Navigating Eclipse Season
The past few months have carried a restless quality. Saturn’s first steps into Aries since late May revealed what his long-term stay there may bring, but also showed his weakness in a sign of haste where order slips and falters. Mars, meanwhile, has spent over a year in compromised ground — retrograde in Leo and Cancer, then diffused in Libra — leaving his drive scattered and restrained. The mutable signs have kept the tempo unsettled, with many stories left unresolved.
September marks a shift to the recent past — and a quickening of pace.
Retrograde Saturn regresses back into Pisces, drawing us again into unfinished waters. Two eclipses define the month: a North Node Lunar Eclipse in Pisces on September 7, swirling like a whirlpool that opens old doorways and bends time forward, and a South Node Solar Eclipse in Virgo on September 21, more austere in tone, reflective and purgative, with Saturn in opposition. Together, they act as accelerators of narrative, pressing endings and beginnings into close company.
By month’s end, Mars returns to Scorpio — his first dignified placement since the summer of 2024. His force sharpens just as the Sun enters Libra, setting the balance of the season. September closes on this pivot: from dissolution and reduction toward judgment, alliance, and decisive action.
September Overview
September begins with Saturn sliding back into Pisces on the 1st, a shift that reopens unfinished ground and slows momentum. Since late May, Saturn has been in Aries, offering a preview of what his long-term stay there will entail. Consider what house Aries rules in your chart: that part of life may have felt strained under Saturn’s temporary presence. In Aries, Saturn is in fall—unable to impose steady order. The push for speed or decisive action may have stretched resources thin, while outdated structures proved inadequate without clear replacements.
With Saturn’s return to Pisces, attention turns back (think April 2023 – May 2025) to the area of life that sign governs in your chart. Here the work is less about charging forward and more about trimming the sails—adjusting course, redistributing effort, and tightening what has been left slack. There is a opportunity to conserve strength and refine practices in the Pisces area of your life. Saturn will not fully resume his Aries journey until 2026, making this return to Pisces a necessary interval for closure and recalibration.
The center of the month is overshadowed by eclipses: a Full Moon eclipse in Pisces on September 7 and a Solar Eclipse in Virgo on September 21. Both directly involve Saturn, with Jupiter in Cancer acting as a rare stabilizing counterweight. These lunations sharpen the mutable axis of Virgo–Pisces, raising questions of discernment versus vision, service versus sacrifice, and clarity versus confusion.
In the second half of September, Mercury moves from Virgo into Libra while Venus shifts from Leo into Virgo, signaling interpersonal adjustments and a shift in tone. The final week brings sharper turns: Mars enters Scorpio on September 21, restoring his strength, while the Sun enters Libra on September 22, inaugurating an autumn season centered on alliances, hidden strategies, and negotiations of power.
The Pisces Eclipse – September 7
The Full Moon North Node eclipse at 15° Pisces draws us into waters both familiar and strange. Saturn, now in the late degrees of Pisces, pulls us toward the task of finishing unfinished business — yet the eclipse does not close the story so neatly. The North Node is hungry, and in Pisces its appetite can feel endless, pulling us further into currents that twist and spiral like a whirlpool. Old knots unravel, but new tangles rise up in their place, like tentacles reaching from the depths.
This is the paradox of a North Node eclipse in Pisces: in completing, we are carried deeper into what cannot be completed, into a narrative without end. The sea becomes both dissolving and generative, a space where boundaries blur and old stories find unexpected sequels.
Jupiter in Cancer, ruler of the lunation and in trine to the eclipse, promises that treasures lie within these depths — but treasure here is not automatically given. It requires discernment, courage, and a willingness to descend where the maps blur. Old doorways long thought sealed may swing open again, beckoning us toward forgotten fortunes or hidden reserves of enchantment.
Adding to the mix, Mars sextile Venus brings a note of allure and entanglement, stirring attraction and desire within the turbulence. The eclipse is less a clean moment of ending than a plunge into a living tide — part shipwreck, part discovery, part initiation.
The Virgo Eclipse – September 21
The Partial Solar Eclipse at 29° Virgo carries a quieter but still consequential gravity. Though separated from the South Node by more than ten degrees — making it less overwhelming than the Pisces Lunar Eclipse earlier in the month — its overlap with Saturn in late Pisces gives it a distinctly purgative and spectral quality.
The mood is somber and reflective, but with the South Node and Saturn working together, there can also be a ghostly presence — echoes of the past, apparitions of what has been lost, or fleeting connections to the “other side.” In Virgo, the focus may fall on routines, obligations, and embodied practices, yet the eclipse can also bring abrupt endings or sudden purges. For some, it may feel like a door slamming shut; for others, a ritual of reduction that pares life back to essentials. Either way, the atmosphere is unmistakably liminal, seance-like, as though old spirits gather around the flame of this eclipse.
