Commonsense Almanac By Ben Commons | March 2025
“At the end of the day, it isn’t where I came from. Maybe home is somewhere I’m going and never have been before.” ~Warsan Shire
Tips for almanac use: All the aspects can be felt in advance. It is good policy to view these as due dates for various energies and prepare accordingly for your context. It’s akin to bringing an umbrella with you when rain is expected, but it also helps us to not take the weather personally. When we proactively manifest these symbols then the world doesn’t have to do it for us. Choose to be con(with)-siderate(the stars). Reach out to me for personal explorations of these times.
Oh my, March. This is a uniquely burly month. It’s an absolute mad mix of oscillating fire and water, with air tossing it all around. This combination is hard to navigate and harder yet to understand, even once it’s done, because the speed will be discombobulating and unnerving at the least. The trick would be to find a way, multiple ways, to emulsify these varied elements into a smoother whole. That may be magical thinking, but it’s worth a shot. Anyways, the beginning of the month starts off like choppy waves of weirdness, then the eclipses take it up twenty notches starting on the 13th. It’s a full-on melee for the second half, where we could theoretically find a new calm by the 29th. And then the ongoing wow continues as Neptune enters Aries on the 30th, starting a 14-year journey of newness. May grace be by our sides.
Venus stations Retrograde on Saturday 3/1 at 4:36 pm pacific, until 4/12. This period is asking us to foster reflection of our updated value systems and self-identity in the world around us, particularly our relationships and our homes. This also means that old tendencies and the people that came with them will tend to resurface, whether literally or within our consciousness. This will be a drawn-out process that demands thorough revisions, so there’s no need to rush through anything. The simplest strategy is to question if the things and people around reflect who we would like to be as our current selves. If not, revise the trajectory or make space for something different.
Mercury conjoins Neptune on Sunday 3/2 at 8:21 am pacific, launching us into the depths of our intangible selves, where the mind does not normally exist. This will be a trilogy of ethereal confusion, so this first pass sets the momentum for some time to come. The idea at this point is to not need to know that which we aren’t capable of understanding or what we really shouldn’t know. Which means the mind’s eternal attempts to make basic categorizations needs to be put to sleep and the whole brain needs to slowly drift into further integration.
Sun squares Jupiter on Sunday 3/2 at 10:18 am pacific, offering some much-needed buoyancy, but without particular clarity. The word could be expectancy, with an angle towards unforeseeable outcomes. However, openness alone will not facilitate these aspirations; choice and conscious use of our capacity to affect change are required. Push through.
Mercury enters Aries on Monday 3/3 at 1:04 am pacific, until 3/29. This will further increase the need to be fully authentic to our present selves. However, this doesn’t mean that we should be sharing the distilled and challenging truths willy nilly. Everyone here is in a state of flux and this ground will be covered a few times because of retrogradation. So, it’s wiser to keep things more hypothetical and wait for our own unfolding to catch up before we announce it on the bullhorn.
Mercury sextiles Pluto on Wednesday 3/5 at 5:12 am pacific, giving us a chance to delve into various issues of group dynamics and friendship situations. We are all eager to share, connect, and be seen, however, none of us should be done cleaning out the residual resin of past (social) fires. There will probably be a need to clear the air with people, but it’s best to do so after we have released as much attachment, resentment, hurt, et cetera before we engage in what is meant to be a mutual growth process. Work it out within.
Sun trines Mars on Friday 3/7 at 9:12 pm pacific, throwing water onto the rocks in the sauna. This is challenging because we will really want to take concrete steps and decisive action, especially about asserting our feelings and challenging old patterns. However, everyone and everything is very delicate now and prone to taking things too personally and reacting exaggeratedly. The issue here is still reactivity versus being. Choose being before acting, which may mean we should sleep on things.
Mercury conjoins Venus on Tuesday 3/11 at 3:54 pm pacific, throwing sparks into the barn. This is a contradictory interaction. On one side we should simply want to speak core truths to our confidants. On the other hand, we are tempted to initiate confrontations because of pent up thoughts and energies. The question centers on how emotional and old-pattern driven are we? We can start to attain new levels of closeness, but only with care.
Sun conjoins Saturn on Wednesday 3/12 at 3:28 am pacific, demanding we all slow it down and take stock of the entire construct. This means more than just the functionality of our lives, but also our existential issues and whatever quandaries swim around in that quagmire. The ideal is to use this to reaffirm our determination to keep on growing, maturing, and pushing into new levels of self-transparency and accountability. The trap is blame, no matter where aimed. Renew the roots.
The Full Moon and Lunar Eclipse in Virgo is on Thursday 3/13 at 11:59 pm pacific. This is a huge line in the sands of time, where we can either give into the torrential noise and discord, and possibly join it, or we could clean up our acts, calm the emotional and mental extremes, and determine to consistently move forward towards what we always felt was righteous to us. Which is not to say that it’s a good time to push our visions onto others, but it’s definitely appropriate for rejecting nearly anything being pushed onto us. Motivate thyself.
Sun sextiles Uranus on Friday 3/14 at 2:16 am pacific, frothing up the natural tendency towards rebellion and rejection. This emphasizes one facet of the eclipse that just occurred; the need for individuality and freedom regarding what we grow in our worlds. It’s easy to imagine overly simplistic metaphors; if you don’t like eggplants, don’t plant them. However, this is obviously more nuanced because we love our people and the shared experiences, but we should choose wisely where our resources are spent.
Mercury stations retrograde on Friday 3/14 at 11:46 pm pacific, starting us backwards through the brambles of our beings. It’s going to be thorny, but the potential is huge for us to disidentify with outdated self-visions and, more importantly, those we allowed from others despite not truly agreeing. As per usual, especially these days, this is safer done internally, but the odds are high that obstacles will have to be met with patience and clear communication. Deconstruct the labels.
