Astrology of the Week Ahead with Chani Nicholas - The Week of March 31st, 2025: Bold perspectives and collectives

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Episode 224In 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 astrology of the week of March 31st, 2025, spotlights our shared and individual brilliance. Venus and Mercury each pay a visit to the North Node, which amplifies their cries for peace, justice, and connection. And the planets of structure (Saturn) and disruption (Uranus) help us tackle long-term projects with a radical new perspective. The next seven days call us to band together, innovate, and take some calculated risks along the way.Let’s get into it.This episode covers:Venus’ conjunction with the North Node on Tuesday, April 1stMercury’s conjunction with the North Node on Thursday, April 3rdSaturn’s sextile to Uranus on Friday, April 4thMars’ sextile to Uranus on Friday, April 4thMars’ trine to Saturn on Friday, April 4thThe Sun’s sextile to Jupiter on Sunday, April 6thVenus’ trine to Mars on Sunday, April 6thThis episode was recorded on 03/17/2025.PSA: This is your last chance to unlock 30 days of free premium content in the CHANI app. It’s easy — just enter CHANI30 in the “redeem offer code” section of the app, and you’ll get an all-access pass to personalized readings, reflections, rituals, and more. Note: 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. And in this episode, we are talking about the week of March 31st. So we just had the last eclipse in Ares near the North Node for a couple of decades on the 29th, just a couple of days ago, depending on when you're listening to this. We also just had Neptune move into Aries. So we're starting this week having just encountered two exceptionally big and important events back to back. The last couple of days of March are like one set of fireworks after another. We only have a round of eclipses in a sign near one of the nodes every like 17ish years. So all that to say. have just experienced and therefore we are right now experiencing a massive shift. And we have had more

than a couple of major events happen in Ares over the past couple of weeks. We had Venus retrograding through that sign. We had mercury retrograding through that sign. We had again the eclipse that just occurred and then Neptune moving into that sign. That is a massive amount of planetary action to be happening in one sign. So that means there is an. emphasis in Aries and the qualities of Ares will therefore be yes, emphasized and magnified. What is Aries? It's head first. It rushes. It's quick. It is impatient. It is a maverick. It is an entrepreneur. It is also a sign that is no stranger to conflict and to heat and to agitation and to being loud. So I'm recording this in the past because that's what we got to do around here.

I'm not too far in the past. I'm in the beginning of March. But I'm wondering what's happening? How are you guys doing? How are you guys doing at the end of March? From where I'm sitting, at least I'm like mid-March, early to mid-March, I should say. From where I'm sitting, I can see a tremendous amount being agitated. There are massive, ratcheworthy, rallies and protests and maybe not like the biggest ones in history, although Serbia just did have a major one. It's probably still going on as I'm recording this. So there are, you know, around the world these big moments of protest, at least in the United States and in Serbia, from what I can tell. And I can only imagine that by the end of March,

And with that eclipse that we just experienced on the 29th of March, that there isn't something major going on in terms of the leaders of whatever country we're talking about. Maybe all leaders everywhere are going through a little bit of a rough time. But an eclipse in Aries is definitely pointing to leadership and how leadership deals with conflict. Now, we don't have anything going on in Aries this week. actually we're going back to look at things that are happening in Pisces, so it's a very different feeling. But the other thing that's happening in the beginning mid of March, where I'm

standing, is that there are stories of people disappearing or the government trying, the U.S. government trying to disappear people. And of course, governments do this all around the world all the time. This government has done that before. I mean, it's not like a new thing, but when we're looking at how things are landing collectively, when we think of the word disappearing or the act of trying to disappear something or God forbid someone, then we're looking at things that deal with Neptune. And we just had Venus and Mercury make a conjunction to Neptune as Neptune was changing signs. And because Neptune has been hanging out near the North Node and hanging out at the last couple of degrees of Pisces and then just moving into Ares, there is this feeling of like,

what is disappearing, what is being eroded, what is evaporating, what, and again, because Saturn is very close to Neptune, what structures and what boundaries in our collective experience, in our global understanding, and then in our personal lives are also being eroded or diluted or evaporated and maybe even made invisible or done away with or disappeared altogether. What boundaries were there, what structures were there, and which ones have been seemingly eradicated. That's one of the feelings of the moment. This week, as we're moving into the beginning of April on Tuesday, April 1st, We have Venus who does very well in Pisces, retrograding through Pisces, making a conjunction with the North Node.

