It is March again.
Two years ago, the whole world shut down. I remember the high adrenalin early in the pandemic — both the intense fear and the intense reaching out for togetherness and hope. Since then, I have talked to so many of you through these surreal times as we’ve navigated collective trauma, relationship stress, care-giving burnout, and fear for the future. And now, we are arguably in a time of even greater uncertainty, and the care that was available early in the pandemic (government aid, eviction moratoriums, friends who aren’t also emotionally burnt out) is vanishing. For some of us, life has returned to something like normal. For many of us, trying to understand risk is even harder and more bitterly disappointing right now. And all of us are still holding unpacked grief — because this pandemic is not yet over. There are ways we’re all energetically still tensed up, still holding our breath, until this thing really changes. Remember this if you’re wondering why you’re not feeling happy, energetic, or excited about the future right now. We are still living through unprecedented global disruption and uncertainty. We’re finding our identities disrupted, our relationships disrupted, our future trajectories uncertain.
I’m not going to pretend these are easy times, my friends, but I’m not here to be a total downer, either. March brings some really sweet astrology. I just want to place it in our real, lived context. As the world keeps shifting, where we have power is in our capacity to be in integrity with ourselves and each other. I believe this begins from locating ourselves in our feelings, in our relationships, in our desires, and in our interconnection with the larger world. I believe this continues when we listen, when we empathize, when we expand the circle of who love a little wider.
And this month brings some potent medicine for doing just that. Specifically, this month begins with a conjunction of Venus and Mars that perfects at 0 degrees of Aquarius on March 6th.
This is a quietly beautiful transit. When Venus and Mars meet, we find it easier to reconcile boundaries and desire, affection and self-assertion, giving and receiving, active love and passive pleasure. When these two planets meet, we learn more about how to love ourselves and each other better. Our loving natures get activated. Our selfishness gets tempered. We are in better balance, and we are better able to balance our needs with the needs of our loved ones. This is welcome medicine for the current moment — our hearts are holding so much. And while this transit alone won’t cure all that ails us, it can give us the motivation to start unpacking our feelings, healing our relationships, and looking toward the future with new eyes.
This can be a romantic transit, but in Aquarius it’s less sentimental and more visionary. We want to tap into the revolutionary power of love, love as the practice of freedom as the late, brilliant, beloved bell hooks wrote. As these planets escort each other from Capricorn to Aquarius, they are teaching us how to move from the old world to the new. Their conjunction began in Capricorn — sign of the past, of tradition, of responsibility and restrictions. This month they escort each other into Aquarius, where they are free to make it up as we go along, to experiment, to liberate, and to take part in a larger collective bending the arc of history toward justice. Activists, artists, healers, ritual tenders, lovers — make the most of this time.
My books are open for readings this month, so get in touch if you want personal support and insights. For more astro details you can follow me on Instagram, join me on Patreon, and listen to my New Moon podcast The Hum. I’ll be doing some magic this month under these potent energies, and I’m lighting some candles for all of you and your beautiful hearts. May this month bring you what you need!
Aries
Align: What you want to be known for (being an incredible friend or lover, or having a killer sense of humor, or being internet famous for your nail art, etc.) with how you’re here to serve the collective. There’s something you do better than anyone else, and there are people who love you and care about the choices you make. From wherever you’re positioned, with the skills you have, map out your impact on the people you influence. That might be family members and friends, or colleagues, students, employers or employees, neighbors, children you care for, collectives you’re part of, communities you stand in solidarity with. We can get so stuck, sometimes, trying to figure out how to help — start by noticing how you are already helping.
Taurus
Align: Your deep interest in the world with what you’re here to offer the world. Find a way to make your calling (may or may not be your job) better aligned with what fascinates you. What you want to learn more about? Where could you pivot and take creative risks? What do you know in your bones that you’re ready to claim as your core expertise? This month brings such a focus on teaching and learning (whether you’re the teacher, learner, or both) and how that practice informs your bigger sense of purpose. Make more room to remember (or discover) what you love and how to do more of it.
Gemini
Align: How your capacity to witness pain (your own or others’) and move toward healing can be something you model for others. Your own courage, attentiveness, and capacity to face the hard things as your résumé for being the kind of person you’re proud of. Too often we don’t get any credit for emotionally difficult things we do — cutting ties with an abusive ex or family member, maybe, or on a more everyday level just refraining from bragging or gossiping when doing so would make someone else feel bad. Developing emotional maturity takes time and patience and you rarely get a party thrown for you. But this month is asking you to teach what you’ve learned — which is a kind of party, really. You get to say out loud where you are now and how you got there. You have permission to celebrate this.
