Insights for Aries
March 18
Sun enters Aries 11:13 PM EST
Feeling edgy (yet)? Defensive? Like you want to fight back but you aren’t quite sure who to take aim at? Or are you weary of the constant tensions: the weird weathers and the reckless waste of lives and resources proliferating across the planet?
Some say, with a kind of ignorant confidence, that war is an archetype, which it isn’t. The actual archetype is Mars and Aries (the sign it rules). War you might say is a pathological manifestation of the archetype. A reactive, knee jerk way of asserting dominance and amassing land and power-over. Like suicide it is a permanent solution to temporary problems. Homage to the least of our human potentials.
Aries is about identity and Mars is a singular kind of energy that enacts our ways of asserting our identities. We decide how and when to call on these energies. Indigenous wisdom speaks of the ‘original instructions’ which generally include reminders to overcome our aggressions in favor of collective good. To put our fierce, energetic warrior nature into life-sustaining ventures such as cultivating food, building houses, raising children and serving life in it’s diversity with our one precious incarnated self. All things considered.
The wisdom of Aries, particularly in 2024 asks us to dig out these original instructions, the ones we learned and understood when we were children: ‘Use your words’. Go sit by yourself till you can engage with others, and allow others to be their self as well.’
As the Sun travels through Aries there will be an eclipse (check out if it will be visible for you) and Mercury will be retrograde in Aries. All these things will add some fire to our lives even as we are cautioned to slow down our reaction time. For details you can follow along below.
March 20
Mercury conjunct Chiron
Here is an example of Chiron in Action
This is the first of three conjunctions Mercury will make with Chiron: Once in the shadow of the retrograde, once while retrograde and once after it goes direct. We will have time to work on whatever it means to us.
What kind of wisdom(s) are you privy to when you listen at the door of silence? How might that inform your actions in the weeks to come? How do you understand the wounds to our cherished identities which we all endure ? What does it feel like to bear your own even as you allow for those wounds in others?
March 21
Sun sextile Pluto
Venus conjunct Saturn
If the world you live in is made of a bunch of things, if this is how it looks to you, then you too must be a thing. About yourself you know this isn’t true. How, then, to shift your view of the world? If the world is not made of discreet and separate things how is it made? Could it possibly be that everything is connected? That it’s alive? And if it is how might we live in it? What might beauty mean or how might it give meaning to all our connections? Who is your community? Not just the people but the birds and the bees, the rocks and the waters: Much realer than a world of inanimate objects.
We are not here simply to “apprehend – and thus manipulate – the world;” but also to “comprehend it.”
March 22
Mars enters Pisces
War is not an archetype. It’s even a lousy metaphor. Consider ‘the War on Cancer’ or ‘the War on Drugs’. Either we lost them or it never was a war. Mars is the archetype. The deeper we delve into its meaning, messages and possibilities the less pathological its cultural expressions. War is, in fact hell. But Mars and its home sign of Aries can inspire us to something much greater and yet smaller than war. Mars is about virility. How we conceive of this makes all the difference. Humans are metaphorical creatures.
March 24
Venus sextile Jupiter
What does satisfaction feel like: this sensation that doesn’t last and which is as fleeting as any other moment in time? Are we even capable of savoring the sensation of ‘enough’ without clutching at it and wanting 'more' even as we are enjoying what we have? Can we really enjoy anything if we are worried about what will happen when it’s done? Catch yourself in the midst of the simplest satisfaction, notice the layers of feeling it evokes. Be human.
March 25
Full Moon: 05 degrees Libra: 03:00 AM EDT: Lunar Eclipse
If you’re an astrologer you might notice something interesting about this full Moon in Libra which is Venus’ home territory. This Venusian Full Moon is caught between two Venus sextiles: One to Jupiter and one to Uranus. You might then be interested in the possibility that this Moon is showing us something of the conjunction to come between Jupiter and Uranus in Taurus which is Venus’ other home place.
A wise fool once said “You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer yes without having asked any clear question.”
That's one perspective on Venus.
Venus is all that we love and cherish. The part of us that says ‘yes’ to the world. Venus is the beauty of art as well as nature. It matters that our ‘yes’ comes from a true place; that it pleases the soul.
Given that it’s an eclipse, not just a regular Full Moon we might also consult a poet who understands the beauty in a singing stream at a time when there is so much to do and the feeling that there is less and less to say ‘yes’ to:
March 28
Venus sextile Uranus
Revelations come through our senses. The AHA! of scent recognition: The sounds of the world in your ears: The feeling of touch on skin and the taste of substance. Sight least of all, only because we rely on it overmuch. These gates of perception are the means of interaction with that elusive thing we call real-ity.
April 1
Mercury in Aries, stationary retrograde
Be a fool. Get it wrong. Dare to blunder along with all the other blundering humans. Some tricks are calculated and some just arise because Life must be someone’s joke. All are grist for the mill of our potential to earn some wisdom along the way. For this Mercury retrograde period action may speak louder than words but every action is likely to arise in re-action. If you can’t think twice before you hit send, if you find your foot in your mouth, you can still laugh at the joke or marvel at the power of the unconscious. You can still shake or wiggle and play your part in The Dance – the only one there is.
