Astrology of the Week Ahead with Chani Nicholas - The Week of March 17th, 2025: Amping up for Aries season

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

Episode 222In this podcast, New York Times best-selling author and astrologer Chani Nicholas discusses the astrology of the week and what it might mean for us all.The week of March 17th, 2025, marks a period of astrological rebirth. A new celestial cycle begins on the equinox, when day and night balance out and the Sun charges into Aries. And when this luminary teams up with the planet of love, our personal and collective bonds get a boost. The next seven days promise strength, clarity, and connection as we prepare to start anew.Let’s get into it.This episode covers:The Sun’s conjunction with the North Node on Monday, March 17thThe Sun’s conjunction with Neptune on Wednesday, March 19thThe Sun’s ingress into Aries and the Equinox on Thursday, March 20thVenus’ sextile to Pluto on Friday, March 21stThe Venus cazimi on Saturday, March 22ndThe Sun’s sextile to Pluto on Sunday, March 23rdThis episode was recorded on 03/3/2025.Want to jumpstart your astrological New Year? We’ve got a suggestion: Try 30 days of free premium content in the CHANI app. Now through the end of March, when you enter CHANI30 in the “redeem offer code” section of the app, you’ll unlock all the personalized astro insights you need to make the most of this month’s astro weather. Terms and conditions apply.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.

Hello and welcome. This is the astrology of the week ahead podcast. I'm your host, your Astro Bestie Channy Nicholas. In this episode, we're talking about the week of March 17th, y'all. We are right in it. We are in the Venus retrograde. We are in between eclipses. We just had the first eclipse near the South Node in Virgo last week.

Mercury just stationed retrograde. This is the thick of it. This is one of the most intense months of 2025 and we are in the middle of the intense astrology. So if communications seem to be going awry, yeah. If you're like, what happened to that email? Yeah. If you're like, oh, I don't know if I kept the receipt. You probably didn't. Like this is a time to do possibly some damage control, maybe even some stopping of the leaks, maybe even like slowing down is a good idea. I don't mean to not live life. I never mean to not live life. I think everybody at some point in like 2014-ish took like the slowing down slogan as a opt-out of my responsibilities for life. and that's not going to get us anywhere.

Or it will get us somewhere, but it's not, I don't think, where we want to go. So what I mean by that is like, think through things slowly. Like when you want to rush into fixing a situation, especially when it involves a relationship situation, especially when there's a relationship dynamic that is like, oh, no, this seems like it's on fire. Okay, great to know. definitely like track it. Do not disassociate from it. But slow down and you're like, what is the best way to hold this situation? What is the best way to work through this challenging moment? What is the

best way to be like, okay, how do I need to hold this now that I know that something might have come undone or maybe has happened in a way that I absolutely didn't intend it to? But here we are and here it is. This week is going to help us get to the heart of a relationship issue. This week, on the 22nd, we have Venus and the sun coming together at the same point in the sky. This is where we get to clarity. This is where we get to like the, ah, that's what's been going on. That's what I couldn't understand. That's what I needed to get clear on. This is when we come to a point of understanding. If we're open to it and if we've been doing the work and if we are ready to do the work and if we're willing to look at our part in the situation.

Again, we want to not rush through dynamics, especially when they bring up really deep emotions for us because most of us want to react to a situation to get out of a difficult feeling, to get out of feeling uncomfortable. And the deal with this part of the Venus retrograde is it's probably bringing us into a space of deep discomfort. And that is not bad. It's not good if it's like, oh, the discomfort is because I'm in danger and I don't do anything about it. But if the discomfort is just being a human and making mistakes and having to go through the process of feeling bad and wanting to make amends and wanting to repair things, it's good to sit with the feeling. Why am I uncomfortable? What is coming

up for me and what is actually going to feel like it is a peace offering or an offering of repair to this relationship. Now, obviously, all of us aren't going to go through a moment where we need to repair something in a relationship. And also, obviously, repair isn't done well in our world, in our modern world, in settler colonialism, in capitalism. It's not about repair. It's about extraction. And so it's good for all of us to really work on and consider what it is we need to learn about doing repair work in our relationships and the ways that we might need to. And I'm saying that because on the 22nd, on Saturday, there is this really important moment that we go through that Venus is bringing us into the heart of the matter.

