waterflame
a lot is going on. which is exactly what this time of year is always like! saturn entered pisces a couple of weeks ago. right before the seasonal change, mercury entered aries and venus entered taurus. the sun entered aries on the same day as the spring equinox. a day later the new moon entered aries. today, pluto entered aquarius. saturday, mars finally enters cancer. whew! what a start to the year!!
there are many things i find absolutely delicious about these transit / vibe shifts. i love venus and taurus together, i was raised by a taurus dominant lady who taught me that having access to my idea of pleasure and beauty is as fundamental and non-negotiable a need as breathing and drinking water. i try to carry a taurus-venus attitude with me no matter what transit i’m in. i love life at that level. at the level of wanting to devour it with my bare hands, sticky and messy like summer fruits, juice dripping down my chest, dirtying my clothes.
i love the sun and mercury and new moon and aries together because i love the idea of everyone being unabashedly honest and unabashedly themselves. Mars, a prolific Haitian artist and an aries, shared on their story a screenshot of a text that said “not to be an asshole but the ‘a’ in aries means something.” and that an aries has to meet their “asshole quota at least twice a day” or else they “shrivel like a plant.” is that not an aries sun’s confidence and clairty of self, mercury’s directness, and moon’s embodiment of it all nicely wrapped up? for me, as a martian ruled cancer moon and mercury with a libra mars (yes, mars in the 7H lmao!!), aries also reminds me that there’s a difference between being an asshole and being afraid of being perceived as an asshole. it reminds me that i have a choice to embrace my monstrosity (accept all of myself) as much as i have a choice to reject it. being an asshole is subjective. just like everything else. allow me to get on my 7H mars soapbox for a second: be the asshole. we can’t avoid conflict forever. i say this with cancer and libra holding my hand as much as aries. we cannot be in nourishing or balanced relationships (of all kinds) that fit us like a glove if we can’t handle the conflict that comes with being true to ourselves. there are people actually being assholes that get obscured (and get away with a lot of shit) in the proliferation of the fear of being perceived as an asshole too.
pluto in aquarius is endlessly exciting to me because i want 100% more social and interpersonal creativity to reign. i want people to get weirder and weirder and to find the pockets of life that meet their weird just how they like it. i want more people to feel it’s safe to believe it’s possible. i want more people to believe it’s possible. today, pluto enters aquarius. at first, i thought of this transit paired with saturn in pisces as the showstoppers. they’re both longer-term transits and the first big shifts that i am old enough to really observe and reflect on. saturn in pisces, for me, is the ignorance of not understanding the nature of reality. paired with pluto in aqua, i imagined how interesting people getting weirder and leaning into it could be at the same time as illuminations of the oceanic nature of time (reality) come into view. i imagined what possibilities that once felt impossible would now be seen as possible. and i wondered if that illumination would be because of how these pairings remind that anything is possible. and, excitedly, i wondered about what anythings people might create.
but, now, it makes me excited about communication. mercury paired with aries while pluto is paired with aqua is exciting because it is the possibility that more of us remember that we are undoubtedly more powerful when we communicate with one another. i’m excited for the possibilities of daily exchange of ideas and circulation of benefit. i’m excited for the possibility of more understanding that every day we have immediate effects on our environment. i’m excited for the possibility of increased mutuality. i’m excited for the possibility of increased creativity! there are innumerable ways to relate to one another, to ourselves, and to being alive; communication is one of our foremost tools to find out what those ways are and give them life.
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in my own natal path, i’ve been studying the 3H because that is where my sun is. it’s the only house that when i tried to think about what it means, i could only blank stare. i came to understand it quickly and randomly through a few reflections on the 9H being privileged over the 3H.
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everything is quite loud and exciting right now. spring is blooming, aries season reigns on more than one level, saturn is in pisces (and will be, majorly, until 2026), pluto is in aquarius for the first time in 200 years (and will be on and off until 2024, then until 2043). suddenly, this morning, i remembered: mars is also leaving gemini and entering cancer. it will only be there from march 25 to may 20. after seven months in gemini, mars journies to cancer for just over a month. it can feel easy to miss mars in cancer in the crowd.
on the equinox, i found myself reflecting that “i find spring and summer (especially) really overwhelming, meeting abundance is more strenuous than meeting austerity... but with a discipline of tranquility finally in my toolbox, i feel excited to try my luck!” the excitement i feel to try my luck is majorly inspired by my understanding of cancer and the 3H (in which the moon rejoices). so this morning, when i suddenly felt all these calls to reflect on mars in cancer, it felt clear why.
the loud and exciting are much like the peaks of the 9H. they are needed and a part of life and they can feel like the whole of life when many happen at the same time. but nothing can exist alone and there is always a bigger story at play.1 this essay by astrologer Maeg Keane beautifully illustrates just what the journey from gemini to cancer looks like.
To move into Cancer, a planet must pass the last decan of Gemini. Austin Coppock calls this last 10° of Gemini “The Executioner's Sword.” This decan marks the moment when Castor was killed (by his twin cousins, of course, twins are never far from the Twins). Pollux, in tremendous grief, offers one final division. He bargains with his father Zeus and splits his immortality between himself and his brother. To Pollux, “half of the gift [of immortality] will exceed the whole” (Ovid, 2000).
