TRANSCRIPT Ep. 228 | Venus in Aries: What’s New?
Hello Invisible Friend, April here, and the date today is April 1st, 2024. Welcome to Episode 228 of the Big Sky Astrology Podcast. This week, Mercury stations retrograde for a three-week backward march through Aries. Venus has a busy week, making a conjunction with Neptune, entering Aries and sextiling Pluto. And the Capricorn Last Quarter Moon asks, how do we evaluate our progress? And I answer a couple of listener questions about composite charts and being born on a Void-of-Course Moon.
Mercury stations retrograde (April 1, 2024, 3:14 pm PDT)
The week begins with Mercury stationing retrograde on April 1st at 3:14 p.m. Pacific Time at 27º13’ Aries on the Sabian symbol 28 Aries, A large disappointed audience. Mercury will be retrograde until April 25th, and it’s probably going to be a stereotypically aggravating Mercury retrograde period since Aries is a very fast-moving sign, and it really doesn’t like to be slowed down, which often seems to be the case when a planet is retrograde.
When Mercury is retrograde, our thoughts turn inward. And this particular retrograde could be a great one to consider your own thoughts, your own way of looking at things. I think when Mercury is retrograde in Aries, tackle something that requires new ideas, new information, that feels like a challenge. Aries really likes a challenge. While Mercury is retrograde, it’ll make a conjunction with the Sun on April 11. It will make a conjunction with Venus on April 19th.
And what about that Sabian symbol, A large, disappointed audience? Something I’m hearing from people and seeing on social media in the last couple of weeks is a sense of feeling very rushed, feeling as if we’re trying so hard to make a name for ourselves, to make ourselves noticed. This is particularly in social media and this kind of thing. I think while Mercury is retrograde, and especially in a very individualistic sign like Aries, the time has come to really think about how we are pleasing ourselves, not the large disappointed audience – because someone’s always going to be disappointed with anything we do. If we’re doing something creative, if we’re trying to make a difference in the world, somebody will have an opinion about it. And it’s really important to think of our own opinion of ourselves, how it is we’re doing, and what it is that we’re doing. I think this could be a helpful Mercury retrograde period, from that point of view.
Capricorn Last Quarter Moon (April 1, 2024, 8:15 pm PDT)
And now for the Moon Report! And it begins with the Capricorn, Last Quarter Moon, later on April 1st at 8:15 pm Pacific Time, at 12º52’ Capricorn, with the Sun at the same degree of Aries. When the Last Quarter Moon phase is in Capricorn, it’s more or less in its natural place. The Last Quarter has a natural feeling of Capricorn about it, about evaluating what we have done up to now and thinking about how things could be done better next time.
This is when we assess the progress of this New Moon cycle. This New Moon cycle began in Pisces on March 10th, with the impulse to explore our compassionate, artistic, and spiritual sides, to ask the big questions, to think about what does it all mean and what is the role that we are playing. But the Last Quarter is in Capricorn, which is a very pragmatic Earth sign. And it has one question, how do we measure our progress?
First of all, we have to implement a plan. You know, the New Moon in Pisces is lovely for many things, but it doesn’t operate on that practical, “let’s make a list” kind of level, but Capricorn Last Quarter Moon does. And it says, if you just have a plan that you’re working toward, let’s say you want to make the world a better place, what does that look like in practical terms? Are you going to go out and volunteer at a food bank or a homeless shelter once a month? What does it actually look like to do these things? And then you know if you’re making progress.
That said, we have to be a little bit careful with the Capricorn Last Quarter Moon, and the Last Quarter phase in general because there’s a difference between evaluating your progress and beating up on yourself. And this is something we can all too easily fall into at the Last Quarter, especially in Capricorn, which is a very tough sign. When we evaluate ourselves from a Capricorn point of view, we are a very strict teacher.
Lunar Phase Family Cycle
This is the Last Quarter in a Lunar Phase Family Cycle that began on January 2nd, 2022, with a New Moon at 12º20’ Capricorn.
So, we started out at the beginning of January 2022 with a purpose. In the beginning of 2022, I remember it being a difficult time to make resolutions or intentions. I remember Venus was retrograde and there might have been some other things retrograde as well. So, it wasn’t the easiest. We had to kind of wait for all the information to come in until we could really begin to plan our year.