It is one of the most potent things that can happen in the Venus retrograde cycle. And it is connected to a kind of rebirth. but we have to go through the fire, so to speak. We have to go through the metaphoric, transformative process of learning something through becoming really vulnerable, right? Like being open enough, being vulnerable enough to learn the lesson and to be transformed by learning that lesson. So that's where we're going.

That's one of the biggest pieces of this week's astrology. It's just like one of the moments in 2025 that I circle because it's so indicative of what the Venus retrograde cycle means for us, what this particular one means for us, and what it can help us to make contact with, what it makes clear, what it crystallizes. And it's also going to help our relationships because it's when our relationships actually get an infusion of light and brightness and energy and healers. So it is a type of healing that our relationships do receive this week. And, you know, the more that we've tried to bring conscious awareness to the relationship issues that we most need to heal, the more this week will reveal something really helpful. And the more healing, I think, will be able to receive. The more of an opening we've created in our relationships and in ourselves to learn these lessons, the more the light of the sun can come in. It's kind of like,

you know, when you bask in a ray from the sun, like maybe in a hammock or on your living room floor, you want to like open the curtains and just like let that warm you. That's the feeling here. So the more we can open to the lessons, the more we can receive that warmth and that light and that infusion. And that can help everything. That can change everything. Really, this weekend has that kind of potential for turnaround in our relationship. or whatever it is we're working through in terms of intimacy and creativity and our one-to-one connections. Okay.

On the 17th of March, we have the sun conjunction with the north node. Now, the north node is a place where eclipses happen. So an eclipse just happened and another eclipse will be happening. And it just so happens that on Monday, the sun's conjunction with that north node, that point in space signals something that we want to pay attention to, right? It is a flickering of light type of vibe, even though technically the light is not going to flipper, flipper, flipper, flicker. It's not going to flicker, but it is going to feel a little unstable. There's a jolt of energy that comes through on Monday, and it is something that's going to most likely bring another

little surprise. We're deep in eclipse season. So it's not just on the days that eclipses happen. This is another one of those moments where it's going to be a like either a surprise kind of event or something that feels like a real turning. There's a closing and opening, a feeling of like going through the carousel of doors. Like, okay, we're in, we're out. We're moving. There's something that is shifting here. then on the 19th there is the Neptune Kazimi this is the deal from the 12th of March to the 19th of March this week from Wednesday to Wednesday if I have my dates right I do okay from last Wednesday to this Wednesday what's happening is the sun is moving from Saturn through the

north node and into Neptune and there is just a series of things that speak to the structures that are being dissolved. And maybe that's what happens on Monday is there's just this peak moment of structures dissolving or of what we thought we knew would be everlasting, no longer being. Saturn is something that is enduring and everlasting and it is the structure of something.

And with Neptune right there and the North Node right there and the sun highlighting this transition that we're in, globally, collectively, personally, there is a disillusion of a structure. And it can be very unnerving. Now, the Saturn Kazimi and the Neptune Kazimi in and of itself can have a real like magic and potency and power. Last Wednesday was really good for building structures and focusing on the structures and also maybe some of the structures in our life receiving some of that healing. And then this Wednesday's Neptune Kazimi is really potent for feeling. compassion for dissolving the boundaries that keep us from experiencing and remembering our

own humanity and anybody and everybody else's. It can be really good for creativity. It can be really good for music, for song, for dance, music is song, dance for any kind of artistic endeavor. It's really good for our ability to imagine what has yet to be. Like someone will tell you something as impossible. And in Neptune Trans, it'll be like, yeah, but if we do it this, way. Like Neptune erodes the boundaries, so the world will tell you, oh, that's never been done, so it can't be done. And Neptune's like, but dream it. See what happens if you allow yourself to have a limitless space to imagine into and to problem solve into in that way. And then on the 20th of March, the sun moves into areas and we are in the equinox, equal light and equal dark. And in the northern

Hemisphere, of course, we are in the midst of spring. We are here to receive the warmth and the light and the heat of the spring. We're here to experience the lengthening of our days. Of course, in the southern hemisphere, you're moving into darkness. You're at this really beautiful tipping point of moving into the mystery, moving into the healing dark. So wherever you are, the equinoxes are potent energetic shifts because we're moving into. to a cardinal sign and cardinal signs get things going. So this is like moving into a season of a lot of energy. Aries brings through a lot of energy. And of course, we're going to have an Aries eclipse next week. So we are also in the midst of transitioning what type of eclipses we're having.

