6:12  pm  AHST  4/19/2023
 9:12  pm    PDT   4/19/2023

12:12  am    EDT   4/20/2023
 4:12  am   GMT  4/20/2023

This is the second New Moon in Aries in a row this year, a bit of an oddity as the degree of this New Moon is 29˚and 50 minutes, just shy of 0˚ Taurus. So it’s a bit of a mix in energies, very much the last degree of a sign, which is about finishing up old business, and beginning anew. Pluto at 0˚ of Aquarius is pretty tightly square (forms a 90˚ angle) to the New Moon. Squares in astrology indicate a kind of a face-off between the two forces when they’re not yet made conscious, and a strength when they are. Pluto squares are almost always about power and how it is used. Sun and Moon square to Pluto indicate issues around the proper use of one’s ego, or as Carolyn Myss would say, the love of power versus the power of love. When used properly, Pluto gives an enormous sense of the kind of power that moves mountains, changes the world around us. And when not, there is great darkness and abuse, and an often dramatic and precipitous fall from grace.

We are seeing around us in the world a gigantic lesson in the abuse of power. From Trump-ian politics to the grandiosity of AI technology, of petroleum companies, and the global war machine hanging on to their wealth and power, we are looking at how Pluto’s power strips away the hidden facets—the shadow—of how our world has been operating. While the billionaires rake in more and more money, the rest of us are footing the bill, and the Earth suffers from the misuse of her resources. In the beginning degrees now of Aquarius, Pluto for the next 20 years demands that we all work for the betterment of humankind — or else. Empire's shadow is showing, big time. Pluto in Aquarius begins the work of dismantling structures of greed and implementing what is good for all people, rich or poor.

And speaking of shadow, this New Moon is also a Solar Eclipse. Yes, we’ve entered eclipse season, entering a time of reckoning with what needs to be addressed that has gone on too long, and with too much hubris. Pluto is also square to Jupiter in Aries, which is conjoined the New Moon. Jupiter’s excess is always too much, too strong, too big for our britches, and this is an especially potent issue while Jupiter is in Aries. Pluto bearing down on Jupiter now at this eclipse will bring out more of the shadow, expose false piety, and pushes the already extreme rigidity of our present economic, political and religious fanaticism to even greater absurdity.

Pluto is now slowing down and will go retrograde on May 1^st. And Mercury is also slowing down in preparation for its retrograde on April 21^st  (till May 14^th). We’ve enjoyed several months of all planets direct, and now it is time to once more focus within, and tend more to our inner garden. For now, it’s best to put off all new arrangements, big purchases, and new business contracts.

Mercury is conjoined with Uranus in this chart and will include the Moon in Taurus at its station retrograde. Since Uranus is the higher octave of Mercury, and ruler of Aquarius, their union suggests Aquarian kinds of awareness being useful in the coming weeks. Mercury governs how we see the world around us, and in Taurus, our ideas of security. We need to see ourselves not only as individuals but also as representations of a larger story, knowing that what is going on in our personal lives is resonant in our community and the global picture as well. Carl Jung told us that we all share a collective unconscious, meaning that the stories and personal dramas we experience day to day are common to all humanity, and the lessons or takeaways, the meanings we can make of our suffering and challenges, are universally applicable. Our psyches are intricately interwoven to each others’, even though we’d like to project our anxiety and rage outward onto the perpetrators of the world. Uranian wisdom cuts through the old “poor me” stories and sees meaning in the larger pattern of our lives here in Earth School. Reaching out to others, sharing stories, dreams and images that come to us, brings us a sense of unity that is very much needed now. As we exchange the experiences of our lives and connect with each other, we are changing the vibration of our own psyche, as well as the collective’s.

This eclipse is near to the North Node, and signifies our movement into the future, examining what is holding us back from advancing into our only option for global survival: cooperation. At present we are a “house divided” which will lead us toward devastation.

Saturn is in Pisces now, where it hasn’t been since 1994. Its presence in the sign of the peacemaker and mystic asks us to find ways to look for connections, to make bridges, within our warring selves, with the different parts of our personal psyche, as well as amongst the countries and peoples of the world. It also influences changes in our relationship to our spiritual life. The influence of Saturn in the sign of Pisces indicates a shift from money being the authority in the world to honoring the authority of the Greater Good. Mars now in Cancer, another water sign, brings us an influence of being active from a new center, different from Mars in Gemini, that of our feelings and sensitivity. To work from this place means connecting with our bodies, our hearts, our somatic self, as a delicate sensing center, to see how we can nourish ourselves and others through conflict and suffering. This is an essential path toward the beginning of the Aquarian Age.