This week is less rambunctious than the last. We are slowly coming down off the Cancer full moon of January 4th/5th and like sugar junkies off of a birthday cake binge we may be a little shaky for a few days. We are, however, through the portal of all the faster moving planets zipping through Capricorn and their conjunction with the underworld heavy-weight planet, Pluto that has taken up residence there since 2008. This holiday season was one for the therapy couch. Make your appointments and purge your overindulgences of family dramas and old abandonment narratives as they are rich with insight and yours to get all you can from.
This week’s big news is that there is a pile up of faster moving planets in the innovative and ever-thinking air sign, Aquarius. This should help us move out of the darker realms that Capricorn and Pluto have had us in.
But.
Mercury has just entered the “shadow” phase of its next retrograde cycle. This means that it is moving forward through the degrees that it will soon back up and reverse over. In other words we are covering the territory we will retread between January 21st and February 11th when Mercury is actually retrograde.
So..
Be mindful. Be watchful. Notice what big plans you are cooking up and make sure you leave room for misfires and mistakes. Live your life but use this as an excuse to be ever more mindful. Slow down so you don’t speed over important details that could derail bigger projects.
I’m offering a new moon in Aquarius/Mercury retrograde magic tele-class on the 19th of January where we will go into more detail about how to make the most of this transit and the upcoming new moon. Stay tuned for more information.
Many blessings for your week ahead!
Chani
Aries & Aries Rising
Considering the fact that this past week (especially the full moon of January 4th/5th) had you in some pretty deep revisions on the career front and the fact that the past month or so has revealed in a pretty public way your ambitions and true feelings about the work you do in the world, this next week is a little reprieve from that spotlight.
Of course most of the feelings that (re)surfaced in terms of your life path have been brewing on a subterranean level for some time. This past month has not been about new information rising but more about not being able to turn away from the truth of how your really feel about your current employment situation. Ambition and drive is only really interesting when it’s connected to a larger theme, intention or purpose. Egos are endlessly boring.
My suggestion for your week ahead is to take some time to revel in the warm and witty glow of those that you hold dear in your social and peer circles. Live a little. Plus you are doing more than just having polite conversation right now. Mercury is going to start to slow down to turn retrograde in this area of your chart and you’ll be asked to undergo a transformation about what role you play among your peers and how you want to approach it. Rethinking, reconsidering and reorienting yourself among friends and co-workers will be next up on the agenda.
Taurus & Taurus Rising
It’s time Taurus. You aren’t one to be rushed and any of us would be silly to try. When you are ready, you are ready. And you are ready.
It’s imperative for your well-being and for the well-being of your professional reputation that you show up to work with your big-girl boots on. From January 21-February 11th Mercury will go retrograde in your Tenth House of career and social standing so you don’t want to be caught slacking off because you won’t get away with playing dumb.
Do your duties and be willing to revise, rewrite and rethink parts of them at the end of this month and the beginning of next. If you are out of work at the moment this might be a time to reconsider the direction(s) in which you are sending your resumes. Rethinking how you go about getting proper employment will help you find necessary loopholes and garner helpful hints from friends and lovers.
Don’t just dwell on your strengths. Be willing to look into aspects of your talents that aren’t as developed. Take a fresh look at the equation of you + purpose + passion=$$. What are you not seeing? What could you be developing in your spare time? What skills could you be polishing up on that would make you more appealing on the employment front.
If you are past your working years or in a position where a 9-5 isn’t part of your game plan then this time will be about rethinking the space that you take up in the world and if you feel fulfilled with your tasks at hand. How can you innovate your worldly role so that you feel your power and prosperity in public spaces? This astrology wants you to flourish in your outer world but will only let you do so if you are willing to review the ways in which you need to help yourself do so.
Gemini & Gemini
Soon it will be time to review what you know, take inventory about what you need to learn, and reorganize what you teach and how you teach it. However, for now I strongly advise you to finalize as many travel plans and arrangements as you need to. Also sort out any publishing deals or contracts that have to do with intellectual material or courses you intend to take or teach.
