Mars Retrograde In Late Scorpio: A Call to Action From the Deepest Reaches of the Soul

Action planet Mars, moving retrograde, re-enters its own sign of Scorpio on May 27 (until August 2), for an inky-potent dip back into the sign of hidden context, including a direct station on June 29 at 23 degrees. 

During Mars' dip back into Scorpio, we will move back over the emotional, psychological, and energetic wakes of past actions/trajectories while also becoming aware of areas of emotional or energetic over-extension.

If we've been giving more than we're receiving or putting up with eroding bullshit of any kind, Mars re-entering late Scorpio may require a trimming of the fat.

Let go of the non-essentials. This includes issues, dynamics, and even people that take up a burdensome amount of emotional and psychological space.

This may seem a little ruthless, but the ruthlessness of Mars in Scorpio is required for survival now. Scorpio is a sign Mars rules, after all. It knows the territory. It knows the score. Yes, Mars in Scorpio is a little ruthless.

But when you're being sucked dry by surreptitious hangers-on who use your energy, talents, or skills without due return, credit, or compensation, ruthless is what you need to be.

When you're being sucked into the drama or problems of others, leaving you at an energetic shortfall, ruthless is what you need to be. 

When you're being lied to, poisoned, abused, or manipulated - as we are on Planet Earth by those who falsely claim to be our leaders - ruthless is what you need to be.

Maintain rock solid boundaries and refuse to put up with nonsense. At the very least, don’t willingly put up with it.
 
Mars in Scorpio is a battling placement, but the battle is going on in the hidden realms. Our intuition is the guide here, helping us manoeuvre through the dark. Every intuitive twinge tells us something important about the true reality of the situations in which we find ourselves and how best to navigate them. 


This is an excerpt from the article, "Mars Retrograde In Late Scorpio: A Call to Action From the Deepest Reaches of the Soul." It is available in its entirety to Willow's Web Astrology patrons, or it can be purchased by email money transfer or at PayPal for $5.75. 

More information about the current Mars retrograde can be found in the February 12, 2016 patron article: "Mars Retrograde 2016: A Re-Direction of Passions."

If you regularly find this blog valuable, consider becoming a Willow's Web Astrology patron. Patronage supports the work being done at WWA and helps to ensure its continuance. Patrons receive full articles to their email inboxes that appear only as excerpts on the blog. Patrons are also privy to YouTube video updates and other goodies.   

Mutable Madness!

The Sun slipped into Gemini this morning and immediately we move to a Full Moon conjunct Mars retrograde tonight.

(The Full Moon is exact tomorrow, May 21, at 3:14 p.m. CST at 1 degree Sagittarius.)

This is the first of two Full Moons in Sagittarius - one at 1 degree on May 21, one at 29 degrees on June 20 - that will illuminate the wisdom (or the folly) of our actions, goals, and trajectories up to this point.

These book-end Sagittarius Full Moons ripen the faith, the understanding, and the sage wisdom we've been gathering - sometimes via the School of Hard Knocks - since Saturn first entered Sagittarius in December 2014. Under these Full Moons, we will have opportunities to apply what we now know, producing preferred outcomes even as our emotional cups runneth over...

The Sun moved into the mutable sign of the twins just ahead of ruling planet Mercury stationing direct at 14 degrees Taurus on May 22 (7:20 a.m.), as well.

This indicates some relieving "completion energy" for this Full Moon weekend and that, as of the start of the upcoming week, the show is officially on the road.

We've gained some new perspective and accomplished a whole lot under Grand Earth Trine aspects this spring that involved stationing Jupiter in Virgo as well as the North Node in Virgo.

Let's just put it this way: with Jupiter stationing direct in Virgo May 9, there was a lot (Jupiter) of work to do (Virgo). Add the personal planets transiting work horse Taurus, and spring 2016 has been a bit of an endurance test to complete all the things we had to complete.

For all intents and purposes, though, as the Sun moves into social butterfly Gemini, as we experience the first of two Sagittarius Full Moons, and as communication planet Mercury goes direct, we've accomplished much of what we needed to accomplish - via sustained effort, endurance, stubbornness, and maybe even a touch of brute force.

