If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world, not some mystical mumbo-jumbo psycho-babble word salad. If it's real astrology for yourself that you want, you can get it by phone or in print. And if you need help deciphering the astrological glyphs in the graphics accompanying this article, see Astroglyphs: Astrological Symbols Guide. Please note: this forecast is expressed in terms of Universal Time (UT, aka GMT). Location for all mundane charts is set for the Great Pyramid at Giza; the choice being strictly arbitrary in any case. Also please be aware that, while I never change a forecast once it's published, I do post errata to acknowledge typographical errors and the like.

PLEASE NOTE: This month’s forecast incorporates elements of (and refers to) the complete version of my 2019 World Forecast Highlights (34 8-1/2 x 11" illustrated pages); focused, amplified and elaborated with details for the month as appropriate. The full version of my 2019 World Forecast Highlights is available in hard copy by mail ($75) or as a PDF document by email ($50). Orders may be phoned in toll-free anywhere in North America to 800-527-8761, and charged to any major credit or debit card. Orders may also be placed direct from your own PayPal account page to rnolle@astropro.com – or by using the AstroPro PayPal order page.

"Yesterday's just a memory, tomorrow is never what it's supposed to be."
-- Bob Dylan
 

The Skinny

The real drama this month will be geopolitical and economic, as Saturn and Pluto narrow the gap in their forthcoming conjunction. (Exact in January 2020, it’s closing in this spring and again in December.) You’ll recognize it in terms of financial gyrations and political crises . . . a good time to take your money and get to the sidelines, at the very least. (Don't bail out now all at once. But start drawing down portions of your equities as we approach December.) This isn’t a garden variety disturbance, as outlined on pp. 1-7 in the full version of my 2019 World Forecast Highlights. It’s an epochal historic shift. But for now, let’s get the geophysical drama out of the way, because for a change, it’s small potatoes.

Geophysical Storm Signals

As described in the full version of my 2019 World Forecast Highlights (pp. 13-19), the first Mercury Max cycle this year runs from February 27-April 11. It’s winding down now, obviously. But throughout this period, and most notably within plus or minus three days of the five pivotal moments in the cycle, geomagnetic storms disrupt our home planet.

All of these geomagnetic disturbances essentially grow out of solar storms of one kind of another; be they X-Ray storms, coronal holes, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), plasma arcs, etc. Blasting charged particles out into the solar system – tending to be directed toward our home planet throughout the whole Mercury Max cycle (February 27-April 11, these high energy solar disturbances coincide with strong geomagnetic storms here on Earth (Kp 5 and up).

2019 MERCURY MAX CYCLES

Max-E	S-Rx	Cnj. SUN	S-D	Max-W
FEB 27, 2019	MAR 5, 2019	MAR 15, 2019	MAR 28, 2019	APR 11, 2019
JUN 23, 2019	JUL 7, 2019	JUL 21, 2019	AUG 1, 2019	AUG 9, 2019
OCT 20, 2019	OCT 31, 2019	NOV 11, 2019	NOV 20, 2019	NOV 28, 2019

Max-E = Mercury (Evening Star) Max. Elongation East of Sun (Max begins)
S-Rx = Retrograde Station (Retrograde GBegins)
Cnj. SU = Inferior Conjunction with Sun
S-D = Direct Station (Retrograde Ends)
Max-W = Mercury (Morning Star) Max. Elongation West of Sun (Max ends)

Dumping Gigawatts of extra solar energy into Earth’s magnetosphere, atmosphere and crust not only amplifies the potential for stronger and more frequent storms and seismic disturbances, but electrical disturbances as well: Kp5 and up geomagnetic storms and auroral displays; also outages in electrical networks (e.g. power and communications) and the human nervous system. Think scrambled circuits, and you’ve got a pretty good handle on Mercury Max; most especially within the plus-or-minus three-day window surrounding morning star Mercury’s maximum elongation west of the Sun on April 11.

As it happens, this particular shock window melds into the April 2-8 shock window associated with the April 5 new moon at 15° 17’ Aries; with the Moon at the same time making its northward crossing of the celestial equator.

A similar confluence of equatorial and ecliptic effects happens with the full moon at 29° 7’ Libra on the 19th – just a day after the Moon’s southward equatorial crossing on the 18th. This sets up a shock window that runs from the 16 through the 22nd.

Anytime declination inflection points (such as the equatorial crossings and peak declinations) closely coincide with a new or full moon, the tidal and magnetodynamic forces acting on what the ancients called the "Sublunar sphere" are accentuated. "As Above, So Below" becomes Even More So.

