Before I get into how wonderful the idea of Beltane is (this being the season of that Pagan holiday) I want to briefly talk about some activity around the Aries Point. There is a pretty big event coming, connected to the Aries Point, which has a way of magnifying the news and making world events seem deeply personal.
First, two paragraphs of technical explanation, easy does it. The Aries Point is the first degree of the sign Aries, which is the first degree of the zodiac. By extension, that includes the first degree of Libra (opposite the first degree of Aries) and then the first degrees of Cancer and Capricorn (the four cardinal signs). The same basic effect happens whenever there is an event early in any of these signs. This is where the Sun is for any equinox or solstice, called the Quarter Days. Holidays — and big events — naturally gather around these points in space-time.
Yet it works one other way — if you divide the distance between the first days of the seasons, you come out in the middle of the fixed signs — Taurus, Leo, Scorpio and Aquarius. We also get an Aries Point effect when the Sun crosses the midpoint of any of the fixed signs, or when there is some kind of noteworthy event. When the Sun gets to one of these zones, we get what’s called a Cross Quarter Day. These are the Pagan holidays that include Beltane and Samhain (pronounced sah-wen, which is Halloween).