When Viola Davis, sculpted and strengthened after months of training, first stood in the garb of the Agojie warrior women, with her bare feet in the African soil, it was the apex of not just the seven-year push to produce The Woman King, but of a lifelong battle to fully express her warrior nature.
“Whenever you’re doing anything new,” Davis told the AP News, “it requires the warrior spirit.” As both producer and star of the popular film, now on Netflix, this included going to battle. “”You’re fighting for actors,” she said. “Fighting for the director, the writer. You’re fighting for the budget. Fight, fight, fight.”
A $50 million action epic set in 1820s West Africa, The Woman King is about the real-life, all-female army of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Made largely by women and featuring an almost completely Black cast, it’s unlike anything Hollywood has ever produced (though it does benefit from the success of the two Black Panther films). The Woman King’s uniqueness may explain in part why it was roundly snubbed at the recent Academy Awards – despite its masterful fusion of profound emotion with live action spectacle. Though I haven’t yet seen Everything Everywhere All at Once, which swept the Oscars, Viola Davis as Nanisca would probably still have gotten my nod for Best Actress – though she wasn’t even nominated.
A fiery, take-charge Leo, Davis was born on August 11, 1965 at an Aquarius Full Moon. She grew up poor in Rhode Island, with seemingly impossible dreams of success in the movie industry. And now – on the cusp of her second Saturn return – she is fully engaged in making them come true.
What big dream are you ready to fight for? The Aries New Moon (March 21, 10:22 a.m. PDT), which falls on the heels of the Equinox, or astrological New Year, is your call to action. This New Moon at zero Aries features a powerful lineup of planets and other bodies in the sign of the warrior, including the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Chiron, Jupiter, Vesta and Eris. This headstrong council is putting their heads together, preparing to take action. Wherever the sign of Aries lies in your chart, you’re being urged to get clear, make a plan, and act on it. To help things along, the Sun and Moon make an out-of-sign square to Mars (the Aries ruler) at 28 Gemini, bringing an additional dose of instinctive action and fierce determination.
Only two days later, on March 23, Pluto enters Aquarius for the first time since the French, Haitian and American revolutions in the late 1700s. This intense transit should again prove revolutionary, especially in terms of technological breakthroughs and old systems crumbling to make way for a (hopefully) better future. Seasoned warriors will be needed. Pluto will sit at zero (there’s that “babe in the woods” degree again!) until it retrogrades back into Capricorn in June. We’re sure to get glimpses of the future over the next few months, though false starts are also possible. Once Pluto returns to Aquarius in January, it will spend the next 20 years empowering and agitating the sign of freedom and community.
Meanwhile, in the Northern Hemisphere, that cluster of planets in fresh-start Aries is announcing that spring has sprung, while in the Southern Hemisphere the gorgeous colors of autumn also bring their message of change. A shift of season brings a shift in energy, along with a call to trust your instincts. It’s worth noting, as well, that we will have two Aries New Moons in a row for the first time since March-April of 2004. The first is on March 21 at the zero degree and the second, a solar eclipse on April 19, is at the 29thdegree. This is a final kicker for whatever begins around the Equinox. Perhaps a venture will be shaken a bit to see if it can stand the test of time. Just keep your warrior flame alight, even as Pluto blasts away the past to make way for what you’ve dreamt of. You might not be undergoing a grueling regimen of weight lifting and fight training to perform your own stunts in a film, as Viola Davis and her fellow actors did in The Woman King, but you’ll still be blazing a new path in your own unique way.
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