Weekend Astrology Forecast for Creatives | April 20th through April 22nd - emotional seesaw, home, family, reinvention, root replanting, adjustments

family tree by Sevim Dalan

We kick off the weekend with a Void Moon on FRIDAY morning, then the Moon moves into sensitive, home and family oriented Cancer at 10:36AM EDT.

Our monthly Cancer Moons are not as peaceful this year due to all the oppositions from those challenging Capricorn planets. If your Cancer situation - home, family, renovation projects, real estate, history, mother issues  - has been stressful, know at least this will be the last Cancer Moon this year with a Mars opposition (that feeling that we have to rush, make hasty decisions) and by next month both Saturn and Pluto will be retrograde which should make the Cancer Moons a bit easier.

We will move through the entire Cancer cycle this weekend, so things could feel up and down, with us more sensitive (self-protective maybe) to the fluctuations than usual.

A sextile to the Sun (in Taurus) before lunch should create a feeling of balance and contentment. People are in a better mood. The Moon is waxing, so this sextile is the leg of our Aries New Moon journey where we expand whatever was kicked off at the New Moon. Strategies can be effectively tweaked now. The Sun in Taurus tells us to take things slow - rushing is for ballplayers and people who don't mind falling on their ass.

Don't over-complicate anything. Taurus says - keep it simple sister. But not so simple we are standing still - the opportunity from a sextile will come from our own actions, so what can we do to make things more Taurus - simple, clean, secure, steady?

At 8:42PM EDT the Moon will square Mercury. Our minds could be restless and active. It might be hard to focus. We could get challenging news, meet traffic challenges or be challenged to fall asleep! Not the best date night. Maybe stay home. Take a bath. Eat a nourishing meal. Good for editing, de-cluttering.

On SATURDAY, the Moon has opposed a newly retrograde Saturn (in Capricorn) overnight - hopefully we slept through that and weren't up late reconsidering our responsibilities or overthinking security issues. This is the day we might feel most of the back and forth Cancerian emotions.

After lunch the Moon will trine (brakes off) Neptune - we have an annual family beach clean-up here and the energy is perfect for that. We will be in tune with the people around us. Good energy for making art, a spiritual practice, slipping into that loving feeling, slipping into an addiction - you get the idea here.

By dinnertime EDT the Moon will oppose fiery Mars (in Capricorn). It could be we need to take care of some kind of responsibility now - likely within those Cancer themes highlighted in the beginning of this post or our natal Cancer house themes. We could be channeling our sacred masculine in defense of a group - maybe home, women or children. Not the best energy for a heart to heart talk, unless you are up for an argument.

The at 8:56PM EDT the Moon will trine Jupiter. The clouds part. Do I hear a Hallelujah? Our emotions expand - and our appetites, watch the snack foods. We feel more optimistic and generous.

By 10:21PM EDT the Moon will make her monthly opposition to Pluto - Pluto is strong and still and preparing to go retrograde tomorrow. This energy could create power plays. Jealousy. Compulsion. Again not a good date night unless you can immerse yourself in something dark in the dark - like A Quiet Place. Intimacy/sex would be complicated. This is not the kind of energy to be out in dark places with strangers - not a good time to be drinking. Dreams could be important.

We wake up on SUNDAY morning (8:40AM EDT) with the Moon sextiling Venus. No one will want to get out of bed! This is good energy to be social. Good for money and our possessions.

It's Earth Day - do something for Mother Earth and your own mother!

The Moon goes void before lunch off a square to Uranus. Creative breakthroughs are possible, so are surprises. Pluto goes retrograde during the Moon's void - making his retrograde over the next five months much less troublesome (Saturn also stationed retrograde this week during a Void Moon now that I look back - good news with that, too). We will talk about this retrograde in a later post. Lots of introspection with this one as we go back over Scorpio ruled and Capricorn ruled issues - loans, debts, taxes, other people's money, savings, intimacy issues, reproduction, death/rebirth, career, goals, authority, responsibilities.

At 1:09PM EDT the Moon moves into "time to play, let's get this party started" Leo. Good energy for having fun, time with children, romance, sports, games. We are feeling brave, confident and generous. We will all want to be center-stage. She will trine Chiron in early Aries (our individuation, commitment to being ourselves) kicking everything "me, me, me" up a notch! Sidestep the arrogance.

This weekend's lunar cycle is all about us reinventing our lives as we are drawn toward that massive Scorpio death/rebirth Full Moon at the end of April. 