There's just so much going back and forth between Pisces and Aries this whole month. It is kind of wild and even into next month. So on the 21st, we have a Venus sex style Pluto, which is really nice as it goes into the Kazimi because the Kazimi is on the 22nd. And basically on the 23rd, the sun makes a sex style to Pluto. So 21st, 22nd, 23rd, there's this depth, there's this power, there's this transformational quality to things as we move into the heart of the Venus retrograde lesson. As we move into the heart of our intimacy issues as we move into what we need to do to heal our relationships or heal our something in relationships. Like whatever it is you've been chewing on, working on trying to untangle, unwind yourself from trying to have more space around, trying to understand in a

deeper way about how you show up in relationship to anyone and everyone in your life. There's like this powerful depth that's lent to us through this sex style to Pluto. And again, that's with us all weekend. So that's really nice. And then I'll just say on the 24th, on Monday the 24th, there's a Mercury Kazimi. So there's another moment of clarity. And the Mercury is also making a sex style to Pluto. And then next week, Venus.

and then Mercury scooch back into Pisces. I'm telling you, the parts of your chart that contain Pisces and Ares right now are just being lit up and there's a crossover. There's like a collab that's happening. So there's a bleeding, emerging, kind of like a watercolor effect that's happening between these two houses in your chart. So wherever Pisces and Ares is, there is like one lesson gets carried over from this area of your life into this area of your life and vice versa. From the Ares part of your chart to the

Pisces part of your chart, from the Pisces part of your chart to the Ares part of your chart. And it's just like back and forth and back and forth. And it's really back and forth all year, but it's really like heightened this month and especially this week, next week and into the following week. As Neptune will eventually, by the end of the month, move from Pisces to Aries. So we have like stuff moving from the flood zone of Pisces. from the overwhelm of Pisces, from the great unconscious of Pisces into the emergent realm of Aries. And then from the emergent realm of Aries and like the fire starter realm of Ares back into the dreamscape of Pisces.

Again, things are just going back and forth. So we're either in a mess or we are in the hot seat. Or we're either like in the dreamscape or we're in the moment of taking action. to make something happen. These are the themes of these two signs. Okay, so in order to help you through all of this wild astrology, in order to help you through and to make the most of this Venus Kazimi, go listen to your reading this week in the Chani app.

If you don't have the premium subscription, I want you to use this code, Chani, C-H-A-N-I-30-30. That's the code to use. If you've never subscribed to the premium version of the app, Use that code and you will get 30 days of absolutely free premium access. It's not only your weekly reading. There's a reading for your year. There's guided meditations.

There are sleep stories. There are affirmations. Those are all recordings that you could. There's a whole library of them. There's also weekly rituals. There's also weekly journal prompts. And then on top of all of that, you get to read about every single placement in your astrology chart. It's like a reading from an astrologer. Go read about your Venus placement

to start. Okay, y'all. Now we get to the Ask Me Anything section of the week ahead. And this week, I want to answer one very foundational question, which is, what is a birth chart and how do I read mine? So this is my explanation that you may have heard somewhere before that I've talked about. Okay. This is what your birth chart is. It is a snapshot. of the sky, the moment that you are born. So it is the sky that you can see and it is the sky that you cannot see. So by that, I mean it is the full 360 degrees of the zodiacal belt. It is every single sign in the zodiacal belt is in your chart, meaning every single sign in the zodiac. All 12 signs are in your chart because your chart is the whole sky. Everything that is in the sky is in your chart.

