Happy New Year! The Sun entered Aries, making an exact inconjunct to the Moon in Scorpio, so talk about a lot of Martian energy. We are now almost a month into the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the pandemic is having a quiet resurgence in China and Europe as restrictions are lifted. Oil companies have raised the prices on crude oil, inexplicably but ostensibly due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and there are Americans still stupid enough to blame this on their president: either it’s a free market or it isn’t, and when you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, it’s not Biden’s fault. If you still want Walmart, you have to have globalism.

But the spring weather is here now: cool at night, warm during the day, and the light is starting to take on that warm spring glow.

One whole year has passed since spring of 2021. We’re still in a pandemic. Those of us old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and what the Cold War actually meant are now feeling as if they’re living in a simulation or alternate timeline: we are still afraid of Russian nukes.

When was the last time you did an air raid drill? Were you under the desk, or did you go out in the hall and stand with your face near your locker? What I understood as a child was that the reason they had you go into the hallway and put your face near your locker wasn’t to save your life, but to help preserve some of your recognizable features so if your body is found, it could possibly be identified.

This is the nihilistic world of the American Baby Boomers’ and Generation X’s childhood that others who come after really cannot know, and one they may have to try to understand when it’s their own children wondering why they have to stand with their noses on their lockers, in silence, twice a year. But better they should understand it to know why children all over the world still live in real fear, where there’s much bigger problems than a ten year old walking down the street to the park by herself.

But you know, it’s spring now, and we’re also in lucky: Mercury, Jupiter, and Neptune are conjunct in Pisces. For me, that’s kind of special because this group is transiting my Ascendant, and with the Sun conjunct my natal Moon today, it feels very pleasant and protective, like I’m doing something right.

Something is on the cusp of changing for me.

I even got my first sunburn of the season, and I know what you’re thinking: Gee, Miriam, haven’t you ever heard of sunscreen? Like all the fucking time my entire life. Pale people don’t get to live their lives without being reminded of it. The problem is that SPF is an art, not a science: SPF 10 is just 10 times your normal tolerance, which is what? It’s whatever is going on with you at the moment, and your sun tolerance can vary depending on your previous sun exposure, the other weather conditions, the time of year, if you’re hydrated, what you’re eating these days, if you’re walking toward the sun or away from it (it matters!), and if you’ve barely had any sun exposure for the last six weeks because it was winter and you were inside working for most of it. So, depending on all of these, SPF 10 for me could mean 60 minutes or 360 minutes or anywhere in between, but I’m human and need my sunshine.

But if you do have problems with sunburn, avoid eating PUFAs, get sleep, take your vitamins, eat meat, fish, and eggs, and your sunburn will heal quickly.

But getting your first sunburn of the season (however slight) is a little kiss of Aries, no?

A Pisces Stellium, the Astrology Hustle

I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on the people who were wearing rose-colored glasses when they thought Jupiter in Pisces was going to be some sort of great awakening for the world, as if it’s not coming back in 12 years, as if there was a great awakening for the world 12 years ago.

Do you remember what you were doing in 2010? If you can somehow separate this from all the other stuff going on in your life (I was at the tail end of my Saturn return), I would say there were some interesting benefits from the past and a chance to travel, as I left for Korea for what would be a surreal two-year stint that resulted in a quantity of personal transformation (although Uranus was transiting my 1st house around that time), but I also remember it being at the end of the recession, around the time of a SARS epidemic, but I also remember it being a time of uncertainty, the bubble popping, and not just the housing bubble, but the great American dream. The Internet bubble had popped, and it became inescapable reality that younger generations simply wouldn’t be better off than those before them because of the decisions the generations before them made.

Mercury and Jupiter in Pisces = the big confusion, and that NATO doesn’t know what to do about Russia, or that we’re probably expecting Ukraine to never forget that we didn’t send troops to help them, and there’s now a surge in Europe and China and likely a new one in America, and just in time for me to have to go back to the office full time.

