All-righty then!

At 10:30 AM ET the Moon entered Virgo, driving most of the next three days with a need to make things right in exacting detail. How is your Mercury retrograde REorganizing going? What are you throwing out? A lot, potentially, using the streamlined, proactive focus of the soon-t0-be exact meet-up between Mars and Saturn on April 2nd.  Not to mention THURSDAY’s 10:16 AM ET square between Saturn and the Aries Sun. In the language of astrology, Saturn refers to necessary control, ambition and discipline. The Sun refers to ego, leaders, vitality.

Headlines that happened in the aftermath of Sun-Saturn squares can be found here and here.  Search the archives and you’ll find more. You are more personally affected by the potential for a streamlined squeeze or advance if you were born around the 28th of March, June, September and December…or if you have a planet or angle around 4-9 degrees of Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn. Now would be an excellent time to book a personal consultation — and I know this because the horoscopes of most of my recent clients fall into this category. Join them!

You can also be proactive about REconnecting with people from your past. I spent yesterday morning catching up with college classmates whom I had not spoken with in years. Found out that one had triplets — what a surprise! And that surprise was an apt reflection of this evening’s meet-up between Venus (women) and Uranus (did I mention surprise?).  Who or what has suddenly returned in your life  since Mercury turned retrograde on March 22nd? You have until April 15th to RE-establish ties. Go for it! And especially GO FOR IT this week, where there are few bumps impeding the flow of the Virgo Moon.  It doesn’t get choppy until Saturday….

And now, the news.

Streamlining is all over the news – militantly so:

• P45 ends immigration protection for 4000 Liberians — many who may have been granted permission to live and work legally in the U.S. for the past 27 years.  They’ve been given a year to pack up and leave.
• In an effort to streamline the results of the next U.S. census, a question about citizenship has been added. It has not been asked since 1950 — with good reason — regardless of what Sarah Huckabee Sanders tells you.  At least 12 states will challenge this question in court — find out why this is important.
• More streamlining — of foreigners living in the U.S.:  P45 proposes that an immigrant who accepts any form of “public benefit — even a tax deduction” may be penalized.
• Where do you draw the line — when it comes to election districts? The Supreme Court seems poised to address this question, but with Mercury currently retrograde, the timing of the hearing is muddled.
• Ecuador confirms it has cut off internet access for Julian Assange, saying its long-term guest is putting Ecuador’s international ties at risk. What an apt application of the Mercury retrograde maxim, “When in doubt, be silent!”

Serious Saturn-Sun news involving heads of state:

• Kim Jong-un visits China’s Xi Jinping 
• P45 has been officially summoned in a lawsuit alleging he is violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution. Maryland and D.C. are the plaintiffs.
• P45 loses in his company’s arbitration efforts to regain control of its Panama hotel.
• Add in the disruption of status quo involving money and aesthetics (suggested by today’s meet-up between Venus and Uranus):  no more public funding of portraits of federal agency heads and politicians.

Meanwhile, Helen Gurley Brown’s horoscope is also under tension. Her 28 Aquarius Sun was impacted by last August’s Big Fat Total Eclipse, as well as the eclipse at 27 Aquarius in February. Transiting Saturn (control, cuts) is squaring her natal Saturn and her Libra Midheaven (public status). Saturn rules her 2nd House — referring to money and self-worth. On today’s disruptive Venus-Uranus meet-up at 27 Aries, Walmart removed Cosmopolitan  from its checkout aisles. Does Ms. Brown have a tense aspect between Venus and Uranus in her horoscope? Of course she does.

Did you know that Cosmopolitan was founded in 1886 — as a “family magazine?” It was also once a “literary magazine.” It was in 1965 — the first hit of the revolutionary Uranus-Pluto conjunction — that Helen Gurley Brown became Cosmo’s editor. She turned that magazine upside down! In the aftermath of the 2011-2016 Uranus-Pluto square, perhaps another transformation is in order.

