Mary Stewart Adams

This week is all about hidden mysteries, in the celestial world and in the festival calendar.

Now comes the season of Venus’ greatest altitude, which means the opportunity is at hand for seeing the goddess of love and beauty in broad daylight, while the Sun lingers above the horizon to greet her.

In the woods of northern Michigan the trillium bloom is about to burst forth and everything seems to be in a state of tremulous anticipation, while overhead, the planet Mercury has just made its inferior conjunction with the Sun.

Venus is so beautiful this week, moving up the sky through the starry region of Taurus, and joining the Pleiades, known as the seven sisters, especially on Tuesday night.

We’ve come to the point in the cycle of the year when the two great lights, Sun and Moon, trade places in the celestial hemispheres.

There are three celestial pairings this week that are worth knowing about, and even though we might not see all of it, this is The Storyteller’s Night Sky, so we can live into these events out of our imaginations.

The Sun arrives at its Equinox moment Monday, March 20 at 5:24 pm in the eastern time zone, entering the cardinal sign of Aries.

On Tuesday the Moon will be full, for the last time this season. If we were to talk about it as medievalists, we wouldn’t be content to just give it a name, or speak about its phase, but to say instead that in the mid-week, the first heaven will be fully illuminated.

This week the astrological love omens are on high alert, given that the gracious planet Venus is catching up with expansive Jupiter in the evening sky. We could just say that their meeting on Thursday will make for a great date night, and leave it at that, but I’m interested in the longer narrative.

Forty early mornings. That’s about one and a half Moon cycles, and is regarded as the amount of time it takes to break, or to form, a habit.