Week of March 20 - New Moon in Aries
Pluto enters Aquarius, Mars enters Cancer
Timeline:
Mon, March 20
♀︎ ☌ ☊
Venus conjoins North Node (true node)
10:31 am ET
♉︎ 4°24’ ♉︎☉ ✱ ♇
Sun sextiles Pluto
4:12 pm ET
♓︎ 29°57’ ♑︎☉ → ♈︎
Sun enters Aries
5:24 pm ET
♈︎ 00°00’ ♈︎
Tues, March 21
☽ ☌ ☉
New Moon in Aries
1:23 pm ET
♈︎ 00°49’ ♈︎
Thurs, March 23
♇ → ♒︎
Pluto enters Aquarius
8:23 am ET
♒︎ 00°00’ ♒︎
Sat, March 25
♂︎ → ♋︎
Mars enters Cancer
7:45 am ET
♋︎ 00°00’ ♋︎
Sun, March 26
☿ ☌ ⚷
Mercury conjoins Chiron
2:58 pm ET
♈︎ 15°16’ ♈︎
Notes:
March has been a massive month astrologically.
A couple weeks back, Saturn entered the sign of Pisces, after spending 2.5 years in Aquarius.
Last week, Mars concluded its retrograde cycle with a big tidal wave, leaving its post-retrograde shadow while square to a tight trio of planets in Pisces: Neptune, the Sun, and Mercury.
This week is another epic week, with Pluto entering Aquarius on Thursday and Mars entering Cancer on Saturday.
On top of this, we will open the week with the equinox on Monday and a New Moon in Aries on Tuesday.
This will be the first of two consecutive New Moons that will happen in Aries: the first happening Tuesday at 0° and the next being a total solar eclipse at 29° on April 20.
[Edit: it turns out that this upcoming eclipse will be a hybrid eclipse, even rarer than a total eclipse, but it will be visible as a total eclipse in some parts of the world.]
But before we get to all that, let’s first talk about Venus (which is now in its home sign of Taurus) and Mercury (which is now in Aries).
Venus entered Taurus Thursday last week. Taurus is a fixed earth sign and when the Sun is in Taurus, we are at the height of spring in the northern hemisphere, where trees are budding and blooming and everything is a supple neon green. This is beauty at its Venusian finest, and you want to take it all in with your senses. Venus in Taurus is highly sensual and known for delighting in things sweet, enjoying everything from walking barefoot in the grass to an afternoon spent at home eating snacks and soaking in the ambiance. With Venus, the planet of love and beauty, empowered in its home sign, you may just find yourself caught up in a spring romance.
This week opens with Venus conjoining the North Node (depending on what you use, it will conjoin the true node on Monday and the mean node on Tuesday). The North Node is the point where the paths of the Sun and Moon intersect and where the Moon moves above the path of the Sun. I like to think of the North Node as an amplifier, as something that turns up the volume, so with Venus in its home sign conjunct the North Node, this week will start off with a very strong Venus.
Where the cardinal sign of Aries is about the beginning of spring and the mutable sign of Gemini is about the transition from spring to summer, the fixed sign of Taurus is about the stabilization of spring. When the Sun is in one of the fixed signs (Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, Aquarius), we are smack-dab in the middle of a season. Because Taurus season coincides with the fixity of spring and because earth is the most solid of all the elements, there is a stability and consistency to the sign of Taurus, so Venus in Taurus might point us to relationships and things of beauty that we turn to again and again for sustenance and comfort.
The Moon will be in Taurus Thursday afternoon through Saturday evening. On Friday morning, the Moon in Taurus (fresh off a conjunction with the North Node) will conjoin Venus an hour before sunrise, perhaps bringing a heightened sense of comfort and enjoyment to the pre-dawn hours, though we should be feeling the Moon’s impact on Venus pretty strongly once it enters Taurus on Thursday.
Mercury left Pisces for Aries shortly after midnight Eastern Time on Sunday. Mercury is both in detriment and fall in Pisces, so its ingress into Aries might feel like a fog is lifting.1
There is a straightforward and direct, and at times loud and impulsive, quality to Mercury in Aries. The sign of Aries is associated with the beginning of spring in the northern hemisphere. It is ruled by Mars, so there is a fiery, even blunt, quality to Mercury in Aries, a sign which has a tendency to jump into things headfirst without much prior thought or reflection. There is a hot-headed quality to Mercury in Aries, but if you are a person who is generally reticent and who tends to overthink and beat around the bush, Mercury in Aries can give you just the dash of boldness you need.
Mercury is already in Aries, and the Sun and Moon will enter Aries this week, with the Moon making a conjunction with Mercury on Tuesday evening, perhaps making for a chatty evening after the New Moon goes exact that afternoon.
