Persephone ruled the middle decan of Aries in the calendars of the pagans in the eastern Mediterranean city-states, according to the dismissive and sneering account of the Christian apologist Cosmas of Jerusalem. The Sun enters this decan on 30 March 2025 at 7:12 am EDT over my home in western Massachusetts — the morning after a Solar Eclipse, and just about 45 minutes before Neptune leaves Pisces for Aries for the first time. Neptune will be back in Pisces for one last retrograde, October ’25 to Jan ’26 — but we’re about to get a preview of Neptune’s Aries-era, Jan 2026 to Nov 2038. Meanwhile, this partial solar eclipse brings only incomplete darkness for only a brief few minutes — but which symbolically completes its resolution on the night of 17-18 April 2025, the 250th anniversary of the Shot Heard ‘Round the World, the battles of Lexington and Concord that opened the American Revolution.
Persephone, of course, is the daughter of Demeter, the goddess of grain. Styled originally as Kore “the maiden”, she was considered the spirit of spring and the new flowers that followed winter. In Homeric and Orphic texts, she’s kidnapped by the ruler of Hades, ‘Aidoneus, to be his bride — and Demeter’s grief at this kidnapping provides the mythic pretexts for the existence of winter. Later versions of the myth transform the kidnapping into an agreed-upon marriage between Aidoneus/Hades and the maiden’s father. Some versions of the story make Persephone and Hades into a happy couple who are able to escape from Demeter’s motherly smothering. In some versions the couple are happily childless; in others they give birth to a series of spirits of vengeance, karma, reincarnation, and judgment.
Most of the stories agree on one thing, though — the maiden Kore becomes a dominant and powerful woman and queen whose husband is steadfast and loyal but defers to her directives and opinions more often than not. Persephone may have been kidnapped and tricked into a marriage, but she comes to a place of rulership and privilege in that espoused role. It may be for this reason that Austin Coppock chose to name this decan The Crown in his book 36 Faces about the decans— and that T. Susan Chang called it The Kingdom of Gold in her book 36 Secrets, knowing how it’s associated with the Three of Wands in the Tarot. In that card, Pamela Colman Smith drew a man standing with his walking staff, passing through a symbolic gateway of two sticks planted in the ground. We don’t know when we’re crossing an important threshold in our lives, but we can often see it in others — and we know when someone is taking up a mantle of a new role in their lives that will be hard to put down. Persephone makes some of those changes in going from unwed maiden to wife and queen — she puts down the toys of girlhood and takes up the underworld’s golden crown, as ruler of the realms from which gold comes. Those who work under the earth, and with the earth, bring forth grain and fruit only through her effort that brings forth flowers — both the gold of ripened grain and the metallic wealth are the offspring of her generosity.
This decan also contains the exaltation degree of the Sun, at 15° Aries, which the Sun will reach on 4 April 2025 at 8:48 am EDT. It’s a position well suited for winning friends and influencing people to come around to your way of thinking on many fronts, and for expressing your sovereignty. However, it’s about halfway through the two-week period immediately following a partial Solar Eclipse in the sign of cardinal fire on the North Node this year, which carries troubles of its own. Cardinal sign eclipses usually signal events or single motivating actions rather than a set of unchanging conditions (like fixed signs) or periods of undulations or turbulence (which mutable signs imply). Fire signs often indicate violence or conflict, and Mars is in a good position to cause issues that affect economic positions and personal finances. It might be a good idea to have some extra cash in hand during this two-week period beginning March 30… and be alert on 4 April to how you can help your friends and allies that day.
The dodeks or twelfth-parts of Aries II are Leo, Virgo, Libra, and Scorpio, speaking to this idea of the phase change that occurs to people when they wed — first there is the triumphant performance of the wedding itself, with all the pomp and grandeur that Leo manages. Afterwards comes the deliberate analysis and practical discoveries that marriage is more work and labor than performative glory, and that’s Virgo. A new equilibrium must be found as Libra activates, and spouses negotiate even in marriage for what they want. Finally, Scorpio represents the ways in which a married person discovers new desires and secrets that they keep even from their spouse — for no person is only the other half of someone else.
