Virgo’s archetypal filter, which the Sun is now casting its rays through, is trained on the ordinary, on the tasks of putting our lives in order, of harvesting the fruits of the earth (bountiful during Virgo season) and getting to the careful work of separating the chaff from the wheat.

Poems of love and light abound, but these two strike me as beautiful illustrations of the Leo archetype, ruled by the Sun, the Light that makes all Life possible in its great generosity. As Mary Oliver say, when we allow that light in energetically, we feel ourselves infused with “something of inexplicable value.” We ourselves become a Light.

For many, this archetype marks where we feel ‘at home’. For others, less resolved around issues of family and home, Cancer energy can invoke, as Rilke says above, “the great home-sickness.”

Magic Weaver: Some of my recent awakenings about the sign of Gemini have pertained to its connection with magic, as well as how it asks us to leave our entrapment in rational linear thinking, and leap out of the very box from which it came. Because while we do associate Air sign energy with the thinking function in astrology, thinking was not originally intended to be a Descartian slam dunk.

Saturn asks us to give form and structure to, and, importantly, take responsibility for, what it touches. It’s a bit of an oxymoron, to take responsibility in a Piscean manner, as Pisces inherently seeks to move us beyond structures and ‘shoulds’, to other planes of consciousness, other levels of awareness, and other ways of knowing and feeling.

Taurus is far more than just ‘the builder’ or the one connected to the physical pleasures, and comfort. Its mission is to get us to slow down and go deeply into our interactions with the physical plane in order to infuse our experience with the spiritual essence of the sacred.

Uranus has been in Taurus since 2018. Since that time, the ‘shocking news’—Uranus being about radical change, insights, and shocks—of the effects of climate change has grown ever more shocking. But along with this has grown a new awareness, both in the public dialogue and in our small lives, of the need to love, respect, tend, and listen to the Earth.

The zodiacal wheel was originally developed by the Greeks to be in sync with the cycles of the seasonal changes on Earth. So at this point in time, we are poised at the beginning of the seasonal and astrological wheels, which brings along the blessing of healthy green things sprouting from the ground! And as a trained herbalist I can inform that some of these are great to ingest for spring cleansing of our livers, which may have gone sluggish during more sedentary, indulgent-inclined winter habits!

So, interestingly, we have this pairing of Saturn, no longer in one of its “home” signs (for the past three years it was in Aquarius, of which Saturn is a co-ruler, and prior to that, it was in Capricorn, of which Saturn is sole ruler), now entering the very different, watery realm of Pisces, associated with the Fish, and the transmutation of consciousness. Perhaps this is an invitation for the reemergence of Feminine ways of being to seep in through our infrastructures, infrastructures that, during Saturn’s time in Aquarius we already saw starting to shift, and perhaps begin crumble.

I love how Rilke weaves together these realms of earth and stars for us, particularly in the vein of the prevailing Aquarian Air element, invoking birds, and the ‘winds of homecoming.’