Astrology of the Week Ahead: April 21st to 27th — The Mars Pluto Grand Finale

Hey, everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology [https://nightlightastrology.com/]. Today we are going to look at all of the major astrological transits for the week ahead. That is today, April 21 through the 27th. There are not so many transits, but they are arguably the biggest transits of the year, or among them, and that includes the sun square to Pluto mid-week on the 23rd, followed by Venus conjoining Saturn on the 24th, followed by Mars opposing Pluto on the 26th, and then to round out the week, we have a New Moon in Taurus. So three major transits plus a new moon. It's not a light week.

Astrologically, this is one of the busier, more dynamic weeks of 2025. I guess there's maybe some small mercy or silver lining in the fact that there's only, you know, three major transits this week, but they are big ones, and so we are going to talk about them as a sequence of events all connected today, sort of preview where we'll be going, breaking down each one of them as the week goes along.

I'll also be doing a little bit of refresher on the fixed signs of the zodiac's horoscopes at the very end today. Those are the horoscopes that have the Mars-Pluto-Sun T-square in angular houses. So our fixed signs will get a little bit more attention. I did do some horoscopes on Mars entering Leo, triggering the Mars-Pluto opposition last Friday. So if you missed those, you could go back and check them out. But anyway, that's our agenda for today.

Remember to like and subscribe. If this is a part of your daily spiritual life, then consider subscribing. Make it a part of your daily practice. We really love seeing people use the channel as a part of their daily spiritual routine. Transcripts of any of these daily talks can be found on the website, which is NightlightAstrology.com.

We are, of course, in enrollment season right now for our upcoming First Year program, which is called Ancient Astrology for the Modern Mystic. It is a course in ancient Hellenistic astrology with an emphasis on spiritual and psychological counseling. And so if that sounds like something that you would enjoy, or even if you feel like you're ready to take your own personal study and knowledge of astrology to the next level, consider our Year One course coming up at the end of June.

There's an informational video tagged on to the end of our daily content during enrollment season, so that you can learn more about the program if you want to hear what it includes and how it works, and we'll show you the classroom website and so forth. Payment options are at the bottom of the screen. Our early bird sale is available until May 15, so you can save on the cost of the course that way.

There's also need-based tuition. So if you'd like to take the course, but you need a little help to make it happen, we understand people are coming from different walks of life and different financial circumstances, so we try to make sure that a spiritual topic is accessible on the financial level. That's one of our values as a business. You can find that tuition assistance available, allowing you to pick within a sliding scale that works for you, so you don't have to live outside of your means to study something sacred.

I really, truly believe that when you learn astrology at a deeper level, and you're able to be your own astrologer, that's a very important step to take at some point in your relationship with astrology. That's what we try to prepare people for, and whether you end up using that to practice for other people or not, everyone's a little bit different on that level. But this course really is for people to be empowered with the language, so that you know you're always going to rely on astrologers like myself and others that you watch or listen to.

But it helps to have your own intuition and your own creativity on board for your relationship with astrology, and this program is meant to help you deepen that connection. So you'll get a really thorough, comprehensive structure in the class, and I think that's its best feature. Anyway, on that note, again, check out the informational video at the end of today's talk.

So let's take a look now at the real-time clock and walk through these major transits that are happening this week. We start here on April 21, coming right off from the sun square to Mars, which we covered last week. But you may be still feeling that today. The middle of the week, we're going to see the sun square Pluto. Right there it is. And then on the 24th, just the very next day, as that square is just separating, we're gonna see Venus and Saturn come together one last time.

And then we're going to see Mars oppose Pluto the very next day, on the 26th, or, I guess, yeah, two days later. So there it is, right? Very, very dynamic sequence of events. A Venus conjunction to Saturn, after a long retrograde and a long period of time spent in close proximity to Saturn, is finalizing a process that Venus and Saturn have been going through. All in the meantime, Mars' long retrograde began with an opposition to Pluto and is now finishing, in a sense, with another direct opposition to Pluto, engaged with that as a T-square from the sun.

This is why most astrologers looking at the astrology for the year ahead—I always gather that research toward the end of the year. I do my research for the year ahead during the Kickstarter and sort of prep my notes for the next year. And I look and I circle on the calendar, "Ooh, these patches look like the busiest, most dynamic times of the year." I don't rank them necessarily, but you know, if I had to, this would be in the top three or four busiest, most dynamic weeks of the year, with maybe the exception of, you know, outer planets changing signs—that's always a big deal, stuff like that.

But this is a very powerful passage within 2025, and one of the reasons that it is so powerful is because of the things all happening in close proximity. Let's walk through them individually now, starting with the sun and Pluto. So on the 23rd, that is Wednesday, the sun will square Pluto. And as it does so, it is, in a sense, the first of a few events that are all part of the Mars opposition to Pluto.

