April 2024

• New Moon: Aries Super Moon (perigee), solar eclipse, 9 April

• Jupiter-Uranus conjunction: Taurus, exact 21 April

• Full Moon: Scorpio, 24 April (Sun in Taurus)

Aries New Moon = cardinal fire. Beginning energy. Transformative power of fire. Think unpredictable, bold, complete. Think phoenix. Super Moons are have a strong influence. Eclipses are wild cards, so plant your seeds carefully, or better yet, simply prepare as you would for fire season. Clean up and let go of what is not serving you. Mercury, Chiron and Venus are co-present, so there is a lot of ancestral patterns at play as well as social conditioning. We can build bridges or burn them down. Aries always asks us to step into courage and face our fears. With its ruler Mars, in Pisces we are talking about spiritual courage. This Moon is about being brave enough to move beyond very old patterns rooted in ego. The next 2 weeks are key.

Scorpio Full Moon = fixed water. Emotions, particularly the darker ones are up for reflection. Own your ugly and find a way to embrace it. It too belongs. Binary stories of good and bad are not just boring, they are purposely fragmenting and misleading. The strong Aries and Pisces vibe this month can help us to find both the courage and compassion to integrate.

The big astro-event of the month is the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction. Despite what the internet might proclaim, every energy has both helpful and unhelpful expressions. Given enough self-righteous ignorance and hubris the horrific is equally possible. Uranus is the revolutionary change-maker/rebellious narcissist and Jupiter is the wise teacher/glutenous and dogmatic gambler. In Taurus, be thinking about planetary and environmental issues, instinctual animal drives, basic needs, resistance to being pushed, the need for material power and patterns of safety. We can be granular or we can be global. These are very BIG energies, best allowed room to move.

Depending on where this falls in your chart you can feel this quite dramatically in your own life. Trines and sextiles will support and energize, squares and oppositions will force growth and challenge, conjunctions are often mixed, but highly focused. Ultimately these are collective energies and we all will be feeling them. As slower moving planets, their effects are felt longer than simply when the conjunction is exact. Its the kind of thing where we look back and see that this month was pivotal. So while historically we can look at this conjunction and see major revolutions happening or inventions and discoveries that changed how we interact with the world and see our place in it, we have to remember that the universe is not a circle or a straight line, but a dynamic spiral – patterns might come around again and again, but there is a progression – they build on themselves. Many astrologers will be focusing on events from 1941 when the last Jupiter-Uranus conjunction happened in Taurus and certainly we will no doubt look back from the future and see this conjunction as marking turning points in global crisis in terms of power accumulation and distribution.

This conjunction has Mars sextiling from Pisces. Sextiles energize and Mars even in Pisces packs a punched. The drive of mutable water is the impetus of boundless compassion or of totally checking out. Yes, some are predicting major weather events involving water and that too is an expression, but with North Node in Aries, in stellium with Mercury, Venus and Chiron, it seems to me that we are also looking at the potential for major breakthroughs in terms of our long held unhelpful patterns of thinking and social structuring. When Jupiter and Uranus come together it is an opportunity to completely shift outdated world-views. The important part to remember is that breaking is part of the package. Jupiter and Uranus are not known for half measures. In Taurus we can see and experience a lot of stubborn clinging and grabbing at power and accumulation of resources, a lot of hubris and trigger happy self-righteous beliefs come to a head. All of that is equally available to any of us. There is no magic wand or special angel that makes less helpful expressions of an energy less likely. There is only our own free will and focused intention… which I grant you, given increasingly more clever algorithms and our own addictive natures, the playing field seems less and less level, but what does Jupiter rule if not the power of Faith with a capital F? Or Uranus if not lightening bolt shocking out of the blue surprises?

Jupiter and Uranus seem to create a kind of doorway that makes the seeming impossible possible when they come together. Mercury is retrograde in Aries during this conjunction, and so we are being asked to have the willingness to take another look at where we are entrenched and stuck (Taurus) – particularly when it comes to our understanding of our needs. Taurus naturally governs the 2^nd house of food-shelter-safety aka: personal power, aka:wealth. The second house is where we hopefully learn to differentiate between need and want. It is from this learning or lack thereof that our values grow. It takes no genius to see how slippery our modern grasp of needs and wants has become. We grasp onto our material wealth and possessions (Taurus) because we fear how unstable and illusory (Mars in Pisces) safety and control actually are. It seems that the time is ripe to step through a new doorway. As the ruler of Taurus, Venus is activating that Mercury by conjunction. Where Venus sits we cannot do our work alone, for this planet is nothing if not relational. So we can begin by asking what is our relationship to this fear? What is our relationship to these ideas of needs and wants? How have our fears co-opted our actions to undermine our actual values? Chiron sits in conjunction to Venus and Mercury along with the North Node, so there is a challenge and opportunity here to heal our woundedness by choosing to not be defined by it. Chiron as the wounded healer always asks us to address what the Buddhists call the second arrow. The North Node shows us the direction to move – towards activation of our will (Aries) guided by a brave and compassionate heart (Aries ruler Mars in Pisces, and sextile to Jupiter-Uranus).

So that is a lot of heady sounds – what does it look like?

In Taurus, this means really looking at where are we spending our dollars? On our needs or our wants and does this choice reflect our values or our fears? That packet of crisps that uses so much fossil fuels for 10 minutes of happy only to become plastic trash in the belly of an orca is a good example. Such a small thing – what difference does it make? Taurus governs simplicity. It is about the wonder of a sunset or the infinite starry sky. It is the glorious feeling in your soft animal body when you stretch your skin against someone you love. It is the peaceful contentment of a good meal out of your garden that you have spent some sweat over and watched patiently grow. Taurus is about a fundamental knowing that everything matters. Everything is connected. What we do and don’t do makes a difference. Taurean solutions are profound because they are simple. Taurus teaches us to always drop into the body and listen closely to our own instinctual knowing.

So what small changes can you make in your choices - particularly in terms of your own accumulation of power/wealth/material possessions that better reflect your values rather than your fears? And rather than framing these changes as saying NO to yourself, your wants and your desires, what if instead we chose to see it as saying yes to the land we stand on. Yes to our grandchildren and their grandchildren. Yes to the kindred of plants and animals and fungi that we share this amazing planet with. What if we learned to say yes to the water that quenches our thirst and the air that gives us breath to laugh? Ultimately this conjunction is giving us an opportunity to change the story that we are in. It asks that we pause and take a deep breath (Taurus) and drop into our hearts (Mars in Pisces) and remember to have Faith (Jupiter) in our own innate power as an individual (Uranus). Our choices matter. You matter. Use this conjunction to take the revolutionary leap and stand strong in your own power. Be the change you want to see in the world.