September Forecast: Knowing Is Half the Battle
September is an astrologically eventful month, and its cosmic action is a tug-of-war between forwarding momentum and a few steps back. We have the major players of 2020, Jupiter and Saturn, leaving their retrograde path to carry us through material Capricorn, and toward their paradigm-shifting conjunction in innovative Aquarius at the end of the year. At the same time, we have Mars in Aries, the planet of drive and conflict turning retrograde, looping back to revisit its harsh clashes with the outer planets in resolute Capricorn.
The astrology of August held the great radiance and optimism of Leo season to offset Mars’ intensive activity, which catalyzed new levels of confrontation in our personal lives and the world at large. We begin this month with a soulful, healing full moon in Pisces, and the purposeful activity of Virgo season, which offers the organizational focus to help us meet unfolding challenges in a tangible way. The new moon in Virgo later in the month shows us the area of life where we may purify and begin anew.
Mercury, the ruler of Virgo, is placed in its home sign, beginning the month harmoniously engaged with material concerns. Later, it shifts into Libra, where it carries conversations into the charged cardinal cross with Mars in Aries and Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto in Capricorn. Mercury’s shift catalyzes diplomatic talks and pushes for social harmony, and there is much to be held in balance.
At the same time, Venus enters fiery Leo, giving us the courage to stay heart-centered and noble in our relationships. Venus in Leo forms supportive fire trines with Chiron and Mars this month, which may help keep our connections centered in healing initiatives while the challenges of 2020 come to a head.
We are hitting the rockiest part of the path through 2020 in September, but if we endure with patience and clarity, making the most of some unlikely opportunities, we will soon be on the road to recovery.
September 1: Mercury is trine Pluto and a full moon in Pisces
September opens with a supportive earth trine between Mercury in practical Virgo and Pluto in conservational Capricorn. Mercury seeks to find the most grounded and useful paths of communication, while Pluto works on transforming material reality with a slow, profound process. In our personal lives, we can engage with emerging truths and hidden powers in a tangible, analytical way that helps us form adaptive strategies. Mercury rules over currency and commerce, and Pluto rules over profound wealth, so there may be a global shift in material and monetary resources.
On the same day, the Virgo sun and Pisces moon come into polarity, forming September’s full moon phase. This full moon in the watery, emotive, empathic sign of the two fishes highlights a culmination in meditative and receptive awareness that helps us meet the challenges of our times with compassion. The full moon in Pisces illuminates our soul work and spiritual practices, and now we may access intuition and psychic forces. Emotions will be strong and immersive, like a high oceanic tide that we can dive into, exploring inner mysteries.
September 2: Venus is opposite Saturn, and the sun is trine Uranus
Venus, the planet of love and attraction in nurturing Cancer, forms an opposition with Saturn in resolute Capricorn, challenging emotional and relational boundaries. We may have a reality check on whom and how we are nurturing, and we may have to recalibrate our giving so that it can be sustainable. Today may symbolize an endurance test on our relationships, challenging us to dig deeper into new levels of long-term commitment and responsibility. Globally, this polarity between the planet of peace and the planet of societal structure may highlight the need to adjust law and order to restore serenity.
Shortly after, the Virgo sun forms an earth trine with Uranus in Taurus, bringing perceptions and innovation into supportive harmony. The sun represents where our energy is focused, while Uranus signifies what is being disrupted and adapted. This earth trine points to our times’ material concerns and may illuminate opportunities to innovate with our resources in a productive, organized way. We may have a personal breakthrough in handling our material matters, while globally, this may represent our leaders forming grounded strategies and initiatives that are unusual but potentially effective.
September 3: Mercury is trine Saturn
Mercury, the swift messenger, is powerfully placed in its home sign of Virgo and makes a strong trine connection with Saturn in authoritative Capricorn. This trine is an extension of yesterday’s aspects and may symbolize constructive conversations around the flow of money, food, and the structure of law and order. Mercury in Virgo is analyzing and sorting, while Saturn is solidifying and fortifying, so this trine stabilizes our personal and global communications and helps direct them toward solutions. It’s a rather serious but useful and dependable aspect that presents an opportunity to take stock and get our affairs in order.
