March and April have these two overlapping retrogrades: Venus and Mercury. Both of them are in the signs of Aries and Pisces. Pisces is also the sign that Neptune and Saturn will be leaving as both go into Aries. So the Pisces and Aries parts of the zodiac are deeply important right now. Two signs next to one another: Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac and Aries is the first. Pisces melts everything into oneness and Aries is a life-filled rebirthing of something clear. Blurry, dreamy and gentle to fiery, charging and lively. Birth is a metal act—-blood and life and energy! And we don’t know who this new child will be—the possibilities confront us with a wild energy. That’s Aries. Aries is Mars ruled. The beginning of life is a fight for survival. Mars ruled Aries prioritizes staying alive and moving forward. It’s a huge shift with all of this stuff from Pisces —-where there was melting confusion and allowing-things-to-happen-to-us. Now is the fight for life. Now is the fight of some life against other life. Something is dead, it has washed away. What remains alive and how does it survive?
What is our relationship with physical courage, virility and domination? What do we want to dominate? And why? Who dominates us? And why? Planets in Aries are trying to swing a weapon and go on a quest. When Neptune enters Aries at the end of March we start an era of Questing Aries Style. Warpath. Romanticized Warpath. Warpath without clarity—-the most dangerous kind. Swinging a sword around through the haze, not knowing who you’re surrounded by. Neptune is trying to do Neptune in Competition Land. And it is confusing. Saturn going into Aries later this year will give us a few years of Authoritarian Saturn bringing itself to War Land. It’s rough. There are, of course, great ways to see the positives of these things in individual charts. And there is a lighter side to all of this. We’ll take it moment by moment. Let’s first just look at these Mercury and Venus Retrogrades.
Venus Retrograde - March 2 (Aries) - March 26 (Back to Pisces) - April 13 (goes direct in Pisces)
Let’s start with the Venus Retrograde. We’ll get nearly two weeks of it alone before Mercury also retrogrades. This will give us an idea of the Venus Rx textures. Look at that first week, especially, some sudden reflection of your social and relationship worlds might be present.
Venus in Aries is a ready to go. She wants what she wants and she’s going to get it. She seeks pleasure in a robust and alive way. She doesn’t want to relax, she wants to go wild. When she’s invited to the Underworld, her Retrograde, she approaches it with the same sort of energy and bravery. And stupidity. She wants to run through the underworld, she’s ready to go, let’s get it done! What’s down there? She’s going to find herself hitting walls with her enthusiasm. This is not that kind of journey, this is the journey of folding inward, looking at what’s underneath. Aries so badly wants to be very very alive that the underworld can be very frightening. Bravery is confronted. Stupid decisions around relationships and social connections are revealed. Pleasures and preferences are examined—and in the case of Aries, the preferences around energy-intensive activites are re-evaluated. Do you even like how you’re spending your energy? Do you still love the things you used to love? If certain things have changed, the Venus Retrograde will help us with who we are now and what we prefer now. You get used to running in the direction of pleasure you found when you were younger—and we can see with Venus in Aries the things we may have run to in our youth—-now not quite bringing the same sort of pleasure. This is confronting. What do you want instead? How will you use that energy? It can be a wild space to be in—the in-between phase—where you realize your pleasures and preferences have changed but you don’t yet know what you want instead. Down here in the retrograde you might find some new kinds of pleasures.
Venus Retrogrades aren’t great times to start relationships. They’re in-betweens. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket right now, it’s OK if you say “maybe” even though Aries often amplifies a “maybe yes” into a huge, loud “HELL YES”. Don’t fall prey to that. There is so much to digest that putting new food in might cause gross problems.
People and relationships from the past sometimes swing around during Venus retrogrades. You might remember something from an old relationship and think about how far you’ve come. Someone might come back into your life and apologize for something or you might feel driven to apologize to someone in your past. Not in order to rekindle anything right now—but just to let them know how you feel. Acknowledging where we may have been too aggressive toward one another, where we may have behaved immaturely—-that can be something that comes up during a Venus Retrograde. Especially in Aries where we can kind of see our dumbest moves. You might be overtly flirted with by an ex in embarrassing ways. Or a forgotten pleasure of youth might strike you as something you might want to reintegrate into your life. Suddenly you’re thinking of how you played hockey when you were young and might want to try that again. Aries can be so much about youth, Venus Retrogrades have a boomerang effect. Will you catch the boomerag and choose to throw it? Will you take it and appreciate it? Will it hit you in the face? Will you never play with it again?