Now here's how I'm thinking about Mars opposite Pluto. That'll give us some context for Sun square Mars in the—or sun square Pluto in the middle of the week. With Mars and Pluto, what I think about is the force of evolutionary necessity. There's this hexagram in the I Ching called Critical Mass. So its English name or translation of the name of the hexagram from Chinese is often translated as Critical Mass. It's Hexagram 28, and it talks about a ridge pole sagging that's supposed to be supporting a house.

And unless that ridge pole is supported, it's going to break. And so there's something reaching critical mass, and you have to do something or there will be a consequence. There will be something destructive that takes place unless a creative act of fixing, mending, supporting is taken. So I'm not saying it's exactly analogous to that image from the I Ching, but it's similar insofar as evolutionary pressures—the pressure of evolution.

One way of thinking about evolution is just that which is unfolding. So that which is unfolding is requiring that action be taken, or that something needs to happen, or there's a feeling of consequence. "If I don't act, this will happen." It's like sometimes when Mars-Pluto hits, for example, someone who has a drinking problem might hit their rock bottom. "If I don't change, I'm going to die." That's extreme, but there is the weight of that kind of evolutionary necessity behind Mars and Pluto.

"If I don't act, if I don't change, if I don't take the information that I'm getting from my environment and do something about it, it could go in a way that I don't want, or it could be destructive." Or the motivation to act is forcing that you do something. There are times in life where you go, "I just knew I had to do something. I knew it was time to take action. I knew in my heart this was the way to go," or something like that. But there's a pressure and a force—that pressure and force of necessity is very Mars-Pluto.

So as that's coming through this week, there are a number of events that sort of prep us for that moment of engagement, that critical mass situation. The first one is on Wednesday, when the sun squares Pluto. This is, in a sense, turning on the burner. And you'll be feeling that already today, because Mars and the Sun just squared yesterday, so the T-square is already cooking, but you're going to really feel it heat up on Wednesday when the sun squares Pluto.

That brings the ideal image into contact with that force of evolutionary change, that Plutonian transfiguring energy. The sun comes into contact with it, and it is about a shift of direction, a shift of purpose, things that are burning down and rising up creatively. And then followed by that, on Thursday of this week, we're going to see Venus conjoined Saturn.

Now, Venus's conjunction to Saturn is also a kind of evolutionary necessity. Saturn is a good word for Saturn, I should say, is necessity. Venus meets Saturn on Thursday, and within relationships, there is the force of change, impermanence, death, decay, endings, transitions, or deepenings of commitment and seriousness about something. We're reaching a realization in the Venusian realm that's intimately connected to this Mars-Pluto dynamic.

Certain key relationships have to change or end or die or evolve as a matter of necessity. That's another way of now thinking about it, where critical mass—the picture of Mars-Pluto and Sun—Mars-Pluto gets paired with something Venusian that must change. That is, we have to get real about Venus-Saturn, or we have to face consequences or make serious, adult, mature, focused decisions about... So Venus-Saturn colors the entire mood of the week.

So you could look at the whole-sign house of Pisces to get a feel for where that's going on in your chart. Now, then on the 26th, Mars opposes Pluto, and this, to me, is the breakthrough moment. Sometimes it's not the day itself, but it's the day after, two days after that, the pot sort of boils over. So keep that in mind—you could be seeing this kind of stretch through to early next week, like Sunday or Monday, the 27th into the 28th.

Sometimes within a three-degree range of separating is when you'll see the events really manifest internally or externally. And I also want to highlight that this force of evolutionary necessity, this critical mass moment, is something that could be very internal and psychological, energetic. It could be about physical health, or your how you feel inside. But on the other hand, it could also be about things changing externally that feel much less in your control—things happening in the people around you, in your work, in your job, in relationships.

So watch for both internal and external forces of evolutionary necessity. But it peaks over the weekend. That's the point. So you look at that Saturday, the 26th, and it's... one thing to note is that we're under a dark moon that day—Moon in Aries, Mars's sign. It's a very Mars day. And at a dark moon, we're really sloughing off some very deep karma. It's like stuff that's really ready to go. So it's a very powerful moment.

I expect we'll see this in the collective. Now, if there's any silver lining to me, it's that while this week is very forceful on the level of growth and change, the 27th we have a New Moon in Taurus, and that New Moon in Taurus, obviously, is an exalted moon. It's in Venus's sign. And that new moon features its ruler as an exalted Venus, separating from Saturn.

The next new moon cycle—the next moon cycle, I should say—to me has a feeling of coming, emerging out of troubled waters, emerging out of that dynamic, creative tension that is the Mars-Pluto moment this week. So by the end of the week, I do expect an energetic shift that'll start toning next week and the weeks ahead. Now, of course, though, there'll be new challenges. There always are. Life is like that.

