Hi everyone,
This is a short one. Regular readers know I usually don’t send something out at the solar ingresses, but this has been a week, and you deserve.
First off, I want to thank you for the outpouring of support following my Substack update earlier this week. As a reminder for anyone who may have missed it, I have turned off all paid subscriptions until a solution can be reached. I’ve also turned off comments on the newsletter going forward; I’m so sorry that any of that vitriol has made its way to your inbox.
In other news:
We start transforming our collective writing processes next month! Registration for Astrology for Writers: How to Make Your Writing Work For You closes in two weeks — the 8-week spring session begins on April 4th. Hope to see you there.
I also had one of the juiciest conversations over at Hello Universe with Akashic Records reader Kyley Caldwell and meditation teacher Eva Liao. We go deep on spirituality, astrology, writing, and creativity.
And now — Aries Season!
Xx,
Jeanna
Today is the start of Aries Season, where the sun ingresses from the spiritual, we-are-all-one, porous energy of Pisces to the passionate, mission-oriented Aries. In the northern hemisphere, this is the spring equinox: one of the four solar festivals (equinoxes and solstices), where the sun passes the equator. Which is to say: on equinoxes, day and night have equal length, whereas solstices mark the longest day or the longest night.
Aries is the first sign of spring, the first sign of the zodiacal year. A fire sign, it initiates us into being with that first spark: and God said let there be light, and there was light (Genesis 1:3). We recognize fire as that element that is essential to light, to warmth, to food safety, and even to connection: to gathering around a fire, to storytelling.
In our contemporary landscape of meme-ruled astrology, we sometimes lose the connectivity of the Aries archetype. Yes, Aries is the decidedly stubborn, unsubtle ram. Yes, Aries is the warrior, ruled by Mars, the action hero of the cosmos. But Aries is also the one who builds the campfire and invites everyone over to create.
Right now, I’m thinking less about Aries through the lens of the warrior and more about Aries through the lens of Ostara and Eostre — pre-Christian Indo-European dawn goddesses whose celebrations were absorbed into (you guessed it) the Christ resurrection “Easter” story, a la Christmas and Roman Saturnalia. I’m thinking about the eggs that so many of us grew up hunting for around this time, the bunnies we played with and ate: all, in fact, pagan symbols of fertility. The people and land are ritually born again, as it were, in the shedding of Piscean winter and the year it represents as the new morning of the vernal equinox dawns.
Aries season brings with it the promise of creation.
Writing Prompts for the Spring Equinox/Ostara
What have you shed this past winter? What has that made room for?
What new creative fires are you building and stoking? Do you want to build or stoke?
Where in your life are you feeling pressure — around writing, around rest, around incorporating new inputs or outputs? How can you build in release valves for yourself?