Then, at the First Quarter on October 2nd, 2022, action was taken on that plan. On July 3rd, 2023, at the Full Moon in this lunar phase family cycle, a sense of seeing now where we were in relation to where we started out at the beginning of the previous year.
And now we’re at the Last Quarter, and I’d encourage you to take the time and think back, if nothing else, to January 2022. Look at your journals, look at your planners, look at your emails. Figure out what was going on in your life at that time. What’s the house of your chart where 12º20’ Capricorn lies?
This particular lunar phase family had a strong characteristic of creativity because it began on the Sabian symbol 13 Capricorn, A fire worshipper. The fire is a sort of a metaphor for the creative process. And now we’re finishing up on the same Sabian symbol. What is it that you set out to create? What was it in your creative process that needed to be refined at that New Moon? And maybe required you to make some difficult decisions as well. And how are you doing now with what you set out to do for yourself creatively at that New Moon?
Void-of-Course Moon Periods
Let’s look at the Void-of-Course Moon periods for this week.
On April 2nd, the Moon in Capricorn sextiles Neptune at 10:40 p.m. Pacific Time. It’s Void-of-Course for about three and a half hours and then enters Aquarius on April 3rd at 2:08 a.m. Sextiles bring an opportunity. And I think that this particular Void-of-Course Moon period gives the opportunity or the invitation to work hard and keep to a schedule. Because this will give our intuitive faculties a place to land, and on which to build beauty and artistry. And to create the kind of boundaries that make us feel comfortable to give to others and be helpful and compassionate, without worrying that we will be completely overwhelmed by someone else’s needs.
On April 4th, the Moon in Aquarius sextiles Mercury in Aries at 10:40 p.m. Pacific Time. It’s Void of Course for about five and a half hours and then enters Pisces on April 5th at 4:13 a.m.
The opportunity during this Void-of-Course Moon period is to exchange ideas with friends, to get or to give a pep talk. Moon in Aquarius is pretty detached from the raw emotions of things, so it’s a really good Moon sign for really thinking things through. And the sextile to Mercury in Aries says that there are probably people in your circle, maybe one good friend who is a really good coach. Who’s really good at pushing you forward to make progress.
That’s a quality I really associate with Aries. They are the best coaches. And if you don’t have that kind of shoot-from-the-hip Aries person in your life, well, you may have to give yourself a pep talk.
Then on April 7th, the Moon in Pisces makes a conjunction with Neptune at 1:27 a.m. Pacific Time. It’s Void-of-Course for about three hours and then enters Aries at 4:25 a.m.
Conjunctions bring what I would describe as a sense of pressure. The pressure here might be about letting yourself feel what you feel rather than running away from your feelings. Because Pisces is a very sensitive sign, especially when the Moon is there. And when we get overwhelmed, which can happen when the Moon connects with Neptune, which has a similar quality about it, of being very sensitive to everything around us, well, it can get overwhelming. And the tendency sometimes is to just shut down emotionally because it’s too much. So this Void-of-Course Moon, I think, gives us a time for experimentation.
Now this is in the middle of the night, here on the west coast of the United States, or very early if you go further east. But this could be a message that you give yourself before you go to bed, to explore this in your dreams, to explore this in your subconscious. To let yourself remember your dreams, feel what you feel, and don’t just get in the habit of shutting things down emotionally when it gets too intense.
Venus conjunct Neptune (April 3, 2024, 6:10 am PDT)
Venus makes a conjunction with Neptune on April 3rd at 6:10 am Pacific Time at 28º Pisces, on the Sabian symbol, 28 Pisces, A fertile garden under the Full Moon. As I started to record this part of the podcast a little bit earlier, my cat, Violet, started just whining at the door outside my office. Clearly, she wanted something, but I don’t know what.
And I think that this is often the case when Venus is in a conjunction with Neptune. You don’t know what you want. You yearn for something. But it doesn’t take a particular form in your mind. It might be a time when you’re reflecting on past relationships, thinking about what was beautiful about them, or what went wrong, but in some way feeling that little bit of nostalgia.
Venus does talk about relationships and it talks about money too, and on a purely practical level, I would say it’s probably not the best time to go out and make a major purchase, because you’re not really clear about what you want. So, you don’t really know how to evaluate what it is that you’re purchasing, and you might later feel some regret.
