This Aries Season Will Not be Like the Others
An eclipse season featuring Chiron and a chaotic Mercury Retrograde will have us missing Pisces before he even leaves. Things may get uncomfortable.
What is happening?!
The vernal equinox has ushered us from winter into spring with a bittersweet goodbye to all things watery and quiet; the blooms are blooming and the days are lengthening, encouraging all of us diurnal mammals to get off our ass and DO something already. Why?!
The sun is now in Aries, the most cardinal of cardinal signs whose temper rears up wildly and intermittently, like a menopausal hot flash. This seasonal transition is often misunderstood as some kind of get-up-and-go magic potion, as though we were all dying to spend our winter doing high octane, extreme sports and are ready to burst into a new, crude arena of life like repressed gladiators. While people with especially athletic natal charts may indeed be chomping at a metaphorical bit, most of us were beginning to acclimate to a more restful pace and will experience a mixture of anticipation and peevishness at our egotistical sun’s directive. This has always been a problem with Helios and Apollo - they are goody-two-shoe golden boys who think nothing of bending everyone to their will. Seriously, fuck the sun*.
More often than not, the transition into astrological spring happens in fits and starts, and is often accompanied by more than a little wistfulness and recalcitrance. The ‘dead’ months may be boring, but they allow for the kind of deep reflection and rest that the busy parts of our yearly wheel rarely afford us, and it can be hard to let go of the slower pace and circumspect approach encouraged by Aquarius and Pisces season. We have to let go of things that are comfortable; old ideas, habits, our perfectly indented couch, etc. and dive into new experiences that will not only be uncomfortable, but that may actually be painful as we acclimate. Even now, Saturn, Venus, and Neptune continue to mellow out in Pisces, causing us to feel like we are straddling the past and the future in an awkward, pants-splitting squat.
Don’t feel bad if you feel bad this week, but are uncertain as to the cause or the solution - and by bad, I mean uncertain, lacking confidence, or succumbing to some fear or negativity regarding the future. There is a steady gathering of uneasy, chaotic energy on the earthly plane right now as we creep toward a lunar eclipse in Libra, Aries’ diplomatic opponent on the zodiacal wheel. The closer we get to this penumbral eclipse, the more agonized our thoughts may become and we will wrestle with the way decisions of the past might affect the trajectory of our future. Did we do the right thing? Are we trusting the right people? Will our future work out the way we need it to? And most worrisome, should we take the plunge and get a haircut with bangs?
The chaos of eclipse season always butts heads with Aries season, of course, because that is how time and planetary rotation work. This year, though, several rare aspects are working together to make this eclipse season extra eclipse-y:
Mars ingress into Pisces, a sign in which Aries’ ruler is deeply uncomfortable
The uncanny alignment of the moon and sun with a troublesome, modern asteroid
The personal nature of a Venus-ruled eclipse
*This is a purely personal stance, mostly due to my status as a card-carrying vampire who has had terrible experiences with blonde men
Why would this affect me?
For you lucky scamps with very little Aries or Libra in the natal chart, this insane acceleration into eclipse chaos may be felt very subtly as an internal recalibration, or perhaps a very quiet review of something endured back in October of 2023, which marked the first round of the Aries/Libra lunar axis hell. For anyone else with important placements in Aries or Libra, this upcoming lunar eclipse may shake the pylon foundations a bit, particularly those propping up money, self-image, and relationships with others. If any intense, paradigm-shifting events occurred last autumn, this would be the time to revisit the repercussions and gird any respective loins for a sequel of some kind.
When a full or new moon occurs, we can tell a lot about the character of said moon by her ruling planet, the god star that is ‘in charge’ of the lunar occultation as it perfects. This is determined by the sign our lovely little moon happens to be in at the time, which, in this instance, is Libra. Libra’s planetary ruler is Venus, which means that our upcoming penumbral eclipse will affect things in our lives that are Venusian in nature, i.e relationships, love, beauty, wealth, and justice. Take a step back before making moves in those areas, however - eclipses bring darkness to even the most banal of situations, causing things like chaos and illusion to skitter around our lives like cockroaches on a linoleum floor. This means any decisions we make during eclipse season can be marred by a lack of accurate information and context, though we will be unable to comprehend these limitations in the moment.
What does that mean in non-astrologer speak? It means do not make any dramatic or sudden decisions until mid-April or so, once we are clear of the solar eclipse echoes from April 8th. We may come to regret them, or worse, to discover that we made these important decisions under false pretenses. Petty example time:
Let’s say you’ve been thinking about a makeover or a haircut, and you float it by a friend this week who says, “Oh yeah, that would be cute!”, so you giddily make an appointment with your person only to end up looking like an angry hedgehog once your transformation is complete. It could be that your friend wasn’t truly listening (this is very possible, as we are fast approaching a messy Mercury retrograde), or was telling you what you wanted to hear instead of their genuine opinion - it hardly matters, because now you look like a hedgehog and you’re feeling even more unmoored from your own appearance and personal idea of beauty.
