As the sky blackened and the dark tides tugged at hearts and heavy heads, the tallest palm on the farthest mountain was burning. Far below in the world of men and warning, only the wise and wyrd raised their eyes to its pinnacle.

Taurus season arrives this transformational year as a portal that will carry us through eclipses, retrogrades and change writ large. Though the lair of the little bull is renowned for its feet on the ground fixed nature, myriad factors conspire to make this Taurean jaunt unlike any other. A tale told in two parts as its mirror held up to us grants passage through rampant revolution.

The lashing tail end of Aries has delivered a torrid few days, oddly spliced for maximum impact. The hard sharp edge of the usually sweet Libran full moon. Tales of crucifixion, liberation and resurrection wrapped in shiny foil and chocolate. The unbearable mash up of man's manifold attempts to craft sense of the ineffable over a four day bender. Dazed and confused, we emerge with a strange hangover that will linger long into the week.

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 gods of sea and sky, Neptune and Jupiter, have come together in Pisces. East of the sun and west of the moon, their meeting is a chime that echoes out across the unverse. It rings in a seeding point as placeholder for what will unfurl in the months to come, a secret letter delivered to the deepest door of your imagination.

Like a lure from beyond the known worlds, another fated conjunction has us in its outer reaches from deep in the Piscean waterworld. There is uncommon magic afoot, its margins shimmering in the currents. Felt more than understood, a glance from the periphery at the liquid intersection of past and future.

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.