Stellar Insights: April 3 - 9, 2023

I like to think of Mercury as the planet of the mind and the voice. It relates to the way we access, synthesize, and share information and insights. It can be a bridging force, connecting ideas to ideas, ideas to people, people to people, and people to places. It generally stays in one sign for a few weeks and as it does we get an opportunity to learn more about the topics associated with that sign’s archetypes and to also orient our communication through that sign’s style of doing things.

Yet sometimes, owing to its retrograde cycle, Mercury will actually spend a couple of months, rather than a few weeks, in a sign. When this happens we get an extended opportunity to hone our understanding of certain spheres of life.

This is exactly what we’re embarking upon starting on Monday when Mercury enters Taurus. Owing to its upcoming retrograde (April 21 – May 14), it will spend almost two and one-half months in this earthy sign (it shifts into Gemini on June 11). This will gift us with a leisurely opportunity to:

· Connect to our senses and sensuality

· Access practical tools that can help us share our ideas more effectively

· Find a greater alignment with nature

· Discover rituals that can have us feel more grounded

· Explore ways to simplify our communication style

· And/or further understand our relationship to change, safety, and security.

As it turns out, in addition to shifting into a new sign, Mercury is also a star player this week owing to the numerous alignments it makes with other planets. And with this, knowing and sharing, learning and transporting, as well as communicating and listening may be on our minds.

On Monday, just after it enters Taurus, Mercury makes a square with transformative Pluto, encouraging us to dive deep into the underlying meaning of messages and the motivation that’s behind why certain communication contexts were chosen over others. As it makes a sweet sextile with structured Saturn on Wednesday and one with action-oriented Mars on Friday, we can attune to a desire to have our communications be conduits for accountability. All this occurs against the backdrop of Mercury uniting with the North Node, a point that reflects destiny and the pathway forward, likely signifying an emphasis on the role of the media and education as vehicles to move our collective understanding forward.

The other shining star of the week is the Libra Full Moon, which lights up the sky on April 5. This one happens to tie in with Chiron, which is also in Aries like the Sun.

This Chiron-informed lunation may catalyze a laser-like focus on the wounds that we carry. As they become too bright to ignore, we may also find ourselves with a galvanized will to tap into the great healing capacity that lives with us. With the Moon in social Libra, turning to friends or other allies may help us find a sense of self-compassion as well as a greater awareness of the steps we can take to release deep-seeded patterns that have emerged from self-limiting narratives that we have embraced and used as our lens for life.

Additionally, it may be us who finds ourselves in situations in which we can remind people of their capacity to reconnect to the source of their well-being as well as offer them beneficial tips and strategies. Through this, we may experience a sense of deep connectedness, seeing how the challenges that accompany being human can actually stir compassion within us, and in that we can find a sense of joy and solace, as well as a reminder that as we are interconnected, we are actually never alone.

Have a lovely week!
xxStephanie

Astrological Highlights

April 3: Mercury enters Taurus; Mercury/Pluto Square
April 5: Sun/Chiron Conjunction; Libra Full Moon; Mercury/Saturn Sextile
April 6: Mercury/North Node Conjunction
April 7: Mercury/Mars Sextile; Venus/Neptune Sextile

All dates reflect Eastern Daylight Time (- 4 hours GMT)