The energetic shifts of March were intense! With Pluto, Saturn, and Mars all changing signs within two weeks of each other, the seismic shift in energy created was enormous. And, just as with a geological earthquake, an energetic earthquake also has aftershock waves that continue to reverberate as a new equilibrium is found.
If we think about what an actual earthquake consists of, we start to more closely see the parallels between our energetic experiences last month, and where we find ourselves today.
Earthquakes occur when the giant set of tectonic plates that make up the earth’s upper crust shift against each other and the pressure becomes enough to cause movement along the boundaries of the tectonic plates (or fault lines) as they shift to release pressure that has built up between them.
Most of us have heard of the “aftershocks” that often come after an earthquake, but what are they really? According to The United States Geological Survey, Aftershocks are a sequence of earthquakes that happen after a larger mainshock on a fault. Aftershocks occur near the fault zone where the mainshock rupture occurred and are part of the “readjustment process” after the main slip on the fault.
This, friends, is what the month of April is really about! Several large shifts have occurred, and there is a readjustment process that has to occur to find the new “normal” after all of this tension has been released. Practically, what does that look like?
If we look at what our biggest “fault lines” were in the month of March, they consist of Pluto at the end of Capricorn and in early Aquarius, Saturn at the end of Aquarius and in early Pisces, and Mars at the end of Gemini and in early Cancer. For those with personal planets in any of these areas of the zodiac, the energy shift will have felt even more momentous. Post seismic shift, let’s look at where the energies will settle out over the next few months (and, in Pluto’s case, years).
With Pluto being the slowest moving planet, its movement is likely to create the largest and most far-reaching cosmic shift. We are now experiencing the early days of Pluto in Aquarius. Pluto will retrograde back into Capricorn in June and will continue moving back-and-forth across the Capricorn/Aquarius boundary for the next few years. These early days of Pluto in Aquarius are likely to feel initially less restrictive. Capricorn is a highly structured sign, and Pluto moving through Capricorn has given all of us reason to feel more keenly the bonds that societal structures place on us. When we pair Pluto’s move into Aquarius, with Saturn moving out of Aquarius with its disciplined energy, there will be ways in which Pluto in Aquarius feels incredibly freeing from a societal perspective. This may mean moving more fully toward the end of covid, being freer to move about freely without restrictions, travel, etc. It also may mean more freedom in the way we interact societally. For example, many of us are now very used to using video calls and other means to stay in touch with people beyond just in-person conversations. For the new group of people working from home more permanently, there is a whole new freedom in the way they can show up to work (i.e. their cat walking in front of their computer screen during a meeting, or wearing yoga pants instead of dress slacks). A lot of this energy is freeing and amazing.
However, Pluto will never let us linger blissfully ignorant at the surface. Pluto will always prompt us to go deeper and to understand more fully. With so many of us having spent so much time by ourselves and in our homes during covid, what does reintegrating with society look like? Is it more stressful for us to interact societally? Are we realizing that what was “working” for us societally before was only working because we didn’t know any other way? Pluto in Aquarius will be helping us plumb the depths to understand our relationship with society and our place in it. Whereas several years ago, we may have seen ourselves by default as members of specific communities, neighborhoods, and friend groups, we may now be questioning whether those are the groups we want to be part of. What in our existing pre-covid societal structure was working for us, and what actually wasn’t that we now want to change? These are questions Puto in Aquarius will encourage us to ask. There may be people considering job changes, moving to new cities, and intentionally creating new friend groups, because they are starting to realize the limitations of their previous communities.
In the midst of this big shift as we try to parse what we did and did not like with our previous societal interactions, we have a New Moon in Aries – the second one this year! It is rare to get two New or Full Moons in the same sign in the same year. However, we had an Aries New Moon kicking off the equinox at 0 degrees of Aries in March, and now we have a second one a month later in the final degree of Aries right before the Sun and Moon move into Taurus. And to supercharge this rare second New Moon in Aries even more, it takes place within a few degrees of the North Moon Node, meaning that it is also a total solar eclipse.
What does this mean, especially as we are all trying to stabilize after the intensity of the planetary shifts in March?
This Aries New Moon and Solar Eclipse will be about embracing new ideas, new paradigms, and new ways of “being” after this cosmic shift. Rather than focusing on how to “get things back to normal”, which wouldn’t allow us to integrate the learnings from the past few years, we can use the New Moon/Eclipse energy to make the deep, Plutonian changes we need to make. Oftentime, recognizing a change that needs to be made is Step 1, but if we can’t get beyond that to actually making the change, the new energy withers before it really gets going. In the synchronicity of the Universe, right after this tectonic shift comes, it is followed by initiatory energy to help us take that shift and run with it to create something better – in our own lives and in our communities. This is the great task for all of us throughout the month of April – identify the old and stale that is no longer helping us, determine what changes we need to make, and start working to make those changes in a real and concrete way. We can even think of this as a break-down to build-up. Wherever we feel stuck and limited, and feel like we can’t build farther, those are areas that are prime candidates to start deconstructing during this month to build a foundation for a whole new set of behaviors and structures. Big work like this takes time! So remember that small, baby steps in this direction are perfect; certainly don’t feel the need to complete all of this by the end of April! If we all start taking positive steps and making positive changes, we will see more opportunities emerge to take that energy farther as we move further into 2023.
Photo by Jason Ortego on Unsplash
