A Cosmic Report for March 18–21, 2025
Welcome to a new cycle, old friends.
And welcome to Living the Spiral, new folks. There are a lot of fresh faces here, and I want to extend my sincere gratitude for you all for coming along we ride this roller coaster through spacetime.
I recommend listening to the podcast above, or following Living the Spiral anywhere you listen to podcasts. But if reading the basic gist is more your speed, by all means… carry on. <3
What a week we have ahead of us…
There is a particular quality to this very moment. Something is ending, dissolving, and, something brand new is cracking open. The sky is doing what it rarely does- compressing a full arc of descent and return into 36 hours.
This week we move through a New Moon at 28° Pisces, Mercury stationing direct, and the Sun crossing into Aries at the Spring Equinox, welcoming in the Astrological New Year.
These three thresholds are happening so close together that they are almost functioning as one long event. We’re embarking into a threshold inside a threshold inside a threshold.
Before we get into the magic of this transitional time, an Invitation for you:
Sprouting Into Action: A Spring Equinox Ritual
On Saturday, March 21st, 10am–12pm Mountain time, I’m holding a live somatic ritual so we can mark these thresholds together. It’s called Sprouting Into Action: A Spring Equinox Ritual. It’ll be live on Zoom, with a replay available for those who can’t make it live. I’d truly love to ring in this threshold moment with you.
In this ritual, we’ll move through breath and body practices, creative writing prompts, and time to sit in the liminal before rushing into the new astrological year. We won’t be making to-do lists for the busy spring months ahead; instead, we’ll be letting ourselves be in the doorway for a moment, feeling what it means to be fresh, like we have just been hatched. We’ll feel into which wisdom we want to carry from the vast oceans of Pisces season into the sprout of a new beginning. You’ll walk away with a sense of rebirth and direction for the months ahead, and a guidebook to act as a lamppost for anytime you feel lost.
Here’s the link to register.
If you’re an Embody the Revolution member (aka paid subscriber), please use the code EMBODY for a free ticket.
If you’d like to become a member of Embody the Revolution, subscribe or upgrade below to get VIP access to all my seasonal rituals, guidebooks, and extra goodies this year. I’ll be hosting an event for each of the 8 holy days in the Wheel of the Year- the equinoxes, solstices, and cross quarter days. Come on in- I promise it’ll be fun.
The New Moon in Pisces in Gate 36: The Birth Canal
The New Moon, happening on Thursday the 18th at 6:23pm PST, falls at the very end of Pisces, in Human Design’s Gate 36. This gate is known in the I Ching as The Darkening of the Light, and in the Gene Keys as the key of crisis, humanity, and compassion.
36, where the sun meets the moon, is not a comfortable energy. It holds the full weight of what it means to be in the birth canal, that disorienting in-between where the old world is no longer letting you float in it, and the new world hasn’t received you yet. It’s the energy of a seed cracking underground, the chick’s beak poking through the eggshell. It’s the moment in labor where the midwives are firmly yelling “PUSH!” and you stop knowing which way is up.
The shadow of Gate 36 is turbulence, its gift is humanity, and its highest expression is compassion. This new moon, we may come to terms with the fact that the path of deep compassion really only opens through a genuine understanding of suffering, not by walking around it or avoiding the deep feelings within.
As the last gate of Pisces season, Richard Rudd writes about the energy of Gate 36 in the context of the figure of Christ, a figure who is himself associated with the symbol of the Fish and the Age of Pisces. In Jesus Christ on the cross, we visualize an image of a human being in pain, fully mortal, fully cracked open. It’s his suffering that makes his compassion approachable.
In the late stages of the Age of Pisces, this image of the cross speaks to every person who has ever asked: why must I suffer? The answer that comes back through Gate 36 is a flowering of consciousness. Suffering itself, when moved through consciously, is the brilliant fragrance that arises after the turbulent storm.
The Sun and Moon meet up every new moon in the same part of the sky, uniting our conscious will and our embodied feelings. This new moon, they are joined together in the birth canal, the dark night of the soul. This is a powerful seeding moment, a potent darkness to plant whatever you want to see grow in the next cycle. This new moon is a moment to appreciate the passions and embodied desires that help you get through the tunnel, knowing that it’s always darkest before the dawn.
The Channel of Initiation
Exactly on this New Moon, Venus is in Aries Gate 51, the Gate of Shock. In the Human Design Bodygraph, Gate 51 creates a connection with Gate 25 (the Gate of Innocence and universal Universal Love) where the Sun and Moon will move together after Gate 36 on the new moon. Together, 25 and 51 connect the G (Identity/Heart) Center with the Will Center, forming the Channel of Initiation, also known as the Channel of Awakening.