The Twins are still parted forever but with Pollux’s loving sacrifice, death mutates into life. At that moment, the Twins change the way they move. They had been on many adventures, running in so many directions, ever lateral. Now they move cyclically. While one is on Olympus, the other is in Hades. And they switch, and switch, and switch. This is the movement into Cancer.
…Planets in Cancer must feel the fish hook pulling them back to open waters, to the branching possibilities of Gemini. They still know liminality and restlessness. Yet planets in Cancer eschew the endless twinning of the Twins, feeling a duty to cultivate and care differently. They know about choosing and they know about cyclical movement. At the water’s edge, we watch the tide come in and go out, over and over, as we feel deeply, as we tend and protect each other. Cancer births, nurtures, cultivates, mourns, and desires again.
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mars in cancer is known popularly as a mars in fall. as someone with planets in fall in both my sidereal and tropical charts, i’ve found the idea of a planet being in “fall” to be a great site for playing with what is and interpreting it in deviating ways. the more i followed my curiosity, the more it became clear that what planets we define as in “fall” or in “exaltation” are a mirror of what society values at any given time.
mars in cancer is seen as mars in fall for the same reason we live in a society that privileges fire over water, masculinity over femininity, the result over the process, god over goddess, rarity over the mundane, “either-or” over “both-and.”
choice is one of cancer’s many life-creating powers. what we privilege is a choice and all choices have consequences (neutral connotation). that’s just natural law. why is the moon, a witch as much as a mother, at home in cancer? because cancer understands the power of choice. the magic of choice. choice itself is life-giving. why does Ace advise this to cancer moons in their reparenting moon series?
Reparenting Cancer Moon is not about gaslighting yourself into growing up into something that you were never meant to become. It’s not about discarding the younger versions of yourself in disgust. It’s not about becoming tough and stern. It’s about locating your sense of reality and treating yourself as the hierophant who has the power to interpret your reality. Then, it’s about making choices.
Making choices is hard. You will often please no one. You have the power to keep the collective safe in your choices but only if you are bound to no one’s fears. In order for you to make decisions, you will need to achieve a place of clarity and not fear. And fear comes so naturally to you. But clarity comes when you know your environment as well as you know yourself.
because cancer understands the power of choice. cancer understands that it is how we feel that moves us to choose. cancer understands that it is what we embody (feel about ourselves and our lives) that determines what we choose for ourselves and our lives. and cancer, when thinking about mars, understands that our individuality is always for more than just ourselves.2 this line of thought also reminds me of astrologer Avalldar once proposing that aries should exalt the moon as the moon and mars are not so unalike. aries understands responsibility. cancer understands responsibility. cancer understands that it is our feelings, our embodiment that will always precede and define our choices. it is our choices that define our freedom. it is our choices that define our world. if aries is to be yourself, then cancer is to understand yourself so that you can be yourself. this is the understanding of cancer i am moving with within the world of this newsletter.
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i decided to write this newsletter, simply because enough omens lined up that there was no reason not to answer the call. during the waxing period of the moon, i have an expectationless set of tasks that are privileged. one is simply: collecting. in my morning collection, i saw this first:
allow vulnerability to help us be more adaptable not less. aggression is for the weak but we are rewarded for making insightful edits to our overall approach. shed the inessential without regret.3
next i saw:
What if every step towards embodied liberation is a good death for the person I was before, sinking to the surface, healing the atmosphere and allowing new life to regenerate. Could I be as algae as that? Could we?
Is this what is so scary to transphobic legislators about trusting trans youth and supportive parents to lead their own evolution? Denials of life-saving healthcare to trans people of all ages disrespect all our ancestors, including the algae. They seek to legislate us into ignoring a spiritual truth: embodiment IS change. Change is life-giving. And how dare they project their fear of transformation itself on the scale of the planet and their own souls onto our sacred teachers, our true leaders, our children.4
next i was inspired to reread this essay on mars in cancer power by Ace:
Some of the greatest loves in my life are Cancer Mars people. Maybe it’s my Cancer Moon. I like the way they move, without hurry and oftentimes late. I like that they care more about how we need each other over the goal of pursuit. I like their humor because, unlike rigid and strident Mars placements, they always know how to have a laugh.
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so, what am i trying to say? i’m trying to say that mars in cancer is the perfect threshold to usher us into all of these transits because an understanding of what it means to choose is what makes the possibilities possible. mars in cancer is the perfect threshold to usher us in because in a time of too much fire, we need water. and water does not negate action but it does ask us to contemplate the actions we take. it asks us to contemplate all that leads us to understand what our intentions are at any given moment. it asks us to contemplate the consequences of our choices. especially in a time of deficient water, the choice to privilege a certain way of moving has a real effect on our environment.
and mars in cancer is the perfect threshold to usher me into these transits because i am deeply committed to my cosmological perspective which includes the Ewe (and many other West African tribes) philosophy of not hurrying, enjoying the polyrhythms of life, and maintaining a discipline of tranquility, self-guided learning, and life-long evolution. it is the perfect threshold because when thinking of pluto in aquarius and saturn in pisces, my first thought was “naturally, it is time to cut open their arteries.”