But it’s also a lot smaller than that, and I have to be honest with myself: I’m not as interested in Big Picture Astrology. Sure, I’m a Sagittarius with a 9th house emphasis, but I’m way more interested in how the Big Picture affects individuals and one-on-one relationships. I know that Big Picture Astrology sells, and the alternative is to do unsolicited chart readings of celebrities that are always bad, but I’d rather sit with Zelenskyy’s chart and compare it to Putin’s chart, or see why Putin has such a hard on for Ukraine (because it’s actually personal with him). However, one of the problems with the hustle is that you’re really compelled to give too rosy a picture because 1) the most commercial astrologers are doing just that, and 2) most people don’t actually want warnings of danger or hardship.

I really hope that on a personal level, that for the people receptive to it, Jupiter in Pisces has been a blessing as promised. For me, it’s transited my 12th and is now almost in my 1st house, just a degree away from sitting on my ascendant. But before that it was in my 12th house, transiting my South Node, and that was big – Jupiter magnifies things, and with the South Node in the 12th house, a Jupiter transit means a strong need for retreat to get back in touch with the soul and to not get stuck in the same karmic cycles again.

But the truth with the fog of Pisces, with Neptune as well, is that there’s no amount of planning you can do – you can’t harness the fog and turn it into fuel no matter what the American dream says otherwise – and that sometimes in life, you just have to be still, be quiet, and wait. It’s in the stillness and the quiet that the magic happens, when you can hear the peculiar and personal music of your own soul.

So, on a personal level, if you’re not already a Neptunian type, just sit and wait.

And the mist is great for your skin anyway, no?

Beware of Crazy Wisdom

Mercury, Jupiter, and Neptune in Pisces, oh my! And it’s happening during a Mars/Uranus square in the fixed signs, which is the least comfortable of them. You know what you need to do, right? Be resilient, bend with the breeze, because everyone’s annoyed lately, and you have to make it your goal to outlive each and everyone of those motherfuckers who get on your nerves.

But also, beware of ideas “just so crazy they must be true.” That is never the case; that’s a flaw in human design to try to make sense of things that don’t make sense. Nothing is so crazy it must be true. Things that are true can be quite ordinary and quite bizarre, but so can things that are not true.

That doesn’t mean to not explore ideas that are deeply meaningful, but beware of things that inflate your ego to hide your insecurities, because once Mercury enters Aries, you may find yourself having to confront a reality where you put up or shut up, especially when Mars and Jupiter align in Aries.

A solar new year

This year isn’t going to be great, nor is it going to be bad. It’s just like all the other years – great for some, bad for others. I have nothing to promise you – I will be writing about the transits as they happen, just ilke I’ve been doing. On a personal level, this is a great time of year for me, or at least a time of abundance and change, but for the rest of you, that depends. The world is not going to have any sort of great awakening. If it were ever capable of it, it would have done so already because we are programmed to think that salvation is in the heavens and outside of our bodies when salvation is always on Earth inside our bodies, inside of us. Astrology is a study of the earth, not of the heavens, because people are down here, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Spring is the seasoning of awakening, literally, physically, metaphysically, philosophically. The winter thaws, the snow turns to rain, and plants grow back and bear blossoms, and the world begins the cycle of reproduction once again, and there’s nothing mundane or unholy about it. Use this Pisces energy trailing behind the Aries Sun to remind you that you’re here right here right now (Sun in Aries) carrying with you the secrets of the universe (Pisces) in your own body (Aries). You don’t really need to be much more than what you are (Aries), and enlightenment (Pisces) is always here (Aries). You could find god in a deep metaphysical journey or you could find it in a blade of fresh grass, and it’s up to you, but I tell you: the latter is so much easier because that’s the way you’re designed.

Feel that sunshine. Listen to that rain. Let the humidity curl your hair and the coolness of night curl you up in your blanket. You’re damned lucky you get to experience it.