Astrology of Saturday, April 18

You say you want a revolution, sang John Lennon. We are in the middle of a revolution. People talk about the new normal, and that is accurate. But few people pre-meditate a revolution..small, significant changes lead to a new way of life when the traditional powers are not functioning well. Nevertheless, when looked at in retrospect, each decision led to a revolution...a new normal.

There is an astrological voice that say we will hear thematic echoes of the American and French Revolutions as Pluto returns to the place it occupied during those revolutionary days. Pluto is returning to a place in the second house of finances, and in a larger sense, a house that is about values (after all, why do we spend as we do?). Pluto takes out the garbage - what is broken and no longer serves us goes away. Sounds easy, bu it is not. We are humans. We dislike change. We like patterns that tell us what to do. Our resistance to change and taking something away that is not of service causes pain.

Nor is change unresisted. Plenty of people, like the landed gentry during the revolution, the Tories, resisted losing power. Pluto is in the sign of Capricorn, the Achiever and Elder. Those people are resisting change and have been in the process of dragging us back toward past achievements since the moment Pluto bagan its journey inCapricorn in 2016.

At the same time Chiron, the wounded healer, is in the sign of identity, Aries. During this time we are challenged to forge a collective and personal identity. Who are we? Democrats? Republicans? Progressives? Conservatives? Oligarchs and minions? Social Democrats? Imperialists? Federalists? Americans? As a people we get to choose, but we get to choose personally, too.

That brings us to today's message - Venus in Gemini sextiling Mars in Aquarius. We have to do it ourselves; we can't rely on dysfunctional institutions. They are breaking down so that we can forge a new, humanistic reality. The Covid-19 crisis has exposed the problems of wealth inequality, viewing corporations as people, low wages, lack of health care. It is going to be a grassroots effort - a revolution. It is up to each of us. Facts fuel our ideas. Let's get to work.