The full moon on the rise is cloaked in shadows. She arrives in the wake of a changeling week that unlocked a codex whose purpose is vaster than we can fathom from here. She is the luminous portent of an upcoming eclipse season that will deeply dredge our worlds. Much as we may crave its simple sugar coating, this Libran full moon is not wafting in rosy shallows beaming harmony and balance. She has designs that go far deeper than that.

The strange ripple in this day and the one after is more than the constant glitching of what once was matrix. It is something beyond regular programming and far below its cause and effect. And it has Pluto's spiny fingers all over it, tickling underbellies and shadows out of hiding.

Hang on to your horns / hats darklings, as our two galactic power players challenge each other to more than a duelling solo. Under these clanging stars arrives a weekend fairly crackling with baptism by fire in the lashing tail end of Aries. The Sun squaring Pluto always makes for interesting conversation.

Hot on the flaming heels of the new moon in Aries, Uncle Pluto is making his presence felt again. This week he claims the frame, drawing our attention backwards and forwards - and possibly sideways - to see what has changed. And what hasn't.

Personal power is actually built by chewing on your own gristle. It is strengthened in times of adversity and challenge, particularly those that kick out the crutches and leave you to go it alone. Power is not restricted by external conditions, dictates or the actions of others - though all can knock you off your spot. It pivots on perspective and is nourished by our whole truth.

Unless you have been trapped under a small planet sized rock, it could not have escaped your attention that Uncle Pluto has just turned retrograde. Next week he is joined by his partner in Capricorn crime Saturn as he also backs the truck up. Each offers us yet another opportunity to stop dicking around when it comes to our shadow, unarguably the greatest work of our life.

Tonight's blue moon is the ultimate late night double feature, coming at us with a leer and a smile. Beware of her power to unsettle, her strange light blazing into the shadows and outing us all.

One of my most brilliant teachers, a rakish afficionado of high school history, taught me two most important life lessons. The first was critical thinking: that it is crucial not to slavishly believe what you have had plopped in front of you. The second was to remember your history because as he proved to us ad infinitum: those who refuse to remember their history are condemned to repeat it.

So how's that whole Pluto Mars thing playing out for you? Still climbing towards tomorrow's torrid peak, well may we feel our cells rearranging. Today is an echo of a glitch from way back in the second week of March's retrograde, cunningly setting the scene for our wide eyed here and now. Ping back to see clearly, Merc's ongoing rx party favour.

Pluto's grind is here again as the dark lord of our underworld turns retrograde in Capricornia. Only five months to go. Unlike other rx's where we get to slow down, this actually amps Pluto's unholy purpose: to create the kind of chaos that forces us into our dark corners. We are transformed finding our way out. His retrograde takes us deeper and holds us under longer.

If you needed a million fabulous examples of the weekend's agitating astrology engendering very real positive change, here it is. Here they all are and there's plenty more where they came from. Kids forged by homegrown terror and trauma alchemising their pain into take no prisoners advocacy. They are reshaping a braver new world.

If you are waiting for this tetchy energy to subside, we have a few more days to go yet. This ongoing power struggle between Captain Chaos himself (Pluto) and our cosmic enlarger (Jupiter) is peaking all this week, having first smashed into our lives last November.

This is a trigger warning, darklings. And not just your particular flavour when the gun is cocked, oh my word no. Today is an across the board recipe for blown tops, epic frustration and the kind of sandpaper niggling that shreds even the thickest of skins.