Mars sextile Saturn in Aries · Mercury ℞ approaching Saturn in Aries

The headline today is Mars sextile Saturn, just separating by half a degree, with Saturn received by Mars in its own sign of Aries. This is the kind of aspect I like more than most writers seem to — a benign gesture between two malefics, with Mars holding the door open for Saturn because Saturn is a guest in his house. Saturn is in fall here, so the reception matters more than usual: it gives a weakened Saturn somewhere to stand. What you get is disciplined action, or action that consents to structure. Not glamorous, but it holds.

Complicating this: Mercury retrograde applying to square Saturn, still two degrees out but closing over the next ten days. The Mars-Saturn sextile is the easy part of the week; the Mercury-Saturn square is the part you're walking into. Expect a document, a conversation, or a decision from earlier in the month to come back for a second look, and expect Saturn to be less forgiving in the square than he was in the sextile. Mercury under the beams doesn't help — his thinking is a little cooked.

Moon in Libra all day, in the Horn mansion, which is one of the mansions traditionally good for beginnings and for planting. She's opposed Saturn a couple of hours ago and trined Mars, so the day's emotional weather is already carrying the Mars-Saturn signature down to ground level. Waxing crescent, still building.

The South Node sits exactly on Regulus, which I'd normally reach for as an omen about pride and downfall, except that with the node it reads more like a place where royal ambition is being *shed* rather than acquired — something being let go of at the collective level rather than seized.

Jupiter combust and opposite Pluto in the background; I'll note it and move on.