UPDATE: House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose horoscope has been discussed here many times. This week it was rumored that the Speaker would be resigning “within 60 days.” Speaker Ryan denied it — with Mercury retrograde, one is always advised to refrain from believing everything one reads in the papers. What does his horoscope suggest? Certainly there are tensions now — with a critical period happening at the end of June and early July, as transiting Mars stations and turns retrograde on his natal Sun. Feels like a battle requiring physical/assertive energy. This fall, after Election Day, transiting Jupiter meets up with Neptune and his Ascendant — that’ll happen at 0 degrees Sagittarius.  This suggests an expanded idealism — and possibly an expanded personal projection. I wonder where he will be a year from now, when transiting Neptune hits the bottom of his horoscope. In my experience, this transit may be experienced as if one is suddenly standing in quicksand, unclear about how one fits into one’s home/foundation. A windfall opportunity may present itself later in 2019, followed by a break for independence in 2020.

In other news, Avid Readers may remember these guys from a forecast posted last August called “The Wiggy Uranus-Neptune Semi-Square”

That’s a picture of Uranus and Neptune when they met up in Capricorn in the early 90s. Their mission: to dissolve boundaries, and connect everyone together into one big spooky, ooky family…with the Capricorn part of the picture suggesting a potential corporate backing. That meet-up (technically called a conjunction) planted the seeds for the cycle. The semi-square is the first challenge to the seeds planted. Do we like what we planted? Now that we’re all connected via Facebook and Google, perhaps you’d like to know what they now know about you. Look here.   Is it spooky, ooky — or something even….(insert your adjective here).

So now we are seeing these big tangled webs of connection being challenged — the timing is perfect.  Mark Zuckerberg is being called to testify before Congress (after apparently dissing requests to appear before Parliament). And we are finding out more about the good folks who worked with Cambridge Analytica to come up with those fun “what kind of pasta/flower/horror movie creature/superhero are you?” personality quizzes that plagued Facebook in the early stages of the U.S. presidential campaign.

We do not have a confirmed birth time for Mark Zuckerberg, but we can see that his Mercury (how he needs to think and communicate) at roughly 29 Aries is under the influence of this Uranus-Neptune semi-square. The next exact hit — the third of five — happens on June 16th.  Patterns in the chart for the launch of Facebook (Feb 4, 2004 in Cambridge, MA) are also impacted by the Uranus-Neptune semi-square. Let’s see what happens.

Meanwhile, WaPo’s James Hohmann is on the case. In today’s Daily 202, he wants you to know about historian Niall Ferguson’s new book:

“The Square and the Tower” is a cautionary tale that challenges the conventional wisdom that growing interconnectedness is inherently good for society…

…To understand the current era, Ferguson believes we need to look more at what happened after Johannes Gutenberg developed the printing press. Like the Web, the use of these presses was difficult to centrally control. “At the beginning of the Reformation 501 years ago, Martin Luther thought naively that if everybody could read the Bible in the vernacular, they’d have a direct relationship with God, it would create ‘the priesthood of all believers’ and everything would be awesome,” said Ferguson.

From an astrological perspective, we see Gutenberg using new technology (Uranus) to advance a spiritual connection (Neptune). Now — Uranus and Neptune hadn’t even been discovered in 1439-40, but guess what pattern they were in back then? Uranus was squaring Neptune! Coincidence or conspiracy?

Finally, thanks to Avid Reader Jennifer who sent in an apt reflection of how Mercury retrograde often coincides with secrets from the past revealed. “After 51 years, police recover remains believed to be of missing Cutchogue woman”   The woman was Louise Pietrewicz, who disappeared at age 38. Investigative reporter that I am, I dug further and found her birth date: August 22, 1928 — in Sagaponack, NY. Her Sun is at 29 Leo, conjunct Neptune at 28 Leo. Avid Readers will instantly realize that her Sun and Neptune would have been totally eclipsed back in August — and again in February. It is fascinating to note that her “cold case” was reopened last fall! And that her remains were finally uncovered after the eclipse in February. Eclipses — like Mercury retrogrades — have an odd way of coinciding with bringing what was hidden to light.

So. To all of you Avid Readers whose horoscopes were affected by last August’s eclipse — how have you seen that manifest in your life?

Thank you for reading this forecast. Here’s the 411 on personal consultations.