Sun conjunct North Node (April 4, 3:10 pm PDT)
The Sun makes a conjunction with the Moon’s North Node on April 4th at 3:10 p.m. Pacific Time, at 15º37’ Aries on the Sabian symbol, 16 Aries, Brownies dancing in the setting sun – so lyrical. Let’s consider this the preamble to the big solar eclipse that’s coming on April 8th and not a bad time to just watch what happens. Eclipses happen when a New or Full Moon is in a conjunction with the lunar nodes. But that can happen within 17º of the exact aspect. So here we have the Sun coming up to make the conjunction with the North Node a week in advance of that eclipse. And I think it’s probably a pretty strong preview of coming attractions.
Where is the Sun metaphorically shining in your chart at around 15 1/2ºAries? What is it you really want in your life moving forward, symbolized by the North Node, and how can you get there?
Venus enters Aries (April 4, 2024, 9 pm PDT)
Later that evening at 9 p.m. on April 4th, Venus enters Aries. It’ll be in this sign through April 29th. Now, traditionally speaking, Venus is not really strongly placed in Aries. Aries represents principles that are kind of the opposite of what Venus is about. Venus symbolizes pleasure, togetherness, and cooperation, while Aries symbolizes striving, individualism, and competition.
When Venus goes into this sign, what can we expect? Well, Venus is where we will find pleasure. So, find pleasure in the experience of your physical body. Get involved in some kind of exercise routine that’s very energetic and very dynamic. This is a time when we actually enjoy competition. So, some of these physical activities could be competitive to make you feel really satisfied.
I’ve noticed too that Venus in Aries or when it’s in an aspect with Mars actually kind of enjoys competing for romantic interests and lots of energy during this transit goes into earning money. And all of the other things we talked about, competition with other people who are doing the same things you’re doing, let’s say you’re going for some kind of promotion at work and this would be a time of competition, of having to revise your elevator pitch about how great you are.
People don’t necessarily believe it when I say so, but Aries is a very romantic sign. And it is very courtly, idealistic, when it comes to the object of its affection. When Venus is in Aries, it’s a good time to make those courtly gestures to the partner in your life, if you have one. Take them out on a date, buy them a gift, do all that kind of first date stuff that we do when a relationship is new. What will excite Venus during this transit is the feeling that a relationship is new, even if it, in fact, has been going on for years.
Venus sextile Pluto (April 6, 2024, 10:45 am PDT)
Venus sextiles Pluto on April 6th at 10:45 a.m. Pacific Time at 01°56’ Aries and Aquarius. The Sabian symbol for Venus is 2 Aries, a comedian entertaining a group, and for Pluto the symbol is 2 Aquarius, an unexpected thunderstorm. So here we have this daring Venus in Aries who’s kind of up for anything, and she’s undertaking the terrifying task of stand-up comedy.
And we have to wonder here, does she get the exciting response that she’s seeking from the audience? It’s always struck me as a really terrifying thing to do, to get up in front of an audience and try to… It’s one thing to entertain them with music, I’ve done that, and you’re there with your instrument or your voice and you can feel the engagement of the audience, but it’s not like you’re relying on them for laughter to your joke or something like that. But I think that the people who do comedy are very courageous and they also have the sense of needing to be in control and trying to kind of control the audience.
That’s what we have here, I think, with Venus being in Aries. And the response from Pluto in Aquarius is unexpected, the unexpected thunderstorm. And that can mean it’s a big boom of applause or laughter, or it can be that horrible moment that I imagine every comedian fears, which is when nothing comes back. If you’ve ever even just been a little bit humorous in a lecture or something like that, as I certainly have, and it just falls flat, that’s what I’m thinking of here, the unexpected thunderstorm.
So the opportunity inherent in this sextile between Venus and Pluto is, to assert yourself to try to engage people. But putting that out there and just seeing the kind of response that you get. And being informed by that and letting it help you decide how you want to act with people moving forward. Venus in Aries is not engaging with others necessarily by nature. This is an opportunity to experiment with that a little bit and get a little more comfortable with engaging others in a way that’s more persuasive than demanding.
Listener Questions: Composite Charts and Born on a Void-of-Course Moon
In this week’s listener question, I actually had a couple of questions that I thought I could answer pretty quickly, and so I’m going to share them both with you today.
