By Len Wallick
Welcome to Monday. This week is a time when it is as attractive and appropriate to look back as it is to focus on the future. This is concurrent with the ongoing exchange between the personal and political as represented by the now continuous series of events in the first degrees of the cardinal signs. Past and future, personal and political. How we prioritize and balance between those imperatives will determine how the astrology of the next few weeks will be manifested in our lives. Therefore it seems appropriate to begin with a review of the weekend just past.
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Indeed, as if on cue, the aspects of the luminaries (Sun and Moon) and personal planets Mercury, Venus and Mars, amounted to something of a passion play over the past several days. Last Friday, Mercury ingressed to Taurus. Almost concurrently, the Moon moved from Scorpio’s mystery of transformation in the dark and into the eternal flame of Sagittarius. Within hours after that transit, Luna formed a trine aspect (120 degrees of separation) with the Sun in Aries. At the same time, Venus in Taurus was exacting a square (90 degrees of separation) with Mars in Leo. Soon thereafter Mercury, also in Taurus, formed its own square to Mars. That was just through Saturday.
Yesterday Mercury entered the echo phase, sometimes called shadow phase, of its retrograde, which actually starts April 18. The echo phase is when Mercury will be in the degrees where it’s about to be retrograde; and when it’s covering those same degrees after it stations direct on May 12. This echo phase business is a new addition to the mythology of Mercury retrograde. We used to just pay attention to the 23 or so days of the actual retrograde; over time, a more sophisticated view has taken hold and the process stretches out about eight weeks: the two echo phases and the retrograde itself.
This time around, the whole process ends just as Uranus is making its historic transit into Aries. Pretty cool how that works out.