Where are the knots in your life?

Usually, astrologers such as myself get very excited when slower moving planets like Jupiter or Saturn prepare to enter new signs. I notice that there hasn’t been that much hoopla around Jupiter’s coming ingress to Gemini in May. Why? Astrologers are preoccupied with April.

There’s this eclipse on April 8th in Aries that’s exactly conjunct to Chiron. This eclipse happens during a Mercury retrograde also in Aries. Two days after the eclipse, Mars will conjoin Saturn exactly in Pisces which means that Mars is pushing a close aspect into Saturn during the eclipse.

Aries can be an intense sign. Aries is a sign that likes to push things to see how far they will go. The one thing that Aries cares about, the thing that people sometimes forget Aries cares about, is applicability. Aries holds onto only what it cares to use. It cares not about whether things are cool or important but about whether they are useful. Aries will discard ideologies, urgencies, and prejudices that it does not find useful to the moment that it is meeting right now.

That’s Mars—it cuts off the superfluous. Aries moves fast because it is willing to make sacrifices. It regards the present with clear and unflinching vision.

This eclipse in April is exactly conjoined to Chiron. Chiron is a point of tension. While Chiron is often compared to a wound, you can also think of Chiron as an entanglement or a knot. When working with Chiron, too much stress will tighten it up. The only way to dissolve Chiron as tension is to understand the knot’s internal structure.

Where are the knots in your life? The tensions and the wounds? What are you tangled up with?

What do you find useful for studying this knot’s internal structure? To understand how the knot happened and what might relieve its stress?

What ideologies are not useful for the task of understanding your problems thoroughly? What urgencies are mere distractions?

What makes this moment different from all the other moments of your life? What might this unique moment require from you? What would you be willing to sacrifice for direction and purpose?

Before the 20th, April is about immediacy. Never let the importance of the present get lost in more faraway considerations about the future or past. Being concerned about the future at the expense of the present isn’t about being chill. Anyone who shames you for having no chill because you are concerned about right now is only able to do this because their security is guaranteed by the present. Don’t let anyone memorialize your life after. Fight for your life right now.

Later in April, the events of life slow down and solidify as the Sun moves into Taurus. Venus joins the Sun and Jupiter on the last day of the month. I don’t think that we should hide away from life before this happens. I think that life is for the living. If life is intense, then allow yourself intensity. If you feel pain, then use the pain to find purpose. Use your pain to find people. Don’t hide from or ignore your pain. Transform it. Understand it. Understand how we got here and what entanglements we should cut. The current moment is worth the future because the current moment is the only thing that can give us any future.

Aries

It’s time to put away your pre-existing ideas about who you have to be, what you will always do, and what you were born to represent. Relieve yourself of the folly of obligation by diminishing the importance of expected return. Never let anyone tell you where your loyalties lay.

You can let the current moment change you. Ideologies and belief systems are only relevant as long as they stay relevant to the task of continuing life. They can change when circumstances change, particularly when encountering life or death scenarios. Go to a protest and let the protest change you. Figure out what you need right now. Let your actions change your thinking. Let the present moment change you. The present can change your future but it can also change your past.

Since it is your birthday season, take some time to remember last year’s birthday. We had another solar eclipse in Aries last April. This eclipse should give you additional information to understand your struggles from last year. Take a moment. Understand that you are moving forward. Let yourself change.

Questions for Aries for April 2024:
How is this current moment changing you?
What outdated desires do you not need to deliver on?
What are you loyal to?

Taurus

Guess what? Friendships, like literature, don’t have to be long to be meaningful. You would never judge a poem for its length. A relationship, too, is not successful just because it is long.

What do you look for when you listen to a song? When you read a poem out loud to yourself in your own voice? What do you look for when you call a friend just to chat? Maybe you don’t have to know what you are looking for. Maybe the feeling of knowing that you are looking for something you can’t name yet is enough.

All friendships have their ebbs and flows. Even if someone isn’t with you in one moment, they might come back. They might not or you might not. Never lose your appetite for wanting something from the world. You can still want people even if you don’t want every single person out there.

Questions for Taurus for April 2024:
What do you hope for when you listen to a song?
What do you hope for when you make a friend?
What do you hope for from the world?

Gemini

Reputation is very rarely worth a friendship. I’ve seen people, people who would never ever care that much about what random strangers might think of them otherwise, duke it out with their best friends because they are worried about their reputations. Guess what? Reputation is something that will always worsen with time. Friendship is something that will usually get richer with time. Intimacy isn’t something that you can win by being the best person in the world.