First, listener Kerrie, with an ie, asks, “Composite charts between partners. Please explain why this is valid. Seems utterly ridiculous to me. Ha ha. Synastry, yes. Composites, I don’t get it.”
Well, Kerrie first, I’m going to remind imaginary friends who are listening and might not know that synastry is the term we use when we compare one person’s planets in their birth chart with another person’s natal planets. And we do this to evaluate sources of friction and ease. I covered synastry in Episodes 127, 206, and 219 in the listener questions segments, so you might want to go back and listen to those. A couple of them are fairly specific, but they can give you a good idea of what synastry is about and maybe how it works.
Now, composite charts, for the benefit of anyone who doesn’t know, this is a technique that takes the birth charts of two people, you can actually do it for more than two people, but let’s say the charts of two people, and uses those two charts to create a third chart that symbolizes the relationship, almost as though the relationship itself were a separate entity and had a separate chart, which in many ways I think is kind of the case in relationships.
The way we derive this composite chart is find the midpoint between each planet in the two birth charts, and that becomes the composite planet. So, for example, let’s say you have Venus at 2º Libra, and you’re in a relationship with someone who has Venus at 2º Sagittarius, two signs away, then the composite Venus would be 2º Scorpio, the point exactly in between those two.
So, you do that with each of the planets, and then to get the wheel, the midpoint is found between the two midheavens of the chart, the 10th house cusp. That composite midpoint degree is used to build the rest of the house cusps for the place where they live.
Now back when I did a lot of electional work with couples to find wedding dates, I used the composite chart actually quite a lot, much more than I used the birth charts. With two birth charts, you might have one person’s chart going through a little bit of a Pluto transit, while for the other person, everything’s coming up Jupiter. But both of them are impacted by spending time with the other person who’s having a very different transit. It’s like the old saying goes, a relationship is only as happy as the unhappiest person in it.
With the composite chart, you get a depiction of this dynamic, how both people are being impacted. And it can be quite different than the birth charts, have very different transits. I found these charts really useful in electional work, much more streamlined than synastry, and it just felt more reliable to me because this was a situation where I’m not trying to evaluate how they get along, but how that third entity that they create together is being impacted by the celestial weather.
If anyone wants a great resource about composites, do get Rob Hand’s classic book, Planets in Composite. And you can calculate your composite chart at astro.com. I prefer the option that is “composite chart midpoint method.”
Now, in my next question, listener Pam asks, “Does having a Void-of-Course Moon in your natal chart have impacts on you or your life?”
And I looked into this while I was researching a lecture on the Void-of-Course Moon. I actually did not find a lot that was written about it. But I did find examples of well-known people who were born on Void-of-Course Moons, and whose lives took really interesting twists and turns. People like JFK, who was never meant to be president. Princess Diana, whose life took a very singular path from teacher to mother of a future king of England. Winston Churchill, he was a very poor student but turned out to be this brilliant orator and politician. Shirley Temple Black, who went from being a child star to a diplomat.
Whenever I give this lecture on the Void-of-Course Moon, I ask whether anyone in the audience was born on a Void-of-Course Moon, and every one of them has related strongly to my idea that being born on a Void-of-Course Moon takes you in unpredictable directions. They’ve shared their own stories with me of starting out to be one thing and ending up someplace radically different.
I think that Void-of-Course Moon times are when we kind of have to go along for the ride. We see that with the transiting Void-of-Course Moon. And when things don’t necessarily go the way we planned.
And I think that can be said of people who are born during the Void-of-Course Moon as well. That their life goes in unpredictable directions. But it doesn’t mean that they’re bad directions.
Kerrie and Pam, I hope that that answered your questions, and I really appreciate your writing in.
And if you, Invisible Friend, have a question you’d like me to answer on a future episode, just leave a message of one minute or less at SpeakPipe.com/bigskyastrologypodcast. Or, you can email me at April at BigSkyAstrology. com and put “podcast question” in the subject line. And by the way, if you want, you can just record a voice note on your phone and attach that to your email.
Donor Thanks
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That’s it for this episode. Join me again bright and early next Monday, and until then, keep your feet on the ground and your eyes on the stars!
Writing and images © 2017-24 by April Elliott Kent
For more on this week’s planetary news, read my weekly column!
