Astrological Insights: February 17 - 23, 2025
Hello Pisces Season + Goodbye Mars Retrograde
Here are some insights about the opportunities and challenges that this week’s astrology may offer us collectively. If you’re looking to access personalized insights to help you navigate the now, I’d love to do a Stellar Guidance Session or Stellar Constellations Session with you. (And if you’re in the Seattle area, we can meet in person for your session over the couple of weeks.)
On Tuesday, we swim into Pisces season, a four-week period in which we could find ourselves floating in the ocean of deep emotions, drifting off into dream spaces, and feeling pulled by the tides of longing.
For more on the archetypes inherently embodied within the sign of Pisces, we can look to its symbol. Following is a portion of what I wrote about it in my book, Astrology: An In Focus Workbook.
Pisces’ symbol—two fish tied together yet swimming in opposite directions—tells us a lot about this sign. In it, we see the challenge and yet the promise of integrating the material and spiritual worlds. It also reflects the mutability inherent in this water sign, one that has chameleon-like properties and is readily able to go with the flow. Reflecting this, it exceptionally adaptable and yet sometimes can lose its shape and experience blurred boundaries. As the last sign of the zodiac, Pisces both embraces the qualities of all the other eleven signs that preceded it and is called to transcend them. This reflects not only Pisces affinity for wholeness, unity, and compassionate understanding but also its spiritual orientation.
The strong feeling orientation that this week brings also stems from two other stellar occurrences: Neptune uniting with the North Node and Mars shifting direct in Cancer.
The Neptune and North Node union is an energetic that’s been streaming through for the last several weeks, initiated earlier this month when Venus danced with them. Around that time, through co-facilitating a family constellations workshop with Rotger Heilmeier, in which we gave reverence to Neptune, another layer of understanding about this planet emerged from our shared experiences.
What I attuned to was how sometimes unclarity is just the “medicine” we need to have a deeper and more wholistic sense of clarity eventually emerge. That when we are confused and things don’t have the distinction that we expect them to have that often by sitting in this space for a bit, we actually ended up seeing shapes and structures that were impossible to perceive if everything seemed neat/tidy and obvious from the start. As such, be with any haziness that emerges and try to feel your way in and through it, seeing how perceptions that appear more subtle than concrete may actually attune you to deeper wisdom and knowing.
Finally, there’s a big movement that occurs this week with Mars shifting direct, ending the retrograde cycle it’s been in since December 6. As I’ve shared previously, when a planet is stationing, about to begin or end its retrograde period, its archetypes and energetics seem quite loud in the collective. As such, this also lends a strong sense of activation, energization, and expression of desire to this and early next week.
Because of its placement in Cancer, a sign associated with emotions as well as an instinctive protective force, we may find that we are more apt to be emotionally sensitive, moved into action by strong feelings, whether those of joy, hurt, grief, delight, or any other. Given Cancer’s connections we could witness battle lines drawn by those who are marshalled to fight to protect their family, tribe, home, and even homeland/nation.
It's a powerful time to be mindful of what galvanizes, motivates, and even triggers you. What makes you angry? What has you feel provoked? What does frustration feel like?
While there’s always the potential that a situation arises in which we truly need to defend ourselves, if you feel stirred into battle, be as conscious as possible as to whether an action needs to be taken at the moment or whether doing so is just a learned reflex. What we may be accessing this week are precious lessons on what we desire and how to move in the direction of it when the time is more more aligned rather than having it fuel us into an action in the very moment that we’d later regret.
Remember that while Mars will begin moving forward, it will do so slowly. So rushing out of the gate to accomplish something with full force may not necessarily be aligned with this moment. Let the awareness you’ve collected over the past two-plus months furnish you with a more holistic understanding of what your next moves should and should not be, when the time is soon right to make them.
All my very best,
Stephanie
Astrological Highlights
February 18: Sun enters Pisces
February 20: Mercury/Jupiter Square
February 22: Neptune/North Node Conjunction
February 23: Mercury/Mars Trine; Mars Stations Direct
All days reflect Eastern Standard Time (- 5 hours GMT)
Illustrations: Resri Yuniaz, Riswan Ratta, and Getty Images, all via Unsplash
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