It happens annually around this time. The Sun’s leap out of the swamps of Scorpio into the aspirational surge of Sagittarius is one of the year’s most dramatic shifts. Picture a flaming arrow blasting upwards out of a cool green marsh.
This year, we have three arrows bursting skyward. On the 15th, Venus enters Sagittarius, two days later so does Mercury, then the Sun on the 22nd.
Take your symbols straight up
The way to access the most valuable side of any astrological symbol is to think of it as a pure creative force.
Signs are not just bundles of character traits. They become personalized once they’re
manifesting in somebody’s chart, but until they’re expressed by the egoic self, they’re raw clusters of potential, value-neutral, waiting for us to make sense of them.
The signs underlie our personal attributes but they don’t determine them. Our consciousness determines them.
From depths to heights
When the Sun and close personal planets enter Scorpio every year, the challenge is how to navigate through emotional and psychological depths. The first part of the month features these three still in Scorpio,
All water signs specialize in emotions: Pisces is the ocean, Cancer the rushing river. Scorpio is the swamp. Still and dark, swamps are the densest bodies of water on Earth. Think of how much invisible fertility is packed into every cubic inch of wetlands.
During the first three weeks of November, with the Sun in Scorpio, you may pick up an all-pervasive mood of emotional density. Strong feelings are stirring that haven’t made up their minds whether or not they want to be known.
Through the first half of November, while Venus, too, is in Scorpio, hidden energies are more palpable in relationships, and creative work delves deeper. When Mercury is in Scorpio, as well, through 11/17. Use this time to render rational truths that are usually inaccessible. This Scorpio triad is informing us of secrets of all kinds if we open to them.
Then, out of the depths, a flaming arrow bursts towards the sky. The three Sagittarius
ingresses signal a shift in collective tone and preoccupations. The watery obsessions of Scorpio morph into the aspirational quests of Sagittarius.
Mutable malaise
The latter part of November will shimmer with restlessness. Sagittarius needs room to roam, whether intellectually, socially or physically. Some people will feel it as an antipathy to confinement, some as a passion to explore. In one way or another, unfamiliar territory is calling you.
Around the 18th-19th an underlying malaise may intensify the mass mood, introducing a different kind of restlessness. This is when the square between retrograde Mars and 
Neptune again reaches exactitude (echoing its first go-round 10/11-12). Those with natal planets at around the 22nd degree of mutable signs will feel its squirrelly malaise especially strongly.
This transit uses doubt as a teaching tool.
We may find ourselves craving distraction, vaguely unsatisfied with the here-and-now. The Sagittarius transits, alone, tend to inspire wanderlust and worldview-expanding studies. But Mars-Neptune is after a more subtle level of exploration.
Its target is our ego investments.
Detach from appearances
If we feel uncertain or confused around this time, we’re responding appropriately. The cosmos wants us to know that whatever we’re doing is not as real as we think it is.
It is a misinterpretation of Neptune-Mars aspects to think of them as undermining practical life. They have nothing against the Earth plane; they just don’t care about it. They are spiritual teachings about the energetic undercurrents behind appearances.
