Key points of the month

• In the first two weeks of April we all have willpower at our disposal, especially in the areas of making money and relationships. We can use it to push through our personal agendas or apply it in a broader context, to serve our community. A favorable time to take care of financial matters.
• Gradually a quality of detachment comes in, which makes it easier to face limitations that Pluto imposes, mostly felt in the period from April 12 to 21.
• The 21st and 22nd bring a natural pause, and the last part of the month is more quiet. A time to reflect on core ethics, evaluate new ideas and align our mind and heart, ready to move in a new direction.

The first ten days

In these days the Sun, Venus and Mercury traverse Gates 21 and 51 in the Ego or Willpower Center. With Mars in Gate 45, the Channel of Money (21-45) is activated several times, first by the Sun, then by Mercury. This gives us the will to take charge of material matters and to make things happen in that area.
Until the 7th Jupiter and Saturn still activate the Channel of Sensitivity (19-49), with a different flavor than last month. It is focused now on navigating a situation of transition in a group setting. Be careful to only delegate to others who are really capable. Saturn can help with that. Yet when you demand perfection of your team, it will sour relationships.
After that Jupiter moves into the Gate of Desires (Gate 30, until May 15), magnifying the highs and lows of feeling. Can we recognize our emotional expectations and disidentify from them?

The second ten days

Here we see Mars move into Gate 12 (Standstill, taking stock) and activate the Channel of Openness (or Romanticism) with Neptune in Gate 22, Grace. Mars may stir up the fine, but also sometimes etheric Neptunian vibes. This energy can confer grace upon our actions, once we have given some moments to tune in to the emotional qualities that are transmitted along with our activities.

At the same time, Pluto activates the Channel of Mutation, first with Venus, then with the Sun. Mutation means a sudden change after a long period of build-up. The energy for something new (Gate 3) is met with a wall of restriction (Pluto in Gate 60). This requires patience, and trust that change will happen in its own right time.
Saturn creates a quiet counterpoint in Gate 19, Line 6 (from April 15). Here is the sage on the hill, who presents a compassionate overview to anyone willing to come close and listen. And that’s a metaphor for an inner process.

The third ten days

On April 21 and 22 Mars, which has now moved into Gate 15, Humanity, creates the Channel of Rhythm with the South Node in Gate 5. It emphasizes the rhythms of nature: a good opportunity to slow down, take a breather and spend some time in nature.
This ushers in a more contemplative period, where we can integrate the experiences of the previous weeks.

At the beginning of the year, Venus was the morning star, but since Jan 23 it is no longer visible. The planet is passing in front of the sun (seen from earth) and will emerge as the evening star on May 24. Currently Venus and Mercury, which is always close to the sun, move through the same gates. It makes it easier to speak about what we feel. For a really clear communication, both our mind and heart need to be open.

From 28 April to May 2 the Sun and Uranus, planet of revolution, stand together in Gate 24, Returning. Through this gate innovative ideas can enter into the world. It can also cause the mind to run around in circles, recycling the same patterns in the hope of finding a solution.
Repetitive revolutionary thoughts do not seem to be a very pleasurable way of being with the mind, and they can lead to some addictive or self-destructive behavior. Perhaps good to pay a visit to that sage on the hill, and come down with equanimity and a renewed sense of direction. Direction will be a theme in May, and also in the coming summer (or winter) season.

Things are picking up speed in this month. All planets move direct and the bigger planets change gates and lines faster than usual.

The takeaways for March:

• The first ten days of the month, practice the art of listening. See if you can keep the mind with its comments in the waiting room. Listening typically is a more efficient way to connect than to talk.
• Pluto and Uranus activate the Channel of the Thinker from March 3-15. Watch a tendency to escape reality by veering off into belief systems that promise to explain it all. Rather than blaming the world, find ways to nourish your inner vision. The same energy turned inwards can give deep insights in your inner truth. Sharing from there will really inspire others.
• If you can, give yourself some time to dream/vision and relax on March 11 and 12. Sun, Venus and Neptune share the Gate of Grace on those days. Also afterwards Sun and Venus stay close, promoting harmony, agreeable sensations and the flow of money. Could be a good time to start a new love affair or refresh an existing one. Around the spring equinox on March 20 there is an opening for the innocence of the heart. From March 13-18 the energy can be flirtatious or restless, while after the 23^rd it is easier to know what you actually feel and to express it with clarity, and perhaps some compassion from Chiron.
• On the 16^th, Pluto moves into Gate 60, Limitation, making ongoing restrictions on the outer plane quite possible. Pluto’s deeper purpose is to goad us to our essence. The challenge is to stay centered and trust in our own dignity when under pressure.