And that means that you will have some signs that are totally empty, some houses that are totally empty, and some that are really full. Some people have like a little sprinkling of everything everywhere, not in every single sign because there's not 12 like modern astrological bodies, but you could. You could have, if you added in the nodes and Chiron and the modern planets, you could have something in every single sign in your chart. But a lot of us will have like an amalgamation, you know, because it's just about how the planets move. So a bunch of planets will be in one sign and then a little cluster of other planets will be in other signs. And we look and see the relationship of every single thing in the sky the moment that you were born.

but it's like the totality of the sky. So, you know, how you can't see if it's a full moon and it's the middle of the day, you can only see the sun. But on the other side of the world, they would see the full moon. And then 12 hours pass and we only see the full moon and we can't see the sun anymore, but the other side of the world sees the sun. But in your chart, it's the snapshot of the whole sky. And you can tell like what was visible in the sky, what was invisible in the sky, but

all of it means something. So it's a snapshot of the sky in its totality, the moment that you were born. And every single thing in it means something. So we've got the planets, we've got the signs. And then through that understanding of where the ascendant is, what sign was rising up over the eastern horizon, because you have to remember the zodiacal belt, the sky as we see it, and as we see it, and as we see the planets move, is just along this 360-degree literal circle orb around the Earth. And so we can only ever see half of it, if we'd had no mountains or anything. We'd only see from one rising sign to the setting sign. It would only ever really be half.

And then the rest of the Zodiacal belt would be what we considered like under the Earth or we couldn't see it, right? It would be visible on the other side of the planet. So that whole thing, everything that's happening there is your chart. And when we see the rising sign, then we know that that's the first house. And then we can set up all the other 12 houses from that place in your chart, from just knowing your rising sign. So there's all of the houses, which are just domains of life. The houses in whole sign houses, which is what I use, line up with the signs. So I consider every sign to be a house. There's 12 signs. There's 12 houses. So your rising sign is your first house, which is the you of the chart. And then the sign underneath that is the second house, which is your money, your assets, and your finances and your livelihood. Then there's the third house, which is your communications, your daily life rituals, also relationships with siblings and extended family. Then there's the fourth house, which would look like midnight. That's where the sun would be at midnight. It's the

point deep under the earth, so to speak. And that's your home and family and lineage and your literal house and your roots or your apartment where you live, but also your ancestry. Then there's the fifth house, which is children and creative projects and also having fun and pastimes and hobbies and all that good stuff. Then there's your sixth house, which is your work and your service and also health issues and like the daily toil and labor of life. Then there's the seventh house. It's which is the house of relationships. The eighth house, which is the house of, we could say, endings, grief, loss, dealing with the endings of things. We live in a physical body, in a physical world. Everything ends. We have grief around it. It's just part of the human condition.

But it's also a place where we deal with taxes and debts and loans and also grants. So I always note that when people have a lot of stuff in the eighth house, sometimes they're mediums because it also has to do with death and having people in your life or animals or pets or what have you pass over. It's about endings, again, in grief. Some people are grief doulas. Some people become abortion doulas. There's like something there that really knows something about being trauma informed or passages and passing from and transitioning from the physical to the, to the non-physical realm, of being. And sometimes people with significant amounts of planets in the eighth house also have had kind of harrowing experiences that may or may not be like, you know, close to the edge of existence.

So the eighth house is complicated, but it's, we all have one and it's all part of the human existence. The ninth house is about higher learning, adventure, travel, school, publishing, going out into the world, having your work go out into the world, having your offerings, your philosophies. It's also about spiritual quests and it's also about dreams and dreaming, like your little dreams at night and psychic dreaming and healing dreams and any kind of like spiritual practice that you do that's also healing. It's about going on a quest for knowledge. It's also about law. So people with a lot of stuff there can also be into law and know a lot about it. Philosophical law, religious law, law, law of the land law, all of that kind of stuff

goes in the ninth house. Tenth house is like high noon. So fourth house is opposite to the 10th house and that is the internal mysterious like inner life and the 10th house is opposite to that. So it's all public. It's your reputation. It's how people see you. It's how people know you. It's how people perceive you. It's also if you have a job, if you have a career, it's that part of your. your life. It's like putting your work out into the world and what you're known for and what you're striving for. The 11th house is all about friends and groups and associations and your hopes and dreams for the future. And then the 12th house, the last house, is about your hidden self, your hidden life. So it's very mysterious. It's very much about meeting your own inner genius, but also