Now, this is the thing. Basically from the 1st of April all the way to the 1st of May, Venus and Saturn are very close together. Right now, Tuesday, Venus is going to be with the North Node and then it's going to scoge back and meet up with Saturn. So they're all together, but if we want to parse them out and be really detailed about it, which Venus and Pisces doesn't want to be, but if we did want to be really detailed about it, first with the North Node. So the North Node increases the prominence and the significations of whatever planet touches it. So Venus in Pisces is an extraordinary hedonist sometimes, is really romantic, is really compassionate, is very like I would like to save all the orphans and all of the lost souls. And it's very Florence Nightingale.

So there is this kind of heightened sense of wanting to connect with people and wanting to have compassion and also wanting to delight in all wonderful things. And it's not necessarily escapist in and of itself, I think last week when Neptune and Venus were together, that's like a real escapist signature. But again, Venus has to do with justice and it has to do with all matters of unions and unifying people and also women, femmes, queer folks. So something about the issues that impact us get heightened. And also there might be like a person that is in one of those categories that gets really heightened. Venus is also the artist and the arts in general and anything about culture creation. So this is also a call to get

very hungry and to allow our appetite for art and for beauty and for connection and for unity and for unions of all kinds coming together to really lead us. And it's a really good time to ask what solidarity means to us. And I came upon this quote that I just want. to revisit and read us. I'm sure you've read it a million times, but it's between Audra Lord, it's a conversation between Audra Lord and James Baldwin. And she says to him, Adra Lord says to James Baldwin, when we deal with sameness only, we develop weapons that we use against each other when the differences become apparent and we wipe each other out. So I think I think that it's really important to be parsing out the ways in which we think about solidarity,

the ways in which we think about coalition building, and the ways in which we probably really often yearn for sameness and yearn for a comfort with each other because we feel safe because a plus B equals C. But that's not a robust, realistic, or it's not a recipe for a long-lasting coalition or union or movement that has solidarity at its core. So when I think about Venus, I think about how we come together, right? How we create unions. If it's between two people, if it's between a family, if it's between a town, if it's between a political party, if it's between its constituents, if it's a group of activists, it doesn't really matter. We need to build coalitions with each other.

We need to understand what a healthy and well-functioning model of solidarity could be. Because when we demand that everyone is the same, we put ourselves in a place that is far more dangerous and far more vulnerable to us being able to attack. It's like the system attacking itself almost, like moving in on itself, collapsing in on itself. So when we think of Venus retrograding now, because it started its retrograde in Ares, and we think of it now retrograding through Pisces. there is this heightened desire for union and there is a heightened need to understand what that really looks like in practice. And I'm going to be honest, like I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to be with a group of people where there are all kinds and all manners of behaviors and situations and life

experiences and to do that flawlessly. And I think that's the problem is we think we need to do it perfectly. But the South Node, as we know, is in Virgo. And it's asking us to let go of our need for perfectionism. So as a human being, struggling through this moment with you, alongside you, having no answers and not even really fully understanding the entirety of the picture that we're in, because I think that's also impossible. I am trying to work really hard on taking my need for perfectionism down 20 notches at a time. I'm not going to get it all in the first go. I can't just think about it and have it.