Cancer
Align: You desire for stable, committed intimacy and the reality that even the most stable relationship will change — and keep changing. The longer you’re in it, the more changes you’ll experience. Align yourself with the continuity that underlies all this change, and with the excitement that revitalizing relationships can give you — every difficult conversation is an opportunity to know yourself and your loved one better. Give yourself permission to keep changing. Give your loved ones permission to keep revealing themselves to you in new ways. Let honesty lead you into deeper intimacy.
Leo
Align: How you’re actually feeling in your body with how you make decisions about relationship. Don’t shove down or try to hide what your body is telling you about what it’s like to talk, flirt, cuddle, or get sexy with a particular person. That’s valuable data! Listen to it! If it’s a relationship you really want to deepen into, share this information! Leo energy often fears authentic vulnerability (even though its strength and charm is in offering authentic vulnerability) so watch for how you try to play things off as chill that are not, in fact, chill. No one wins in that game. This month offers you a chance to be real with yourself and deepen into relationships that love the real you, the full you.
Virgo
Align: What feels good and what’s good for you. You have a tendency to focus a little extra on that second piece — raise your hand if you’ve eaten health food that tastes like cardboard or tried to date someone you weren’t attracted to just because they seemed like a reasonable, healthy choice for you. This month is asking you to remember that pleasure and fun need to be part of making good decisions. If you’re not loving what you’re doing, it’s not sustainable and may not even be “healthy.” Joy relieves stress. As does laughter. As do really good orgasms. We know you’re good at working hard toward what matters. Now, how can you make those efforts more enjoyable? And know when you’re done with effort for the day?
Libra
Align: Your desire for staying home all day reading novels and rearranging your house plants (“this one is telling me it doesn’t like the east-facing window”) with your need to get out and be visible as a human with a full body, legs and all. In these pandemic times, staying home and going out are both more weighted than they have been. By extension, there is so much uncertainty about whether to keep things as they are (even if they’re unfulfilling) or to take big risks. Recognize that the unfamiliarity of these times means we reach for familiar structures and routines more and more — but this month, it benefits you to stretch a little farther into the unknown. Pay attention to the excuses you tell yourself about why you should just stay where it’s comfortable — and remind yourself you can make a plan, take baby steps, and make sure you know where you’re going to land before you take any sudden leaps.
Scorpio
Align: Moments of extroverted connection with that deep pull inward. Your inner life is alive with stories, memories, unexpressed language — this month invites you to shift some of it into actual speech (or texts, fine). One fascinating thing about this is that Scorpio energy has a keen antenna for bigger themes in the collective, but they usually get tucked away as impressions and intuitive hits that get buried with all that is personal and private. In unpacking what you are feeling, what you remember, what you struggle to express, you’re also mirroring the feelings, memories and struggles of the larger world. It takes, effort, yes. Go slowly, be gentle, stay hydrated, and nap when you need to.
Sagittarius
Align: Your communication style and what you have to share with the world. This is a month of powerful connections, as well as opportunities for learning (from others and from your own experiences). How can you communicate more effectively? What do you need to know in order to make yourself heard (and understood)? Are there ways that you can improve or refine the way ideas flow through your life? Stay open to questions that don’t lead you down the rabbit hole of what you already believe. Let the world be stranger than your assumptions.
Capricorn
Align: Your ambitions with your resources. You may have a lot of energy this month, and you may also find that you burn through that energy more quickly than expected. Background stress is draining your batteries, so this may not be the time you move that mountain through sheer sweat and willpower. Remember you have friends. Remember that some projects require allies, coalitions, communities. You may always be tempted to just do the damn thing yourself, but this month wants you to remember that you can share both the work and the rewards. Admit when you’re tired — it’s not an admission of defeat, but a call toward connection.
Aquarius
Align: What you need (or think you need) with that part of your mind that’s pulling you in a totally different direction. There’s a lot happening under the surface this month, and your job is not necessarily to excavate it all but to let it show you where and how to drift. Linear, productive activity can only get you so far right now. It may be uncomfortable, but it can also be powerfully revealing. As much as possible, let your rational mind quiet down enough to listen to what the rest of you has to say.
Pisces
Align: Your ideals with your activity. It can be hard to know where you have leverage, what you can change without disrupting your own precarious balance. And yet, you have a knack for bringing your dreams into reality that you can trust. Holding the limitations of reality in one hand and the world you dream of in the other, you are the calm and clear center of this present moment. There will be a time when you know what to do, and when to act. Your assignment this month is just to practice knowing and not knowing, so that you can tell, when the time does come, that your knowing is valid.
Oof. How do you always write what I need to read?
“It takes, effort, yes. Go slowly, be gentle, stay hydrated, and nap when you need to.”
as a libra who reads many hundreds of books a year and has purchased three houseplants in the last week…this is eerily (and illuminatingly) accurate
Libra here and that east window quote is literally me during this time period