It means there are two layers to circumstances, or to developments in general. In Cancer, Mars will highlight and expand all sensitive and personal issues: emotions, family situations and feminine energy on all levels. The Moon ruled Cancer is concerned with needs and provisions and responses to them. At the higher level the effects are on domestic political policy, food and produce supply, hospitality industries and health care.
In Leo - the heart of matters and the inescapable core of issues - it takes things to a higher point of expansion and a keener point of interest. Cancer is the mother and Leo is the father (symbolically speaking). Both are concerned with the production or the parenting of whatever is to be brought forth.
The last vestiges of Pluto in Capricorn - which will happen September to mid November - tend to tie up the finalities of an era, or an epoch. Saturn goes into Aries next year, as does Neptune. No-one can speculate about what these two heavies will portend when working closely, though many will try.
The world is on the edge of cataclysmic change. Anyone who has not seen that is a head-in-the-sander. Or blithely indifferent to the world in general. The speculation on universal change has to be underpinned by some kind of faith or there is complete despair. How these seismic shifts are viewed and contemplated is very much down to individual belief or philosophy. But whether religious or pragmatic, it has to be accepted that change must ensue, on possibly unprecedented levels within our known history.
Mars/Cancer opposing Pluto/Capricorn in November cannot be ignored on the outer levels of worldly life. It will bring perhaps a balance, especially when Sun/Libra squares Pluto (and Mars more loosely) in the third week of October. This less than tight T-square can organise a balance, or orchestrate allegiances, which calm present unrest. Or perhaps not - it could signify change and transformation going ahead whatever the cost for the sake of unholy alliance or pact whatever the cost.
Pluto/Aquarius signals extremes in many ways, dangerous ones and untried ones. When Pluto opposes Mars/Cancer in November and Mars/Leo in January there need to be shifts in the status quo.
Things usually begin in-house or at close quarters - Cancer and the Moon rule matters at closer quarters; small spaces, womb-like retreats, burrows and hide-awyas. November is very much concerned with personal safety and nest building or home-making, whether these are literal or more collective. Mars/Leo tends to distinguish the true from the false, for the more discerning. The fake from the fictitious. The sincerity from the spin. Although perspective will vary in what is believed. Do we all live in the same paradigm? It is doubtful, but an interesting question!
These two signs hosting Mars (Cancer and Leo) for the next few months are about the personal situations, the nature of the development before it can stand the test of time (Pluto) or of being valuable in the long-term. Though Moon ruled cancer will predominate by courtesy of earth time transit. In small and large ways, the heat is on the sustainability and the safety of what is being sewn or put together.
Pluto/Aquarius is the exact opposite effect to Mars/Cancer. The former is technocratic almost. The latter is organic. The didactic and powerful characteristics of Pluto deal with swathes of time, cycles of movement and periods of motion which defy quantity or definition - except with hindsight. The Moon also deals with cycles but in a different way, in an ecological way perhaps. In short, the effects are without precedence. We mortals can only fathom or understand segregated sections of what shifts and transpires. It is too large to be digested whole.
In January 25 Pluto enters Aqurius and briefly opposes Mars/Cancer while moving direct again. It remains in Aquarius for twenty or so years. This connection between Aquarius and Cancer, between Mars and Pluto, however loose and brief, is asking for human sentience to harvest and collate from natural sources within sustainable power rather than any other consideration.
The Aquarian age is very much concerned with technicality and automated movement that can be orchestrated and controlled through digital or similar means. Should this be resisted? Can we resist? And what do we do to make those decisions from our own perspective or requirements? We see the worst often, before we can discover what is the best. The signs of Cancer and Leo to a great extent show us what is personally most important to us - and this differs from individual to individual. But the planning stage is frequently happening unbeknown to us, or in a way we do not comprehend until later.
The wisdom we glean is with hindsight. Have we enough info or intel to garner foresight now. Or at least to have some inkling of what must be resisted and what must be accepted!