Mercury in Aries will conjoin Chiron this Sunday and Jupiter next Tuesday. Its conjunction with Chiron in Aries can help us understand the wounds surrounding our sense of self, while also helping us communicate in a way that speaks to healing. Mercury’s conjunction with Jupiter early next week could find us talking a big talk or simply having a lot to say. These energies will get a boost when the Moon enters the chatty sign of Gemini on Saturday evening. While in Gemini, the Moon will sextile Chiron, Mercury, and Jupiter, going into Monday next week. The Moon will remain in Gemini until early Tuesday next week, so it will be in Mercury’s home sign of Gemini as Mercury’s conjunctions with Chiron and Jupiter go exact.
Last week, there was a lot going on in Pisces, particularly surrounding the planet Neptune. The sign of Pisces and the planet Neptune have a tendency to dissolve things, and last week wasn’t a time for having a fixed agenda or for pushing oneself, particularly in view of the Mars-Neptune square that was so strong last week.
You will have found that if you tried to go hard, things probably fell apart. Instead, last week was a time for simply going with the flow and keeping your to-do list to an absolute minimum. It was a time for relinquishing ambition and control. It was a time for going with inspiration when you felt it, flowing into action when it felt right, but taking it easy when you felt dizzy, overwhelmed, or depleted.
This week, this will all begin to change with the Sun’s ingress into Aries on Monday, which will be followed by the New Moon in Aries on Tuesday. On Saturday, Mars will leave Gemini for good, and we can officially say goodbye to the Mars-Neptune square, which has so defined Mars’ time in Gemini, adding elements of confusion, chaos, and dissipation.2
The Moon will be in its balsamic phase in the sign of Pisces at the start of the week.
The balsamic phase is all about going underground and preparing ourselves for the lunation cycle to come. It is as if we have done everything we could do during the lunation cycle that is winding down and no longer have the energy reserves to push forward. It’s a time of reflection, and with the Moon in intuitive Pisces during the last moments of Pisces season, the beginning of this week is a great time for turning inward before we move into a more initiatory and action-oriented New Moon in Aries.
Before moving into Aries on early Monday evening, the Sun will sextile Pluto that afternoon. Sextiles are a helpful aspect, but only if we are willing to hear their call and put in the work. The Sun in the final degree of Pisces will sextile Pluto in the final degree of Capricorn and there is a sense that we are on the cusp of some kind of great transformation. Pluto, after all, is the planet of transformation, and of death and rebirth, so this sextile at the final degree of Pisces could signal a kind of Piscean death before a new rebirth in Aries.
The Sun moves into Aries at 5:24 pm Eastern Time on Monday, and we might get a feeling of wanting to jump out the gate. But there will be a lag between the Sun’s entrance into Aries and the Moon’s, with the Moon entering Aries at noon on Tuesday and the New Moon going exact at 1:23 pm that day.
We are at the end of winter and about to enter spring, and this will be felt very powerfully this week with the Sun’s ingress into Aries at the equinox on Monday and then the New Moon in Aries on Tuesday. The balsamic Moon in Pisces that opens the week, however, is great for dreaming what we would like to accomplish going forward, but not particularly great for initiating action. After the New Moon, when the Moon starts to grow in size and in light, then the energy will build to begin taking steps toward our goals.
New Moons tend to have a kind of initiatory, youthful energy, just like the sign of Aries, so this week will be a great week for envisioning grand plans and thinking about the ways in which we can assert ourselves and take up space in the world. The Sun’s ingress into Aries at the equinox is thought of as the new astrological year, so this week is a great time for thinking about resolutions and what kinds of bold action we want to take going forward. This New Moon, so to speak, is the New Moon of New Moons.
This week’s New Moon will happen in the first decan of Aries, which is associated with the Two of Wands tarot card, which invites us to be bold and daring. This is a time for dreaming big, stepping out of your comfort zone, and taking up space.
There is an incredibly rare quality to the present moment. It isn’t all the time that we get two consecutive New Moons in the same sign, with the first of them happening at the first degree of the first sign and the second one being an eclipse.
And it isn’t every time that Mars leaves a sign that it is wrapping up an ultra-extended period in that sign. Mars typically changes signs every couple of months, but it spent seven months in Gemini.
And it isn’t every day — or every decade — that Pluto changes signs.
Pluto has been in Capricorn since 2008 and we can define Pluto’s time in Capricorn very much in terms of the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, with all the bank bailouts, home foreclosures, and rising disparities between rich and poor, so it makes sense that Pluto’s time in the final degree of Capricorn has been marked by banks going under.
The past couple weeks have felt historical, and potentially epoch defining. In addition to the banking crisis, which kicked off with Silicon Valley Bank going under, there has been a lot of talk about artificial intelligence, and just last week, OpenAI released a new version of the AI system that powers ChatGPT.
Thus, we can see in recent headlines a) the closing of the Pluto-in-Capricorn period (the banks) and b) the anticipation of the upcoming Pluto-in-Aquarius period (generative AI).
ChatGPT was first released in November, and Catherine Urban likes to talk about a “‘teeing-up’ of events before a major planetary ingress,” and so we have seen this teeing-up over the past year with the explosion of generative AI technolgies that can do everything from create images to write essays.
Technology will be a hallmark of Pluto in Aquarius, but also questions of power.
