APRIL 2024

April is a big month astrologically speaking but it doesn’t mean that everything we want to set in motion will happen quickly. There are more than a few indications that although there is huge inspiration for jumping headfirst into the mysteries of life there are still some complicated spiritual equations to wrestle with in order to get at the roots of our desires and there are no easy solutions ahead.

For those of you who know the astrology, this is easy to see. A Solar Eclipse ruled by Mars in Pisces conjunct Saturn almost automatically brings us back to more profound philosophical questions and poetic imageries that reveal paradoxical yet fundamental truths about the nature of reality. Walking on a tightrope, the emerging yet very immature consciousness of Aries collides with the profound knowing of Pisces and more extensively Chiron which conjunct the Solar Eclipse on April 8th. The Solar Hero is confronted with ego-transcending riddles and one must advance with all these considerations holding both the heart and the mind in each hand while the winds of change, swirling left and right, threaten to throw this delicate equilibrium into chaotic inceptions.

I don’t think that April Astrology is bad, I think we have the opportunity to understand more profoundly where we have abandoned ourselves. However, with Mercury moving retrograde all month, the very potent Solar Eclipse in Aries conjunct Chiron and the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus on April 20th, there are most definitely some elements that we are unable to take into consideration just quite yet. The fruit is ripe with sweet nectar and the Head of the Dragon hungers for it but there is no reasoning with the compulsive nature of Rahu and there is always a price to pay in exchange for the treasure that it guards.

My guess is that in the next month, most of us will have opportunities to gain greater insights into our own nature and the nature of reality itself.

‘’It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.’’

New Moon in Pisces: A Spell for Peace

Spell – Nicholas Roerich – 1940

The New Moon in Pisces on Sunday March 10th is an important one for many reasons including that it is the last New Moon before Eclipse Season begins just a few days after the Aries Equinox on March 20th. The beginning of this significant astrological period will take us all the way to the month of May when Mercury finally emerges from shadow.

The Lunar Eclipse in Libra takes place on March 25th, Mercury stations retrograde in Aries on April 1st, a Solar Eclipse in Aries occurs on April 8th and the much anticipated Jupiter-Uranus conjunction in Taurus arrives on April 20th. It can be hard to predict what will transpire from the Aries Eclipse and Jupiter-Uranus conjunction as both these events are considered somewhat supercharged and volatile yet we can expect to see some important collective changes taking place in the months ahead and beyond.

The New Moon in Pisces on March 10th is receiving a supportive aspect from Uranus in Taurus which emphasizes the ‘’newness’’ of this particular moment. We are going to see a million different interpretations of ‘’what is going on’’ in the coming months but if you can keep just one thing in mind is that: Nobody really knows what is going on.

The sign of Pisces contains the greatest possibilities of permutations imaginable.

It is the end and the beginning, death and rebirth and everything in-between. This is also why the influx of planets in Pisces right now can feel like things could flip upside down from one moment to the next.

Pisces is the consciousness wrestling with meaning, it’s a mystical dialogue with a God, it’s seeing through the eyes of the world and being brought down to your knees until you let go of your egoist agenda and trust the unfolding process of your life’s mystery.

This New Moon in Pisces is not a call to surrender but a moment to set the necessary intentions to renew with meaning in a world being overridden by senselessness. Each moment is an opportunity to start over, each time wiser, trading superficial inclinations for spiritual initiation into the present moment so that you can stand clear in your own peaceful center, like an oasis amidst the rising cacophony.

WEEK OF FEBRUARY 26th, 2024

At some point subjective inflations and presumptions about what reality ‘’IS’’ and ‘’SHOULD BE’’ meet with contrasting images and ideas so foreign that no framework and no words can describe them. Anyways, the eyes have become too full with attention deficit and the contradictions of a disordered world, that although the light is on 24/7, the spirit longs for an apocalyptic blackout, a night to rest the mind on, the peace of coherence, the simplicity of health without the hamster wheel fuelled by fears of scarcity; the cult of materialism and status which keeps life force locked-in the crumbling structures of a destructive world that belonged to your forefathers where you err like a hungry ghost superstitiously prompting your imagination to release you from the constrictions of your own limited thinking.

