Yesterday Mars, our planet of Action, entered the mutable air sign of Gemini where it will remain for the next seven months. The reason for this is that we will be undergoing an intense Mars retrograde cycle that begins on 10/30 and continues into the new year ahead.
Welcome to the great indecision of 2022-2023.
If you are familiar with the energies of the signs, you might know Gemini as the sign of many minds. As our mutable air sign, Gemini is concerned with the mercurial activities of thinking. Gemini as our first air sign is about the expansion of thinking – first, you explore in Aries, then you break ground and settle in in Taurus, and only then, once you have found and created a structure in your life can you start to wonder – what else is there?
(Spoiler alert – the answer is everything)
Where Gemini can flounder is that once you expand beyond your immediate needs, you will find a whole world of options that you never considered when your whole being was focused on a place to live, a place to eat, and a safe space to sleep at night. Gemini often sees so many options and they all look so exciting. Gotta collect them all – or try them all at the very least.
You can see why this energy does not combine particularly well with the drive needed to propel forward action (signified by the planet Mars). Though exploring every option available can be fun and enriching, it’s not known for getting anywhere. The biggest problem is that when Mars gets too stymied and feels immovable, his next course of action is often to get destructive. With our final Saturn-Uranus coming to a head and keeping us in a vice grip (a world aspect) and some very important midterm elections on the horizon (for us US folx), this is a bit troubling.
This message, per usual, isn’t meant to scare you – instead, it’s meant to make you aware of the greater energies descending upon us to add some context to the events that will (likely) unfold in our lives over the months ahead.
This isn’t the easy road but then again, there hasn’t been an easy road available since almost all of our planets met up in the sign of Capricorn in January of 2020. These transits that we have been undergoing for two and a half years are WHY we live in “interesting times.” We can’t make the transits go away, but through our understanding of the planets, we can learn to live with them and work through them.
The other major impact that will affect Mar’s seven-month journey through Gemini is that of our lunar nodes. It is worth noting that earlier this year, the lunar nodes switched from Gemini-Sagittarius into Taurus-Scorpio. The reason that this is noteworthy is that our North node, until recently, was in the sign of Gemini where Mars will reside now AND our South Node is now in Scorpio which is co-ruled by Mars (and Pluto). This is a bit of a double whammy – supporting the same message of the upcoming retrograde: we will have to move backward in our Marsian pursuits in some way.
Some actions, already taken, need to be reviewed and redone.
By the end of the first quarter of 2023, however this will have gone down will be mostly resolved but until then we will likely have to sit in the indecision of this all. It is going to feel uncomfortable (as indecision often does). There will be no ready or easy answers. Things may start and stall out over and over again. Expect mixed messages (Gemini is one of our “lie to me” planets) and broken promises.
The big flex during the next seven months: if you can’t rely on other people (or institutions), rely on yourself. It will be hard to get up every day and take steps to better your own life when it seems like nobody else has got your back. Do it anyways. As long as you are moving forward, no matter how slowly, you are still moving.
And, at the end of this all, note this: if you can keep moving through a Mars retrograde in Gemini, you can (truly) do anything.