This scenario would be most likely for someone with Venus in the first house, the house of identity, or perhaps some tough aspects between Venus and another personal planet…which brings me to another major bummer of the upcoming eclipses, which is the proximity of each to the asteroid Chiron.
Chiron inhabits one of the most thankless roles in ancient mythology, which is that of ‘the wounded healer’. This nebbishy centaur was abandoned by his immortal parents for being half horse (more on them in a couple of weeks) and raised as a foster by Apollo*, who ensured that Chiron received a thorough education in everything from archery to medicine, despite his equine appearance. Chiron was so genteel and learned by his maturity that young men from every corner of Olympus came to him for tutoring, and he was especially adept at herbal medicine. A weird and unfortunate accident left Chiron poisoned by the blood of the Hydra, resulting in an eternally oozing wound that, try as he might, Chiron could not heal - despite his magic ability to heal everyone else!
Astronomers discovered Chiron in 1977 (the asteroid, not the horse man) and astrologers were quick to jump on the inclusion of a ‘wounded healer’ archetype in star charts, making Chiron a fairly common inclusion in astrological readings by the next millennium. Fast forward to 2024 and Chiron is forming a close aspect to this month’s lunar eclipse, as well as an exact conjunction with the moon in Aries during the eclipse on April 8th.
Chiron’s proximity to both our moon and sun during an already sketchy season makes the possibility of painful lesson learning very, very high, because Chiron represents our unhealed wounds - wounds that will remain unhealed, resistant to any expertise or therapy we throw at them. Painful childhoods, formative betrayals, and life altering injuries stay with us until death by their very nature, and the psychological issues that we formed like scar tissue around such events are going to be agitated by the stars over the next few weeks. So, for real…don’t cut your hair. Don’t quit your job, either, or burn a bridge between friends and lovers, because we are about to endure a couple of intense, reality-obscuring occultations as we simultaneously face resurfaced trauma, and that is enough to make Zeus himself hide under his blankets for the duration of these events.
*Fine, I suppose Apollo can’t be that bad.
When do I have to deal with this?
The sun’s foray into Aries began on 3.20.24, and the further in we get to the hotheaded season of The Ram, the more fired up for action we will be. This could result in more depression than motivation at first, due to the tension between the planets newly in Aries and the planets still lingering in Pisces. Mars enters Pisces on 3.22.24 and immediately comes down with a case of the sads, causing our physical motivation and conflict management to suffer. The lunar eclipse reaches its apex on 3.25.24, and the gathering energy of Chiron near the lunar nodes will likely already be affecting some people. (Again, always look at your natal chart for specifics.) At the very least, all cardinal signs - Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn - should consider taking it very, very easy over the course of the next 2 weeks. Keep your schedule nice and light wherever possible, in case personal situations or overheated emotions ruin our concentration and productivity. Remember that we need to be wary of the following: outsized emotional reactions, situations where truth or reality may be obscured, and rash decisions regarding personal appearance, employment, and/or money…and yes, I realize this makes all of 2024 quite the minefield.
Cool, what does the Tarot say about this?
An unhelpful combination of vanity and insecurity will color many interactions on Thursday, 3.21.24, and the more protective of our personal space and time we can be the less likely we are to wrestle with such tendencies. The Queen of Wands reversed can make decisions hastily, steamrolling any external opinions with which they disagree.
Chatter on Friday, 3.22.24, will center a difficult transition or ending, one which many parties may be loathe to honestly acknowledge - but, as is usually the case with Death reversed, ignoring something will not eliminate our need to eventually grapple with a new reality.
The 5 of Cups will dominate our actions and reactions on Saturday, 3.23.24, and we are likely to be consumed by disappointment and sadness if we cannot keep our focus on the practical, known entities that govern daily life. (It may also be that the eclipse is causing people to be a touch dramatic.)
On Sunday, 3.24.24, we will need to be careful about energy expenditure - a passion project is very close to some kind of milestone or completion, but the 9 of Wands indicates that our fuel reserves are running out of the energy it takes to sustain this effort. Rest may be warranted in order to avoid massive burnout, and the best course of action may be to pause on next steps until after eclipse season.
Visit @alectochaos on IG for the full, wordy breakdown of each card. If you are into that sort of thing.
🐐🔥 Thank you for the insight Lovely 🌹
That's how I feel about your readings and insight 🖤🌹😘 we're not alone ❣️