Moving slow & getting carried away
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Bullish
A First Quarter Moon brings an energetic mandate to forge ahead and transcend your comfort zone.
(That snort you just heard was from Taurus, hating that entire sentence.)
The First Quarter Moon in Taurus (Feb. 12, 2:26 pm) has the propulsive quality of a bull launched out of a chute and into a bullfighting ring. One minute the bull is loitering peacefully, munching on some grass, and the next minute a guy in a gaudy suit is shaking a red cape at him. The bull can be forgiven for getting a little bit carried away and a tad imprecise about where his horns land.
But before he can get carried away, he’s got to get moving in the first place. It’s winter Up Over, and cold, and many of us are moving slowly. It’s hibernation time. Forcing our slow-moving, bullish selves out into the world takes considerable energy and extra work, and a bit of courage as well. Being a bit patient with ourselves will make it easier to be gentler with others—and to avoid goring innocent bystanders. (Consider this an advance drill for Mars entering Taurus on Valentine’s Day; more on that later.)
“Now that he had accepted the slowness of himself, he took pleasure in the distance he covered.”
― Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
An electric car
If I were to create a set of Sabian Symbols for planetary aspects, the conjunction of Mars and Uranus (Feb. 12, 10:20 pm) would be, An electric car. And as the conjunction forms at the last degree of Aries, this is specifically a red electric car, eerily quiet and very, very fast. It’s exhilarating to cruise along a winding highway at top speed, but the faster you go, the more dangerous it gets. What happens if you hit a pothole, or a jackrabbit runs in from of your car and you instinctively swerve to avoid hitting it? Catastrophe is always near when you’re moving at high speed.
But that’s Saturn talking, I suppose. When impatient Mars comes together with unpredictable Uranus in Aries, it’s not really our job to be cautious or to look ahead to what could go wrong. Rather, we’re meant to play Butch and Sundance, poised at the edge of a crevasse with a posse in hot pursuit, and to hold our breath and jump. At least with both planets headed for Taurus, we’ll land on solid ground – which, depending on how fast we’re moving, could lead either to stability or a rude awakening.
Sundance, refusing to jump off a cliff: “I can’t swim!”
Butch (laughs hard): “Are you crazy? The fall will probably kill ya!”
Feats of strength
Mars spends Valentine’s Day moving from Aries, his home sign, to Taurus (Feb. 14, 2:51 am), where he must work a lot harder to perform his feats of strength. Here, an irresistible force meets an immovable object, and all the Mars in Aries momentum of the past couple of months (since Dec. 31, 2018) hits a proverbial brick wall.
Mars in Taurus is not without its strengths, though. It’s sexy, for one thing. (Happy Valentine’s Day.) And if you’ve been trying to accomplish something that requires patience and persistence, you’ll find it much easier with Mars in Taurus than you did while Mars was in impulsive, fast-moving Aries. It’s easier to manage your temper, too, though anger does tend to back up while Mars is in Taurus, only to explode later on at an inopportune moment. The key is to manage your anger, not to extinguish it.
“I’m in no hurry: the sun and the moon aren’t, either.
Nobody goes faster than the legs they have.
If where I want to go is far away, I’m not there in an instant.”
―
Preexisting conditions
February 17 brings two important sextile aspects – between Venus and Neptune, and between the Sun and Uranus. Sextiles, which naturally form between planets in signs with complementary qualities, indicate cooperation and fresh opportunities. When Venus and Neptune are sexile (Feb. 17, 0:44 am), the opportunity exists to let new relationships develop; and since Venus symbolizes money, there may be an opening for artistic ventures to prosper.
As odd couple Sun and Uranus are sextile (Feb. 17, 11:55 pm), try standing apart from your own and societal expectations in order to be more fully yourself. Personal identity is challenged in an exciting way when these two planets meet; there’s the sense that you know exactly who you are, and the growing awareness that you’ll have to surrender those preexisting ideas of yourself if you want to become something more.
© 2019 April Elliott Kent
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