This week, Mercury, Saturn and the Sun will all converge at 9 Pisces which is a relatively rare occurrence for these three to be exactly conjoint at the same time. The collective tides are shifting and although this is a small aspect within the complexity of this year’s astrology, I do think it fits the overall changes that we will continue to witness in the world at large and in our personal lives

Saturn’s transit in Pisces until 2025 is hard to grasp; on one hand Saturn is the reality of Time yet Saturn in the boundless sign of Pisces has brought a strange relationship with the passing of Time and Time itself.

The Mutable signs (Pisces, Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius) seem to be more anxiety inducing in general as they represent things moving from one state into the next (ei. Winter to Spring). We witness the old forms dissolving without necessarily having the information of the new incoming forms and this movement towards the unknown can leave a lot of room for the imagination to speculate.

This week, we have an equal influence of planets in Fixed signs (unbudging – present moment) and planets in Mutable signs (changing – future forms). There may be resistance to change although there is impetus towards liberation that will lead us into May and beyond. Whether it’s from a belief, a perception, or a way of doing things you may have been getting a hint of what scares the shit out of you: Lean into that and listen to the teachings.

Sunrise with Sea Monsters c.1845 Joseph Mallord William Turner

LOOKING FOR COHERENCE

WEEK OF FEBRUARY 19th, 2024

Pisces Season 2024 is coloured by Saturn and may bring some clarity surrounding Saturn in Pisces lessons since its ingress in March of last year and the need to build better boundaries or structures around things that may have never needed organization up until now. 

We are just a month away from the Aries Equinox/Eclipse Season, and may be compelled to take stock or acknowledge the limitations of a changing reality and the burdens that come from being embodied and having to pay bills against a virtual zeitgeist that is threatening to swallow our humanity whole: A delicate equilibrium may be needed to keep consciousness afloat in the timelessness of virtual worlds or simply with attention scattering into a multiplicity of interest, stimulations, or opportunities which may not all be worth their investment in time and energy.

Sorting priorities could however be a confusing process and your ability to distinguish between the superfluous and the invaluable could be akin to locating and isolating the grains of salt from within the sea.

Jupiter in Taurus rules over this year’s Pisces Season and Jupiter is currently receiving a whole sign square from Pluto, Mars, and Venus currently in Aquarius which may bring up a conflict between the conceptual and the material, while emphasizing what is deeply ingrained and slow to change. It could also be that some of the tools used to measure ‘’worth’’ are obsolete leading to a sense of confusion as to what needs to be prioritized at this point in time. 

Jupiter in Taurus squaring its ruling planet Venus in Aquarius (exact on the 24th) highlights the current generalized sense of injustice related to who gets to benefit and the ways in which wealth and privilege is unevenly distributed. On a more personal level, Venus in Aquarius squaring Jupiter could bring a sense of needing to simplify things and return to more analog ways of doing things in order to enjoy life, against an increasingly complex and de-naturalized technological world.

The Full Moon in Virgo arrives on February 24th ruled by Mercury newly ingressed in Pisces and may highlight a need to find more coherence between learned skills and intuition, techniques and creative impulses; something that can only be done once we quiet the mind and trust the process at play even if it doesn’t seem to ‘’make sense.’’

The Full Moon receives a supportive trine from Jupiter in Taurus while opposing Mercury, the Sun and Saturn in Pisces: There may be a need to slow down and think things through more deliberately and assess the land on which you have built the foundations of your beliefs while weeding out the concepts or ideas that are now deprived of life.

We do not get to coherence by blindly following dogmatic beliefs or worse: the status quo. We get to a place of coherence with time and experience where we can hopefully synthesize what we have learned into wisdom which paradoxically comes with the diligent application of skills overtime.

Things will certainly get increasingly confusing in the virtual and mediatic world as we progress in 2024 and beyond and this is another ‘’pit stop opportunity’’ to assess where you are at and stick your head out of the water especially with information and image intake. We are all compelled towards making sense of the world but more often than not, the more you know, the less things make sense. 