You don’t have to trust the court of public opinion with your intimacies. People out there will judge any situation even when they have no skin in the game. People who have nothing to gain or lose usually make the fastest judgments. You are the one who knows your relationships best.

Think about what this means. You are the one who has to judge your own friendships. I know that there is this really specific phase of every relationship where we start to hunger for a third person perspective. We talk about our relationships in our own heads, analyzing them, as though there is a third person watching. That third person doesn’t exist. They are a part of you. They know about your relationships because they are part of you.

Questions for Gemini for April 2024:
What do you want other people to know about you?
What do you wish to keep private?
Who reminds you of your peace?

Cancer

Never allow nihilism prevent you from enjoying all of the existing breadth and depth of knowledge you have at your disposal. I’ve seen it happen before. People will walk around an abundant world and think that everyone has been done before. All of the great art has already been made, the great stories written down, and the best movies already made. Yeah right!

All good ideas are interconnected. No idea is original. You should copy and emulate. You should walk on the shoulders of all who came before. Cherish those whose ideas are related to your own because, with them, your ideas become stronger. You are a child of a tradition.

This is why creation and study are so similar. Study the things that you want to study, whatever draws you close from moment to moment. Keep creating. Never stop creating because the things that you are studying are too good. They are good and you can understand them which is why you must interpret them.

Questions for Cancer for April 2024:
Who is the best flawed artist you can think of?
What is it like to stand on top of that person’s shoulders?
What do you understand about yourself when you study this person’s work?

Leo

It’s time to think about your debts and how they might affect your beliefs around your own potential. Do you believe that your debts are just? Do you ever feel alone in them even though most of the world runs on debt? Does your mind ever get stuck at debt when you try and dream about possibility?

I don’t know that much about finance but I do know this one truth—you are never alone if you have debt or are otherwise exploited. I know that power is systemic and that power is collective. I know that solidarity between debtors can transform an entire economic system. All solidarity, just like any relationship, begins with honesty and desire. What do you desire from possibility? What do you want to say to other people?

Let your hunger for possibility drive you towards honesty. You want to be inspired by life and not drained or used. Debt affects everything from dating to career. See if the things that you think debt means for your potential are really true. See if your honesty knows anything about your power.

Questions for Leo for April 2023:
What debts do you account for?
What dreams do you account for?
What story do you tell yourself about life and debt?

Virgo

This is a great month for standing up to peer pressure. Standing up to peer pressure doesn’t mean that you no longer care about what other people think. That would be impossible. Standing up to peer pressure also isn’t a fuck you to everyone around you. It’s alright to care about people. Standing up to peer pressure is simply about taking responsibilities for the things that are in your control.

You have the power of personality. Your power is best expressed not by winning a fight but by transforming the situation that created the necessity for conflict in the first place. You are persuasive because your analytic powers are strong.

April is about transforming relationships. Sometimes, all a relationship needs is a small break. Most of the time, when people get sick of each other, we don’t even need to talk too much to just take a breather. Sometimes, relationships need ruptures or a breaking of habits. Give yourself a break and give other people one too. The best time to transform a relationship is when you can come back to it with a fresh mind.

Questions for Virgo for April 2024:
What challenges do you want to share with other people?
What challenges feel like they are your own to take on?
Could your answers to the first two questions change at any point?

Libra

April is about taking back your time from the plans and agendas all around you.

Do you keep your own calendar? What about your own sense of cycles and time? For a long time, I never had my own planner or time keeping method. I always just used the schedules that my workplace or school provided to me. The thing is, everyone’s schedule prioritizes the things that they want to get done. If you bend your own time around schedules authored by other people all the time, you might be left wondering where all of your time went.

Say yes to events and hangouts that you actually want to make, not ones that you think you need to go to. Give yourself some leeway around holidays and group rituals. Not celebrating an event one year doesn’t mean that you lose the entire tradition. Saying no to a friend shouldn’t mean that you lose the friendship.

If you are feeling overwhelmed with things that you are only halfhearted about, try giving yourself more choice where you can. Keep your own time and see if there are any things that you want time for that you don’t need to justify to anyone else.

Questions for Libra for April 2024:
What time is your own?
What schedule is your own?
What cycle is your own?

Scorpio

This is a busy time of the year for whatever reason. You have all kinds of tasks, events, and schedules on your plate. Now is the time to get serious about time.