Now, as the Sun gets settled in Gemini (conjunct asteroid Vesta) and we experience the Mercury direct station, the circulation, communication, and connection wheels are being greased. Necessary information and perspective are rolling in. Mental tensions start to ease a little as we move through the last stretch of May. The things that have been stuck, fixed, cemented onto our minds during the Mercury retrograde through Taurus (April 28 - May 22) start to shift, ease, dissipate, spread out a little. As Mercury picks up speed, these seemingly fixed mental stresses start to resolve themselves, and we start to reap the rewards of our long haul through the sign of the farmer.

At times this spring, we may not have felt we could do it on our own. But we did. We persevered. And now we find ourselves on a new - or at least a more secure - foundation.

The Sun's ingress of Gemini, followed almost immediately by the Full Moon in Sagittarius, also throws us head-long into a highly mutable (changeable, transitional, fluid) span of time.

The Gemini Sun leads the charge - with Venus and Mercury following - into mutable Grand Cross formations that will be very active throughout the month of June.

These mutable Grand Cross formations will involve the Sun, Venus, and Mercury in Gemini, Jupiter in Virgo, Saturn in Sagittarius, and Neptune in Pisces. The bodies form four squares or two oppositions - a cross - in the mutable signs.

This combination of bodies and themes indicates that some divinely-inspired change or transition is afoot. There is some fairly grand movement coming - even in areas we had feared were lost causes.

We must stay flexible, adaptable, and cheerful as we move through this busy and transitional month of June. Like water rolling off a duck's back...

With Jupiter and the North Node transiting Virgo, we must continue with clean-up duty. We must continue rolling up our sleeves and setting things right. We must continue to create order and simplicity and health and function, no matter how many monkey wrenches the universe throws our way, no matter how many slack-asses we come across who choose, instead, to slough things off.

With Virgo, there is a right way to do things. There may be many right ways to do a thing, this is true, but there are ways that are right and proper, and there are ways that are...less than that. We aren't looking for utter perfection. (Where does that truly exist on this wacky planet?) But we are looking for correct, proper, simplified, streamlined, sensible. This is what keeps us grounded as we move through the "mutable madness."

Under these mutable Grand Cross formations, if we've worked diligently - and continue to do so - we may very well see solid progress toward some of our most precious hopes and dreams. With Jupiter and the North Node in Virgo, work is key, though. This doesn't just fall in our laps. Don't let up, don't slack off, don't let things slide - no matter how hard the Pisces South Node conjunct wounded healer Chiron is trying to pull you into the helpless chaos abyss.

Yes, there will be some siren songs, some illusions, some blind spots, and some dead ends nipping at us, tempting us to go in the wrong direction, tempting us to just give up.

With this much mutable energy in the astro atmosphere, there is a possibility of chaos, confusion, ineffectiveness, and the dissipation of physical and mental energy.

But we can outsmart it all.

We must tame these energies, riding the waves successfully as we continue to move toward our cherished goals.

Keep rocking it, keep clearing it, keep streamlining and purifying it. Keep working hard, and these aspects can carry us into some very interesting and inspiring connections as we head into summer in the northern hemisphere.

The connections we make and the networking we do this Gemini season and throughout the month of June will be "of the spirit" in many ways. Connections made, conversations engaged in, and perspectives shared can validate our faith, bringing us back to the inspiring and loving bigger picture for our own lives and for the planet at large.

Phew. We needed that.

There is certainly some stress possible with all these mutable oppositions and squares. There is some pressure here. There are some moments of being a little flustered, a little overwhelmed, maybe with too many possibilities that we must filter through and pare down.

Our faith and our spiritual perspectives may be tested here - perhaps on all sides. We may have moments when our heart drops, when it seems silly to have had faith in the good in people, in things, or in this planet at all.

These are temporary stresses, though, indicated by these transitory squares and oppositions. Stay fluid and move through it. Don't get stuck seeing things through the desolate, heart-hollowing lens of the now-dissolving astrological Piscean era.