i’m remembering these quotes i wrote down from Black Performance on the Outskirts of the Left: A History of the Impossible
The Anglo-Christian education system, under which "African cosmology, religion, spirituality medicine, music, dances and plastic arts were equated with the working of the devil,” was one such institution that Nkrumah quickly sought to reorient. Upon assuming power, he quickly placed all levels of education under government control…These institutions’ mandate was fourfold: First, they were to disseminate information on African arts through research; second, they were help develop new artistic forms consistent with African traditions this they were to express "the ideas and aspirations of the people impose independence Africa"; and fourth, they were to combat the inside colonial legacy of cultural distortion and misrepresentation.
Like many intellectuals and cultural activists of the 'independence generation,’ Efua Sutherland saw herself as an African with responsibilities that included the representation and validation of indigenous thought, values, and knowledge, the fashioning of new institutions, and systems thought?
if my power is in my choice then i choose to carry forward, a la Nkrumah and Sutherland, a philosophy of not hurrying, enjoying the polyrhythms of life, and maintaining a discipline of tranquility, self-guided learning, and life-long evolution. i choose to be a waterflame. i choose to be like our algae ancestors. i choose the embodiment that i have a choice. when i think of mars in cancer being a mars in fall, i think of generations of demonizing this way of life in favor of the Western way of life that privileges fire in extreme. mars in cancer is not in fall. it is simply another way to live. another attitude of mind. and one that is still actively being suppressed.
there is a level of depth we are socialized to never perceive by way of saying the power of mars when in cancer is suppressed. that lack of depth directly translates to hopelessness and a lack of belief in the endless possibilities. cancer knows that anything is possible if you’re willing to choose. and, again, the moon and mars are not at odds in such gaping ways. they are in many ways similar and compatible. the moon and mars are both relatively quick. the moon can be as ruthless as mars, as aggressive as mars, as chaotic as mars if she so chooses. cancer is a strategist and knows how to win a battle. however, the battles cancer chooses are in the realm of water. the way cancer makes its choices is deemed unruly, inefficient, unproductive. cancer makes choices in a realm that is often unseen (read: actively hidden) and therefore not popularly understood. the way cancer communicates and understands is, currently, not the popular mode. the popular mode of the moment is to undervalue and disrespect water. if we live in a society that privileges fire over water, masculinity over femininity, the result over the process, god over goddess, rarity over the mundane, “either-or” over “both-and” then it follows that mars’ power in cancer always seems “suppressed.”
but cancer knows about choosing. cancer knows that anything is possible. cancer knows that you can choose “either-or” and you can choose “both, and.” cancer knows that these choices have consequences. cancer knows that these choices have consequences on how people feel. and cancer knows that how people feel is what moves them to act. so, cancer wants more and more people to feel like it is pleasurable and safe to be alive. if nature doesn't care if we get what we want5, cancer knows that the choice of how we experience our time as a human (individually and collectively) is up to us. cancer is a strategist, interested in people feeling at home here. mars, if anything, exalts in cancer given the current medicine society needs. and it enhances mars’ swordsmanship with its always deepening understandings of action (choice) and what it can really do.
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the TLDR is brought to you by my dad. we were chatting while i was still in the middle of writing this and he said he likes this quote by the celtics general manager that goes something like “when you think about the consequences of not doing the little things, you realize that nothing is little.”
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p.s. i am not an astrologer. i’m a layperson who loves astrology. or, if i am one, i’m a beginner astrologer studying and expanding on a hyper-specific-to-my-relationship-with-myself-and-my-relationship-with-my-destiny-based cosmological perspective. i’m informed by any and everything that crosses my path and by being alive and deeply curious about the ins and out of my daily life as a human. i deeply enjoy learning tradition but it’s my natal path to freak it my way, so that’s what i do. it would take a long time to explain my cosmology but i’d be open to explaining it in conversation, so feel welcomed to hmu if you’re curious and not moun blan. all that to say, i’m abiding by my own interpretation of astrology though there are many throughlines with established traditions aka things i don’t need to change as of yet :p
quoting Maeg Keane again because how can i not?
Aries therefore relates to leadership, responsibility, and power. A sign of Mars, Aries can sever and individuate. Aries initiates us into heat with all the vitality and burning that heat offers. But Aries is also an equinox sign of balance, of two. That part of Pisces carries through and we see it playing out in a king. Yes, the king is separate (Aries) from his people and the land, but he participates in a ritual to offer up that separateness to the goddess. The king is not a sovereign alone but is granted sovereignty in sacred connection to more than himself.
The threshold of Pisces-Aries asks: who else is your individuality for? At what altar do you offer it? What sacred relationships, human and more-than, bring renewal to your life and others?
https://www.third-sister.com/writing/threshold-pisces-to-aries
"Embracing our tenderness, there is a real opportunity for harmony. Ultimately, Nature doesn't care if we get what we want. How we collectively meet the abundance of the Season is what determines our outcome." - Scott Zook @zhenwuastrology