Love is like a fire:
its glow is devotion,
its flame is wisdom,
its smoke is attachment, and
its ashes detachment.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
The Solar Eclipse and New Moon on April 20th, 2023 12:51 am EST is at 29.50 Aries
occurring at the very last minutes of Aries just before the Sun and Moon both slip into Taurus. As the previous New Moon on the Spring Equinox was also in Aries, there is a potent reinforcement of the Aries invitation.
The narrow path of totality during the Solar Eclipse will sweep through Australia and Southeast Asia, stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. At either end of this path, the curvature of the Earth increases the distance between the moon and the observer. The moon is then too small to cover the sun completely. As a result, in these locations (which are out over the ocean), the eclipse will appear to be annular where the sun forms a ring around the moon.
Jupiter conjunct the New Moon
Pluto square the Eclipsed Sun
Eclipse Ruler Mars square Chiron
Mercury Retrograde conjunct Uranus
All New Moons and Solar Eclipses are times where something new can be created, but the one on April 20 at the final degree of Aries packs a special punch. It catalyzes the re-creation, or rather the re-alignment with our Self.
Two consecutive New Moons in Aries have invigorated our confidence and vitality, calling us to actively validate who we are and what we are about. It is a time of beginnings but also of endings. We are saying goodbye to who we have been that is holding us back from living authentically and fully. We are to affirm what lights us up, release what does not, and claim our place in the world.
We may encounter past wounds, issues around societal conditioning. or a health issue that points to where we are blocking the flow of the life-affirming fire of Aries that is coursing though us. As we align with our intrinsic nature, the fire of our vital force will help to burn away the patterns and beliefs that have masked or restrained our relationship with who we really are.
While Aries energy is fast, hot and impulsive, we are to slow ourselves down, notice when we are being reactionary or impatient, and give ourselves time to consider the root of our desires and the actions we want to take. We are living in a time of transformative change. The Eclipse directs us to the changes happening within ourselves and the reshaping of our own identity so that we can best meet the changes that will be happening in the world around us.
March 29, 2006 was the last time we had a Solar Eclipse in Aries. Thinking back to 2006, was there a new surge of confidence or bold action taken in your life? What was ignited during the last Aries eclipse may offer insight into what is opening now, and what may be a deepening or furthering of what the last Aries eclipse initiated for us. For further clues for how this eclipse is awakening new passion or self-confidence, we can identify the house where the last degrees of Aries fall in our birth charts. The activities of that house indicate where we can expect a turbo boost of energy, vitality and new growth.
Don’t fear the light within.
May it ignite
the Sacred Flame in your soul.
Paulo Cohelo
Aries: Primal Fire
There is an abundance of primal fire coursing through us with 5 planets and asteroids in Aries. It is primal because it is the fire that ignites from seemingly nowhere, from the eternal womb of potentiality. Fire warms, illuminates and gives life. It initiates and instigates. It can also burn hot, become unpredictable and we can easily lose control of how we direct it. If we fear the intensity of the life-giving heat and shut it down, we can feel inertia, depression, frustration. As we battle to minimize the fire, we may experience an accident or an onset of an illness.
Aries Affirmation: I am!
Aries Fire is the foundational affirmation of life, where we say: I am here. I exist. I matter. There is no apology of self, just an acknowledgement that I am what I am. Our desire to live, to thrive, and to excel surges. Our libido gets an added boost. We feel a pride of our unique expression, recognizing that we are an original, and there is no one us like us. Our desires become simple and straightforward.vWith this, we are more aware of who we are and how we fit into the scheme of things. We look less outside for validation and realize we are who we have been waiting for. We are being jump started, ignited to give ourselves fully to what calls us - not silencing, minimizing or compromising for the sake of keeping the peace or fitting in. We take the reins of our life and claim our authority to do so. Raw Aries energy takes the lead and does not heed or submit to another’s guidance or expectation. We validate our Self in a way previously out of reach.
Holding Fire
We are aware of the divine spark that gives us life. It brings a light and intense warmth that fills and radiates from our whole being. It is the source of the potent and resilient human spirit that will readily stand up, speak, and fight for a life worth living. Yet, there is a volatility with the Aries fire of the Eclipse inflamed by the square to Pluto: We are being called on to hold the fire, embody it, and let burn away all that is no longer part of who we are - childhood patterns, behaviors shaped by trauma, or societal conditioning. If we cannot hold the heat of the fire effectively, we can dissipate its power by using it to angrily lash out or act rashly. Fire has the power to create and to destroy. We can only empower ourselves if we refrain from diminishing and cutting down others.
