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Astrology Highlights for April 22-28, 2024: Walking to the Waterline

Magic Under the Surface

It’s Taurus season and spring now in the Northern Hemisphere, and everything is easy and pleasant. We’ve just started filling the raised garden bed that Jonny built during Aries season, and two different mama birds have taken turns nesting on our front porch.

How do birds know when to nest? What tells seeds how to transform into a zucchini? For most city dwellers, it’s enough to observe the satisfying, uncomplicated pleases of Taurus – the healthy garden, the fledgling chick. But Scorpio, its opposite sign, symbolizes the magic that takes place out of sight, underground, under the mama bird, the creative force that turns one thing into another.

This Scorpio Full Moon (April 23, 2024, 4:49 pm PDT, 4º17’ Scorpio) and the Sun in Taurus are square Pluto in Aquarius, and I’ve spent the past few days playing around with a new technological element in my creative process. The artwork I create to illustrate my writing is the Taurus result of an intensely Scorpionic, magical process – conceiving a collage, tracking down individual elements, and knitting them together piece by piece. I enjoy this work, but it is very time consuming. And now, Pluto in Aquarius has introduced a lightning-fast approach to this labor: artificial intelligence. I could easily save hours each week by simply telling AI what to create instead of doing it manually.

But while the resulting images look just fine, I feel they lack something – and that something is me. And that’s the side of artificial intelligence that is unsatisfying, and a little bit chilling. The process is not sufficiently Scorpionic; it lacks that mysterious underground process of distilling various elements into a single, satisfying whole. And so the whole isn’t quite as satisfying, either.

Leo, known for its joyful creativity, is the missing fixed sign square in this Full Moon t-square. I had fun playing with these images. But it’s like giving a kid a shiny toy that’s exciting at first, but soon loses its luster, because it doesn’t really engage one’s creativity. That’s when you give the kid some colored pencils and used printer paper with one blank side, and say, “Play with that.” And what comes from that is not a reflection of a toymaker. It can only come from that particular little human.

Wobbly

After moonwalking retrograde through Aries since April 1, Mercury stations direct (April 25, 2024, 5:54 am PDT). Like a kid who’s been laid up with a broken leg and just had the cast removed, we’re impatient to take off in a hurry and pick up where we left off.

But slow down for a week or so, because it’s normal to be a little unsteady on your pins after the disorientation of a retrograde period. You might still be a little wobbly, so it could be challenging to move as quickly as you’d like. More importantly, if you took a thoughtful approach to this retrograde period, you’ve had time to reconsider some of your plans, and maybe you’ve decided that some of them might not be the best for you.

During Mercury’s retrograde periods, it’s common to slow down (willingly or not) and review recent history. Projects may have stalled; collaborators may have been doing some thinking of their own and moved on.

Remember that restarting things that have slowed to a crawl isn’t always as easy as flipping a switch. So give yourself and others a little grace this week, while everyone gradually gets back up to speed, or decides to move in another direction altogether.

Walking to the Waterline

I’m always surprised at just how long it takes to walk across sand, and how much effort is involved. Make it down to the waterline, though, and you’ll find the wet sand provides a steadier walking surface.

The days leading up to Mars’ conjunction with Neptune (April 28, 2024, 9:31 pm PDT) often feel like trudging across sand, or like one of those dreams where you’re running and running and not getting anywhere. When Neptune is involved, it might simply be that our destination is poorly defined. Maybe that Mercury retrograde period made us rethink where we’re going.

The conjunction takes place at 28º52′ Pisces, on the Sabian symbol 29 Pisces, The light passing through the prism. There are many approaches we could take, and as Neptune is nearing the end of its long journey through Pisces, we might be at the end of one and path not quite sure where the next one will lead.

As the conjunction becomes exact, we reach the wet sand, firm beneath our bare feet. The direction might seem clearer – or least, it’s clearer what the wrong direction might be. In any case, the ground beneath our feet is sturdier, whether we’re walking to the finish line of an old dream or moving purposefully toward a new one.

Writing and images © 2017-24 by April Elliott Kent

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