The Crossroads of April

Astrologers all over are flipping out over April 2014.  I’ve been mostly flipping out over the weather lately, since like all humans, most of my cranial alarm bells are set for whatever is going on in my back yard.  And my back yard has been through a lot. Ice, snow, floods, and any minute, I’m expecting the four horsemen of the apocalypse to trot on by.

Maybe, too, I’m focused on my back yard because the larger trends seem so daunting.  There’s a palpable sense that some dramatic historical drama is being set up,  that the forces are aligning for a major change.  The T-square is already in place, and edging closer all the time.  Uranus, Pluto and Jupiter are all in tense aspect to each other, with these aspects exact on April 20 and 21. 

Pluto is about slow, inexorable transformations, while Uranus is about sudden rebellions and abrupt turns.  Jupiter is about business, economics, law, principles, and community, and all these things can swing wildly back and forth.  Since it’s currently in Cancer, Jupiter is also about the homeland, the sense of belonging.

On April 22 and 23, Mars joins the fray, plugging into the empty space and turning the T-square into a cross.  Mars is the planet of action, the trigger planet.  So this is when people could reach a moment of resolution.  This could express itself in angry words, flying bullets, or tanks in the street.  

Of course, that’s already true in Venezuela, as the protests drag on.  My spouse’s aunt says that her neighborhood in San Cristóbal is desolate, a maze of ripped-up streets.  It used to be that if you saw a gun, you were being mugged, but now the gunshot in the streets comes from the military, or from the government gangs that patrol on motorbikes.    

Things are tense everywhere.  We’ve already seen Russia carve off a piece of the Ukraine, abruptly altering the world map.  The people in the Crimea have had to figure out where they belong, as they adjust to this shift in the boundaries of their world.  They are either celebrating a return to the Russian motherland, or packing everything and bustling the whole family out the door, or just staying put and feeling anxious and displaced.

And we’ve seen the earth itself move, in various places.  A mountain lost its grip in Washington state, swallowing most of a small town.  There’ve been a bunch of little quakes in California.  Will we see more of this as these aspects grow stronger in April?  

These almost simultaneous oppositions are very rare, and that’s why astrologers are getting so excited.  Especially from April 20 to 23, it’s best to be a little more cautious than usual, especially if you have any planets close to 13° of cardinal signs.  The U.S. sun is at 13° Cancer, so, as a nation, we will be affected:  our priorities, our sense of identity, our national ego.  Venezuela, with the sun at 12° Cancer, will also have to redefine itself.  And Russia has Uranus at 13° Cancer, indicating an even more radical shift. 

Vladimir Putin has the sun at 13° Libra, so he will be right in the middle of what’s going on.  Mars, the trigger planet, is right on his sun – his leadership, his sense of purpose, his ego.  He’s definitely ready for a showdown.  Barack Obama has nothing in the sensitive range of cardinal signs, and is clearly not that interested in mixing it up with a cowboy, but with Neptune currently opposing his Pluto, some old karmic power issues are up for him.

When I first looked at Putin’s chart, especially in terms of the karmic influences, it definitely gave me pause.  He has a Leo conjunction involving his midheaven, Pluto, the south node, and Black Moon Lilith.  And to me, this says that he has a deep hunger for conquest, left over from a past life in which he didn’t quite get his chance to run the world.  When I see this, and when I think of the official homophobia and covert anti-Semitism in Russia, I get nervous. 

Adding to the charged atmosphere this month, there are also two eclipses in April.  The first, the total lunar eclipse that goes along with the full moon on April 15, is the most volatile one, since Mercury is at 13° Aries, side by side with the fiery planet of change, Uranus.  This could mean sudden shifts in intention, communication, or process.  There could be fighting words, a challenge, an audacious plan.   

By the new moon of April 29 – which brings us an annular solar eclipse – the pattern is dissipating a bit, and a few Taurus influences help to ground things.   Still, the energies of the cardinal cross and the eclipses will have lasting repercussions.  Countries, allegiances, and ideas will be juggled this month, and this new state of things will comprise our reality for quite a while. 

The cardinal cross indicates a time when things are being broken down.  We can all agree that some things need to break down, and to be rebuilt in a better way.  But the process itself is turbulent, scary, and sometimes dangerous.  So it’s time to take a wider view, a historical view.  We may all have to look beyond our backyard, and notice what’s coming down the road.