What can I say to introduce a week with an eclipse and an exact conjunction between Saturn and Pluto? (For reference, the Saturn-Pluto conjunction only happens every ~35-40 years and tends to bring about enduring changes. The last one was in 1982.) The astrology is monumental. We can be deepening in capacity at this time – capacity to love, to participate in the unfolding of reality, to respond meaningfully to the unknown. This is all in the midst of doubt or anxiety & the call is evolving our ability to respond (our response-ability or responsibility).
Since this is THE week of the big Saturn-Pluto conjunction (the alignment is exact January 12), I have an offering for you! While subscribers to my email list have had access to this in-depth Saturn-Pluto article since September, in light of the current transit I made the article public, which you can read here. Resource it as a companion article to this week’s forecast, since it contains a more thorough depiction of what the Saturn-Pluto transit means and how we can participate with it.
In case this is your first time here, I’m Sabrina Monarch and I’m a soul-centered astrologer. I love providing perspectives on the opportunities of transits and putting into words what the vibe may feel like at this moment in time, to support you on your path & open a dialogue between us and the cosmos. If you would like to receive these weekly forecasts to your inbox, sign up for my mailing list here.
Here’s our week, after a few announcements!
An educational opportunity of a lifetime!
2020 begins with an Evolutionary Astrology Intensive (starting January 27, enrollment deadline is January 24) and I invite you to join us and bring a deeper relationship and comprehension of astrology and chart-reading technique into your life for 2020 onward. If you have questions about the course, start a conversation with me by emailing me at sabrina@monarchastrology.com. I’ll get back to you! If you haven’t already, take a moment to read over the course page to learn all about this offering – it’s been such a profound experience and has gotten high reviews from students, which you can read on the course page.
Latest on the Magic of the Spheres podcast:
I had Becca Tarnas back on the show to discuss the planetary combinations of Mercury after we last discussed the planetary combinations of Venus. This episode is part two of our conversation where wel discuss Mercury’s combinations with Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. See the episode before this one (#39) for Mercury’s combinations to Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn!
Becca is a scholar, artist, and counseling astrologer, and an editor of Archai: The Journal of Archetypal Cosmology. She received her PhD in Philosophy and Religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and her dissertation is titled The Back of Beyond: The Red Books of C.G. Jung and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Speaking with Becca and getting to otherwise interact with her work is a real pleasure one reason of which is that she combines such deep intellect and scholarship with the numinous and the mythic, which I feel becomes a doorway to making new connections about the magic of the world around us. Archetypes, after all, are everywhere. We explored Mercury as it expresses in people’s communication styles but also some of the esoteric qualities of Mercury like spell-casting, etymology, and “dead languages”.
Tune in where you listen to podcasts or on your web browser here: part one and part two.
Here’s our week!
January 8, 2020
Mercury in 16 Capricorn sextile Neptune in 16 Pisces: 5:02 AM PST
- The Saturn-Pluto conjunction in Capricorn (highlighted by Mercury and the Sun this week) can relate to a fearful and reactive mood in the air. This can be around larger world/climate events as well as trigger points in our own lives. As much as real crises and impasses may be presenting themselves, we may take care to be as nonreactive as possible – and to soberly respond as needed, as nonreactivity does not equate to disengagement. While Mercury-Neptune suggests a potential for creative, imaginative and visionary thinking, it also relates to being prone to fantasy, which in certain cases, may not actually be ideal. Notice if you are coming up with stories about things for which you do not actually have all the information.
- In situations where we do not have all the information but we are grappling with anxiety or repetitively thinking about something, it would be useful to compartmentalize – such as to allow ourselves to deliberately put the issue aside and accepting where we are in the process when we are going to sleep at night. Mercury in Capricorn is very methodical by nature, and can relate to our desire to think something through in its entirety, to be diligent (as Becca spoke of with Mercury-Saturn in our last podcast together in part one of our Mercury conversation), but we can be more responsible in this process by giving ourselves actual breaks. This can be a good time as well for research and consulting experts related to our concerns, and staying open to new information or new perspectives of meaning.
January 10, 2020
Mercury in 19 Capricorn conjunct Sun in 19 Capricorn: 7:19 AM PST
(Image: “A Writer” by Lucian Freud)
As both Mercury and the Sun will go on to form exact conjunctions with Saturn and Pluto this week, consider their alliance a meaningful precursor to our Saturn-Pluto moment. Saturn and Pluto could have exacted their conjunction outside of Capricorn Season, but it just so happens that the light of day will be shining upon that moment along with translator/interpreter Mercury. Here are some thoughts on what this can mean:
- The Sun’s nature is to shine light, and it represents as well the feature of our consciousness that understands through intellect and reason. While our lunar (Moon) consciousness may approach inner understanding through dreamwork, and through feeling, the Solar consciousness within us may approach inner understanding through neuroscience and biology – just as an example. When the Sun and Mercury join, we are more likely to shine light or experience light shining on our mental processes, like how we deduce a conclusion or how we tend to intellectually process our emotions.
- This awareness coming through with the Sun shining upon Mercury can relate to moments of clarity around historical thought patterns (whether analyzing how a culture thinks or how we personally, have thought) and logical structures we have formed. This may catalyze an awareness that we are changing or maturing in some way, like “I used to think I had to do __________ to earn love, but now I can see that very behavior was also working to push people away.” The light, essentially, shines upon our logical structures, and reveals holes in some of them, allowing us to change our minds.