Your ruling planet, Mercury, has just entered the “shadow” phase of its next retrograde cycle. What that means is that Mercury will eventually revisit the degree it currently occupies as it appears to move backwards in space. The shadow phase can be important because it sets up the rest of the transit. What happens now and the choices that we make in this stage of the game are generally the things we’ll be rehashing once the retrograde gets going. Notice what plans you are making and what you are trying to push forth and remember that all of that might be put on hold soon or need to be revised.
Mercury officially reverses direction (and effect) from January 21st-February 11th. It’s not too complicated of a retrograde though and it seems to be geared towards helping you reconsider your outlook on life. Be open to new views, new poems, new love songs and new ways of reviewing old material. Sometimes we need to look at things in reverse to understand how to move forward. Sometimes we need to stand on our heads in order to feel right way round. Sometimes we just need to shake the snow globe and stand in awe of all the tiny pieces up in the air. Sometimes we have to let go of what we know in order to understand what we don’t.
Cancer & Cancer Rising
Feeling feelings and being full of flavorful snacks is most likely what your weekend had in store for you. January 4th/5th birthed a full moon in Cancer in your first house of self, body and vitality and if there is ever an excuse to raid the cupboards and crawl under the blankets that was it. The weekend very well may have been full of half baked feelings, fatigue and fears that didn’t quite add up to anything substantial.
Feelings aren’t facts but they sure as hell aren’t for the faint of heart either.
The next few weeks might give you the sensation that you are falling down a rabbit hole of indescribable emotions and inexplicable hauntings. Old monsters that aren’t really threatening but not so friendly either. How these dementors appear all depends on whether or not you have been delving into the intimacy issues that have been arising over the past month. Tackling your misconceptions around partnership and testing out your ability to hang in with your hang ups when it comes to opening up and getting vulnerable is your ticket out of any Hogwarts nightmare.
Those that we perceive as enemies open us up to our own vulnerabilities. Those that appear to be attacking us or testing us in ways we wish they would not make us susceptible to being defensive. Experiencing our own defensiveness is a priceless clue as to where our boundaries have become faulty. Build better internal structures to house your most precious resource: your energy and talent. My hope is that this time has helped you handle the sometimes toxic waste of others with a deft discernment and a mature momma-bear type disposition.
Much of your lessons lately have been about how to be in touch with your needs while rising to the occasion of being present for the relationships in front of you. Good love is worth the work it takes to get to it. We can’t expect to experience the gifts of being bonded with another without experiencing the very important task of putting down a barrier between us and those that aren’t worth our open door policy. It’s just as important to say yes right now as it is to say no.
Leo & Leo Rising
Look, listen, watch, meditate and engage in practices that help you to merge consciousness with your significant others. Consider ways to engage with your beaus and babes that you have been too tired, busy or bothered to play with as of late. This past month has required a lot of heavy lifting and working overtime from you, even during the holiday hours. But no matter how many extra bucks you made, you just can’t buy love.
If you’ve been hiding from the intricacies of intimate affairs, the next month or so may call your bluff. If you have been refusing difficult conversations or complicated conundrums with your partners, this month may tease a statement or two out of you. If you have have been afraid to be real, raw and ready for the challenges that love brings, the next few weeks are about to call you into the ring so get your love gloves on kittty-cats.
Whomever you are with needs more affection, attention and interaction with you. Fighting and playing both require contact. If you can, set it up so you get to experience the version that is more enjoyable and less painful.
If you are a single cat this will be a good couple of weeks where you are blessed with a marvelous meow that could beguile all the birds and bees to follow you around the town. However, this is a time for you to play fair and to play for future bonus points. Mercury is about to go retrograde in your Seventh House of one-to-ones so everything that you do comes back to you boomerang style. Give out to others only what you wish to come back to you.
Virgo & Virgo Rising
Last week’s astrology is still reverberating through your love life and creative pursuits, echoing words of encouragement to remember that this is a slow transformation of epic proportions that you are undertaking. Issues of obsession (yours and others of you) and the desire to obliterate overly intense feelings may still threaten to sweep you away in their undertow and affect all you do. Delving headlong into artistic projects can be a good counterpoint to all that jazz. Deciding to get to work with the energy at hand can be a wonderful distraction to any emotional dramas that have been hogging center stage.
