“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it’s yours.” ~Ayn Rand
April 2014 is being given star billing as the month to end all months. Most of the talk is about what could happen, might happen, what could go wrong and what could fall apart. In other words all the drama and frisson of apocalyptic anticipation. You’d think by now we’d have learnt that while everything—lives, situations, relationships, organizations, empires—does eventually end, the big overblown scenarios usually bear no relationship to what eventually transpires. Cast your mind back to Y2K or the dire forecasts for December 21, 2012.The reason for this is “Presentism,” i.e., focusing on one aspect of the change whilst assuming the rest will stay the same. Do you remember those now laughable visions of the Twenty-First Century back in the sixties, when flying saucers, personal rocket backpacks and robots were predicted but the way of life stayed the same, the men wore hats and went to the office while the housewives stayed at home?
April 2014’s astrology is stunning, rare and exciting. It doesn’t have to be scary, frightening or full of drama nor does it have to be a one-way ticket to Ascension. The Grand Cardinal Cross may be the first with Pluto, Uranus, Jupiter and Mars since the early 1400s, but all of us have successfully negotiated a series of Grand Crosses and Cardinal T Squares from 2010. April 23 brings the fifth of seven squares between Uranus and Pluto, with the sixth in October 2014, and the last in March 2015. Seen from this perspective, you can re-frame the Grand Cardinal Cross from being a standalone big-bang event into another unfolding cycle of global change. As Clarissa Pinkola Estes reminds us so beautifully:
Do not lose heart. We were born for these times.One of the most important steps you can take to help calm the storm is to not allow yourself to be taken in a flurry of overwrought emotion or despair—thereby accidentally contributing to the swale and the swirl. Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.
We’ve been endowed with the desire for service and we’ve been mastering the art of surfing the big waves of change by collaborating across the global Internet and innernet. It’s the choice between telling yourself a repetitive, hypnotic, addictive negative story or discovering what’s going right and what could go even better. Instead of obsessing over the flaws and the pitfalls, we can choose to think about humanity’s tenacious willingness to restore, repair, rebuild, reform or renovate the outgrown to reshape it in the service of new discoveries.
April 23’s Grand Cardinal Cross will be a catalyst for change across global organizations through changes in styles of leadership. Add the four cardinal directions to the archetypes of Uranus, Jupiter, Mars and Pluto and the morphic field is pregnant with potential.
- Uranus in Aries: unstoppable demands for personal freedom and democracy
- Jupiter in Cancer: a global challenge to hunger, the refugee crisis and inequality
- Mars in Libra: the shift from confrontation to negotiation and collaboration
- Pluto in Capricorn: the renewal of power structures—the state, the Church and economic systems
The multiple outer planetary combinations of four squares and two oppositions, combined with a Grand Water Trine between Neptune, Chiron, Saturn and Jupiter with Jupiter as the ballast in his own sign, are birthing breath-taking breakthroughs in science, astronomy, medicine and technology that would have been inconceivable only recently.
As April brings a Libran Lunar eclipse on April 15, the Cardinal Grand Cross on April 23 followed by a New Moon Solar eclipse in Taurus on April 29, remember that you always have options: towards or away from, to stay in the past or create a different future, to live by your highest values or pay lip service to them, to be your own North Star or give your power away.
Each of our unique calls to action this April is encoded in our charts and our psyches wherever 10-16 degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra and Capricorn fall. These four Houses or areas of our life are being woken up like sleeping beauty by the Gods of change—the outer planets. Then factor in the two eclipses either side of the Cardinal Cross and 25 degrees Libra/Aries and 8 degrees Taurus will also be change points. What’s already ripe for development? How can you do more of it? How can you think bigger?
When the first fissures of change appear, the knee-jerk tendency is to see them as negative, as detours from the road you’d planned. Instead, try a more nuanced, strategic, akido approach:
- Turn the setback into feedback
- Control your state
- Aim to be resourceful,not comfortable
Turn Setback into Feedback
If you regard any setback as feedback, it can begin to tell you what to do next. Feedback is not the same as failure and if you make that distinction you are already changing your internal state, that is, the way you are inside. And the way you are inside has enormous impact on how you handle any setback.
Control Your State
Allow yourself to have your emotions and acknowledge them. Take extra care of yourself. Seek support.
Aim to Be Resourceful, Not Comfortable
When change happens, it’s easy to keep struggling to retrieve old situations and comfort zones. This keeps you stuck in the past. So instead of reverting to old habits, ask yourself: how can I feel more resourceful so I can handle the challenge of the unknown and the ambiguity in this new set of circumstances?
We are needed, that is all we can know. And though we meet resistance, we more so will meet great souls who will hail us, love us and guide us, and we will know them when they appear. Didn’t you say you were a believer? Didn’t you say you pledged to listen to a voice greater? Didn’t you ask for grace? Don’t you remember that to be in grace means to submit to the Voice greater? You have all the resource you need to ride any wave, to surface from any trough. ~Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Lorna Bevan is a former Consultant Astrologer for The Sunday Times Magazine and other publications. She works with clients across the world, combining Visionary Astrology with Master NLP Coaching. Her passion is giving her clients the tools to live their best life.
Lorna is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Analytical Astrology.
She’s also a Jungian Psychotherapist and Master Coach qualified in NLP and Psychosynthesis.
She writes for the Cosmic Intelligence Agency as Agent 98 and for Daykeeper Journal and Infinity Magazine.
She is a Member of the Association of Professional International Astrologers, The Astrological Association UK, MBACP (British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy ).
Lorna works to the BACP and APAI code and all sessions are completely confidential. Book a 2017 Reading with Lorna
I was born in the mid 60s and am helming green programs in an industry that has been very slow to adopt green practices. The first wave of younger professionals is looking to myself and those ahead of me for leadership and they are also ready to push for change. I see my job as inspiring and sparking these younger workers to not give up or be complacent and to stay within the industry and be a steady implacable force of change in the face of sometimes intractable resistance. My challenge is to stay creative and to be inspired!
Yes, Jess, many of my current clients have this configuration and want to step up and make their unique contribution.The Chiron opposition to their Pluto/Uranus often leads to painful and self sabotaging doubts about their perceived competence.
There is a group of people who were born in the mid 60’s who have Uranus and Pluto in conjunction in their natal charts. These people are now in their late 40’s (or early 50’s?), that is to say at their full professional power and maturity. Right now, Pluto is not only involved in a current Grand Cross, it is in trine to the natal Pluto-Uranus combo (in Virgo) of a whole chunk of the working population. Virgo is, of course, a mutable sign. So, at the moment, Pluto is not only demanding change, it is giving the inner resources to make that change to many people, who are well positioned to actually do something. Has anybody besides me noticed this?
Agree with Crystal’s post. I was also especially struck by “aim to be resourceful, not comfortable”. Resourceful calls on our reserves of imagination and playful inventiveness. There are no shortcuts, it can’t be purchased or pretended at. It is real and always within our reach.
Blessings!
I just reread this article. Its relevance is brought into relief by the South American earthquake of the first week of April. The suggestions, particularly, “aim to be resourceful, not comfortable”, are helpful. In my prayer group we have been affirming for harmony and stability for the areas affected, and I also appreciate the reminder to take care of ourselves and focus on those things within our reach. This approach moves us out of the victim part of the cross archetype. Thank you, Lorna.