Mars sextile Uranus

Mars and Uranus reach an exact sextile today, and it is the clearest fact in the sky. Mars carries ambition, frankness, a sense of freedom and the push toward new enterprise. Uranus carries sudden release: the break that comes when an arrangement can no longer hold what is inside it, and the originality that follows. A sextile joins the two by agreement rather than collision, so the urge to act and the urge to change pull in the same direction. Across these days that tends to show as quick, inventive initiative: a readiness to drop a way of doing things that has been outgrown and try another, with the energy to follow through.

The contact has been tightening since yesterday and is still applying, so it sharpens before it fades. Sepharial counts the sextile among the good aspects. He classes Mars and Uranus among the malefic planets, yet holds that they produce good effects when the aspect between them is good. Ptolemy calls the sextile harmonious because it joins signs of the same kind. It sits more noticeably for anyone with Sun, Moon or Ascendant in the early degrees of Leo or Gemini.

What makes the day interesting is where Mars has just been. Over recent days it has stood opposite Pluto, and Mercury has squared both of them. All of those contacts are now separating. Astrocábala and modern practice both read Pluto as the higher octave of Mars: assertion gone deep and sustained. The opposition set personal drive against something that would not yield. That pressure is loosening as Mars turns toward Uranus, where force finds a quicker outlet.

The opposition is still in orb, though. The counsel both lines give under Pluto still applies: do not let frustration pile up, do not give way to emotional coercion, and do not let someone else's authority quietly replace your own judgment.

Mars is also currently in contact with all three of the slow outer planets. It sextiles Uranus, trines Neptune and opposes Pluto. Those three have held their own long contacts with each other for years, as part of the generational background. A fast body touching all of them briefly makes that background specific, which is why change can feel unusually available just now.

The Moon has just passed over Jupiter in Leo. Sepharial gives Jupiter optimism, generosity and a fruitful mind, and makes it the significator of increase. He gives the Moon adaptability, love of change and a taste for adventure. He also counts the conjunction as good when it is made with a good planet such as Jupiter. The mood leans expansive and warm-hearted. The contact is separating, though, and the Moon will soon move on.

Neptune and Black Moon Lilith are squaring each other exactly, and the square is still tightening. Neptune is the principle of dissolution, the loosening of edges between one thing and another. That loosening makes compassion and imagination possible, and it also makes evasion and self-deception possible. Lilith is read as what refuses to be accommodated: the part that will not be made palatable or traded for acceptance.

The square is a discordant aspect, and here it sets blurring against refusal. If you have been holding a line, these days tend to fog the reasons for it. It becomes harder to tell whether you are standing on principle or drifting away from something you would rather not face. Readings of Lilith beyond this are divided, and we leave it there.

Mercury and Venus are closing on each other in Scorpio, a sign Pluto co-rules. Mercury is moving forward and Venus is retrograde, and the conjunction is exact. Sepharial holds that Mercury takes on the nature of the planet it is nearest to. Here that is Venus, which carries fine feeling, taste, pleasure and affection. Thought and speech take on a softer, more appreciative tone, and words about love or pleasure come more easily.

That conjunction runs alongside a tightening square from Venus to Mars, and Sepharial makes Mars the significator of strife. Where something about affection has been left unspoken, the gentle phrasing tends to meet Mars's frankness and its scorn of consequence. That contact is building, not fading.

Finally, the Sun's opposition to Saturn passed exact and is easing. Both bodies are in their fall. Ptolemy explains that each sits in the sign where the other is exalted: the Sun's heat wanes in Libra and Saturn's cold wanes in Aries. The pull between the wish to stand out and the demand for patience and limit has been real. Neither side has carried it cleanly, and it is now loosening.

While the sextile holds, pick one arrangement that has become too small for you and change it by one concrete step. Say plainly what you mean as you do it, rather than letting the softer currents blur it.