Astrology for Saturday, 11 April 2020:

​Today Mercury ingresses into Aries. Mercury has been in Pisces since February 3, with a brief visit to Aquarius during its retrograde cycle. Now finally moving out of the sign of both its antithesis and fall, Mercury—the planet of communication—enters the fiery cardinal sign of Aries. These are the days of coming passionately, assertively, and willfully to voice. Reflecting on her own experiences of domestic violence, Sara Ahmed writes in Living a Feminist Life, “… being judged as willful was a technique for justifying violence in the midst of violence. You are being punished for your subjectivity, for being the being you are. You can be beaten by a judgement … becoming a feminist was about becoming audible, feminism as screaming in order to be heard; screaming as making violence visible; feminism as acquiring a voice. Willfulness: the acquisition of a voice as a refusal to be beaten.” In Aries, Mercury compels us to become audible, to scream if we have to, to assert our voices as an assertion of our right to exist and as a refusal of violence. The Moon in Sagittarius opposes Venus in Gemini then makes a sextile to Mars in Aquarius. We may feel the tension of giving our own needs room to take up space while also making ourselves available to respond to the needs of others. Finding that balance may require us to demand change of a whole system, in order for all of our needs to take up space. Finally, Mercury makes a sextile to Saturn in Aquarius. If Mercury in Aries fuels the fires of our voices, Saturn gives us the reassurance to refuse what is no longer bearable. We are living in truly unprecedented times; if you find yourself faced with expectations that are no longer sustainable, remember that you have the right to refuse. And as adrienne maree brown writes in Pleasure Activism: “No is a complete sentence.”