When the Shining Ones Return: Mars & the Lunar Standstill

Early this morning, Mars returned to Cancer, the creation waters of the Mother of the Universe.  Five days after going out of bounds -- literally moving beyond the bounds of ordinary reality -- and three days after opposing Pluto, the Red Planet has come to the sign the Moon calls home. He'll be here for the next 110 days -- not only the remainder of his retrograde, but for 56 days afterwards.

Rx and Out of Bounds, Mars in Cancer is shaping some of 2025's most important astrological events

The Red One is about to spend more time in Luna's sign than he has since the fall and winter of 1992 -- and he's making it count. By the time Mars leaves Cancer, both Venus and Mercury will have completed retrogrades through Mars' fire sign home of Aries, the Aries Equinox and an Aries solar eclipse will have occurred -- and Neptune will have entered Aries for the first time since the Confederates bombed Fort Sumter in April 1861. That's enough to tell us that Mars' time in Cancer is extremely important -- but it's not all.

What just happened between Mars and Pluto?

It's only been three days since Mars and Pluto made their second opposition -- when Mars was in Leo, sign of the king. What happened with Pluto that sent the Red One from the king's sign to that of the mother and her child? Whatever it is, Mars was out of bounds -- beyond the boundaries of consensus reality, to a place the Sun, Saturn, and Neptune never go, and the other planets only rarely.

Could Mars be as central as the moon to 2025's Major Lunar Standstill?

Being simultaneously retrograde and out of bounds is an extraordinary state -- almost shamanic one -- and it's happening for Mars during the major lunar standstill that is presently underway, for the first time since 2006. As during all lunar standstills, our consciousness is being reconfigured at the deepest, formative levels -- that of the Moon.

"When the Shining Ones Return"

The full Moon on January 13th is the closest full moon to the North Node’s passage across the Aries Point, which occurs one week after Mars’ re-entry to Cancer is, as Cayelin Castell points out, the center point of the three-year lunar standstill period. It's the time the ancient inhabitants of Scotland referred to as the time "when the moon walks the land & the Shining Ones return."