Image: Chihully Glass Flowers from last year’s installation at Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Gardens hint at the exotic quality of events emerging this season.
The surge of Aries fire lights up the skies! April begins with SUN, VENUS, MARS and URANUS closely bunched together like a bundle of fireworks. Uranus is the WAKE-UP planet. This rare planetary fusion wakes us up in a vital, emotional way. Are you feeling it? New impulses lead us to try the new and different. Many of us are waking up to the radical realization that the “way of the world” can change.
ARIES is pioneering, impulsive and, at times, more than little trigger-happy. Whoa! Especially with Mars so strong in its own sign, we may need to reign in some of those impulses—without dampening our motivation and initiative. Saturn in Scorpio can help with this, as we focus on maintaining a still centeredness. With that caution duly noted, Maris in Aries, at its best, is the heroic impulse, the courage of the pioneer.
Mars, in Aries especially, can also get impatient, frustrated or angry. Anger is a more vital emotion than depression, which many may be feeling, yet excitement is much the better. Let’s try for such an energy upgrade. “Follow your bliss, follow your excitement” is a great motto for Uranus, very stimulated in Aries. . Looking for something new and different? We all are, as we aspire to a new way of living on Earth.
Venus is the planet that sets the emotional tone. In adventurous Aries, Venus becomes a heroine with a warrior spirit, suggesting a proactive emotional invitation to bring us what will make us happy. We just can’t be too pushy about it or we push it away.
With all this Aries fire, the first half of April is like a non-stop action movie! Any planet that enters Aries (or Cancer, Libra, Capricorn) will trigger the Uranus/Pluto square, a challenging dynamic between two outer planets that defines the global revolution in progress. Mars, Sun and Venus already pushed the Uranus/Pluto button in the last week of March, a power-punching, world-shaking combination. Obviously global systems are being restructured. In the U.S. we’ve got “Sequester” to contend with, for one big deal. But the more important question to you is, “What does this all mean to your experience?” Where do you stand as April begins? It is a time to engage, make moves, not stand by and watch. Still, we need to stand in and move from that “still” place inside ourselves.
Never a dull moment this month! Almost every day features an intense celestial dynamic of one kind or another, largely choreographed by the Moon as it weaves planetary patterns into our specific day-to-day experience. If there is any pause in the action, we may find ourselves nostalgically looking back at the spacey, floating Piscean seas of early March! If so, take yourself in hand and go for the gold.
The Moon is the fastest hand on the cosmic clock, ticking off day-by-day developments. It establishes a weekly rhythm,
1. unfold the latest developments in the Uranus/Pluto dynamic. New initiatives move things inevitably along, then,
2. check in with reality planet Saturn. We take stock of the unfolding situation, analyze and consider implications, determine effective strategy and response, then,
3. dive into the quantum soup with Neptune and its reality-shifting cohort Chiron. We tune into the flow, smooth out any feathers ruffled from stress, relax and commune with our inner guidance.
Let’s look at the sequence for the first week in April:
APRIL 1
The Sun conjuncts Venus, in close square to Pluto. This is an obvious indication of financial restructuring and repositioning, be it from “Sequester,” the potential Italian withdrawal from the Euro, the death of influential Venezuelan oil president Chavez, the voting in of the new Pope, the new Chinese leadership or other, inevitable major global events likely to hit the headlines. Don’t believe everything you hear, as various factions give their spin to favor their agenda. Pay more attention to your life. Bring it “up close and personal.”
APRIL 2-3
The Moon enters Capricorn, conjuncts Pluto and squares Uranus, along with the Sun, Venus and Mars. Personal considerations of the impact of larger changes are in order, as we take stock of our own situations. This is a highly emotional dynamic, as we increasingly recognize the necessity for new initiatives. Pluto indicates where we are empowered or disempowered. Its potent square with Uranus has an obvious impact well into 2015, as global systems are dismantled, rot from the inside out or are revitalized with new pioneering ideas.
APRIL 4-5
The Moon in Aquarius squares Saturn, the “reality check” planet. We step back to gain perspective, converse with our friends and neighbors. Community liaisons are forged to address the situation at hand.
APRIL 6-7
The Moon in Pisces conjuncts Neptune and Chiron and squares Jupiter/Black Moon. Thank goodness it’s the weekend. Let’s find some moments of pause in the swirl of activity to we feel out the energy flow and tune into the unfolding moment. JUPITER and BLACK MOON in air sign GEMINI offer breathing room amidst the busy hub-bub. The subtle, non-judgmental wavelength of the Black Moon suggests an attitude of open inquiry and curiosity about how things are unfolding. Are we curious enough to notice, even to seek out unprecedented perspectives, different facets of a situation that reveal unforeseen opportunities?
