Hello Alex,

This week the weight gathers in a single place. In the sky, Mars is moving through the final degrees of Cancer, bearing down on your natal Mars from the exact opposite point of the chart. On 25 September this opposition comes almost fully into place, one of the tightest angles of these days. But before you can see what it is telling you, you need to remember who that natal Mars is, because it is no ordinary planet.

Your Mars rules the whole chart. Your rising sign is Aries, and Aries belongs to Mars, which sits in Capricorn, in the tenth house, in the sign of its exaltation. The planet that carries the direction of your life sits at the very top, at your most visible point, in its strongest condition. This sounds like clean, smooth power, but it is not. That Mars is not alone up there. Uranus and Neptune stand beside it in the same Capricorn cluster, and from the opposite side the Moon in Cancer looks toward it. A person made this way never has a drive of a single layer. Inside your resolve there is a sudden urge to break away, a foggy uncertainty, an emotional pull, all standing together. You are strong, but your strength is not clean. It is crowded.

Hello Alex,

Last week I asked what weighed most inside you while Mars pushed from across the chart; you said "pushing back, resisting."

I take that as it is: someone who carries Mars at the top of the chart, like you, does not retreat when pushed, they harden. This week let us look at where that hardness goes, because the sky is no longer pushing from across, but from the side.

The opposition was tightest on September 25 and is loosening. Now it is Venus's turn: Venus in Scorpio squares your Sun in Aquarius, and this is where the price of resisting gets asked, on the line between pleasure and duty.