The Creative Spirit is Invigorated
Our creativity is boosted, helping us to harness the powerful energies of the eclipse. We can see new ways to work with or respond to circumstance. We can look for something tangible and concrete that energizes or affirms our innate talents and gifts. While big shifts are occurring on a global scale, we are give our focus to what we can accomplish and can effect, which is most likely right in front of our noses.
The Eclipse occurs at the Final Degree of Aries, a degree that exaggerates and amplifies the fire of Aries and can easily draw out its shadow side. For those who do not know how to let the fire embody and illuminate us, to in effect be a crucible for its life giving, life transforming alchemy, the fire can bust loose and wreak havoc with aggressive and warlike behavior. We are called to transmute the fire surging within us into courage, confidence, and life-affirming passion rather than vent it with impulsive actions or getting caught in an ego battle with something or someone. No one outside of us can give us confidence unless we first give it to ourselves. We are to own our own power and, in this, break free from conditioned patterns and expectations that have held us back and invalidated our right to exist authentically and fully.
Honor What is Ending. The Aries eclipse initiates a new cycle of life. That it is happening at the last degree of Aries cues us to pay attention to what is ending, to recognize how we have changed, and what behaviors, fears or beliefs are no longer part of our how we define ourself. Our self-identity is changing and we are to align with an expanded sense of self that is emerging. We are to acknowledge what has shaped us, what we have outgrown, and what is and is not authentic to our nature. As the world is changing, so are each of us. We are in the process of shedding the skin of who we have been so that we can embrace a new vision and direction. We are to being readied to push off from the shore of what is familiar and discover more of ourselves.
North Node conjunct the Eclipse cues us that our gaze is on our future collective destiny. There is a clear message that this elcipse is an ignition point for a future that is ready to unfold. There may be seismic shifts as we align with it.
Just remember to always
be yourself and don’t be afraid
to speak your mind
or to dream out loud. J.A. Redmerski
The Eclipse Potential Receives a Turbo Boost
Jupiter conjunct the Solar Eclipse
Jupiter is the great benefic, amplifying and growing whatever it touches. In Aries, Jupiter further amplifies our wishes, desires and self-assurance. Conjoined with the Sun and Moon, it fans the flames of the Aries spirit and the life force that is surging through us, paving a new way to hold and trust ourselves. The only cautionary note is that we don’t become so full of ourselves that we become arrogant or cocky.
Jupiter is approaching an Exact Conjunction with the asteroid Eris, Goddess of Discord. She creates discord as an antidote to address imbalance and injustice. We are ready for a fight, to be an activist for a cause, willing to break from conformity. If our desire to fight is political, we may decide to join a protest march. The fight may also be closer to home as we fight for the wellbeing of our children or for the health of our backyard garden or to realize our career potential. Let it be a good fight and not one that is reactionary or fueled by feelings of vengeance or inadequacy.
Substantive Change
Pluto square the Eclipsed Sun
Eclipses are especially impactful and important when Pluto is in the mix. Pluto effects collective movements and brings a transformative energy that fuels signficant endings and beginnings, loss and rebirth. Pluto catalyzes revolutionary shifts, quantum breakdowns and break throughs, ushering in permanent changes to our social and political structure. Because of Pluto's energy, this eclipse is the second most powerful eclipse of this decade. January 10, 2020 saw the first big eclipse because Pluto conjoined Solar Eclipse. Pluto prompts us to awaken to the paradigm shifts that are taking place and to release our attachment to familiar behaviors that we have outgrown so we are freer to embrace what is on the horizon.
Pluto is in Aquarius, the sign of enlightened thinking and vision, encourages the rebel, the noncomformist, the innovator, the independent spirit within us. There is a speeding up of information and awarenesses about what is working and what is not. There will be more revelations of corruption and what blocks life-affirming movement and growth. Alliancess and agreements between countries or between states will be shifting, as there is a movement within countries to achieve greater independence and autonomy. As Pluto moves through Aquarius over the next 20 years, we will have access to a creativity and ingeninty that opens us to new perspectives, understandings, and ways we can interact with the world.
A Need for Patience. We may feel impatient with a desire to just get on with it. We may want to be done with releasing the old and arrive at the other side of substantive change. Action-oriented Aries is known for being impulsive and living as if today is all there is. There is an immediacy and urgency to Aries energy. If we curtail the driving desire to just get on with it, and we let the fire build within us, we can successfully and finally release patterns that make us smaller than we are and be ready to welcome changes as they arrive. Pluto is like an iceberg; it moves immensely slow but there is no way its course can be deterred or thwarted. This year is not a period of small changes but of a transformative and seismic shifts in the pardigm of how the collective operates. Pluto will ensure that the change is thorough and permanent.
