If you’ve spent any time on Instagram or certain internet news outlets lately, you’ve probably seen people throwing around words like “massive energy shifts,” or “the Great Awakening.” Conspiracies abound on whether our calendar system is so far off that 2020 is actually the famed Mayan 2012. And yet, there is an undeniable change in the energy from even six months ago, for better or for worse.

Last weekend, I called my Dad to say happy father’s day. The last time I saw him, he was just waking up from an unexpected week-long coma; just two months before that I had danced with him at my wedding. My father has always never been a spiritual person, but between his own brush with death and the widespread panic stoked by recent news prompted him to ask me, “what do the constellations say about this?”

The answer isn’t easy. Nothing in the world is actually so cut and dry, and when you’re dealing with an ancient system of symbolic archetypes, questions like my father’s require a lot of modernizing and reframing. However, 2020 has already brought some monumental transits and forced some unusual planets into the spotlight. It’s also brought the first nodal axis shift since 2018 and with it, asked us to focus our attention on very different (and perhaps counterintuitive) aspects of life.

The Lunar Nodes are points along the Moon’s orbit, designating where the Moon carves out her path in the ecliptic. The ecliptic consists of all other planets in our solar system as well as the Sun itself--if everything in astrology is symbolic, we can think of this as a representation of our personal path among the collective. The nodal axis becomes a sort of compass that guides us along our journey to evolution through individual experience. Like a compass, the North Node asks us to follow its guidance, to step into new roles and embody new energies. The South Node, its opposing point, represents the energy that threatens to cement us to the path already tread, the outgrown roles, the stagnant.

Over the last two years, the Nodes have highlighted lessons around the Cancer/Capricorn axis. They encouraged us to reconnect with our most private selves, to dive into our dreams and strengthen our ties to home while unknotting the threads that have kept us from family. They encouraged us to do away with our materialistic tendencies, to redefine success, and to ask at what price our achievements have come. But in May of 2020, the nodes changed signs, settling into the signs of Gemini and Sagittarius until December of 2021.

Our world is about to get much smaller.

Or at least, it should. The Lunar Nodes only represent the direction of the energy--we still have free will, and we’re perfectly capable of denying the call.

I know--the world already seems so much smaller than it did earlier this year. The spread of COVID-19 saw most of us shut in for months, unable to visit friends and indulge in basic modern comforts like shopping or dining out. Our world shrank to the four walls of our homes. But in anticipation of this shift, information became more available than ever. Every hour came with news updates and press conferences, social media became inundated with speculation and personal experience, and the cloud of transitional Cancer-Capricorn-Gemini-Sagittarius energies became a swell of indecipherable voices screaming into the void, emotionally charged, vying for importance, each espousing a unique and individual truth.

How do we choose one to follow? Sometimes the problem and the solution are one in the same.

When we talk about direction, ambition, movement, and the will behind it, we often look to Mars. As the God of War, Mars dictates our strategy, our desire. Mars thrusts himself into the spotlight later this year as he begins his biennial retrograde which may be revealing to the outcome of certain world events, but right now, the planet still occupies the dark waters of Pisces. While Mars doesn’t have any essential debility in Pisces, it’s definitely not the easiest sign to be in: Mars represents many traditionally masculine directives, encouraging us to strike outwards and expand our reach and Pisces is its own alternative quantum reality. Pisces is the dreamworld, the realm beyond the veils, a place full of spirits and illusions populated by our own fantasies. Here, Mars cannot reach outward; he can only reach within.

This Friday (June 26th), Mars reaches 28 degrees of Pisces, perfecting a tense T-square with each of the Lunar Nodes.

This dam cannot hold any longer.

It’s important to remember that Mars is the Lesser Malefic. While he absolutely has a higher octave of expression, he easily falls prey to his own appetites for violence and rage. When we examine the symbolism for this particular degree, it seems to specifically warn against distinctly Martial qualities--words like “tyranny” and “sacrifice” litter the passage, expressly calling out prescribed roles and archetypes that we feel we must embody in a time. “A virtual masochism of submission to programs, trials, and cycles.” At 28 Degrees of Pisces, our action is not our own. And for a planet like Mars, our God of Direction and Will, this is detrimental.

So how are we to continue on the path if all our actions are prescribed by others? How do we reach our own potential if we’re stuck in cycles that don’t seem to end? If the North Node encourages us to gather information, think in new ways, communicate and forge ties of community, our chains to the past absolutely must be broken. The South Node represents the energy of this past, and in Sagittarius, it shows us where we’ve spread ourselves thin in expansion. If each one of us has a unique individual truth, there’s nothing to tie us together; the membrane of reality is nearly transparent, too weak to hold back the Winds of Change about to blow in as we approach new outerplanetary cycles. Before we act out in the world and strike the mortal wound, we must reign ourselves in.

Luckily, Mars in this placement prescribes his own treatment: in order to stop ourselves from eating our own tails, we need to shift our focus inwards. We must witness ourselves, develop the keenest awareness of our own thoughts and emotions before anyone or anything outside. This aspect often finds resolution in the square’s opposing point: if we trace Mars’ arrow we find it perfectly aimed at the path ahead. This is the Internal Labyrinth, the maze within our own subconscious spirit that must be navigated in order to strip away so many false concepts of self that detain our growth. If that sounds esoteric, it is: we need to empty ourselves of false knowledge, to tear down walls of mistaken identity, in order to receive what’s next.

It’s easy to mistake this process as action to be taken in the outside world. Mars begs for outward expression, chomps at the bit of destruction and chaos. But this is not a literal tearing process. The only icons that must be destroyed live within our minds, and the end result is not a world devoid of the past but a self that is fertile ground for new ideas, ready to plant the seeds of the future.

We’re not yet done with the past: Saturn’s retrograde will pull it back into Capricorn to finish business left prematurely and we still have several years of Pluto leveling this ground. If we can use the next 18 months to refine our own minds and spirits, we’ll find ourselves in a much better place to receive the revolution to come: once Pluto crosses the threshold of Aquarius, all obstacles to intellect crumble and we’ll need our mental energy to build a better reality for humanity at large. Rest assured, change is in the air--but we are still tethered to the earth and we must dig down before we rise.