This channel lights up both the heart chakra centers in the 9-centered bodygraph. Uniting the G Center (identity, direction, universal love) and the Will Center (drive, courage, follow-through), this channel brings forward the energy of being just-born and immediately struck by lightning. The newborn lamb takes her first breath and meets the shock of the world.
I’m sure that’s not what you want to hear about this new moon- I’m willing to bet that nobody loves the word shock right now. (We’ve had enough, already!) But Venus in Gate 51 reframes it. Think of driving through a dark, stormy night, when a bolt of lightning illuminates the entire landscape at once. Or swimming in the tumultuous Piscean, Neptunian seas, and catching a wave with a bioluminescent jellyfish. You didn’t have to analyze your way there or do too much digging to figure out where you’re going. You just suddenly, out of the blue, know. The initiatory quality that this new moon carries is like a brightness that reveals what has been obscured with a burst of clarity.
We don’t have many conscious rites of passage left in Western culture, and many people are speaking to the idea that if we had more, we might not be in this mess. This new moon, with the channel of awakened initiation being activated, is an invitation to create one, for yourself. It’s a beautiful time to let the disruption initiate you into the next cycle, the next iteration of your innate power, instead of just batter you and demand a reaction from you.
On Passion and Compassion
One thread I’ve been pulling on lately that relates to this initiation from the Gate of Crisis to the Gate of Innocence is the etymology of the word passion.
We use it now to mean enthusiasm, aliveness, and deep investment in something. But that is a recent evolution of the word; initially it came from the Passions of the Christ- the suffering that he underwent. For centuries, passion meant to endure. The siddhi frequency of Gate 36, Compassion, carries passion inside it. Com is with, and so compassion means “To suffer with”. As we move through this new moon initiation, it’s good to remember that compassion is the willingness to be moved by another’s experience of their own unique birth canal.
That pairing of passion and compassion feels like the real invitation of this new moon. To be passionate enough about something to endure what it costs to get there. And to hold that same tenderness for everyone else who is cracking open right now too.
Mercury Direct in Gate 37
The day after the New Moon, Mercury stations direct in another Pisces gate. It will station in Gate 37- the gate of community, friendship, and the agreements that hold belonging together- and move forward through that gate until March 28, a good long while.
Mercury has been retrograde in Pisces for three weeks, moving us slowly through reconsiderations and re-assasements of our boundaries, interconnections, and what we owe each other in community. Gate 37 is an intimate gate, all about the unspoken contracts of family and chosen family. When activated, it brings focus on what we agree to give, where we’ve been silently giving our power away, and what relational group contracts that we want to renegotiate.
Mercury will stay in Gate 37 through March 28th, an unusually long stay because of the retrograde motion. That’s nearly two weeks of the messenger sitting in the house of community agreements, asking you to communicate clearly with the people closest to you about who you are now, on the other side of whatever this rebirthing season has awakened in you.
The Astrological New Year: Gate 25
When the Sun crosses into Aries on March 20–21, it enters Gate 25, the Gate of Innocence, Acceptance, and Universal Love. This is where the zodiac begins each year: the gate of the newborn baby child.
After everything Gate 36 holds- the turbulence, the dark, the suffering, AND the compassion- Gate 25 is the sprout breaking through the crust of the earth. The little green sprout arrives wide-eyed, a little stunned, and open to pure possibility. This energy is not starting from scratch, but arriving with everything it learned in the underworld still in the body.
This is the energy of Inanna, the Sumerian Queen of the Sky who descended to the underworld, ascending back up through the gates toward heaven, reclaiming each piece of herself that she left behind. In her return, she is not the same as she was- she has stripped the excess away and become far more true to her essence.
This is a full arc compressed into 36 hours: crisis, initiation, and birth. The Astrological New year asks us to arrive into it consciously, by spending a little time in the threshold. Luckily for us, we have a brilliantly dark, starry sky of the new moon to remind us to gaze into the great mystery before we
sprout into action on the Spring Equinox.
(I’d love to see you at the ritual on March 21!- Register here!)
(Members can use code EMBODY for your ticket.)
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A guidebook for each seasonal threshold with somatic & creative exercises
A 2026-2027 Google calendar of Astrological and Human Design transits
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Bonus posts & tasty goodies
If you’re not ready to go deeper, I’ll leave you with this:
This new moon, light a candle. Write down reflections on what your time swimming in the Pisces seas has given you. Let yourself be in the birth canal without rushing toward the other side. The sprout knows when it’s time to break through, and so. do. you.
With love and a little bioluminescence,
Alison
Keep in Touch
Thanks for being here. If you find resonance in what you read, please leave a comment, share, or heart this post! <3 <3 <3
My books are open as we transition into this new cycle. Book a “SoulShine” Astro-HD reading with me here:
