Are you feeling the Mars Maximus? Mars is amped, on the verge of turning Direct in Gemini* and in a friendly alignment with Venus, his long-time love interest.
It’s adding an extra zing to Mercury Retrograde – cyber-fuqery, grounded flights, mail delays and more – but really, how good is your recalibration?
Granted you may not be precisely where you want to be at the moment but Mars Retro in mercurial Gemini has been magnificent for insights, pivots and fresh tactical takes.
No matter who rat-a-tat or scattered your process since October 30, it’s all come together over the last five days or so. If not, it’s converging as you read this. Any Mars Retrograde will compel an audit of tools, weaponery, defence assets, unique or easy-to-replenish resources, goals, metrics, grudges, ambitions and long-term strategies.
But when the Retrograde is in Air Gemini and it’s the longest Mars has been in that sign in nearly a century, the process is more fluid. It’s also helpfully amoral.
This is not an insult to the Tao of Gemini: I guarantee that a component of your last ten weeks has been re-assessing scenarios you’ve felt inappropriately inferior about or as if you’d done something ‘wrong.’
Now think about how difficult it is to guilt-trip a Gemini – Mars in this sign lends similar super-powers. Lithely leaping out of range if there are Vibe Vampires on the prowl, deflecting circular self-guilting loops and deploying wit or agility to evade ponderous bores.
The recent months – okay, fine – years – of ramped up Saturn-shite and fixed-sign-square fuqery made many a situation seem insurmountable. A Mars this mutable and quick-silvery is a blessing – even if the retrograde revealed some concealed animosity or made you more aware of holes in a strategy, you are about to emerge more adept and agile.
So, how is/was your Mars Retro?
*Mars is Direct on Thursday 12 at 20:56 Universal Time – see the Moon Calendar for the time in your zone.
Image: Tom Cruise – Legend
Milestones! Literal knee rehab, stopped genuflecting to the faux- learned NO. (Gem Mars rx in 7th.) Also got a fat raise! Gem Moon adult son with ADHD- crucial admin/paperwork from 10 yrs past saved and submitted- got him extra time on bar exam. Niece divorced from troublesome husband. And beloved kitty survived FiP after 84 days of tx and 84 of observation- today is anniversary of her dire diagnosis. Phew!
Exactly as you describe Mystic. Eerily so. My Gemini boss and Gemini stellium partner have been um, my teachers at this time. And boy, have I learned some things. I feel like I’ve been through a looong wash and dry cycle, but I’m clean and dry now, baby. And wiser too.
Oh yes. ‘teachers’ baha x
I felt an instant pressure release and relief when Mars went direct, the tension it caused in my 8th house was like being metaphorically on a hook and scrambling to find the ground. I am so ready to regain the momentum I had in November before my house of cards fell completely down lol. The South Node sweeping through my first house (and over my Pluto & Saturn) has unearthed some fairly traumatic past life experiences that obliterated my health, which I’m only re-emerging from now. Heavy. 2023 has already brought lessons on lessons and I’m feeling primed and ready for battle 💅
Thank you for this, this is awesome!
How funny, my multi-Gem & I (Gem Asc) went back to our hometown to visit friends & family for New Year. We visited 3 separate peeples a day on average. This was over my 1st & Gem Hub’s 5th mostly. It was a wonderful great wrapping up of the Mars Retro and I am feeling relaxed and optimistic now we have managed it and Mars is direct, so cheering!
It sounds trite/indulgent but, if I were to boil all of my Mars Retro in Gemini personal significance down into one peppermint-humbug-to-go, it would be “Life is All About having Fun. This is Serious.”
(My) personal details/ingredients irrelevant.
Signed,
Aries Sun, Merc, Chiron, Venus, South Node cj Eris, and with Mars conjunct Mc in Pisces (sq Gemini Moon). Xoo
Unfortunately I lost it with my Virgo male friend, all in a stupid text. Now no response. Everything I had bottled up, just came out. I didn’t say anything that didn’t need to be said but regrettably could have handled it so much better. Feel terrible now but worse from his inaction.
Virgo’s IMHO, can be internally calculating many petty offences and when others prick the balloon in frustration may take years if ever to recover. Frankly, life’s too short to be crackling about on egg-shells. But I am sorry for your grief!
Are you in a position to follow up. You don’t need to apologise for feeling frustrated, but if you wanted to, could convey regret at how you expressed it and leave the door open for a chat. Who knows, maybe it’s the wake up call he needed (is mars squaring his Virgo things).