your inner self-saboture. It's a very deep and complex kind of place. It's also about where we put people that we don't want to deal with. So it's about incarceration. It's about institutions. It's about being institutionalized. And so metaphorically, in our own life, our 12th house will teach us about what it is we relegate to the shadows or what it is we marginalize in ourselves. So societally, it's who we marginalize and who we want to put away. And then personally, it's how we might do that to the self. It's how we might not be in contact with a part of self. So those are the houses. And then the planets are somewhere in those houses, right? They're in a sign, in a house, somewhere, and it all means something. Having Venus in the first house is very different than

having Venus in the 12th house, is very different than having Venus in the third house. And whatever sign you have on your ascendant, whatever your rising sign is, the planet that rules that sign, what house it's in is key. And wherever your sun and moon are, key houses, key areas of life that you want to know about. There is a little video on YouTube about the houses and their meanings as well. But what signs are in the house at in question? What planet is in the sign in the house that is in question? Very important. And there's all of these different combinations. There's 10 planetary bodies we look at. There's 12 signs.

There's 12 houses. Imagine all of the different combinations you can have. And then there's the fact that planets will have relationships with each other. So those are called aspects. And so if you have sun sitting with Venus, that's going to be very different than if you have sun sitting with the planet Uranus, because Uranus is about upheaval and being a weirdo. And Venus is about being really likable and being really cute. and being really approachable and all the Venetian things. It's about being an artist, really.

And Uranus is about being a scientist or experimenter or someone who's going to really go rogue and shake everything up and break everything possibly. So every planet-to-planet combination is very specific as well. So planet-to-planet combinations are also different given what house they're in and what sign they're in. So a Sun-Urinus person in the 12th house is going to be very different. than if you have sun uranus in the 10th house where it's really obvious and really loud, the sun uranus and the 12th house will be hidden. It might be loud internally, but it might not be

as loud externally. And so there's all these combinations mean different things. The bottom line is that we take a snapshot of the sky the moment that you're born and every single thing that is happening the moment that you're born is exceptionally important. There's different rankings of how important and how I prioritize information in your chart. I'll always look at sun, moon, rising sign, ruler of the rising sign, first and foremost. I look at if you're born at night or if you're born in the day. If you're born at night, I look to your moon first. If you're born in the day, I look to your sun first.

And then I go to the other luminary. And then I want to know your rising sign. I actually start with the rising sign first. I like the rising sign first because it's the most personal to you. and then I look at where that planet is that rules your rising sign, and then I incorporate the sun or moon, depending on if you're born at night or day, and then I incorporate the other luminary. And by the time I'm done talking about all that and all the planets that they touch, I've usually gathered the whole chart. But if there's other planets that are in really special

condition, meaning if they're in the sign that they do really well in, or if they're in a sign that they struggle really intensely in, that also pops out. So there's these different levels of like ranking of how important the information in your chart is. And you can learn it all. It's like coding. You're like, okay, this code means this, this code means that. I need to pay attention to this before I pay attention to that. But a good, good, good place to start is a rising sign, ruler of the rising sign. Where is that planet, sun and moon? And you can get tons of information just from those little nuggets. Okay. y'all, I'm sending you off now. Listen, come back next week because we have the very last eclipse

in Aries near the North Node in a series of them that started two years ago next week. And then we also have Neptune moving into Aries for the first time in a hundred and a half years. It's a long time. Neptune has not been in Aries in our lifetime. We've never experienced Neptune and Aries. So come back and let's talk about all the other things that are going to happen in Aries next week and why it's important for you. And what we're closing. We are closing one chapter and beginning another one in the same part of our life. We're going to close one thing down, open up a new thing in the area of our life that is resonant with where Aries is in our chart. In the area of our chart where Ares is, we are closing and we are beginning. So come back and

please listen to your reading. Listen to your reading. If you just listen to your readings, March, it'll do what you need it to do for the year. Like, that's how significant this astrology is. And I promise you, I won't say that every week. I won't. I don't want to. It's not, I don't want to be this broken record, but this is it. This is where we are. This is what we're in. And again, Aries tends to galvanize us into action. Aries helps us to make a decision. It can be tough stuff, but it's really important. And it's very pointed for sure. All right. Some of you love, Lots of love, many blessings. Thank you for joining me.

If this podcast resonates with you, if it helps you, share it with a friend. It helps us so much. All right, bye for now.