Mars trine Neptune

Mars in Leo reaches an exact trine with Neptune in Aries today, both in fire signs, and the contact is still building. Mars is direct assertion. Neptune loosens the boundaries between things: between self and others, and between what is and what is imagined. Joined by trine, the two let effort flow toward something larger than personal interest. That can mean work done for others, or drive that follows an ideal without needing it spelled out first. The same loosening carries Neptune's other face. Energy that moves this easily can attach itself to something not clearly seen, such as a plan resting on assumption or a cause taken on faith. And the trine does not run alone. The same Mars is in hard contact with Pluto and Mercury, so this ease sits beside real strain.

The trine and that hard contact land on the two ends of a sextile between Neptune and Pluto that has been in orb for years. That sextile is background for a generation, not news. Mars, passing through the first degrees of Leo, makes it briefly specific: it runs easily toward Neptune and straight into Pluto.

The Mars opposition to Pluto is tightening since yesterday. Astrocábala and modern practice agree that Pluto is the higher octave of Mars. Mars is assertion, and Pluto is what assertion becomes when it goes deep, stays, and stops being personal. An opposition is a standing disagreement between two demands. Here, the personal will to act in Leo meets pressure in Aquarius that is sustained, collective, and concerned with power. At full strength that tends to look like contests over who holds control, a push met by a harder push, and frustration that builds when neither side gives.

Mercury, at the start of Scorpio, squares both of them. The square to Mars is exact today and the square to Pluto is closing. Together the three form a T-square in fixed signs, with Mercury at the apex. The apex carries the strain of a quarrel it did not begin, and Mercury governs the mind, speech and dealings. So the disagreement between Mars and Pluto tends to find its address in conversation and negotiation, in what gets said and how. At full strength this means sharp words, arguments that dig in, thinking that circles a grievance, and pressure to win an exchange rather than settle it. Mercury is also in exact sextile to Black Moon Lilith, which makes words a ready channel for what refuses to be accommodated. Things left unsaid tend to find their way out.

The point opposite Mercury is not empty. Chiron stands there, in the last degree of Aries, and it closes the three into a grand cross. That corner is loosening, though. The Mercury opposition to Chiron was close yesterday and is now easing. Mars is separating from its square to Chiron, and the Pluto square to Chiron sits wide. So the T-square tightens while the cross slackens at its fourth corner. Chiron marks an area that needs attention, and the competence that grows from tending it. Today's friction can reach into older sore places, though less sharply than yesterday. While the cross holds, effort in one direction tends to disturb the other three.

Neptune is in exact square to Black Moon Lilith, closing slowly. What will not be domesticated meets the principle that blurs edges. The difficulty is telling a clear refusal from an evasion, because a stand that felt firm can go soft at the outline. Sepharial writes that Neptune brings complications and an involved state of affairs, and a square to Lilith gives that complication a stubborn edge.

Yesterday's grand trine in air among the Sun, Uranus and Pluto has dissolved. Sun trine Pluto has left orb and Sun trine Uranus is easing, and the kite built on that trine has gone with it. The easy circulation has been replaced by fixed-sign pressure.

Meanwhile the Sun's opposition to Saturn is tightening. Ptolemy places the Sun's fall in Libra and Saturn's in Aries, so each faces the other from its weakest sign. Dignity and steadiness pull against each other, and neither is at strength.

The Moon in Gemini is applying to a sextile with Saturn, having just passed Uranus. That lends the day's quick, mental cast some steadiness where it is used deliberately.

The practice while this holds is to take one thing at a time. Say one point clearly before moving to the next, and let the Mars and Neptune ease go into work that does not depend on winning. Where frustration builds, name it early rather than storing it. Where someone else's certainty presses on yours, check your own judgment before yielding to theirs.