Fill your ears and heal your body with the sight and sounds of the natural world whenever you can. It may be the best medicine for the spirit of our times.

NEW MOON IN AQUARIUS:

”We have encircled ourselves within ourselves – inside out. Laid to rest within digital tombs, closing our eyes to the real world for temporary pleasure and pearls, make beliefs, bindings and unread contracts, total participation, the enclosures of consciousness, the mind that spins on its axis, uncomfortable convenience, encrypted blood, frozen in place, movement without mobility, calcification of the heart; the opposite of flow. Within this containment, the centrifugal force pushes everything through the abyss until clarity comes through like filtered water. The soul awakens and emerges like Houdini’s escape out of a straight jacket; a magic trick for the immortals amidst the grand illusions.”
– Elodie

In Chris Reppucci and I’s four years research on the Lunar Mansions, one Mansion that stood out dramatically is the 25th which sits between 8*17’ and 21*25 of Aquarius where the upcoming New Moon on February 9th is taking place.

From the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) list in the ‘’Prayer to Mene’’, the 25th Lunar Mansion is associated with the shape ‘’Garland’’ as in the funerary garlands found on ancient tombs. στέλμα or stélma is the word used in the PGM for the 25th Shape, which gets translated in the Betz edition as GARLAND.

Etymologically stélma can mean a wreath, or crown, or garland but roots from the idea itself of ‘’ENCIRCLING’’ For the 25th Lunar Mansion, the Picatrix mentions guarding trees and crops, and mentions binding body parts, firm incarceration and securing buildings.

A very easy way to understand this part of the zodiac is to recall the lockdowns that occurred world wide as a very dignified Saturn transited in Aquarius.

Another example is the one of famous escape artist Harry Houdini who was born with Aquarius rising and Saturn at 11 degrees of Aquarius in the 25th Lunar Mansion.

“Doors only lock, Because enemy within scares more than outside”
― Harry Houdini

The upcoming New Moon at 20*41’ Aquarius is receiving a square from Uranus in Taurus emphasizing themes of bindings but also themes of liberation. There may be an awareness of the things, situations, people to whom we have binded ourselves, the boundaries that protect us, the containers that keep us locked into an interrupted state.

This can be a very claustrophobic section of the zodiac, it is the arrested state of the tomb before the soul is released from its form.

Since this is such a powerfully binding place, this New Moon and this period of time could also be utilized towards the creation of lasting projects or commitments – for what is laid out now could be encircled and protected by the Garlands of Time. The involvement of Uranus with this New Moon may however demand that we trust our higher intelligence (daimon) as opposed to forcefully trying to twist the arm of Fate; for the most lasting results in our lives often come from divine intervention.

Riding the Eclipse Serpent

Art by Clay Shaper

♢

Did you know that Eclipses come in pairs (a Solar Eclipse takes place at the New Moon and the Lunar Eclipse takes place on the Full Moon) and that the two week period between the first Eclipse and the second one is considered a period of liminality, a bridge, a cut in the fabric of time, a crossing from familiarity into unknown circumstances? Moving from one moment to the next with new story lines emerging while old forms disappear into the black opening created by the obscuring of the light. You may notice new factors coming into your life/in the world at large or a shifting even so slightly if you pay attention to these things. Otherwise, you may simply feel a heaviness or on the contrary, elation as some parts of reality rearrange itself and bring about new or different story lines in your life.

Humanity has feared eclipses for a very long time and many cultures throughout history evolved with serpent and dragon mythology, protocols, and remediations to avoid being susceptible to the effect of eclipses. In my own astrological practice and research on this topic I can say that I have observed really varied results and manifestations brought about by eclipses, from really positive ones, to less positive ones, to totally neutral but overall I have a tremendous amount of reverence during this period of liminality and I usually pay close attention to what occurs during eclipse season as it often correlates to some important storylines that will play out over the course of the next several months.

