Astrologers are looking at the chart of the Virginia Tech shootings for hints about the mind and motivations of Cho Seung-hui, America’s latest Troubled Young Man (With a Gun). A dread new cultural archetype, the TYM(WAG) is a desperately attention-worthy sign of the times. We have come a long way from the 1950s’ Man in the Grey Flannel Suit. But the chart does not tell us just about Cho. It tells us about the season we are living through. The two transits which dominated the chart of April 17th were both just shy of reaching exactitude:  Mars exactly conjoined Uranus

Saturn and Neptune have been opposing each other in the sky for the last couple of years, with an unmistakable impact upon the mass mood. In some ways blatantly obvious, in some ways extremely subtle, this aspect is an all-encompassing indicator of the feeling tone of what has been a very peculiar period.

The Equinox this month is astrology's New Year's Day. It represents the Sun's entry into the first minute of the first degree of the first sign; and it bursts upon the scene like buds splitting open in the sunlight. This is the chart we read to take the pulse of the whole zodiacal year. In the Northern hemisphere it signifies the first day of Spring, officially arriving this year on March 20th at 5:09 PDT.