Astro Daily: August 13, 2018

It’s a powerful new lunar month, one marked with the energy of a solar eclipse. We’re ready to start fresh and strike out in a new direction. But with Mercury and Mars Retrograde, it’s more about planning than moving forward for the next week.

As I was explaining to one of my clients this weekend, retrogrades aren’t inherently bad. They are the yin to the planet’s yang phase. Yang is active, assertive. Yin is receptive, supportive. And so when a planet is retrograde, which happens quite often, the dance of energies pulls inward. It’s necessary and reflects the natural harmony and rhythm of the universe.

The eclipses, by their nature, want to move things forward and things have certainly moved since the eclipses started on July 12. But we need to have patience. We don’t have all of the information yet. We’re still sorting and figuring things out. And it may take until after Mercury turns direct on August 19 and Mars direct on August 27 that life starts to kick into a new gear.

Speaking of Mars, the planet of action and motivation dipped back into Capricorn yesterday, the sign where it will finish its retrograde. Personally I think Mars will feel a lot more at ease in Capricorn than in Aquarius, a sign where it not only spent the last three months, but found itself in an uncomfortably wedged with Uranus and the South Node. With Mars in Capricorn again, this is a second look at the role of leadership and ambition in our lives. Do we need to step up? Get back on track?

That said, we start the week with a Virgo Moon, a moon that loves to organize and get things done. Make your to-do list, crunch the numbers, and recalibrate your plans for the week. (Maybe, powered by the new moon, you’re obsessively tidying up.) Virgo also puts health and wellness in the spotlight today, so make sure you’re tending to your body with good food, exercise, or even a doctor’s visit.

PS, if you missed my write up on the Leo New Moon solar eclipse, you can read it below.