In fact, preparing yourself to re-enter the working world after the new year is a great way to start things off. Pretty up your lunch box with nutritious and energizing snacks and spruce up your inbox by cleaning it out. Get creative when organizing all the little tasks at hand so that you can feel like there is some ease in going from A to B during the day.
Your Ruling planet, Mercury, is entering the shadow phase of its next retrograde cycle this week. Mercury’s actual retrograde will occur from January 21-February 11th. This “shadow” phase is a foretelling of the transit. It’s still a green light to get things done, but in a proceed-with-eyes-wide-open kind of movement. Mercury will be reviewing all the ways in which you tend to health, wellness and day-to-day grinds. Anything that you can do in these next few weeks to honor your body and your routine will help you transition into a powerful Mercury retrograde review.
Health is wealth after all.
Libra & Libra Rising
Get out your markers and your glue sticks. Get on your high heels and your lip tricks. Get to your poetry slams and pump up your favorite def jams. Libra, it is time to shake your tail feathers and prim, preen and prepare yourself for creative collaborations that are sure to heat up these cold days of winter.
You don’t need a date to feel hot to trot. You don’t need a book deal to write an epic essay on the state of modern love. You don’t need anyone’s approval to fall madly, deeply in love with whatever strikes your fancy.
You don’t need permission to be beautiful. You just need to declare it so.
Declare it so. Declare your passions, charm your own pants off and worry not if you are right or wrong in your pursuit of beauty and fun. Just go forth and find it. Find it, dance with it and decide in favor of it. The heavens and I know that this past month has been an inner adventure of epic proportions and it’s high time that you took a break from navel gazing and psychoanalyzing the root of your issues (even though I am sure that you’ve uncovered some old patterns and begun a very transformative process of healing and lessening your load). Creative pursuits are your fastest route to healing all you have witnessed and survived in your life. Loving what is and who is currently with you is equally as soothing. Letting yourself be adored and adorable is as well. Doesn’t matter how you do it, all roads lead you back to the principle of pleasure and its importance.
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
Time to pay extra attention to the needs of your home, family and foundations. In fact in the coming weeks you might even see those that you live with, the place that you live in and the very notion of family quite differently. If there is an issue here that has been internally gnawing at you, you may find yourself hard pressed to ignore it or refuse it any longer.
Nothing is right in life until our foundation is.
This can be a completely psychological endeavor however. Most likely your attention will be turned toward understanding how to create a secure and safe environment for yourself with sufficient financial resources flowing in. No shame in covering your bases and in fact Saturn, having moved into your Second House of money recently, demands that you understand your dollars and cents. Your evolution and evolving maturity depends on it.
You might also have started to either make moves towards changing careers or changing the role that you currently hold. Remember that at this moment you are trying to build your base which demands that your outer life and career also start to align with your center. Knowing one helps you understand the other and as you get to the root of one issue it makes the other come into focus. Don’t hesitate to spend the weekend at home reorganizing your nest and remodeling your space so that you feel creatively stimulated by your surroundings. Set yourself up so that you feel as free and as empowered as you can to make whatever shifts you need to out in the world.
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
Everything right now is about how you say it, how you frame it and when you choose to communicate it. Think of yourself as a master comedian in the coming weeks, one who has a deft sense of timing, intonation and inflection. You are the foot-in-mouth-master of the zodiac but I suggest that we coax out your more tactful tactics and pretend you have the patience of a saint at your disposal. If you have news that will upset or remake a situation in your life-plan it out accordingly. Make sure that you take into consideration the daily rhythms of others and how your news might shift their paradigm. You have some sweet and soothing tones available to speak with so lay the sugar coat on heavy when needed.
With an upcoming Mercury retrograde happening in your Third House of communication but affecting your Seventh House of intimate relationships (think romance and finance duos) and your Tenth House of career it looks like you’ll be reevaluating, reforming and reconfiguring these aspects of your life. Lay down the ground work as consciously as you can. Make transitions and changes with the greatest amount of foresight possible.
You are being reformed remember. Saturn has just made it’s first firm steps into your sign and you are going to have to learn pace and patience as a means to prosperity. What you choose to walk away from right now is just as important as what you walk towards. You are taking the first steps towards building your dynasty. It’s a long haul process that requires that you put your beliefs, ideals and visions front and center so that every step is a measured one that counts towards getting to your end goal.
