What’s cookin’ for April 🌷
Welcome back to Astrotribe 🌠 A digital space I’m building for both astrologers and the astrology-curious. Astrotribe content usually lives behind a paywall and is shared within my network, but for the month of April I’m gifting free subscriptions here on Substack.
If you’ve been a free subscriber following my work over the last year, reach out in the comments, via DM, or message me in the places you know to find me, and I’ll update your account with a freebie month 💝
At the moment, I’m (reluctantly) building a YouTube channel to offer more visibility into the brand I’m creating. Part of that is sharing what I know about how geopolitical themes tie into timelines mapped against the stars, along with insights from those within my network 💝
Today, we’re welcoming Hummingbird, a fellow American currently residing in Hawaii. Hummingbird is a mundane astrologer whose work I came across in 2022 on Medium. She was the first American astrologer I found actively speaking about America’s collapse in real time, bold enough to use language we are only now collectively applying to events that began over a decade ago.
She harbours a wealth of knowledge in tracking America’s Pluto Return and doesn’t hold back when painting a reality that, with unsettling precision, reflects what our collective future could look like if we don’t take matters into our own hands. So I recommend saving this one for when you have the time and headspace. The topics dominating our headlines are exhausting our nervous systems. It’s vital we approach this coming period with clarity.
The intention behind this podcast was to invoke peace, harmony, and collaboration. A theme aligned with the Aries–Libra axis we’re currently navigating, echoed in April’s New and Full Moons. At this phase in our timelines, the power of prayer and intentional visualisation can prevail if enough of us are working towards building a new reality.
Imagine it. See it in your mind’s eye. Embody the thought. Then act on it.
March 28: Saturn Sextile Pluto
This weekend’s skies are not quiet ones. If you’ve been feeling a low-grade tension you can’t quite name, a sense that things are hardening, or that events are moving faster than they should, the planets can help explain. Let’s walk through it together.
First Things First: What Is a Sextile?
If you’re an astro newbie, you might be wondering what a sextile is.
In astrology, a sextile occurs when two planets sit roughly 60 degrees apart in the sky. Think of it like two people at a party who aren’t in the same conversation, but can still hear each other and thus work to influence each other. It’s a supportive, cooperative angle. Not as intense as a conjunction (same place, same energy), or as confrontational as an opposition (facing each other head-on). A sextile is more like two forces working in parallel, quietly reinforcing each other in the background.
Now that we’ve got that in the memory bank, let’s get into it.
The Sun is currently moving through Aries, the sign of bold action, fresh starts, and the primal urge to get shit done. Aries doesn’t wait or deliberate. It leads with its chin. The Sun here is strong, direct, and clear.
Saturn, on the other hand, is not in its happy place in Aries. Saturn loves structure, patience, and long-game strategy. Aries wants to move now, creating real tension between impulse and consequence.
Consider the geopolitical stage right now. We are a month into a war that was initially projected to last a couple of weeks. This is a weekend where decisions that feel impulsive will quickly harden into consequences that stick. Mistakes made in haste will carry real weight, and fast.
The Sextile That Locks It In: Pluto in Aquarius
Here’s where our new vocabulary comes in handy.
While the Sun and Saturn are doing their tense dance in Aries, the Sun is also forming a sextile with Pluto in Aquarius. Pluto is the planet of deep, irreversible transformation that doesn’t deal in surface-level change. It breaks down power structures, exposes hidden systems, and accelerates long-term shifts that are already underway.
Pluto in Aquarius asks big questions:
How do we organise society?
Who holds power?
What does the future of collective life actually look like?
The sextile between the Sun and Pluto this weekend means that whatever is set in motion (personally, politically, globally) doesn’t stay localised. It propagates. Choices made now don’t dissipate. They echo. We already see this build up over this last month with the rising price of oil triggering global inflation. I reckon we now should prep for an energy crisis that brings organised blackouts and/or lockdowns. Not mandated ones, but rather because no one will be afford to travel and rely on luxuries of the old world. Nevertheless, it’s a great time to learn about the impact of fossil fuels on our planet 😕
The bigger picture of timelines on repeat
History doesn’t just rhyme. It runs on cycles. The same planetary configurations that appeared at pivotal moments in the past return as opportunities for course correction. When these transits reoccur, they activate familiar themes… even if the costumes look different.
Right now, we are watching one of those moments unfold in real time. The ongoing war between the USA/Israel and Iran… the strikes, the counter-moves, the so-called negotiations happening while bombs are falling… this carries a very specific astrological signature.
With Saturn in its fall (a placement where it struggles to operate effectively) in a war-ready Aries sky, authority is present, but its application keeps missing the mark. Each move justifies the next. Each response creates conditions that demand another response. This is force without strategy and escalation without an exit plan. We can expect this war to last throughout this year. Even if it ends tomorrow, countries are already dipping into reserves which take years to restore. Inflation isn’t something anyone can escape, and the long-term impact of what has already been executed will take years to rebuild for the countries with the most impact.
