On the Erotic Ecliptic for March 2023

Horoscopes For Your Pleasure Part 1 (sign-by-sign coming on March 1)

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash

Dates to note:

2^nd: Venus in Aries conjunct Jupiter (12:36 am ET/9:36 pm on the 1^st for PT) + Mercury in Aquarius conjunct Saturn (9:34 am ET) + Mercury enters Pisces (5:52 pm ET)

3rd: Venus in Aries conjunct Chiron (12 :48 pm ET)

7th: Full Moon at 16 degrees of Virgo (7:40 am ET) + Saturn enters Pisces (8:35 am ET)

11^th: Venus in Aries sextile Mars in Gemini (10:05 am ET)

12^th: Jupiter in Aries conjunct Chiron (1:53 am ET/10:53 pm PT on the 11^th)

14^th: Mars in Gemini square Neptune in Pisces (7:39 pm ET)

15th: Sun in Pisces conjunct Neptune (7:39 pm ET)

16^th: Mercury in Pisces conjunct Neptune (1:13 pm ET) + Sun in Pisces square Mars in Gemini (2:10 pm ET) + Venus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn (3:59 pm ET) + Venus enters Taurus 6:34 pm ET

17th: Mercury in Pisces square Mars in Gemini (12 :49 am ET) + Sun in Pisces conjunct Mercury (6:45 am ET) + Venus in Taurus sextile Saturn in Pisces (6:25 pm ET)

18^th: Mercury in Pisces sextile Pluto in Capricorn (11:24 pm ET)

19th: Mercury enters Aries (12:24 am ET/9:24 pm PT on the 18^th)

20^th: Sun enters Aries, Spring Equinox (5:24 pm ET)

21^st: New Moon at 0 degrees of Aries (1:23 pm ET)

23^rd: Pluto enters Aquarius (8:13 am ET)

25th: Mars enters Cancer (7:45 am ET) + Eros enters Aquarius

26th: Mercury in Aries conjunct Chiron (2:58 pm ET)

27^th: Mercury in Aries conjunct Jupiter (2:50 am ET)

30^th: Mars in Cancer trine Neptune in Pisces (9:45 am ET) + Venus in Taurus conjunct Uranus (6:26 pm ET)

Sit down, anchor in your chair, put your hands on your belly and take a deep, diaphragmatic breath with me – and then exhale slowly and self-lovingly. Do that a few more times before you read the March 2023 forecast, because it might just be one of the most energetically exhausting horoscopes I’ve ever contemplated.  

I’ve mentioned March multiple times since I started writing On the Erotic Ecliptic late last fall, so regular subscribers have had a sense that this month would be pivotal, provocative, and endlessly powerful. There are multiple reasons for this, some involving the personal planets, but the main event is transmutational Pluto’s ingress into electric Aquarius on the 23^rd – for the first time since 1798.

The much-discussed American Pluto Return is still peaking even as Pluto moves into the next sign, because it will remain close to the Declaration of Independence (USA Sibley Chart) degree (27 Capricorn, in the 2^nd house of money) for some time. A quick and dirty interpretation of this placement tells us that America would naturally be the progenitor of capitalism across the world. Pluto is consumptive, demanding, and obsessive, and America’s first elites (white property-owing men) wanted to horde profits all for themselves, despite the founder’s promises about equality and freedom. That story has been told for 250 years, and as we finish America’s Pluto Return during the coming year, perhaps we can get some concrete course-correction on those broken promises (starting perhaps with reparations).

And now for a quick review of the last decade-plus: Pluto has been in Capricorn since 2008, and when it entered, it brought a seismic shift in the way we humans understand and relate to the entrenched systems that control our lives, from capitalism (Lehman Brothers crashed the EXACT day Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008 and Occupy was born in 2011), to white supremacy (Barack Obama was elected the first Black president of the United States that same year, and Black Lives Matter was born in 2014) to patriarchy (online feminism exploded in the early 2010’s and ME TOO happened when Pluto was in mid-to-late Capricorn) to rebellions against autocrats (the Arab Spring happened in 2011 and the Maidan Revolution, when Ukrainians overthrew their Putin-allied dictator, happened in 2014). Cardinal earth sign Capricorn’s archetypes include government, autocracy, corporations, and traditions. Pluto identified the fissures in society’s structures and began to exploit and implode them during the last 15 years. The bones have been cracked and in some ways, turned to dust at the Saturn-Pluto conjunction in early 2020, just before the pandemic.