September 4: Venus is square Mars, and Mercury is sextile Venus
Venus in protective Cancer forms an edgy square aspect with Mars in reactive Aries, bringing attempts at peace into conflict with fiery impulses. Both Venus and Mars are in cardinal signs, meaning they hold their ground with equal leadership and authority. Mars may have the upper hand, however, as the planet of war is emboldened in its home sign of the warrior, and it may apply tremendous stress on Venus’ attempts to soothe and restore equanimity. Personally, this may rouse and catalyze romantic conflicts and push us to make-or-break moments in love and commitment. Globally, this clash between the planet of peace and the planet of conflict may symbolize tensions reaching a boil in matters of health, safety, and defensive forces mobilizing to assert control.
There is a saving grace today, a sextile between Mercury in articulate Virgo and Venus in nurturing Cancer. While tensions build from the Venus/Mars square, there is also a tension release from Mercury in Virgo, its most potent sign. It supports an avenue of clear communications that we can lean on to navigate the combustive cosmic weather. Mercury in Virgo helps us access a useful emotional vocabulary, which will be clarifying for us personally and collectively. Venus and Mercury are both in receptive signs, reminding us that cool heads and open hearts will prevail.
September 5 – 6: Mercury enters Libra, and Venus enters Leo
The eventful opening week of September draws to a close with two major planetary shifts. First, Mercury leaves its home sign of Virgo behind to move into diplomatic Libra. Mercury helped us sort out our material affairs in late August and early September, and it facilitated many practical conversations. Now the planet of messages and currency is drawn into the fray of the active cardinal cross, working communications from a challenging social justice perspective. Mercury in Libra seeks negotiation that restores balance and peace, but it must contend with Mars in Aries and the heavy planets in authoritative Capricorn. While Mercury in Venus’ air sign guides conversations to a higher, more objective ground, the way to peaceful agreements may be challenging to find in the short term.
The following day, Venus leaves emotive Cancer to enter passionate Leo, heating Virgo season with inspiration and bold expression. Leo is a fierce place for the planet of love to reside. It symbolizes the tremendous heart and courage needed to navigate the rocky social and economic terrain of autumn. Now that Venus is in Leo, she is out of the hard aspect with the heavy cardinal cross, offering a fiery outlet for Mars’ potent energies. This sign shift provides some freedom and liberty amidst troubled times, maybe helping us to foster new creative connections and kindle new passions.
September 9: The sun is trine Jupiter, and Mars goes retrograde
The Virgo sun forms a stabilizing earth trine with Jupiter, which is on the verge of moving direct again. This trine symbolizes energy, inspiration, and initiative applied to financial matters and questions of faith and justice. Jupiter is typically a planet of opportunity and abundance, but it has been more frugal and reserved in Capricorn this year. This frugal Jupiter placement represents in part 2020’s economic downturn, and the resourcefulness required for adapting to it. The trine from the sun illuminates opportunities for connecting to hope and optimism in a grounded, practical way, and may even point to new avenues of wealth and prosperity. These opportunities may not pay off in the short term, but personally and collectively, we can organize and plant the necessary seeds to grow the future now.
On the same day, Mars, the planet of drive and conflict, turns retrograde on its course. Retrograde motion tends to destabilize and volatilize a planet’s energies, according to that planet’s nature. Mars, already a volatile planet, becomes more so in retrograde, and when it’s in Aries, this volatility is especially challenging to harness or channel in a manageable direction. We must now lean into the earthy or more diplomatic planetary energies to give us the resources for seeing Mars through its potent retrograde passage, which ends November 13.
Meanwhile, we can expect a reactive, discordant time in certain facets of our personal lives and society. Some of this activity is necessary to express long-held frustrations, but some may spill over and cause misunderstanding and damage. It’s a fiery season that we must pass through before long-term healing and rebuilding can truly begin. This retrograde passage may be an excellent time to rework essential projects that we started in the summer, or to channel frustrations into hard work and solutions.
