Welcome to the Aries New Moon, which marks a dynamic solar eclipse that plays off the energies of renewal and new beginnings. A door closes and opens. The next six months will push us to take the lead, go after what we want, and make lasting changes. The Aries New Moon solar eclipse is exact on April 20, 2023 at 12:13 am ET, 29 degrees. That’s 9:13 pm Los Angeles on April 19, 5:13 am London on April 20, 6:13 am Johannesburg, 2:13 pm Sydney, and 4:13 pm Auckland.
New moons are new beginnings. But a new moon that’s a solar eclipse? It’s a pivot point, one that marks a new chapter and, for some, brings a powerful new beginning. Eclipses, especially solar eclipses, punctuate time. Life bends and shifts around this punctuation point. As a result, eclipses have a well deserved reputation for swiftly ushering in something new or heralding sudden change.
If you are an Aries, especially if your birthday is on or near the solar eclipse, the coming year will be dynamic and likely different from the previous one in obvious ways.
This isn’t our first Aries New Moon this season. It’s rare to have two new moons in the same sign, but nevertheless it happens. Perhaps the Aries New Moon of March 21, 2023 was a dress rehearsal, a subtle preview of a larger chapter of time that will take us into early 2025. Here we are, well in the threshold of fate, waiting for our next act.
This is also our first eclipse in the sign of Aries, which tells us that the Lunar Nodes are getting ready to shift out of Taurus-Scorpio, where they’ve been since January 2022. If you recall, we’ve had eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio beginning in November 2021 and throughout April-May 2022 and October-November 2022. If Taurus and Scorpio talk about our material lives, then Aries-Libra talk about individuality and relationship, something that will be a dominant thread over the next 18-months.
When we look at the chart of the Aries New Moon, we see that Mars, the ruler of the eclipse, is over in Cancer. Which is to say, the eclipse energy activates Cancer, a fellow cardinal sign and a sign that gets to the heart of some of the most important and primal of our needs — home, family, connection, stability, roots, emotional security, care, nurture, and a sense of anchorage.
Jupiter’s not far away in Aries, too. As if to maximize these changes or motivate us to make a huge leap of faith. If Aries is new beginnings, then Jupiter in Aries is like the start of a grand voyage.
The cardinal signs — Aries, Cancer, Libra, Capricorn — are the four pillars of life. In the case of Aries, we need its energy in order to learn to individuate and take the lead. Imagine a life where we have a hard time standing up for ourselves, go after what we want, to have desire for something new. Aries is not only like sitting in the driver’s seat of life, but also putting our foot on the proverbial gas pedal.
If you can imagine a life where it’s hard to be in the driver’s seat of life, then here is your eclipse. It’s pushing you to take action, to accelerate, to move. In fact, the eclipse plays off of a powerful square to Pluto, newly in Aquarius. This isn’t just hitting the gas pedal, it’s a trip to the dealership for a more powerful car or to the shop to fix what’s preventing us from moving.
Pluto is an evolutionary force. It’s not the raw power of Aries. It’s something that forges us into something new. It pushes us to make necessary changes and sometimes take a hard look in the mirror.
If you want a deep dive on this eclipse as well as the lunar eclipse to come on May 5 and the changes possibly coming your way, I did a 2.5 hour webinar yesterday. You can still get the recording for The Eclipses of April & May 2023. I also have a sign-by-sign look. Learn more and get the recording in the link below.
Finally, it’s important to note that this eclipse is at 29 degrees, which is the last degree of the sign. Twenty-nine degrees doesn’t function like the other degrees. It takes on the energy of Saturn and Saturn pushes the bar higher for us. It demands maturity, excellency, and integrity. We can’t slack off over the coming six months. We need to set some goals and be prepared to reach for them.