I’m not projecting anything on the order of a SuperMoon or eclipse, but it won’t pass without notice. You’ll know it when it happens: a surge in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, tidal extremes as well as inland flooding, and a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (M5+ quakes and VE2-3+ volcanic eruptions).

I suspect the first of these two shock windows (April 2-14) will be the more extreme, inasmuch as it combines all three of the factors described above. The later shock window (April 16-22) will leave a mark – just not as big a mark. Watch the news; keep your weather radio and emergency gear handy just in case. If traveling, have contingency plans for weather delays.

Don’t overlook the personal potential of these shock windows - most especially the one anchored by the new moon at 15° 17’ Aries on the 5th, and to a lesser extent the full moon at 29° 7’ Libra on the 19th. All life responds to geomagnetic disturbances – including humans, some more than others.

Feeling fritzy during shock windows like these is par for the course for a lot of people – you know who you are. Power down, shields up and stay hydrated is the motto – especially if you were born under significant placements around 15° and 29° Aries and Libra (and to a lesser extent the other two cardinal signs, Cancer and Capricorn).

Saturn, Pluto & Justinian’s T-Square, etc.

The approaching Saturn-Pluto conjunction – again, it won’t be exact until January 2020 - is within a few degrees of partile alignment from late March into late May. And as detailed in the full version of my 2019 World Forecast Highlights (pp. 1-7), it’s part of an historic sky train of planetary configurations in the wake of the Jupiter-Saturn-Neptune T-Square in Scorpio-Leo-Aquarius that hadn’t been seen since 536, in the reign of the Emperor Justinian at the dawn of the Dark Ages. Unseen, that is, until 2006. That’s when the same T-Square reappeared for the first time in some 1,500 years.

Thirteen years after Justinian’s 536 T-Square came a Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn. Now, 13 years after the Great T-Square’s 2006 reincarnation, comes another Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn. For an in-depth look at what to expect this time around, see the passage in the full version of my 2019 World Forecast Highlights: "the Saturn-Pluto conjunction itself is "a configuration that comes around only once every 30 years or so, and it speaks of a contraction of wealth and production, a rise in oppression. ‘The rich grow richer and the poor grow poorer’ maxim is never more true than in a time of a Saturn-Pluto conjunction."

I have been telling my clients and followers for years now, "this is not a positive indicator for the global economy, to put it mildly. While the conjunction won’t be partile (exact) until early 2020, it remains within a few degrees of precise alignment on and off here and there in 2019 (particularly spring and late fall). And it melds into a couple of eclipses (January and July) along the way, magnifying its significance in the course of events. Years like this one, when the economy is the big story, are times to be frugal and defensive rather than daring. Focus on the return of your investment, rather than the return on your investment."

Three years before Justinian’s T-Square set the stage for the 549 Saturn-Pluto conjunction, there was another historic Pluto watershed moment; viz. Pluto’s crossing of the ecliptic.

Garden variety Saturn-Pluto conjunctions come along once every 30+ years or so. This particular Saturn-Pluto conjunction is no ordinary specimen, however. That’s because it occurs with Pluto within just a few degrees of its recent (October 24, 2018) and historic southward crossing of the celestial ecliptic, something that happens only once in very nearly 250 years. In mythological terms, this represents the God of the Underworld returning to the Underworld. And he doesn’t do this without taking something or someone precious down with him. If it feels as though the whole world has been in a slow, inexorable descent toward the Underworld these past few years, that’s why.

What’s the ecliptic plane? It’s the plane of Earth’s orbit around the Sun. If you could set the Sun on a giant table, Earth would roll along on that table in a nearly-circular elliptical path around the Sun. That flat table is Earth’s ecliptic plane. (It’s called the ecliptic plane because eclipses occur when the Moon aligns with Sun and Earth on that plane.) Earth and Sun are always at 0° ecliptic latitude; which is to say that the ecliptic plane passes through both bodies.

Pluto’s orbit is tilted with respect to Earth’s. It’s on an entirely different orbital plane. In Euclidian geometry, parallel planes, like parallel lines, never intersect; but when one plane is inclined at an angle to the other, they do cross. That’s the ecliptic crossing: the points at which two nonparallel planes intersect.

There are two ecliptic crossings for any one planet with respect to another. One intersection occurs when the planet crosses the orbit from below (south of) to above (north of) the other planet’s ecliptic plane. The other happens when the planet crosses from above (north of) to below (south of) the other planet’s ecliptic plane.

