Tie up loose ends, star-gazers — the astrological year is drawing to a merciful close. I don’t typically comment on politics or current events, but I find myself thoroughly exhausted by the headlines so much so that I’ve largely stopped reading them.
Maybe some of this has to do with out-of-bounds Mars in Cancer? The planet of action, drive, ambition, conflict and severing has its instruments blunted in Cancer’s watery domain. Though it enjoys some minor dignities by triplicity and term, it can nevertheless feel under siege in the security-focused sign. A heightened focus on self-preservation and maintaining carefully constructed emotional boundaries can sometimes lead it to see hostility where, perhaps, it doesn’t exist. While Mars in Cancer can be a fierce fighter, valiantly protecting principles of home and family, robbed of the strategic and surgical sharpness we might see in Scorpio, it can turn to weapons of manipulation, emotional abuse and even victim-blaming, shaming and identifying. This is always the extreme shadow-side of the sign and with Mars in a particularly extreme declination, we can sometimes see these more challenging associations magnified.
No shortage of headlines recently made me consider how much Mars’ stay in the sign of the crab reflected many of these themes. Unfortunately, we have to wait over six more weeks before Mars enters Leo, so, on that front, expect much of the same, particularly when Mars squares wounded-warrior Chiron on March 26.
On the plus side, this month will be one of renewal on some fronts. Mercury will turn retrograde in Aries, beginning a new synodic cycle with its solar conjunction on March 24, and as the Sun dips into Aries once again, we can all hope that the equinox chart has some softer placements to take some of the sharpness out of the year ahead.
On a more individual level, this may be a month of instability. As we gear up for eclipse season, some signs may feel the weight of this soli-lunar event manifest in energetic changes ranging from anxiety to exhaustion. Sleepless nights could contribute to feeling a lack of control over situations, so take extra care to look after your individual emotional, physical and mental needs, especially if, under this eclipse, the world goes a little more buggy than usual.
This said, there are many positive transits to look forward to this month, including these seven.
March 2: Sun Square Jupiter
Have you been waiting for that big break? Biding your time as the heavens move can try anyone’s patience. However, as Sol meets up with Jove in a kinetic square, this action-packed transit can carry major carpe diem energy.
Squares to benefics always have some silver lining about them and squares have just the right amount of dynamism to catalyze meaningful changes in our lives. While the Sun in Pisces may have had difficulty navigating uncharted seas, its angular aspect to Jupiter in Gemini can bring a much-needed intellectual perspective, especially if we've been up to our knees in emotional detritus.
If Jupiter brings ideas, information or connections that have that telltale horizon-opening quality, the key here may be dealing with a little overwhelm. Abundance is Jupiter’s middle name and so we can sometimes bite off more than we can chew under this signature, thinking that we need to seize every opportunity presented.
While the Sun may not be the most discriminating of celestial bodies, perhaps Saturn could lend a hand in the following days as the Sun creeps ever closer to a conjunction with Kronos. Although Saturn’s gift for discernment may be slightly diffused in Piscean realms, it may nevertheless offer us some support in structuring any ideas that flow.
March 8: Sun Trine Mars
A watery trine can cool some of the heat of these two planets making for an interesting expression of this otherwise ambitious planetary signature. Typically, this trine has go-getter written all over it. The world is our oyster and we feel as if we can conquer anything under its action-oriented gaze.
Here we could see actions moderated and the offence shift to defensive considerations. What do we need to protect and from whom?
Under this signature, we may consider our spiritual goals. Matters of ethereal, esoteric and emotional concern could be foregrounded as the trine brings a cautious Mars into the picture. Our actions may be directed toward hearth and home — perhaps not literally, but figuratively, as we search for and likely find a positive feeling of belonging under this celestial signature. For any sign that has been endeavoring to find a spiritual practice, reconnect with religious philosophies or simply shun the world’s material excesses, this may be a positive transit for rebalancing priorities and taking meaningful and rewarding actions that allow us to adjust any imbalances we may feel in our personal lives.
March 14: Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Virgo
Eclipse season, in my view, can be a mixed bag. Sometimes we can feel its effects profoundly; other times, the soli-lunar event passes without anything noteworthy occurring in the intervening period before the next eclipse pair takes place.
Much of this, I believe, has to do with time lords and the themes activated in our lives in any given year, as well as planets in the natal chart receiving conjunctions from eclipses. In my client work thus far, I’ve seen these as the two most consistent predictors of eclipse effects, though I do know that various astrologers also maintain the notion that the eclipse degrees in your chart remain sensitized to subsequent transits for the intervening six months, or that the themes the eclipse brings to the fore will always reverberate on some level.
Personally, I believe everything has to do with the radix chart and that empty houses and their rulers not activated by any time lord system could yield weaker connections to concrete events. As always, however, consider my strong opinions to be loosely held!