Sometimes, I trick myself into thinking that I don’t have time for doing what I really need to do because I don’t want to do it. I trick myself into believing that I don’t want to do things that I haven’t tried because they are too much of a challenge or because I don’t know how to do them. I wonder if this happens to you too.

For April, try just one thing. Try believing that the things you don’t know how to do are just the things that you haven’t figured out yet. Try believing that you have enough time to learn. I want you to increase your capacity around your own capabilities. Accept that you’re intelligent, that you will always do things better the second time around than the first. You can learn. Give yourself some time. Whatever you put time into will always grow.

Question for Scorpio for April 2024:
What are some things that you don’t want to do because you think that you don’t know how to do them?
What could learning these things be like?
What is your favorite thing about learning?

Sagittarius

Since Saturn has been squaring your sign for about a year now, it’s very possible that you are just getting used to a new location or a new way of living. In April, I want you to think about the location shapes your desires.

Every location closes some door. Every location also opens up another door. People look different from place to place. They wear their hair differently and they want different things from the world and from each other. I remember when I moved out of China. In China, my desires were always collective. I wanted things from other people. After I left, I started to want more space.

Everyone talks a lot about what every location offers but every person who enters a place also offers something to that place. What you offer a place depends on what you want when you are in that place. In the place where you are now, what do you want? In your home, whether that home is old or new, what do you desire?

Questions for Sagittarius for April 2024:
What did you want last year?
What do you want this year?
Did anything change?

Capricorn

The thing is, authority is something that grows only when it is shared. I used to run around and try to do everything my own way. This was when I did a lot of physical skills related jobs. Then, I started teaching children. Did you know that the best way to get a kid to stay on task is to give them some responsibility? Let’s say some kid is running around trying to cut another kid’s hair with scissors. Give that kid the responsibility of making sure every kid is using scissors safely. He will turn a new leaf.

You don’t really have any authority if you don’t share it. I mean, unless you’re doing a task by yourself from beginning to finish. That works if your tasks are small.

I wonder what sharing your authority would be like for you. You don’t need to begin with any authority in order to share it. You might be a stressed out teacher in a room full of kids running wild. None of the kids take you seriously until you take them seriously too. When you begin to share your authority, you find your own.

Questions for Capricorn for April 2024:
Who do you take seriously?
Are there any people you don’t take seriously?
What responsibilities could you give those people before you start to take them seriously?

Aquarius

It’s time to think about how funding affects your voice. Do you still think the same way when you are getting paid for your ideas versus when you are not? What structures make you feel as though you are selling your ideas and what structures merely compensate you for the labor you put in of arriving at an idea? When does funding give you more time and when does it take away time?

Let me share some personal thoughts here since this horoscope is written by a subjective human and not downloaded from the stars. I believe in the importance of free work. A lot of people get on my ass about it. “You should put your writing behind a paywall.” They mean well but I believe in doing some work for free when you can. Getting paid for writing changes it. When you write for free, you can write whatever you want. If I make enough to get by, then I can afford a little freedom.

What ideas do you actually need funding for? You need to fund your life, to pay your bills, to feed your kids. What ideas can you afford to do for free? Are there any parts of your practice, however small, that you can do for free even if you have to earn an income from the rest of your work? Do you have any ideas that actually require no funding to start and sustain?

Questions for Aquarius for April 2024:
How does funding change your ideas?
What work do you need to be paid for?
What work do you want to do for free?

Pisces

Do you actually need all of the things that you are paying for? I promise you—this isn’t some kind of save-money-by-not-eating-avocado-toast-and-coffee sentiment. Let me tell you a story.

When I was 21 years old, I got my first salaried job. I was surprised to learn that, even though my income went up, my expenses did too. I was spending money on eating out, on convenience, and on clothes for work. As my life got busier, my expenses went up too. Paying for my friends felt good but eating expensive deli lunches and buying clothes unsuited for my personality because I wanted to look professional didn’t.

Money is always shared eventually. We spend a lot of money to make our lives run more efficiently but we are not always the ones to benefit. If it’s something like paying for a friend’s meal, you might be happy to do that. You also pay a lot of money to just exist and even to work.

In April, I want you to imagine what control over your own resources could look like. When are you paying for other people? Do you consent every time? Does a budget feel like consent to you or do you need another method of communication? If a resource moves through you, then how do you guide it to where you need it to go?

Questions for Pisces for April 2024:
What do you currently pay for?
When do you consciously think about a purchase?
What purchases do you not think about?