April 3
Venus conjunct Neptune
Venus again! Finishing up her journey through Pisces. Reminding us to say ‘yes’ to beauty, to love, to all that matters to the soul as well as The Soul of All Things. It’s quite likely that my soul or yours are actually each and all part of an Over-Soul which belongs to all of us, which connects us as surely as breath is connected to air or water to fish.
April 5th and 6th
Venus enters Aries and sextiles Pluto
Exalted as Venus is said to be in Pisces, she is considered to be in detriment in the sign of Aries. Planets in detriment (opposite the place they call home) are said to be uncomfortable in the cultural expectations which surround them. Venus in Aries doesn’t just say ‘yes’. At best she says, ‘Yes, but’. Maybe she has a point. Maybe we should listen as she sextiles Pluto and conjuncts Mercury retrograde or Chiron. Maybe a bit of detriment is exactly what is called for. Question authority! Just because you (still) can.
April 8
New Moon: Eclipse: 19* Aries: 2:20 PM EDT
In times of great change we look for portends, we want to know the future. But we would be much better off if we could only focus on and wake up in the present. I’m 100% sure you already know this. But to know the merit of such a thing has not much to do with practicing it.
Eclipses, unlike transits, are moments that demand presence, particularly if they are happening over your head. They are portals, not events. They allow energies to pour in and we may or may not feel helpless in guiding them. For what is astrology if not a guide to how we live? Not a cause of it, or even an effect. Astrologers used to love saying, ‘The stars (and planets) do not compel, they impel’. Some say they do neither of these things; they simply ‘tell’. You decide…
This eclipse, so closely aligned with Chiron asks us to look, not with horror, upon the world, as if it is happening somewhere else but rather to open ourselves to the rather radical sensation that our actions, our reactions are real and have consequence. We are all each first responders in a world of events over which we have only some small measure of agency. But that small measure makes a big difference.
If the eclipse is happening where you can ‘see’ it, don’t just look up! Look around. Virginia Woolf described her experience of an eclipse like this:
“We had fallen. It was extinct. There was no colour. The earth was dead. That was the astonishing moment; and the next when as if a ball had rebounded the cloud took colour on itself again, only a sparky ethereal colour and so the light came back. I had very strongly the feeling as the light went out of some vast obeisance; something kneeling down and suddenly raised up when the colours came. They came back astonishingly lightly and quickly and beautifully in the valley and over the hills — at first with a miraculous glittering and ethereality, later normally almost, but with a great sense of relief. It was like recovery. We had been much worse than we had expected. We had seen the world dead. This was within the power of nature.”
April 10
Mars conjunct Saturn
Whatever your responsibilities, reality has a way of unfolding throughout our lived realities in so many unique and diverse ways, not always in lock step with our perceived obligations. Perhaps the fundamental responsibility is to live willingly and with dignity as a human on this troubled planet with as much compassion and kindness as you can manage without burnout. Who are your 150 people?
April 11
Sun conjunct Mercury retrograde: 7:02 PM EDT
I love this aspect which happens about 6 times a year: three when Mercury is direct and three when it’s retrograde. ‘Cazimi’ is the word, a word that seems to need no definition. To say it is to conjure its meaning. In the heart of the Sun, Mercury is delighted and enthralled by all there is to learn, to play in, to uncover, discover and recover (even in some cases to cover up in covert ways…).
My sense is that we are meant to listen deeply when Mercury is cazimi.
April 15
Mercury (retro) conjunct Chiron
This is Mercury’s second conjunction with Chiron. If you add the eclipse which was conjunct Chiron and then the Sun conjunct Mercury you might think there is a story here and Chiron is the Key. One of Chiron’s meanings is in fact that it is the key as you can see by the glyph which represents it.
Chiron in Aries tells us, teaches us that suffering is a very personal thing. It is felt and experienced by individuals. Of course our wounds teach us everything but Chiron does not wound us. There is nothing inflicted when Chiron is at work in our lives. Chiron’s mandate is to teach. their textbook is the places that hurt, frighten and arises again and again in us. In our thoughts as well as our experience. Mercury first met up with Chiron on March 20th and these last days have underscored and highlighted their teachings. The last conjunction, after Mercury goes direct will be on May 6th. If life, yours, is a teaching what is the lesson? Open your book to the page called today. Class is in session.
April 18
Venus conjunct Mercury (retro)
This conjunction actually perfects at 4:59 AM tomorrow which is the first day of Taurus. I am including it because the Sun will still be in Aries and there has been so much Mercury in the astrological news recently.
This aspect suggests that we may be inclined to retort, to put our foot where it doesn’t belong, to take a shot at the status quo. All good. Perhaps this should include some poetry or art: Passionate, pointed and yet lyrical.
These insights, are meant as contemplations. Astrology is a kind of sky writing which invites the muse. No two perceptions are exactly the same but any of us can find insight through the images if we look. These are mine, happily offered for you to reshape and fashion into something of your own. Follow the links, where you find them for further musings on the planetary aspects.