House Delineations
The First House, representing our selves and self-presentation, is Aries ruled by Mars in Cancer from the square and supported by the Sun as day triplicity ruler and Jupiter from the sextile. Moon is present below the horizon, ruling the night half of the chart. Our traditional identities stir our fires as we begin to spring into action, crowning intentions with exertions. Our emotional lives are kept relatively buried even as we put our most logical selves to work. A forceful spring cleaning will help us renew ourselves — seeking leadership roles is easy but doing them is hard right now.
The Second House, representing our wealth and resources, is Taurus ruled by sextile but retrograde but exalted Venus. Incoming resources are promised but not yet delivered. New and delightful possibilities for both outward but budget adventure and luxurious but inward retreat are presented for inspection. Sextile but detrimented Mars indicates complex family dynamics at play requiring the use of resources even before they’re acquired, but promises greater contentment in the long run. Uranus invites us to pray and hope for some relief from the financial turbulence which will come (but not yet).
The Third House, representing our extended family and neighborhood, is Gemini ruled by squaring Mercury retrograde (in detriment and exile). Hospital or prison stays for family members bring technical challenges and difficulties in thinking through problems. Detrimented Jupiter acts as triplicity ruler to hold together the big picture, but it’s understanding the granular detail that brings the best rewards. To-Do lists and task reminders are your friends as you wrestle with issues of travel and education programs deferred by medical or legal difficulties.
The Fourth House, representing the home and your household and immediate family, is Cancer ruled by the squaring Moon in Aries, in the Second Mansion The Belly of Aries. Placidity of mind and privacy of one’s own thoughts brings stability and ease in handling difficult family situations that threaten to spill out into larger emotional problems. Mars promises conflict under your own roof, but the Imum Coeli reminds you that this is the place of love and long-term contentment. The current battles will pass, let them wash over you and hold no grudges. Go to your therapy appointments; there’s nothing to be gained from lashing out at loved ones, and much to lose. Keep your shit under control, stay hydrated, pee often, keep the peace at home.
The Fifth House, representing hobbies and pleasures as well as children, is Leo ruled by the trining and exalted Sun. Go to your kids’ plays and performances and recitals, celebrate their achievements, put their pictures on the fridge. Show off your own hobby-work and demonstrate the flower of your abilities to others. If you’re disappointed in the quality, don’t let that emotional woe show for now; wherever possible, be the celebrating parent to others’ endeavors that you wish you could have had.
The Sixth House, representing daily routines and efforts to remain healthy, is Virgo ruled by opposing and exiled Mercury retrograde, and hosting the South Node. Keeping to daily routines is likely to get you into trouble, especially when it comes to hauling important data out of the archives — or learning where the bodies are buried. Lonely labors are likely to yield results, but you’re surrounded by people who want you to do more with less, or provide more creative effort, or reinvent the wheel One More Time!™ And there’s at least one dude who’s prepared to tell you it’s unrealistic or Can’t Be Done® even as you’re doing it. Persistence in the face of these issues won’t be easy, but it’s where the real value of your days will be found.
the Seventh House of your main romantic relationships and peer-to-peer connections in the workplace is Libra, ruled by inconjunct Venus retrograde but exalted. Rules must be broken to keep the right balance between you and others in a dynamic situation that’s subject to constant change… but it may be worth accepting that these violations are going to be unspoken or under the table, rather than out in the open. Only Jupiter of the triplicity rulers is available to assist, but in detriment; you may find more emotional support for your relationships (business or romantic) from close friends than from your sweetie — just remember what these ties that bind you to others, are for: bend expectations, break not the connection.
The Eighth House of duty and obligation is Scorpio, ruled by exiled Mars in Cancer from the trine; Venus exalted in Pisces at the opposite trine provides additional support as a triplicity ruler. Complete your endeavors and task lists in secret; keep your work private and don’t show social media what you’re trying to complete. It’s delightful to show work in progress, or to demonstrate how your desires are being fulfilled through steady effort — but nothing good comes from revealing this work to any but your self or your closest family members (even then, if you’re spending too much time in your sewing room or woodworking shop, you may be causing tensions at home; make something for the household to keep the peace).