but I know that my own perfectionism in my life and I have a tremendous amount of it has kept me in isolation in so many ways in my life. Like on a personal level, the kind of isolation I have experienced is in direct connection, relationship with my need for everyone to show up in a way that I need them to show up. So that has a lot of nuances. And it's a not a one, you know, one size fits all kind of situation. But I think it is something that we would be well suited to be reading about, studying about, and really like talking with other people about, like really trying to talk out this idea about solidarity. So I think as this week rolls out and Venus makes a conjunction with the North Node and then on Thursday, Mercury, the planet of

communication makes a conjunction with the North Node, with Venus right there. So it is this desire to have a conversation about togetherness, about solidarity, about communion, about union, about coming together, about do we need to love each other, do we need to agree with each other, what do we need to agree on? How do we actually build something where we can gather a mass of people or we can gather the enough people, the people that we need to do the thing that we're trying to do. And then basically, Mercury stations direct right with the North Node. So from Thursday the 3rd, all the way through to Monday the 7th, Mercury is just sitting with the North Node and stationing direct.

So again, it's amplifying our conversations because the North Node is an amplification or a magnification of, and Mercury is the megaphone, the microphone, the translator. And so Mercury is translating the North Node. So Mercury is translating this desire to have a big conversation about something Piscian and also something Venus, because it's sitting right with Venus. So again, it's a big week for conversations and for learning. I would read books about solidarity. I would read books about unions.

I'd read books about movements. I think that we should all be reading books about movements and specific sections of movements in the past that have worked, that have built coalitions against all odds and with really wildly varied different groups of people that come together and do something together and where they found common ground to get to. a shared goal. So I just think that all of those conversations and all of those ideas are

really heightened this week. And it's a really good time to say like, hey, who wants to have this conversation? Who wants to have this book club? Who wants to have this meeting? Like, how do we get together and have these conversations? There's all of these problems. And we need to meet them. We need to address them. We need to be talking about them. Then on Friday, Saturn in Pisces makes a sex style with Uranus in Taurus. And this is like a big deal kind of moment. This is how I feel about astrology like this. When it's outer planets, when it's planets that move really slowly and they come into alignment, it's so archetypal. It's so kind of removed from our personal experience on a level that it is way more about

what's happening collectively. And it's not just about this one moment. It's about a bigger kind of span of time. These two will be doing this for a little while. And so, Saturn is the structure. Uranus is innovation. How are we innovating and updating our structures? God's willing, please help us to innovate and update these structures that we live within because they are all archaic and in need of a massive 2.0, 3.0, 10.0 update. What we are living in, whether it's a two-party system, whether it's obvious like oligarchical, autocracy, capitalism, corporate capitalism, massive structures that just keep feeding the greed machine, whatever system you're living in that is dominant where you are, it needs an update.

I don't know of a system that is in the modern world for the most part that doesn't need an update or a going back to ancient and indigenous knowledge and how to live on the earth with the earth with everybody. Okay, so there's that kind of like systems update, massive overhaul, but it's like who's updating the system and what is the system update? Is it regressive or is it progressive? Because is it Saturn, which can be a little bit more traditional? Is it Saturn being updated or is it Uranus being met with?

I mean, it's a sex style, so it's helpful. So all in all, if I saw this in somebody's chart, I'd be like, oh, this is really good. You can understand the rules and update them. I just think it's time for a change. We know it's time for a change. We're itching for change. This astrology says, yes, change can happen. And then Mars comes along and trines Saturn and makes a sex style with Uranus, which means,

on a personal level, that's the Mars of it all, Mars comes along and starts to like translate some of this bigger stuff. And Mars is taking action. So Mars and Saturn meet up and say like, okay, what is worth it long term? If I take this action repeatedly over a long stretch of time, is this going to be worth it? And then Mars making a sextile to Uranus is really innovative and it's very groundbreaking and it's very disturbing to the status quo, which great. And remember, Mars is still in cancer. So Mars is, if it's going to do anything good in cancer, obviously when it does hard, harmful things, it is like the system attacking itself.

