Friends
Consider yourself lucky if you and your partner started out as friends. When you’re building a friendship with someone, the expectations are much more forgiving than if you were dating. You both tend to be more honest about yourself and your past.
Friends have a lot in common, but are generally different enough to keep things interesting. You present a touch of mystery to each other. You don’t run out of dinner conversation.
This is the relationship between planets in signs that are sextile one another, generally in signs of complementary elements. Take Venus in confident, comfortable, earthy Taurus – a delight, but if we’re honest, maybe a little set in her ways. But pair Venus in Taurus in a sextile to Jupiter in the water sign of Cancer (April 13, 2026, 1:21 am PDT, 16º47’ Taurus-Cancer) and you get a combination that’s both grounded and sensible, and sensitive, nourishing, and funny. With Jupiter in Cancer, Venus in Taurus laughs more and has found someone who likes to cook as much as she likes to eat.
This week, visualize Venus and Jupiter as potential future lovers who are beginning their journey with friendship. Something – or someone – that you really enjoy is presenting you with vast opportunities and wider horizons. Enjoy them!
A Catalyst for the Imagination
Where do ideas come from? Ask anyone whose livelihood depends on coming up with them, and I suspect you’ll hear a variation on this:
The raw material of ideas comes from hours, days, years of gathering information and impressions. We don’t even realize we’re doing it, until one day we find ourselves calling our pet by the name of someone we worked with years ago and weren’t even close to – they just had a sticky name.
Anyway, that’s Mercury’s job, gathering all the data. But how do those pieces of information come together to form something more interesting than a crossword response, something that’s entirely new?
All that data needs a catalyst, a prompt, a match to ignite it. And when Mercury sextiles Uranus (April 14, 2026, 10:10 am PDT, 29º24’ Pisces-Taurus), something in the imagination spontaneously combusts. So, grab a pen, find a napkin, and scribble your great idea on the back. It’s lightning, so be prepared to bottle it up while you can.
Floor It!
A friend delights in telling the story of a car trip with a Libra driver. At one point they reached an intersection with a sign marking several directions to choose from, and the driver froze with indecision and barely avoided running straight into the sign!
Well, Mercury in Aries (April 14, 2026, 8:21 pm PDT through May 2) is literally the opposite of Libra. Libra carefully weighs its options and comes to a careful decision. But when confronted with a fork in the road, Mercury in Aries decides in a flash which way to go and puts the pedal to the metal. Is it the right direction? Who cares? Who can know, in just a moment? But you can always change direction later. For now, just pick a direction, and floor it!
Lighted on One Side
As Mars sextiles Pluto (April 16, 2026, 11:56 am PDT, 5º25’ Aries-Aquarius) the planet of personal force opens a dialogue with the planet of power. Mars is on the Sabian Symbol 6 Aries, A square brightly lighted on one side, signifying the drive and focus we associate with Mars in its own sign, seeing things only from its own point of view. Pluto is on the symbol 6 Aquarius, Performer of a mystery play, symbolizing our role in a larger archetypal context.
The sextile from Mars to Pluto suggests an opportunity to direct our energy outward, to be of use to something larger than ourselves. It all comes down to where we choose to put our focus.
Move Your Tools Around
It was time to make room in my cabinet of active client files, so one recent afternoon I went through and culled the files of everyone I hadn’t heard from for four years, putting them into a long-term storage box.
By dinnertime, two of those clients had booked readings with me.
I mean, it seems magical. And why not? In feng shui, moving objects around is thought to activate their chi. Moving a cat’s neglected toy or cardboard box reignites their interest in it. And as Mercury conjoins magical Neptune (April 16, 2026, 7:01 pm PDT, at 2º47’ Aries), something in me believes there actually was magic afoot. Mercury is the tarot’s Magician, with all his tools laid out before him; but Neptune is the magic that is summoned with those tools.
When Mercury conjoins Neptune, move your tools around.
V-Formation
The Aries New Moon (April 17, 2026, 4:52 am PDT, at 27º28’ Aries) reminds me of this story. If you’ve ever seen a flock of geese flying in a v-formation, you may have assumed the bird at the vertex was particularly dominant. But actually, there is no one “lead” goose. Flying in a v-formation allows the rest of the flock to fly farther, by protecting each other from wind resistance. But the bird in the lead position hasn’t any such protection. And because this position is such a taxing one, the flock shares the load by rotating, each taking its turn in the lead position.
