The Beginning of the End of 'Stuckness'

3.7.10


Only so much pressure can be borne before buckling… or bursting.

Only a certain amount of internal turbulence is containable, without some sort of release… or a massive breakdown from within.

And we're only able to twiddle our thumbs mindlessly for a finite number of days, until we grab some convenient thumb-surrogate (perhaps the nearby appendage that looks suspiciously like someone else's insolent middle-finger flipping us the bird) and bitterly break it in two.

Nature does not intend us to flourish in inertia. She expects any sustained conditions of 'stuckness' to kick our survival instincts into high performance. What creature other than a navel-gazing human would react to the threat of perceived immobility by hopelessly moping, instead of fiendishly forcing a breaking-free? Hell, a raccoon will chew its own damn paw right off rather than succumb to being stuck.

Both in my recent client work and my personal life, I've witnessed example after example of folks reporting having felt 'stuck'—in job or relationship, in undesirable living situation or dire financial straits—for a while now. When I push them to specify a time-frame to the feeling, they often point to these past six months… or about as long as Mars has been lodged in Leo, where (now on his last few days of retrograde motion) he's made no directional progress in his trip around the zodiac wheel.

This I can confidently declare: We are now at the beginning of the end of this 'stuckness'. While there are some massive wild-card unknowns lying in wait amidst the clouds of fate, I am without doubt that very few of us will, within a few short months, still feel as locked in place or lodged in the mud as many lately have. The astrology just doesn't appear to allow it.

The pent-up anger so palpable these days is merely the flip-side of the energetic initiative required to bust tensions out into creative being… and both 'anger' and 'initiative' are Mars-ruled concepts. As of Wednesday (Mar 10), Mars returns to direct motion. Mars doesn't clear the shadow of his recent retrograde (that is, make it past the territory he's recently visited and onto new ground) until May 17. Over those upcoming two months, we'll experience the 'resolutions' of unfinished business I described in my last Mars-retrograde article, which essentially amount to drawing our own conclusions (whether 'well thought out' or spontaneously instinctive) about how we're going to proceed so as not to remain stuck. No circumstance, no matter how bleak-seeming, is without a 'way out'.

Venus sails into Aries today, to add further fire through supportive trine to the stationing Mars. In Aries, she sets us up to value impulsive, self-stirred activity over patiently waiting for someone else to offer permission or deliver formal invitations. Aries, pioneer and warrior alike, gets things started without too much concern for what'll happen next—and without bowing to fears about who or what will attempt to block its advance. Next week, Mercury and the Sun join Venus in Aries, for a sweltering further abundance of fiery energy.

Venus, alas, bumps up against still-squaring Saturn and Pluto this week, for what may be experienced as a rude awakening to what we're really up against. Just as our individual get-up-and-go is starting to return, we are greeted by zinging reminders of all that is unfairly stacked against us… the people or authorities we must consult before proceeding, the institutions supposedly in existence to provide support instead thwarting our development, the downbeat messages from mainstream propagandists we must tune out in order to preserve faith in ourselves. 'Rude awakenings', however, can also be seen as necessary motivators. Though a valiant battle or two may fizzle or be altogether lost in the short-term, it is far from the final battle in the larger war. Whatever transpires now, I'm firmly convinced, is part of the 'unsticking' just beginning to occur—and even if an immediate result looks suspiciously like more of the same dull dissatisfaction, it is in fact accelerating our instigating sense of 'fed-up'-ness that will lead to decisive change.

Within the month following Mars's exit from the retrograde shadow, this climactic unfolding comes on pretty quick. Uranus enters Aries on May 27, followed by Jupiter's arrival the next week, on Jun 5. These two planetary change-makers will be within five degrees of conjoining while both are still in Pisces (from early May), and form their first exact conjunction on Jun 8 in the first degree of Aries. Powerful place for a conjunction like this to occur, in that very first degree of the zodiac cycle: The symbolism screams 'dramatic new beginnings'.

Needless to say, a joined-forces Jupiter and Uranus are a far more formidable foe to the Saturn/Pluto 'unfairness factor' than little ol' Venus. And it is under their leadership that subsequent battles for individual freedom from burdensome relationships, authorities and power-structures will be fought. As I said, this war is far from over.

By the height of summer (which is just a few months away), this notion of having been stuck will probably seem a quaint echo of some long-since-out-of-mind past. Meanwhile, Jupiter and Uranus remain in conjunction through Feb 2011, ensuring that these immediate weeks ahead of fledgling 'unsticking' really are just the beginning steps of something much larger.

Further reading (from last year's transit of Venus through Aries):
More Venus-Retro Thoughts: Prophetic Whiffs (3.17.09)