The Astrology of April 2021: All Day & All Of The Night

April contains for the most part the seemingly regular progression of the seven visible planets transiting through the zodiac how they might any normal month in any normal year. Although, we are well aware from the context of the world situation and from our own lives that this is far from any normal year. This ain’t no 1997, 2005 or 2014. We are in the middle of quite the transition of epochs and leading to some noteworthy upheavel and conflict in just a few more leaves fallen off the calendar. So the relative calm we might see in April, as it lacks in dramatic slow moving squares and bell tolling ingresses or epoch pivoting conjunctions, might not necessarily mean a mellow and relaxing time. At the top of the month Mars is still separating from the excessive and insatiable North Node in mentally manic Gemini ruling over a series of activity from fiery Aries with both lunations this month being Mars ruled. Aside from a couple brief squares to Pluto and Saturn as the days click along the month proliferates in sextiles with some trines sprinkled on top. Easy aspects, but easy aspects from malefic ruled signs and to outer planets from an indifferent Mercury ruled territory. This could be things made easy just as much for the bad as for the good. The later end of the Month everything goes Venus ruled, the action taking to Taurus and Mars ducking into Cancer for some sensitive saturation. We go from a highly diurnal pallet to a considerably nocturnal persuasion, although the conjunctions to Uranus’ random voltage make for extremes and unpredictability in the methods and rhythms we end up indulging in.

Mercury ingress Aries, beams

Venus sextile Mars

Mercury conjunct Chiron

Mars square Neptune

Mercury sextile Saturn

Venus sextile Jupiter

New Moon in Aries

Venus square Pluto

Mercury moving into combustion

Sun sextile Mars

Venus ingress Taurus

Sun sextile Jupiter

Sun square Pluto

Mars trine Jupiter

Mercury sextile Jupiter

Mercury square Pluto

Mercury cazimi in Aries

Mercury ingress Taurus

Sun ingress Taurus

Venus conjunct Uranus

Mars ingress Cancer

Mercury conjunct Uranus

Venus square Saturn

Mercury square Saturn

Mercury conjunct Venus

Full Moon in Scorpio

Pluto stations RX

Mercury sextile Neptune

Sun conjunct Uranus

Salvador Dali

All Day…

The Sun has been in Aries since the Equinox, and Venus came cazimi slightly after, but Mercury manages to make it into action oriented and exciting Aries by the 4th of April. Spring has already sprung, and plenty of new activities are sparking off, focus beginning to laser point desires, sights are set as the world thaws, steps are initiated, risks are taken, and with Mercury on board we are now processing our gamble in the heat of the dice roll, playing it on the fly we use in the moment tactical thinking to express our independence and kick off new thinking around what we want to hit, cut, begin, end and do immediately in the moment. This is not undirected shots fired at random, but well choreographed maneuvers in the heat of diverging tracks and multi tasked pathways as Mars and Mercury here go into mutual reception and share resources. Someone’s on the radio feeding insights into the ears of the infantry on the ground in the crossfire. There might be some quick coding to increase the tactical pace so multiple things can happen at once, killing two birds with one stone if not four with two or six with three. Indeed, Venus sextiles Mars not long after on the 6th and we know there is collaborative communication between the sign of cleverly juggling lots of ideas and the sign of striking while the iron is hot. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and we might just find shortcuts to what we are wanting. Run don’t walk.

Only a few days later on the 9th Mercury conjoins Chiron and Mars squares Neptune. Nostalgia might slog our progress as old boils are lancet and the bloodletting begins. A necessary step in moving forward is often having to make uncomfortable sacrifices. We are forced to lighten the load in the face of confusion, slaying some dragons and giants only to find they were windmills. Torch your fears and phobias, inform your approach, move through one step at a time. Meanwhile Mercury sextiles Saturn and Venus sextiles Jupiter. The innovative updates and new thinking forced into shape by a dispassionate world of sweeping restrictions has indeed opened up some alternate free spaces to expand and develop our intellectual game and at this point our lust for action and excitement wins out over pessimism. We fix the most tantalizing opportunities available to us in the crosshairs and pull the trigger, bringing us quickly into unexplored territory that unfurls in a rush of sudden wind. It is in that moment we realize something has clicked. There is the contemplative pause of the marksmen after firing the shot, stillness in the arms and shoulders until it is clear where on the target the bullet struck. We can feel in this brief pause initiates something that will come into focus later, as the New Moon in Aries occurs, just before Venus square Pluto. This is what we want, but having pulled the trigger we realize how ominous the result of our actions actually are. What have we just done? We are giddy with excitement but also aware we have altered our world. Irreversible. For those about to permanently altar their body after being held hostage under a Plutocratic power move because they are so impatient for a little spark of fun and pleasure, there’s a contemplative and paranoid chord ringing out here. Luckily for the itchy in the trigger finger, it’s only a brief scene in the story. Mercury goes into combustion around here, so whatever it is, the big one or some parallel in your personal life, you’ll probably start to internalize your anxiety over it and turn to scheming more than spitting out the details of the battle plan. Not to say there won’t be any conspiring. Mars and Mercury are still meeting up at the location of the heist, but not for meticulously planning, just a quick run through the night before the robbery, looking for alternate approaches and escape routes in case something unexpected occurs. It’s good to have options.

