September Horoscope: Waiting Out the Spin Cycle

Written with love by Mariah the Mystic

September feels occlusive. Just as we sense momentum building, the seal suctions up again. The personal planets whirl about in their regularly scheduled restless choreography, while the generational and social planets spin off kilter, following the endless rip of a broken-record beat. Retrograde after retrograde, exact aspect after exact aspect — a grinding barrel roll toward an unknown destination, with a general countdown as its only conductor.

It isn’t that life stops happening. It’s that the maze keeps shifting — doors vanish, walls appear, paths collapse into trapdoors. We find ourselves in a primal mode, toggling between the collective “what next?” and the uncanny labyrinth of back rooms, where every knob springs a terrifying and absurd prank toy.

September’s larger events — eclipse season, the retrograde pileup, autumn’s zodiacal returns — thrum beneath it all. Routine cycles move through our personal spheres, while seismic changes simmer collectively. It feels like living through a perpetual meme: “And you just expect me to keep working as usual while X is casually happening?!” If you feel this way, you’re far from alone.

The generational planets straddle extremes — apocalyptic and otherworldly Pisces versus impulsive, sweltering Aries. Enemies to lovers, endings to beginnings, the fuzzied edge of a collective cycle. These shifts aren’t ours to command, which means even as chaos foams around us, there is little to mop up just yet. The eclipses drag us back to our own storyline, the only pulse we can intuit.

Staying observant is vital, especially under retrograde haze. The risk lies in drowning ourselves in what ifs, in losing time, in abandoning our needs. Every month I joke to myself that I’m writing an article as depressing as an obituary. Truth be told, we are living through historical astrology. 2025 and 2026 are astrological beasts. Yes, there are always retrogrades, eclipses, returns. Yet, the stalled speed of these planets colliding creates singular dynamics — every hour, every day, every week unique in its geometry.

Astrology isn’t static; it isn’t a fixed map, much like our natal charts. The sky, mirrored in the current chart, never stops turning. Sometimes we bear witness to astrology that feels monumental, other times to something new but not reality-twisting. Neither outcome shocks me as a practicing astrologer, but the sheer demotivation and insecurity of it all feels disappointing to parse. We are asked again and again to conjure sparkles from scratch because it isn’t being rationed or vended to us. We continue, we find new mundanities to revel in, new small pleasures to be grateful for. Our world will evolve, we will evolve. These can be linked, and these can be independent.

September 1: Saturn re-enters Pisces

Our rigorous mentor Saturn is falling back into the watery void of Pisces, pausing our momentum just as we were ready to sprint. This is where we face the clay of our soul: unformed, yearning to be shaped, glazed, and fired by the kiln. We are defining the contours of our subconscious, reaching into a cycle so we can pull ourselves through, and sew up the void. Here Saturn will finish its retrograde, continuing to reverse until November 27th. For those with their natal Saturn nestled in late degrees of Pisces, you’re approaching the final face off with the sparking embers of your Saturn Return. You’ve glimpsed clarity as these themes have risen and fallen. Now you are here to finish the fight. You must knead your formless clay into a structurally sound fixture of your imagination. One that will hold up through this new cycle as Saturn bursts forward into Aries again, for the long haul.

September 2: Mercury enters Virgo

Mercury, now clear of its shadow, steps into the crisp lines of Virgo. As it does, it experiences a startling zap from Uranus in Gemini. This square calls on our ability to thrive in a state of disorder. There is a desire to find the directive, to shave off the excess, and yet to tinker, break through cracked molds, and dare to wonder. While our mind finds restlessness where it hopes for perfect balance, we are tasked with creating zen through flow and rebelling against mindless routine. We are asked to reinvigorate our processes, mental, creative, communication, and otherwise.

September 4: Mars enters Libra

Mars arrives, suit-pressed and still steaming, in Libra, ready to court with cool grace and flirtatious diplomacy. Jupiter in Cancer yawns wide with emotional swell, squaring this encounter, and shaking the perfectly quaffed snowglobe. All of the sudden, we are 50 feet in the air, poised on an acrobat's web of string, shifting our weight anxiously between our separate sides. We are reminded of the importance of intention when confronting a balancing act. We can anchor into our own bodies for deep support, even if we can’t always shirk the responsibility or obstacle we’re facing. The tight rope walk between the safety at the end and the fragile unknown forces us to rely on our strengths and try to divvy up our weaknesses like small weights on the scale, remembering that we are whole, we are a system of many functioning and dysfunctional pieces. This is also a reminder to reach out for help when it’s needed, there is no shame in a safety net or a step back to reassess before continuing forward.

