Venus has arrived into Pisces, its waters embracing its queen of stars like a lover returning. Restructured first by retrograde and now moving more easily beyond Saturn's relentless reach, Lady Love swans into her pleasure state. Swollen with the magic of Neptune and Jupiter, rampant revolution cleaves to deep psychospiritual currents.

Every two years or so, Mars and Saturn bring their hot and heavy heads together, and the world groans and shifts. The last time this happened during March 2020, it set the stage for breakdown and the world followed suit. Most everything was shutdown and wildly shunted by a pandemonium that plunged us into uncertainty and chaos. The game was changed, irrevocably.

Aries new moon, thy name is initiation. We rise to observe the cycle incoming, the new astrological year and the next season of our lives amid the strains of wider revolution. The noise is not going away and neither its challenge to our well worn out status quo.

Dark moon, thy name is respite and relief. Time to tend arrives now as the barely there crescent turns her face away and tucks back into herself. If you will let yourself linger long, this dark moon offers a wonderful scrying pool to craft uncommon sense from the fray.

Haul the megaphone from the watery depths darklings and prick up your flaming ears. Now do we move beyond sodden thoughts and haul acuity from the doldrums. Progressing from Pisces to Aries, Mercury has crossed the threshold of the most powerful initiation point in the zodiac. In a year built on rapid transitions, our marvellous minds once more poise for welcome change.

In case it has escaped your attention darklings, things have gotten realer than real. They have in fact become mythological. As we bear witness to the fall of the old world and it unwillingly gives way to the new age birthing through the Aquarian portal, we all swim in brackish waters. Between life and death, creation and destruction, joy and despair, the thread of story pulls taut.

Volatility is a curiously misunderstood force of nature. Its power is not held in fury nor fire but rather in uncertainty. Risk is measured in the size of the change made and weighed against its options, seen and hidden. Herein lies its magic. Those willing to harness themselves to unknowable futures and let their faith in themselves draw dividends their way.

Meet my Nanna, darklings. This is the inimitable Nancy and today would have been her 109th birthday. An ultra Aries journalist, shrewd operator and my very first Bohemian role model, a reporter and then a publican at The Australian Hotel where my Mum ran up and down the stairs as a kid. The stories of her heyday are legendary.

The Aries initiation point arrives like a blaze, arising from the depths of the Piscean waterworld. Its time stamp is the equinox and seasons rearrange themselves around its cardinal doorway. The zodiac refreshes and we look to its next start finish line for portents as the keys to the next solar cycle dangle from its bright beams.

One sunny late March day in 1983 in Kansas City, an astrologer called John Sandback was sitting in his parked car. In the space of four hours that afternoon he channelled 360 distinct images, each one symbolic of a particular degree of the zodiac. Evocative symbols that held keys and clues hinting at deeper celestial information.

Holding fast to hope in turbulent times is not an empty cup. It conjures far more from its enduring depths and places soft landing in our hands. Hope is not a wan promise, nor a weak vanity. It is a fierce courage that arises in response to troubling reality, holding us through and beyond it, planting seeds in our every footstep.

If your senses grow soft and stay sharp enough, you can feel yourself slipping between worlds and into wonder. The noise of our built environs, its grinding cogs of industry and inhumanity give way. The soft animal of your body, finely tuned and well eqipped to perceive magic, can intuit its rippling margins. Without warning or care you can find yourself delightfully beholden to its everyday miracles.

The far end of the zodiac is nigh, and more besides drawing inexorably towards its passing. As we navigate the dissolution inherent in the outer reaches of the last sign, so too are we bearing witness to the end of the world as we knew it.

Merc's winged heels have been busy already this wildly transformational year. Darting between the new age birthing through Aquarian sensibilities of future focused humanitarian ideals. Fishing through the olde worlde fast crumbling under Pluto's heavy hand in Capricornia. Retracing hard yards with his reset retrograde between the two and now trailing all that revision garnered as he dives into Pisces.

In a sea of performative annual feminism, women just get on with it. As we always do, quietly and without chest beating. It is how this world actually keeps spinning, no matter the wars in the world of men or the disasters that lap at our homes and caravans of care. Running the usual gauntlets and battling the same old shit, getting more than our share done for less of the spoils and hoping for throwaway thanks.

If you have been genuflecting for change, something to give or shift or lift, consider your prayers answered from the future. The vibe has shifted from grind to tangent. The balance of power has been tipped back towards the people. And all of our personal planets are now in league in the surreal terroir of Aquaria.

The very first time you hold your first book in your hands.

Revolution begins and ends in the dark corridors of heavy hearts. Out past the breaking point of loss and great griefs, beyond despairing resignation to currents and conditions. Sparked at the tiny cardiac altar when hope flickers low, craving a gust of wind or a strike of lightning to raise its flames to crackling.