Astrology of 12/21-12/27: The Planetary Stage for the Holidays

There’s a lot of beautiful stuff going on this week! I have been reflecting on how transits flow through the containers that we set: how for example, I have a really intense Pluto transit to my 16 degree Aries Sun (squaring it) and have been working with this for several years now. Lately I have a lot of energy day to day, and it seems to do the most for me as a transit if I stay busy and apply myself to projects related to career. As long as I’m doing something intentional and rest good when I’m tired, the Pluto intensity seems to be happy, there’s a learning process and I feel super excited about my life. When I’m not doing something, I feel this presence of something like a screaming phoenix: I need some structure (Capricorn) to metabolize the magnitude of this kind of transit so I have been going to school, working on apps for grad school, volunteering as an advocate, training, learning ashtanga yoga, and taking up various projects. It is only through this process that the clarity and information of this transit reaches me and digests (and then in dreams), and I note that I won’t be experiencing this particular energy mechanic forever, but it’s definitely shaping my life at this time. (If you have your Sun or other planets in the mid-degrees of any cardinal signs Aries, Cancer, Libra or Capricorn, you are also experiencing an angular Pluto transit.) This summer got really rough for me when I didn’t have these ways to apply myself or to metabolize the major life events this Pluto transit correlated with for me. It just ended up looking like one of the worst depressions of my life, which galvanized me to start making other decisions and plans. I know a lot of us had a rough 2016, so congratulations for making it through! The Saturn-Neptune square characterizing the year was no joke – disillusionment and despair, a major sobering & addiction bust of a transit. A lot of what unfolded this year is only going to make real sense over time (Saturn).

I note that this week there are immense transits at a time when many people are celebrating the holidays. The parties and gatherings at this time and the relationships at play definitely can provide a container for insights to emerge. The nature of the transits is going to express differently depending on how you vibrate with the container though; as Venus in Aquarius likes being around likeminded individuals, and the holidays are a time where we gather for a common celebration with people we may have strained or terse relationships with. So, more on that below, I’ve meditated on both situations of peace and conflict! 🙂 To the point that conflict itself seems like an expression of peace, and peace potentially conflict. The point of any opposition or polarity within astrology is eventually integration.

Before you read on, check out my new Patreon campaign. I’m asking for support for the writing of these weekly forecasts by a monthly donation of your choice. Donors at the $5/month level or more get an astrology reading for signing up! Your support helps a lot, and this is a way I can thank you, get to know you, and train as an astrologer at the same time bc, as I mentioned, Pluto transit. Help this Aries lady train! Your support helps me devote more time to work on astrology, which I will return back to you via content and personal readings.

(Top image: Joel Robinson)

Here’s the week:

December 21 (Happy Solstice!)

Sun enters Capricorn: 2:45 AM PST and we begin the week with Mercury and Pluto conjunct in Capricorn:

• The Sun will be conjunct Pluto in Capricorn on January 6 @ 11:44 PM PST. Watch for the vibe shfit leading up to that moment and after. This can bring some storyline regarding desires and our process of actualizing them, as well as what stands in the way of that (conditioning, shame, guilt). When the Sun joins up with Pluto, we tend to access what was hidden before, and sometimes these visions are intense. Combined with the recent Mercury rx on Pluto, intense awarenesses are coming through.
• Maybe it goes without saying, but humor keeps the brooding at bay and actually re-contextualizes divine tragedies into divine comedies. Find it. Amplify it. There are a lot of deep and intense things that don’t have to be so serious, they can actually be a lot of fun!
• That being said, the Sun/Pluto vibe in Capricorn is kind of manic depression-y, tears and laughter.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
• Take note of what personas inspire you (you want to be like them) or create jealousy within you (jealousy is caused by resonating with the potentials of that which you see, but having the painful illusion of not feeling like it’s possible for you).
• Themes around feeling empowered or not to express oneself creatively – what judgements dissolve, and which seem to block the process.
• Read between the lines: energies take on many appearances/costumes… the energies are at the bottom line.
• Focusing on or studying a persona that inspires you is a way to merge with it and get to know those qualities within yourself. It’s amazingly transformative, for example, to read the autobiographies of people who inspire you.
• Generally trust that there is some authority in your inspirations – that it can be a great act of kindness to yourself to follow the hint and investigate it.

