Does astrology seem too intellectual to make any sense? Then this edition of Planet Waves TV is for you. Eric Francis describes the Aries New Moon after giving a basic rundown on the lunar cycle itself. This New Moon revives our old friend the Uranus-Pluto square, and brings in the Uranus-Eris conjunction. Play episode here.

There is no glory in star or blossom till looked upon by a loving eye;

There is no fragrance in April breezes till breathed with joy as they wander by.

— William Cullen Bryant

Dear Friends:

This week, there is the potential for substantial leaps in insight and perspective. The astrological patterns are…intense, certainly; and deep, for anyone who wants or needs to go there. They are also vivid and splendid and inspiring, like a Van Gogh painting or a Beethoven symphony.

I most unashamedly confess to being a total sucker for fractals. This gorgeous specimen is Forever Fire, by Nis86.

This is true of the Aries New Moon chart in particular. That takes place on Thursday, 7:23 am EDT (11:23:37 UTC). The meat and potatoes of this moment include the New Moon being conjunct Uranus-Eris (as Eric mentions above) and square Pluto.

This might seem incredibly ponderous. Yet the asteroids Haumea and Altjira, both primal creation deities, and the divine enchantress Circe are also involved. The end result is something like godhood bursting forth on the Earth along with the spring; the actual idea of beauty taking form and blossoming beside the flowers. If nothing else, notice the beauty of life and of the world around you.

This week, if you so choose, you can reach out and touch the web binding together all that exists on this wonderful Earth. That web can never be broken, despite all that humanity does to divide itself from itself. The threads are in your DNA, and in the atoms that form the living body of you.

If you are able, now is a very good time to wander out into your local bit of nature (in person, rather than on Geoguessr). You could also work on artistic endeavors, make love, eat good food — anything that reaffirms your connection to life and the creative principle.

Make a concerted effort to break down the barriers hiding that connection, especially if they happen to be electronic. I say hiding as opposed to blocking, because at any time you have the power to lift the veil and step through.

Bask in the wakening of spring, or the myriad colors of fall. Have a good time, relax and soak in the joie de vivre. If there is anything you need to avoid, it will be activities that involve excessive risk, or are prone to cultivating escapism. What you actually want is to be able to lift your eyes to the stars, plant your feet in the soil, and feel the love pulsing through the radiant universe.

With love,

Amy Elliott

Planet Waves Client Services

Aries (March 20-April 19) — Use your imagination and figure out what you want from life. Tap into your dreams, your secret desires and your creativity. If you were writing a movie and you were the leading character, what would you have happen? Later this week, you’ll experience a New Moon in your sign, which happens just once a year. Between now and then, the Moon will be in Pisces, which is luring you into your inner vision for yourself. While you’re in there, you might notice a difficulty, past hurt or some factor that is urging you not to trust yourself or what you want. Rather than fight that thing, I suggest you engage in a direct dialog with the feelings surrounding it. At a certain point, what was done to you in the past must cease to predict what will happen in the future. Yet you are the only person who can intervene and alter the flow of events, by making conscious choices from among real options.

Taurus (April 19-May 20) — One of the rewards of your current life is getting to be of service. I suggest you claim this reward with a joyous heart, because you have plenty to offer, the world has plenty of needs, and the meeting of the two is proving to be beneficial to everyone. When you have a point of focus, you can orient on that and organize your world around a real priority. This will work with physical space as well. Imagine that you place a hearth in the middle of everyplace you occupy, whether it’s your desk, your living room, your kitchen, your bedroom or your office. What is the source of heat and of your sensation of being home? Your metaphorical hearth could be an altar you place on your desk; it could be your stove (the altar of culinary pleasure and nutrition); it might be the place you make art or make love. Define your personal center and orchestrate your life outward from there.

Gemini (May 20-June 21) — Spend more time listening than you do speaking, particularly at work. Tune into your environment, and notice what people in positions of leadership and management are concerned with. If you take your time with this, and take some notes, and sleep on what you’ve observed, in a few days you may come up with the winning idea that is eluding all of them. If you’re self-employed, you have a free pass to re-think and re-envision your business plan, matching it to some new real-world goal that has come to your attention. It will help immensely if you trust what your intuition is telling you. Listen to yourself; and, rather than second-guessing, give any inwardly discovered information a few days to bear itself out. There is no rush to start the new story, and your time would be well spent tying up old commitments and finishing old projects, the better to make room for the bold adventure that is just ahead.

Cancer (June 21-July 22) — In hindsight, these months and seasons may turn out to be one of the most successful times of your life. Therefore, take hold of the moment while you have it within reach. That means getting clear on what your most important goals are. I don’t mean last year’s goals; I mean the ones that are exciting to you now. You might notice that some of them have followed you through many incarnations of your work, even if you didn’t do anything about them along the way — those are the ones to notice. Right now you’re imbued with the power of invention. Inventors work with an idea, and then embark on a process of trial, error and success that helps modify that idea. In trying something, you’re not committing to it for life. You are, instead, embarking on a journey, and you might have little idea where it will lead. Give yourself permission to be bold, and trust synchronicity.