The last Pluto southward crossing of the ecliptic occurred in 1770, the year of the Boston Massacre. The Boston Massacre wasn’t just an isolated event. It was a significant milestone in an historical process. So it is with this year’s Pluto crossing, which is part of a whole picture dating back to the reappearance of Justinian’s T-Square in 2006, and all the celestial configurations that have unfolded since then – including the imminent (2020) Air Trigonalis Great Chronocrator.

The 1770 crossing was the first early seed of the disintegration of Britain’s days of empire, in the form of the American Revolution. The next (1930) Pluto crossing of the ecliptic was in the northward direction, and the end of the empire accelerated greatly from that point forward. In 1930 it could still be said that the sun never set on the British Empire. thirty years later (roughly one Saturn cycle), the sun had set on the days of empire. The latest (2018) Pluto crossing heralded the break-up of Great Britain (Scotland seeking independence) and the act of national suicide known as Brexit.

These Pluto ecliptic crossings have been occurring in the Cancer-Capricorn axis since the 533 CE southward crossing in Capricorn. Historically, this is in the period of the transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Incidentally, this also occurred during the reign of the Roman Emperor Justinian – within three years of the March 8, 536 Great T-Square I’ve been writing about for years: the same configuration which recurred in 2006, for the first time in some 1,500 years. We have been living in an historic epoch defined by Pluto’s ecliptic crossings, and bracketed by the two incarnations of the Scorpio-Leo-Aquarius T-Square from Jupiter to Saturn to Neptune.

For the last dozen years or so, we’ve been living through one of the critical transitional phases in that confluence of cycles. It will take decades to a century or more to unfold, so don’t look for an abrupt metamorphosis. But since 2006, there have been clear signs of what’s to come: the economic and political disintegration of the Western-dominated world order that has held sway over the world for the past several centuries.

On that time scale, April is miniscule. Nonetheless, there will be some more focused pointers. April 10-13, for example, features quadratures from the Sun to Saturn and Pluto, plus a lunar opposition. And Both Saturn and Pluto make their retrograde stations at the end of the month, on the 24th and 30th respectively – neatly sandwiching a Mars square to Neptune on the 27th. . . This happens with Mars right on the US President’s natal lunar eclipse Sun-Uranus, and Neptune squaring that eclipse from the seventh house; even as Saturn and Pluto oppose his natal Venus-Saturn conjunction.

President Trump is far from the only person (let alone the only world leader) whose natal chart is spotlighted by the narrowing Saturn-Pluto alignment this month. Vladimir Putin, for example, gets an opposition from Saturn-Pluto to his natal Uranus; and Angela Merkel’s natal Sun-Uranus conjunction is opposed by Saturn-Pluto transiting over her natal Chiron, with the Mars-Neptune square on the 27th squarely on her natal ascendant. Nicolas Maduro gets the Saturn-Uranus right on the descendant . . . etc., etc. (A Venezuelan expat client – hi, Jackie! - reminded me last month that she had asked me back in 2014 when Maduro would be gone. Looking at his chart and watching the transits, I told her 2019.)

Although not the only player in the drama, Trump is central to the collapse of the old world order. He’ll be central to the tremors in April-May and later this year, as Saturn, Pluto and other factors in his natal chart get triggered by the eclipses of June-July and December-January.

How will you know it’s happening? Look for increasing political turmoil (domestic and international), instability in the financial markets, breakdowns in economic production and international trade. April has more than its share, but it’s just a foreshadowing of what’s to come. Remember the last time . . . it was a turning point in history.

Acknowledgments

All mundane astrological charts as well as eclipse and astro-locality maps are set for the Universal Time (UT) of the event, and calculated and produced using Esoteric Technologies’ Solar Fire Gold Version 7.0.8. Charts are set for the location of the Great Pyramid - a purely arbitrary choice, since location is irrelevant to these charts. Unless sotherwise noted, sky map images are screen captures from the Pocket Universe or Star Rover apps for iPhone, or produced by Starry Night for Windows; storm tracks are screen captures from The Weather Channel app for iPhone; and earthquake maps are screen captures from the QuakeFeed or QuakeWatch apps for iPhone. Any market images are screen captures from the default iPhone Stocks app, unless otherwise noted. Weather images and storm tracks are screen captures from the Weather Channel app for iPhone.

SPECIAL FEATURE: This month's birthdays of the famous and infamous (with astrological birth charts)

Richard Nolle, Certified Professional Astrologer consultations/orders (AmEx/Discover/MasterCard/Visa) 800-527-8761 data/message 480-753-6261 - email rnolle@astropro.com Box 26599 - Tempe, AZ 85285-6599 - USA www.astropro.com