Mars enters Leo

Mars enters Leo today, arriving at the very first degree of the sign, and it steps straight into pressure. Ptolemy calls Mars fiery by nature. It now joins a sky where fire and air hold eleven of the thirteen bodies, while earth and water hold one each. On arrival it is squaring Chiron almost exactly and moving toward an opposition with Pluto. It also sits at the stress point of several hard configurations. What that produces is drive that comes quickly and meets resistance just as quickly. Force presses on old sore places, and anyone who pushes hard tends to find something pushing back. Elsewhere the Sun makes an exact, easy trine to Uranus. The day holds real ease, but it is not where the heat is.

Start with Mars and Chiron. Chiron sits in the last degree of Aries. It has been back in that sign since mid-September, so this placement is background rather than news. Chiron marks the wound that does not close by ordinary means, and its aspects show what keeps reopening it. Mars squaring it is effort and assertion landing on exactly that tender spot. The square is already separating, so its sharpest edge is behind it and it loosens from here.

The pressure is organised, not scattered. Mercury, in the late degrees of Libra, stands opposite Chiron, with Mars at the apex of the T-square they form. The Moon, close beside Chiron and still drawing nearer, is exactly opposite Mercury. That builds a second T-square on the same apex. An opposition is a standing disagreement between two demands. The apex carries the strain of a quarrel it did not start, and here that apex is Mars, newly in Leo. Sepharial wrote that the Moon excites passions and impulses, and it is adding its weight to one side of this. Its part is brief, because it is in the final degrees of Aries and moves on within a couple of days.

In a T-square, the point opposite the apex is usually where the pressure has nowhere to land. Today that point is not empty. Pluto stands in early Aquarius, opposite Mars, and the two are drawing closer. Pluto in Aquarius is a generational condition, years long. Mars reaching it makes that long pressure briefly personal. A hard contact from Pluto to a personal planet is felt as pressure, and this one is tightening, not easing. Pluto has also been squaring Chiron for years. Mars now touches both ends of that old contact at once.

The counsel that holds under Pluto applies directly. Do not let frustration pile up unspoken. Do not give way to emotional coercion. Do not let someone else's authority quietly replace your own judgment. This sits hardest for anyone with the Sun, Moon or a personal planet in the last degrees of Aries or Libra, or the first degrees of Leo or Aquarius.

The other half of the sky runs smoothly. The Sun in Libra, Uranus in Gemini and Pluto in Aquarius form a grand trine in air, with the Sun–Uranus leg exact today. Modern practice reads Uranus as a body that does not work the way its neighbours work. The Sun's easy contact with it makes departures from the usual pattern feel natural rather than forced. Flowing contact with Pluto adds depth and staying power without crisis. The figure is mixed, though: some of its legs are loosening. A closed circuit like this also carries no pressure of its own. Nothing in it compels anyone to use what it offers, and ease that is never drawn on simply sits.

Neptune changes that. Standing opposite the Sun and sextile to the other two, it turns the triangle into a kite. That gives the ease an outlet, and it puts the Sun under demand. Neptune loosens edges: between one thing and another, between what is and what is imagined. That loosening makes both imagination and evasion possible. Sepharial associated it with complications, involved affairs and double-dealing. The Sun is also in its fall in Libra. Ptolemy placed the fall there because the Sun is passing into the lower half of the year, when the days shorten and its heat diminishes. The light behind all this ease is not at full strength. The Sun–Neptune opposition is separating, so the demand is easing. What it asks for, while it lasts, is to be clear about what is actually true before trusting how easily something seems to flow.

Neptune is also closing a square to Black Moon Lilith at the start of Capricorn. Black Moon Lilith is read as what refuses to be accommodated. Blurred edges and a refusal to be made palatable are pressing against each other.

The useful practice today is to spend the easy energy on one definite thing. If a push meets resistance, name plainly what you want rather than forcing it or swallowing it.