It is like no social security, no security nets, no social nets at all. That is what Mars has been reflecting to us since the beginning of January when it reentered cancer. So on a positive note, and this is Mars and cancer doing positive things. So on a positive note, Mars and Cancer is like, let me fight tooth and nail to protect the things I need to protect. Let me be a mama bear, pop bear, like parental, like don't you dare mess with my children, kind of energy. So we can hope that at the end of the week, there's something coalescing that is about systems change and is about fighting for that systems change and is about something. somebody rallying us with that determined, I will protect what needs to be protected, type of energy. Because Mars is the fighter. And in cancer, it's got to fight for the family.

It's got to fight for the most vulnerable. It's got a fight to protect life. So how are we doing that together to create systems change? And then on Sunday, the sun makes a really nice sex style with Jupiter. It's very congratulatory. It's very celebratory. It's very confidence boosting. So we love that. And then also Venus comes into the mix and makes a trine with Mars. Now, I will say that Venus is making a trine with Mars. And then on Monday, it's going to make a conjunction with Saturn, which is a really tough spot for Venus to be in in traditional astrology. It means it goes from an aspect to one molyphic to an aspect to the other. So I just think that with all of these Venusian themes happening this week with Venus by the North Node and then moving to make a trine with Mars and then

to make a conjunction with Saturn and then to basically sit with Saturn for like a good three weeks, there's something here about needing to be exceptionally disciplined. about our joy. And I think that Venus in Pisces does tell us something about hope. And hope cannot be a feeling, right? We cannot rely on whimsy. We cannot rely on inspiration. And we cannot rely on feeling hopeful. What we have to do is take actions that could lead to the possibility for things. and that can be where the hope lives. The hope can only be in the fact that I'm going to work towards the things that I hold to be of absolute value.

I am going to try to be a decent person. I am going to try to create spaces in my life where healing and justice can occur. I'm going to try to be part of some kind of solution today or I'm going to be open to being so. I'm not the whole thing. I'm a part of a giant web of other people who are doing this work and need to do this work and will always do this work. But I have to be dedicated to taking actions every day that can lead to a sense of possibility and opportunity for another world to make itself manifest and make itself known. That's not going to come from me feeling hopeful. That's going to come from me making a concerted, conscious effort towards taking actions that I can hope will lead to something good.

I just said hope. You know what I mean? It is a way of being. It is a way of doing. It is a way of moving through my life. That hope can only occur through the things that I, become a part of through the risks that I take. And I think that as Venus makes a trine to Mars and a conjunction to Saturn, we have to think about long-term action plans and risks that we want to take whether or not we feel good. It cannot be about feeling good. It has to be about being values-based, action-based, values-based, aligning our actions with our values and knowing that we are in it for the long-term. like beyond our lifetime long term, setting things up so that future generations can pick them up and keep going with them. All right, Chelle, so that's the reading for the week.

Just remember that on Monday, April 7th, we've got Mercury Stationing Direct. And then on April 12th, we have Venus Stationing Direct on the same day as a very tender full moon in Libra occurs. So as we go through the end of this weekend, we've got Mercury, some people call it storming. As it changes directions, it's like a whole confluence of events. And sometimes as Mercury Stations Direct, I find it the bigger kind of cluster, if you will, of the whole journey, especially when it's Stations Direct. In Pisces, the sign that it has probably the hardest time in, in terms of like keeping the data and the facts straight near the north node, it just feels

very eclipsy. It does feel like the information, something about the energy, something about the translation goes off and on. It's like we're off and online. Things get disrupted and interrupted because that north node energy is so volatile in a way. Remember, it's where eclipse has happened. So the light goes off and on. And so if Mercury is translating something that goes off and on, there's something about the information that goes off and on. It's almost like we lose the internet, or we lose the ability to communicate for a moment, and then it comes back on. But what is that, what is happening in the interim? So what happens in the flickering of the conversation? So just notice in your personal life, when conversations come online, go offline. And then obviously,

