Astrodharma Transit Report: April 2020

By Hunter Reynolds, on March 31st, 2020

THERE USED TO BE A WORLD; NOW THERE’S JUST GOD’S DREAM.

It’s over. The sinful materialism of Saturn: cauterized by the hot poke of Pluto. The Tinder-swiping obsessions of Pluto: freeze dried by monkish Saturn. Hundreds of thousands will die in order to deliver this ethical re-set. The best we can do now is honor their sacrifice by taking the first, fledgling steps to realize the eight year vision of Uranus in Taurus (2018-2026): communities alive to their dream-animal nature, working meditatively together in the garden, as they inwardly chant:

There used to be a world; now there’s just God’s dream.

Rogue and restless ego! To whom do you belong? No one! Your orphaned me-story shrinks from the virus of sangha. Like a Coronavirus patient, touch-and-go on a ventilator, you suck hard on the tube of spiritual alienation. You are dying, yes, but listen! A lullaby– strange, yet eerily comforting– is breaking through your fever of disbelief:

There used to be a world; now there’s just God’s dream.

Mars conjunct Saturn: Peak Anxiety or Gutsy Ego-Death

The world is turning into a giant monastery. This is Saturn conjunct Mars (mid-March- Apr 7th) agitating and provoking the Saturn/Pluto/Jupiter conjunction, driving us into our monk cells to repent and pray for salvation. For how long? Well, it will be a good six weeks (when Mars moves into Pisces) before most people fully digest the fact that the life they once knew has irretrievably passed away.

On the news front, the first two weeks of April are ominous. Please understand the stakes: Peak anxiety or heroic ego-death. Holding it together? Great. Practice strict intervals of work, meditation and listening other’s into Being. Feeling shaky or falling apart? Totally understandable. Ask a friend to be your “news filter” for the month of April, relaying only the events that directly impact your here/now life, then immerse yourself in simple, timeless routines: cooking, reading, writing, devotional music and chants. Lay back, close your eyes and visualize as you repeat:

Note for fridge:

Like rain on the ocean
Lifetimes dissolve in consciousness
That’s why you douse me
In radical emptiness*

Remember: You’re not broken! You just need to wait until Mars untangles itself from this malefic configuration. Instead of obsessing on Saturn/Pluto’s socio-economic deconstruction project, make a vision board. Making plans for the future reminds us that there is a future.

Still feeling scared? Try this: Imagine how it felt just before you incarnated.

You felt fear, surely. But it didn’t stop you from suiting up in the garb of a gladiator. Sure of your eternal nature, you donned an Aries “crash helmet” (the cranium) so you could ram through the Spirit/matter veil (your mother’s spread and heaving legs). So great was the calling to drink the Kool-Aid of ego and infiltrate, once again, your terrestrial kin. Why? For a chance at becoming an inspiring example of how to fuse boundless Being with gutsy, Aries individuation and spread the most “novel” virus of all:”eternity-with-eyes.”

The return of animal purpose

An immense amount of pettiness falls away when death locks eyes with us. This time, it’s a viral predator that has leaped into our space. Now what? Notice: fear mixing with relief at the animal simplicity of it all. We are here to simply survive and help other’s do the same- so consciousness has a container in which to continue evolving. There now. The restless search for “my purpose:” solved.

Jupiter Conjunct Pluto in Capricorn: Accelerated cycles of death and rebirth.

Jupiter is so gigantic that it’s gravitational field sucks earthbound space debris away from us. Symbolically and literally it blesses and protects. For this reason, it is called “The great benefic,” the planet that expands opportunities for growth and greater understanding.

This Jupiter/Pluto conjunction happens every 13 years (last pass: just before the 2008 stock market crash) and is exact on April 5th, June 30, Nov 12th.

Conjunct death-stinky Pluto, Jupiter liberates people (and, in this case, whole societies) from things they are attached to, but only lukewarm about, freeing them to pursue their soul’s real passion and destiny. Jupiter is now asking us to humbly accept that whatever we lose over the next months (job, money, home, relationship or other life-aspiration) is only our near-gift and that this massive gas giant (whose size is two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the solar system combined– is busily clearing a way for some deeper fulfillment down the road.

This yearlong transit also symbolizes huge reversals of fortune. A bankruptcy for one means a windfall for another. Later, the haves and the have-nots will trade places again. The quickest route to recovering abundance? Brandishing an opportunity-magnetizing faith in the One who giveth and the One who taketh away.

*Brave New Prayers