So this month has a gentle, pleasurable side, as well as the continuing, uncompromising drive from Pluto to take away all that is not essential. Perhaps Jupiter and Saturn in the Channel of Sensitivity can mediate between these two extremes.

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In focus this month: the Channel of Sensitivity

On March 11, Jupiter moves into Gate 49 and thus activates the Channel of Sensitivity with Saturn in Gate 19. There are many dimensions to this channel. I spoke about some pretty mystical ones in last month’s video.

For now, let’s focus on how this channel plays out in relationships. Here Gate 19, Approach, which is in the Root Center, wishes to connect with the Emotional Center. All the three channels between Root and Emotions share this characteristic: the raw life energy in the Root wants to experience itself as feeling. In a sense, it’s the beginning of the human journey. Gate 49, on the other side of this Channel in the Emotional Center, is called Revolution. It is tuned in to the deep currents of our feelings. From there it knows what is beneficial to let in, what needs to be changed, and what should be rejected. It is an aspect of our emotional authority, which rules this channel when it is activated.

The immature expression of Gate 19 is to be needy, and that of Gate 49 is a reactive ‘no’. You can imagine for yourself the relationship dynamics that unfold. With growing awareness, Gate 19 learns that can be more self-reliant. From that viewpoint it can see itself as part of a relating field between itself and the other, and become sensitive to the effect of its actions within that field. Gate 49 learns that interaction can be enriching, and how to distinguish between various approaches. In the highest expression of this channel’s energy,  Gate 19 lets go of the need to be a separate entity, and Gate 49 simply opens to the flow of life, welcoming whatever life brings. This engenders a deep state of trust and unity.

When this channel is active in your chart or in your relationship, know that the feeling waves in it can be gentle. It takes a subtle type of awareness to understand what transpires. And when you are with someone who has this channel and you do not, it helps to appreciate this subtlety. Otherwise, you could be behaving like a bull in a china shop, and you would miss the special quality of sensitivity that your partner offers here. They probably feel your emotions before you do, and so can become a great mirror and even teacher in your life.

The transits in three sentences:

• The first and third week of the month are good to initiate new projects.
• The Emotions Center is very present this month: many feelings can come up. Good to find creative ways to express them.
• Until Feb 21 Mercury is retrograde, mostly in emotional gates. Take a deep breath before speaking about feeling matters.

Transits in detail

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Here in the mountains everything is under a thick layer of snow in February. But the days are getting longer and underneath the snow life is preparing for an outburst in spring.

The transit Chart for February gives me a similar impression.
There is a layer of restraint – Pluto in Gate 61 keeps insisting to find our own truth before we act, and Saturn, in Gate 41 until Feb 18, imposes reality checks on our ideas. Yet underneath that life is teeming.

The Directional Gates

In Human Design, they are the gates of the Self Center, the one that gives direction to your life. This is true also if you don’t have this center defined. They look like the spokes of a wheel.

The original dates of the Celtic festivals are when the sun is in the gates of the Self Center. The sun is in Gate 13 on Feb 2. This is the Celtic festival of Imbolc, situated between Midwinter and the Spring equinox. In the northern hemisphere, it marks the first stirrings of spring, after being purified by the cold of winter, which has taken away all things non-essential.

So you can look what winter has taken away from you, or more broadly, what life has taken away from you in the last months. And for many of us there have been losses – of loved ones, of our freedom to move, the loss of money or job security, or of our health. It can be a lot to take.
While honoring these losses, which are real, see if there is also a perspective where the loss has brought you closer to something essential in you. Perhaps a deeper sense of security, that comes from within, or how precious life is, even on this troubled planet.
And then look from that perspective if there is a new sense of direction, a fresh beginning. Something you want to nourish now, so that it can grow stronger and come above the ground in spring.

‘Aquarian’ Gates

Back to these five gates in Aquarius. The sun moves through them in one month – this year from Jan 20 to Feb 18. It’s about the same for Mercury and Venus. The outer planets however are slow, so they will be in this part of the sky for a longer time. Jupiter all of this year, Saturn until the end of 2023, and Pluto will enter the first of these five gates in 2024. Pluto is the slowest planet and brings deep, collective transformation.

So the next years will have a strong ‘Aquarian flavor’. From the viewpoint of the ancient Celts, it is Imbolc time, a period where we will experience collective and individual loss, which can lead to a fresh beginning. We will need to mobilize the inner strength and understanding to let go of what is taken away, stay with the feelings it may bring, and allow ourselves to blossom into parts which are as yet unknown to ourselves. It’s like pruning a tree, and we are the tree.