I'll be looking at the world to see what's coming offline and going back online again. and what that means. What information is disappearing? What is coming back? Is it what was there before? Is it correct? All of those things will be really important as we end this week and begin next week. All right, y'all. Now let us talk about a question that I get asked all of the time. So I love it when you all ask me questions, when you want to know something specific, because then I know. I know. know, if one person asks me, especially if two people ask me, but then if like a whole bunch of people ask me, I know that it's going to be something that is going to be very helpful to a large group of people. So recently somebody wrote in and said, what does it mean when I have all

of these major transits happening in one part of my chart, in one house? It means that that's the way the sky functions. There will be pile ups of planets or a pile of planets or a pile of lap of planets like we've had, like everything has been going back and forth between Aries and Pisces at the time that I'm recording this. But even if you're listening to this a couple years from now, this little segment, I want you to know that that's just the way the sky is. So you have to know that the sun and Mercury and Venus pretty much travel together. They'll be, you know, a sign apart or maybe Venus will be two signs apart, but they're never really that far. So when there's a pile up of things, it's just that there's an emphasis in that area of your life.

So say a whole bunch of planets are in one sign, which, again, happens every once in a while. That means that that area of your life is getting schooled or you are getting schooled on that area of your life in all of these different ways. So say Saturn enters that part of your chart, well, that means that you're going to go through a period of understanding how to be disciplined in that area of your life, how to work really hard at that area of your life. So if it's first house, it's self. If it's second house, it's money. If it's third house, it's communications. If it's fourth house, it's home and family. If it's fifth, it's creativity. If it's sixth, it's work. If it's seventh, it's relationships. If it's eighth, it's either grief and mental health and going to therapy or it's

about your collaborations or maybe a little mixture of both. If it's ninth, it's about your long-term plans and maybe education or maybe teaching or maybe travel. If it's 10th, it is about your relationship with the world and also if your career, if you have one. If it's the 11th, it's about your groups and associations and your friendships. And if it's your 12th house, then Saturn's asking you to be super disciplined about your alone time and about needing to go into creative incubators and dark rooms and writing caves or maybe even healing retreats, understanding your more hidden aspect of self. So that's the deal. If you've got a bunch of planets that are all in the sign of your 10th house, then it's going to tell you how to be in the public life, because that's what the 10th house is,

in all these different ways. So say Saturn is there. That's going to say, okay, you got to be disciplined in the way that you show up in the world. What are you working towards? What are you building steadily over a long period of time? Say Neptune also enters the scene. Okay, well, then what's the dream? What do you need to also do away with? So Saturn's going to want to build a structure and Neptune's going to want to erode it. Well, how do you deal with both of those things at the same time? It's a paradox and it's a conflict. Some things need to be. eroded and washed away, and some things need to be built. How you do that at the same time is, you know, I don't know, we all have to, but we all are going through these transits together

so we can watch each other and see how it happens. That's why talking about the astrology can be so helpful. So if Neptune enters your 10th house, then maybe you also have a moment of fame or of being idealized in the public. And then the Saturn also being. and also being there would help you to build some good realistic boundaries around that or some good kind of like separation from how the world sees you, let's say. And then say that there's also some kind of like mercury retrograde that happens through there. Then you have to understand how like the systems are breaking down or how you can articulate yourself in a clearer way. Say there's eclipses there. Then there's like these major points of activation that are also helping you to

understand what it is you need to do in that area of your life or what is getting activated there will end up like helping you to unfold kind of like a new pathway in that area of your life. Say Jupiter is moving through a part of your chart or wherever Jupiter is transiting through, then it's helping, it's encouraging you to grow and to open up in that area of life. It's encouraging you to relax into that area of life. And then we have to know that the planets all do better in some signs and have a harder time in other signs. So Saturn has a really hard time in Aries. So if you're watching this during Saturn's transit through Ares, which starts in 2025 and we'll go for a couple of years, then we know that the structures that we're learning to build in the part of our chart that contains Ares are going to be hard one because Ares is an impatient sign. but Saturn is here to teach patience.

