New Moon in Aries — March 24, 2020, 09:28 UT

The vernal equinox was on March 20, 2020. The Sun entered Aries, the first sign of the zodiac, and passed the Aries point. It is the point in which the most personal intersects with the larger world around one. The equinox chart shows the themes of the upcoming astrological year.

The New Moon in Aries took place on March 24 in the early degrees of the sign, in conjunction with Chiron and Salacia. The New Moon squared the lunar nodes on the Cancer-Capricorn axis and the Pholus-Quaoar conjunction in Capricorn. The tight triple conjunction of Jupiter, Pluto and Mars in Capricorn is squaring Eris in Aries. The New Moon opposed Makemake in Libra.

136472 Makemake is a cubewano discovered 15 years ago, in March 2005. It is one of the five minor planets which officially have received the dwarf planet status so far. The orbital period is 306 years. The discovery team (Brown, Trujillo and Rabinowitz) nicknamed it “Easterbunny” because of its discovery shortly after Easter. In 2008 Makemake was named after the creator god of humanity in the myths of the Rapa Nui, the native people of Easter Island.

The god Makemake was also the chief god of the birdman cult of the Rapa Nui, an annual dangerous competition. The contestants had to swim to the nearby island to collect the first egg of the season of a certain tropical seabird, and then swim back to Rapa Nui. Many lost their lives. The winner was entitled to gifts of food, and his clan would have sole rights to collect the wild bird eggs and fledglings of that season. The winner had to go into seclusion for a year and spend his time eating and sleeping, and could not engage in any other activity. He did this for his community.

We are now in the situation where we need to restrict our living. We need to reduce our social contacts to minimum. Luckily we have phones, the internet, and the social media, so we are not totally secluded. Our pursuit is nothing compared to that of the birdman. We need to do this now for our health care workers and for our community.

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