We are reinventing our lives now - re-committing ourselves to life on Planet Earth.

Can you feel it? I sure as hell can!

At 5:46PM EDT the Moon (in Leo) will square the Sun (in Taurus). Fixed signs make our usual First Quarter Moon adjustments a bit harder. Try to stay flexible. There could be a challenge here around our personal resources. Our values. Our self-esteem. Our natal Taurus house theme. Uranus will begin tossing sticks of dynamite through here in another month, so any challenges now could play into that - maybe note where you are spending your money/resources. That upcoming transit will be harder to manage if we are not valuing ourselves, if we don't know what we really value. Again review progress from that Aries New Moon back on April 15th.

The weekend's final aspect is the Leo Moon's trine to Mercury at 1:32AM EDT - good for creative actions, writing, communicating - our minds are clear and active.

Have a lovely weekend everyone! xo

Sun into Taurus | what we really own, surviving and thriving

lovelove by bsium

The Sun moves from 'Action Jackson' Aries into "stop and smell the roses" Taurus today where it will shine a light on all things Taurus and light up our Taurus houses until May 20th.

This doesn't mean life slows down, but we will feel much better if we make the time to enjoy those slower moments, care for ourselves (and others, but especially ourselves) in loving and practical ways and appreciate what we already have.

If Taurus is stubborn, it's only because it rules really important things - the kind of things that have to be nurtured and preserved and seen through to the end.

As the Sun moves through Taurus, he will oppose our Scorpio planets, square our Aquarius and Leo planets (and since the Nodes are in Aquarius/Leo square them), sextile our Cancer and Pisces planets and trine our Virgo and Capricorn planets. We will all be burning Taurus fuel.

Taurus is the nuts and bolts of life. She rules our second house of everything important money can buy and everything important money can't. She rules food and nourishment. She rules the sensual touch that feels like love. She rules our resources - our money, the planet. She rules our self-esteem and values.

Ruled by balanced and beautiful Venus (hopefully Ceres someday which feels more right to me and empowers more female archetypes) our lives could get maybe more imbalanced until they topple over or we are forced to remove something from the more loaded side or add something to the weaker one.

Taurus is the space in your natal chart that naturally encloses what we are here to nurture, preserve and grow. It may be a space we have a bit less passion and ambition because we most naturally feel the need to sustain what takes root here. A bird in the hand thing usually applies to the theme of whatever space Taurus occupies in our natal chart. The energy is cautious because the thing we are holding/carrying here is precious.

It can also become the fear-based space where good things go to die - and then we carry around a bunch of dead stuff like a crate of rotted vegetables and wonder why we are so tired all the time. 

I can already feel my Taurus house, and my life, preparing for "let's shake it up" Uranus's upcoming visit (May 15, 2018- July 7, 2025) - maybe you can, too?!

Taurus is the first earth sign. A fixed sign - she values simplicity over complexity, calm over chaos, stability over flexibility, silence over noise.

Taurus is all about the fertile Earth (it is not a coincidence Earth Day is during Taurus season). The polarity of Scorpian sexuality - Taurus is sensuality - the touch that feels like love. Taurus coaxes us back into our bodies at the end of a hard day with a long hot bath. She stimulates our hands to pick up those tomato plants at the farm market and get them into the dirt. She encourages us to buy the quality thing that will last when we can afford it. She is the quiet voice inside us that whispers I love you when we stroke the baby's ear with our lips.

People will want to be comfortable (whatever that means to them) and might resist new and unfamiliar situations now. If you make/sell things for a living keep this in mind.

(I always get my best non-seasonal response when I email/mail stores that haven't ordered my jewelry in a while when I contact them right after the Sun moves into an earth sign)

It will be easy for all of us to wander outdoors and forget the pot of water boiling on the stove, the email that needed to be answered or the work waiting for us on the bench. Keep this in mind.

Life is moving fast now - but this energy can help us stay grounded. We'll stop and smell the roses, eat food that has touched the earth, listen to good music, purchase quality long-lasting items, get our hands dirty, appreciate the stuff that is right in front of us and we'll use Taurean strength and determination to be consistent and get things done (maybe just fewer and different things!).

In ten days the Taurus Sun will trine (brakes off) a retrograde Saturn (in Capricorn). We are slowly and steadily building something that will last here - we are re-checking the structure. Do we still need this thing? What do we need to survive NOW? What do we need to thrive NOW?

We are playing the long game.

