Astrology of the Week Ahead with Chani Nicholas - The Week of April 1st, 2024: Triple-checking everything with this Mercury retrograde in Aries

Episode Date: April 1, 2024

Episode 172 In this podcast, New York Times bestselling author and astrologer Chani Nicholas discusses the astrology of the week and what it might mean for us all.  The astrology of the week of April 1st, 2024, asks us to be prepared for glitches and malfunctions. On Monday, Mercury (the planet of communication) stations retrograde in Aries, stirring up the typical trouble in the area of our lives that contains the sign of the ram. On Wednesday, Venus (the planet of love) conjoins Neptune (the planet of fantasy), creating a dreamy and romantic mid-week interlude. On Thursday, the Sun conjoins the North Node (aka the place where eclipses happen), adding a touch of instability to the ether as we prepare for the next eclipse. Also on Thursday, Venus enters Aries, adding some extra kindling to our connections. On Saturday, Venus sextiles Pluto (the planet of transformation), empowering us to strengthen our bonds with depth and prowess. So drink plenty of water and seek out ways to slow down and cool off this week.  This episode was recorded on 2/15/2024. For more, check out your free daily horoscope on the homepage of the CHANI app — now on iOS and Android. The music featured in the podcast was created by Latashá.

Prepare to review all of the ways in which we got things wrong or the ways in which things are malfunctioning or just don't take the next three weeks personally, especially when you get course corrected. In this podcast, we look at the astrology of the upcoming week and how it will be landing for all of us collectively. For a more personalized reading that dives into the ways that this week's astrology will play out for you, download the Chani app. Hello and welcome.

This is the Astrology of the Week Ahead podcast. I'm your host, Chani, Nicholas, and Mercury is stationing retrograde on Monday, like the April 1st, April Fool's. Here we go. Here we are. Jokes on us. For real. And it will be for the next three weeks.

Next week's an eclipse. Last week was an eclipse. When Mercury and the eclipses pile up like they have been for the last little while, it's a lot. It's a lot to parse through. So you could blame everything in the world that's gone wrong on Mercury retrograde in your world that goes wrong on Mercury retrograde. But I don't know if that's how you want to live your life. I do think this. Mercury retrogrades are amazing times to understand the parts of our ourselves.

system that is malfunctioning. The system of our home life, our physical life, our professional life, our friendships, or whatever, wherever Mercury is retrograding through in your chart is going to get this thorough audit and edit. And that's a good thing because there's too much here. There's things that don't work and there's stuff that we don't need to take with us. and Mercury retrogrades through a certain part of our chart every so often to say, okay, now we've got to focus here. And we're going to focus here, and we're going to course correct, we're going to clean stuff up, we're going to fix what's broken, and then in a couple of weeks we're going to move on.

And that's the deal. The thing is, is that not only is Mercury retrograding through this part of your chart, but next week we're going to have a very important, potent eclipse in Aries. So Mercury is retrograding through Ares and Eclipse is going to happen in Aries. Venus this week is moving into Ares. There's a lot of planets and planetary action happening in the sign of Ares. Ares is a sign that is loud and bold and in your face. And it is not a sign that minces words or meanings.

So whatever isn't working is going to be explicitly so. And whatever this next eclipse next week is here to point out, It's also going to be explicitly so, and I sigh a little bit because it's conjunct Chiron, and Chiron is the wounded healer, so it's always talking about the wound and the medicine in the wound and the ways in which our wounds teach us and the kinds of teachers and mentors that we need to become in our life. But it's definitely not like a frolicing, rollicking good time, which Ares likes to have. But this setup, this mixture, this eerie season is fast and furious at getting to some of our pain points. So we just have to know to be extra tender with ourselves last week, this week, next week, etc.

Because we're going to keep going over these points of soreness. because Mercury is going to retrograde back over Chiron, and Venus is going to conjunct Chiron. And again, next week's eclipse is going to conjunct Chiron. So the area of your chart that contains Ares is so important right now. Not always, maybe. Maybe it is, but not always. But this point of the year, this next couple of weeks, super important for you to get very intimately involved with the area of your chart that contains Ares. In this week's recording, next week's recording,

etc., I go into this in great depth in the readings for the week for your rising sign. So get to know the area of your chart that contains Ares. Or it doesn't even matter if you've, you know, consciously do. This astrology, this time frame will definitely get you knowing it. It's like not really a choice. But sometimes having the information or having the knowledge up front, can be really helpful because we can be like, oh, this is what the Mercury retrograde is for me. And not all Mercury retrogrades are made equal, right? They're all very different. This one is solely in Ares. It's going to meet up with Venus, which is nice. Again, it's going to meet up with Chiron. It's going to meet up with the North Node.