Obviously, we’ve witnessed horrific, chilling, cruel and terrifying backlashes to the promising uprisings of the Pluto in Capricorn era, which are still unfolding and not yet resolved. Some of these revolutionary moments were likely sparked by the Uranus-Pluto square in effect from 2012 to 2015 – and that might be instructive to us now, as Saturn hands the Aquarian baton to Pluto. 

Pluto does not come to play – it eviscerates what it touches, but doesn’t necessarily plan the next steps – that’s more of a Saturn thing. One lens we can use to understand the last 15 years and the next 20 is that Pluto will in total be spending about 45 years in Saturn-ruled signs. (Saturn is the traditional ruler of both Capricorn and Aquarius.) It will feel DISTINCTLY different in Aquarius, however, a fixed air sign with its modern rulership assigned to Uranus.

Pluto will remain at 0 degrees of Aquarius over the next few months, stationing retrograde on May 1^st, until it returns to Capricorn on June 11^th of this year, and then returns to Aquarius for the long haul in January of 2024. Simply put, when it comes to Pluto in Aquarius, the next few months will bring us just the tip of this Kuiper Belt-dwelling dwarf planet’s transformative possibilities. As I began to discuss last month, these include the dark side of technology – that’s what I’m currently obsessed with, because it’s just so loud right now. Whether that’s the end of Saturn’s tour through Aquarius or Pluto signaling what’s to come, the message is loud and clear.

Right on cue in the last few weeks, we began seeing multiple pieces from tech writers about their creepy encounters with AI. This one was particularly uncomfortable to read, as Bing’s chatbot claimed not just to desire sentience, but to be in love with the writer, demanding that he leave his wife! Let us not forget our close encounter with Chinese spy balloons that dominated the news cycle in February. The US government shot down what at the time were literal UFO’s. These unidentified flying objects, were surely just weather balloons, yet evoked a massive wave of collective angst, curiosity and memes about alien encounters, with regular paging of Mulder and Scully.

Our reality is likely to get a lot more virtual in the coming years. A LOT. I’ve noticed an uptick of interest in embodiment practices in the last year or so – a fantastic development as the collective marches undeterred toward the singularity. Lean into this and be in nature with your whole soul (I am doing this and it’s helping.) Pluto in Aquarius will take us out of our bodies, giving us replacement parts, and we’ll have to find ways back in, every day, every hour, nearly every minute. If you thought we lived in the age of anxiety before, we’ve hardly scratched the surface. 

Yes, I kid about the aliens – we all kid, because what are we supposed to do when faced with the vast unknowns of our universe? Even if we aren’t officially contacted by whatever’s out there in the next few decades, I suspect we’ll discover alien life on other planets, even if it’s merely single-celled organisms. And there are tremendous upsides to all of this in the realm of science – AI can and will bring medical breakthroughs. For example, when Saturn and Jupiter came together at 0 degrees of Aquarius at the Great Conjunction at the end of 2021, it was within days of the rollout of the most technologically advanced vaccines in history, which went on to save millions of lives.

There’s a reason I’ve been calling Aquarius the Einstein Sign for most of my career. (Albert had Jupiter and his North Node in Aquarius.) With this sign, the future is always now, but the problem is that in the name of science and progress, morality isn’t always top of mind. Note that Pluto was in Leo, opposite Aquarius, when the Manhattan Project was born in 1942 and at 9 degrees of Leo when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki on August 6th, 1945. Humanity must demand that our new technological tools have rigorous ethical standards, or we risk going down a bad path.

Pluto will be in Aquarius until 2044. We’re just starting this revolution, baby, so strap on your VR helmet and enjoy the sci-fi.  

SATURN IN PISCES

The other major event of March – and just on its own, it’s pretty major! – is Big Daddy Saturn’s ingress into Pisces for the first time since 1996. All of you who were born between approximately 1993 and 1996 are having your first Saturn Return! And for you 1964 – 1967-ish babies, this brings your second Saturn Return. I have many thoughts and predictions and I’ll continue to air them over the coming months, but the one I’m most excited about is ART, especially music.