September 6: Uranus Stations Retrograde in Gemini

As Uranus crashes into its brakes and reverses, its gears grind and spark like an unwieldy arc welder. Our reactionary instinct has been injected with the cerebral, tempting mischief and curiosity in this space where anything might be possible– soon. First, we have to germinate, as innovation shuts down slowly like a rebooting computer, leaving us in wake of the static. We need to turn the object in our hands a bit, to solve the puzzle. Rubix cubes are solved with algorithms and patterns, not by randomized play. With sextile to Neptune in Rx and trine to Pluto in Rx, this is anything but child’s play. There is an overgrowth of intergalactic fuzz forming rapidly, over our sense of clarity. As we move towards breakthrough, we must reinvent our versatility, facing overhauls and petty sleight of hand from its fellow generational planets. Don’t fear the slow burn, pushing into something that feels fateful and aligned, yet humanistic, idealistic and not yet rooted in our reality.

September 7: Total Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Pisces

A cord splits and we can feel a tangible release happen with this lunar eclipse. There is a sweep of energy whether through a major ending, a leap of progress, or a reckoning in our subconscious. Prepare for trippy dreams that are dispatches of deja vu, an unfound optimism that is rooted in a larger trust, even amidst a large development. Nuzzled next to the North Node, we are at the threshold of becoming. We are moving towards our higher self and dharmic fulfillment. Allow yourself to drown in intimate ritual today, expressing straight from spirit and diving as deep as the well will allow.

September 13: Mercury Cazimi

A quick and potent flame licking the wick on our mind. Mercury stands still for a moment, enthroned by the sun. For a very brief moment between Mercury combust (near in conjunct to the sun), Mercury strikes cazimi (an exact degree conjunction). In this moment, the energy turns lucid, allowing us to arrive if we are able to catch it. Seize it if you can, light a prayer lantern, and let it float into the ethers.

September 18 & 19: Mercury enters Libra, Venus enters Virgo

Our minds and hearts struggle, alternating solos in a battling duet of harmonies. Mercury drifts into Libra, a rococo liminality. A space where we want tufts and sprinkles on our communications to avoid the rickety truth. With Neptune retrograde opposing it, a gauzy veil, our idealism and sense of reality is even further impaired. We need to slow our speech, open our ears, and be observant and mentally tuned. The next day Venus enters Virgo, but not before it touches the Moon in Leo. There is a subtle dust off here, one where we trade cloying materialism and petty, yet hollow affluence for something simple, standard, but actually higher quality. Love is in practice, nurturing and caring for the dears in our sphere instead of focusing on the world that lives and breathes nonstop around us. Using the softness of these planetary movements actually offers us something more productive than solving problems that are unfixable overnight. Fold laundry, beautify easy things in your space, sharpen your knives, get fresh air in your space. Find beauty and enchantment in things that are physical, uncomplicated, and right in front of you.

September 21: New Moon Solar Eclipse in Virgo

While the lunar eclipse sealed a cycle, oppositely the Solar Eclipse is a peeking slice of opportunity, cracking open a new door, clearing a path for us, setting a seat at the table. Something new is gestating, but still eclipsed by the fog of Saturn Retrograde. We can feel its subtle force vibrating towards us, but its form is not yet clear. Pull out your sharpest tools and begin to sculpt the form from the slab of marble here. Instead of searching an endless box for instructions, as Virgo often would prefer, Saturn in the numinous Pisces’ challenging aspect here reminds us that the invitation is more important than the manual. Offer a soft courage that exists inside of you towards this luminance. Portion your course into steps and pieces. Do some intuition work, whether it be scribbling, mood boarding, psychedelics, or otherwise-altered states. Follow the cord into the invisible forcefield with equal parts wonder and caution.

September 22: Mars enters Scorpio & Sun enters Libra

Mars dances its way into Scorpio, lighting up a square to Pluto and inviting the sun into tentative Libra, finding itself facing the Neptune retrograde. We open the trunk and magma crackles out, uncontainable. We feel it deeply in our actions, and in our emotions, as it conjoins the Moon in Scorpio. This hunger is visceral, pulsating through every artery, lancing the pressure chamber and releasing the screaming steam. The shroud now ripped, we are forced to molt, whether it feels safe or not. As much as we fight for control or balance now, the skies have other plans for us. In this rather ungraceful transfiguration, we allow ourselves to be plunged into icy currents at the tip of a cherry-red hot poker.

Our soul is shattering its calloused layers, not ceremoniously, but like metallurgy collecting messily at the bottom of the furnace. The metal is being purified and globularized so that it can be reformed into a stronger and more potent blade. Allow yourself the honor of flux and surrender, even if parts of it are not glamorous or comfortable. In concurrence with Libra Season, the season of the scales, we have nothing to do but release the tension in our levitating bind. Libra desires a utopia, one where fairness, aesthetics and vindicated adoration reigns supreme. Basically, they want everyone to get along, everything to fit a level of lux, and to feel worthy and good. Their desire to satisfy equally, often at cost of themselves, can be incredibly draining. The Libran ideal does not exist, though their untethered romance and optimism is valuable and lovely. Neptune retrograde is their crystal ball, helping them transmute the clear message from a place that feels like a heterotopia.