This said, for anyone in profection years which have hit the signs of Virgo or Pisces, or individuals with natal planets within a couple of degrees of the Sun or Moon, you may find this eclipse particularly catalytic. Look at the houses that Virgo and Pisces correspond to in your natal chart to understand the topics that may be foregrounded as a result of this eclipse.
More broadly, given that this is a Full Moon lunar eclipse, we could expect the topics of health, assimilation, analysis or organization to take centre stage. Although these sound like seemingly unimpressive topics, the importance of Mercurial earth energy in managing our lives should not be overlooked. This is the sign that can help (or hinder us from) paying the bills, balancing the budget, creating efficient domestic spaces, as well as the sign that keeps our health goals on track and our digestive systems churning. Virgoan health issues almost always have something to do with the way that we take in, absorb and eliminate food and on a metaphorical level, this same process may be mirrored in what we consume intellectually.
As a result, we could expect some difficulties in this regard. Mercury, the ruler of this eclipse is in aversion, suggesting that something more challenging may be afoot. The Moon only has minor dignity in Virgo, making this a little more of a crunchy placement. It’s a placement that, I argue, frequently evokes some degree of emotional and physical discomfort, manifesting as low-grade upsets from tummy aches to small ‘a’ anxiousness. Without its domicile and exaltation ruler offering it a helping hand, we could feel a little adrift under this eclipse, not quite sure how to steer the ship in the wake of any heady issues that could manifest.
The combust Saturn is particularly noteworthy. Its position of relative weakness under the Sun’s beams has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, any obstacles we might have encountered from the nay-saying planet could be blunted under the Sun’s strength. On the other, the obscuration of a planet typically involved in moderating, contemplating, restricting, structuring and exercising due caution can have us lose any grounding we otherwise lacked with so much water energy in the mix.
Neptune’s influence could be heightened under this configuration, especially with the weakened counterweight of much-needed pragmatism. Its dance on the last degree of Pisces could be especially portentous, suggesting that our hopes, dreams and illusions are about to be revealed. In opposition to the Moon, we could find ourselves banking on something that may or may not come to pass, or placing far too much stock in the illusions projected onto us by others. Either way, the Moon as the proxy for our bodies, our psychological and emotional selves opposed by a weakened Saturn and a volatile Neptune could cause us to get too wrapped up in myth rather than reality.
March 15: Mercury Turns Retrograde in Aries
From a practical standpoint, little needs to be said about Mercury retrogrades. As usual, social media will no doubt be awash with memes, reels, tips and pithy reflections about the technological, scheduling, travel and other perils as Hermes does the backstroke.
From a more individual astrological perspective, we may have a welcome do-over as Mercury retraces the steps it first took at the beginning of the month. Keep an eye out for any activities you may begin, any ideas you may have, or even relationships you initiate in the first days of the month; a cosmic redux is inevitable from mid-month into the first days of April. The house under the constellation of the ram in your natal chart will reveal the topical agenda that you can expect.
A few years ago when Mercury was transiting ninth Geminian house, I got an e-mail from an old grad school buddy that I hadn’t spoken to in almost fifteen years, making for a very literal confluence of significations. Astrology can sometimes be like that: we don’t need to reach for the complex delineation in some effort to demonstrate the obscure significations we know about the sign, house and planet. Often, it’s smack-you-upside-the-head literal and this could very well be how the little grey planet presents its themes this time round.
The other observable nuance to this Mercury retrograde is that its ruler is regarding it by a square in the sign of Cancer. Thus, as an added caveat to all Mercurial matters that we invariably regard with caution during this period, the position of the domicile ruler in the place of its astrological fall, out of bounds, and regarding one of its two signs by a tense, catalytic, and sometimes clash-of-the-Titans square warrants extreme care in matters relating to our speech, correspondence, and contractual matters. Even well-meaning blog posts might find a more volatile reaction from your audience, so tread lightly in this more iffy period.
March 20: Sun Enters Aries
The larger, collective tone of the astrological year is always worth examining. Although I am something of an armchair mundane astrologer, participating more as casual spectator than committed commentator, one cannot overlook this signature for the broader attitude, sentiment, and emotional baseline of society at large.
When the Sun enters Aries, it brings with it the debilitation of two of the three social planets. Both Venus and Mercury are combust and retrograde, symbolically moving towards that all-important cleansing and purifying rebirth that takes place at their cazimi. A reset is in the cards, but not just yet. We thus may see a continued occlusion and potential challenge to issues ranging from the way we individually present in the world to what we say. Under the Sun’s beams, work may be going on in the background, retracing previous gains and steps taken to powerfully amplify personal expression on myriad levels.
