Karena, Author at Magic of the Moon Astrology & Tarot

There are a few major themes of this month. The first is the conjunction of Jupiter and the North Moon Node in Taurus. Both Jupiter and the North Moon Node have similar themes of expansiveness and growth. In a way this makes their conjunction very helpful for giving us a boost of energy – almost like a rocket that will expedite our progress in a particular direction. If you feel like you are on the path you want to be on, but progress has felt sluggish and difficult, you may find this is the energy you need to rocket forward.

However, with rockets, there is no guarantee that they are pointed in a good direction; the only guarantee is that they will move explosively along whatever their path happens to be. Therefore, it is extremely important to make sure they are pointed in the right direction; otherwise, we may find that the rocket just adds a lot of energy along a false start path that we need to backtrack from. To really use this expansive energy helpfully this month, be very conscious and deliberate about the path you want to move forward on. Once the forward momentum starts, it will be difficult to change direction.

This means that early June is a perfect time to spend time contemplating what is most important to you. What do you want to be investing time and energy in? Is the path you are on a fulfilling one, or are there shifts you want to make? Meditating and setting intentions around your desired path will help the Jupiter/North Node conjunction lock in on that to move you forward.

It is also important to look at what house Taurus falls in your chart to get a sense of what area of life you would expect to see this change. For example, if Taurus is in your 4th house, you may contemplate your house, the city you live in, the people you live with, and your general personal environment. Are these supportive of your soul and your growth? Are there things you are dissatisfied with, but haven’t made a move to change? This would be the time to set yourself on a path of change, and then let Jupiter and the North Node rocket you toward a new situation more aligned to your goals.

Also this month, Venus moves from Cancer to Leo. This marks a big shift in the relational energy we feel toward others. Venus also joins Mars when she moves into Leo. Normally she would catch up to, and pass, Mars since Venus moves more quickly, but since Venus is slowing down and preparing for a retrograde in Leo, she actually just spends June chasing Mars through Leo without ever catching him before she stations retrograde in late July. This extended Venus conjunct Mars energy is passionate and explosive, and it has similarities to the energy we experienced in Jan, Feb, and March of 2022. In that case, Venus and Mars were moving through Capricorn and Aquarius together because Venus had just come off of a retrograde and was still moving slowly. However, the Capricorn Venus/Mars energy was much more formal, and indicative of relational boundaries and frustrations over those boundaries not being honored. The Leo Venus/Mars energy will be much warmer, and more inviting – if anything, it will burn with so hot a passion that it threatens to burn us out in the process.

Flow with the energies this month to spend time on whatever you are passionate about – enjoy this energy! Often we wish for motivation and can’t seem to muster it, so this opportunity when passion is running through our hearts is one to take advantage of! However, make sure to save some energy for yourself during this time. It will be easy to lose yourself in relationships and in passion projects during this time because you feel motivated and inspired, but not realize how much you are wearing yourself down in the process. Self care will be a good theme for us to keep in mind this month along with pursuing your passions!

Regardless of the self-care we try to institute, though, we are likely to finish the month of June feeling exhausted and like we need some down time alone, or down time with people who require very little energetically from us. With all of these fiery Leo energies, there just isn’t an opportunity to slow down and find the cooling water among the rampant fire. However, we start to get an opportunity to do that later in the month as the Sun moves from outgoing Gemini to inwardly-focused, nurturing Cancer. The Cancer Sun will bring a much needed drink of refreshing mountain stream water after an intense fire spent the early part of the month evaporating any water around us.

Notice how you feel when the Sun moves to Cancer. You are likely to still feel the pull of passion and motivation, but also be acutely aware of how much energy you have spent earlier in the month. The last week of June would be a wonderful time for a relaxing spa day, or a day at home just relaxing and reading your favorite books or performing your favorite rituals. If possible, plan some downtime for the last week of June, and at a minimum, ensure that your calendar isn’t so booked that it will be difficult to schedule in any last minute needed relaxation.

Between the expansiveness and growth of the Jupiter/North Moon Node conjunction early in the month, and the sustained Venus/Mars in Leo conjunction throughout the month, all of the themes this month are outward-facing. It is a time to go – not a time to only be. Move forward on your soul’s rocketship propelled by all the fires of your passion – just make sure you have plans for a relaxing oasis or two along the way.

Photo by Rafael Garcin on Unsplash

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

Author: Karena

June 2023: Propelled by Passion

April 2023: Finding a new equilibrium