Back to current Premium Home


Jump directly to:

April '13
Premium
Edition
Home

Archive—
Past
Premium
Issues

Daykeeper
Home

by Terry Lamb

April finds us amidst a brilliant array of planetary events, bursting into sparkling possibilities as we move through the month. These come to us in the form of several cyclic transitions, not the least of which is the opening we experience on March 27–28, through the Sun-Venus-Uranus triple conjunction timed to occur on the crest of the Full Moon.

If we feel like things are “over the top”, we’ve found the energy that flows through this amazing confluence of events, and plot twists will emerge from this during April. This comes to us from two primary patterns. The first is a stellium (cluster) of planets that tightens and releases during April. In the last week of March, the fast-moving planets were headed toward each other, Venus to the slower Sun and Mars, Sun toward (slower) Mars. Mercury, just out of its retrograde, lagged behind, having spent its connections in February–March during its forward-backward-forward retrograde dance.

This results in three key events that mark off turning points in our journey through the mythic realm, where meaning is generated and visible reality is created. The first is the Sun-Venus conjunction, which signals the halfway point in the Venus cycle commenced last June. This is not really a conjunction in the ordinary sense; with Venus on the opposite side from Earth in her orbit, we should think of it more as an Earth-Venus opposition, a culmination that brings insight about what’s happened since June in our love and financial stories. It brings perspective, and with the involvement of Uranus, it comes with the flash and bang of a firework display.

This comes just before the start of two other cycles, those of Venus-Mars and Sun-Mars. Both of these happen in April. The first, on April 6, bring to us a renewal of the courtship dance—the courtship of love as well as the one we have in wooing life to express itself through us to give us purpose and meaning. The second, the Sun-Mars conjunction on April 17, takes us through the Underworld, where the ego (Mars) is burned up in the light of the spirit (Sun). Our old identity-mask thus immolated, we emerge raw but filled with spirit as we launch our new drive forward, temporarily blinded to the ego’s yearnings.

This allows us to take actions imbued with the energy of soul-spirit to the extent that we have learned to access it. However, for many people, they will feel temporarily rudderless, a feeling prolonged by the Lunar Eclipse a week later (April 25).

The gestalt of this is a sense of diving into a brilliantly lit pool where we are so blinded that we can’t see which end is up or how to find our heading. The beginning that is happening now carries the seed of the new 26,000-year Earth-wobble cycle that is just now showing signs of sprouting. We are in a chaotic profusion of possibilities too numerous to see all at once, part of a process too enormous to grasp in the moment. When we experience this type of process, it helps if we can surrender to the moment and trust that forces larger than ourselves will carry us through.

All this happens in a fertile context. The slow-moving planets are treating us to a coordinated surround of support, a Zone of Harmony. While it’s true that there are pitfalls as well—the Uranus square to Pluto a prime example, we have a system of harmonies available to us. However, it sits in the background, and we have to let go of drama and masking to take full advantage of it.

The cornerstone of this Zone of Harmony is a Minor Grand Trine between Saturn in Scorpio, Pluto in Capricorn, and Neptune-Chiron in Pisces. They are, incredibly, all at about the same degree of their respective sign, as they have been since October. In April, the degree range is 9–12̊, moving to 7–11̊ by April 30.

Periodically, other planets step into one of the other “feminine” signs to augment the configuration. When a planet stays in Taurus, Cancer, or Virgo, the harmonious pattern is magnified to create a Cradle, or even a Grand Sextile, of which we will have several before 2013 is complete.

As each faster planet moves through this degree range, a panoply of stimuli comes our way. For the Moon, this is once every three days; with the remaining planets (Mercury–Mars), it is more like once a month.

This allows us to lay the foundation for whatever we want to build, but we have to put in the effort—it won’t happen on its own. On a deeper level, these planets have their own story to tell, both individually and in their various combinations. Herein lies the key to our progress.

At present, Pluto is the apex planet in the Minor Grand Trine, the linchpin. This makes it the main timer in our process, especially if we have personal planets in Capricorn or another of the Cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra). What happens around April 12 is especially significant for our overall progress, since this is the day that Pluto begins its retrograde period (SRx).

Often with Pluto, what occurs cannot (or dare not) be expressed but needs to emerge on its own timing. We can see what’s coming, but we may feel powerless to affect its course (or empowered to let it flow as it will—our choice). As Pluto stations, we have our finger on the pulse of a problem, and if we can define it precisely we’re exactly where we need to be. After 2.5 months of problem-solving (testing and trying out ideas), we come to a way forward at the halfway point of Pluto’s yearly cycle (July 1), and get 2.5 more months to resolve this stage of the situation, until Pluto returns to forward motion on September 20.

If Pluto is our primary guide through our building process, Saturn is the Manifestor. Its timing is set to a bit earlier in the year. Saturn presented us with its defining moment between January 30 and February 17. Now we know what we need to work on, but we won’t have a clear path to solving it until the moment of illumination comes at the end of April, the halfway point in Saturn’s yearly cycle.

The other side of the triangle is shored up by Neptune-Chiron, the timers of our Great Healing process. They are still in the opening phases of their yearly cycle, still in the co-creative process with us in defining what we will heal in their new cycles begun in late February.

The way it works goes something like this: Prompted by the need for deep transformation in the face of global crisis, we are stimulated to get clear about who we are and where we need to be stronger, and this permits us to build a future on a brand new foundation based on our renewed sense of direction and purpose.

There are bigger stories behind the current connections. Saturn is heading into its next conjunction with Pluto, the last of which came in 1981-2 and whose shadow we are working with still. The next comes in January 2020, a cycle which times the restructuring of society and its institutions to coincide with the needs of the time. Anything we can get right at this time will draw off some of the heat from the challenges then.

Neptune and Chiron conjoined in 2009-10, launching the healing of humanity’s Great Wound (of separation). Neptune and Pluto also interact in fusing spiritual ideals and truths into the deep grid of human consciousness, the last cycle of which began around 1890.

The other players on this stage, Jupiter and Uranus, are in the same degree range and like Zeus throw the occasional lightning bolt into our midst, sparking our ingenuity and keeping us on course. Jupiter in Gemini will leave the Zone behind by the end of April, zooming on into Cancer by the end of June, when it engages these planets from a different perspective. Uranus brings the opportunity for quantum leaps across time and space, if we can let go of enough of the ties that make us feel safe but are actually confining.

The upcoming eclipses help us turn the page to the next chapter in our life story. The first of three eclipses comes on April 25, a Lunar Eclipse that dissolves old forms and reconstitutes the energies into the forms and connections that will carry us forward.

There’s no question that we are facing some daunting situations and seemingly insurmountable obstacles with long-term connections like the Uranus-Pluto square. However, seen in the correct light, this is our salvation. It is often only when we feel we have nowhere else to turn that we try what really works—the solution that lies outside the box of conventional thinking, or the soul-guided path through a process that brings the perfect resolution of all our dilemmas.

Daily Success Guide | Travel Advisory | Void of Course Moon Guide