perhaps signaling that we must always try for kindness in delivery.
Justice is an amorphous, subjective concept, but she came to us on Friday, 2.7 to remind us to never let up on our pursuit of equality and fairness. Labradorite reveals hidden intentions by attuning our perceptions, so we might start to notice unspoken truths about who gets justice in our lives and who does not.
Saturday, 2.8, is asking us to consider our own leadership with a pull of the Six of Wands. The moon also enters Cancer today, doubling down on Mars energy and making people a little moody and irascible. Do we need to give so much power to these intense reactions when we have them, or can we buck up and become inspirational to those around us? An accompanying granite reinforces a general need for strength and grounding, as opposed to being at the mercy of our inconstant feelings. It’s possible that YOU are the leader you’ve been waiting for.
The Nine of Cups reversed is a card that tells us we’ve had too much. on Sunday, 2.9 - too much ease, too much sadness, or maybe just too many emotions, period. We have overwhelmed ourselves to the point of paralysis, which is typical of Pisces, the zodiac sign with which this card aligns. A crystal draw of granite, two days in a row no less, is indicative of a need to realign with our own strength and focus on the practical. Our worries about what could happen might be hindering our responses to what is already reality, and that serves no one. This is granite’s way of saying, “Buck up, buttercup. Just because the world’s gone insane doesn’t mean we need to follow it.”
You’re amazing. Thank you for this. 💜