But in terms of this week and riding the energy, I'd just double down on your practices of self-care. And if really intense things come up, ask yourself, "Do I need to address this right now, or can I sit with it, be with it, as opposed to reacting too quickly, not processing things?" To me, that's always something I have to be careful of—just reactionary. So anyway, this is brief. We're going to spend a lot of time on this this week.

So Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, there will be content focused on breaking each of these parts down individually, and I hope that that will be a benefit for all of you as you are working with these things. That's why I say I hope that this place is a place that is part of your daily spiritual self-care and practice. I hope that the content gives you tools and help to be able to work through these things.

Certainly for me, even doing this work is how I help myself process it. Right? That's this is my practice. So anyway, let's take a look at the fixed signs. Let me get to the—here we go. Give me just a second to get my screen set up here. So we're going to look at the fixed signs for some brief horoscopes. I always do on Mondays one group of signs who is getting the biggest stuff of the week.

So for Tauruses, we'll start there. I mean, this T-square in the first, tenth, and fourth is really emphasizing that there's a place of integration within yourself, within your own psyche, your own character, your own values and personality, within your own body, and it has to do with who you're deciding to be relative to public expectations, social or professional expectations, and your inner life, the private side of you, as well as the family dimensions of life or the private home-based sphere of life.

The point of integration is in you, with the sun in Taurus in the first house. So watch for those three areas to be in a pretty intense dialog with each other this week. Now, if we move on to Leos, the next fixed sign, we see that there is oppositional tension across the first and seventh with Mars-Pluto. That's about self and other. Is that about a power struggle? So is it about mediating conflicts or different expectations or ideals or values in relationships?

Is it about your strength, power, assertiveness, creativity versus others, and some need for mediation or balance across that self-other axis? The point of integration with the sun squaring the two is with respect to your work in the world, your sense of calling and purpose, perhaps professionally, or what engages you in the public, what you feel matters with respect to your career or your sense of calling, your direction professionally.

So something's seeking integration around both career and identity and relationships for Leos. Now we go on to Scorpios, and we see the Mars-Pluto dynamic across your tenth and fourth house, with the sun as an integration point in the seventh. What are the pressures you're facing right now between the public sphere of life, the professional sphere of life, the place that connects you to the public, and the private or interior sphere—your home, your family, what you feel or who you are inside when you're not out in the public eye.

That private-public distinction is going to be a tension that you're feeling really intensely this week, but the point of integration with the sun in Taurus in the seventh house might be your relationships. The point of balance may somehow be the quality, health, and integrity of your relationships. In what way are you seeking balance or harmony in relationships, and how is a focus on interpersonal dynamics related right now to things like career, public sphere, and private home, family life?

So you can feel that the tensions in these three areas are enormous. These are three of the major areas of life that every person comes to talk to astrologers about. You've got it cooking. All right. Finally, we'll go to Aquarians. Now for Aquarius, the point of integration with the sun in the fourth house is home, family, and the private sphere of life, whereas the evolutionary tension is across the first and the seventh.

So you know, Pluto's entered your first house and presented you with this need to evolve and transform, to die and be reborn in terms of your identity. Now this is a long process that's going to play out over many years for you, but the force of evolutionary change, with respect to identity, purpose—what makes me unique and set apart from others? Who am I, and how do I cultivate my individuality? And the force of change, or the pressure that you face from other people in relationships—their will, their way, their needs, their creativity, their existence.

Those things are coming into a rather intense dialog this week, which could manifest in terms of power struggles or challenges or conflicts, but also creative tension that could be really meaningful and useful in relationships. The point of integration with the sun in the fourth is probably your home and family sphere. How peaceful, easy, stable is your life, and what need for peace, ease, stability at the roots is a part of, or needs to be a part of, questions coming up around power and balance within relationships.

So for Aquarians, not light stuff either. You can see why the fixed signs—boy, you know, you've got it like this. This is a really big week for fixed signs. I will be doing some horoscopic work as the week goes on, as I usually do for everyone. So please know that Mondays are just the time to feature one group that's getting angular transits, in case you're new to the channel.

On that note, I'm going to sign off now, and I hope that you will find some value in hearing more about the Year One course. I can't wait to study with a new group of people. I lead all of these classes personally. There's nothing that's like—and all of my classes I teach, I don't just pre-record the content, because I believe that the actual transmission is important—that there be live teaching is a huge value of mine.

So I hope that you will come and join us for what is a very, very powerful year to be studying astrology in, especially when Uranus enters Gemini and trines Pluto—fantastic signature for the next year or so to study astrology under. Very, very nice transit for astrologers. Anyway, that's it for today. I hope you're having a good start to your week already, and we will see you for more as the week goes on. Bye-bye.