In the face of lifequaking transformation and the quite frankly unholy methods the multiverse has been reefing out of its bag o' tricks to shake rattle and roll us, it has been all too easy to overlook the balm of Taurus season.

If you collapsed just before (or on) the full moon finish line, you still made it. That makes every day of your life in a row you survived, which is an impressive consecutive effort and one of which you can be very proud.

We have a blessed few unaspected days in front of us now, astrospeak for drop your weapons.

Often the only way we ever make necessary changes and tweaks to our operating system, is to first endure a period of deep discomfort. Everything begins to turn to shit. We react and overreact and scramble. We lose something, sometimes all the things, we hold dear. We make poor choices and bad decisions in the fray. We hurt the people we're trying desperately to hold close. The rot sets in.

Our full moon mere moments from her peak is in curious aspect with her lunar nodes. These hypothetical markers that gate our past and future. This is your life, held fast between the two.

Depth charge anyone? Tis nearly time to dance with your darkness in the pale moonlight, if you have not already been occupying the shadowlands as a lifestyle of late. The incoming Scorpio full moon is built on ruthless regeneration provided you can live and let die.

And so we tip and the wheel creaks around again. Samhain and the Scorpio full moon, Pluto and Lilith, mayhem and transformation.

Welcome to your underworld. Samhain falls after the Autumn Equinox and before the Winter Solstice, traditionally marking the end of harvest and the descent into deep, dark Winter.

There is a palpable easing in the air and the ebbing is balm indeed. The dark arts supertroop marched us right to the edge, bless 'em, and despite all the wobbling we were not lost.

Transformation, the goring death and laboured rebirth, is a messy business. And in the thick of it, as we be now and for months to come, still nothing is fixed. This rolling transition has many faces yet unseen and greater depths to terrify and dazzle us.

So how's that whole Pluto Mars thing playing out for you? Still climbing towards tomorrow's torrid peak, well may we feel our cells rearranging. Today is an echo of a glitch from way back in the second week of March's retrograde, cunningly setting the scene for our wide eyed here and now. Ping back to see clearly, Merc's ongoing rx party favour.

Pluto's grind is here again as the dark lord of our underworld turns retrograde in Capricornia. Only five months to go. Unlike other rx's where we get to slow down, this actually amps Pluto's unholy purpose: to create the kind of chaos that forces us into our dark corners. We are transformed finding our way out. His retrograde takes us deeper and holds us under longer.

By way of antidote to the incendiary quake zone that was Aries season, now may we rest in the realm of the little bull. Ordinarily a luxe zone of sensual delights, we bypass pleasure for treasure with so much at stake as the sun stamps his entry into Taurus.

This week I had lunch with a wise man, one I consider to be master of his thoughts. I was shocked to learn his life had not been the zen lens practice it appears from the outside. He told me instead how the tiniest disagreement or harsh word would derail him, plummeting him into a fight or flight mode that saw him spend days isolated and spinning in his own head, plotting his escape and fleeing from his own life.

Because the flux zone is not shaking or stirring us enough - and we're really only moments into the process that is playing games with us until June - today we welcome the lightning rod that is the Sun and Uranus, shoulder to shoulder at the tail end of Aries. Thunder is rumbling and the air is crackling, the light shifting with the impending storm.

Next cosmic cab off the evolutionary rank during this Saison du Flux is Chiron, following the moonlit path into Aries. Our wounded healer remains our emblem of overbloodycoming. Tempting as it is to see only the claret oozing and float away on a sea of tears and fingerpointing, Chiron is always far more interested in our healing. In how we rise, not what knocked us flat. In how we each alchemise that shit into gold.

Beware the Ides of March, they say. Gah. We have all been settling karmic debt and shadow dancing for weeks before that - and since. As we plunge into the sweet dark of the moon after a month or more in Meltdown City, the reckoning is here. When the moon makes new in Aries in a few short days, it will be dragging Chiron into its fiery imperative and kicking Mercury into forward gear. This will be a high impact transformation, the kind that we crave and quake.

Back in the saddle darklings and loving it! After a long and winding convalesence, I read tarot this morning for a wonder from Wisconsin and have officially re-opened my bookings for readings.

My old boss used to remark that the problem with having your head stuck up your arse* is that only one of your senses is working. Yes, wisdom of dinosaurs but a salient observation nonetheless. As we chewed over yesterday and the day before that on this page, April is built on revisiting old scenarios or past mistakes whilst being agitated and niggled on most fronts.

In the spirit of Mercury retrograde, we're going to do a quick revision on his masterful magic so that when he squares Saturn and Mars today we don't all drop our bundles (again) or get booted hard in the nostalgias.

Let's just get one thing straight and take the bleating right out of it. April is a pressure cooker designed to get you hot under the collar.