The Cosmic Story: April 2022

 

The Cosmic Story for April 2022

April Showers Bring May Flowers 

 

 

The Power of Beauty

This old rhyme may seem like a stereotype, but I like it because rain showers are so magical. How can they not give rise to the concrete magic of beautiful flowers in May?

I’ve just returned from my first trip to Hawaii – to both Maui and Kauai – and it was moist and juicy – almost too much so, since both tropical storms and winds, and strong tides kept us out of the water. But the colors! – the blues and greens, golds and oranges – filled our eyes, whalesong/birdsong filled our ears and soft, warm winds caressed our skins. Hawaii opened me to my senses.

 

Virgo Full Moon setting over Maui before Sunrise.

               Sunset off Maui

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hawaii was certainly a precursor of Spring in New England. All that beauty – the colors, the water and wind, and the green fertile Earth – belongs to the Goddess of April, whom the ancient Romans worshiped as Venus or Aphrodite of the Greeks.

After the lushness of Hawaii, I ended up with friends in Las Vegas, where one day the humidity was 19% – and where we went out into the desert to Tacopa for the hot springs on the first weekend to hit 90*+ The heat and the harshness of the desert has its own beauty, but it isn’t the beauty of April showers.

So now back in Rhode Island, I find today’s rain showers to be quite a gift. What a wondrous, magical world we live in. The sky showers water down upon us like blessings. Rain is a blessing and an awesome delivery system. The sky brings us water – it brings us life. What would the western deserts give for a few of these April showers!

Going to other places in the world, seeing Nature in her different aspects, helps remind me to bless and thank the April showers that come to us here in the Northeast as the Sun begins to warm the Earth. (My part of the country has gotten cloudier with climate change, so it’s easy to be annoyed at clouds and rain. But the reality is that it’s such a blessing in a world where our waters are often scarce and polluted.)

Without a doubt, the showers bring us new life, the new green appearing on limbs and branches, in the rich soil and in the seas and lakes, ponds and streams. Our animal relations also bring new life into the world in Spring, and sounds and sights of new life delight our senses. And that new life is always Beautiful – whether a newborn human or animal baby, or a sprout pushing its way up in the soil, ready to grow and blossom and become. 

 

Beauty is such an intrinsic part of new life and new beginnings. The potential in new beginnings is vast, and perhaps it is the best time to experience its true beauty, because we sometimes lose sight of it as time goes on, working hard to achieve some of those potentials.

Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, attracts our love and connection so that we feel invested in this new beautiful creation. Go out into Nature as she Awakens from her winter’s sleep, and let the sights and sounds and feel of Nature awaken your senses (Venus, Goddess of Sensuality). Let your delight in the new life awakening around you see the beauty and value it. Honor it. Live it. If we begin to value Beauty now in Spring, we will embody it throughout the coming year. 

 

 

Nature wants to teach us how to live on her beautiful home. The more consciously and sacredly we engage with the energies of Spring, the easier it will be to align ourselves to Mother Earth’s biosphere and to our own innate Wisdom. 

 

 

April’s energy is all about awakening in Beauty! “Behold there is beauty all around us!... Awaken, Rejoice and Sing.” (Abby Spinner)

Thanks to what I experienced in Hawaii, I already feel April & May on the way!

Venus as the Goddess of April

The Romans¹ – (I thought I’d look into Roman practices, since so much of our modern culture has its roots there) – saw April as the month of Conception, of new beginnings, of that initial spark of life that defines the wild Aries fire.

It is said that April was named for the open season,

Because spring opens all things and

The sharp frost-bound cold gives way,

The soil thaws and is easily worked.

Venus lays claim to this month.

This most deserving goddess governs the entire world.

This queen rules a kingdom second to none.

Ovid

And the new life that appears – be it a human baby, an animal baby, or new plant life – appears in Beauty! Beauty is the initial state of life. All new life is delicate, beautiful and delightful. That’s the essence of April and her goddess.

For the Romans, Venus was an earthy goddess, the divine Creatrix, Nature incarnate. She was and still is the source of female mystery and energy, the power to conceive and bare life – whether physical or creative.

Throughout seas and mountains and sweeping torrents, and the leafy dwellings of birds and lush green plains, the Goddess Venus strikes soft love into the breasts of all creatures. She causes them to be lustful and reproduce. ~Lucretius~

Life is supposed to be desirable to us. That’s why the Goddess of Love rules here – we are seduced by and we seduce each other by the heady rush of Life! Our patriarchal religions have cut us off from our body’s pleasures, calling them sins. The reality is that these ‘sins’ are our natural response to life and if we didn’t repress them, they wouldn’t overwhelm us – especially if we don’t overdo things. Our beliefs that the Earth, women and our bodies are somehow evil have led to our mechanistic age, where we live in our heads and ‘work out’ our bodies – but somehow don’t live in them.

So April is a time to embody yourself again. April is a sensuous month, a time when breezes softly blow and the Sun warms the Earth, awakening the colors, scents and sounds of life. It is a time to be open and receptive to the sensual flow of Nature. Let yourself indulge in your senses and adorn yourself (another aspect of Aphrodite/Venus) in beauty. April, and later May, is a time to let our senses drink in the world.

