New Moon in Aries: Astrology of 4/7 – 4/13

In addition to a New Moon in Aries, many of this week’s other transits highlight Aries (we currently have the Sun, Mercury and Venus in Aries) and so themes around autonomy and individualism may be prominent. Mercury in Aries joins up with Chiron in Aries, making our current impasses and initiations around selfhood more apparent. Later in the week, Venus in Aries squares Pluto in Capricorn, highlighting some of the deeper conflicts of interest that come up when we have different desires than people around us.

The journey of selfhood can also be deeply subjective and experimental. We may know exactly what we want, only to initiate the course and realize mid-way that we have learned new information that changes our vision of where we are headed. Did it make the first legs of the journey wrong? No, they were necessary for initiating a path of understanding. Keeping in mind that Aries’ ruler Mars, is in a mutable sign Gemini, and will be squaring Neptune this week, it is possible that this transit is really putting the “moment-to-moment” vibe into Aries’ already instinctual frequency. You don’t step in the same river twice, because it’s always flowing and changing.

What can this mean for us? Honesty with ourselves and others is not something we can necessarily write up in a document, frame and hang on the wall, and expect to last forever. Perhaps some truths or moral codes we live by are broad enough, or inherent enough to our deepest, truest nature, to have longevity like that. But there are many other flickering inspirations, NOW-inspirations, that come up in our lives which offer truths for us if we engage them – and are open to them changing once we learn a little bit more about the path.

Welcome back! Or in case this is your first time here, I’m Sabrina Monarch and I’m a soul-centered astrologer. I love providing perspectives on the opportunities of transits and putting into words what the zeitgeist feels like at this moment in time, to support you on your path & open a dialogue between us and the cosmos. If you would like to receive these weekly forecasts to your inbox and be notified of upcoming educational opportunities, sign up for my mailing list here.

Watch this forecast on YouTube or keep reading below… (I neglected to write about the New Moon specifically by the time I recorded the YouTube! 🙈 but you can find my write-up on the New Moon below or in the notes, on YouTube)

Here’s our week after a few announcements!

Study Evolutionary Astrology with me in May 2021 – enrollment is now open! It’s always an inspiring group of deep thinkers that gather for this class. If you are wanting to learn karmic soul-centered astrology, and go deeper into the astrological craft in both an intuitive and a structured/guided way – and you resonate with these forecasts, you’ll love this course. Learn more, read testimonials, and enroll here. You can also listen to a podcast interview I did on Amelia Quint’s Bad Astrologers about what Evolutionary Astrology is for a feel of this system of astrology and how I approach it.

Forthcoming fiction novel: The Garden of Sleeping Hammers will be coming out late spring of this year! I’ve shared a reading of the first two chapters on a recent Magic of the Spheres episode, which you can listen to here. Thank you to Alex Maune @chthonicbacchae for the cover artwork, and Liina @local.smoke.press for the text on the cover and helping me design/format the book behind the scenes. 

Here’s our week:

April 9, 2021

Mercury in 9 Aries conjunct Chiron in 9 Aries: 12:08 AM PDT

(Image: Kent Andreasen)

• Chiron in Aries is a longer transit (Chiron first entered Aries April 17, 2018 and will leave Aries in April 2027). Chiron in Aries can relate to activations and initiations around a variety of Aries topics, like: men and our relationship with the masculine/masculinity, newness/being the first, anger and aggression, and courage. You might imagine how each of these themes are rich and fertile grounds for transformation – places where we might have baggage, collective or ancestral baggage, and where there may be opportunities for greater integration/wholeness.
• Mercury joining Chiron creates a spike of activation in Chiron in Aries themes, potentially through news, conversations, or our own internal mental processes. We might also be facing the impasse of whether or not to put an idea out into the open. While Aries is about ‘just doing it’, there can be hesitation and trepidation with Chiron here. You know when you have some words hiding behind your lips that you know would change everything if you said them aloud? These moments naturally put us in the position of questioning if we should choose patience and caution or if we rather ought to throw that to the wind and choose bluntness, change, transformation.
• Mercury joining Chiron could also relate to the ways that our thoughts, and especially the thoughts we choose to identify with or believe in, open up initiatory adventures. If thoughts were magical potions, what would imbibing do for your life? We have the opportunity to recognize here which thought-forms are poisonous, and which are medicinal. And which thought-forms even, are poisonous & medicinal. Take for example, a disturbing dream image that catalyzes a transformation, or a tarot reading that cuts very deeply but catalyzes some important change. Poison here, is interpretive, but sometimes a sharp message activates a response, which is also part of the message.

