We’re coming up on April 1, and I strongly encourage you to play as many good-natured practical jokes as you can, because dead-serious planetary transits at the end of the week aren’t going to make us feel much like fooling around.

The week starts out on a bright enough note, with the Sun and Mercury in a snappy conjunction in Aries. Last week I wrote about the dominant underlying energy of Neptune and Uranus in mutual reception. That pattern remains active for most of this week, but at least we’re not lost in a fog. It’s so frustrating when you just know you’re onto something, but you can’t explain it to anyone else without sounding like a total nutcase! With the Sun and Mercury in Aries, we can clarify the ideas that come to us, and we know what to do to begin to act on them.

We ought to come up with some pretty good April Fool’s jokes, too.

Of course, Venus is still retrograde in Aries as well, and she’s now in the second half of her reverse course. Friends are reporting an increase in events that we’d typically experience with Mercury retrograde. I’m attributing these to Venus. Personally, I’ve renewed ties with a couple of friends I lost touch with. This also can happen when Mercury is retrograde, but love and friendship are clearly within the realm of Venus. These have been happy occurrences. I hope you all are experiencing some of this, too.

I’m feeling antsy, though, as Venus is going to square Pluto on Friday, the day before Pluto turns retrograde. The dance between these two is not unlike the tango, in which one person is entirely under the control of the other. If you’ve got a romantic date set up for this weekend, you may want to do some serious soul-searching ahead of time. What do you want the outcome to be? Be honest with yourself. It’s OK to want something purely for your own selfish interests. But how you go about getting it is another matter. I know that I don’t need to lecture you on what not to do. Likewise, if you’re sure of what you want, you will be less likely to allow the other person to manipulate or control you (unless you’re into that sort of thing).

On Saturday, Pluto turns retrograde at 3°18′ Capricorn and will return to 0°40′ Capricorn before stationing direct on September 11. You will feel this the most if you have personal planets or chart angles at 0 to 3 degrees of the cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn). Otherwise, this transit probably won’t even register on your radar screen.

However, most of us are going to feel the Mars-Saturn opposition in one way or another. The opposition is exact on Saturday, but Mars transits are felt a week before and after, and this one is going to be all the more powerful, because Mars also is in a waxing conjunction with Uranus, which will be exact on April 15.

I have to tell you that I will sleep a lot better after this opposition-conjunction is behind us. Mars typically doesn’t create trouble where there isn’t any, but if there’s a bomb waiting to go off anywhere, he’ll happily light the fuse. With so many hotspots in the world right now, there’s no telling what could blow up — literally or figuratively — in the next two weeks.

I’ve got my eye on the G-20 summit in London this week, as well as a couple of literal hotspots, Mount Redoubt in Alaska and the undersea volcano off the coast of Tonga. I chose the latter as this week’s image, as it nicely illustrates the combination of Mars in Pisces opposite Saturn in Virgo — fire, water, and double earth.

Just remember that when times are difficult, we have opportunities to rise to the occasion and show what we’re made of. Most of us are stronger than we give ourselves credit for. Tough times are much less fearsome if we have confidence in our ability to weather the storm.

Wishing you all much love and courage …
Pat

Image: An undersea volcano erupted off the coast of Tonga on March 18, producing a magnitude 7.6 earthquake but posing no immediate threat to the island. This volcano and Mount Redoubt in Alaska are part of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Photo by Lothar Slabon for Agence France-Presse.