An Aries New Moon of Thoughtful Progress

Thursday's New Moon comes at the perfect time for a liveliness boost the week before we dive deep into the retrogrades of mid-April. These come along ten days later, beginning on Sunday the 17th. In this first week of April there is a burst of enthusiasm for everything that you have going, because Aries as the first Fire sign is full of enthusiasm, and because this New Moon degree is conjunct Uranus and Eris, in the 21st and 23rd degrees of that same sign, and inconjunct to expansive Jupiter. The trickster energy of the Uranus archetype has a tendency for surprises and for sudden moves, as well as for unexpected glimpses of enlightenment. This is therefore a week, and a weekend, when almost anything can happen and when it is advisable to surf the wave that comes rather than to lose time complaining over missing the wave that you were expecting.

Uranus and Pluto are receding from their recent close square of earlier this year, and yet this world transit is still extremely potent, lasting until 2020. Still only a few degrees apart from exact, this transformational and even revolutionary aspect is triggered by this New Moon, that closely squares Pluto, to little over a mere half of a degree, while also conjoining Uranus. Saturn too is in this picture, trine the New Moon and in close parallel with Pluto and with a slowing Mars, preparing to station mid-month. This is therefore a time when important life structures are crumbling, and being rebuilt in a new way. You might as well accept this situation and go on from this fresh beginning, because it is ultimately a losing proposition to try to hold on to what was once vital and active for you, but is now no longer viable.

Mars, the ruler of the Sun and Moon, is located in the compatible Fire sign of Sagittarius, and is dramatically slowing down right now, preparing for his retrograde on April 17th, as described above. This implies that forward momentum with projects is similarly slowed, and an introspective period of time is ushered in when we will be thinking hard about our worldview and our fundamental beliefs. Meanwhile, Jupiter, harbinger of positive and expansionist vibrations, is greatly favored in the timing of this New Moon, being apart from all the other planets, which are contained within five signs across the zodiac from him, and closely aspected by Sun, Moon, Pluto and Uranus. There is thus in this very interesting and intense New Moon configuration an optimistic attitude that somehow prevails, in spite of any and all evidence to the contrary. Jupiter and Uranus in combination point to new and brilliant ideas gaining currency, while Jupiter square Saturn provides a sober and conservatively grounded counter-note.

The Sabian symbol for the degree of this New Moon, the 19th degree of Aries, represents reality in a fully miraculous way, along the positive lines represented by Jupiter and Uranus in combination. It is "A magic carpet," for which Marc Edmund Jones has the keyword PANORAMA. He refers to "freedom of spirit and expansion of soul," and "imaginative self-fulfillment." He then goes on to call for "full realization of the broad endowment which [everyone] may make his [or her] own." This symbol echoes for us that here below we are indeed operating on multiple levels, all at once, for truly we are "Spirits in the material world," as Sting would have it, while we try to survive as we go about our simple and normally productive tasks. We are reminded also of the words of that great artist of the spirit, William Blake. We are always aware, and yet unaware, of this simple, subtle, and incontrovertible fact that we know in our hearts but yet not always in our heads, that "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."