Mars in 21 Gemini square Neptune in 21 Pisces: 12:18 PM PDT

• This transit may favor open-ended adventures where we set off and wander without much attachment to outcome, but are instead open to twists, turns, and detours along the path. Wherever we are fixated on achieving a certain thing, we may find more turbulence in getting there if we are overly rigid about it. Sometimes we end up getting exactly where we intended when we harmonized with the Tao instead of trying to force our trajectory. If you are trying to get to point A to point B in a very linear fashion this week, try not to take it very personally that the Universe may steer you off course a little bit.
• A higher opportunity for Mars-Neptune contacts is to align the personal will with the universal will, which ameliorates much of the personal angst we feel when what is happening in reality is not the same as what we wish were happening. When we drop into what is ACTUALLY happening and accept it fully, we can reach new levels of divine inspiration when it comes to how we choose to participate with what is. Simply imagine the value of tuning into what is immediately present as just what is perfect/spiritual as opposed to being at war with it because you wish it were different!
• For what it’s worth, surrendering to what is, passively, is not always the truest thing spiritually. Sometimes truth ripples up within us as a knowing that we are meant to take action – some greater spiritual inspiration becomes personalized and mobilized through the personal will. This is a great opportunity for attunement, because what is the difference between zealotry and divine inspiration? One must imbibe the juice of divine inspiration responsibly. 😉

April 10, 2021

Mercury in 12 Aries sextile Saturn in 12 Aquarius: 8:09 AM PDT

• As for the question of whether to speak it or hold one’s tongue, this Mercury-Saturn transit may relate to us weighing on the side of caution. Mercury-Saturn can relate to being sparse with one’s words, or at least highly intentional.
• On the other hand, a Mercury-Saturn contact could also relate to saying that which we are willing to take responsibility for or that which we are willing to experience the consequences of. Sometimes just because it is inconvenient or troubling to have a conversation doesn’t mean we are more willing to live with the consequences of not having the conversation, either. We have to assess what is more important, and then ideally, take responsibility for the choice that we do make.
• Consequence is not just what happens externally. Consequence is also how we feel in the act of verbalizing or not verbalizing something. We might say something, and then feel we are digesting it afterward. If we are expanding our range or bandwidth in our nervous system, we gain the ability to be with greater levels of sensation.
• Mercury is also about commerce, not just communication. One example to consider here is the energy you feel in your nervous system when you spend or receive money. Developing a more easeful relationship with money might involve learning to feel comfortable IN YOUR BODY giving and receiving money (and noticing where your nervous system spins out around this). This can also apply for things like attention, compliments, love. What is being exchanged (words, resources, affection, etc.)? And what is your nervous system’s response to that exchange? With intention, you can build more capacity to hold these exchanges.

Venus in 25 Aries sextile Jupiter in 25 Aquarius: 11:53 AM PDT

(Image: Moebius)

• Venus-Jupiter contacts can relate to our processes of becoming increasingly authentic/truthful in our relatedness with self and others, and our capacity to be tactful in sharing truth. When these planets come together, a beautiful insight about life is revealed: truth makes way for more love. When we lie to ourselves and others, we protect our attachment to a status-quo that is not as vulnerable or as deeply meaningful as the kind of life we would build if we were honest. We may also generally assume that other people couldn’t handle our truth without it compromising the relationship, so we opt out of giving other people the opportunity to grow and learn with us. Likewise, in being loyal to truth, we also run the risk that people will not follow us across the bridge – that we may enter a territory that another does not wish to join. It is this fear of loss or change that may keep us from being in full relationship with truth, should it destroy our current attachments and all that we have invested.
• Venus in Aries can highlight the experience of life that is our essential aloneness. That though we connect with others, create lives and families with others, we are also alone. This awareness of our aloneness can also empower us to trust in ourselves enough to be truthful in this life. Aries sextiles Aquarius, which relates to community, and opens up the meditation that it is through being ourselves (Aries) that we vibrate in resonance with like-minded people (Aquarius). It is possible that the urge to be ourselves and be more truthful in love is in the field. Being truthful will tend to magnify where there is disconnection and where there is connection. Even if disconnection surfaces, it may open the way for connection still anyway (whether it is in resolution with that particular person, or not).
• In the context of deep commitments that are not swayed by certain disagreements or disonnances, a type of love that can emerge here is the honoring and protecting of another person’s individuality and freedom. 