No matter what the circumstances, there is inspiration to be had on the path that is now laid before us.

Love, relationship, money, and aesthetics planet Venus enters Gemini on May 24 (3:44 a.m.) just as Jupiter in Virgo squares Saturn in Sagittarius for the final time (exact May 26 at 6:28 a.m.). We're officially on the move in one way or another - and maybe in many ways all at the same time!

Both the Sun and Venus in Gemini will activate the mutable Grand Cross (with Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune) from June 1 - 4 as we move to a New Moon at 14 degrees Gemini on June 4 (9:00 p.m.).

The Gemini New Moon is followed by the Sun-Venus exterior conjunction at 16 degrees Gemini on June 6 (3:49 p.m.).

This conjunction of the Sun and Venus picks up some beautiful threads that began under the Venus Transits of June 2012 and June 2004. The historic Venus Transits were an especially close alignment of the Sun, Venus, and Earth whereby Venus could be seen transiting across the face of the Sun during the Sun-Venus interior conjunctions.

The Venus Transits of 2004 and 2012 occurred in mid-Gemini, which is the same area of the zodiac where the Sun and Venus will conjoin on June 6, 2016.

So again, beautiful threads are being picked up, fortuitous connections are being made, and things are being drawn together in simply magical ways, often related to the events and experiences of those Venus Transits.

To illustrate: it was under the Venus Transit of June 2004 that I first became fully immersed in the study of astrology. That immersion has certainly not let up much to this day, but I can say that I was first brought into the study and practise of astrology in an epic way, body, mind, and spirit, at that time as Venus in Gemini traversed the face of the Sun. I remember that day, and I even remember having the particular realization that a major change had just occurred for me regarding astrology under the influence of the Venus Transit. I was being communicated with by the universe at that time, and I was also learning how to communicate via the language of astrology. An entirely new intellectual framework opened to me under that Venus Transit. All Gemini themes.

During the Venus Transit of 2012, building on the themes and connecting the threads that began in 2004, I was fortunate enough to visit California thanks to a very generous offer by a fabulous lady (and reader of WWA) who lives there by the sea. Other than short trips across the border to North Dakota, that was my very first trip out of Canada. On that same trip, I met fellow astrologer Matt Savinar in person and appeared on his radio show. The show was recorded for YouTube, making it my first YouTube foray. Matt and I also organized a little get together with other local astrologers at a nearby restaurant. So that Venus Transit certainly opened up some major avenues related to short trips, communication, media, and networking (Gemini), building on the themes initiated during the 2004 Venus Transit.

Now, as the Sun and Venus move to their exterior conjunction in mid-Gemini on June 6, we have the release of the third issue of Matt Savinar's Hexagon Astrology Magazine (June 8), a magazine that has drawn a number of astrological perspectives - and astrologers - together in new and potent ways.

Publications like Hexagon are information-based, Gemini-related endeavours, and there is something quite momentous-feeling about this third issue being released under the Sun-Venus exterior conjunction in Gemini. Gemini is the third sign of the zodiac and rules the third house (communication, interaction, networks, local society). With the release of this third issue, Hexagon has officially established a new astrological society along with a new network of astrology-related connections and interactions. This is no small feat, as astrology is often quite a solitary endeavour.

Hexagon has quite literally changed astrological discourse forever, bringing together astrological writing and astrological voices that are generally considered "niche" or outside the astrological establishment, giving them a broader platform and reach. Very influential.

The influence of Sun-Venus in Gemini in mutable Grand Cross formation at the time of its release indicates that this issue of Hexagon may very well be a conduit for the divinely-inspired connections and networking I wrote about earlier. Your anarchist astro-reporter has two articles appearing in this issue of Hexagon, one on the astrology of the punk movement and one on iatrogenic (doctor-caused) illnesses, Big Pharma, and the development of the Plutonic Sociological Imagination (PSI).

