As the month begins, the air is still quivering from the volatile energy of the Equinox. That blast of aggression we just experienced was Mars, the Sun and Venus igniting the Uranus-Pluto square in late March.

All Cardinal turning points (Equinoxes and Solstices) are paradigmatic: their transits set the template for the season to come. These martial placements are giving us the measure of the themes that will be in our faces this Spring. During early April the Sun, Venus, Mars and Uranus continue ramming their way through Aries, heating up the atmosphere with head-first force.

This force has courage in it. Our goal should be to put it where it can do some good.

Such as walking down the basement stairs to visit the ghosts.

Pluto Station

April’s transits are a light switched on in a dark cellar, inviting us to look at unconscious contents we’ve hidden away. Whether or not we want to see this shadow material is another question. But if our goal is to be rid of psychological toxins, we won’t let our squeamishness deter us.

Pluto made a retrograde station on April 12^th. It’s as if the planet were slowing down just for us, so we can get a good, long look at it. Where does 11½ Capricorn fall in your natal chart? Pay attention to this zone of the wheel. Its house position and the aspects to this degree tell you where in your life power plays will show themselves. In all senses of the word power: worldly power, psychological power, spiritual power.

For a couple of weeks on either side of the station, situations in decay will be identified as such. Like a diseased organ, they need to be eliminated if the greater organism is to thrive. We might imagine ourselves as a patient going under the knife. In this picture, Pluto is the expert surgeon; the transit is the needle-thin beam of light exposing the rot that must be removed. Unlike the patient in my analogy, however, we definitely want to stay conscious. And we needn’t experience pain.

To this end, a ritual is always a good idea. Let us light a candle this month at the altar of renewal. The intention here is to step aside and let Pluto eliminate what needs to go. We are making a solemn promise to release it willingly.

Eclipse with Saturn

Mercury activates the Pluto-Uranus square on April 20-21 and will keep the energies simmering as we lead up to the Full Moon on April 25^th. An Eclipse, this Full Moon is in Scorpio and conjunct Saturn. Those uncomfortable energies festering below the surface are our guides. They’re pointing out where purging needs to happen.

The beauty of transits like this is that there’s nowhere to hide. In our relationships, incipient manipulative impulses may come to a head. At work, stealth dealings become apparent. In our dream life, we may get echoes of a theme that goes back many years; maybe it feels lifetimes old.  This is why the feelings it provokes are so troubling, and seem so ineradicable.

Spiritual Will

But they aren’t ineradicable; they just feel that way. Most of us have become adept at stuffing the emotions associated with this material. We identify with our conscious lives and we dis-identify with what’s in the basement.

The station and eclipse are opportunities to confront, with courage, the energies down below. Then we let Good Doctor Pluto dig out that shrapnel lodged in our heart. It doesn’t have to take years of psychotherapy; indeed, intellectual analysis alone won’t crack this nut. The Saturn-in-Scorpio years (last October through 2015) support hard-core inner work. With a canny use of these windows of opportunity, we can resolve even the most entrenched  wounds.

But it takes no small degree of focus. It takes focusing our spiritual will.

Mass Mind

On the collective level, the disruptive energy that arose at the Equinox is prickling in the air. It is provoking long-term global issues, themes we have been referring to collectively as the Cardinal Cross. Mars, in Aries until April 21,^st is intensifying them.¹

Mars is not known for being creatively modeled in the societal sphere. One of its low-level manifestations is impulsive, testosterone-fueled violence. The US public has had a good look at this energy in recent months. In addition to triggering an outpouring of empathetic grief  — a gift of Neptune in Pisces – a spate of high-profile shootings in middle-class settings have brought the public conversation to a boil.

The rampage in Newtown Connecticut, a week before the fated solstice of December 2012, dealt a decisive blow to America’s numbed complacency about the violence in our society. This time, the victims were little children.

Gun Debate

As with Richard III’s alleged murder of the princes in the tower,² it was the slaughter of sweet-faced children that made Americans perceive this particular rampage as qualitatively more unspeakable than all the others. For our Cancer nation (family, parenthood), these murders were not just tragic but blasphemous (US Sun/Jupiter/Venus): the crime was one of innocence violated (Uranus-Pluto). It took Newtown to give the gun debate traction.

The public discussion features many voices. Reactions have been chaotic and crazy, heartfelt and considered. Mike Huckabee, for one, hypothesized that Newtown was caused by atheism. The spokesman for Tea Party Nation blamed sexual stimulation in the media. The NRA proposed posting armed guards in every school.³

Last July, on the day the mathematician’s son⁴ shot up that movie theater in Colorado, the NRA’s online magazine had posted: “Good morning, shooters! Happy Friday.”

But the NRA has not been issuing cheery tweets lately. Like a weather vane on the roof, their fierce, nervous defensiveness represents a shift in the wind.

Notes

1 On July 19^th 2012, a few hours before the Aurora shootings, transiting Mars in Libra had hit the degree of the Uranus-Pluto square, forming an exact T-square.

2 I think Henry VII did it. See The Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey (Davies, 1951)

3 A call to arms that, by mid-March, had inspired policymakers in several states (including Texas, of course) to propose legislation.

4 When the Aurora rampage was first being blogged about, it looked like we might be seeing an exposé of the financial industry far more consequential than that of 2008. It was reported that the murderer’s father happened to be one of the handful of experts who knew the code to crack the LIBOR scandal; he was scheduled to testify about it when the massacre occurred. But this extraordinary bit of information disappeared from the news without a trace.