Even though Retrogrades are contemplative times that call on our reflection and emotional awareness, whenever something is in Aries it is also important to process this stuff physically. With vigor. With your power walk or kettlebell or sport or something with velocity. Remind your body that you’re moving forward soon and whatever is meant to stick from the past will stick once Venus goes direct and we begin running in a single direction again.
As Venus goes back into Pisces (its exaltation) in this Retrograde, it is possible there is a beautiful sadness about what has been lost, about what has changed. And the spiritual dimension of this process will be upon us. The real love we hold for our past, our memories, can be felt in a timeless way. Understanding where gentleness has been important in our lives and how we get pleasure from deep connection. I think sometimes with Venus in Pisces, there’s this delicate balance between an all-encompassing-love and an overbearing love. Pisces aims to “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” but even though love is universal, how people need to receive and give love—-is not. When we go back and forth between Aries and Pisces like this, we see the individual needs, the need for autonomy in Aries contrasted against the “all is one, love is all” deep truth of Pisces. Both things are true. And learning that we can’t just wash away individuality and escape through love—that’s an important lesson. Venus in Pisces is always a balm, though, even Retrograde. But I think we might be realizing our relationship with how much we desire to be part of the collective vs. how much we need very specific things for ourselves and our pleasure.
This might be a confronting Venus Retrograde for People Pleasers. Because you have to re-evaluate what you want and not just what your lovers, friends and relationships want. What do you actually want and need in your romantic and social relationships? Are you getting it? Do you know what it is? Use the Aries part to selfishly find out. And for the non-people-pleasers out there: be the example. Be the person who delights loudly in your discovery of pleasure. It helps others do the same. That’s what’s cool about Aries. It takes the first step so others know the ground can be traversed.
This also might be a time where bodily autonomy and reproductive rights are getting an overhaul from government. We might see a lot of conversations re-emerge about this and there might be things to actively do on behalf of bodily autonomy. Pisces thinks “all is one” but Aries knows “my body my choice”. Aries at its best really fights for everyone’s autonomy by fighting for their own.
Mercury Retrograde - March 15 (Aries) - March 27 (back into Pisces) - April 7 (goes direct in Pisces)
When Mercury is Retrograde, it is inconvenient and short circuit-y. I think this one will have an energy of Aggressive/Passive Aggressive. It starts in Aries, a Mars-ruled sign, and at its worst it can indicate nasty, clear verbal fights. Fighting with words. Needing to assert oneself with words. But retrograde—so maybe a speaking without thinking and it just doesn’t work. People just yelling, unproductive fights. Fights that won’t be resolved right now. Verbal situations where someone might be driven to “win” but there is no winning. It’s going to take more time and calmer conversations. It goes backward into Pisces (it goes back in there on March 27) where communication might be retreated from. Productive verbal fights resulted in nothing and there’s this feeling of melting backward into “I give up”—-and a bit of passive aggression instead. All Mercury wants to do is keep things going in a clear way, stay light and effective. Aggression isn’t always effective. Passive aggression is even less likely to be effective. And those are the barriers for this Mercury retrograde. It could be a feeling of going backward to an old fight. An old verbal fight kicked up to revisit. How do you deal with it now? Is it really over?
On a brighter side, going backwards can often allow us to fish out a few things we left behind. Maybe there were times you forgot to stand up for yourself, moments where you had that “Oh if I could have only just said X!” will be haunting you—-but there’s a lot to learn from those moments. Plan to be assertive about similar topics next time. Look at where you kick yourself for not saying anything and mentally prepare yourself for bravery next time. On the 27th, when it goes back into Pisces, there might be some interesting abstract processing to be done. This year has already been wild and I think when Mercury Retrogrades back into Pisces, we’ll find a gentleness and emotional digestion. There are so many things that we have mentally pushed past—there has been too much news to take on. Too many things! There may be a bit of digestion and seeking gentle conversations in the last section of this retrograde.