Aquarius is a fixed air sign, and as such it has a utopian-ideological bent. Air is the element that corresponds to the mind and ideas. The sign of Aquarius is ruled by Saturn, which is a planet that’s about structure and endurance, but also rigiditiy. So with fixed air, there is a great capacity to build up visions for the future that can provide a framework for a better world. But look out for inflexibility, as our ideas for how we think things should be can get in the way of genuine collaboration.
When Pluto was in Aquarius in the period from 1777 to 1798, we saw the French Revolution and the ratification of the US constitution. (Catherine Urban writes about this here). What revolutionary changes await us with Pluto in Aquarius?
Pluto is entering Aquarius this week, but it will be dipping back into Capricorn on June 11 and remain in Capricorn until January 20 of next year. It will retrograde back into Capricorn one more time on September 1, 2024, but will be in Aquarius back for good on November 19 of that year.
Pluto will be in Aquarius until it leaves for good on January 19, 2024.
Here are the dates that Pluto will be in Aquarius:
March 23 – June 11, 2023
January 20 – September 1, 2024
November 19, 2024 – March 8, 2043
August 31, 2043 – January 19, 2044
You may have noticed that Pluto will be spending way more time in Aquarius than in Capricorn. Due to Pluto’s irregular, oval-shaped orbit, it doesn’t spend the same amount of time in a given sign. Pluto has been in Capricorn since 2008, so about 15 years, but it will be in Aquarius until 2044, about 21 years.
Aright that’s it for this week. Big changes are upon us.
I have been thinking a lot about Mercury in Pisces over the past few weeks, as I tend to be most fascinated by planets when they are in signs of a nature contrary to their own.
In particular, I have been thinking about the imagistic quality of Mercury in Pisces, how with Mercury in Pisces, cognition is more oriented around image and imagery than around language and logic. Mercury in Pisces is very imaginative and poetic. And when Mercury in Pisces works with language, it tends to speak in image and metaphor.
Mercury in Pisces isn’t so much interested in facts and data, or numbers and calculation. Mercury in Pisces is often described in terms associated with artistic movements: it is impressionistic, dadaistic, surrealist. Being in a Jupiter-ruled sign were Venus is exalted, there is a generative, creative quality to Mercury in Pisces, but one shouldn’t expect much if one wants Mercury to act in an orderly fashion.
With Mercury in Pisces, it can become difficult to translate the stirrings of imagination and spirit into linear prose. For Mercury in Pisces, the greatest achievement is to be able to transmute an image from one person to another, to conjure and evoke, and less to explicate and delineate.
Oftentimes, with Mercury in Pisces, instead of prose that unfolds in a linear fashion, one might write in a series of images and vignettes, as one might find difficulty finding a logical starting point. Everything in Pisces is an interconnected whole and one can often find the totality reflected in the parts. The sign of Pisces is all about oneness.
Neptune (the modern ruler of Pisces) and the sign of Pisces are often associated with spiritual transcendence, altered states, and intoxication. These things can bleed into each other, and it can sometimes be hard to tell one from the other. There is a haziness to Mercury in Pisces, a formlessness like a jellyfish and slipperiness like a fish. Mercury likes to be able to grasp at things, but fish are slippery and you can’t simply grab at water and pick it up like you would something solid: you have to cup your hand in order to receive it. And that’s what Mercury in Pisces is about: it is more about receiving than grasping. It is often best, then, to just let things wash over you when Mercury is in Pisces than to try to parse what one is receiving.
Things will feel a lot more straightforward with Mercury in Aries. After Mercury travels through Aries, it will enter Taurus on April 3. Where Mercury in Pisces is oriented around image and thus can present us with vivid pictures (but also mirages), Mercury in Taurus is more oriented around the senses and the sensual and, in this sense, is more grounded than Mercury in Pisces. In both Pisces and Taurus, Mercury is less oriented around language and logic. Venus has a special place in both Pisces and Taurus, as it is exalted in Pisces and in its domicile in Taurus, lending a poeticism to Mercury in Pisces and a sensual, sense-oriented quality to Mercury in Taurus. I often like to think of George Lucas, who has a natal Mercury in Taurus applying to a conjunction with Venus: his strength is in creating striking visual worlds and less so in writing dialogue.
Mars is in the sign of its fall in Cancer, where we find the planet of conflict and aggression in a sign that is oriented around care and nurturance, so it might not know how to act in Cancer, but we will probably find ourselves and our actions oriented around Cancerian things during this period. Mars is associated with sharp things that are made of metal, like knives and needles, and Mars in Cancer can manifest itself as the surgeon who uses a scalpel or acupuncturist who uses needles to heal others.
Wonderful synopsis of the week ahead! Thank you!
On Wednesday, the Moon will conjoin Chiron at 1:04 pm and Jupiter at 4:16 pm. So Wednesday could have a very expansive feel that is oriented around healing and growth. The Sun will conjoin both Chiron and Jupiter this Aries season, and this Aries season will be a significant period during Jupiter’s time in Aries.