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

The headline is Venus retrograde square Mars, barely a third of a degree past exact and already loosening. Venus in Scorpio is in her detriment, which I usually treat as a serious handicap, but Mars receives her by domicile, and that reception does real work here. It doesn't dissolve the square, it civilizes it. The friction between desire and will today has a container. Arguments that would otherwise spiral have somewhere to land, because the planet being squared is also the planet hosting the aggressor. Fights between people who actually belong to each other, in other words, rather than fights that end things.

Mars himself is busy: sextile to Uranus still in orb, and separating from an opposition to Pluto that was wider than I'd normally bother with except that Mars in Leo near Jupiter amplifies everything he touches. Expect boldness that overshoots. The Uranus sextile gives it somewhere clever to go.

The Sun in Libra is in fall, and the Moon is combust and conjunct him in the Horn mansion, which is traditionally excellent for beginnings. I want to honor the mansion, but the combust Moon complicates the picture. Horn favors planting; combustion means the seed goes in without the planter being able to see the soil. So: begin if you must, but don't expect to evaluate what you've done for several days. Earlier I said the Venus-Mars reception civilizes the square. I'll complicate that: it civilizes the behavior, not the feelings. The feelings are Scorpionic and retrograde and in detriment, and they're not getting resolved today, only expressed with slightly better manners.

Saturn in fall in Aries holds mutual reception with the fallen Sun by exaltation, two weak planets propping each other up by borrowed authority. The outer planets are doing their slow sextile-and-trine thing in the background. Not today's story.