Venus ℞ square Mars in Leo · Neptune ℞ square Lilith in Capricorn

The headline today is Venus retrograde in Scorpio squaring Mars in Leo, applying, inside a degree and a half. Venus is in detriment and moving backward through the sign of her exile; Mars is at home and receives her. That reception is the whole story of how this square plays. Without it you'd have a nasty little quarrel between desire and will, the retrograde Venus losing ground to a dignified Mars. With it, Mars holds the door open. The friction is real, but Venus has somewhere to be received, which usually means the conflict gets had rather than festering. Expect the argument that's been sitting in someone's chest to come out this week, and expect it to land on terms Mars sets.

The Sun in Libra is in fall, Saturn in Aries is in fall, and the two of them are in mutual reception by exaltation. This is one of those configurations I keep returning to because it looks worse on paper than it behaves. Each weakened planet is propping the other up by proxy. Decisions made under this pairing tend to feel bureaucratic, slow, oddly formal, but they hold.

The Moon ingressed into Libra this morning and is under the beams, barely a sliver, moving through the Chariot mansion, which is the mansion of conveyance and of grief. A thin waning Moon in the mansion of passage, joining the fallen Sun by the end of the day, is a quiet, valedictory texture under the louder Venus-Mars noise. Earlier she opposed Neptune and trined Pluto; by evening those have cleared.

Mars sextile Uranus is separating and Mars opposition Pluto is wide and separating; I'd normally give the Pluto opposition more room, but with Venus-Mars dominating and Mars received, it reads as background pressure, not event. The outer-planet trines and sextiles behind all this are doing what they've been doing for months.