Chose a real estate agent to assist me in selling my house because of her go-getter personality. However, she honed that aggression at me as the seller rather than bringing people in at the price I wanted to see. Ignored any instruction I gave, made up her own price to advertise, spoke to me like I was a four year old when I refused the ‘offers’ presented to me. Gave notice that I would be terminating our agent contract, terminated unless a legit buyer signed a contract, advised her if she wanted me to accept that price she can drop her commission instead and a contract is now going through. She became so aggressive I ended up advising that I would no longer accept her phonecalls and all future communication would be writing. Phew! This is my 5th house bought and sold and I’ve never struck an agent like it!!!! Buyers agent extraordinaire masquerading as a sellers agent for sure. And Mars has been squaring all of 7 my planets in Virgo and Pisces as well as crossing my north node/south node angels the whole damned time. That’s okay. At least it’s not Pluto opposite my moon anymore!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mars has been retrograding back and forth on my IC. Lots going on domestically, good things in my two families, and like others have posted, I am feeling that this has been “magnificent for insights, pivots and fresh tactical takes.”
Okay I NEED this Mars energy back, I’m a native Mars in Aries and everything has been SO messed up since late October. Just utter chaos and nothing getting done right. Closing on a home purchase any day now and it’s been delays and nonsense up until the end… come on Mars I need you to have my back!!
Had the most amazing ‘ohhhh, so THAT’S the lesson’ insight this week over a small physical niggle that has been recurring for literally years. I think it was down to a combination of Mars going direct in my 12th. Mega insights!
Awesome!!
As an aside, I love the picture of Tom Cruise in Legend. Not a particular fan of his, but he looks so beautiful here! 🌟
Goodness, him and Tim Curry in this movie were the stuff of my preteen fantasies.
Mars has been in my 10th. I’ve just checked the dates and the retro phase coincided with me being diagnosed with burnout. It’s been a full-on couple of years career wise and things going well in my chosen sphere (as opposed to day-job, which has been tanking) but all of it together finished me off. So I spent the retro phase making no plans (on doctor’s advice) and trying to rest. Not easy for a moon in Cap/Mars in Virgo girl.
2023 has begun with a mobility injury scuppering my health and fitness goals. Ugh. Should get the all clear to move again when Pluto enters my 6th, thank goodness.
Sounds like you really deserved some rest and “plans-free time”. Do hope things are on the mend.
Thank you, q. Hope things are good with you x
Sending you wishes for healing, recovery & strength 💚
Thank you. It’s been a huge wake-up call about not taking my 2nd-Saturn-return ageing bod for granted. x
I’m hoping that, combined with my Jupiter Gemini, this is going to bode well.
I systematically pushed down my impostor syndrome without realizing. Who the heck is this new version of me, sprouting my cv experience and standing up for myself at a new work place. “No! sorry I need Fridays off for my family.” Uranus on my natal Mars in 4th.
Mars went direct and my teenage son blew up at me less than an hour later 🙄
Lolol 😂
Ws: got my inspo back for my dissertation, successfully evaded drama and actually had some really beautiful moments with my family over the holidays, stood up for myself with bureaucratic issues
Ls: closer than ever but still struggling to let go of my Scorpio ex/stop peeking in on his life!! also got covid for the first time and I am down for the count when I need to be writing and working.
Excited for men to act normal again, esp my Aries crush <3
I had an enormous Aries crush once. Nearly annihilated me (beware The Ides of March). But on that note Aries peeps are acting out of their usual straight forward groove. I have an amped up Mars being conj Jupiter Sun and Uranus in Leo and have been gung ho on moving forward major aspects of my life but someone has had the hand brake on. I am hoping now the horse can bolt out of the gate…
Oooh that sounds like an amazing Mars placement! I hope this mars direct lets you release all that firepower!
And thank you for the affirmation that something has been up with fire people. My crush and I have been dancing around each other for a couple months, and this guy has a fire trine and an Aries sun–I’m like where is that fiery directness I’ve heard so much about sir?? lol I’m an Aqua sun/gem moon/big bad fixed pluto/venus/mars tsquare girl. I probably need to calm down!
I have found that disinterest works wonders with the Aries Sun man. Just make like he’s not the apple of your eye and he’ll come circling like a shark smelling blood lol. Hang in there.
