MERCURIAL MACHINATIONS

Mercury/Mars Fixed Square| May 17

Image credit—@floow.ai on Instagram

Let’s begin with the obvious: Mercury in Taurus is not your caffeinated barista of thought—it’s the philosopher-farmer, slowly turning soil, considering every word like a seed that must feed seven generations...

Mars in Leo, meanwhile, is an operatic fire-starter in gold lamé, lighting matches with its teeth and declaring the self divine.

Now imagine these two meeting not at a peace summit, but at a cosmic tug-of-war, each one clutching a different end of a flaming scroll titled How to Be True to Yourself Without Blowing It All to Hell.

That’s the square. And it isn’t subtle…

This is a collision of tempo and temperament—slow-burning truth meets hot-blooded impulse.

Mercury wants to build.

Mars wants to burn.

Mercury wants facts rooted like heirloom vegetables.

Mars wants the applause, the heat, the throb of being seen doing something—anything—with conviction.

You, dear reader, may feel caught in the middle like a freshly unpeeled onion—layered, raw, and prone to tears…

But here’s the trick of it: you’re not actually stuck.

You’re suspended.

Between old dreams that have stopped calling your name and futures still pixelating in the distance...

You don’t quite belong to the past anymore—and the future hasn’t given you the password yet.

What you do have is this precarious middle—this in-between realm where the only way forward is to let your old ways of thinking rot into compost and trust that your next big act will grow from the mess.

Let’s talk ego.

Not the strut-down-the-sidewalk kind, but the quiet, calcified crust that says I know who I am and what I’m about...

Well, today’s square doesn’t care.

In fact, it’s a cosmic chisel.

Not to break you, but to expose you.

The version of you who used certainty as a comfort blanket may find themselves shivering now, not because they’ve failed—but because they’re being peeled back to their original radiance. That’s where grace creeps in, not with fanfare, but with the glint of light off a shovel in fertile dirt.

This square says: humble yourself, sweetheart. Not in the groveling sense, but in the make space for something bigger than your ideas of yourself kind of way. Mars in Leo will tempt you to defend, to dominate, to dazzle. Mercury in Taurus will keep asking: But is it real? Can it grow? Will it last?

And somewhere in that rub, in that hum of friction between self-assertion and soul-inquiry—you’ll find a strange kind of peace. The kind that emerges not from knowing who you are—but from shedding who you’re not.

Because here’s the secret: your best thinking won’t save you…

But your willingness to listen—to the body, to the breath, to the roots underfoot and the fire inside your chest—just might.

You’re not here to prove. You’re here to plant.

To press that bright, radiant, stubborn little seed of unfallen truth into the world’s trembling soil and whisper, Grow, damn it. Grow.

So strip off the self-importance like last season’s armor. Let the humiliations come like summer rain—quick, uninvited, and ultimately nourishing. Let the awkwardness of not knowing who you are anymore soften you into the shape of someone who can carry love into places it hasn’t yet been.

Because paradise, friend, is not a destination… it’s a readiness.

And today, the sky is asking:

Are you brave enough to bloom where you’re broken?

⸻

Here are the Zodiacal Perspectives for the Mercury in Taurus square Mars in Leo—crafted with the cosmic frictions between earthbound thought and heart-lit fire…