If any of you are true crime nerds, you probably know about the show “I Survived,” which features first-person accounts of the most harrowing experiences one could ever imagine.
Survivors regale us with their unbelievable stories of having fended off a serial killer with their bare hands, or survived a plane crash, or escaped a sinking car while saving everyone in it.
And they often do so with composure and grit right on the surface for all to see. They survived.
The will to survive fills us with a rare strength that sometimes comes out in the most muddied of circumstances: someone losing oxygen or bleeding out, unable to think rationally but operating on pure animal instinct for survival.
It’s that raw power that enables mothers to lift cars off trapped toddlers.
When we survive the throes of chaos, when we come out on the other side of the valley of Death’s shadow, we wind up with steel in our spine that no other experience can give us.
This week’s story presents us with an opportunity to engage with the counter, original, spare, and strange power that emerges out of desperation.
Mars finds himself this week in the sign of his dignity but at the Moon’s southern bending. The southern bending, halfway between the south and north nodes, is the point at which the Moon is at her furthest southerly latitude, 90° from either node.
Planets near the bendings carry out the Moon’s story in their own experience, as they do when they are conjoined the nodes themselves; the Moon’s story at the southernmost point of her orbit is the story of rock bottom, the worst it can get.
Yet when you’ve hit rock bottom, the only direction you can go is upward.
As Mars prepares to square the nodes and bear out this story in his body, Mercury enters the sign of her detriment and her fall, Pisces, where all rational thinking is clouded over in luminous vapor.
Mercury in Pisces has no access to the light of reason, the mountains of data he’s gathered in Gemini or analyzed in Virgo. He must learn to act on faith and instinct, something completely contrary to his toolkit.
He can do so just as powerfully as he can in either of his home bases, but the problem is that he doesn’t believe he can. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work on paper.
Remember the stories of survival: we are at a point where reason fails, and instinct takes over—and those stories don’t make sense a lot of times, either.
This week’s story culminates with Mars’ conjunction to Uranus en route to his Taurus ingress, where an adaptive crisis asks Mars to draw on the strange and wild strength that he carries in his arsenal while in Aries.
Mars will be given an opportunity to recall the steel in his spine because of the way that he has borne witness to the Moon’s story of survival amid impossible circumstances, walking by faith and not by sight.
Uranus is the trigger of triggers, and Mars’ response will call out the best in you as you engage with the impossible odds that the chaos of life’s ebb and flow throws at you. And remember, the best steel is as supple as it is strong.
Be ready to adapt at a moment’s notice and without any time to think it over; instead, open your heart and allow yourself to feel your way forward. You’ve got Jupiter in Sagittarius to help you do this all year, regardless of Mercury’s long slog through Pisces.
Remember: the following horoscopes will probably land more closely if you read them from your rising sign.
aries
The adaptive crisis bears out in your body, requiring you to feel your way into new circumstances as the echoes of challenges past cause the fire of survival to rise in your bones.
taurus
Uranus’ bolt passes unseen, but that does not mean it hasn’t struck its mark. Listen to the soft and subtle voice of silence bringing memories of past sorrows and rejoice that you have survived them.
gemini
Who are you among those with whom you keep company? Uranus’ challenge asks you to take the helm in unprecedented ways, setting the steel in your spine at work to create better fortunes for all those around you.
cancer
The challenge from your professional endeavors asks you to give voice to something that has remained close to your heart, but the time is now—sooner than anyone expected—to release that gift into the wild and allow it to take flight.
Leo
Resist the urge to escape into parts unknown when circumstance raises the specters of old legacies and family stories, who come knocking, unbidden and unwelcome; they no longer have a hold on you anymore.
virgo
Of all the signs this may hit you the hardest, for Mars for you holds sway over all that you fear. But you have conquered fear before and you will do so again as you bear witness to the rich vein of story that your life has given you as a gift-in-kind.
libra
Those closest to your heart will fear for lack, perhaps to the point of despair. Use your vision of beauty to speak of the fertile abundance that you have at your beck and call as you invoke peace beyond understanding.
Scorpio
You, like your Aries siblings, will experience the upset taking place in your body as matters of health hit home, but you’ll find that your constitution has everything it needs to ward off disease and establish itself in strength.
Sagittarius
Uranus wrangles and jangles your children, whether literal or figurative. Remember that they have everything they need to make it and ride the updraft of faith to select in your heart the best outcomes for them.
Capricorn
Social crises threaten to quench the fires of your hearth, but the flames prove all the stronger as your diligent preparation enables you to switch your systems over to autopilot. You’ve been getting ready for this for a while.
Aquarius
Raw and rugged rhetoric on your part has placed you in the position of reevaluating the role of your vocation within your professional communities, but you must remain loyal to your message even when it runs bitter, for you know it to be true.
Pisces
A sudden expenditure calls to mind former, leaner days, but you have earned the requisite monies before through trusting in the abundance that grounds all things and so shall you do again.
Soul Friend Astrology 