I got 2 different black eyes from falling or dropping things on my face and was bed ridden with a cold for 2 weeks while stuck at my family’s house way past the holidays.
Even though it’s almost my entire first house (late Taurus rising) I find Gemini energy pretty weird to deal with – plus Mars retro! Communications have been baffling and men have been skittish. Can’t wait for it to turn around. In the last few weeks I finally just decided, fewer f*cks to give. Business or personal, if you’re not showing up for me, don’t make excuses or string me along. Be on your way, I’ve got other things to do, and I’ll be okay.
WoW! Same here 🙂
Strange how November is just a blur of activity. I’ve had a lot of energy to get stuff done. Lots of writing going on. Have also released people without drama… That came early in December, I think. I just don’t want to spend anymore energy with people who are seeking drama, or who are trying to gaslight me.
Lately, I’ve been speaking up to people. Not something I’m used to doing, but it feels empowering and I don’t feel guilty.
I am “paying” for the productivity with pain in my wrists and hands.
Something else is going on, too. Looking to solve long-standing problems.
But also, a lot of self-reflection and an inability to sweep things under the rug. Can’t repress anything anymore…
i’m mars ruled. i got super sick the entire month of november just as mars went retrograde. so excited for the forward movement!!
My Mars Retrograde was absolutely fire and I’m sad to see it go. I formally exited long term relationships where I was casually taken for granted, those went on for years. Made MAJOR tactical pivots with business and now finally these brand new contracts appear to be panning out majorly. Transit Mars was literally conjunct my Chiron-Lunar North Node in my 12th house throughout the retrograde.
Wow the shedding of layers is real for you Clarissa! Regeneration and healing is supercharged when Mars and Chiron meet. I had those powers a few months ago, and had similar fwd momentum. Wellll that was until Mars Rx moonwalked across my MC, then all bets where off…… some form of backward slide has basically been the whole of Dec till now 🫤🫠
I’m going to describe it as a time of subtle progress in spiritual healing. Made a conscious decision along the lines of ‘let go, let god’ , not always smooth sailing but have really felt the “sshhh .. there there” emerge where my normal reaction could be to fight/fuss/grizzle /contend (and add to stress levels when I didn’t have the capacity to take on that stress). Not so much replenish the fuel reserves as activate alternative sources.
Just realised that my description of the absence of fight power, but just going with that, echoes missdee’s comment.
Something else too. I’m trying to find the right word for it: renunciation. Emancipation. Yes It’s a 12th house transit. I decided to abstain from romance last year, a kind of sabbatical from men (heterosexuality is so banal isn’t it), on account of the continually ‘off’ choices that I make and the heartache and sheer amount of headspace occupation that this inevitably brings about.
Am permanently in awe/mystified by the more love-adept types’ ability to fling themselves back into the fray, time after time.
Anyway I’m still in the process of re-wilding my heart / psyche, but the conscious mars-retro 12th housing and previous incremental adjustments into inner freedom and peace? I think are starting to gain traction .
I am abstaining from men too – don’t have the capacity to deal with the whole thing either. I feel like the weird hormonal transition of peri-menopause does not allow for conscious, rational, sensible choices to be made in that department and i frankly just don’t have the space for it while i try to work myself out… Nevertheless, this Mars transit has been entirely in my 7th house, like some total waste of energy and opportunity! Despite that, I do feel like men are more attracted to me at the moment – perhaps because i am ignoring them and maybe they like that – or they simply cannot handle not being given automatic attention so make more of an effort to get it..? ‘The hunt’ i suppose… Or maybe this is all just my Mars energy projected outward – it certainly hasn’t been in my body..!
The only person i have liked (a Cancerian) left the country prior to the Mars shadow period. That was probably in both of ours best interests, all things considered. I do miss having a crush tho, and he was genuinely really interesting. A rare find in a small town…
One of my words is Restoration. There’s a lot that i lost over the past few years (or threw away) that i feel is in a gradual process of being restored, or needs to be.
Renunciation is a good word. Relinquish also has that same feeling. It resonates with me, being Sun-Ur-Node in 12th. There’s more of a sense of agency and determination in those words than in “releasing” or “letting go”, which still convey a sense of loss.
I don’t know if a romantic connection has to necessarily be rational or sensible, (being a mutual experience would help though so I suppose that’s rational?) but then again the outer planet transits I’m experiencing actively resist such choices anyway… But yes. And I like your classification of ‘letting go’ vs relinquish etc. Something about having more agency?