Kawabe Masahisa

By the 13th the Sun in Aries sextiles Mars in Gemini. It feels good, there’s good feedback from the actions taking place, the instant replays look great. The Sun sextiles Jupiter two days later. The new plan is really showing results. It’s probably good that we regrouped and explored all those new options and drew up an experimental strategy. It’s holding together in reality. We’re excited. …And so are our oppressors and their aggressors fyi. Actually these sextiles between the sign of the Individual and the Collectivist System likely imply we are going right along with their new plan— “Great Reset” are probably the best pairing of words to come about in this moment of the Great Chronocrators having recently conjoined in update oriented Aquarius. We probably are getting some clarity on this as the Sun then squares Pluto on the 16th. Things are feeling better and more hopeful but in a way that seems suspiciously played from high up on a top tier somewhere way above our heads, so high in fact we appear to be ants or simply cogs in the works. We continue to feel this out, work with what we’ve got at hand and think this through, the pros mostly rather than the cons as we process the big game being played and what it means for the history of empire as Mercury follows the Sun through the same set of aspects the next day. This may bring some serious insight, as by the 18th at 10pm eastern Mercury perfects his cazimi and the individual action we are focused on, the obstacle we are looking to over come, the ass we want to kick, the thing we are poised to do suddenly fills with information and quality thinking surrounds us in striking distance.

It’s at this point, just following the reception of impulsive insight that things shift significantly, slow down, get more real, tangible, and our receptivities become more embodied. It begins to feel better to be more well prepared and not so eager and trigger happy.

Dorothea Tanning

And all of the Night…

Just after the Mercury Cazimi both Mercury and the Sun ingress Taurus in quick succession. Now our minds and thoughts become more oriented to how good it feels to get our hands dirty and get to work, to labor at what we love and indulge in natural pleasures as we calm ourselves into more methodical, musical, rhythmic and cyclical frames of mind. The calm is only in comparison to the bright fiery excitements of the day. It is here we enter the coolness of the night, but that doesn’t mean the parties over. It has only just begun, so make sure you fasten your seat belts as the group of planets traveling along the Sun’s path are all headed to a conjunction with rodeo ready Uranus who plans on speeding up and slowing down, chopping and screwing and remixing whatever lands on the turntable.

Venus is the first to come into close contact with randomizing and surge fluctuating Uranus on the 22nd, throwing our values, desires, attractions, connections, aesthetics, and senses of sensory and sensual pleasure into turbulence, rocking the boat, conducting experiments, vibrating the materials, and leading to both ecstatic eruptions and derailings of regularity. Interestingly Mars ingresses Cancer the next day. All the exciting dialoguing around doing a million things short order in early April is now gone. What we direct our tools and weapons toward is, amidst trembling fecundity and mutating growths, patrolling the nursery and protecting what is incubating and keeping the wolves away from the precious flock. The Stork flies with a knife in its beak. We are deep in the labor of creation, the water is breaking, and in our pangs we growl and snarl at those who might threaten this birth. You might want to conjure here the 90s SciFi Hollywood softcore ‘Species’, but you certainly don’t have to.

Dorothea Tanning

Mercury is next to touch the wires live in the garden beds on the 24th. We can feel all the need to ground the circuitry and it’s becoming a bit of a desperate situation as Venus and Mercury coming into conjunction square Saturn in tandem on the 25th. We’re thinking about the epiphanies in our creative projects as they implode and explode and regather before our eyes and we need to set things into some sort of stability somehow and the only way we can think to do it is an altogether new plan in an altogether new world and if everything is unwritten at this point we might as well do some of the planning ourselves, as things get real, we grip what we want and with full awareness of the limitations, bring the wilds into conformity with an abstract blueprint. How can we invisibly gain some control on the natural processes playing out?

Dorothea Tanning

As we are wrestling with this a Full Moon in Scorpio blossoms and our emotions swell with survival instincts and primal drives and the animalistic power struggles that have dogs mounting one another and predators chasing prey and tooth and nail unleashed at night. There is enough wild indulgence here and carnal satiety to spell out hedonism and iniquity, although, with the Squares to Saturn, it’s likely not going to be sanctioned by authorities, the progressive collective, or emerging scientific and medical paradigms. We have a pretty obvious clash between what it means to be an animal body within an ecology vs what it means to be a member of a Society that doesn’t acknowledge that and stands starkly opposed to the natural world. Luckily Scorpio is empowered with stealth.

Dorothea Tanning

Unsurprisingly, following the impassioned dramatics of a Scorpio Full Moon Pluto stations Retrograde in Capricorn. The shadowy machinations of power shift gears behind the curtain but we probably can catch a glimpse of the cloak of darkness as it swishes past. The rollercoaster continues throughout the earthquake even if our stomachs have had enough. For us personally, I imagine we will be as immersed in the throws of our own embodied practices and projects as we could possibly be at this point, the obsession that grips us making itself obvious. But things anything but retract. With mystery making itself known, and the whole workshop shaking, some howling at the Moon in the middle of the night, Mercury sextiles Neptune, allowing for more gothic romance rather than less just as the Sun sidles up to Uranus and presses the full Prometheus button on the final afternoon of April, when many are celebrating Walpurgisnacht or getting geared up for May Day parades. I’d wager that in a year when we have seen the most sweeping disregard, disrespect and destruction dolled out to the working class by societal strategists, May Day will likely be significant for both its lack of oomph as well as its top blowing off potential. Just set your sights on Uranus and see what’s in store.