This past week has felt like a beam of iron laid across the back of the neck. A deep structural weight. The kind that asks you to hold steady even as your muscles tremble. There has been a sense of almost. Almost breaking. Almost speaking. Almost choosing. We have seen it in the wider world and we have felt it in the quiet corners of our own bodies. The astrological weather for February 22–28, 2026 does not remove the pressure. It changes its element. Where there was steel, now there is water.

Midweek, Mercury begins its first retrograde of the year in Pisces, the final sign of the zodiac. The mind loosens its grip. Thoughts no longer march in straight lines. They drift. They circle. They return. Memory becomes tidal. Dreams thicken. What has been stored beneath language rises into sensation. You may feel it in the sinuses, in the back of the eyes, in the throat that has held too many unsaid things. Old stories surface not to accuse but to dissolve. This retrograde is not a punishment. It is a clearing of psychic sediment. A softening of the hard edges we have built around our own tenderness. It asks us to sit with what lingers in the subconscious and allow it to wash through rather than calcify.

Later in the week, the atmosphere shifts again. Mars forms a square to Uranus and the water sparks. A sudden surge through the nervous system. An urge to act, to break differently. The friction is not random. It presses on the exact place where fear has been disguising itself as caution. It challenges the reflex to cling to what is familiar even when it confines us. This is forward movement asking to be claimed. What is most real will feel steady even under pressure. What is misaligned will feel brittle.

On this same day, the SUN meets the NORTH NODE. Self meets soul direction. Identity brushes against destiny. It is a magnetic pull toward what is already calling your name. Not through force but rather recognition.

And then on February 28, MERCURY retrograde conjuncts VENUS in PISCES. The mind bows to the heart. Ideas about worth, beauty, love, longing, and creativity soften and become permeable. Nostalgia may rise. Grief may surface. A tenderness long avoided may finally ask to be felt. This is the thread that stitches thinking back to feeling. Forgiveness becomes possible as release. Creativity waits in this conjunction like an open tide. Healing does not demand effort. It asks for willingness.

The week ahead asks for softness and strength at the same time. Strength to stay present with the patterned responses that flare when fear is touched, and softness enough to let those patterns unravel rather than reinforce them.

We are not moving fast or forcefully. We are moving deeply. Steel becoes water. Water carries current. And you learn, slowly, how to float without losing your ground.

SUN | MOON | RISING 

Read through your SUN | MOON | RISING to know where this week’s energy unfolds in your chart. Take what resonates, leave the rest.

If this writing resonates, if it nourishes your thinking, your sensing, your way of meeting the season, you’re welcome to support its continuation. This work takes time, attention, and care to create, and your contribution helps keep it alive and freely shared. Adding something to my TIP JAR is a way of participating in the circulation that makes this work possible.

ARIES 

This week moves through you like water finding its way into old cracks. MERCURY stations retrograde in PISCES and something behind your eyes softens. You may feel more porous, more inward, less certain about what you thought you knew. Let that be sacred. When MARS squares URANUS later in the week, the heat rises quickly. A flash of irritation. A desire to act. Do not confuse impulse with truth. The liberation you seek requires presence, not reaction. Your fire is learning devotion.

TAURUS 

URANUS has been reshaping you for years and you know the feeling of harrow beneath steady ground. MERCURY retrograde in PISCES draws you into reflection around friendship, belonging, future visions. Old dreams resurface. Some dissolve. When MARS forms its square to URANUS, the body feels it first. A jolt through the nervous system. A choice about whether you cling or evolve. Stability now must include freedom. There is no turning back to who you were.

GEMINI 

Your ruling planet MERCURY turns inward in PISCES and your usual clarity becomes mist. Career, visibility, direction — all are under review. This is not loss. It is recalibration. When MARS squares URANUS, pressure builds between the life you have been building and the life that is quietly calling you. Notice where your shoulders brace. Notice where they release. The path forward will not be forced. It will be chosen.

CANCER 

The water speaks to you. MERCURY retrograde in PISCES opens your spiritual body. Longing, faith, belief systems soften and reconfigure. You may feel nostalgic for a version of hope you once carried. When MARS squares URANUS, community and connection are tested. Where have you been shrinking to belong? The friction clarifies. Your growth is not negotiable.

