We’re now at the Vernal Point: the Sun is about to enter the first sign of the zodiac, Aries; that’s at 6:29 am EDT (10:29 UTC). The change of seasons comes with a surge of energy, enough that every critter, flower and tree experiences it.

The newborn Aries Sun gleams from this chart, center left. It’s the yellow circle toward the left with all the zeros.

Humans of all creatures are the most oblivious to seasonal changes, though we do seem to like them. The habit of living indoors staring into illuminated rectangles tends to mute the effect. We will experience this one way or another.

Our esteemed and beloved government servants seem to be brewing up another week of antics, particularly an attempt to reverse the United States’ first nascent step toward a nationalized health care system. I could go on and on about this, but I’ll give it a paragraph.

There is nothing with which to replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This thing that became known as Obamacare is the replacement. The thing it replaced was the very centralized or socialist health care system that people attack it for being. Yes, Obama was president when a Democratic-controlled Congress put it through. But the ACA is a creature of the pro-corporate, pro-profit, greed-and-religion-driven Heritage Foundation. We covered this back in 2012. Yes, the Republicans are crying foul and trying to repeal their own proposal, which is really a tax cut for the very wealthiest among us. There’s your paragraph! That’s all yer gettin’, cus that’s all there is!

Equinox means the Sun crosses over the Aries Point, that great village square where personal, collective, private and public all intersect. The Aries Point is the location where the tropical zodiac is reckoned against the sidereal (star-based) zodiac. And the Sun’s arrival here resets ‘sidereal time’, a way of measuring the year using a 24-hour clock, to midnight.

Night and day are of equal length, implying balance. They’re also of equal length when the Sun is at the autumnal equinox, in Libra, the sign of balance. So the kind of equilibrium we get on the Aries side is an assertive, even aggressive, compensation for things having gone too far one way or the other.

Among many interesting features of the Equinox chart is that the Moon is conjunct Saturn and the Galactic Core to the degree. This is a reminder to stay strong on your spiritual footing, and not to let your mind be seized by prejudice, greed or uninformed opinions. If you hear yourself arguing vehemently that a triangle has four sides, take a deep breath.

The next week or so comes with some super-interesting, downright freaky astrology, which I’ve had under a microscope all weekend writing daily horoscopes.

Fractal by Barbara Lane.

There are two highlights: on Saturday, March 25, Venus and the Sun form their interior conjunction, which is the midpoint of the current Venus retrograde (which ends April 15). Just after that happens, Mercury aligns with the Earth, the Sun and the Uranus-Eris conjunction. That’s the astrology that the whole week is building up to. All the craziness in the news can be seen through this filter.

That filter is the internet. With people in public office vomiting lies and propagating chaos around the clock, we might wonder what’s going on. We live in an echo chamber, which magically and mysteriously magnifies everything. Not only is it never silent; every new sound adds to what’s already there.

Consider that what we’re witnessing and experiencing — the turmoil and the confusion and the deception — is all a function of electronic media in general and the internet in particular. The strange behavior, the near-total state of contradiction, is an effect of the background, the environment or what we call ‘the media’.

We live in a maelstrom. The only way to not get dizzy is to focus on one thing for a little while and see what happens when you hold your attention there.