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The last week of August 2023 brings the movement of Libra, Uranus retrograde, and a beautiful Pisces Full Moon. It’s a week of slower movement, release, introspection, anchoring, and reflection.
Mars in Libra
In astrology, Mars is the self that lives within all of us and is dedicated to movement, action, and outward expression. It is how we exert ourselves in the world and champion our desires through determination and discipline. Mars, at its essence, is fiery, quick, and single-focused.
As the warrior planet moves into Libra on August 27, 2023 and remains there until October 12, 2023, the Mars within each of us takes on a different lens. Libra, as a zodiac sign, is diplomatic, constantly concerned with the other, and able to see the many perspectives that coexist simultaneously. It seeks balance and peace, compromise and tact.
While Mars is in Libra, we are invited to step back and review where we express our drive in life and the impact that has beyond ourselves. Mars represents being single-minded and tunnel-visioned when holding a vision and moving toward it. With Libra, however, we are all invited to explore alternative directions, outcomes, perspectives, and collaborations with others along the page that we may encounter.
Throughout these seven weeks, we are invited to explore how power and peace can coexist, how anger can be an expression of beauty and healing, how will can be expressed in a balanced and diplomatic way, and how the expression of ourselves concerns more than just ourselves. Mars wants to win. Mars in Libra wants all parties affected to win.
Uranus Retrograde
August 2023 brings our annual Uranus retrograde, which lasts until January 27, 2024. Uranus is our planet of innovation, change, and breakthrough. It is forward thinking, concerned with where we are going and what needs to break down in order for that future to come into fruition. In astrology, it is often associated with a higher mind, one that is free from the confines of the norm, the expected, the status quo, or current structures, both individually and collectively.
As Uranus begins its descent into the underworld of its retrograde, it joins a list of other planets in retrograde, including Mercury, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Chiron, Neptune, and Pluto. We are deep in retrograde season, and there is much medicine and healing to be found here.
The journey backward by Uranus recollects and revisits the major changes, breakthroughs, and transformations we have experienced in the last 12 months. When the path is clear and Uranus feels empowered, in flow, and moving forward, it pulls us into immense growth, whether we fight against it or ultimately allow it. It transforms us. It shows us what is outdated and restrictive within us—whether our beliefs, self-narrative, identity, habits, relationships, or career paths—and with that awareness, begins its work of breaking it down so that the new and aligned may begin to reveal itself.
As Uranus begins its retrograde, the forward momentum slows and we are gifted an opportunity to integrate all that we have journeyed through and how we have been changing. We are gifted the opportunity to tend to who we are now are, as opposed with being preoccupied with who we could be. We are invited to plant roots beneath us, offering ourselves the nutrients to make a home in ourselves and the current structures of our lives, especially the areas that have been going through beautiful, uncomfortable, and breakthrough-filled growth. It is an opportunity bring comfort to the areas of life that have been inviting us to expand into discomfort, and with that, expand our capacity, and our comfort zone.
Pisces Full Moon
August comes to a close with a beautiful and mystical full Moon in Pisces on August 31, 2023, synchronistically closing a month with a Moon that represents closure.
Pisces, as a zodiac sign, represents the space of oneness from which we all came, existing in the realms of pre-incarnation. It is the dissolution of boundaries, where you are I and I am you, where we are nature, the stars, and life itself. Pisces is limitless, existing beyond time and space, and wants to take us into a boundless space of love and oneness through imagination, intuition, creativity, empathy, and emotion.
As the Moon comes into her fullness embodying this esoteric sign, it invokes a certain sensitivity to what is unseen. Under this lunation, there is an attunement to the beyond, whatever that may mean to you. We are gifted insight into these unseen realms of existence that we all swim within. Pisces reminds us that we are the thread that links the spiritual and the physical, the energetic and the tangible. This full Moon brings our conscious awareness into the spiritual and the energetic, and into the ways in which we live within, and are guided and directed by, these intangible realms.
Your Invitation
This week is not filled with quick movement, breakthrough, growth, or new beginnings. But what it does offer may be even more nurturing. A step back. Contemplation. Review. Anchoring. Release. Intuition.
While the fires of Mars in Libra may not feel so quick, decisive, or singularly focused on the movement toward reaching a desired outcome, this time is an invitation to explore alternate perspectives, pathways, desires, and collaborations. Allow your inner Mars to be reminded that life is not always a straight line, and that it is through opening and exploring all our options that we can then find our most impactful and direct path. Allow yourself to explore your relationship to anger, beauty, peace and power, individual desire and collaboration, and how these energies could possibly collaborate instead of work in opposition.
Uranus retrograde joining Mars in Libra this week brings a slower movement, too. It brings an opportunity to strengthen who we are in this moment, in this season, in this chapter, without the continuous invitations into our next selves, into expansion and moving beyond who we are. It’s a time to come into deeper communion with ourselves, and to get to know who we have become over this last year in an intimate and enriching way. How can you celebrate you? How can you arrive deeper at home within you? How can you sink into the structures and aspects of your life? What more depth is waiting to be discovered?
As the week and month closes with our Pisces full Moon, allow your connection into the divine guide you to release what is yours to release. To close not just this month, but the chapter that is ending within you. To release anything that has you believe that you are on this journey alone. To release the fear that keeps it all on your shoulders, that it is all up to you, all weight you must carry. Pisces reminds us that we are held by and within something greater. Whether we can name, identify, or even comprehend this thing or not, we are still held by it. How different would your moment-to-moment experience feel if you knew that you were held? What would you let go of? And what would you then have the space to dream into, to reach into as possibility, to envision as what could be for you and your life?
Learn more about the influence of astrology in your life, including astrological events the Moon cycles, your Sun and Moon and rising signs, how journaling can help you connect with the current influences, and more with Jordane Maree at Girl and her Moon.
About Our Contributor
Jordane Maree is the founder of Girl and Her Moon, a platform and community exploring Soul through the lens of astrology, tarot, and energy healing. She is a writer, intuitive astrologer, energy and soul guide, and host of Girl and Her Moon, The Podcast. She is inspired, every single day, to be the mirror for you to see all that you truly are, you in all your infinite abilities, in total expansion, in infinite opportunity and love.