The Ninth House of travel and education is Sagittarius, ruled by opposing Jupiter detrimented in Gemini. The big picture requires you handle details close to home, and educate yourself with the assistance of teachers; but these may disqualify you from seeking out larger adventures farther off or on your own. Others in your extended family may be more able to travel but you won’t be joining them for upcoming reunions or meeting friends at conferences in these next ten days; plan your excursions closer to home.
The Tenth House of career and reputation is Capricorn, ruled by sextile Saturn in Pisces. You likely are having dreams of making it big with your side-hustle, but it’s worth tamping down such visions for the moment, or keeping them in the vault. It’s a great time for writing the business plan, for developing the market plan, and for envisioning a brighter future away from the daily oppressions and offenses of your workplace with a tight-fisted and miserly boss, or buzzword-spouting colleagues or the flirt in the sales department. Time to buckle down, know your place in the pecking order. But dream up something better and plan for a different future; it’s a good time for making the plan, even if’s not time to work it.
The Eleventh House of friends and allies is Aquarius ruled by inconjunct Saturn, and receiving detrimented help from Jupiter in Gemini at the trine. Pluto rides high in the first decan, expressing a solid critique of all your financial choices and decision making processes, while also insisting that you have to spend money on maintaining relationships that may not be serving you well at the moment. Where is the real intimacy coming from? Who can you trust with your secrets? A hybrid approach is required, here: you need both masculine and feminine friends to face the current moment, and you must be prepared to have their backs with possible financial support as well as facing their impolite criticism when you’re out of line.
The Twelfth House of both opportunity and obstacle is Pisces, ruled by the squaring and detrimented Jupiter, but hosting exalted Venus retrograde. Trining Mars offers challenges from your housemates and from your parents to smooth sailing; while direct Saturn and Neptune, as well as Mercury retrograde, insist on rehashing old conversations and exploring long-settled boundaries with roundabout conversations and visions of a better future. It’s a good time to dust off those plans to turn side-hustles into businesses, and update them with new information, but not a great week to put them into practice. You’ll long for and want solitude — but having it may feel like something of a trap in current situations. Be prepared to respond to argument in your home or family as conflicting visions of the future play out in conversation.
Horoscopes:
Decan I of any sign (usually covering the 21st of the month to the first of the following month) is free to all visitors; Decan II is only available to Patreon and Ko-Fi.com subscribers; and Decan III is available to Patreon, Ko-Fi, and MailChimp subscribers.
I recommend reading your Sun sign, Moon sign, and Rising sign for best results. I write them with rising sign in mind, but several people have told me they find that they do better with all three.
Aries: You may be in a darker mood than usual despite the new spring in your step; what you believe and how you choose to act on those beliefs may be faced with deep personal challenges. Some new visions may emerge, but you’re also still deeply committed (possibly through economic or social or cultural ties) to existing viewpoints and stances. More is required of you, though — sooner or later your gut feeling is going to have to be expressed through rational action, and you’ll have to put your money where your God tells you you ought to put it (even when your personal political or economic sense tells you that’s personally inconvenient). Being generous to your community while being austere or caustic to your household is likely to bring trouble: you can begin mending fences now or wait til June, but it’s happening sooner or later, and later will be harder.
Taurus: You have financial and personal boundaries that seem to be crossed on a daily basis right now. Your emotional and rational self are both telling you that it’s not a good time, that you should hold to your traditional routines and norms. At the same time, your friendships, relationships and social norms are trying to find a new equilibrium in a landscape of shifting sands and suddenly turning tides. The wind is picking up, too. Big picture thinking about your financial future is required, but a big heart is willing to lend a helping hand if you do the detail work. The question of your intimate relationships are troubled by secret desires, but contentment comes from standing your ground and loving your closest circle of friends.