Find the heart of joy in your being and “proceed as way opens,” as the peace-loving Quakers say. Right in synch with this, also on the 7th, Venus and Mars conjunct in Aries, a special moment to clarify our emotional integrity, so we avoid hasty judgments and make sure we are doing what we really want to do. Then we are ready to undertake a course of action without needing to know all the details but with confidence that divine guidance will make these apparent and assure an appropriate outcome.
APRIL 10
The NEW MOON at 21 ARIES, 4:35am CDT,
is mythically interesting, as it features a union of Sun-Moon as well as Venus-Mars, two archetypal conjunctions. Carl Jung wrote of the “conjunctio” as a union of spirit and matter, male and female, human and divine, a merging symbolic of the process of individuation. This is the heroic quest of Aries.
APRIL 12, PLUTO turns retrograde at 11 CAPRICORN,
with laser focus on the Plutonian process of deconstruction. It will take time to process what has already been laid bare. Recently I saw some photos of the piles of trash from the Japanese tsunami that still needs to be dealt with. We need to address such matters, so the stuff does not fester and become increasingly toxic. Let’s deal with what we have in front of us now, as we continue to dismantle what Pluto exposes as inevitably unsustainable and reorganize global systems and our own lives in the grounding of Capricorn’s Earth-honoring ways.
Pluto is retrograde until late September. Like a planetary archaeologist, slow moving, Pluto digs down to uncover and expose underlying issues that impact the current state of affairs. A Pluto “dig” is a 2-3 year process, unearthing old history. Since Pluto has a 248-year orbit around the Sun and through the signs, it looks back two and a half centuries. Looking back that far takes us to the roots of the American Revolution. Britain had just won the French and Indian Wars and the Seven Years’ War, a global colonial repositioning among European powers. The Stamp Act, a tax levied on American colonists to support British military presence, was passed in 1765, exactly 248 years ago, which created the rally call of “No taxation without representation.” The Sons of Liberty, a key group of Revolutionaries, organized and began its activism that culminated in the Revolutionary War. Does any of this sound familiar in this third millennium version of global repositioning and fall of an economic power elite?
APRIL 14, MERCURY into ARIES
After an extended visit in Pisces, Mercury moves into Aries, just as the rest of the party starts moving into Taurus. Mercury pops up with new initiatives that fuel the current revolution, plugging into the Uranus/Pluto square April 19th-21st. Watch the media for interesting, probably surprising news.
April 15, VENUS into TAURUS
April 19, SUN into TAURUS
April 20, MARS into TAURUS
Mars was host of the Aries action; Venus now offers a gracious welcome in “her” sign. Taurus slows things down, inviting us to enjoy life. As an earth sign, Taurus naturally deals with the “stuff” of life, sometimes becoming materialistic, favoring quantity over quality. With Venus in Taurus, particularly strong in its own sign, quality becomes primary, as we seek best long-term value. The quality index of Venus includes beauty, enjoyment and sense of satisfaction. What is worth spending your energy, money and time on? Taurus steadies and grounds energy in order to be productive. It’s a sign that likes to have something to put its hands on, something tangible to show for time well-spent. What will give satisfying results that you will take pleasure in? Venus and Taurus are a financial indicators. In these economicallyy challenging times, less money needs to go a longer way. Such Taurus questions become more meaningful, as we set our sights to invest in long-term prosperity.
TAURUS-SCORPIO FULL MOON, April 25, 2:57pm CDT,
is a partial ECLIPSE with a strong planetary dynamic. The Sun conjuncts Mars and Venus while the Full Moon conjuncts Saturn, a potentially confrontational face-off that highlights the realization that things can’t go on “like this” and won’t. Looking back to Solstice week in December, Saturn revisits what was going on then, calling for a review, resolution and definitive step in any situation.
Another time to review is the reverse Saturn-influenced Full Moon last October, that brought in mega-storm Hurricane Sandy, long to be remembered on the U.S. East Coast. How are we recovering and rebuilding from any such disaster? Are we doing this the old way? or are we going to re-evaluate for the long-term. What are the financial implications? Clearly our values are being deeply scrutinized, as we each work through a profound process of revitalization on some level, which includes letting go of useless attitudes and stuck habits that waste time and energy. The times call for us to use what we have. We may discover more resources than we thought we had and more resourcefulness than we believed ourselves capable of.
This Full Moon suggests an alchemical process that renews, literally from the inside out. Earth sign Taurus demonstrates the results of our labors and our emotional state of being. If we don’t like what we are experiencing, we can tap into the subatomic levels beneath the surface in Scorpio, where energy patterns can be dissolved and rearranged. The power of desire is a Scorpio potential that redirects the undercurrents to alter the outcome. Are we capable of such a feat? When we intend that our desire aligns with the highest good, then we can proceed confidently “as way opens.” Let’s have at it! If enough of us channel that energy, heaven knows what we can accomplish.
