We begin a new zodiacal year at the Spring Equinox when the Sun reaches 0 degrees of Aries. Astrologically this moment can be seen as a “birth chart” for our collective year ahead. Highlights of this year’s chart are an imaginative Moon in Pisces conjunct Neptune, Mercury in Aries, a combination known for brilliant flashes of insight and creativity, and gentle Venus conjoined the North Node in Taurus, bringing forth beauty, stability, and artistic forms of expression.

Against this backdrop we have Saturn, which moved into Pisces on March 7th, dissolving creative blocks and bringing art movements to the foreground. This is a shift away from Aquarian rationality and into the realm of the ineffable. It’s a journey into the mysterious and distant realm of Valinor of the Two Trees–the Undying lands, The Elysian Fields of the Gods, and Valhalla.

Saturn in Pisces harkens us back to the age of the great Romantic poets of the early 19th Century when Pluto transited this sign. Poets like Byron, Shelly, and Keats rejected pure reason in favor of values that were more individual, subjective, inward, and emotional. Harold Bloom called Romanticism ‘the internalization of quest romance’, a transformation of the heroic quests in medieval romances into interior spiritual journeys. In Leo, we find the extroverted, hyper-masculine heroes of Greek Myth––Hercules subduing the Nemean lion. In Aquarius, the story begins to turn inwardly in the shape of misty tales of Arthurian legend and the apparitions and inner turmoil that haunt Shakespearean protagonists. When we enter Pisces the quest becomes an entirely inner conquest––a test of spiritual fortitude and the quest to know what lies beyond our human understanding.

On March 23rd Pluto will move from pragmatic Capricorn into progressive Aquarius. Pluto symbolizes humanity’s deepest desire for transformation while Aquarius governs the outsider, the other, the fringes of society, and the values of Liberté, égalité, and fraternité. Aquarius is linked to human progress, the ecology of the human spirit, technological progress, and the linking of human consciousness. We are beginning to see that a rise in scientism without a commensurate rise in wisdom, imagination, and vision, is detrimental to humanity.

The combined powers of Saturn in Pisces and Pluto in Aquarius give our collective canvas a readiness to materialize new dreams, new visions, and new forms of artistic expression (AI!) with a decidedly queer sensuality; queer in all senses of the word.

Magical realism is a style of literary fiction and art that retains a realistic view of the world while also adding magical elements that often blur the lines between fantasy and reality. It’s been by described British novelist David Lodge as "when marvelous and impossible events occur in what otherwise purports to be a realistic narrative.” It’s the literary equivalent of the Magician card in tarot; the ability to manifest thought into physical reality. With Mercury in Aries and the Sun in a harmonious angle to Pluto, this year’s Aries Equinox carries the charge of transcendent brilliance brought to earth for the benefit of all earthly creatures. This year expect the usual to interrupt your life in ways that playfully challenge your personal narrative of reality and provide you with new avenues for exploring artistic, spiritual, and emotional modes of expression.

Key Aspects:

Sun in Aries Sextile Pluto
Moon in Pisces Conjunct Neptune in Pisces
Mercury in Aries
Venus in Taurus Conjunct the North Node
Mars Trine Saturn
Original artwork by Robert Peak for the film Excalibur (1981).

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