December 24

Saturn in Sagittarius trine Uranus and Eris in Aries: 4:17 PM PST

(Gif: Amber Maitrejohn)

• This is the transit I correlate to the rise in status quo extremism and trying to use force or control to uphold particular values of the past.
• At the same time, this transit has another direction it can flow, which is really about mass evolution and liberation, and what this looks like on the micro level in one person’s consciousness; one’s very idea of what reality is shifting to become more technologically advanced. And by technology I mean all technology, including the kind where you say to your lover, “let’s meet on the dream plane”, and then you literally share the same dream and confirm in the morning.
• People can be the most defensive and vocal about threats to their freedom, which can obscure the awareness of the advances that are happening within humanity at the same time. While it is necessary to defend life and to defend what is precious, it is important to also direct energy towards the innovation, the solutions, and the structures of our life which will expand and create joy. The fight for liberation happens on many fronts!

• OMG do you feel this way about your food or your reality? You could… (Image from cosmofilius)
• Take serious consideration and cues around what EXCITES you. We have a lot of conditioning around excitement and practicality being separate from one another, but it is emerging now especially with Saturn (practically) in perhaps the most excitable of signs (Sagittarius), that being connected to our excitement is being connected to our intuition and to nature, which puts us in more expansive and lucky circumstances than plodding along on a contrived path would. Our excitement resonates with our electric higher self (Uranus in Aries) – it is a form of alignment. And duty – to the higher self! Better pay off.
• It may not be necessary to regret the past or past “mistakes” at all – you have the hindsight now – start with where you’re at.
• Liberation from our own control mechanisms and new discoveries of how to flow with reality at a vibrational level… becoming a scientist of your direct life experience and how it tends to operate, how it radically changes.
• I also wrote a lot about this transit in last week’s forecast, if you’d like to read more about it.
• REALiTi by Grimes

December 25

Venus in Aquarius trine Jupiter in Libra: 5:23 AM PST, Venus in Aquarius sextile Uranus in Aries: 8:35 AM PST, & Venus in Aquarius sextile Saturn in Sagittarius: 10:33 PM PST ALL IN ONE DAY! :O

(Image: Daniele & Iango)

So I’m going to just speak to these all at once friends. Venus is in contact with a lot of forces on the day of gift-giving and gathering! (For many, not for all, but based on these transits alone I would highly suggest gathering and celebrating sometime this week if you were on the fence about it.). Here are some things to note/think about:

• Where there are differences in opinion or actual differences in how consciousness is structured between individuals, the bridge is relationship.
• Using detachment (Venus in Aquarius) when someone with good intentions (I say that that knowing that good intentions do not always equal good practice) lacks the awareness of how to treat you as you wish to be treated and would not understand even if you told them. Recognizing that the relationship can improve incrementally and that it may require patience and finesse.
• Really listening to what people are saying, between the lines: meeting there, at the heart space, even though the methods/language you immediately face is alienating.
• Differences settle over time. There may be some wake-up calls to be gained by cutting off contact or putting up walls, but alternately, where there is some level of relationship and rapport, people influence each other over time when the waters between them are loving, more easily than when the waters are full of venom and vitriol.
• The recognition that, where there is not the ability to see eye-to-eye or have a similar reality to another who for whatever reason, wants something from you, wants you to be someone else, would not understand you if you explained yourself, etc… you have every right to interact at a boundaried level with that person. This may even let the relationship be what it really wants to be at the time: versus you projecting back your own desires for the relationship to be what you want, which requires the same acrobatics from the other that you resist yourself. This doesn’t have to be dramatic, or be a giant betrayal: some relationships just can’t vibe all the way at this space-time moment and that’s okay!
• Actively listening to another person alters consciousness. The matrix of that person’s reality is being shared with you; as your mind stops to receive theirs… this is actually like a high or mind-altering substance. Sometimes we struggle with what to do with the info or we get attached/identified to it; so we put up walls to not actually receive other people’s energy. What happens when we are clear channels? As in, we hear and witness that which is being shown to us, and we are able to let it pass through us.
• Objectivity and non-attachment truly expands us at this time and increases abundance. Two visuals: a. Imagine if your mind were like a computer chip, and your thoughts took up actual space on your hard drive. This is what we do when we are attached to ideas and memory in a physical kind of way. Take the cue of say like, cloud technology, where ideas can be re-accessed via a remote location. They’re there and avail for download. Let them go. b. We grab onto things when we don’t trust they will return or come back, or generally don’t trust the flow or in Aquarius, the conduit of life. If you recognize this possessiveness within, imagine instead the idea/person/etc. as having their own track; which you will collide again with at the right, resonant time. With thoughts that are ‘yours’, maybe they even set and rise over your consciousness like the Sun.
• If you’ve ever looked at old things you’ve created, art, diaries, whatever it is: your essence shines through whatever ego structure you have at the time. And so it will be. You keep expanding on your personal theme relative to your growth.

