get ready for things to shift monumentally as we head into the new year.
happy new year, my sweeties! i know that our celebrations looked very different this year than they have in the past (and if your celebration was to go out and party last year and you did that again this year, please leave my page, thank you very much!), but i just want to say that staying inside was worth it. you have no idea how many lives you may have saved just by staying home.
i wanted to take a moment to talk about the astrological transits happening this month. in the astrology community, it sort of feels like the new year began on december 21, 2020, which was the date of the grand conjunction between jupiter and saturn in aquarius. thematically, that conjunction opened the door to a new 20-year cycle, because that is how long it takes for those two planets to conjoin. it *also* opened the door to a new 180-year cycle, as those planets are now meeting in air signs. that is incredible!!! how lucky are we to be alive to experience that shift?!?
now that we’re transitioning into this air age, our focus moves from groundedness, stability, and a little bit of “stuck”-ness into a period of connectedness, communication, and thinking more in terms of the collective. if you don’t run in circles where you hear that word often – “collective” – get ready to hear that a LOT in the future. we really are moving into a period where the focus is less on “me” and more on “we”.
not only do we have this jupiter/saturn activity, but we have some other shifts happening with the inner planets that will change the atmosphere a bit in the coming weeks. first, on january 6th, mars will *finally* leave aries and move into taurus. mars has been hanging out in his home sign of aries for the last six months, which is a longer time than mars usually takes to transit a sign. this is because of the retrograde that happened from september – november of last year. even though mars loves being in aries, there has been a lot of heat and activation with his transit for our cardinal sign friends (aries, cancer, libra, and capricorn). with mars leaving aries, those signs can breathe a little sigh of relief that the heat is off them for a minute.
that being said, mars in taurus is going to stir up a little shock when he connects with uranus on january 20. while the mars in taurus signatories are not so much about being fast and more about being stubborn or bullish, things could crackle that day when he runs up against the planet of electricity, rebellion, and breakthroughs. i don’t love that this is happening the day of the united states’ presidential inauguration, yet, i don’t think that this kind of activation is surprising at all. tensions are high and will continue to be high for a very long time.
circling back a bit, on january 8th we see a shift when mercury joins up with our friends jupiter and saturn by moving into aquarius. expect to see our communication get a bit more logical and higher-minded during this time. mercury will be hanging out in aquarius for a good chunk of time – until march 15th – because he will be going retrograde in that sign on january 30th.
perhaps this is a good moment for me to explain retrogrades to any of my followers who are new to the term! a retrograde is a period in which a planet appears to be moving backwards in the sky. now, we know scientifically that planets do not move *backward*, but this is more about what things look like from our vantage point here on earth. astrologically speaking, astrologers signify retrograde periods as a time to focus on words with the “re” prefix – reviewing, renewing, revisiting, reflecting, and so on. when planets move “backwards”, they are going back over degrees in a sign that they have previously visited. so how does that affect us? retrogrades are asking us to revisit, review, and reflect on certain areas of our life that we have already experienced to see if there is something we need to clean up. something we maybe didn’t focus on the first time around that we can polish or tailor now that we know more. or maybe a theme that you experienced previously is now coming up again, and you can’t just brush past it this time. this is just a quick explanation of a retrograde, but i’m sure i’ll be explaining the concept more when we do finally move into a true retrograde season.
getting back to the transits, we also have venus moving into a new sign on january 8th. she’ll be leaving sagittarius and entering capricorn. venus, the planet of love, relationships, values, aesthetics, and pleasure, is only going to be in capricorn for a few weeks, but while she is here she is going to meet up with pluto. expect a little bit of intensity, depth, passion, and maybe even a twinge of obsession when those two conjoin on january 28th.
we have two big lunations this month, with a new moon in capricorn on january 13th and a full moon in leo on january 28th. i won’t go into those *too* much at this moment, as i expect i’ll be writing more about them closer to those respective dates. what i will mention here is that new moons are a time of manifestation, and full moons are a time of release. keep that in mind as i will be talking more about rhythms and cycles as it pertains to the moon and her phases down the road. 🙂
the final big thing we have to look forward to this month is the ingress of the sun from capricorn into aquarius on january 19th. in capricorn season, we are asked to look at establishment. structure. legacy-building. laying the bricks to the building we’re creating for ourselves. it’s very fitting that the new year occurs during capricorn season, when many of us are setting resolutions or using this as a time to think about what we want to do next and where we go from here. when we transition from capricorn season to aquarius season, we are again shifting from the thoughts of our *own* legacies to the thoughts of what is occurring all around us. where do we fit into the bigger picture? what is our responsibility to others? how can we make what we’re doing on our own work in the framework of…wait for it…the collective?
i’ve mentioned before that while we are not in the age of aquarius yet (it’s more complicated than just having a bunch of planets in the sign of the water bearer), we certainly are heading into a more aquarius-minded era. and boy, is february is gonna be one big, fat, aquarius wedding. i’ll get more into what i mean later! meanwhile, enjoy these shifts and changes that january has in store for us. things are about to get wild, my loves!
astromaeghan | astrologer 