the astrology of march 2025

pisces season, self respect, and desire

This note is hitting your inbox on my birthday (!) — send me a little love in the comments or here (if you want to buy me a drink)

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Pisces season is my birthday season. It’s also when I do my annual reading of Joan Didion’s On Self Respect. Besides also being a writer who lives in New York City, I have nothing material in common with Joan Didion. But she and I do have some things in common astrologically.

Joan Didion and I were both born about 90 minutes after sunset. We learn in defensive driving courses that just after sunset is the most dangerous time of day to operate heavy machinery. Everyone is distracted and more aggressive as they adjust to the change in light. This time of day is represented in the birth chart by the sixth house, a place the ancients called Bad Fortune. Joan Didion and I both have the Sun in the sixth house: the place in the chart where we go into battle, solve problems and manage dis-ease. It’s where we adjust our daily life to the elements. Against all odds.

Joan Didion, like me, had both her Sun and her ascendant ruler (in my case, Venus and in hers, the Moon) in the sixth house. Most wouldn’t call the sixth house the sexiest place in the chart. But in my opinion, it is very sexy. The sixth house is where life happens. In all the ways Didion defines it, the sixth house is about self respect.

Didion writes, “To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent.” The sixth house is where we show up day in and day out, even when we don’t want to, even when it feels impossible. It’s where we sweat. It’s where we bleed. It’s where we do the uncomfortable work of self love. Didion continues, “To lack [self respect] is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference.” Self respect is the foundation of love, and love is the foundation of resistance. Mr. Rogers said, “look for the helpers.” The helpers are the sixth housers amongst us. I think self respect is what we need to get through March.

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La Case del Diavolo (The house of the devil, also known as the house of god) from the Minchiate tarot, a card not unlike The Tower. This is how I feel exiting 35 and entering the month of March 2025.

The astrology of March is perhaps the most overwhelming month of transits I’ve seen. The New Moon in Pisces on February 27 was sleepy, hopeful, and deeply felt. With this new moon, we enter eclipse season. The current lunar cycle will peak not with a standard full moon but with a lunar eclipse.

The New Moon in Pisces was about walking away from a tempting but ultimately unfulfilling dream. For real and for good. This is a dream that’s been dissolving for years now. It’s time to get out of the tub or drown. Didion writes, “[People who respect themselves are] willing to invest something of themselves; they may not play at all, but when they do play, they know the odds.” The thing about March: there’s no choice but to play. Falling apart is better than remaining on the sidelines.

Luckily we don’t have to make up the to-do list by ourselves. The Lunar Eclipse in Virgo on March 14 assigns roles for the revolution. The Lunar Eclipse is in the third decan of Virgo, a part of the chart I associate with custodians. It’s one thing to be there for the party, it’s a completely different thing to clean up after the sun rises.

The Solar Eclipse in Aries on March 29 will further upend the given power structures. Keep your eye on the “rulers” because with the Sun aka “the king” getting eclipsed in Aries, the jig is up.

And these eclipses are just the tip of the iceberg. Mars, just stationed direct, spends all of March in Cancer, the sign of his fall. The fight isn’t easy. That’s why knowing our roles is so important. Please listen to the Virgo with the run of show. The solar eclipse in Aries says “Drop your ego and take direction.”

The stars of March in my opinion are Venus and Mercury. The planet of love and the planet of words do some gorgeous partner choreography this month, retrograding over the same degrees in early Aries and late Pisces. It’s here we have a change of mind and a change of heart. Planets in Aries have a fierce individual presence. Planets in Pisces are on a quest for true universal love. As Venus and Mercury retrograde, we split from the mother, divide and conquer, overcome doom, and through it all become ourselves, but first: we must admit what our real dream is. You don’t have to be careful what you wish for if your heart’s actually in it.

I’ve never been more tuned into the idea of “be careful what you wish for” than when I moved to Los Angeles during my Saturn Return. For months my mission was getting there but as soon as I arrived, my mission was to leave. It turned out that I was more interested in running away than in being anything. In Los Angeles, I couldn’t figure out my tasks. I wrote this poem about eight weeks into the LA experiment:

Canadians feel high on America

I feel high on homesickness

I feel like a lil fish trying to put a fence around my plot of ocean.

Recently, I burst from a bowl.

(I’m not Joan Didion.)

On my first night in los angeles, I got a fortune cookie at the Pho Cafe.
It read, “From a past misfortune, good luck will come to you.”

Didion writes that without self respect, “one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.” I thought I was homesick for a place but really I was looking for myself. There’s nothing more valuable than a sense of worth during turbulent times. I did get some good luck from past misfortunes but one can only ask so much of luck. I would’ve been luckier if I believed in myself

my Venus retrograde reading list — what are you reading?

Venus retrograde is for communing with desire. I suggest looking back on the springs of 2009 and 2017 for clues about what you’re seeking in this time. Look back but also don’t look too hard. Retrogrades are times when we can get stuck in the past. It’s one thing to visit the archives and another to live there. These periods, for me, coincide with humiliating romantic disillusionment. But are also times in my life when I’ve been the most unapologetically literary. Poets don’t exist without heartbreak. But to survive heartbreak, one needs a solid foundation. I’ve put together a little reading list for myself to get back in touch with my inner romantic (pictured above). I’m exhausted with data. I don’t want to wake up tangled in analysis. I want to wake up tangled in someone’s limbs.