December 26

Jupiter in Libra opposite Uranus in Aries: 10:32 AM PST

The expansive forces of peace-keeping and building authentic relationship (real harmony, real pace, not fake harmony and fake peace) taking place in Jupiter in Libra are visible (as Jupiter can be seen by the naked eye in the night sky). Uranus in Aries is farther out and transpersonal, and from this space giving some (lots of) voltage to Jupiter. Uranus in Aries is associated with warrior trauma, and the fight to liberate the underdog within or the underdog without. By opposition, these two forces are in a dynamic relationship. I think about this transit everyday to be honest! It speaks to the potential to liberate oneself and another through relationship, and it also deals with the trauma through relationship. The centuries of social scripts and their traumas. The potential to invent new social scripts. What we will project onto another or have projected onto us can be extreme. What these planets are workshopping through consciousness is amazing: relationship becomes the battlefield, but what if there was never an enemy to start with?

Balance is a yoga of this transit. One side of the scale is visible harmony or performances of harmony (where there is actually not), and the other is a far out, electric drum beat of liberation and freedom. This transit has the ability to affect what we believe (Jupiter) relationship is, and how we can access relationship as the most wild, exciting, magical meeting of individuals in which both parties are positively transformed. This may ask us to learn more about who we actually are; so that we can show up as that… not as someone else. This may ask us to examine what peace is from a larger, more expansive outlook: to cooperate (Libra) with the higher self (Uranus in Aries), the immediate balances of peace and discord in our lives can shift.

• There is an extensive section on this transit in the forecast titled “A Philosophical Map of the Revolution, 2016”.

Mercury retrograde in Capricorn sextile Neptune in Pisces: 8:19 PM PST

• Generally this can have something to do with the integration of compassionate or even enlightened concepts into one’s mental frameworks: by re-thinking some deeply grooved thought pattern and paving new directions.
• A sign that inspired re-thinking is wanting to occur is the feeling of hopelessness.
• Mercury retrogrades are dreaded and demonized because they correlate with interruptions to one’s normal schedule. The nature of Mercury is like A.D.D/A.D.H.D. which is considered a problem within institutional schooling rather than a different kind of mentality to meet in a different way. We really value predictability and focus in some regards, where an unhinged Mercury is going to follow a bread crumb trail of whatever is interesting or capturing attention: it is the nature of this that creates spontaneous new experiences, or perhaps even draws us to notice what is actually unfolding in our reality, versus being so highly conditioned to only walk the same track, over and over again. Watch out for the rabbit holes, they *do tend* to be magical. Red pill or blue pill? 😉

December 27

Sun in Capricorn sextile Mars in Pisces: 12:08 AM PST

• Check yourself when it comes to your beliefs about what is possible or not. And especially regarding timing, which is a semi-permeable, semi-flexible constraint we are working with. This is a very creative Sun-Mars, asking for a reality check which can enhance one’s mobility and ability to realize dreams and creative desires. The reality can be dreamier than we imagined, if we take into account the actual (and often temporary) limitations, resources currently available, and false limitations we can let go of. This is the surf, the ocean – we do not force or try to control the ocean because we know better. Life is the same way, but forget resignation – we can surf life too.
• Morale comes in the form of dreams (sleeping and waking). If something’s drudgery, there’s another angle or perspective needing to be uncovered. Or another mission, altogether.

THANK YOU for meditating on the planets with me this week! I love you guys, thanks for the readership and support! I am so grateful to get to share astrology interpretations with people and connect over it. I spent years studying astrology in semi-isolation, not feeling mobilized to be weird and accepted simultaneously, and getting shit at parties when I would bring astrology up to strangers, so this actually all means a lot to me. As I got deeper into studying, it was the ideas within the Aquarius and Uranus archetypes especially that have given me the courage to broadcast my thoughts instead of letting the immediate resistance keep me from following my dreams. So whenever you are inclined, please leave a comment or write me about how your week’s going; I love hearing your thoughts. And do take me up on my Patreon campaign’s offering for astrology readings & show the support that you are able. This year I got to meet a musician who was happy to trance out in the woods playing music for hours; I feel similarly about reading the planets and I’d love to share that with you through astrology readings or astrology tutoring (10 spots available for one-on-one tutoring, see the Patreon page for details!).

Happy Solstice and Holidays,

Sabrina Monarch

Sabrina Monarch is a soul-centered Evolutionary Astrologer who publishes weekly astrological forecasts. She has been collecting astrological experience for over a decade. She also enjoys yoga, hiking and creative writing. You can subscribe to receive her weekly forecasts by email here.

---