This month’s transits

In February, the two channels in these gates, 30-41 and 19-49, have various activations until the 20th. The first is called the Channel of Recognition (Jan 26-Feb 7 and Feb 13-18), through which new experiences want to come into the world. It’s a good time to start new projects, with Saturn in Gate 41 helping us to keep our feet on the ground and stay practical.
The second is the Channel of Sensitivity (Feb 4-12 and 17-20). Here we want to approach the other and melt with them. It’s easy to become co-dependent; good to remember that through the other we actually long to approach the divine within ourselves. Touch is important in this channel. If you need to be socially distant, see if you can be in touch with the elements: air, water, earth, fire.

After the twentieth, Jupiter and Saturn will be in gates 13 and 19 into March. More about that next month.

A final note: from Jan 31 to Feb 21 Mercury is retrograde. During this time mind your words, especially in feeling matters. Sometimes the best way to let love flow is to stay silent.

My dear colleague Marga has mapped the development of Covid-19 with the planetary transits. In this guest blog she presents her conclusions.

These are astrological notes that I took during the months of lock-downs and unlockings, originally published in June as facebook posts, in reference to the main facts and tendencies of Covid-19 pandemic all over the world. I also inserted links of relevant information excerpted from the media. I am now editing and integrating information for people who are not so acquainted with the HD system and also adding more references to facts and events.

It all started when, while reading an article, I realized that the beginning of the outbreak in Italy happened during the so called Incarnation Cross of Contagion, last February 14th.

Incarnation Crosses in Human Design are fixed configurations of the Sun/Earth binomial on the HD Zodiac wheel during the solar year. They’re calculated at the actual position of the Sun on a given day and at 88° of Solar arc – roughly 3 months before. Considering the Zodiac wheel, the Earth is always organically opposite to the Sun. So we have basically points in space-time that make a specific configuration for each moment of the solar year. The Crosses always occur more or less at the same time in the year, lasting 2 hours to 4 days (according to a fixed structure), and they bring a special climate, imprinting life with their peculiar energies. Each Cross  happens 1, 2 or 4 times in a year, in the different seasons, with shifting of the reciprocal positions of the Sun and the Earth and following a predetermined pattern ruled by the motion of the Sun.
Another important observation I made it’s that on February 13th, one day before the Contagion Cross, planet Saturn had entered Gate 60, Limitation (26°22′ Capricorn to 02°00′ Aquarius), after 30 years, and it seemed particularly relevant in a moment in time when all the world was basically locked, limited, restricted… And even if I am not an expert of transits, I decided to go deeper into planetary positions, to see if they could really explain, or describe, what was – and still is – going on.

So here is the timeline more or less as I originally presented it, with some clarifying notes.

Phase 1: China

17 November 2019: first case tracked down in Wuhan

We all know that word about a new disease, that was killing people in China, spread all over the world around December 2019, but of course it is pretty obvious that it often takes a while before a new virus gets isolated and identified. I did some research and from an article on The Guardian I learnt that, “The first case of someone suffering from Covid-19 can be traced back to 17 November, according to media reports on unpublished Chinese government data. The report, in the South China Morning Post, said Chinese authorities had identified at least 266 people who contracted the virus last year and who came under medical surveillance, and the earliest case was 17 November – weeks before authorities announced the emergence of the new virus”. (excerpted from Https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/first-covid-19-case-happened-in-november-china-government-records-show-report )

Emblematically, on this very date, we entered the Incarnation Cross of Contagion (17/11 to 20/11).

As of course a virus does not come out of the blue, I have been wondering if the previous Cross of Contagion – 18/8-21/8 2019 – could have been relevant, even though it was really impossible for me to retrieve such information. But, while looking for something else, I came across this headline:

“Virus might have emerged in august”

Https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/virus-may-have-emerged-in-august/article31798472.ece

So, there it was! Another little piece in the planetary puzzle, even though hypothetical…

We have 4 crosses of Contagion every year: February, May, August and November. They probably beat the clock of seasonal flues in different geographical areas with no much fuss, but this time something went differently. Maybe the interplay of Neptune in Pisces (63 cusp 22) and Mars surfing from Virgo (47) to Sagittarius (5 cusp 26)? Or the transit of Mars in Leo (29) during the August 2019 Cross of Contagion (29-30; 8-14), followed a few weeks later by the opposition to Neptune? Neptune, according to traditional astrology, is connected to viral and bacterial infections. And Mars is connected to immunity. Some astrologers do say that Neptune/Mars relationship (opposition in September 2019, square in January 2020) has played a role into it.

Another interesting event: on the 20th of January we had the Fixed Cross of Restriction (a fixed cross happens only once in a year), in Gate 60.4 and, 2 days later, the Chinese government enforced the lock-down in Hubei region.

