Editor’s note: this is the full PW members’ edition, featuring your weekly horoscopes, the Create feature, Planet Waves FM and more.
Dear Friend and Reader:
We’re moving into the last half of Mercury’s current retrograde in Aries — and the contacts Mercury has been making this week seem to be stirring things up for many people. If you’ve been feeling a sense of pressure lately, this astrology could be why.
Dear Friend and Reader:
On April 17, Chiron will enter Aries — its first return to that sign since 1968-1977, an eventful era that left its mark on the world. Outer planet transits through signs tend to describe phases in history. During those particular years, Chiron was in the phase of its cycle prior to its own discovery, which took place in November 1977.
Heaven Beside You by Christine Yates.
Dear Friend and Reader:
Some fresh faces have arrived on the political scene.
Did you ever have the experience of sitting in your living room on a spring day, with the windows open, and the sound of a leaf blower stops? And suddenly you feel a sense of relief, because that vile sound is gone, though you hadn’t consciously noticed it was even there. But you notice when it’s gone.
Dear Friend and Reader:
It’s been an exciting week in the last days before the Pisces New Moon (exact Saturday, March 17 at 9:11:31 am EDT, 6:11:32 PDT).
Nautical storm warning flag, indicating winds of 55-73 mph. The next highest grade is two of these flags, indicating a hurricane, or winds above 74 mph.
This is the final New Moon of the astrological year. The equinox, when the Sun enters Aries, is on March 20. These last days of Pisces are like a seed moment of transformation and laying intention for the future, and the end of the lunar cycle coming so close to the equinox ramps up that effect.
The Moon and Sun will align in a close conjunction to Chiron in Pisces, which is nearing the end of its run through this sign. After eight years in Pisces, Chiron makes its first ingress into Aries on April 17. The New Moon conjunct Chiron is one of many events heralding the transition of Chiron from Pisces to Aries.
First let’s take a look at the news and see if we can get a feeling for what this New Moon is about. Beginning with the most exciting and positive development, students at thousands of high schools across the country walked out of class, demonstrating for sensible gun laws.
The students who walked out were mostly born 2000-2003, a group with significantly different astrology compared to their immediately preceding cohort. As one protester told BBC World Service, “We are the generation that will change everything.”
Or as a New York Times report put it, “Even after a year of near continuous protesting — for women, for the environment, for immigrants and more — the emergence of people not even old enough to drive as a political force has been particularly arresting, unsettling a gun control debate that had seemed impervious to other factors.”
Dear Friend and Reader:
Jupiter stations retrograde tonight, in Scorpio, the ancient sign of sex. And sex has certainly been in the news lately, only it’s taken some strange forms, and there is intrigue and chaos on many other levels.
Original Caption from Instagram: âfightthenewdrug last weekend our co-founder @clayolsen presented to the @kcroyals players and coaches. The Royals are the first #MLB team to actively take a stand against porn, and we’re inspired that they’re stepping up to the plate. #pornkillslove #fightforlove.” The first comment reads, “I’m in awe at how dumb this is. Imagine your day job is talking to grown men about whether or not they should watch porn.” The guys are being very polite.
The most interesting thing about Jupiter’s move to retrograde motion (which lasts through July 10) is that it’s in an aspect to Eris in Aries. When a planet changes apparent directions, it holds its position for a while, and Jupiter and Eris are in a 150-degree angle, called a quincunx.
It’s linking planets placed in two Mars-ruled signs, and at the moment Mars is big, conjunct the Galactic Core (exact Monday).
We live in the age of Eris, which induces chaos in psyche and culture in part through advances in communication technology. It’s easy to forget that just about everything we experience as information comes through TV and the internet.
News on the topic of sex has been so weird, it has been difficult to notice. Chaos is in the air. We’re in the midst of the fifty shades of scandal that are brewing as the wheels, axels, fenders, bumpers and doors are coming off of the executive branch of the federal government.
Top presidential advisors are quitting the White House on an almost daily basis. High officials lack security clearance, beat up their wives and sell their influence abroad, and the guilty pleas related to the Russia investigation have been flowing. (Going against the trend, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, however, pleaded not guilty on Thursday to additional charges related to financial fraud. His former longtime assistant Richard Gates has pleaded guilty and will testify against him.)
Dear Friend and Reader:
Sunday afternoon, wrapping up your Capricorn reading in The Art of Becoming, I noticed it felt a little strange writing the annual reading on a warm day. Since 1998, my annuals have been written through many cold days with low clouds, and long nights, and Christmas Eves and Thanksgiving weekends — in places that include Paris, Brussels and Vashon Island.
Dear Friend and Reader:
Something extraordinary is happening. Yesterday, survivors and families from last week’s Parkland, Florida, school shooting attended an epic ‘listening session’ with Pres. Trump, who for once behaved like a human being and actually sat there paying attention.
Therese Gachnauer, center, an 18-year-old senior from Chiles High School and Kwane Gatlin, right, a 19-year-old senior from Lincoln High School, both in Tallahassee, join fellow students protesting gun violence on the steps of the old Florida Capitol in Tallahassee, FL., on Feb. 21, 2018. Students at schools across Broward and Miami-Dade counties in South Florida planned short walkouts Wednesday, one week after the deadly shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS. Photo by Mark Wallheiser.
On the same day, other survivors from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School confronted Sen. Marco Rubio at their state capitol in Tallahassee, and it was a real showdown.
Thousands of students across the country staged a walkout from their schools to demand stricter gun laws. There are two direct actions planned for March, including a nationwide walkout at 10 am local time on March 14, and the Million Kid March on DC for Gun Control on March 24.
The kids are showing the way. They’re being the adults, and the rest of us need to listen, follow and do everything we can to support and encourage them.
Dear Friend and Reader:
On Valentine’s Day, I was eagerly waiting for the White House press briefing to begin. It was delayed several times, hour by hour, and finally the 4 pm scheduled event was canceled.