Being the lead goose is not about prestige. It’s about survival.
When we think of Aries, we often think it’s a sign of leadership. But Aries, in my experience, doesn’t really love to lead; it just doesn’t want to follow. It wants to pursue new things at its own pace and is perfectly happy to do them alone. Look for the house of your birth chart where 27º28’ Aries falls. This is a house where you often finding yourself blazing new trails.
But as this Sabian symbol reminds us, being out in front by yourself is a taxing position. And at this New Moon, with Aries’ ruling planet Mars headed for a conjunction with Saturn, we should be mindful that our individual energy has limits – and that letting someone else in the flock take the lead for a while can help us travel farther in the long run.
Broken Baffle
Our venerable Mazda had started making a sound that was a kind of loud CLUNK combined with a SWOOSH. When Jonny’s concentrated efforts and replacement of various parts failed, he volleyed the problem to Mark, our mechanic of many years, for more insight. Mark poked and prodded ceaselessly for a couple of days – and, he confessed, in the wee hours of the night, as he turned over the problem in his mind – without success.
Ultimately, he brought Jonny to the garage so the two of them could combine diagnostic forces. And in the end, they cracked the code. Because, you see, neither of these men will admit defeat. A puzzle unsolved will cost them sleep and peace of mind; giving up simply isn’t an option.
And so it is when Mercury, planet of the intellect, sextiles Pluto, planet of obsession (April 18, 2026, 1:34 pm PDT, 5º26’ Aries-Aquarius). Mercury in Aries has good instincts, especially about mechanical matters, but it’s often impatient and doesn’t necessarily stick with things. Put it together with Pluto in tech-savvy Aquarius, though, and between the two of them, they’ll skip lunch and dinner as long as it takes to eventually figure out that there’s a broken baffle in the fuel tank.
Get ‘er Done
Think of Mars moving through the sky or your birth chart as an aggravating factor. On the plus side, aggravation can be motivating. If we’re complacent and comfortable, we won’t get much done. Mars symbolizes the galvanizing force that urges, “Let’s make something happen.” But when it comes together with Saturn, Mars initially triggers… Saturn. Inertia. Procrastination. Blockages.
When you really look under the hood of inertia, procrastination, and blockages, what you’ll find is fear. And nothing can make you face that fear and get to the other side of it quite like Mars.
When Mars in Aries conjoins Saturn (April 19, 2026, 3:44 pm PDT, at 7º51’ Aries), it’s like that spunky, fearless, get-‘er-done friend who drags you to the party you’re afraid to go to. If you went by yourself, you might just stand around awkwardly nursing a Solo cup of wine and avoiding eye contact. But when you go with your spunky pal, stuff happens. You’re pulled into lively conversations. Maybe you dance a little. And by the time you leave that party, you feel energized, and maybe a little sad to go – because for once, you really felt like you fit in. And all it took was a little bit of Mars.
Baptism
The Sun enters Taurus (April 19, 2026, 6:39 pm PDT) on the Sabian symbol 1 Taurus, A clear mountain stream. Taurus season represents a fresh, cleansing transition from the hectic pace of Aries month; it’s almost like a baptism.
When I was small, we used to travel over the river on Sundays to a park where we’d have a picnic in the same bucolic setting. Nearly every time, there were baptisms taking place in the small stream running through the park. I remember wanting to wade in the stream on one of these days, and asking my Taurus mother, “If I do, will I get baptized?” “No, you have to ask for that,” was her sensible reply.
When we walk into Taurus’ stream, will we get cleaned up or baptized? It’s a pretty down-to-earth sign, but this year’s Taurus season brings the Sun almost immediately into a square aspect with Pluto (on April 25), planet of deep-cleaning and spiritual renovation. So, I suppose the answer is… both? We can do our spring house cleaning, but there’s the chance for a little spiritual sprucing up as well. All we have to do is ask for it.
Writing and images © 2017-2026 by April Elliott Kent