Then around the middle of May, just a few days before the Sun leaves Taurus, Uranus blows into town - most likely for the first time in your life. Uranus is a super-complicated planet but it will become easy to figure out what we really value, what we really stand for when he moves into Taurus - because it will be the things we can cling to in the hurricane winds.

The stuff with the deepest roots get to stay.

The rest (the dead vegetables which could take the form of that job, those stocks, that relationship) will be blown away. We will know what we don't need because it won't be there anymore.

For now, get into your body - take a bath, get a massage - take care of your money - straighten those bills in your wallet, balance the books - here's a post about THAT , appreciate what you have, get your hands into some dirt, talk to your plants. Look into a mirror and tell yourself how beautiful you are.

Taurus is a simple sign. Unlike its polarity sign of Scorpio, nothing in Taurus will be complicated. Just do what feels good. What feels right.

xo all

(most of this post is from April 2017 - Taurus inspiration endures)

Saturn Stations Retrograde | April 17th - September 6th - re-considering our commitments, re-thinking our responsibilities, re-assessing our ambitions, re-drawing our boundaries and re-valuing our time, NO is a complete sentence

Strength by pedadue

On Tuesday, Saturn stationed retrograde at 9 degrees Capricorn. He will move backward (from our perspective on Earth) until he gets to 2 degrees Capricorn and then reverse course and begin moving forward again (in early September).

If we have planets or points within these degrees of Capricorn or any of the other cardinal signs - Aries, Cancer or Libra - we will feel this retrograde strongest because Saturn will move over our natal "hot spots" three times. He has already made one pass moving forward. Now he will move backward. Then in the fall he will begin moving forward again. His retrogrades are annual and last for about five months.

Maybe think of a retrograde as if we are pressing the wrinkles out of a shirt. We move the iron forward, then we slow down a bit and move backward being careful not to iron in any new creases. Then we make one final pass forward more forcefully before we move on. This is kind of how it goes.

Right now we are starting the backward swivel part where we try to avoid ironing in any new creases.

Generally the best use of Saturn retrogrades is going back over structural issues. Re-considering our commitments. Re-thinking our responsibilities. Re-assessing our goals and ambitions. Re-defining our boundaries. Re-valuing our time. Re-structuring our projects. Sometimes we get to see what is holding us up because it isn't holding us up anymore. Dad is on vacation folks.

The activities of our Capricorn house tend to slow down a bit so we have the time to establish a stronger foundation. 

Wherever Saturn goes, so does our time and commitment. When planets are retrograde, more of the work becomes internal.

EXAMPLE FOR CANCER/Cancer Rising with Capricorn ruling your 7th house cusp, Saturn's transit of Capricorn will be about strengthening that 7th house. Situations will arise (mostly through other people because this is your partnership house) over the course of Saturn's two and a half year journey here that will require your time and commitment to the affairs of this house. Maybe the person/people you count on will have challenging personal problems and you won't be able to count on them. Maybe you will have to step up. Maybe a relationships changes course - romantic, business, competitor. You thought it was going here and realize it is going there, or maybe it is going no where. Those Saturnian rules, goals and limits are up for re-view now. Maybe you were born with Saturn retrograde (and Saturn is retrograde almost half the year so many people are) in your 7th house and your ability to set limits and boundaries and accurately access what can realistically be expected within a partnership situation is skewed (unless supported somewhere else in your chart) and you have a predisposition to say, "yes", when you should be saying, "NO" (which is a complete sentence all by itself). So, now as Saturn stations retrograde maybe your partners' problems will ease a bit or maybe you will start re-considering your commitment to their issues. Maybe you will re-assess your boundaries and limits. With Saturn retrograde here this could be about a past relationship.

Keep in mind Pluto is about to station retrograde in Capricorn, too - this can intensify whatever Saturn has us re-evaluating or focus us like a laser beam on one specific issue.

This is an excellent time to take an accounting of what we have accomplished over the last few months while Saturn has been direct. Saturn doesn't always offer pats on the back - so let's give ourselves one now.

It is so easy to notice what isn't working that we sometimes don't take the time to appreciate what is. 

This is the time to deal with commitments and responsibilities from the past rather than taking on new ones.

For some people, just working with "NO" being a complete sentence would be an excellent use of this transit. This would also be supported by Chiron in Aries and our North Node in Leo - whenever multiple aspects are saying the same thing we know we are onto something!