LEO 

Depth calls. MERCURY retrograde in PISCES stirs intimacy, shared resources, emotional contracts. There is tenderness here, and truth. Old agreements surface for review. When MARS squares URANUS, tension moves through your public life. A decision about how you lead. Do not armour your heart. Real power now comes from embodied honesty.

VIRGO 

Relationships are the mirror. Your ruler MERCURY turns retrograde in PISCES and communication softens into feeling. You may realise that you have been analysing what simply needs to be felt. When MARS squares URANUS, belief systems and long-held assumptions are jolted. The discomfort is evolutionary. Love cannot live where rigidity rules.

LIBRA 

MERCURY retrograde in PISCES asks you to reconsider your daily rituals, your health, the way you tend your body. Fatigue may whisper truths you have ignored. When MARS squares URANUS, shared dynamics intensify. Money, power, intimacy — the undercurrents surface. Choose what honours your worth rather than what keeps the peace.

SCORPIO 

Creativity and desire swell under MERCURY retrograde in PISCES. Old lovers, old passions, old art forms return like tidewater. Let them speak without assuming you must return. When MARS squares URANUS, relationships ignite. The truth wants air. What is brittle will crack. What is real will strengthen.

SAGITTARIUS 

Home becomes porous. MERCURY retrograde in PISCES draws you back into memory, lineage, emotional inheritance. You may feel it in the belly. In the need to rest more deeply. When MARS squares URANUS, your work rhythms demand change. Freedom is not escape. It is integrity between inner and outer life.

CAPRICORN 

Your voice changes tone. MERCURY retrograde in PISCES moves through language, conversations, the stories you have repeated for years. Some no longer fit. When MARS squares URANUS, creative risk calls your name. Speak what is real even if it unsettles the room. Your authority is evolving.

AQUARIUS 

Worth and value dissolve and reform under MERCURY retrograde in PISCES. Financial themes, self-trust, resourcefulness all come under gentle review. When MARS squares URANUS, the tension touches home and foundation. What you build next must reflect who you are becoming, not who you were protecting.

PISCES 

This is personal. MERCURY stations retrograde in your sign and the world feels slower, dreamier, more permeable. Identity softens. Certainty blurs. Trust the tide. When MARS squares URANUS, your words carry charge. Speak carefully, but do not silence yourself. The heart and mind are learning to move as one.

TAROT READING | FEBRUARY 22-28

You find yourself no longer able to answer in the old tone. The sharp reply softens. The impulsive yes becomes a pause. The reactive no becomes a breath. The KNIGHT OF CUPS shows up as a shift in how you move toward what you desire.

With MERCURY retrograde in PISCES, you begin hearing what sits underneath your own words. You notice when something tastes off. You sense when an invitation is not aligned even if it looks correct on paper. The manifestation is subtle but unmistakable: you stop betraying your inner atmosphere.

When MARS squares URANUS, there is pressure to act fast, to break, to decide in heat. The KNIGHT does not freeze. He does not explode. He chooses movement infused with meaning. In life, this can look like declining something that once flattered you. Reaching out to someone you genuinely care about instead of chasing intensity. Redirecting your energy from proving to offering.

It may appear in work as choosing projects that resonate rather than impress. In love as speaking from vulnerability rather than performance. In the body as a slowing down of the nervous system’s spikes — not because the world is calmer, but because you are.

This manifests when you realise that sensitivity is directional. You become less interested in being right and more interested in being true. Less seduced by disruption for its own sake, more attuned to what feels clean in your chest.

In a week charged with water and voltage, the KNIGHT OF CUPS shows up as the one who can feel the storm and still ride toward what matters without spilling himself.

It is dignified alignment in motion.

Water between worlds. Friction that refines rather than destroys, and a quiet knowing that what survives this week is what is true.PISCES SEASON is lived through the body first. Through sleep, through swelling, through tears, through the bones of the feet that carry us forward even as something dissolves behind us. If you want to understand precisely where this water is moving in your own chart — and how to work with it rather than against it — a personal ASTROLOGY READING with me offers that map.