April 11, 2021

New Moon in 22 Aries: 7:31 PM PDT

The New Moon squares Pluto in Capricorn. The New Moon sits at the midpoint of a Jupiter-Mars trine, sextiling both Jupiter in Aquarius and Mars in Gemini.

• The Mars-Jupiter contact (and Mars already being the dispositer of the Sun and Moon here in Aries) may relate to a boost in feeling conceptually game to take on new goals or endeavors. The square to Pluto in Capricorn, however, invites a deeper embodied inquiry as to the nature of our true limitations. Whether we are taking on more than we can handle, or we are not fully activating our capacities (and keeping potentials latent), this may be something to assess or be aware of.
• It is worth noting that general advice given to everyone about whether to pump up the fire and get all amped and accomplished, versus resting and napping and not finding self-worth through production, is not universally true for everyone. We are really looking at the wisdom of our own constitutions and the cycle/phase of life we are in at any given moment. From what I can intuit about this New Moon, it seems like it may activate a deeper awareness of how much energy we have and how we might allocate it, but the answer to these questions is deeply personal. Not universal.
• The Sun-Pluto contact relates to our primordial creativity – the burst of creative eros that wants to come through us. Facing this creative power invites us to consider our limitations of who we ARE and who we ARE NOT. There is a difference between cultivating an inherent talent or truth inside of us, versus feeling a fantasy to be someone we aren’t and trying really hard to put ourselves in that box. The first one requires a surrender to actually being ourselves (and facing all that entails) and the second requires that we recognize what is not for us. This is an immense gray area. Many talented artists have received feedback from their environment that they were not going to succeed – but they listened to that voice inside of them and creatively persisted. Likewise, sometimes we have a voice inside of us that tries to quell our own creative spirit by telling us it’s not possible, or that we aren’t meant for it. We have to discern what our creative limitations really are. If we can cultivate the truth inside of us, it tends to be an immensely bright light. Why? We’re taking full responsibility for our inherent gifts – they are already there. We just have to say yes to them.

Venus in 26 Aries square Pluto in 26 Capricorn: 8:20 PM PDT

• This one has some more potential (possibly) to invoke more control dynamics than the Venus-Jupiter transit explored above. The tension between Venus and Pluto relates to unconscious dynamics in relationships, and projection, and power plays. And the tension between Aries and Capricorn is that of personal freedom and doing whatever one wants (Aries) and the rules or the agreements and bonds/commitments that we make (Capricorn). One tension in the field right now may be the way that we want to control others behavior so that we feel freer, or we sense that someone else wants to control us for their own needs. Feeling that we need to control ourselves or others is not just something we ‘get over’ once and for all, a lot of the time. It can be a sneakier pattern that we can observe cropping up if we are psychologically aware of it. Just be mindful. Control relates to security, and when we are feeling controlling, it points to an unmet security need that may be taken care of in more beneficial or responsible ways.
• The more self-aware and knowledgeable we are about manipulative patterns and unconscious dynamics, the less susceptible we are into hooking into other people’s control stories or manipulations. This is part of why taking responsibility for ourselves at a deep level is so important. Actually doing the inner-work around our own control patterns and the ways we are dishonest and manipulative. Not only do we show up in relationships in healthier ways, but we are naturally less available, less on-the-hook, for control and manipulation dramas.
• Another potential of this transit is to feel a greater spike in allure around powerful relationships – like a desire to network with prominent/notorious people, or to make oneself known as a person of impact/legacy. Aries and Capricorn are ambitious signs. This would not just be about making contact with specific people, but also being the person in the arena – embodying certain qualities you would see in your most successful, dynamic self.

Thank you for meditating on the planets with me this week! If you would like further guidance, I have been increasingly focused on longer-term experiences in the form of the Evolutionary Astrology Intensive, higher level courses for alumni, and 1:1 mentorship – helping people form a depth relationship to their natal chart and personal transits over time, to develop themselves, to heal, and to reach their goals, all through the soul-making lens of evolutionary astrology. I would love to support you in building your relationship with astrology. The intensive is currently open for enrollment, and I am soon to take on new coaching clients.

Find me on Instagram @sabrinamonarch, get on my mailing list to stay apprised of all upcoming offerings and events, and I’ll see you next week!

With love,

Sabrina Monarch