When Saturn turns direct in the fall, Dad comes home and brings some external structure into our lives. This can feel supportive (if we have been doing our Saturn retro work) or like a wall/limit/roadblock (if we have been partying like it's 1999).

xo all

Chiron into Aries | healing the wounded masculine, stepping into our warrior energy, healing through action, facing our anger

not angry by ZNZtazmanijus

Early this morning Chiron left Pisces - where he has been hanging his hat since 2011 - for warrior Aries.

In Aries, Chiron turns away from the emotional, connecting reactions and the victim stories we grew through in Pisces (this is a long process he is going to be in Aries for seven years but will drift back into Pisces during his retrograde, September 25th, 2018 - February 18, 2019)

and toward our personal regeneration.

(as the Parkland survivors have been reminding us - and if they are annoying you that annoyance is something to look at, not to judge yourself, just to sit with it - the time for prayers and long-suffering silence is over and this isn't about guns, but yes, in warrior Aries, Chiron will be about healing our relationship with guns, too)

Aries is the first sign so rules newness. What does it take to embrace the new? It takes courage.

Chiron in Pisces has been about feeling and then surrendering the wound. Chiron in Aries will require action. Individual action. The kind of action that isn't always supported by other people. The kind of action we take for ourselves. This energetic is intensely impactful for the collective, too, although it could feel like we are all alone in whatever we do with this.

Our natal Aries house(s) theme(s) will be our personal field of healing. Every situation, person, place and thing - if honestly met - will simultaneously gift and wound us here.

I believe, as spiritual beings, we came here with a game plan - a blueprint, a set of guidelines for our life arranged in a language of patterns and archetypes. Some of our blueprints are very specific. Most, are specific in some areas and more general in others. We probably can't even begin to know all the reasons for this. They are almost certainly diverse and complex.

Our natal astrology chart is a complicated set of specifications designed to build up an individual and run him/her. Like we would build a car or 3D print a Christmas ornament, except our "blueprints" are a map of our consciousness. 

Unlike a machine, we always have the choice to become more conscious - more than our blueprints, we have free will - but without our blueprints we can't gain entrance here to life on planet Earth.

They anchor us in time and space.

It may seem impossible to believe, that you, that I, that all of us, came into being with a plan/possibility for Chiron (discovered in 1978, so not even knowable when many of us were born) to move into the Aries room in our "blueprint" - the space we have always had to fight, always had to walk through that door alone, always had to initiate, be brave, be motivated - in order to get anything done, maybe in order to be accepted - probably for lifetimes - that Chironic energy (wounded healer) was going to come into this space on April 17, 2018 - to work with this energy precisely as we carry it as of April 17, 2018, in order to heal the wounds we are holding/hiding here.

Life is magical that way.

There are a million ways this could play out.

A word salad could stretch our brain here, so let's do that: healing the wounded (Chiron) masculine (Aries), physical (Aries) disabilities (Chiron), going (Aries) until we drop (Chiron), healing through men, male bonding, healing through self-defense, healing through self-assertion, healing through conflict, healing through courage, healing by going it alone, healing through our instincts, painful instincts, healing by pushing past a vulnerability, healing through expressing/acknowledging unexpressed anger or resentment, healing by resolving competition issues, healing by being ourselves - you get the idea.

Remember our Aries house has always been the space we have had to fight/work alone/compete/push for what we want if we are going to have it.

Chiron is going to help us lighten this load.

And like the medic resetting a shoulder that has come out of its socket, here is the part where I say, "this is probably going to hurt."

Our Pisces house gets to breathe a nice sigh of relief. Chiron will be back for a few months, during his retrograde, to tie up the loose ends in Pisces and give our Aries houses (and especially people with planets/points in early Aries) a short respite.

Chironic healing doesn't mean the wounded space just disappears.

Like the scar after the deep cut, there is always something here we kind of have to learn to live with. The healing comes through acceptance. The healing comes through our learning to work with/live with the wound - the embrace of our scars - somehow this shifts our energy and we become like a beacon attracting others with similar wounds (the way a recovering alcoholic can help an alcoholic in ways no one else can).

That's where the collective thing comes in. But for now this will be all about ourselves. Remember this is a process. We can't jump ahead and skip steps.

We will heal by learning to express anger, aggression and force in healthy, positive ways. 

For today - if we think about why we aren't doing what we want to be doing - who/what we are afraid of angering - why we are pissed off at men/the man/him - what we are resentful about - why we don't defend ourselves - why we are always defending ourselves - why we push our physical bodies so damn hard - why we don't get off the couch - we might find a place to start.

xo all