September 10 – 11: Mercury is opposite Chiron, and the sun is opposite Neptune
Mercury in objective Libra forms an opposition with Chiron, the asteroid of healing, in individualistic Aries. This polarity may bring deep inner wounds up to the surface in our personal and societal conversations. With Mars newly retrograde, we may be embarking on a journey that we thought was complete, but that must be revisited to pick up loose ends without rushing our recovery. We may find a way to hold our wounds in balance, with self-care and non-judgement. Globally, diplomatic conversations may be active now, meeting the deep systemic wounds of our times with justice and equality.
The following day, the sun in pragmatic Virgo is opposite Neptune in imaginative Pisces, bringing awareness and perceptions in contact with dreams, escapism, and illusion. We may be facing the ways that we’ve retreated into fantasy to cope with the challenges of our times. The Virgo sun offers clarity and structure to help us find a way of making our ideas a reality. Collectively, it’s a time to bring transcendent visions down from the ethers of imagination and into our tangible day-to-day practices. Neptune can also represent anything nebulous and elusive, and it may even point to scandals and illicit activities coming under scrutiny today.
September 12: Jupiter does direct
Jupiter, the planet of abundance and optimism, finally moves direct on its course today after four long months in retrograde. This shift in direction symbolizes that we may at last start making slow progress in financial matters, and also in issues of justice and faith. Affairs may get a bit harder before they get easier. Jupiter’s long retrograde may only have delayed the inevitable, as it’s linked to the gradual economic downturn and the recovery that must come next. The good news is that anything stuck in the mud or delayed may begin to resolve now, and hope is slowly restored as Jupiter finishes its serious work in Capricorn by December 2020.
September 14 – 15: Venus is trine Chiron, and square Uranus
In passionate and courageous Leo, Venus forms a supportive fire trine with Chiron in Aries, offering potent healing forces to our ongoing personal and collective wounds. Venus in Leo represents fierce love, the kind needed in troubled times for troubled hearts. This magnanimous trine is auspicious and productive, describing how we can reignite the passion in our romantic connections when we honestly tend to our self-care. We are then more able to love and support others who are dear to us in our lives. This effect can ripple out into society, and help us build an authentic community and peace based on honesty and accountability.
The potent fire trine may also shake things loose when Venus in Leo forms a square with Uranus in steady Taurus the following day, a square aspect that brings Venus’ fierce love into an edgy contact with Uranus’ revolutionary energies. This catalyzing square may cause upsets and surprises for us on a personal and collective level in our relationships. Since Venus and Uranus are in fixed signs, it may represent deeply entrenched forces that are hard to blend. This triggering aspect may point to how some deep patterns need to break so that new solutions can flow. To help us evolve through this transit, we can tune into the axiom that the only constant in the universe is change.
September 17: Mercury is square Jupiter, a new moon is in Virgo, and the sun is trine Saturn
Mercury in justice-minded Libra forms an amplifying square aspect with Jupiter, now direct, in formidable Capricorn. This triggering square aspect may expand conversations around material resources and how current laws are functioning. It may be that the expansive nature of this square signifies how communications are revealing that there’s more to solve than at first meets the eye, and that once these talks begin, more needs will unravel.
Shortly after that square, the moon goes dark in Virgo, forming September’s new moon phase. The new moon is an end of the last lunar cycle and a pause before the next. It’s time to draw back our energy and attention as we recharge and restore. September has already been quite eventful, drawing on our mental and bodily reserves, so this new moon is an opportunity to pause and reflect. Virgo is the sign of nature, health, and earthly fertility, so this new moon can represent a time of clearing the soil of our inner world to let new growth and intentions emerge. This new moon can also allow us to let go of any practices, habits, or perceptions that are not useful to our emotional, physical, and mental health.
September 20-23: Mercury is square Pluto and Saturn, and the sun enters Libra
Mercury in Libra continues on its swift course around the sun, forming a square aspect with Pluto in Capricorn. At the beginning of September, Mercury in Virgo formed a supportive earth trine with Pluto, which brought our conversations into constructive harmony with the topics of hidden truth and transformation. Now, the connection has shifted and has become more charged, as Mercury in diplomatic Libra tries to keep this engagement balanced and objective.
