Something You Have Been Refusing to Let Go Of Is About to Be Taken From You Anyway
Mars in Taurus squares Pluto in Aquarius on May 25. Clinging to stability may no longer be an option.
I got laid off this week.
The day job I had been holding on to for years — the one I worked alongside this practice you know me through, the one that paid the bills while I built my platform and found my voice — is now gone. The arrangement that had let me stay in two places at once, that had let me build a social media presence without having to risk fully committing to it, that had been my safety net through every uncertain season of the last several years, is over. It was stable, you could even call it cushy. It let me do the things I love (writing, creating, bringing characters and stories to life even on a limited scale) while also working remotely and giving me a ton of flexibility. And now I’m scared. But I guess this is the time to get off my high horse and follow my own teachings.
Subconsciously, I knew that safety net had to go at some point.
I had been telling myself I would leave that job when the timing was right. When the astrology practice felt stable enough. When I was sure. The same part of me that has been writing about the audit of what you have built versus what you have been performing instead of building knew I was going to have to leave eventually. The same part that has been watching the Mercury-Uranus conjunction and the Mars-Pluto square approach for weeks knew exactly what kind of energy was coming. I knew. Deep down, I wanted to hold on to the stability for a little longer.
What is meant to fall away will fall away. On the day Mercury met Uranus, with Mars firing the last shot from 29° Aries before crossing into the slower territory of Taurus where it would square Pluto seven days later, I hopped on a call that ended my illusion of stability for good.
This is how the current energy manifested in my own personal life.
If you are reading this and something has been pressing on you recently, you probably know what it is. You may have had your own Mercury-Uranus lightning strike in the last few days. Or the conversation you had been delaying finally happened. Or something you had been carrying became impossible to keep carrying any longer. The information arriving this week is what life has been organizing itself to deliver, with a cherry on top.
You probably have your own version of the day job. The thing you have been holding on to out of an entirely reasonable fear of what its absence would mean. The relationship, the role, the identity, the financial pattern, the friendship that still survives only because neither of you has been brave enough to address what already happened to it.
Your body has been making a case for keeping it as it is. And the case probably sounds reasonable. It is all about stability, at the cost of change, the fact that things could be worse, the value of what you have already invested, the discomfort of starting over, or the perfectly valid question of why you would burn down something that still works on paper.
Mars entered Taurus on May 19 and went immediately into detriment. Pluto, retrograde in Aquarius since May 6, is waiting at 5° of its sign. On May 25, Mars catches Pluto at the square — two fixed signs, two planets that do not like to negotiate, and ninety degrees of pressure and tension between them.
This is the aspect that takes the thing from you anyway.
Sometimes Mars-Pluto creates dramatic events: a firing, a breakup, a financial crisis, a health crash. Or a sudden layoff on a sunny Monday morning. And sometimes the switch is quiet and internal. The job becomes intolerable in a way that makes leaving feel less like a choice or a disaster and more like a relief. The relationship reaches a point that cannot be reversed. The financial pattern shows you a number you can no longer pretend not to see. The friendship goes silent and confirms what you already knew. The body sends a signal you can no longer ignore.
Think of this square as the end of a long argument.
What is happening in the sky
Mars is the planet of will, action, anger, desire, and the body’s capacity to push. In Taurus, Mars is in detriment. The slowness of Taurus and the speed of Mars are temperamentally opposed. Mars in Taurus still has force, but the force has to apply itself through resistance. Through weight rather than the natural velocity of Aries.
For six weeks, Mars was in Aries, in its own sign, moving forward at full speed. Everything you started during that period had the wind at its back. By May 19, that engine downshifts. Whatever you were pushing forward on Aries Mars now has to be pushed forward on Taurus Mars, which means it has to be pushed forward by your body’s actual capacity rather than by the borrowed momentum.
Pluto in Aquarius is doing the work of restructuring our collective systems, which I’m sure you’ve already noticed. Pluto retrograde turns that work inward. The collective structures Pluto is dismantling become visible inside our individual lives as the structures we ourselves have been propping up, the agreements with our own conditions that we made years ago and have never renegotiated since.
When Mars in Taurus squares Pluto in Aquarius, the friction is quite specific: the body’s preference for what it knows, applied with all the stubbornness of Taurus, collides with Pluto’s demand that what no longer works be released so it can be transformed.
The square is exact on May 25 and 26, but the energy builds all week. By the weekend, the pressure peaks.
Why fixed squares are different
Other squares in astrology create conflict that can be resolved through movement. Cardinal squares (between Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) create crises that demand action and tend to clear quickly. Mutable squares (between Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces) create confusion that resolves through adaptation and change.
Fixed squares are different. They produce conflicts where neither side wants to give way. Fixed signs are the part of the zodiac built to hold, accumulate, resist. When two fixed planets square each other, the friction builds and builds instead of dissolving. The thing that has to break breaks under sustained pressure that finally exceeds what the structure underneath it can hold.
Mars-Pluto square in fixed signs is one of the most consequential squares of the year. The last time Mars in Taurus squared Pluto in Aquarius was around June 9, 2024, when Pluto was still settling into Aquarius. Whatever was beginning to shift for you around June 2024 has had almost two years to intensify, or become impossible to avoid. This is the square that comes back to ask what you have done with the time you had.
What this looks like for your Rising sign
Pluto is in Aquarius, Mars is in Taurus. Where these two signs fall in your chart might give you an idea of where the friction is happening for you.
