“], “filter”: { “nextExceptions”: “img, blockquote, div”, “nextContainsExceptions”: “img, blockquote, a.btn, a.o-button”} }”>
Heading out the door? Read this article on the new Outside+ app available now on iOS devices for members!
>”,”name”:”in-content-cta”,”type”:”link”}}”>Download the app.
The week that closes the month is a breath out. As the transformation of eclipse season continues, Venus and Neptune bring their medicine front and center for each of us and Mercury begins its retrograde in Aries. These days are a time of intuition. A time of retracing and rewriting ourselves, our relationship with desire, and the ways that we allow ourselves to take up space.
Weekly Astrology Forecast for March 31-April 6
March 31: Moon squares Venus
April 1: Mercury retrograde begins; Moon enters Capricorn
April 3: Venus conjunct Neptune in Pisces; Moon enters Aquarius
April 4: Venus enters Aries; Mars, Venus, Saturn, and Neptune conjunct in Pisces
April 5: Moon enters Pisces
Mercury Retrograde
Beginning April 1, 2024, is our first full Mercury retrograde of the year. Ancient astrologers believed that when the planet was in retrograde, it was moving through the underworld on a quest for new perspectives, greater wisdom, and heightened insight. It was considered a time of reflection and realignment. A time to ask what more is beckoning to be seen, known, and made aware of within our consciousness.
As Mercury retraces its steps through the sign of Aries until April 25, 2024, it invites us to reflect on the experiences, beliefs, narratives, and perspectives that have gone into the building of our identity. It asks us to question our sense of self, our spark, our life force, and our relationship with owning our desires.
Aries teaches us that we must start with ourselves. To find fulfillment in our relationships, our career, our creativity, our health, and any other aspect of our lives, we must first turn inward. And if there is any sign of the zodiac that reminds us we are worth standing fully in ourselves, as ourselves, it is Aries. The fire sign reminds you that you are here to be no one but yourself. You deserve to be the fullness of yourself, for that self is spectacular.
Mercury is the mind. It is the constructs and narratives that create the way we perceive and experience the world. It is also our communication about what we perceive and experience. While in retrograde, instead of continuing to move along our usual path without question, we turn around and review things.
Mercury retrograde in Aries desires for us the kind of rewriting that has the potential to reverberate into every corner and experience in our lives. During this time, allow space for reflection. What beliefs, perspectives, and ways of being am I simply ready to let go of, ready to release, ready to courageously look beyond? Are the narratives of who I believe myself to be still true? Are these ways I have been taught to dim my life force and fail to own my desires real to me? Am I becoming myself in a way that is self-directed, inspired from within, and true to who I am?
Venus Conjunct Neptune in Pisces
Shortly after Mercury steps away from its usual path of perception and communication, Venus and Neptune come into partnership on April 3, 2024, intensifying this change in the pace and intention of our thoughts.
As much as we may rely on the necessary rational and linear aspects of our perception in everyday life, Venus conjunct Neptune is less like a textbook and more like a book of art or poetry. It is flowers. It is a sound bath. It is the way art speaks. It is the kind of insight and knowing that comes from intuition and feeling rather than logic, and release rather than mental exertion. It is higher wisdom.
Venus and Neptune aligning in the sacred waters of Pisces brings imagination, creativity, and intuition. It brings ambiguity and openness. It brings a release for the mind and the easy flow of the ethers.
Venus Enters Aries
Beginning April 4, 2024, Venus moves into the sign of Aries, where it remains until April 29, 2024.
Venus brings love, beauty, pleasure, value, abundance, harmony, and art into our life. It reminds us that our needs and desires are worthy of being heard and honored.
Venus in Aries is self-love. It is self-ownership, self-worthiness, and self-reclamation. It is the healing of our relationship with our desires, our courage, and the honoring of our wants and needs.
As Mercury retrogrades in the same sign, untangling the narratives and beliefs of who we are, Venus pours profound love into these spaces. It fills ourselves with the love we so deeply deserve, both the spaces we openly express and the spaces that are less often tended.
Your Invitation
As Mercury begins its retrograde, Venus and Neptune dance together in the cosmos, and Venus enters the domain of Aries, the week reminds you that when you release and allow, you get much further than if you try to push.
The days to come invite the kind of release that allows for an untangling of your thoughts and a rearranging of your patternings and narratives. They offer an escape from your frameworks in order to be open to new and different ways of seeing and being in the world.
None of this week’s cosmic movements are here so that you can focus on details. They invite you to instead let go of your orderly thought processes and let in the invitations and musings of something higher.
The week invites you to breathe out. It helps you experience an openness and deeper trust in your intuition and your life. And with this, it brings a beautiful rebuilding of your relationship with yourself, the space you allow yourself to take up, and a life that makes you feel in awe, in love, and fulfilled. In living beyond who you were, you somehow become truer to who you are than ever before.
