As Mars eases out of the grand earth trine from the first half of the week, it’s also easing out of a packed grand cross made up of minor planets in the mutable signs. Minor planets mean small and with an unusual pitch — not less meaningful. Mars is on a mission with this material, providing us a lot of information right now. In this case, we get a detailed look at the web of stories, beliefs and memories influencing our sense of love, desire and self.
In yesterday’s Daily Astrology, we considered Eros and Psyche flanking Mars in Virgo, and the insecurities and wounds regarding love that many of us carry. Mars retrograde in Virgo has been doing its work well these last few months, calling up all sorts of material for us to address. Virgo in general can be a nesting place of our insecurities and self-criticism. So you may be getting a workout – but exercising muscles makes them stronger, even if takes more effort than you’re used to. And Mars, the planet of get-up-and-go, is reminding us that we’ll only get out as much as we put into this work.
Now, one planet we didn’t mention yesterday in the Psyche-Eros conjunction in Virgo is Arachne. This is bringing the sense of interconnection right up to our noses, complete with ideas of ‘conspiracy’, ‘love as a subversive act’, and the ‘stories’ we tell ourselves about how love is or is not something we deserve. Sometimes these story lines run so deep, and are so interwoven, a visual aid is necessary to sort them out. In fact, try that: get out a piece of paper, and try mapping out the discoveries you’ve been making lately. Make it as visual as you like (symbols, icons, scenery) and draw the pathways from one false belief to another, through as many relationships as they affected, and see how far back you can trace them. Amidst all of that, where do you locate yourself? Is there room on the page for you? Or is it time to step outside the web and see what you actually are?
Let’s check in on the other side of the zodiac from the Virgo stellium. There we have Orpheus and Borasisi. Martha Lang-Wescott and Jason Schwartz note Orpheus as being about mourning or grief, longing for what is past, and grieving a missed opportunity or missed person. It is teamed up with Borasisi, Mr. ‘If I believe it, it must be true’ himself. All of us have grieved love lost at one time or another; most of us feel we’ve missed opportunities in our relationships. But have we really? Or have we been exactly where we needed to be each step of the way? Consider that Chiron and Pallas are close at hand in Pisces, opposite those Virgo planets. Chiron is asking you to question and heal some of these assumptions; Pallas suggests there are practical steps to the process.