Gemini: Everyone wants you to handle the big picture and the detail oriented analysis right now, and expects the buck to stop with you even as they want to control the ongoing decision-making around you. Make clear boundaries professionally around what parts of the work you used to do will still be on your plate, but establish limitations and edges to what is expected of you if other people want to carry the vision forward. Meanwhile, focus your attentions on your friends and allies: how can you support them with realistic planning and emotional support, especially as you face economic hardships that keep growing? These hardships will likely resolve later in the year, but it’s important for you to get realistic help with understanding and managing household costs now so that the restoration goes more easily.
Cancer: Household questions create trouble in what seems like an unending flow, and the only time you get to yourself winds up being used to unpack these challenges — which takes time, conversation, and consideration of many hypotheticals. A nominal friend has got your financial issues in something of an uproar, and the attempt to restore some workplace norms takes a great deal of your brilliance and your emotional heavy lifting right now. A trip away might be just what you need, but the realistic issues of when, where and with whom are requiring a different kind of juggling act and deeper communication that carries its own burdens. Your planning and resource use depends on professional conduct, and your learning and higher calling also depends on levels of communication with past employers and academic advisors that requires you to act in your own financial best interests — as well as to assume responsibilities that put your own wealth and resources at risk. Act with integrity toward your partner(s) in all your doings.
Leo: It’s time to take delight in who you are and who (or what) you have brought into the world. It’s your responsibility to bring your children up in the right way and help them succeed, and that may require you to second-guess yourself at the moment, re-envision a new path forward, and creatively communicate a new set of boundaries, rules and expectations – both for yourself and the child (or children). But it’s also time for you to set and approach new learning goals and reach for new hopes and dreams for yourself; and this may require upsetting your career goals, or making new friends, or cutting through old obstacles with new fervor. Expect that these things are going to cause your finances to take something of a hit — but recognize that taking on new responsibilities usually leads to better outcomes for yourself and self-image than hiding behind excuses. You can do this thing, and achieve results. The money will come — but first comes the work.
Virgo: There’s quite a bit of subjective trouble ahead for you, as your spouse or significant other(s) like business partners struggle through a mess of old assumptions and projects that no longer provide meaning; and you will have to shine your own flashlight of rationality on your responsibilities to them, even as you keep your emotional attachment (or lack thereof) to those obligations under wraps. You have new practical learning to do, and new journeys to undertake to the sources of your spiritual development (interior or exterior). The big picture of your professional development requires that you get your hands dirty and work those shoulders kneading the dough for yourself. This may require troubling the waters and asking friends for recommendations and favors, which won’t be easy. But asking for help? That’s the hard stuff for you right now, maybe as it always has been — but it’s the change that’s required.
Libra: There may be financial reasons for keeping the important peer-to-peer relationships in your life on solid ground, but you may be facing temptation to break the rules for yourself, in part because your key allies seem to be shining so much light on your flaws rather than acknowledging their own misdeeds. Throwing around accusations of unprofessionalism may feel like the right play (in part because it’s probably true, and speaking truth will bring a kind of deep contentment from commitment to righteousness). But — have you got something else lined up, or are you going to come undone? A revolt against your chores and odious tasks may feel spiritually cleansing, but some tasks will factually remain regardless of who you’re doing them with, or for — yourself, or someone else; your bank account or your household situation. Before throwing out the great big baby, ask whose bathwater is, anyway?
Scorpio: You can hide your desires and focus on your big-ticket tasks, but you may also want to own up to the things you don’t yet know about your current efforts — and what you still need to learn. Being ambitious about acquiring new skills is hard work, but right now you should practice certain steps before you try to achieve them in the main flow of your effort. That will be hard — because at some level, you want success to bring economic rewards from friends that you know will pay for your endeavors whether they’re good or bad. But high quality work takes just as much time as low-quality work; and it’s hard to get repeat customers with low-effort results. Your pleasure-seeking and hobbyist activities are like children, and they need your nurturance and ongoing love… but they also require you to be honest with where your own talents are still lacking, and where they must be refined. Don’t let yourself go dark: put love as well as labor into your work — and that doubled fire will give you fuel for new achievements.
