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It’s a week of change as the astrological year starts anew. It’s also a time of untold potential as the new Moon invites your boldest desires and Pluto takes you by the hand through even greater transformation.
Understanding the Astrological New Year
Imagine an invisible backdrop to our cosmos. It allows for the measurement and tracking of the individual placements of the Sun, Moon, and planets. It’s shaped like a circle, cyclical in nature, and split equally into sections as if it were a 12-slice pizza. The backdrop is the zodiac and each section represents a different sign.
Our planetary bodies are forever spinning through this backdrop, shifting in expression, intentions, and insights as they shift from sign to sign. The Sun spends approximately a month in each of these signs and completes its cycle every 12 months. The Moon lingers just a few days in each sign and begins a new tour of the zodiac every 27 days. The planets vary in their orbit of the signs—depending on their size, speed, and location—from just 88 days to 248 years for a journey through the zodiac circle.
This week, the Sun, the new Moon, and Mercury will have moved through all 12 signs of the astrological zodiac and will once again enter the first sign, Aries.
March 19: Mercury Enters Aries
After spending a few weeks in the mystical emotional sign of Pisces, Mercury begins a new cycle of the zodiac as it moves into the fiery sign of Aries on March 19, 2023. This movement represents a mental shift within us from water to fire, abstract to direct, reflective to forward thinking, and receptive to action oriented.
In astrology, Mercury is our mind. It is communication, mental processing, and learning. Its shift into Aries represents a new beginning in these areas of our lives. This time invites a new way of communicating—one that is empowering, bold, and assertive. It welcomes a new way of making decisions, too, which enables us to be decisive, clear, direct, and spontaneous. It’s a chapter that welcomes new ideas, inspirations, and challenges that can be explored with excitement and passion.
March 20: Aries Season Begins
The astrological new year takes place when the Sun has journeyed through the 12 zodiac signs and begins the cycle once again. It is the January 1st of the cosmos and brings a new chapter, new opportunities, and new chances. On this sacred day, the Sun crosses the threshold from Pisces into Aries.
Aries is birth. It is heat and passion. Aries is the inner flame that burns within us all, giving us direction and connecting us to desire, drive, and movement. It is inspiration, fierce courage, and the glorious glow of new beginnings. Aries is ensuring that we do not stand still and continuing to create ourselves anew again and again and again.
Beginning on March 20, 2023, Aries season insists that we stand in each moment as ourselves and for ourselves. It nudges us to take the risk, face the fears, and muster the courage to experience this life with as much freedom, passion, creativity, adventure, and courage as possible. It acts as a reminder that we are wholly and completely worthy of our dreams, and worthy of a life that feels nothing short of exhilarating and fulfilling. This is the time to honor your worth and take a chance on yourself.
March 20: Spring Equinox
Similar to how the Moon pulls the tides and the planets shift our internal reflections and outward expressions, the Earth pulls us into our futures. The word “equinox” is derived from Latin and means “equal night,” referring to the roughly 12-hour day and 12-hour night that occurs only on the two equinox days of each year. This day represents the balance of light and dark, day and night, outward and inward, and marks a point of coming together in the Earth’s cycles before she shifts directions.
The equinox, which meets us on March 20, 2023, initiates spring and its natural evolution into summer, letting in more light, life, and energy. The equinox holds space for a cycle of rebirth that is reflected both in the stars above and the Earth below. It resonates at the frequency of a changing of the seasons, where new dreams are called forward and passion is awoken. It is a transition that opens the doors into a new destiny, fueled from above, below, and within.
March 21: New Moon in Aries
The first new Moon of the astrological year will shine bright and bold, initiating awakening, inspiration, and moving past any dormant veils of complacency.
Just a day after the astrological new year, the New Moon in Aries on March 21, 2023, invites us to pursue whatever new desires are born from this emerging and rebirth. Influenced by the fiery force that is Aries, this new Moon invites our passions, bold desires, and courageous requests. It asks us to run with the inspiration and tenacity of Aries. It tells us to dream big.
Pluto, which sits in a sextile position to this lunation, facilitates our transformation by encouraging anything that is unaligned with our truest selves to be released and allowing our truest desires to bring change from within.
RELATED: What the New Moon in Aries Means for You
March 23: Pluto Enters Aquarius
Pluto doesn’t move quickly. It takes close to 250 years to move through the zodiac cycle. When it does transition into a new sign, it creates vast ripples of change, transformation, and shifts that can be felt from deep within us as well as in the structures of the collective around us.
On March 23, 2023, we mark the highly anticipated and influential shift in our cosmos of Pluto entering Aquarius and leaving Capricorn, where it has been since 2008.
In astrology, Pluto represents the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. Pluto signifies journeying through the underworld. It reminds us of the gifts, resources, and power that can be found within our own depths and shadows and readies us to transmute them.
Aquarius is the sign of innovation, independence, freedom, and future thinking. As Pluto enters this intellectual sign, there is transformation on the horizon on both the personal and collective levels—namely around power, freedom, science, innovation, and technology.
During its retrograde, Pluto will dip back into Capricorn on June 11, 2023 and will spend only three months in Aquarius this year. Consider its current transit a teaser for when Pluto reenters Aquarius in January of 2024 and remains there for the next 20 years.
March 25: Mars Enters Cancer
Mars is our passion planet. It is action, drive, courage, and forward movement. Cancer is our watery planet of inner security, tenderness, and protective nurturing.
March 25, 2023, marks the movement of Mars into Cancer from Gemini, where it has been since August 2022. While Mars’ fire can burn bold, Cancer’s water tends to soften it slightly. Mars’ actions can be influenced heavily by our emotional world and guided into creating protection and security for both ourselves and our loved ones. There is an invitation here to bring greater intuition, inner satisfaction, and purpose into our desires and actions.
Your Invitation
This week brings bold invitations and new beginnings. It is a week of inner and outer evolution, where you may find yourself confronted by aspects of you that are ready to release as well as those that are ready to be brought into the world.
You are invited to meet yourself in new ways and to be changed by your experiences as well as the world around you. In the process, you are likely to shed outdated versions of yourself that no longer contain your true expression.
As you move through transformative periods in your life and find yourself letting go of comforts and familiarities, identities, and structures, astrology can provide a larger context. Look to the Moon and trust in the growth that can begin from your current intentions. Turn to the Sun and trust that it is creating space for your new direction.
It is a week that invites you to unclench your hands, soften your breath, and surrender to the cycle that is life. It’s okay to trust in your journey.
Learn more about the influence of astrology in your life, including astrological events the Moon cycles, your Sun and Moon and rising signs, how journaling can help you connect with the current influences, and more with Jordane Maree at Girl and her Moon.
About Our Contributor
Jordane Maree is the founder of Girl and Her Moon, a platform and community exploring Soul through the lens of astrology, tarot, and energy healing. She is a writer, intuitive astrologer, energy and soul guide, and host of Girl and Her Moon, The Podcast. She is inspired, every single day, to be the mirror for you to see all that you truly are, you in all your infinite abilities, in total expansion, in infinite opportunity and love.