Transits

The god of war is entering the sign of peace and balance on July 3. It’s easy to understand why this pairing might be a detrimental match. Mars likes to tangle — and in a very direct fashion. Libra prefers to keep things nice, and avoids nasty confrontations. Mars likes to make things happen pronto, and Libra prefers to stall while carefully weighing out every decision. Mars adores action, and Libra tends to be passive.

Hence, this pairing is often associated with passive-aggressive maneuvers, frustration and repressed anger. Sadly, passive-aggression often leads to internalizing the anger, which then leads to reactive-formation: i.e. imagining that everyone hates you. This is just to give you a sense of how challenging the combo is, and to explain why it may feel more uncomfortable than usual to be in our anger — let alone express it directly.

The planet of beauty, love and relationships goes into her rare retrograde state (approximately once every twenty months for right around the famous 40 day trial period) on 15 May in the “double your pleasure” sign of Gemini. The sign of the Twins is known for all kinds of duality, bipolarity, changeability and other mercurial tricks. It is also a sign of extreme intelligence when the higher octave of the constellation is developed. The lower level reveals more of the “all over the map” A.D.D. side of The Twins. Gemini is also known as the archetype of the Lovers in Tarot constellating life lessons around integrating the masculine and feminine sides of our psyche. So when the goddess of beauty and love expresses herself through this airy, dual and mental realm you can imagine there will be plenty of back-and-forth confusion in the relationship department while our minds attempt to sort out thoughts, notions, concepts and words that may be in complete contradiction to our heart. Good luck. Can you embrace the inherent paradox, contradiction and oppositions that your relationships bring in order to expand your consciousness and move you beyond “black and white” thinking? Gemini is about flexibility, variety and novel solutions so if you can apply these gifts of Gemini into your world of dating, mating and relating, you’ll reap the benefits of this powerful phase.