Sagittarius: You would like to focus on enjoyable activities which bring health, prosperity, and intellectual excitement; or to spend time with your kids doing traditional pastimes with them that are fun for the whole family. Instead, a widespread challenge involving family, health and legal obstacles continues to smear itself over your down time and eats your ability to plan for the future; you’re likely continuing to try to understand past events in greater detail and recognition. Your ability to manage resources and bring forth treasures from the vaults is being admired professionally, but there’s circling vultures who have other concerns. Expect that your daily routines will continue to be disrupted until mid-July, but that your leadership will be able to establish effective systems by June. You may want to put expectations that career milestones can be reached, on hold for a little while.
Capricorn: Your professional capacities bring attention your way, as secret projects require your attention, expertise, experience and vision all at the same time. There are financial rewards available if you ask for them, but you’ll have to present your work as though you’re doing a favor for a friend, and remind them that this is less than you’d usually charge for your day rate. Why would you do that? Seems like your household may be in a bit of an uproar or have challenges keeping the lights on; and if you do things in the usual way, chances are they’ll stay off. For the sake of peace in your home and with your significant partners, you may have to break a few of the ordinary limits of your professional boundaries. And even if you don’t have trouble with bills or with doing the work pro bono, you still might consider accepting a handmade gift or two as recompense for giving up your hobby time in an emergency to help a good ally. Not all payments have to be in dollars, but some energy exchange makes cents.
Aquarius: Be wealthy in friends this week, and do what you can to put many minds to work critiquing your big plans — especially if you have thoughts of going into business for yourself. Kathryn Finney, in Build the Damn Thing! reminds us that “planning a business is free, starting or running a business is expensive.” You have big dreams this week — the best way you can be sure that they can face reality is to ask your friends to stress-test your vision with the hard-hitting questions in an intimate setting, using their creativity and expertises to double-check your work. Not starting a business? You can still have a gathering of friends around the fire and invite everyone to use the light of the new moon to express their grand desires. Some upheavals may occur in your household, but do what you can to put your children in charge of the clean-up: training them to assist you will cause trouble now, but bring joy by June.
Pisces: Belief can be the source of both opportunity and obstacle, and you face a mighty flow of both at the moment as powerful tides flow through this sign. Four planets invite you to demonstrate intention and zeal in setting both goals and objectives, which might be for the next several months, or the next several decades. What do you want? It’s time to ask for it, and to make reasonable plans for achieving them. Saturn promises that there will be hardship and. hard work in achieving any goal you set; Neptune indicates that the trials will come anyway, so you may as well work for your highest vision. Mercury, retrograde and in exile, says your first-draft spreadsheet and task list will be flawed —but that they can be made better on subsequent edits. Venus says your first plan won’t be beautiful or elegant… but your aesthetic will win through in the end, and the effort will be beautiful in the long run. The North Node says, “you’ll get more of whatever you ask for right now, than you thought possible… if you accept that there will be turbulence on the way to getting it.” What will you challenge yourself to attain? How will you hold yourself back, from holding back?
Colophon
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If you want to read some of my astrologically-oriented poetry, the largest collection is called A Full Volume of Splendor and Starlight, available through my Etsy shop, and containing poems and hymns to the planets, constellations, decan deities, and Moon Mansion angels. While not astrological, Festae contains hymns to some of the older Roman gods and spirits from the calendar created by Numa Pompilius, the second ancient King of Rome.
I use iPhemeris for my charting software, and screenshot it to make charts. I want to thank the team that develops iPhemeris for the addition of Terms and Decans to their charts. I also use Hugh Tran‘s Physis typeface to craft logos for this blog, as well.
I use Christopher Warnock‘s The Mansions of the Moon as the basis of my Moon placement delineations, and Austin Coppock‘s 36 Faces for much of my planetary delineations. Neither gentleman endorses me.
