Weekly Astrology Forecast, April 30-May 5: Turning Toward the Mysterious

It’s a week that strips back the noise and invites us to turn within instead as Pluto begins its five-month retrograde and a revealing lunar eclipse takes place in Scorpio. Prepare to traverse the underworld of mystery, surrender, transformation, and renewal.

Pluto Retrograde in Aquarius

It has been theorized that we perceive the invitations and frequencies of planets further away from the Sun as more complex, misunderstood, mysterious, and subtle. Pluto, named after the Roman god of the underworld and sitting at the edge of our known solar system, is no exception.

A slow-moving planet, Pluto retrogrades once a year. Unlike Mercury retrograde, which brings us back to our thoughts and communication, Pluto’s influence cannot be grasped with the mind alone. It relates to the process of death, rebirth, transformation, and the unconscious. It represents the unseen, the mystery, and the hidden aspects of self and humanity. It is the deep reserves within us that are not often journeyed, including our shadows, our darkness, and our most vulnerable spaces.

When Pluto entered Aquarius on March 23, it was a highly anticipated and influential shift in our cosmos since the planet of transformation spends between 11 and 30 years in each zodiac sign and had not been touched by Aquarius in more than 200 years. Aquarius is evolution. It is liberation, innovation, technology, and concerned with the progress and equality of the collective.

Beginning on May 1, Pluto will retrograde in Aquarius for approximately one month before dipping back into Capricorn, where it was stationed for the last 15 years. While in the early, Aquarius-influenced stages of retrograde, we will be invited to explore our relationship to independence, power, and fear in ways that are comfortable and in ways that bring up discomfort, fear, and resistance.

Full Moon Lunar Eclipse in Scorpio

A lunar eclipse meets us when the Earth sits between the Sun and Moon in perfect alignment. It is an ending and a beginning. It is the closing of the door before another opens. It is a communion with the lunar nodes, which in astrology represent purpose, destiny, and awakening.

May 5 brings our second eclipse of 2023, which coincides with a full Moon in Scorpio. Ruled by Pluto, Scorpio holds similar invitations as the Roman god of the underworld. As an archetype, it can’t live on the surface of life. It needs to strip back, to go beneath, to venture through the hidden darkness where others fear to journey. It is concerned with truth, revealing all that cannot survive in the face of truth so that it may be transformed.

This week’s lunar eclipse in Scorpio represents the culmination of an 18-month chapter of profound transformation, transmutation, rebirth, and evolution. Exposing and revealing, the eclipse journeys deep into what it means to be human. It sits with our emotions, brings to the surface our fears, mirrors where we have been clinging and what we try to control. It illuminates what sits within us that is not real, so that we may continue to inch towards what is.

Your Invitation

Both Pluto and Scorpio represent aspects of humanity that are uncomfortable for many of us. To journey through one’s inner shadow and face what sits within the discarded parts of ourselves isn’t easy. It is, however, loving. And it is deeply healing.

Pluto and Scorpio are the missing pieces of the puzzle that bring us home to the wholeness of our human experience.  This week invites us to be vulnerable. To peel back the layers and sit with what lies underneath. To witness parts ourselves we have disowned and cast into the shadow, all so that we may reach into acceptance and slowly reclaim ourselves.

As Pluto begins its retrograde, allow the cyclic journey of your becoming and unbecoming to be what it is. We are beginning a five-month journey of transforming our stories around freedom, power, and independence— meeting all that is rooted in anything but truth, so that we may meet what is truth. Transformation, healing, growth, and evolution cannot be controlled, planned, or mentally grasped. It is journeyed. It is felt. And it often feels as if it is happening to us.

Under the lunar eclipse in Scorpio, take a moment to honor who you have become over the last 18 months—how you have changed and what you have faced in the name of transformation. This full Moon is a culmination of this intense journey that we have been walking together.

Ask yourself, what final release is waiting to take place so that you may be free, fully rooted in the beauty of your humanness, empowered, and in love with each moment of your life?

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Learn more about the influence of astrology in your life, including astrological events the Moon cycles, your Sun and Moon and rising signs, how journaling can help you connect with the current influences, and more with Jordane Maree at Girl and her Moon.

About Our Contributor

Jordane Maree is the founder of Girl and Her Moon, a platform and community exploring Soul through the lens of astrology, tarot, and energy healing. She is a writer, intuitive astrologer, energy and soul guide, and host of Girl and Her Moon, The Podcast. She is inspired, every single day, to be the mirror for you to see all that you truly are, you in all your infinite abilities, in total expansion, in infinite opportunity and love.