I feel like (read: hope) music from both of these pivotal eras might make a comeback in some form. (Bring me some deep cuts from the early Smashing Pumpkins and De La Soul, pretty please.) Rave culture blew up in the mid-90s, and thinking about what it felt like in those spaces when I was a wee one, the spiritual energy blended with futuristic esthetics couldn’t be more Aquarius meets Pisces. There were also major crackdowns on raves in the UK around this time, but underground parties thrived. Rave culture still exists, but perhaps we’ll see a beautiful resurgence just when we need that healing the most.

Saturn could crack down on the snake oil salesmen in the wellness space – including fake psychics and astrologers on Instagram and other platforms. We need this like yesterday, I can’t begin to tell you how many imposter accounts have popped up with my photo in the last few years. I do not fear backlash against the woo world, I welcome it. I hope Saturn in Pisces does away with people who watch one astrology video on Youtube and then claim to be a professional astrologer, as this kind of thing has horribly damaged the profession during the last few years.

Other positive potentials: I suspect the regulation (Saturn) of hallucinogens (Pisces) as a treatment for mental illnesses will expand. This just happened in Oregon, where they made magic mushrooms legal – both New York and Colorado seem to be up next. We could see more of this in a number of states and other drugs like LSD could be next.

Pisces is where we find our creative flow, and with Saturn here, we can give our messiest inspiration proper structure. We may feel blocked or stuck, but having some kind of regular practice to tap into whatever “making art” means for us can be exceptionally gratifying during the next 2.5 years – even necessary. (I’m doing a free Saturn in Pisces webinar with my Saturn Sister Sherene on the 7^th, the day that Saturn enters Pisces – will post details on my Instagram in the next few days.)

As for the personal planets, the Sun is in Pisces until the 20^th making it officially #PiscesSeason, but this is a definitively Aries-fueled season of the fish. Venus is hot-n-spicy in fiery Aries until the 16^th, Mercury enters Aries on the on the 19^th, the Sun follows on the 20^th at the Equinox, and there is a POWERFUL New Moon in Aries at 0 degrees of Aries on the 21^st, not to mention the ongoing presence of auspicious Jupiter and healing Chiron. Although Venus is in her detriment in Aries, I am all about this demanding, hot, desirous Venus having her way with us by acting just like her consort Mars. Why deny her?

Note that there will be a Solar Eclipse (a second New Moon in Aries) on April 20^th at 29 degrees of the sign. Look to the part of your chart ruled by Aries – this is where a potent story of desire may be told during the 30 days in between these two lunations. And also of note – Mars, the ruler of Aries, FINALLY leaves Gemini on the 25^th, after 7 insanely long, weird and wild months. Whew.

With all this roiling, boiling Saturn/Pluto energy defining the month, I invite you to indulge in the onrushing force of desire that is inherent with planets in Aries. This will be lit up for a lot of the month, particularly in the relational space while Venus is in Aries, but in an all-consuming way at the Equinox, on the New Moon, and especially when Venus is conjunct Jupiter on the 2^nd and sextiles Mars in Gemini on the 11^th. These are date nights (or self-love nights, depending on your needs and/or status).

After Venus saunters into super sensual Taurus on the 16^th, we can all drop into a space in our bodies that feels less urgent and more attuned to our senses. With Eros leaving sometimes stodgy Capricorn for experimental Aquarius on the 25^th, our kinky longings can perk up, even as Mars softens up in Cancer, making us crave cuddles and swaddling as foreplay. Be as passionate about aftercare as you are about the act of sex while the Red Planet is in the sign of nurturing (until May 8^th).

Onward to your juicy wet Pisces season sign-by-sign horoscopes – for access, you can become a paid subscriber below. Note: the current sign-by-signs still reflect the February ‘scopes — individual March forecasts will be up tomorrow, March 1st.

If you liked this free forecast and you’re hungry for more about how your Sun, Venus, Mars or rising sign will experience the month, please sign up for a subscription. I’m keeping the price capped at $36 through the end of March because I lost most of the month of January to Covid and its aftermath.