Aries rising: Pluto is in your 11th house. Mars enters your 2nd. The square is between your money and your community. Friends, networks, or collective commitments are pulling you in a direction your finances are no longer willing to support. Or the opposite: your earning capacity is shifting in a way that is going to change which communities you can afford to be part of.
Taurus rising: Pluto is in your 10th house. Mars enters your 1st. The square is between your public role and your body. Career pressure that you have been carrying is starting to show up physically. Or the inverse: your body is making a demand that your career cannot accommodate. Something has to give, and the something is probably the structure of how you work, not the body.
Gemini rising: Pluto is in your 9th house. Mars enters your 12th. The square is between your worldview and your unconscious. A belief you have organized your life around is being contradicted by something rising from inside you that has no easy language. Pay attention to dreams, to what surfaces in moments of solitude, to the feeling that something you used to know with certainty is no longer as solid as it used to be.
Cancer rising: Pluto is in your 8th house. Mars enters your 11th. The square is between shared resources and your social world. A financial entanglement, an inheritance issue, or psychological baggage is colliding with the question of which communities you actually belong to. The friend group that knows the older version of you may not hold the version trying to emerge through the 8th house work.
Leo rising: Pluto is in your 7th house. Mars enters your 10th. The square is between your closest partnerships and your career. A relationship is putting pressure on your professional structure, or your career is putting pressure on a relationship. By the end of the week, the question of which one matters more may have to be answered with newfound certainty.
Virgo rising: Pluto is in your 6th house. Mars enters your 9th. The square is between your daily life and your beliefs. Your health, your work routine, your physical environment are contradicting the philosophy or framework you have been using to make sense of your life. The body is telling you that what you believe and how you live are no longer in the same space.
Libra rising: Pluto is in your 5th house. Mars enters your 8th. The square is between your creative or romantic expression and the deeper psychological material it has been sitting on top of. A creative project, a romance, or a relationship with your own pleasure is brushing up against grief, debt, or buried family material that the lightness of the 5th has been protecting you from feeling.
Scorpio rising: Pluto is in your 4th house. Mars enters your 7th. The square is between your home or family of origin and your closest partnership. A partner is asking something of you that conflicts with what your foundation can support, or your home situation is making a demand that the partnership cannot accept. This week may bring a confrontation that has been delayed for months.
Sagittarius rising: Pluto is in your 3rd house. Mars enters your 6th. The square is between how you think and how your body operates daily. A mental pattern or a conversation that keeps replaying starts manifesting itself as physical symptoms. The mind has been trying to argue its way out of a body that is telling it something the mind would rather not hear.
Capricorn rising: Pluto is in your 2nd house. Mars enters your 5th. The square is between your money and your pleasure. A creative project, a romantic connection, or even your right to enjoy your life is pressing against your financial structure. You may be spending in ways that are not sustainable, or you may be denying yourself in ways that are starving the part of you that needs to create and play.
Aquarius rising: Pluto is in your 1st house. Mars enters your 4th. The square is between your identity and your home. The version of yourself that has been in the works since Pluto entered your 1st house is no longer compatible with the home, the family situation, or the foundation you are operating from. Something at the base of your life has to shift to accommodate who you are becoming.
Pisces rising: Pluto is in your 12th house. Mars enters your 3rd. The square is between your unconscious and your everyday communication. Material from your 12th house, what you carry without seeing, is starting to leak into how you speak, what you say in conversations, what comes out of your mouth before you can edit it. Pay attention to slips. The unconscious is using the 3rd house to send messages it cannot send any other way.
What to do with this week
The mistake people often make with harsh aspects like a Mars-Pluto square is trying to win them. This is like trying to win over a thunderstorm. The force is bigger than you, and the line you are holding is exactly the thing that is going to break. It will only be more painful than it needs to be.
The alternative has nothing to do with being passive or giving up. I would rather call it recognition. The thing you have been refusing to let go of, the thing whose name you already know without having to read this whole article, is asking to be looked at this week. Look at it, see it, name it, acknowledge its existence.
Some of what surfaces will need to go. Some of it will need to be renegotiated rather than ended. The square will not tell you which is which. Your job is to stop convincing yourself that you know everything, and let this energy show you what you actually need to see.
The body can help you. Mars in Taurus speaks through sensation — tension, fatigue, appetite changes, the physical response you have around certain people, places or decisions, the way your body feels when you imagine staying and the way it feels when you imagine leaving. Trust your body more than you usually do. Taurus is the sign of the body’s intelligence. Pluto is the sign of buried truths and transformation. Together they can bypass the rational part of your mind that has been making the case for keeping things the way they are.
Once you see it, do not act recklessly. The square is exact on May 25-26, and the temptation will be to make a definitive move in the heat of those days. Resist that temptation if you can. Mars-Pluto in fixed signs is better suited to considered response over reactive action. Whatever you see now, you will have to look at again, and eventually deal with.
But do not look away either. The thing is still there, even when you close your eyes.
Thank you for reading.
If you want to understand yourself better through the lens of astrology, I offer in-depth birth chart readings to help you align with your personal cosmic blueprint.
Sorry/not sorry (because divine timing) about the job! I think you're amazing at this, so I hope it works out for you to just do this! <3
Big hugs on the loss of your stability (day job) and best wishes for the new life you’re building on stronger foundations 💜