Finding Agency in the Bardo: Retrogrades & Co-Creating with the Mystery
If you're not alarmed tonight, you're in a field infused with that of others. On planet Earth at the moment, alarm and danger are calling us to be the space where reality shifts. In some ways, it's a lot like the point, when you were your way into the world, it became clear the opening was nowhere near big enough for what was coming through.
To get here, you moved right on through a field of alarm and danger. Not because you're in any way deficient -- but because there was no opting out or turning back. The only way out was through. Just like now.
When all I can see is doom, I know it’s time to turn to the stars. Over the last four decades, I've learned that when what I’m seeing here on the ground seems most unacceptable, I’m actually most likely to perceive the most empowering signal behind the noise of mental and emotional filters. To receive, we need to have some empty space.
After looking at the 2025 ephemerides for months now, it's only been over the last week, as I neared my personal edge that I saw where we are -- in the bardo.
Meeting our edge: The reality-changing power of the bardo
For Tibetan Buddhists, a bardo is the initiatory space between realities – between birth and death, and especially between death and birth. It's where we can see that something has died, but it’s not yet clear what will be born. There never is in the bardo. It's where our choice matters most of all. That's the initiation.
One of the astrological bardo qualities of this time is that it's unprecedented. That's why no one knows what’s going to happen. How could they? The energy configuration we’re moving into has never happened before. What has happened before, though, is the hijacking of our nervous system by fearful events that shut down our capacity for empowered response. That's precisely what the blitzkrieg of shocking events coming from Washington is designed to do.
Astrologically, this bardo between a known and an unknown state began on November 19 -- two weeks after the US presidential election, when Pluto made his final, much-heralded entrance into Aquarius. It ends on March 30, when Neptune becomes the first of the five slow-moving, reality-shaping giant planets to change signs in barely three months. But we'll be moving in and out of bardos for the next decade, as our world -- and our lives -- go through a metamorphosis that even now doesn't really seem possible.
Navigating our edge is the way through.
It’s hard to convey the power of the shift the stars portend, because it’s never happened to anyone alive on our planet. To begin to resonate with what's coming, we can look at some of its component parts – like this summer's near-exact conjunction of Saturn and Neptune, who sparked seemingly "impossible" but very real nonviolent revolutions across eastern Europe after their last conjunction in 1989 (in the zodiac’s least revolutionary sign, not its most impulsive one, which they're now headed to).
As far as I’ve been able to determine, though, the full scale of what we’re on the verge of hasn’t happened in centuries upon centuries, perhaps millennia. We can sense that something we've never experience is happening, but we don’t know what it is. We can’t know what it is.
That's why we’re much better off thinking in terms of scenarios that open us up to the multiple possibilities that are always surrounding us, even (maybe especially) now – if we’re open to them. Our true nature is not to be "acted upon," but co-creative participants in the Great Mystery. But our world has been designed for us to be anything but.
Take this in, as deeply as you can. Along with everyone on Planet Earth, you're now in a bardo. In the bardo, reality is created by our choices. Breathe that in -- all the way into your bones. Anchor it into your connection with the Earth. Think of it every time you read, or hear, a "prediction." We do not know -- and we cannot know -- what is going to happen. What we need to have a sense of is what is possible, and how to begin to actualize it.
Letting the old paradigm -- within and around you -- know that it's time to go is a way of living, not a one-time event
November's presidential election was held when the Pluto in Capricorn era was almost -- but not quite -- over. Two weeks later, the Pluto in Aquarius era officially began. That's the era where transformative power lives in the most humanitarian and future-oriented part of the zodiac. This is the way through -- our birth canal.
The inaugural visual of a US president flanked by billionaires wasn’t a good look for Pluto in Aquarius. The tiny reality transformer's last visit here brought democracy to the world – but when he entered the sign, the world he found was one where autocratic power was the rule of the day. Pluto took the long shot then, and he's about to do it again -- if he's activated with your intention, your willingness, and your action (no matter how seemingly small, you can dedicate it as a fractal of planetary well-being). The planets can do almost nothing without our willingness.
What we saw on January 20 was actually the look of Pluto in Capricorn, the sign he'd finally left, after 16 years, two weeks after a billionaire won the election by less than 50% of the vote – clearly not a mandate by any definition.. Last month’s inauguration looked a lot more like Versailles in 1787 – just before the French Revolution – than Valley Forge in 1777.
Maybe the reason we needed to see that – and all that’s followed, most of it illegal and almost all of it depending on the compliance of a population frozen by the spectacle of crisis – was so that we could understand – with our whole of our bodymind – what’s happening now and what needs to happen next.
The Cosmos has your back. That's what the back-to-back retrogrades of Mars, Venus, and Mercury are all about.
The Cosmos seems to have anticipated that navigating this bardo would require some reconfiguring on our part. Because during this four-month bardo, another highly unusual astrological development is occurring. All three of the planets closest to Earth – Mercury, Venus, and Mars, known as the “personal planets” for the far-reaching effects they have on every aspect of your daily life and mine – are taking part in back-to-back retrogrades. Your most personal cosmic allies are on this!
One way we can see this trio of retrogrades – happening in reverse order from the Sun, first for Mars, then for Venus, and last of all for Mercury – is as a “cosmic personal growth intensive,” supporting you in upgrading your personal agency (Mars), then your values (Venus), and finally, your perception (Mercury). There’s a lot about this that’s important, but two things are especially noteworthy:
All three of the personal planets are retrograding from the courageous, confident fire element into the vulnerable, receptive water signs which hold your emotional intelligence. It’s a kind of re-birth for each planet – into a new level of emotionally empowered agency. Of course, a retrograde is not a gun to the head. No one can force us to reconfigure our emotional reactivity. It’s entirely up to us.
Because the retrograde trio begins with Mars, and then moves to Venus, by the time Mercury begins his backwalk, our nervous systems and our values will be ready to hold a deeply embodied space for more empowered perceptions. It all starts with reclaiming our agency.
While Mars is retrograding from Leo to Cancer, Venus and Mercury will be retrograding from Aries (the Red Planet’s fire sign home) to Pisces – reconfiguring the fluid, watery ground from which all new beginnings arise, and the connection between our dreams and our actions..
Barely a month after his own retrograde comes to an end and Mars begins moving forward, Neptune will enter the Red Planet’s fire sign home of Aries Except for a brief return to Pisces this fall, he’ll be there until 2039. Mars is getting ready to get his power on.
The starting point is reclaiming your personal agency
The real, burning question is what do we – you and me and all the people we know and love – need to do to get the power of our agency on? The president does not have the power to spiral us into doom. Most of his blitzkrieg of executive orders are illegal, and he knows it. He’s counting on shock and awe. He doesn’t have a mandate. He didn’t even get 50% of the vote! He wants us to believe it’s hopeless.
That’s not what the stars are saying.
Of course, we don’t have to listen to the stars. The fundamental reason our world is in such a mess is that we've gone rogue and done everything we can to disconnect ourselves from the rest of the universe. And we're not puppets of the stars. We totally have the power to do that.
We’re cosmic co-creators. The only one who can disempower us is ourselves. That’s exactly what these last weeks have been so full of shock and awe. You’re being asked to surrender your sovereignty. It’s the only way this so-called takeover can work.
So, let’s get started. We’ve got three weeks to open some new pathways for our agency and our drive – and every minute counts. Remind yourself – and your congressional representatives – that most of what the president has “ordered” is in fact illegal, and much of the rest of it is unpopular. Has your representative called a press conference to denounce what’s going on?