Things don't always happen in such textbook ways, but check back to what was going on in your life in June 2004 and June 2012 to get the flavour of the current Sun-Venus conjunction in Gemini on June 6, 2016. As this conjunction takes place within mutable Grand Cross formation, there is something fairly major being activated. Threads are being drawn together, connections are being made, and ideas are being communicated that have quite a massive scope. This formation draws in our faith and our hopes and dreams, as well as the sustained hard work we have put in thus far.

Winged messenger planet Mercury will enter its own sign of Gemini on June 12, activating the mutable Grand Cross yet again at solstice, from June 20 - 22. Saturn Rx in Sagittarius will also be square Neptune in Pisces at that time (exact June 17 at 12 degrees). This Mercury activation occurs as the Moon grows full on the anaretic (29th) degree of Sagittarius June 20, making for a very potent solstice time.

We can expect a very busy period of time June 20 - 22 when those lovely Venusian threads are picked up and activated yet again by Mercury, providing new context, new interactions, and perhaps new societies in which to participate. Short trips and circulation within our local societies and neighbourhoods will be potent. Attending or throwing a solstice party/bonfire may prove fruitful on the networking front.

There is some very necessary cross-flow coming around solstice time as Mercury in Gemini activates the mutable Grand Cross, a new co-mingling and interplay of perspectives and information.

And all this requires a little adjustment on our parts - maybe a lot of adjustment.

Again, some degree of mental stress is to be expected (though not guaranteed). Too many options, too many choices, too many irons in the fire, perhaps. Keep participating in the creation of order (Virgo North Node). Keep working your way through it.

We find new personal context within our societies via this Mercurial activation at solstice, learning new angles and picking up new perspective about our places in the world so that we can define these places and live them precisely. 

WWA Article Featured on the Aloe Cadabra Blog

My recent article, "Saturn in Sagittarius, Dispositor Jupiter in Virgo, and Puncturing Corporate Spin on GMOs" has been featured in its entirety on the Aloe Cadabra blog. (Yep, they even included "corporate dicks.")

Organic lube ftw!

I'm an affiliate for this product (organic, aloe-based lubricant), and you can find out more about it here: www.aloecadabra.com

There is free shipping in the United States if you purchase three or more bottles.

And if you use my affiliate coupon code at the online check-out, you will receive 25% off your first purchase:  AFWillow

GMO Labeling is Not Fully Effective: Puncturing Corporate (and Activist) Spin on GMOs

Photo: Saskatchewanian

Taurus season is still in full swing with the Sun, Mercury Rx, and Venus currently in a woolly bully conjunction. Asteroid Vesta is also in late Taurus at this time. As we open out of the Taurus New Moon May 6 (16 degrees) and into the following 28-day lunar cycle, farming, ranching, agriculture, and food issues are highly pertinent.

These issues are certain to heat up even more as Ceres, the dwarf planet associated with agriculture, grains, and the fertility of the Earth, transits warrior sign Aries until July 17, triggering the Uranus-Pluto square.

Ceres in Aries squares Pluto in Capricorn on May 31 at 17 degrees of the signs. It then moves to a conjunction to Uranus at 23 degrees Aries on June 23. This creates a very potent window of time between late May and late June that involves battles (Aries) around food and agriculture (Ceres), especially as they relate to biotechnology, chemicals, and the bloated institutional spin coming from both corporations/governments and pseudo-alternative scenes like some of the big anti-GMO and organic organizations.

As a complement to my recent article, I've done a YouTube video explaining why the unintentional and unknowing contamination by genetically modified crops - especially alfalfa - has made GMO labeling only partially effective, if not almost entirely null and void:

YouTube Video: GMO Labeling is Not Fully Effective: Puncturing Corporate (and Activist) Spin on GMOs 

This video includes information about the real situation. It is the potent truth - a truth that much of the organics industry and many of the big anti-GMO organizations are not fully admitting or working with in their own messages.

Despite the rhetoric, labeling foods produced with genetically modified organisms is not fully effective. Foods can be labeled non-GMO while still including genetically modified material. The video outlines how this is happening.