This is what happens when Aries energy goes unchecked. Action becomes self-reinforcing, momentum replaces strategy, and the system continues forward. Not because there’s a clear goal, but because stopping feels impossible. The Pluto sextile ensures this war doesn’t remain regional. What we’re witnessing is a pressure point within a much larger global reshuffling of power, and a race to secure the world’s next global superpower(s).
What to expect when Mars gets involved
If the current skies feel tense, buckle up because the weeks ahead have their own escalation arc. Actions and reactions unfolding under a kind of collective spell. Structures shaking. Decisions feeling inevitable, even when they aren’t.
Where are all the chaos witches?! 🧙♀️
I hope they’re working hard, burning the (last of) midnight oil under their cauldrons this Aries season as we need that level of transformative magic 🪄
April dates of importance 🗓
☄️April 9 — Mars enters Aries: energy shifts into a higher gear
⚔️ April 13 — Mars conjunct Neptune: inflamed vision, crusade energy, the blurred line between conviction and delusion
🤺 April 19 — Mars conjunct Saturn: boots on the ground, hard limits, the brute reality of consequences
If March was the match being struck, early to mid-April is where the flame catches.
July 4, 2026: America's 250th Birthday & A Date With Its Own Birth Wound
Let's talk about July 4, 2026 as this is the 250th birthday of the United States. There will be speeches, fireworks, backyard BBQs, and we can expect a whitewashed over-sensationalised showdown on the White House lawn. But on July 3rd, the day before all of that, Mars and Uranus will come together at 3 degrees of Gemini.
For those keeping score: Mars is aggression and force. Uranus is rupture, shock, and the thing nobody saw coming. Together they're a lit match in a room that's been filling with gas for years. In Gemini, the sign of information, communication, competing narratives, and duality, the explosion tends to happen as much at the level of ideas as physical events.
But here's where history gets genuinely interesting.
On June 23rd, 1776, this same Mars-Uranus conjunction in Gemini was active when the British launched a massive naval assault on Charleston. Days later, the largest naval armada ever assembled in North American waters materialised in New York Harbor. George Washington's army was staring down what looked like total annihilation. The threat was existential and immediate.
What we tend to picture as a celebratory birth moment was actually a terrifying confrontation. A violent, irreversible break from empire that permanently reorganised the relationship between colonial powers and colonised peoples everywhere.
But notice what got left behind. The people who were already here brought here in chains. The contradiction built into the words "all men are created equal" and the brutal reality of who that phrase actually applied to was written into the founding document, left deliberately unresolved.
The Sibley chart (the birth chart of the United States, set for July 4, 1776) already contains its own Mars-Uranus conjunction. The July 3, 2026 transit lands on top of that natal signature with striking precision.
The country is being asked to meet its own birth wound again.
So what do we do with all of this?
Astrology isn't fortune-telling. It's pattern recognition. These transits don't cause events. They describe the energetic weather that makes certain kinds of events more likely, and certain kinds of choices more costly.
The Sun-Saturn conjunction this weekend asks for sobriety and a willingness to see consequences clearly, without filtering them through identity, allegiance, or the comforting story you most want to be true. Saturn doesn't answer symbolically. It answers materially.
And yes, empires fall. We are watching this in real time across the globe in various countries. But here's the thing about rock bottom: it has a way of clarifying what actually matters. When the noise collapses, the signal gets louder. When structures that no longer serve us finally give way, there's space for something more honest to emerge.
We can hold both things at once: the weight of what's breaking down, and the possibility of what's being built. The Uni is patient. It's been doing this a long time and understands the bigger picture view better than humans.
I try hard not to spread too much gloom and doom, but I am a stoic realist. Graciously I hold a deep belief in knowing there is a higher Source working in our best interest together with us, and for the greater good of our species. And prayer, I have a strong faith in the power of prayer 🤲
I will close with a recent quote from my guest, Hummingbird, on the episode of Aud's Pods. She can be found here on IG and YouTube.
A phrase that comes to mind often for me, when dealing with these heavy subjects is: I’m a doomer, but not a nihilist.
I believe it’s possible to give up hope that humanity can turn our situation around, and still live a life of meaning and purpose. We can act to ease suffering. If this enormous death we are approaching is actually a metamorphosis, then we can embrace our work as the death doulas, trusting that future generations will find the wisdom and resources to guide the rebirth in time. Our species has been through bottlenecks before. Earth’s climate has gone through destabilized, chaotic periods, and then stabilized again. Our short individual lives make it difficult to stretch our consciousness to this scale. But deepening into the acceptance of collapse helps us expand beyond ourselves, and beyond the limitations of meaning-making put in place by capitalism.
Whatever path is revealing itself to you, whatever dharma is yours in this new era, I hope it shears you of anything that has kept you small until now. I hope you can step into the fire with courage and faith. I hope you rock it.