(Extreme crushes still abound. Maintaining a non-action policy for now. Hope one wanders into your path too)
I do agree with you there and nearly made the disclaimer that my past connections have never been rational or sensible either (i am entirely Neptune driven in that respect, all those 12th house planets, Neptune in the first, OOB Mars in Cancer in the 8th, nodes on the Asc/Dsc axis… it’s all energy, karma, and magnets that either repel or attract, with a default setting of single-and-happy-about-that-thank you), but there’s something different about this moment. OMG maybe i’m growing up at last, or just growing too old to deal with the fallout of the aforementioned ‘decisions’… Whatever it is, it feels like the stakes are all much higher now – or maybe that’s just the awareness that there’s less time left in life to recover from them…
But, more importantly, it’s that the hormone rollercoaster does some weeeiiird shit to your brain and body..! When you start losing estrogen you realise how much of your ‘love’ life has been dictated by it for the purpose of procreation – and without it, what actually IS the point of these crushes and obsessions – and men in general…? Who do you actually want..? Your tastes and sex drive seem to go from one extreme to the other, sometimes within a matter of minutes. One moment you want a nice soft cuddly teddy bear of a man; the next you want that guy from 365 Days (against your better judgement), and the next you just wish they’d all just piss off. So i guess that’s what i meant to say…
It was never this confusing before. I knew exactly who and what i wanted. I’m curious what i will want post-menopause… and what i can even get by then. I suppose this is much more about ageing than astrology – the post-second Saturn opposition realisation that one is not young anymore and things are suddenly quite different.
Mars is still OOB – since late October ’22 through May ’23. I feel like this everlong transit will only make sense in hindsight – when it’s back in bounds, direct, and out of Gemini. When we can contrast it with something else in order to see it for what it was. Ultimately that’s what Gemini asks of us, it just doesn’t normally take so long… Right now we’re still in the smoke & mirrors phase, seeing something that’s constructed, projected, but not tangible or real. It’s a deceit of some sort waiting to reveal itself.
This entire ramble is: Mars in Gemini Out of Bounds, only just stationed direct. Oh and opposite my Neptune… Of course 🙄
(By you/your/we i mean ‘one’, of course. Tho maybe it’s just me 😏).
I really love your comment but don’t have the capacity to reply more fully just now, Mariposa
💗 No pressure or obligation to reply Sam 😊 Sometimes i just end up writing, writing, writing because i’m too tired to go to bed… Then i wake up in the morning thinking oh god, what did i write and i must stop doing that… 😆 And also, i take any opportunity to warn women about peri-menopause because it really does change you and it isn’t talked about enough (and i wish i’d known it was coming).
Things just got super weird with Mercury stationing direct, Sun conj Pluto, and Jacinda Ardern’s resignation here. I’m reeling a bit and loitering here in the hope that Mystic does a post about it. It’s shone a spotlight on the toxic online trolling & hatred she – and many other women in public positions – has received. I hope it becomes a turning point for how we deal with that in our societies. But for now, sheltering in a safe space and chatting about astrology is my respite…
Take care out there 🌸😊
Also I just realised that Tom Petty literally sang about all the heartbroken good girls staying at home and my reaction was: “ugh gross. This is so common it’s in a fkn song from the 80s that a man wrote? FK this I’m going out” so yeah
I am a quadruple Gemini with Virgo rising where Mars is now stationary (8 deg Virgo). I have Saturn, Sun and Mercury at 11, 18 and 24 deg Gemini so yeah, I kinda felt it :).
I must say frustration with my project at work is very intense but I have had no fight / attack / dispute. I have kept a very tight reign on it and never lost faith.
Also I tried to start an archery class since the end of November 2022, but it has been impossible to set a date. Guess when I finally start it? Yes on Saturday the 14th with Mars already direct?
Oh my god! Love the imagery of archery class. Will be so apt!
well the ‘affair’ with the ahem-much older man is over, since new yrs eve.
his age really showed thru im the end, and yes i did feel embarassed abt it, like it was somehow ‘wrong’ like Mystic says above
Still,all part of life’s rich tapestry
Cannot wait for it to go forward again.
AND LOOK OUT AUSTRALIA i am coming over on the 31st to visit my Dad in Melbourne!!!
woooo hooooo goodbye rainy England
I am gonna miss my tabby girl DESPERATELY, i just can’t think abt it 🐅💕