The message I'm putting out has been shunted aside and sloughed off by major farming groups, government officials, and anti-GMO organizations in Canada for years now. I have been ignored by newsrooms across this country. I have had a person held up as a leader for anti-GMO discourse in Canada attempt to censor my message, telling me not to use the term "Franken-hay" because her group didn't like it. At the time that I spoke with this woman three+ years ago, she did not understand what alfalfa really was, believing it was only alfalfa sprouts, and said she had a hard time explaining to the public why they should care. This was a woman considered by many to be one of the leading voices of opposition to GMOs in Canada! After I sent her my own Stop GM Alfalfa literature, she co-opted the information and then offered a watered-down version - and a watered-down response - from her own substantial platform.

Most recently, a major Canadian anti-GMO Facebook group removed the link I posted to this video.

I share these delightful anecdotes to illustrate the ineffectiveness of the "people behind the curtains" at many of the large anti-GMO organizations.

The reality of the matter is: these groups are most often not putting the full truth out to the public. Major anti-GMO organizations have dropped the ball on GM alfalfa, and they continue to drop the ball. They are far too late to the game and continue to put forth a much weaker effort on the subject than they should, especially considering their substantial platforms and public followings. These institutions are not our leaders. Instead, they stifle, censor, and attempt to control grassroots activists like me who do not come under their umbrella. 

As long-term readers here know, I've been writing about genetically modified alfalfa and doing extensive independent activist work since it first came onto my radar screen in 2011 (writing articles for other publications and newspapers as well as for my own blog, multiple letters-to-the-editor campaigns in newspapers across Canada, writing and distributing literature, creating and distributing bumper stickers, old school protesting with poster board signs on my body, contacting provincial and federal governments, contacting newsrooms across the country, etc.). You can read past WWA articles on GM alfalfa here.

Two thousand eleven was the year genetically modified alfalfa was first approved unconditionally in the United States, amidst huge opposition.

A study done on GM alfalfa by the United States Department of Agriculture in 2005 found substantial contamination of the natural alfalfa crop by transgenic varieties. "The study surveyed 4,580 fields in California, Idaho, and Washington state where conventional alfalfa seed was being grown. About 10 per cent of fields had feral or rogue varieties, and in 27 per cent of those cases, the rogue varieties were transgenic." Source: "GM Alfalfa May Already Be in Alberta" by Alexis Kienlen and Glenn Cheater.

Despite those findings, the USDA approved GM alfalfa unconditionally in 2011. The results of that study - showing the obvious danger posed by the spread of GM alfalfa - were just released to the public in late 2015.

Frighteningly, when the study was done in 2005, only 1% of alfalfa acres in the United States were genetically modified. Today, 30% of U.S. alfalfa acres are (knowingly) genetically modified.

The only logical conclusion at this point, eleven years later, is that cross-contamination of the natural alfalfa crop in the U.S. is widespread. And as a foundation stone of the organic agriculture system, this means that organic food products produced using alfalfa cannot be guaranteed GMO-free. As alfalfa is used as livestock feed and as fertilizer for fields, this touches many, many food products.

In Canada, GM alfalfa has not been approved for commercial sale. However, it has been planted in test plots in Ontario and Quebec since at least 2014. This ensures that GM alfalfa has been released into the natural crop in Canada to at least a certain extent.

In fact, in 2012, before GM alfalfa was even being planted on Canadian soil, an Alberta farmer discovered that his alfalfa seed had been contaminated by a GM variety. The farmer applied Roundup to a failed alfalfa crop in order to kill it, discovering that about 100 plants survived the application of the potent chemical herbicide. Those plants had been genetically modified to withstand Roundup. So although the farmer did not knowingly or willingly order, purchase, or sow GM alfalfa seed, he got it anyway. One would have to be highly naive to believe that this contamination was an isolated event. Source: "GM Alfalfa May Already Be in Alberta" by Alexis Kienlen and Glenn Cheater.