The simplest way to explain this to a non-astrologer would be that what regulates our perceptions of Time here on Earth is directly related to the cycle of light and darkness and that although eclipses are a totally normal and natural phenomenon that occurs several time each year, it seems to create or remove some ‘’threads’’ in the tapestry of Fate.

The Head of the Dragon (the North Node of the Moon) compels us deeper into material reality, and into the illusory nature of our egoic desires while the Tail of the Dragon (The South Node of the Moon) tends to remove things and bring about a process of spiritualisation requiring us to adopt a more detached or less self-centered approach to reality but it is truly not straightforward.

Fate works in very mysterious ways and I am not one to pretend to understand the workings of the universe. I am simply a mere observer and translator of her patterns.

The First Eclipse of the season was a Solar Eclipse in Libra on October 14th and the next one will be a Lunar Eclipse in Taurus on October 27th.

I open my inner eye and look onto the red diamond shape that bleeds insights directly into the world. Multifaceted answers are reflected through complex prisms and the more I try to hold on, the less I know but everything comes to me when I relax my gaze. Snakes are constricted around our necks and when we gasp for air, new forms are birthed as we hold hands tightly. We breathe secret passwords into each other involuntarily so we can extend our reach across time and beyond our bodies. The light shimmers inside the void as we unravel the codes of complications and weave new patterns into saline inceptions. Sharp is the edge and the master of depth is an unruly one but you can give him cigars for safe passage into Caribbean dreamscape where flesh is covered with fat for the feast. If it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth its weight in gold and that’s why we are born with our mouth open in search of golden milk.
– Elodie

NEW MOON IN VIRGO

The New Moon in Virgo on Thursday the 14th of September is pretty straight forward and that’s what I like about it. It takes place at 21 degrees of Virgo forming a supportive trine to the planet of innovation: Uranus currently at 22 degrees of Taurus. Actually all of the Outer Planets are involved with this New Moon which serve as a broader context indicators of the cultural zeitgeist and societal changes we are experiencing at this time. Mercury which rules over the sign of Virgo stations direct less than 24hrs after the New Moon which is a good testimony for traction or at least clarity emerging after an extended period of troubleshooting various less-than-ideal structures, thought patterns or habits in our lives;

Doing a little bit everyday makes the big changes happen overtime. We don’t need drastic changes, we need to change our daily habits, practices and rituals so that we can be more effective at implementing the bigger changes that we want to see happen. Uranus in Taurus (Earth) forming a trine to the New Moon in Virgo (Earth) accentuate the upgrades available from a very tangible standpoint but you have to roll up your sleeves, get your hands dirty, try and then keep going.

After the New Moon in Virgo, the Sun trines Uranus (15th) oppose Neptune(19th) and trines Pluto(20th-21st) before entering Libra on the 23rd. This Outer Planet sequence is contained in the New Moon and it looks like we are being prompted at this time to work with the tangible and I think (or at least I hope) that most everyone is intuiting the importance of embodying and actualizing our material reality at this time as we move deeper into this consciousness-altering exoteric digital era.

Yes, Mercury stationing direct (exact on the 15th) can sometime coincides with more logistical snafus but that’s a minor detail in the grand scheme of things.🐒

Chop wood and carry water as the saying goes…

”What some might call the restrictions of the daily office they find to be an opportunity to foster the inner life. The hours are appointed and named… Life’s fretfulness is transcended. The different and the novel are sweet, but regularity and repetition are also teachers…

And if you have no ceremony, no habits, which may be opulent or may be simple but are exact and rigorous and familiar, how can you reach toward the actuality of faith, or even a moral life, except vaguely? The patterns of our lives reveal us. Our habits measure us. Our battles with our habits speak of dreams yet to become real.”

-Mary Oliver

PISCES FULL MOON

Speaking on the behalf of the Universe, the Stars, and the realm of Spirits, self-proclaimed Magicians, High Priestesses and Healers translate the secrets of the world into vulgarities. Diluting the sacred into the profane, marketable mysteries for easy consumptions. Is it a revolution or is it psychic contagion? To be seeking the truth within the confines of technology. One can pretend to know what regulates Time and Fate. Elevate oneself to the ranks of the Oracle. Speak of imminent change, and of the secrets of eternal youth. Ride the wave of authority over spiritual matters before initiation, stealing fire from the gods for the sake of profit. But ‘’truth’’ could be much more simple right now. What if you already knew what you needed to know? What if this moment required unlearning the complexities of this world, its constructs and your desires within the confines of your own mortality so that you could get closer to nature, your nature which is desperately seeking you.