So how do we learn patience in an inpatient style? Well, that's the conflict. That's what makes it interesting, but it's also what makes it really demanding. So we have to learn, I think, when Saturn moves through Ares, let's say, where we get impatient, where we skip over things that we shouldn't, and how we need to go back and learn them,

and how frustrating that can be. Now say when Saturn's in Libra, the opposite sign, it's exalted. So it's like, oh, I love this. This is a great way to show up as a disciplined, organized person because it is really helpful to me. It's like people really loving or liking the way I show up because I help to bring structure. And I'm known for the kind of egalitarian or fair ways in which I create. a container or create a structure or show up. Like as I show up as a disciplined organized person, people really like it. That's part of Saturn in Libra. Saturn in cancer, you know, when it transits through cancer, has a really rough time.

Again, it's one of the signs it has a hard time in, but Saturn in Capricorn and Saturn in Aquarius, that's its home signs. So, you know, depending on what year you're watching this and we just had that, those transits, Saturn moving through Capricorn and Aquarius. And those were very Saturnian years. Now, Saturnian years mean really strict and really rigid and also very separate because Saturn is the planet that in terms of like what we can see

with the naked eye without a telescope, Saturn is the furthest planet out. And so it just so happened that over the course of Saturn in Capricorn and Saturn in Aquarius, that's like a five year period, we went through COVID together. And so there was literal isolation that we experienced together. Now, that's not going to happen every single time Saturn goes through every like 30 years, you know, segment of time when Saturn goes through those two signs back to back. And we have these severe Saturnian years. But I don't know what you did during those years, the pandemic, but a lot of us did a lot of

deep work, a lot of introspective work, which is Saturnian in nature. So you could look and see where Capricorn and Aquarius is in your chart and know that as Saturn was transiting those houses, we were going through COVID. At the end of Capricorn and the beginning of Aquarius, we were going through COVID when Saturn was going through those signs. So the areas of life, the areas of your chart that contain Capricorn and Aquarius, were the areas of your... life where you were in a literal lockdown. Like Saturn is to be locked down, to be put under a hefty, heavy weight, or to be literally in confinement. And we were in social isolation. So you can look at those years and those parts of your chart and be like, okay, well, what did I learn about those areas

of my life as Saturn was moving through those signs? And also as we were experiencing, a global phenomenon, a pandemic. So we can watch how these slower moving planets move through signs and how it impacts our chart and how it impacts us collectively. But when we get like a teeming up of things, so that means we'd have to have like a bunch of faster moving planets and then slower moving planets all coalescing or eclipses, all coalescing in a sign,

we look to the nature of the planet and the nature of the sign and then the nature of that house, like what area of life, does this house in my chart speak to? And we have articles on our website on chani.com that tell us about the different houses in our chart and what the areas of life are that correspond with those houses. And I think that's one of the best ways to learn astrology. I know we're all very obsessed with the signs because it's how we like learn to know each other.

And that's great. And a deeper level is understanding where those signs, are in your chart, what house are those signs in? Because in whole sign houses, what we use on the Chani app and at the company in traditional astrology, we look at the signs as the houses. So when you hear, when you're aries rising and you hear things are happening in areas, you can be like, oh, that's my first house of self. That means it's going to be very personal to me. I will feel attacked. But I'll also be given the opportunity to develop myself in the way it's specific to the planet. If you're a tourist rising and you hear things are happening in Gemini,

you can be like, oh, that's my second house of money, assets, livelihood, my work. That means that that kind of planet and what it's up to is going to be impacting that area of my life. So it's like a cheat sheet. Everything you understand in astrology is like becomes part of the like, ooh, this fits with this fits with this. Okay. Then I can. can understand what this is meaning for me and how to work with it in my life. All right, I hope that helps. Let me know. Send in more questions.

I love, love, love, love answering them. Bye for now.