This echoes the case of Percy Schmeiser, the Saskatchewan farmer who spent years battling Monsanto in court. The corporation sued Schmeiser after its GM canola plants were found contaminating his organic crop in much the same way as the GM alfalfa was discovered in Alberta.

Please educate yourselves, and speak your own message and your own mind - on any subject, not just on GMOs. Do not look to paid, institutional activists to speak for you. Do not give up your own responsibility on these issues, believing these organizations "have it covered."

From what I have seen, they do not.

From a previous article in April 2013:

"Anti-GM alfalfa rallies were held across Canada on April 9, spearheaded by the National Farmers Union and the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network.

These rallies got the issue of GM alfalfa on the public map to a certain extent, but only for a split second. Only for a minute-long news story or via a weak, poorly-researched newspaper article.

The cross-Canada rallies were a failure as far as making GM alfalfa an issue for all citizens, rather than strictly a "farm issue." They were a failure as far as catalyzing new leadership and providing a platform for new voices and new information within the anti-GMO movement.

The issue of genetic modification of our food is being funneled, in Canada, through an establishment-template communications framework called CBAN or the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network.

Under this framework, information is carefully controlled to include only the least incendiary and most widely-palatable bits. Instead of a diverse group of well-educated people speaking out on this issue across the country, media are directed to a single communications person or a small handful of carefully-vetted farmers whose livelihoods are directly affected.

...We need many voices, many perspectives being heard publicly through media. Making the issue broader, hitting people at the fridge and at the fork, is a necessity.

But what we have is a single lobbyist and a handful of farmers sending the same messages over and over again through media. These messages do not make the leap. They don't make the necessary connections among alfalfa, hay, animals, fertilizer, soil, farmers, food, supermarkets, and citizens cooking and eating their daily meals. They do not facilitate the cross-over we need as far as catalyzing the entire eating public on this issue...

We need leadership and bold, immediate, new direction in the fight against genetic contamination of our food supply, but much of this is coming from the same templates and structures we are attempting to change. Much of it plays by the rules of establishment structures.

The old protest techniques and the standard channels for protest aren't going to get the job done now. We need to go beyond them, to complement them, as well as revamp and reinvigorate them.

The vast majority of people on this planet opposes the insidious genetic modification that is going on with our food, but those voices are not gaining the traction they need. We're butting up against politically-charged and often tongue-tied communications structures - outdated, corporate, and hierarchical.

This will not do, and it will not get the job done.

We need every voice raised on this issue in an immediate, undeniable, irrefutable global cacophony, and we need to keep these voices raised. We don't need public relations flaks controlling the flow of information or watering down the messages sent to the public. We don't need figureheads - farmer or otherwise - to legitimize this issue.

We need raw, messy, real, potent, effective, and undeniable.

We need to dig and dig and dig some more, repeatedly offering our findings on a silver platter to the consuming public.

And that's not what we get from a cleansed communications network following the template of establishment communications.

We get communications figureheads controlling who can say what and when. We get "official spokespeople" who keep the issue far too narrow to be truly effective. We get people jockeying for position politically within the protest movement, with paid lobbyists motivated, above all else, to keep their jobs.

You can see the complexity of these times and the challenges with which we're faced.

All hierarchical structures are failing us, and this includes hierarchical structures within protest movements. All established structures have poisonous power dynamics inherent within them that can keep us from reaching mutual goals. Most of our established structures are about control, and this includes established communications structures.

We need to bust out of this follow-the-leader Pluto in Capricorn template, but we have to understand how far and how deep the icy fingers of the control structures really go in order to do that.

No one controls my voice. No one controls your voice. And anyone who tries is working from a pitifully outdated set of rules..."

Use the energy of this Ceres transit through Aries to speak your own mind, make your own choices, and fight your own fight for a safe and non-toxic food supply. 

Educate yourself, and puncture the corporate and institutional activist spin on GMOs.

Apply your own critical thinking skills when reading or hearing anything about GMOs, especially if it is coming from a major organization or a food corporation itself. 

We must stop the growth and spread of genetically modified alfalfa if we are to halt the contamination of our food supply.