With Mars in a tense-sign-based square, we may see collective rhetoric take many forms around how to secure different versions of “home” — whether that’s the so-called “family unit” or the “fatherland,” the paternal overtones of the fourth astrological sign in the natural zodiac cannot be discounted. Moreover, as Mars remains out of bounds, it could see an amplification of rhetoric and a weaponization of these concepts, sometimes in a more extreme register. This, however, should not be cause for alarm insofar as I firmly believe that nature heals and the cosmos always self-corrects. Keep calm and carry on, even when things may seem bleak.
The out-of-bounds Moon in Sagittarius may be a beacon of light in the darkness. The quest for truth should be a comforting compass point, seeing the needle shift collective will towards exposing lies and inauthenticity.
March 29: New Moon Solar Eclipse in Aries
New Moons, new beginnings, and with solar eclipses these may be particularly important. As lunar eclipses can often signal some sort of karmic release, solar eclipses can bring fresh starts our way, especially when we need them most.
The Mars-ruled solar eclipse may be a more volatile one for many of us. Remember that little thing called the Big Bang? This could very well be the sentiment around any initiatory event: a catalyzing, inciting, and challenging opening salvo to a new chapter. And sometimes that’s just what we need: a good, swift kick in the pants.
With Pluto sympathetically sextiling this eclipse, there’s an opportunity for us to dig deep into the recesses of our psyche and even hopes for a much-different future to help shape how this new chapter could unfold for us. As we scan our natal charts, examining the house and any natal planets impacted by this astronomical event, we can certainly expect this to be a rougher beginning, with Venus in aversion and Jupiter only mildly helpful in a weaker, albeit mercifully redemptive sextile.
The power in this eclipse really lies in the angular relationship between the Sun and Moon and their dispositor, Mars. There’s something we can no longer tolerate in the area of our lives under the crab’s domain: something that propels us to take a fresh look at old problems and to resolve that, once and for all, we’re ready to act.
March 30: Neptune Enters Aries
Although I’ve previously shared some thoughts on Neptune’s sign change, this month we’re getting the movie-trailer version of the full-length feature down the line. Watch the cast of characters closely as this first plunge may reverberate into 2026 and beyond.
At Neptune’s ingress, both the Sun and Moon remain in Aries, which could suggest something of a necessary external and internal consonance. Is our head on the same page as our heart? And, how much commitment do the dreams we are going to dream in this new Neptune-in-Aries era demand from us? On some level, perhaps the split is no longer tolerable: our collective and individual identities can no longer stomach the separation of our social selves — the mask we wear which sometimes hides our deepest convictions — from the reality of who we are.
Without fail, the illusory side of Neptune always comes up whenever I write about it, almost like a default. And yet, how often do we really probe those illusions, testing the veracity of our perceptions? This could be as banal as what we believe others think about us, or as monumental as the trust we place in figures of seeming cult significance, whether pop culture icons or political heavyweights.
I do think on some level, Neptune in Aries will lay bare every manipulative and inauthentic smoke-and-mirror lie that we bought into during Neptune’s transit through Pisces. While I don’t mean to suggest that the mutable water sign and modern domicile of Pisces would lead us astray necessarily, I do think there’s something about the sympathetic side of the Jupiterian sign that permits us to be hoodwinked because we’re more apt to take a compassionate and understanding stance. This isn’t naivete so much as hope in humankind and in the universality of the human condition.
On an individual level, we may use this first dip as a floodlight to be shone on everything we erected over more than a decade. What myths did we buy into? What false idols did we worship? And, most importantly, what empty illusions about ourselves did we harbour which have proven bankrupt in hindsight?
Perhaps Neptune in Aries will be a moment of individual reckoning and restoration of hope and trust in ourselves. The fervour that we once gave into, whether swayed by social media influencers or the icons of our era, will hopefully be replaced by a startling reset of self-confidence and a questioning of all that we willingly capitulated to when we couldn’t see our own light.
Wishing everyone a March full of positivity, hope, and countless celestial blessings!
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If you're curious about larger trends, check out my Pluto in Aquarius video, filmed in 2022, seems particularly apt given the current climate.
Also, BIG NEWS! I’m taking the plunge and developing an eight-module intro to astrology. The best part is that I’m looking for students to beta test the material; those that sign up for the ride get to take the course for free. If you’re interested in joining the mailing list for the class once it’s ready to go, sign up here.
*DISCLAIMER: All astrological forecasts are for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY. Any decisions that you might make as a result of reading this or any other astrological blog entry are YOURS ALONE and the creator of this blog will not be held responsible! For any legal issues, see a lawyer; for medical ones, consult a physician. None of the information in this blog constitutes actionable advice from a licensed professional. Once again, this forecast is for ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY!
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