It wouldn’t hurt us to honor this tradition of indulging our senses – not in the unconscious, addictive way of our society, but by actually using our senses to understand life. In our technological society, we need to awaken our bodies again from the collective sleep we’ve been in. We can do it by opening our senses and exploring our world. If we don’t feed our senses in Spring, our senses won’t be awake enough to alert us to the dangers and ugliness in our world. By paying attention to the beauty of new life returning to the world, our senses will come alive and we will walk through the world in beauty, even as we recognize and name the ugliness that is evil. (EVIL is LIVE spelled backwards – evil wants to annihilate LIFE.)

For the Romans, Venus ruled over it all. As the goddess of sexuality, beauty, love and wisdom, Venus ruled over the fertility of the Earth and women. The Romans held festivals during April to Venus, honoring female sexuality. (They recognized women’s powers!) They also honored the Magna Mater (Cybele, the Great Mother) during early April and later the goddess Ceres, the Mother Goddess who welcomes her daughter Persephone back from the underworld. At the end of April the Romans held 4 agricultural festivals sacred to Mother Earth.

So let’s celebrate Venus this April as the Sun moves through both Aries and then Taurus. It is during April that the mystical planet Neptune and the philosophical planet Jupiter meet up in Pisces. With Venus watching over them to bring Beauty and Love to the meeting.

The Astrology of April

March ended with the Aries New Moon which was conjunct Chiron. The Cosmos asked us to consider who we are. Are we are wounded and still struggling with collective expectations (Chiron as Wounded Healer) or are we conscious about what we learned in the initiations those wounds offered us (Chiron as Mentor)? This is the year we are being asked to resolve our individual traumas and stand up together to face the traumas shaping our world.

After watching Putin invade Ukraine, the world is faced with the choice to stand up for our values, or be shown to be hypocrites by doing nothing. Both the world and each of us have that choice to stand up. The energies of this month are going to sweep us away – either to stand together to heal the world or to tumble into fear and darkness. Many decades ago I had a vision of unicorns holding back the giant waves, keeping the land safe. Perhaps some of you are unicorns.

 

 

The giant wave is also the upcoming conjunction of Neptune and Jupiter in Pisces, which calls us to acknowledge our connection. We are not alone – we are in this together. This strong conjunction is gathering energy and as we see the results of the dominator culture of patriarchy in the Ukraine, we are offered the choice to embrace our higher Self as our identity and get on with the work of imagining and making a better world.

So let’s start with the energy of Aries. Aries is action-oriented original FIRE – think wildfire. Aries fire is the spark of creation, of conception. Life gets switched on. Beginnings, births, new life, getting the electric shock that starts the process of life. 

 

The wonderful thing about Aries is that its energy is instinctive. It’s the energy that sparks life after all, so this energy shoots out in all directions, searching for what is new so it can fill it with the spark of life.

That’s also why the energy of Aries is immediate. It’s the energy of Be Here Now! Do you know an Aries? They always want to be doing something. They can’t stand around, waiting. They instinctively listen to the energies around them and fearlessly jump into life.

That’s the Aries gift – that fearless involvement in Life. On April 12^th, Neptune/Jupiter will conjoin in Pisces, while the Sun is in Aries. The Aries Sun is the juice that powers this conjunction. So let’s finally talk about next week’s Jupiter conjunction with Neptune in Pisces, the sign they’re very compatible with.

Back a few centuries ago, the ancients only recognized the 7 planets they could see in the night sky. And so they assigned each planet two signs to ‘rule’, whose energies were compatible with the planet’s energy. Jupiter has rulership over the signs of Sagittarius and Pisces. Once Neptune was discovered in 1846, it was assigned to the sign of Pisces since Neptune was the King of the Seas. So we say that both Neptune and Jupiter rule Pisces.

The Jupiter/Neptune Conjunction of April 12, 2022

So both the rulers of Pisces are about to connect in the depths of the world ocean – or the Collective Unconscious. Pisces is the last sign of the zodiac and is referred to as the primeval ocean where we return to Source. As the Collective Unconscious, it is the World Soul, the place where all of humanity’s experiences, knowledge, fears, hopes and wisdom reside. It is where the rejected parts of our society and our individual consciousness get dumped, like the trash islands in the Pacific. 

 

 

Mythologically, Neptune is in his own watery realm and Jupiter is more comfortable on high Olympus, so we’ll give a bit more power to Neptune’s ability to transcend dimensions and realities. He’s slippery – the Old Man of the Sea who shapeshifts until you hold on long enough for him to settle into his true form. (Alot like working with the Unconscious and with the imaginal.) Watch how people are reacting to life now. Are they being sucked into delusions and fanaticism or are they navigating their life nimbly and with grace. Stay open to revelations and visions – which means take time to meditate, especially in Nature.