Yet here lies the caution: South Node eclipses with Saturn can encourage austerity to the point of depletion. Simplifying and pruning can be clarifying; pushing too far into withdrawal or denial risks eroding vitality. This is an eclipse to honor the call to reduce, but to stop short of hollowing out what still sustains.
Mercury, ruler of the lunation, has just separated from a trine with Uranus in Gemini, suggesting that sudden clarity or disruptive insight may accompany this eclipse. What emerges may feel like a jolt from outside — the past reframed through a sharper lens.
Within hours, Mars enters Scorpio, turning the atmosphere from austerity to determination. What is cut away under this eclipse becomes fuel for sharper focus. This lunation is both a reckoning and a haunting — a confrontation with endings that clears the path for autumn’s plunge into deeper waters.
Mars Returns to Scorpio – Restoring Strength
On September 21, just hours after the Virgo Solar Eclipse, Mars ingresses into his nocturnal domicile of Scorpio. This marks the first time since the summer of 2024 that we’ve had Mars in full dignity. The intervening period has been marked by weakness, detour, and frustration: Mars slogging through his retrograde in Leo and Cancer, falling back into terrain where his usual clarity of action was blunted by fatigue, indecision, or indirect maneuvering. For over a year, Mars has struggled to assert himself cleanly.
With Scorpio, that long night ends. Here Mars regains his strength, strategy, and endurance. No longer hampered, he moves with purpose—direct, sharp, and uncompromising. Where Libra disperses his force in negotiation, Scorpio concentrates it like a blade in the dark.
The ancient astrologers recognized this. Vettius Valens wrote of Mars in Scorpio:
“When Mars is in Scorpio, he makes men powerful, invincible, bold, restless, martial, dictatorial… able to bear fatigue.” (Anthologies, Book I)
Valens’ description is characteristically stark, but it captures the essence: Mars in Scorpio endures. This placement drives decisive action, persistence in conflict, and the willingness to cut away what cannot survive. In modern terms, we can expect escalations in struggles for control—whether geopolitical, technological, or personal. Yet it also opens the possibility for breakthroughs born of resolve, discipline, and hard labor others may avoid.
History offers parallels. The last time Mars regained dignity in Scorpio after a long retrograde period through Leo was late 2009. At that time, the global financial crisis had exposed systemic weaknesses; when Mars reached Scorpio, restructuring efforts intensified. Governments and institutions pivoted from reactive measures toward deeper, more strategic attempts to stabilize and transform. The symbolism was clear: Mars in Scorpio concentrates force to tackle entrenched problems that demand endurance and strategy rather than speed.
In 2025, Mars returns to Scorpio under similar conditions—after a year of frustration, half-measures, and exposed weaknesses. The timing, coming immediately after the Virgo Solar Eclipse opposing Saturn, suggests that what collapses under Saturn’s weight will not linger in ruin. Mars in Scorpio seizes what remains, reshaping it with surgical precision. Expect late September to bring sharper turns in collective conflicts and personal struggles alike, with decisive moves that cut through hesitation.
Other Important Transits
- Mercury: The swift planet plays a critical role this month. Mercury enters Virgo on September 2, then meets the Sun in cazimi on September 13 before moving into Libra on September 18. Though in Virgo he is dignified and sharp in analysis, for much of this stay he remains under the beams of the Sun. His work is therefore somewhat hidden, effective but carried out “behind the scenes,” where results may not be immediately visible. The cazimi moment around September 13 brings a brief interval of exceptional clarity, amplified by Mercury’s sextile to Jupiter in Cancer. Between September 13–16, watch for sudden insights, the surfacing of key documents, or revelations that crystallize just before the turbulence of the eclipses.
- Venus: From Leo, she softens Mars’ sharper edges (sextile Sept 15). Her ingress into Virgo on Sept 19 is less comfortable, as she squares Uranus in Gemini (Sept 20). Venus in Virgo pushes relationships and aesthetics into more exacting terrain—precision is required, yet surprises upend expectations.
- Uranus: His retrograde station in Gemini on Sept 5 is subtle but significant. The innovations, breakthroughs, and disruptions promised earlier this year now turn inward. Expect reversals or the resurfacing of earlier Gemini–themed upheavals (media, communication systems, AI, transportation) to be re-visited in 2026 and beyond.
Closing
September 2025 carries us through eclipses that act as wormholes and accelerators of narrative and time, bending events forward with unusual speed while distorting the ordinary pace of change. Saturn’s opposition to the Virgo Solar Eclipse and Mars’ return to Scorpio make the month feel compressed, decisive, and exacting. Jupiter in Cancer steadies the ground, preserving kinship, care, and the work of tending life even as the larger frame strains under weight.
The Sun Libra ingress closes the month with its ancient symbolism of balance and judgment, opening the gates to autumn in the northern hemisphere. As the Sun crosses into Libra, the season turns to harvest—gathering the grain of memory, symmetry, consequence, and decisive action.