The changes will happen in stages, sometimes with big leaps, as Pluto squares the nodal axis through July and then again with the January 2024 eclipse just it re-enters Aquarius. We have a sixth sense of what is coming and opening with Pluto's entry into Aquarius on March 23, but soon it will turn retrograde and return to Capricorn where it will remain through the rest of 2023. We have a final opportunity to complete what we have been about and be accountable to ourselves. We can look for spontaneous flashes of insight and understandings around what our life is about as we are being rewired to align with what is coming. We are preparing to have our minds blown.
There is a vitality,
a life force, an energy,
a quickening that is translated
through you into action,
and because there is only one
of you in all time,
this expression is unique.
And if you block it,
it will never exist
through any other medium
and will be lost. Martha Graham
Emotional Security
Solstice Ruler: Mars
Mars is In Cancer. It is moving slowing through the sign that brings attention to our security and home. Ruler of the Eclipse, Mars cues us to the emotional underbelly associated with seismic shifts and a future that may look radically different from the one we have been living. There is an urge to protect ourselves and what we love. We are looking to guarantee our safety and comfort. We will be encountering impulses that are reactionary or childish that speak to needs that are rooted in our childhood or distant past. We are to recognize where we feel unloved and unseen and rather than look for the world to be the good parent, we are to do what is needed to reparent ourselves.
Mars is 'Out Of Bounds' through April. With Mars moving outside the boundaries of the ecliptic path, he becomes a renegade, a revolutionary, a fired-up activist. We can likewise feel rebellious, fiercely independent or feel out of control. We are prompted to notice when the intensity has us moving too fast, responding to some false sense of urgency, or insigating some drastic action is needed because we feel we are at the end of our rope. We are to practice mindfulness around impulsive, rash or aggressive urges and instead slow ourselves down, take a walk around the block and give ourselves time to adequally consider what we are wanting to initiate.
Mars square Chiron. Chiron has us in touch with the wound that has us feel that we don’t matter and the accompanying experience of having to go it alone without adequate support. The child within us may wonder if we have the right to exist at all. Unmet needs are amplified. Childhood issues and trauma may surface. Anger and health issues can flare up as we encounter the wound. We can see how and where we did not receive validation for who we are. We can identify how the environment, school, family, community, media have been less than supportive in shaping a healthy self image. We are to now do the work to heal the wound rather than continue to act from it in an retaliatory or self-defeating way. We are to understand and be in relationship with our emotional nature so we are in the driver seat and not it.
A new sense of ourselves is emerging, where we will feel more ourselves than ever before. We are understanding more of true power and needs. We are separating out our conditioning from our innate authentic nature. Because Mars is the ruler of both this and the May 5 eclipse, we are to actively work with this energy for the next several weeks so we learn to love and not abandon ourselves, for whatever reason. We are prodded to find completion with childhood, family and karmic patterns so they don’t distort the new sense of self emerging.
Do your own thing
on your own terms and
get what you came here for.
Oliver James
Tending to Practical Considerations
Mercury Retrograde (April 21 - May 15) at 15 - 5 Taurus
Mercury turns Retrograde on the heels of the eclipse, prompting us to reflect and listen to what is stirring rather than take further action. The picture of our life is like a puzzle. We are having access to more and more pieces, but we don’t yet see how they all go together. Until Mercury turns direct on May 15, it is beneficial to take it slow, to contemplate what the Aries fire is opening within us.
Mercury conjunct Uranus. The first part of the Retrograde, as Mercury travels alongside Uranus, we can expect the unexpected. Secrets or new information may come out. Because both planets are in Taurus, there will be continued instability in the world’s banks and financial systems. We may receive shocking news, but if we can view it as part of the transformative change that will lead to a new way of working with our resources, we can discover the opportunities and potentials alongside challenges.
With Mercury in Taurus, our mind is focused on practical considerations. We are looking to ground ourselves in relationship to the changes happening, and discern how to best work with the resources we have. We are mulling over issues of security and personal value. This includes a re-evaluation of our finances. We are to seek out information and options that can help us clarify what we really need to put in place and where we can lighten our load. The Retrograde affords us some space and time to think things through and to be present to what is rising within.
Another terrific post, Olivia, thank you very much! We do indeed live in interesting times. This is a very eloquent message about the changes we are seeing on an individual and global level, and about how we can best adjust to change. Your paragraphs about Pluto especially wowed me: "Pluto is like an iceberg; it moves immensely slow but there is no way its course can be deterred or thwarted."