So it's going to circle around this eclipse energy. So it's going to circle around the aspects of our mind and our conversations that is more shadowy. We're going to learn about things that have been relegated to the shadows. We're going to have conversations that feel very pivotal and very enlightening and very much about the awareness building that we can do in regards to, again, what hurts our pain, our woundedness and not staying there, right? Like, Ares doesn't stay anywhere for very long. So it's not like we're meant to wallow in things that hurt, but we can't just blaze a path over them or through them or without being in conscious awareness of them. So here we are. Monday might be a little bit of mayhem. There's like a storminess to the day that Mercury Station's retrograde.

And again, it's going to be a loud storm with a lot of theatrics. because it's in Aries. On Wednesday, totally different story. Venus and Neptune make a conjunction, which is very idealistic and very sweet and quite loving and really good for delusional romantic interludes. It's really good for fantasy. It's really good for imagination. It's really good for feeling connected to people that we love and connected through art and connected through music and connected through dance and connected through beauty. So it's a really good time. time to seek out beauty, no matter what we've got in our plate, we should always remember to seek out beauty and joy and to get a little lost in it and to escape a little bit into it.

And that's what Wednesday says. Thursday, the sun and the north node, where an eclipse happens, make a conjunction, and then Venus moves into Aries. So now we're just like Aries, it's hot. We've got Mercury retrograding through Aries. We've got the Sun-North node conjunction in Aries. We've got Venus in Ares. And then on Saturday, Venus makes a sextile to Pluto, which is empowering and it's bold. And maybe we're making some connections that require a kind of depth and prowess. Maybe it's a little sexy. I think so. Okay. So the Sun North Note of it all is just like preparing us for eclipse season. So it might feel like on Thursday, the energy source, whatever that might be, metaphoric or literal, is flashing on and off.

It might feel like things are a little unstable. And in times of instability, great change can happen. And that's the thing with eclipses and eclipse season is that they bring about change, whether we like it or not, whether it's fun or not. They are catalyst. And because this North Node, where things get increased and definitely get amped up, and the sun make a conjunction in Ares, the energy of initiation, and catalyzation, is that a word, is also amplified. On the world stage, Aries definitely deals with things that are challenging to deal with. So aggression, violence, war, this is a sign that's ruled by Mars.

So we know that an amplification of Ares energy can often be an amplification of conflict, of courage, of energy, and also of, individualism. And we want to counter individualism as much as possible with an understanding of the potency and the power of collectivism. And that might be one of the things that we're really engaged with right now. So there is this kind of signature of the one kind of valiant hero with Aries. And we know that that's not a real thing because no matter how heroic a hero Owen is, she's had a lot of help from a lot of people from the collective, whatever collective that is. So there's this need to be bold and to be leaders and to be in our courage and to be in action that

feels right and in integrity for us. But there's also a need to make sure that we don't stray too far from the group, from the people that love us, from the relationships, from the peacekeeping or the liberation seeking that we also know we need to do. All right, y'all, go slow with the information. I'm not saying don't live life. Sometimes people are like, I'm going to cancel everything. And you're like, well, that's not realistic, is it? I don't know. I can't do that. You got to live. Like, I'll be doing stuff. Mercury will be retrograde. It'll be eclipse season. We'll all, you know, work through it. But I do think we could be slow with the information. We can be slow with like, wait, I don't understand that one piece of what you just said. Slow it down. Repeat it for me. Write it down. Let me read it and reread. Double, triple check all your facts. Same as always with a Mercury retrograde. Mercury and Ares likes to go super fast. So we're going to have to counter that. It's already being countered by the fact that it's retrograde. But, it's good to also think about how to counter where we speed up with information and jump to conclusions and instead say, I'm not going to jump to conclusions here. I'm going to go back through the facts

and see what it is I might be missing. Because oftentimes we jump to conclusions to escape something that hurts or something that's uncomfortable. And because Mercury is going to circle back to Chiron, we know we can't do that. Because next week's eclipse, is conjunct Chiron, we know we shouldn't do that, or we know that doing that will make things more challenging and more difficult, and that's not going to help anybody. Thank you all so much for leaving us reviews in the App Store. We read them. We love them. We take them all the heart. This one is called Favorite App. This is my absolute favorite app. I look forward to opening this app every morning and seeing what the stars have in store for me. It is so well equipped with

everything I need to navigate the world more thoughtfully, rituals, alter suggestions, affirmations. I particularly love the daily meditations and daily horoscopes. I have learned so much about my chart and myself since using this app. It provides so much insight and helps me feel more connected to the world around me. Amazing job, Chani and team. All right, I'll see you back here next week for the reading on the Ares eclipse. So much Ares, so much fire. Cool down. Have some cucumbers. Drink a lot of water. Get your rest. The energy source is flickering off and on. The sun and moon. Go in and out of looking like they exist. So this is a time to get low to the ground, to stay cool, to stay hydrated, and to stay in your

body. All right. Lots of love. Many blessings. Bye for now.