Leo (July 22-Aug. 23) — You have the ability to see far into the future. This is a gift of the current moment, as if you’re standing on a high mountain and can see the landscape in every direction, all around you. Take a week out of your usual approach to life and really look into the distance — checking out every possible perspective, remembering what you see. Imagine the different choices you might make, different directions in which you might proceed, and project each one five years into the future. Once you come down from that mountain and continue your journey, your perspective will be different, much closer to the ground. You will benefit from bringing your perspective with you, remembering how you felt when you saw into a particular direction of future arrival. If you have commitments or complications today that you think might prevent going any particular way, do not be hindered or discouraged. You have the power to resolve them, and nothing will stop you.

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sep. 22) — This week it’s essential that you claim for yourself what is yours, and return to others what belongs to them. In particular I’m talking about psychological or emotional needs, including your healing agenda. It’s easy for the past material of others to intrude on your thoughts and feelings. It’s also possible that you will assign to others what is really your own, and which you can resolve with some self-honesty, love and determination. You may discover some places where what is yours and what belongs to a partner seem to overlap. I suggest you treat any shared material first as exclusively your own. Then consider a way to bring up the subject with anyone else who might be involved. This is an important boundary issue. What is in your consciousness and in your life belongs to you in the first instance, and is shared material in the second instance. While there are no absolutes, keeping things in the appropriate order will help you simplify your thinking and facilitate healing.

Libra (Sep. 22-Oct. 23) — Be mindful of negativity in your environment, and make the conscious choice not to take it on. From birth, you’re someone who does what healers call ‘somaticize’ — that is, you can easily transpose emotions to physical experiences and body ailments. However, this is working with greater emphasis in the current extended phase of your life, so you must be especially mindful at this time. Tune into every environment before you dive in, just like you would size up a lake before diving in head-first. Before you eat anything, ask yourself if this is really what you want or need. If you can take care of yourself this way, you’ll turn your exceptional sensitivity into a productive, creative force. Your greatest strength right now is not your time or your labor, it’s your ideas. You can see things that nobody else can perceive. This includes problems and it includes brilliantly creative solutions. Though others will want their say, be sure to trust yourself first.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22) — You have reached a maximum point of expansion. Soon it will be time to draw your energy inward, which I think will come with a sense of relief. You seemed to be headed toward a limit that it would be helpful to stop well in advance of. If we take your story back approximately two years, do a review and consider what you’ve left unresolved (whether emotionally or in your commitments to others). If you’re focused and efficient, you can tie up the loose ends in about two or three months. In that time you’ll make some decisions and set some new priorities, and proceed with far greater confidence than you have right now. It’s likely that a financial reorganization will be part of this process. Look at every account carefully. There are places you can stop needless spending, and others where you can consolidate and refinance debts. Be thorough and get second opinions as you proceed.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 22) — Your sign is a magnificent blend of sensitivity and courage. Both are going at full strength at the moment. I suggest you emphasize your sensitivity for the first few days of the week, and then plunge into the courage side of the equation. Phase one is about feeling how deep your ideas go, and feeling how deep your emotions are. Just being present for yourself will build your confidence. Hang in with yourself — there is no rush. When the psychic tide turns, you will know it, and you may feel called to express yourself in an especially bold or daring way. Your chart depicts you as the ‘true artist’ at the moment — whose inner life, creativity and outward expression are mingled into one idea. Few others might grasp how this works, or how necessary it is for you to be this way, but that hardly matters. Your journey is your journey — and that is the rare beauty of Sagittarius.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 20) — Your solar chart has the look and feel of home renovation. You might not be diving into Angie’s List this weekend, but let’s take the metaphor in ways that would work for you on the physical and psychological levels. It looks like you want to change things around. It’s often relevant to rearrange your furniture, or to clear out a room and use it for something else; it’s also relevant to rearrange your priorities and make sure that you’re doing first what you want to do and need to do most. That alone can be liberating, not just of time and of energy but also of your sense of freedom. Yet there’s something else — perhaps more appropriate for outdoors, by the water, on a rooftop or in a quiet space: pause, invoke the silence, listen and receive. What you would be listening to is yourself. You have something interesting to say, though it’s subtle — so you’ll need to tune in.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) — Rarely mentioned about Aquarius is your sign’s deep commitment to service. You might be into socializing, cars, clothing or your recording studio, though the bottom line of your chart is your humanitarian values. Two things are happening to bring this out. One is that the sky is still swimming in Pisces energy (that’s the water in your urn). At the same time, the Sun is about to meet up with a planet you love: inventive, oddball Uranus. You have a sense of what the people around you need, and you have the ideas and intelligence to do something exceptionally useful. Trust your ideas. Trust yourself. Whatever scale you’re working on, I would encourage you to make the contribution that you want to make. The reward for you will be the exquisite feeling of fulfilling your purpose, which has a way of opening doors both in your mind and in the world around you. Open is not merely good, it’s excellent.

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20) — The theme of finances has been on your mind lately. Rather than being optimistic, I suggest you work on your confidence. The ups and downs of your personal economy have taught you a lot the past few years. You have learned how to stand on your own feet, and you’ve learned how to take leadership. And now you have a mission. What’s interesting is that this may be an old mission into which new life is being breathed; something you’ve worked at for a while and have discovered the value of. As a Pisces, it can be difficult for you to feel bold and strong every day. But now your sensitivity is your greatest asset. Your understanding that the world and many people in it are struggling for sanity is your secret power. Your role is to rise above the emotional level of the struggle, to rise above the problem and see your role in the solution. Feel, be clear about what you’re feeling, and remember that emotion is energy in motion. So keep moving.