A palpable heaviness hangs in the air and floods our days and dreams. The weight and its grave implications are impossible to ignore. In this year of transition we will keep finding ourselves caught between worlds real and imaginary as the old gives way. Its slippage uncertain and discombobulating as the devil we know falls into these broiling seas of stormy change. Though we have felt it incoming like a smackdown for a day or more, Venus is now passing by Saturn in Aquaria.

Saturn's seachange has arrived, towed in by the virgin's moon. She who has already moved on, now ensconced with Neptune at the zodiac bar that overlooks the great falls of Pisces. These cocktails could take down a dragon or two. Nothing is clear. Hard and fast borders and exclamations have dissolved. Feelings have been spilt all over the floor.

Saturn's move into Pisces less than an hour after the Virgo full moon exacts next week is undeniably a big deal. His anaretic squat in Aquaria has been keenly felt, its heavy weight reinforcing the themes of the transit while nodding to what lies just across the border.

As we wait with bated breath for next Tuesday's significant shifters, it is all too easy to get ahead of ourselves. Haul fraught minds and willing bodies across borders prematurely in an effort to project ourselves into the future and bypass any clear and present discomfort. As usual, Saturn's not having a bar of it.

Saturn's rebirthing arrives through the Sun as he begins the last kiss goodbye with Aquaria. Making his way towards the border into Pisces' patient fathoms, the ides of March spelling a lottery of changing tides.

Every two years or so, Mars and Saturn bring their hot and heavy heads together, and the world groans and shifts. The last time this happened during March 2020, it set the stage for breakdown and the world followed suit. Most everything was shutdown and wildly shunted by a pandemonium that plunged us into uncertainty and chaos. The game was changed, irrevocably.

This magical day delivers an unusual chime, at once a grating clang and a bolt of crystalline lightning that will ground its strange combination in your hummingbird heart. Today change sets itself in motion inside you and begins construction.

Astrology for the apocalypse continues unabated, darklings. The dance of the planets is eternal and does not disrupt its constant choreography just because the seething ball of gas third from the sun is crippled by the labour pain of its rebirthing. As one of its handmaidens and scribes, you can bet your hand sanitiser on its prescriptions continuing here.

In the 1920s Dr Dolittle introduced us to the fantastically perplexing creature, the lesser known Pushmi Pullyu. It boasted two heads at each end of its body, each with a mind of its own. Its remarkable form was built on both magic AND on the coordination and cooperation of opposites, requiring one part of the creature to be moving backwards in order for it to get anywhere.

One of my most brilliant teachers, a rakish afficionado of high school history, taught me two most important life lessons. The first was critical thinking: that it is crucial not to slavishly believe what you have had plopped in front of you. The second was to remember your history because as he proved to us ad infinitum: those who refuse to remember their history are condemned to repeat it.

Saturn gets such a bad rap. As a species, we may well be better at doing what we are forced to, than what we could chooose to do. When life requires work and adjusting to sudden unforseen capitulation, enter Saturn. Captain of the right thing to do, the steady long player, the solid unassailable move forward.

Saturn throwing his weight around (& strapping on his retrograde shoes) can feel gloomy and dour. A compulsory cosmic colonic. Chocked with reluctant responsibility. Littered with solid lessons that will hold you in good stead forever but feel craptastic now, & maybe tomorrow too & at least until August.