Grumbling, Fuming, and Mental Stress As We Move Through the Week Ahead. Pace Yourselves.

We start the week on Monday morning under a Scorpio Moon conjunct Saturn, with both bodies forming a square (hard aspect) to Mars in Leo.

This is the sweet and sensitive, feminine Moon - already uncomfortable in the sign of its fall, Scorpio - in aspect to the two Bad Boy malefic planets, Mars and Saturn.

By Friday morning, the Moon is in Capricorn (the sign of its detriment), conjunct stationing (ie. very potent) Pluto, just as we head into another tense and highly-strung cardinal Grand Cross formation, exact September 14 - 19.

It's going to take a very strategic game this week to not come out emotionally shredded.

Find your emotional sustenance where you can - just don't broadcast your sources. People are going to be a little crusty, looking for a sticking point they can latch onto and pick apart. (We are in Virgo season, after all.) Though Mars in Leo may be urging us to be expressive, boisterous, fun, and generous, the square to Saturn in Scorpio indicates that even well-intentioned efforts on that front could have some karmic bite-back.

As we start the week, war drums are being beaten as the United States government and its allies attempt to manufacture consent for yet another brutal war to secure long-term oil interests, this time in Syria. The media blackout related to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan is starting to crack around the edges. The "green shoots" of economic recovery in the United States and around the world (if they ever really existed) have officially withered and died. Saturn in Scorpio requires that we keep in mind the very serious context of the times in which we are living, and you do so to your own benefit this week.

Maintaining the right tone means you will not get caught on any Saturn in Scorpio bramble bushes.

As the workweek begins this Monday morning, the mood is sombre, touchy, irritated, under-appreciated, and a little burnt out. People are not in the mood for any shenanigans or for any forced joviality, either. Emotionally, we're playing our cards close to our chests, gathering our energy to us, despite the urgings of Mars in Leo to radiate our fabulousness for all to see, to fight for our rightful attention and acclaim.

You can fight for what's rightfully yours this week. Just do it in a matter-of-fact way - no blowing your own horn, no overkill - and then withdraw from the proceedings.

If you are passed over this week and can fly under the radar, consider yourself lucky.

As was mentioned in a previous post, the Mars in Leo square to Saturn in Scorpio has been restricting our wills, our actions, and the expression of our fun-loving personalities since the beginning of September.

However, this square that has been so peeing on our Leonine parades is exact at 6:06 a.m. CST on Monday, September 9. This means, as we wake and get our Mondays underway, the discomfort, restriction, and frustration indicated by this square has reached a peak. We are dealing only with the aftermath of this aspect, the denouement, throughout the week.

This is not to say that the Mars-Saturn denouement will not be feisty, challenging, or action-packed. Its potentially pissy, frustrated themes reverberate throughout the upcoming week.

It is in our best interests to keep our big, bold personalities in check, or Saturn in Scorpio will do it for us.

Further adding to the fun is an uncomfortable quincunx between Mars in Leo and Pluto in Capricorn on Wednesday, September 11. Power issues continue to simmer within the hierarchies as they exist, as we continue the shift from a Pluto in Leo world that we all just live in (love you, Pluto in Leos!) to a stronger Pluto in Virgo-led scene.

One saving grace is communication planet Mercury, which shifts into congenial and sociable Libra on Monday morning, as well, until September 29. This does help to maintain a modicum of social decorum under all these emotionally spicy and feisty layers.

However, Mercury in Libra also moves into the cardinal Grand Cross formation by the end of the week. Lovely Libra is going to have its work cut out for it keeping the peace under these conditions.

There's some definite subtext and some underlying charge to our social interactions through the next two weeks. Honour this. Don't be phony about it. Understand that the things you say and the tones you take with people - even in brief moments of frustration - could have enduring social and professional ripple effects, with Mercury in tight-as-a-drum cardinal Grand Cross.

Love, money, and relationship planet Venus in Libra first activated the cardinal Grand Cross involving Uranus in Aries, Jupiter in Cancer, and Pluto in Capricorn at the end of August (exact August 23 - 27). This set a new tone in relationships while testing them under intense pressure. New social leadership was initiated under that configuration, particularly involving new era-oriented leadership in our personal and professional relationships.

Now, as communication and intelligence planet Mercury enters Libra and re-activates the cardinal Grand Cross September 14 - 19, we start to wrap our minds around the social, professional, familial, and interpersonal shifts underway. We're gathering information and attempting to find our own social context within these pressurized and changing circumstances. We're working to maintain social continuity and right human relations during times when those things are too often being shoved to the side as unimportant.

Relationship-ruler Venus enters the sign of its detriment, Scorpio, on September 11, indicating human relations will have their sticking points through the end of the transit October 7. The relationship planet transiting the sign of sex, death, regeneration, secrets, and emotional suppression indicates our relationships are more tricky, complicated, and complex than we would prefer. However, a trine between Venus in Scorpio and Neptune in Pisces, exact September 14, indicates that there is a whole lot we can transcend, give up to the universe, or see under a spiritually-compassionate lens on the relationship front.

The combination of the tail-end of the Mars-Saturn square, the Moon conjunct stationing Pluto in Capricorn, and the Mercury-triggered cardinal Grand Cross indicates that people could be quite fed up, past their breaking points, by weeks end. You will hear it in their tones, as the sociable Mercury in Libra convos show strain.

Big egos that are used to getting what they want with a free course could be particularly fuming, uncomfortable and perplexed as a new pecking order emerges.

Women in the workplace could also reach an "enough's enough" point, as it becomes too much to maintain the nicey-nice social façade, as well as the invisible and often unrecognized social work so often expected of females in the workplace.

This week is a bit of a minefield, though it's not impossible to navigate. Pick through carefully, and don't allow temper tantrums, shitty remarks, or desperate passive aggressiveness to throw you off course.