Sun conjoins Neptune on Wednesday 3/19 at 4:24 pm pacific, tossing us back into the depths for the ultimate cleanse and purification. This is truly beyond translation because words can only hint at the amorphous nature of being stuck between our frontal lobes and our animal selves. I doubt that coyotes contemplate their space in the grand, and concurrently irrelevant, scheme of things. And since this is beyond contemplation, all we can do is soak in the existence.
Sun enters Aries on Thursday 3/20 at 2:02 am pacific. Well, this Aries season will be quite the roller coaster. The standards of being true to yourself, without being harsh, and striving to do your full thing are definitely there. However, there is a massive push towards undoing the false self of times past, while somehow connecting to the deepest spiritual whispers of the universe through our own selves. The way through is within, without, and nowhere.
Venus sextiles Pluto on Friday 3/21 at 2:31 pm pacific, for round two of this curious trilogy. Now is another chance to take back our identity from the group/our communities so that we can somehow become more involved with those collectives. It’s fraught, but it’s not a frivolous endeavor to define oneself and disavow the labels that are put upon us. What good is a crew if they don’t know you?
Sun conjoins Venus on Saturday 3/22 at 6:07 pm pacific. This is a massively important chance for rebirthing ourselves. It takes the last couple of entries, (astrological aspects), and turns it up to eleven. It’s about radical authenticity of self; up, down, and all around. We are planting the seeds for many years of our self-update subscription here so we should do it for ourselves, not to please others, or make them feel more comfortable; unless we want to do that for ourselves. Become all that you are meant to be.
Sun sextiles Pluto on Sunday 3/23 at 12:31 pm pacific, frothing yet more undercurrents. Again, this is about how we are perceived and allowed to show up in social and group settings. Steady assertion of self is the wise way, but everyone else is on this same calendar, it’s not a contest, and the goal should be communion. Keep your side of the street clean and proceed from there.
Sun conjoins Mercury on Monday 3/24 at 12:48 pm pacific, yet more rebirths in the central mind/emotional axis of existence. It’s more themes of choosing how we define ourselves and working to figure out how to share that amalgam with other people. It’s still all in a state of revision, so do not haste, and avoid emotional traps. The question is who would we be without all the stories and external ideation? Let’s try turning it off and back on again. Restart the system.
Mercury sextiles Pluto on Tuesday 3/25 at 3:02 pm pacific, and one more, and final for now, revision of how we fit into the world. It’s all vastly complicated and interwoven, making sense of all the ways we are perceived and spoken to is beyond comprehension and not needed. We should focus on understanding ourselves and figuring out how to phrase something as surreal as our existences in a sharing capacity for others. Which means, it’s probably more about editing the script than writing it.
Venus returns to Pisces on Thursday 3/27 at 1:41 am pacific, until 4/30. And splash, back into the water after a flurry of fire. This will give us space, if we take it, to rest and digest all the recent tumult, and see how we feel about it when all is said and done and the night is quiet. In some fantastical version, we should be as peaceful as the crickets in song. But in reality, we need to take a few steps back and out of ourselves and allow the numinous to have a say.
Venus conjoins Neptune on Thursday 3/27 at 6:13 am pacific. This is another vitally important opportunity to undo and renew. Simple it is not, because the normal light of consciousness doesn’t penetrate this far below the surface. The ideal here is to release all the relationship histories, and not only with people, but how we relate to anything and everything that isn’t within the bodies we inhabit. Become none, become one.
The New Moon/Solar Eclipse in Aries is on Saturday 3/29 at 3:48 am pacific. Well, this brings that ultra wild eclipse season (the last two weeks) to a close. This eclipse is relatively mild, because there’s some separation from the recent maelstrom. It’s a chance for us to further embody and integrate this recent push towards full authenticity of self, even, and especially, within the context of all of our relationships. Self-love and trusting the intuition are the keystones to this arc(h).
Mercury returns to Pisces on Saturday 3/29 at 7:18 pm pacific, until 4/15. And the mind returns to the waters of eternity for theoretical relaxation. It’s another paradox of finding pearls of wisdom from an exhausted and recuperating mind. There’s been so much that the rational parts of the brain really do need a staycation. We’ll see what needs retrieval from the flotsam and jetsam.
Mercury conjoins Neptune on Saturday 3/29 at 7:46 pm pacific, another huge opportunity. This centers on fully surrendering the mind to the fact that we will never fully understand anything. I mean, how could we when we never seem to fully catch up to understanding our own meandering experiences. But in the end, that doesn’t really matter. What is important is our own self-comfort and how deeply we sleep at night.
Neptune enters Aries on Sunday 3/30 at 5:01 am pacific, until 10/22. A new generational time wave starts here, so the momentum is huge. While it only stays until October for now, it’s really a fourteen-year sojourn with a brief revisitation of Pisces for a few months at the end of the year until 1/26/26. This is uncharted territory for all humans alive now, so it’s nearly impossible to know what this entails. We can guess that this will alter, undo, shift, and blur all sorts of topics around identity, self and otherwise, truth, reality, and so much more. It’s truly going to be a whole new world. Let’s focus on making our worlds in our own highest visions.
Well, by the end of March, who knows where we will find ourselves. Ideally, wiser and not overly worn, but wow, it will have been all sorts of who-could-have-even-imagined. The goal is always the same, we take care of us and ours and keep on pushing towards greater maturity, clarity, and all-around justice. The path is winding, but we must be finding our way home.
Ben Commons
ASTROLOGER | Ben has been studying astrology since 1994 and started doing readings professionally in 2002. He is also a practicing Reiki master, and works with stones for healing. He uses astrology as a strategic tool and calls himself an Astro-strategist.
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