Sun square Uranus in Gemini · Mars approaching Saturn ℞ in Aries

The headline today is a Mars-Saturn square, applying, and I want to spend a moment on it because the reception changes what would otherwise be an ugly configuration. Saturn in Aries is in fall — brittle, forcing, easily provoked — and Mars in Cancer is likewise in fall, reactive and thin-skinned. Ordinarily two debilitated malefics squaring each other is exactly the kind of day I'd tell you to keep your temper and drive carefully. But Saturn sits in Mars's domicile; Mars receives him. That doesn't cancel the friction, it civilizes it. The argument still happens. It happens between people who owe each other something.

Around that, the Sun has just cleared its square to Uranus and Mercury is walking through the same square a day behind. Something jolted the machinery over the last forty-eight hours and the mind is still catching up — Mercury is combust, moving fast, at home in Virgo, which is a strange combination: cauterized but competent. You will think clearly about the thing you can't quite see straight. I'd trust the analysis and distrust the mood.

Venus at home in Libra is doing her own quiet work in the background, unaspected by anything urgent, which is often when she does her best. And Jupiter is closing a trine to Saturn — I mentioned Saturn was brittle; this is the aspect softening him over the coming week and a half, so read the Mars-Saturn square as the sharper edge of a larger settling.

The Moon is full in Pisces in the Encampment mansion, a mansion for shelter and fortification, which is a peculiar pairing with a Piscean full Moon — the walls are being built out of water. And Regulus sits on the South Node: something royal is being released, or should be. Pride is the exit tax.