On the Erotic Ecliptic for March 2024

Another World is Possible in Pisces Season

Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash

March 2024 Dates to Note:

1^st: Sun in Pisces sextile Jupiter in Taurus (7:15 am ET)
3^rd:  Venus in Aquarius square Uranus in Taurus (8:17 am ET)
4^th:  Mercury in Pisces sextile Uranus in Taurus (3:24 pm ET)
6^th: Mars in Aquarius sextile Chiron in Aries (6:04 pm ET)

8^th: Mercury in Pisces conjunct Neptune (10:06 am ET)
9^th: Mars in Aquarius square Uranus in Taurus (5:55 pm ET), Sun in Pisces sextile Uranus in Taurus (6:01 pm ET), Mercury enters Aries (11:03 pm ET)
10^th: New Moon in Pisces at 17 degrees (5:00 am ET), Mercury in Aries sextile Pluto in Aquarius (6:21 pm ET)

11^th: Venus enters Pisces (5:50 pm ET)
17^th:  Sun in Pisces conjunct Neptune (7:22 pm ET)
20^th: Sun enters Aries: Spring Equinox/Ostara/International Astrology Day (11:06 pm ET)

21^st: Sun in Aries sextile Pluto in Aquarius (4:03 pm ET), Venus in Pisces conjunct Saturn (7:09 pm ET)

22^nd: Mars enters Pisces (7:47 pm ET)
24^th: Venus in Pisces sextile Jupiter in Taurus (12:37 pm ET)
25^th: Full Moon/Lunar Eclipse in at 5 degrees of Libra (3:00 am ET)

28^th: Venus in Pisces sextile Uranus in Taurus (9:58 am ET)

The usual metaphors about the lions and lambs of March failed me as I began writing this during the last days of February, watching wildfire smoke (this time from Texas) hazing the skies of NYC, the Atlantic Ocean freakishly warm, and children starving in Gaza while leaders fiddled and frittered, eating ice cream as the world burned.

The lion’s ravenous jaw roars as we enter the month and as we end it — but we can take respite within the smaller stretches of lamb-like softness in our cosmic fabric, finding safety and solace there. This month and next month, more than any other in 2024, we are reminded that we must rest if we are to survive. Pisces season healing takes many forms, but sleep is one of its highest callings.

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Saturn’s ingress into Pisces on March 7th, I am meditating on the concept of borders. Borders as we understand them today are a relatively modern invention taken to perverse extremes by colonialist powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Saturn is the planet that tells us when to stop, to withhold, to resist, to build a boundary so we know where one thing ends and the other begins. We need Saturn the way we need bones to hold up the meat suits of our bodies. Pisces, a mutable water sign, is the last of the zodiac, more formless than any other. This is where souls find each other and perhaps reincarnate, where the end is the beginning, where we melt and dissolve and merge and swim in perpetual circles back to what feels like love.

With Saturn in Pisces, we might do this even when the sensation of love in our bodies is just trauma bonding, but ideally we make art from the experience. The pain — this longing for love and merging — is intense and all-consuming, but the poetry or choreography or novel that emerges can heal not just the art-maker, but the entire collective.

I’m also thinking about the way culture, politics and media have grown even more intensely obsessed with borders in this last year: the Southern border in the United States, Ukraine’s border, invaded by Russia (a colonial power claiming their neighbor’s sovereign border never existed) the border between Israel and Gaza, crossed repeatedly by missiles and bombs and rockets defying borders in both directions for years, until it was crossed most horrifyingly on October 7th — changing our world forever. Mostly I’m thinking about the borders we construct between ourselves and the people we love, and the borders we build in our own psyches, to wall ourselves off from what we don’t want to see.

With Saturn in Pisces, we learn hard lessons about the cruelties inflicted by borders, the way they separate us from people who may look or sound different than us, but those who are mirrors of our own souls. Or even harder lessons about the people across the border who are our very own ancestral cousins — those we are told are our enemies. Excruciating pain — a massacre of starving masses in Gaza — erupted this past week during the Saturn/Sun/Mercury cazimi at the tail-end of February. I pray that this will be the boundary of our collective’s tolerance of genocide. At its highest octave, Saturn in Pisces can be a time when we remember that another world is possible — we can imagine it and then take the Saturnian steps to build it into our reality.

For many of us, that inner border is eroding like a wooden fence washed over by seawater and we cannot contain it anymore, we cannot hold off the reality of relentless brutality happening in real time on our social feeds without having our egos dissolve. In Pisces season, the only solution for all of this is love.

Let’s look at the rest of the month, shall we? The first and most important thing to know about the story of March is that it’s inextricably linked with the story of April — it’s hard to talk about one month without considering the other. This is because we’re entering both eclipse season and the shadow of Mercury Retrograde, and they’re all kind of glomming together in one gigantic messy cauldron of chaos.

Venus and Mars are still traveling in the same train car (Aquarius) before they part ways in April (when Venus will exit and hop on an express to Aries). Venus squares Uranus in Taurus on the 4th, offering all kinds of unexpected surprises in the arena of desire — it’s a strong moment for kinky people. Mars traces his lover’s footsteps on the 9th, repeating the square to Uranus - this feels a lot rougher and more shocking. It takes place the day before the New Moon in Pisces, feeding into our last non-eclipse lunation until the end of April. Mercury heads into Aries later on the same day, adding a rumbly, fiery element to a soft and dreamy New Moon made for pastel-hued fantasies and vision boards. Just five days later, Mercury will enter the shadow of its April retrograde.

Venus enters Pisces, where she is exalted, on the 11th. This is the softest, sweetest bit of the month, the part where we can perhaps rest for a moment, enveloping ourselves in her mystical, magical beauty. The Sun-Neptune conjunction brings us that dissolving sensation once more on the 17th — if you hold the camera just right, the lens could show you exactly what you want to see. As much as Venus in Pisces is a vision of divine love, when she conjoins Saturn on the 21st, there could be a sense of longing that becomes utterly melancholy. This looks like loneliness.

Aries season begins on the night of the 19th into the morning of the 20th. This Spring Equinox is like a door opening into a new world — and right behind it is eclipse season. Green shoots may be visible, but we probably won’t remember to watch them grow until after the Solar Eclipse in Aries in April.

The Lunar Eclipse at 5 degrees of Libra brings all our emotions about relationships to the fore on the 25th. This is especially potent for Aries, Cancers, Libras, and Capricorns. Still, anyone of any sign is likely to feel overwhelmed with powerful feelings during the days leading up to this incredibly potent Full Moon. Something that came up for you six months ago may need releasing now, whether it’s a parntership, a project or a means of expression.

Sign-by-sign horoscopes will be posted tomorrow. Thank you for your patience, beloveds. I’m a little bit overwhelmed by life on this planet (and my soon-to-be-published book).