On September 22, we enter a new solar season with the sun’s ingress into Libra. This passage, where the day and night are of equal length, marks the end of summer and the entry into autumn. We enter the time of year where light becomes more scarce in the Northern Hemisphere until the winter solstice. Symbolically and practically, this is a time of harvest, when we begin gathering and taking stock of the fruits of the summer, and prepare to turn inward toward self-reflection and conservation. Libra is Venus’ air sign, an archetype of harmony, justice, and peace, and so Libra inspires us to find ways that we can compromise for everyone’s well-being. It’s also a social and communicative season, which will foster new connections and community networks that we can rely on during these intense times.
The next day, Mercury in peaceable Libra forms another square aspect, this time with Saturn in determined Capricorn. This rebuilding aspect echoes the previous square with Pluto and points to what surfaced on September 20. We wrestle in our diplomatic connections to restructure our society’s institutions and examine how they must be adapted to be more socially inclusive.
September 24-27: Mercury is opposite Mars, and enters Scorpio
Perhaps in light of, or reaction to, Mercury’s recent squares to Jupiter, Pluto, and Capricorn in authoritative Capricorn, this innermost planet now shifts into an opposition with Mars in impulsive Aries. Mercury in Libra seeks peace and serenity and must face-off with Mars, now retrograde and especially volatile in Aries. Personally and collectively, we walk a razor’s edge in our negotiations and conversations today, as we try to hold the aims of diplomacy in balance with the forces of conflict and uprising. Profund cardinal forces are activated from three sides, forming a tenuous t-square between Capricorn, Libra, and Aries, symbolizing the powers that have come to the table to face off on the most significant challenges of 2020.
While these challenges and negotiations simmer and boil, Mercury stealthily slips into secretive Scorpio. Scorpio is under the rulership of Mars in Aries, which may hint that the tone of our personal and societal conversations is shifting into darker territory. Scorpio is a fixed water sign that navigates through the shadows on x-ray vision and deep instinct, so we may have to pull back into solitude and privacy for reflecting, regrouping, and strategizing. In Scorpio, Mercury can help us access profound intuition and creativity, located in quiet reflection, meditation, and shadow work.
September 28: Venus is trine Mars, and Saturn goes direct
September begins drawing to a close, and Venus in courageous Leo ignites a potent fire trine with Mars in propulsive Aries. This trine may help offset Mars’ combative energies and redirect them into passionate and creative pursuits. In her essence, Venus continues to uphold peace and connection, and she may help harness and tame Mars’ volatile energies, both personally and collectively. In Leo, Venus may be the one planetary force that is now brave enough to contend with Mars, symbolizing that love, authenticity, and truth may be the only tools that can fully disarm conflict and uprising. This fire trine may also symbolize profound forces of renewal, initiative, and awakening, encouraging us to put our hearts on the line for what we believe in.
September 29: Mars is square Saturn.
September ends on a more dire and potentially divisive note. Mars, now retrograde in individualistic Aries, doubles back to form its second square with Saturn in formidable Capricorn. This square aspect echoes back to issues stirred up when Mars in Aries made its first square with Saturn on August 24. Mars represents reactivity, defensiveness, and military forces, while Saturn represents law, order, limitations, and societal structure. Both planets are in authoritative cardinal signs, and both are also in their home signs of absolute power. They will face off again today from equally unyielding positions, this time while Mars is in reverse, and as Saturn moves direct.
Saturn is in a “superior” position, meaning that it has a zodiacal advantage over Mars in Aries. This likely symbolizes the application of law and order to suppress and contain Mars’ volatile activity, which may present a passage of enormous friction and stress for us on a personal global level. The good news about this second pass is that we are now already halfway through the worst of what Mars and Saturn may kick up this year, with only one more square between them to endure. The tricky news is that we’re entering an intense period, and we can best prepare for it by knowing ahead of time so that we won’t be blindsided or unaware. Knowing is half the battle, and this aspect will help us all grow and become more resilient in the long term.
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