 

 

Jupiter in Pisces brings an expansion of spiritual insight and the creative imagination, as well as the ability to go on the quest to discover our spiritual source. Jupiter/Zeus is the god of the lightning bolt, ready to bring his power of expansion into this ocean. So you can see how rip-tides might develop. Or tidal waves – which can create a radical shift in collective consciousness. With Vesta, Juno, Saturn and Mars (until April 14^th when it goes into Pisces) in Aquarius to anchor it in, it’s very possible that our collective consciousness (Aquarius) will shift because of this powerful conjunction. We’ll see some signs of it as Venus connects with Neptune on April 27^th and with Jupiter on April 30^th, right after the Venus-ruled Taurus Solar Eclipse. Or again when Mars conjuncts Neptune on May 17-18 in Pisces and Jupiter on May 29^th in Aries. These two planets can activate some response.

 

This important astrological event occurs next Tuesday April 12th at 7:47 am PDT/ 10:47 am EDT.   The Jupiter/Neptune conjunction occurs at 24* Pisces.  The Sabian symbol for 24* Pisces is:

On A Small Island Surrounded By The Vast Expanse Of The Sea, People Are Seen Living In Close Interaction. 

Having just returned from a very similar island, I would say that this image speaks to community, unity and co-operation.  What wonderful gifts this conjunction brings to us. 

There’s an old belief that when lightning strikes water, it forms the pearl of great price. Which is Love. So the Goddess is here as well, especially since the planet Venus will be in the sign of Pisces after April 5^th, where she is honored – Venus in Pisces is said to be exulted. So she’s very powerful here, in the ocean of her birth. Venus connects us to the imaginal realm as well as the spiritual realms and multi-dimensions. She is the Connector. This month is a great time to connect with your inner artist and mystic. Venus will lead the way with love.

It all connects – love, imagination, our Unity, Source. Rumi says,

Love is the water of life. And a lover is a soul on fire.

                    The Universe turns differently when Fire Loves Water!

It’s a great time to take back our imaginations, which our media has colonized and stunted. We are all living in very harsh patriarchal ‘stories’ about what we’re supposed to do and how we’re supposed to be. It’s time to drop those outworn stories and decide what you want to believe about life. Create a story with you at the center – loved, fulfilled, compassionate, wise, satisfied, open, generous, complete. Let’s all create stories of a better life and a better world.

We need to deepen our imaginations together. What collective values do we need to cultivate and call upon so we can create a better world? Some people want to take us back to the repressive values of the past. But if this tidal wave creates a radical shift in consciousness, it will be to reconnect with the Earth and with our bodies, not with repressive religious fears.

Before we can truly enter the Age of Aquarius, when humanity will grow up into conscious beings, we need to finally embody the Piscean ideals of love, connection, compassion and the willingness to sacrifice (to make sacred) for the common good. We need to leave behind the idea of our separateness and the ideal of rugged individualism which has separated us from each other and from Mother Earth.

The Truth of Life here on Earth is that we are all one, and we’re all in this together. We need to celebrate this truth by living it.

On April 19-20^th, the Sun enters the sign of Taurus. Taurus is a fixed earth sign, the sign of Venus’ Garden home. It is Mother Earth and her Bull. It is fertility and abundant life. Taurus takes Aries’ fire and shapes it into something of value – a body, a home, a business, the mountains, trees, plants and flowers. Taurus populates the Earth with living spirit.

More on Taurus in May.

Some quick astrological notes:

Mercury moves into Aries on March 27, into Taurus on April 10^th, and into Gemini on April 29^th.

April 29^th is also the day Pluto goes retrograde, beginning the process of integrating the U.S. Pluto return that first occurred on February 22^nd. Pluto will retrograde back to it on July 12^th and going forward, for the third time on December 29^th. Let’s see what America, and the world looks like then. Will the revolutionary energy of freedom spread throughout the world, just as it spread throughout America in 1776? 

 

 

The Libra Full Moon occurs between Passover and Easter on Saturday, April 16^th. The Full Moon squares Pluto in Capricorn and involves Eris in Aries conjunct the Sun. Libra rules justice and equality. It’s another reminder that our country and our psyches need to drop the dead weight of old expectations and embrace a new world and style of life. Conspicuous consumption has polluted the Earth and benefited the wealthy. What has it done for the rest of us lately? Not much.

This Full Moon reminds us that the revolution is upon us – not only in Ukraine but in the U.S. as well. Will freedom ring? Or will our very own American Taliban impose old repressive rules on us? (There’s a lunar eclipse on the US election day this year so it will be wild. Despite wide-spread voting restrictions, people need to vote to change the system.) This Full Moon is just 4 days after the Neptune/Jupiter conjunction, so we’ll still be feeling the rip-tides of it.

Coming as it does between Passover and Easter, let’s all pray that the old repressive beliefs die out so that new life can thrive.

Saturn also squares the lunar nodes, pushing at our collective mind to wake up – not be ‘woke’ but to wake up to what the world needs and reconnect with Earth’s biosphere. We are at a crossroads and it’s choice time.

The month ends with a Taurus Solar Eclipse on April 30^th, but I’ll talk about that in May’s newsletter.

May you be overwhelmed with Beauty this month,

Cathy

¹Bernstein, Frances, Classical Living: Reconnecting with the Rituals of Ancient Rome, (New York: Harper-Collins, 2000).