Phase 2: Italy and the rest of the world

14 February 2020: first Italian (and European) cluster and acknowledgement of possible community transmission in Codogno, Lombardia. The rest is history, we all know what happened. Literally something that will be remembered in history books…

And on the very same day we entered the Incarnation Cross of Contagion (14/2 to 17/2) again… The day before, 13/2, Saturn had entered Gate 60, the Limitation or Restriction, reinforcing the climate set up by the Cross of Restriction on the 20th of January. Around this time restrictions started to take place everywhere, culminating in lock-downs and travel bans all over the world a few weeks later. On the 12th of March WHO declared Covid-19 a worldwide pandemic.

The thing that really struck me about this planetary position is what the traditional I-Ching hexagrams narrative – on which HD Gates are based –  has to say about it:

• Line 1: don’t go out of your home, not even to the courtyard.
• Line 2: don’t go out of the door of your home: danger!
• Line 3: the one who cannot restraint himself will complain.
• Line 4: restriction fulfilled.
• Line 5: better to sweeten up the restriction.
• Line 6: bitter restriction: perseverance will bring disgrace.

Saturn slowly moved through these lines, pacing the different phases and moods of the lock-down, and became retrograde on the 11^th of May. Then it lingered on the 6^th line, “bitter restriction: perseverance will bring disgrace” with all the problems and conflicts that everywhere people were facing, tired and exhausted of being quarantined. Jupiter had entered Gate 60 on the 20^th of April, complicating a situation that was already becoming very tense. While Saturn is at home in 60, because it has itself an energy of restriction and limitation, Jupiter is at total unease, because it wants to expand and freaks out in restraint. It also gives a sense of confidence and optimism, that in this case can translate in the idea that it’s ok to let go of any kind of restraint, including mask and social distancing, creating a false sense of being safe, especially since it also turned retrograde on 15^th of May, at the same time when we entered the next Cross of Contagion (15/5-18/5), starting a “phase 3” of openings and increasing infections in the states of India who had, up to that point, limited the spreading of the virus, and of exacerbation of the situation in the Americas and in Russia.

Phase 3: India, Brazil, US, Russia

Between the Cross of Contagion of May and the following one in August (17/8-20/08) the countries who were very affected in Phase 2 saw less infections and restrictions. While US, Brazil, Russia and India took the stage with massive rates of infections, with different problems to face and different attitude of the people towards the issue of restraint (self-quarantine, mask, SD etc.)

This phase saw a temporary relief of Gate 60 with Jupiter moving out on the 6^th of June,  retrograding in 61, and Saturn slowly stationing and retrograding on the 6th line of the Gate, detached and distracted enough not to take anything seriously about Limitations… with Jupiter, Pluto and Uranus screaming from the Channel of Awareness (61-24), and Neptune in Pisces stirring the waters of Information/Misinformation from gate 22. It was indeed a tough battle…

Phase 4: The Second Wave

Soon after the Cross of Contagion in August, on the 24th of the same month, Saturn too regressed to 61, leaving a long moment of interregnum, till it turned direct again on the 29^th of September, indicating that the climate of Limitation would  return by the time it entered 60 again on the 4^th of November, pacing through 60 again and aligning with the last Cross of Contagion of 2020 on 16/11-19/11 and bound to make its final exit from 60 on the 3^rd of January 2021.  Also Jupiter is bound to return to 60 on 2^nd of December and complete its tour of the Gate on the 28^th of the same month.

So I guess we will not be really free of restrictions and limitation – and of the virus – until the beginning of the new year, but if the dance of Saturn and Jupiter in and out of 60 and around the Crosses of Contagion provides indeed a description of what has happened, we can say it is likely that we will be free of it by the beginning of the new year, with a wake to the Cross of Contagion of February 2021 (13/2-16-2). Neptune will be lingering in Pisces for a long time, but it has made peace with Mars during the June conjunction and the fact that the sextile will be during the Cross of Contagion on February 13th makes us hope for the best. The next square from Gemini will be in April 2021, but it will be a wading square, probably just the wake of Covid-19…  I am not a champion at predictions, but it all makes sense to me and we will all see how it will actually play out very soon…

Till then, the call is to caution, patience and wisdom… other strong Saturn themes…
After that, Saturn will move to 41.1, the start codon Gate, marking a completely new phase. The last time this shift from 60 to 41 happened was December 1991 that saw the end of the USSR after a whole 30 years of Restrictions that affected the whole world and that became so symbolically evident in 1961 with the building of Berlin Wall with Jupiter in 60 (barbed wire phase), soon followed by Saturn (cement and concrete phase). And the story of human Limitation can surely be traced back, analyzing all the 29-30 years cycles of Saturn starting in 60 and ending in… 60. But that’s, maybe, for another article…

Marga Eleonora Scroppo

Disclaimer: these are just notes and not an exhaustive analysis of the whole Human Design astrological picture during this time. I hope that someone more expert than me will take on the task and fill in the blanks.