Your Horoscope This Week: September 26, 2021

It’s the last week of September and the first week of Mercury’s retrograde transit through Libra. But, with Mercury not only stationing retrograde just two days after Mars in Libra makes a trine to Saturn in Aquarius, but also just one day after the Sun in Libra makes a trine to true node in Gemini, it’s a two-steps forward, one-step back kind of dance — and a decidedly Libran one at that. 

The dance continues both when our last quarter moon in Cancer applies a square to the Sun in Libra, as well as on the 29th when the Sun in Libra makes a trine to Saturn in Aquarius. There’s a sense here that in order to collaborate — to work things out and to keep building together — we’re going to have to give each other emotional respect. Of course, honouring the emotional experience of others shouldn't preclude our ability to advocate for ourselves and for what we believe in. If we’re going to move forward, we have to take a few steps back and do maintenance on the foundation. Trust is integral here, but — no matter how much some Libra and Cancerian babes might wish it otherwise — trust is not a tacit exchange based on implied expectations. It’s a contextual dialogue and a dialectic, too, an emotional contract that changes shape with each new endeavour.

But, like any dialectic, what we feel and what we believe to be true and what we expect from others is informed by our larger cultural experience, by systemic privilege and systemic violence. When our retrograde Mercury squares off with Pluto in Capricorn on October 1, we’re reminded that there’s room in every relationship for those conversations too, and there’s a palpable shadow when that room feels locked or inaccessible, like a weighted silence, like a ghost. Venus in Scorpio makes a sextile to Pluto in Capricorn the next day, in mutual reception with Libra, reminding us that even when we feel like we can’t move forward, we can, at least, go deeper.