Astrology update

Aries into Taurus

There was a solar eclipse today, just after midnight, Eastern Daylight Time (late yesterday if you live farther west in North America). Solar eclipses happen with the moon is new, and Aries season brought us two new moons (but only one solar eclipse), on the first and last degrees of the sign. Aries, whose season begins on the spring equinox, is the shot from a cannon, the catalyst, the force of the sprout breaking out of the seed. Aries is the Fool in tarot, the one who leaps before they look. Aries carries a reckless bravery. Its archetype is the warrior. Hotheaded Aries wants to get things started, and it becomes very, very frustrated when thwarted.

The symbol¹ for the first degree of Aries is “A single lightning bolt on a quiet moonless night.” The symbol for the culminating degree of Aries is “A visionary ignores every path except the one leading to the polestar.” Aries has singlemindedness of purpose. It doesn’t reflect. It acts.

Aries season always brings with it the energy of fresh beginnings, but with two new moons in Aries this year—the new moon also carries the energy of beginning a new cycle—that energy is particularly pronounced. At the same time, the energy of a solar eclipse is quiet, dampened, occlusive. As the astrologer Chani Nicholas points out in her report for this week, this new moon isn’t starting anything with a bang; the energies may feel muffled, or muddled. But they are potent nonetheless, even if you don’t come shooting out of a cannon. What have you begun over the last month, between these Aries new moons? It is significant.

Already this morning the sun has moved into Taurus, that luscious sign that is the province of Venus. The sun is, for today, exactly square Pluto, which emphasizes the glittering, buried, earthy wealth of Taurus. The symbol for the first degree of Taurus is “A clear mountain stream” or “A diamond deep in the earth, glowing.”² Taurus is the energy of the fertile soil warmed by the sun. We want to be out in our gardens, or wandering the woods looking for spring ephemerals, or, in Ithaca, walking all over downtown looking for the old magnolia trees in exuberant bloom.

If the first degree of Taurus is diamonds glowing in underground caves, the first degree of Aquarius, where Pluto now sits, square the sun, is constellations of stars strewn across the night sky. Diamonds below and diamonds above, and we earth creatures wander in wonder in between (and should leave both the wealth under the earth and the skies alone, in my opinion; a human-sized life, without hubris, lived in awe, is what I want for us).

Tomorrow, Friday, Mercury stations retrograde, also in Taurus. Mercury retrograde is always a time for reflection, and in Taurus we are asked to reconsider what makes us truly wealthy and well resourced, and what is our right relationship with the earth.

1. In 1925, the clairvoyant Sophie Wheeler, working with the astrologer Marc Edmund Jones, assigned a symbol to each degree of the zodiac; they called them the “Sabian symbols.” Other astrologers have developed their own sets of symbols. My astrology teacher, Linda Ruth, is in the process of reworking the Sabian symbols based on her over 50 years’ experience reading charts, and the symbols I use are hers (possibly not in their final form).

2. The first is the Sabian symbol. The second is an early version of Linda Ruth’s symbol.