Sun in Virgo ruled by Mercury Rx in Virgo
Moon conjunct Saturn in Pisces ruled by Jupiter in Taurus (turning Rx in 5 days)
Uranus has just stationed Rx in Taurus
Venus is still Rx in Leo
Pluto Rx in Capricorn
Neptune Rx in Pisces

The Pluto in Capricorn era slowly coming to a close

Painting by Michael Thomas

Pluto leaves Aquarius on June 11th and moves back into Capricorn for the next 6 months. There are many ways to interpret Pluto retrograding back to Capricorn where it has been for the last 15 years.

Pluto transits are slow and far reaching which means its influence is best understood collectively but think back to what was initiated for you around 2008 and you might find that an important chapter ended or began around that time especially if you have Cardinal placements. (Aries-Cancer-Libra-Capricorn)

When studying astrological cycles, one tends to realize that life and personal experiences are more cyclical than linear. We would like to think that life is straightforward and that we leave things behind forever but more often than not, we have to revisit patterns and challenges in our lives that come back around through different relationships or circumstances until we learn the fundamentals. We learn, we grow, and life changes but self-mastery is a slow process that is best understood through repetition.

Pluto will be back and forth between Capricorn and Aquarius for another year and I would compare this motion to a ”threshold crossing of significant importance” yet, because of Pluto’s very slow motion this ”crossing” is stretched across a few years.

You might feel that powerful and totally new ways of being are wanting to emerge for you but this slow process requires a delicate balance between two worlds; the old and the foreign, the conscious and the unconscious. You may have to let go of something that feels safe and familiar while moving deeper towards what is compelling you at this time For the next 6 months, you might continue to ‘’bargain’’ with aspects of yourself you would rather not deal with, a decision you made half consciously could be haunting you or you may have to keep revisiting a pattern, a habit, or a situation you thought was officially on its way out.

Pluto re-enters Aquarius January 2024 and then moves back into Capricorn one last time September 2024 before it officially enters Aquarius for good in November of 2024 promising that the new shapes we are wanting to initiate will in fact emerge yet ‘’letting go’’ is also part of the equation.

NEW MOON IN TAURUS

There’s a New Moon in the last degrees of Taurus on Friday (near Fixed Star Algol) and the collective is weary and susceptible from too much information, too much internet, too much algorythm, although it’s a really nice hopeful moment and new forms are emerging, projects are budding and starting to unfold; Venus in Cancer rules over the skies, birthing pathways towards greater pleasures and joys, inviting us towards compassionate care and connection with ourselves and with others.

There could be worries about money, about resources, about not having enough or needing more since most of the planets in the sky right now are concerned with ease and stability. Needing more reassurance and proof although Taurus knows how to take charge of itself and its world slowly and steadily. Taurus rhythm is nature’s rhythms but with Venus in Cancer ruling over this New Moon there’s also a need for connection, care and value.

This is not supposed to be a pity party but… …Mars in the very last degrees of Cancer and applying to oppose Pluto is like a dull blade; more dangerous than a sharp one, insecure about its position, needing to prove something, doubling down on efforts and requiring more pressure and force to do what it’s usually good at – which is making things happen without tearing itself up trying to prove something. Power and power imbalances are obvious now. Know how to distinguish between quiet strength and quiet rage within yourself; They don’t have the same effect on your body and your health. These acrimonious ‘’feels’’ threaten to blind the vision, the aims, and the peace.

This New Moon brings fertile opportunities but care must be taken to plant seeds in soils that offer steady growth and longevity; not just hollow gratification. Invest your powers wisely not just to curse strangers on the internet or people who’ve hurt you.

The Goddess is near, waiting to hear your prayers.