Mars in Gemini

Mars’ move into Gemini on Wednesday and Mercury’s conjunction with Jupiter on Thursday are this week’s highlights. But its real cat amongst the pigeons is the seemingly innocuous Moon. La Luna will instigate commotion amongst the fixed and mutable signs beginning on Tuesday night, when she slips into passionate, secretive Scorpio.

Quietly in the background, the lunar Nodes have been working their mutable magic. Last May, when all of the cardinal sign action was the center of attention, the Nodes stepped away from the fray and slipped into Gemini and Sagittarius. For the past two months, the planetary focus has been on the dogged fixed signs. On one hand, people whose charts have strong mutable sign placements have felt relieved. For Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius and Pisces, the pressure’s been off. On that notorious other hand, the role of the mutable modality is just as essential as those of its counterparts. Where the cardinals thrust and probe and the fixed resolve and sustain, mutables dissolve and prepare. Their capacity to soften is accentuated when Venus is engaged.