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
The full moon on January 4th/5th was a healthy dose of holy-wow for you. This is in large part due to the fact that the sun was merging with Pluto in Capricorn. This transit only highlights the kind of metamorphosis that you are undergoing (especially if your birthday falls between January 3rd-6th). It’s a slow burn of renewal for some and an outright overhaul for others. This past full moon was a tipping point or peak of the energy, an even that will reverberate with you for weeks to come.
This means that if there is a change that you want to make, a long-lasting-skin-shedding-crap-composting-overhaul-of-the-highest-order, this is your season. This past month you have been on a high octane, deep-sea diving journey of transformation that has been encouraging you to uncover the old, buried bones of discontent, repressed desires, and sorrows that stop you from living life in 3-D. There is no shame in needing to make a pit-stop for self-pity, it’s just advisable not to stay there for too long. Pity parties should be short-lived affairs as the air of melancholy tends to wrinkle duds and flatten do’s.
This overhaul didn’t just spring up out of nowhere however. It’s been around for a couple of years but every once in a while it gets majorly activated. One of those times is now (started back in December and ending with this last full moon) with the next installment/activation this March. In between now and then there will be a Mercury retrograde (January 21-February 11th) in your Second House of finances, fortunes and resources that are rightfully yours. Take the next few weeks to get any financial fiascos in order so that you can better fund and support the adventures that your renewed self desires to go on.
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
Due to the fact that Mercury will station retrograde in your sign on January 21st, the mischievous messenger is about to be in Aquarius for an obscene amount of time; from January 5th to March 13th. Usually the speed demon only spends a couple of weeks in any one sign (outside of its retrograde blip) so this extended stay signals a slew of questions, inspires many an inquiry and stimulates the desire to gather information about yourself and to relay it.
Some of these questions will be about love, partnering and how to make certain compositions worth your while. A Mercury retrograde mucks things up at times-details, codes, numbers, agreements-but this one in particular isn’t so bad. No fear hear, just a slowing down and a step by step prance when heading into romantic and/or business ventures. Any situation that has you merging your talents and energies with others will be front and center so keep a steady hand on the wheel and make sure you have room to back up and rework things if need be.
Having said all of that you have until around mid January to get things sorted out as best you can when it comes to these issues, Mercury’s actual retrograde cycle will be from January 21st-February 11th. The days in between are the least efficient in terms of moving forward but the most powerful for redoing, reworking and reconfiguring your master plans, so spend the next two weeks making as many strides forward as possible. Dot your t’s and cross your i’s and double check the details.
Mercury isn’t alone however. Venus and Mars are also piled into your solar first house helping you to attract what you want and appease the more grumbly demons that you may have come across at work (thanks to January 4th/5th’s full moon in your house of employment). Right now the tides are with you to get some good work done and Mercury’s forthcoming retrograde will hopefully help you to rethink aspects of yourself that you have problems seeing clearly. There may be no greater gift than that of true self-perception. Make every attempt to support a more honest look in the mirror.
Pisces & Pisces Rising
Depending on how the last full moon (January 4th/5th) landed in your Fifth House of love lives, seductive eyes and creative endeavors, you’ll either want to be curling up in the luscious arms of a lover or falling in love with your current creations. Either way the desire to conquer will be temporarily on hold.
I know that we have been talking a lot about showing up in the world due in large part to Saturn’s recent show in your Tenth House of notoriety and public displays of authority, I am not going back on any of that as a larger, broader stroke for your year. it’s just that right now you might need to run away with the circus or binge-watch an entire season (or three) of your favorite Netflix series.
It’s more than spacing out that we are after here (though I fully endorse ceiling therapy …. as in, lie down and gaze at the ceiling. It’s something more along the lines of tuning into your need to unravel via letting go of the more mundane movements of your day.
We all need to show up to pay the bills but I highly recommend that you duck out as early as you can so you can pay homage to dreamtime and downtime. Also in preparation for the upcoming Mercury retrograde cycle (January 21-February 11th) get a dream journal, make an appointment with a Jungian analyst and/or draw one image each morning from your dream life. You’ll be assisted tremendously with tips and tricks from your psyche in the coming weeks and there’s no reason not to get a head start with the 411 coming your way.