- With the Sun and Mercury passing over the Saturn-Pluto conjunction (discussed below and in the previously mentioned Saturn-Pluto article), light is being brought to both hidden and systemic themes. This awareness can be immensely sobering. While not really jumping-for-joy kinds of epiphanies, these deeper insights give us grounding on the scaffolding we exist and operate upon, which means we are more resourced to create the future. Moving forward absent of the future can seem revolutionary, but not if it’s constantly undermined by unconscious, unaddressed tendrils of the past.
Full Moon in 20 Cancer Lunar Eclipse: 11:21 AM PST
- Eclipses bring in events that are beyond our planning or imagination – eclipses are like portals where new energies enter in and other things exit. They call for our equanimity, calmness, and nonreactivity, as our reactivity during these times can feed and inflame dramas that don’t need our feeding. However, the mood and events during eclipse season can be triggering, so we can feel challenged. See if you can gather your inner resources to respond, rather than react, and if there are situations where pausing to respond is an option (as opposed to impulsively reacting).
- This lunar eclipse features the Moon on its North Node – so Cancerian energies are “coming in” to the collective. This may be reflected in an increase of tenderness and instinct to protect and nourish.
- It is possible that this increase in tenderness is a response to incredibly sobering situations, whether they be confrontations with our own inner hell-making (the hells we make in our mind) and putting down our armaments, or confrontations with external situations. The photos of rescued koalas from the Australian bushfires are an example of this tenderness emerging from a saddening situation. The koalas are not able to move very fast, and are quite vulnerable – and people have stepped into help them by physically rescuing them and/or donating funds to rescue efforts remotely.
- This transit can also speak to wetness coming into places that have previously been dry – tears running where we have been stoic, emotional presence coming to places we have numbed, as well as joy and connection coming to places where we have previously been too guarded to connect.
- Should we be interacting with conditioning around “being too emotional” there is a deep value in allowing those emotions to move, as well as gaining new tools or literacies around how to be with ourselves and others in a deeper way.
- Cancer is one of the most sensitive signs, and it is represented by the crab, who has a soft body with a hard shell to protect it. This relates, as well, to the ways that we create defenses around having feelings which seem too overwhelming or vulnerable to deal with OR we let those feelings move as they arise and we flow with the constant fluctuations of life and fortune (fortune as in the quality of our circumstances as judged as good or bad, fortune as in resources, family life, friendships, luck, health, and so on). It may very well be that life is conspiring at the moment to help us feel, helping us not shut down when we feel challenged or close up when we feel most vulnerable.
January 12, 2020
Mercury in 22 Capricorn conjunct Saturn in 22 Capricorn: 1:51 AM PST & Mercury in 22 Capricorn conjunct Pluto in 22 Capricorn: 2:14 AM PST
Saturn in 22 Capricorn conjunct Pluto in 22 Capricorn: 8:58 AM PST
(Image: detail from Jacopo de’ Barbari’s Portrait of Luca Pacioli)
- Read the Saturn-Pluto article for need-to-knows. Here are some additional thoughts.
- Saturn-Pluto is intensely sobering. Consider your relationship to what is sobering. While we don’t normally equate sobering experience with happiness, there is actually something satisfying about being grounded enough in experience that we are in touch with what is actually happening. It may feel responsible or dignified to us, to be aware in that kind of way.
- Depending on what is happening in our lives, we may be in the thick of situations which are in themselves immediately sobering (caring for an ill family member, responding to a local crisis situation, as examples), or we may be witnessing sobering situations in our periphery that are not immediately affecting us, such as global issues around injustice, climate, and politics. Whether we are immediately affected or not, both kinds of situations may be calling us to step up in some way. Saturn-Pluto indicates a transformation of authority, inner-authority, and accountability. We can become more aware of our position and leverage to create impact, as well as ways we’ve unintentionally created impact that we wish to pull back from (unintentional harm). Responsibility can take the form of both stepping forward and stepping back, situationally depending.
- Inner and outer circumstances may be aligning to confront us more unavoidably with aspects of ourselves that are due for some kind of shift or restructure. Saturn-Pluto relates to a mood of intense inevitability, that sense of “no way out but through”.
- In the midst of this rather intense transit, many people are feeling the call inward or are retreating from certain aspects of life that feel unaligned or like too vast an expenditure of energy. There will be other moments, in the cyclical nature of life, where being more extravagant or energized will feel more available. For now, many are feeling the pull to slow down and deepen into an important process, and this is okay.
January 13, 2020
Sun in 22 Capricorn conjunct Pluto in 22 Capricorn: 5:20 AM PST & Sun in 22 Capricorn conjunct Saturn in 22 Capricorn: 7:15 AM PST
Venus enters Pisces: 10:39 AM PST
(Image: Local Preacher)
Venus will stay in Pisces until February 7.
- Venus in Pisces dissolves the boundaries between what is and what we find lovable or worthy of love and compassion – both when applied to ourselves and to others. Our hearts can definitely feel as though they are expanding.
- Venus in Pisces highlights romantic yearning and longing, and even the enjoyment of the yearning itself, like a kind of romanticism that infuses our entire lives when we are in the pursuit of sublime satisfaction, or the meeting of a soulmate. Love isn’t compartmentalized – it becomes everything, all-encompassing.
- Venus in Pisces also highlights our desire and capacity for union, to feel completely witnessed or completely met. While perfection is perhaps not a thing – in Piscean experience it is certainly felt as a thing, those moments of complete sublime communion that time disappears and we are having a kind of religious experience. Venus in Pisces lives for these moments, and in the absence of them, Venus in Pisces can create them through a rose-tinted perception.
- In tandem with the Saturn-Pluto transit, Venus in Pisces may act as a reminder to bring things back to love and compassion without bypassing the realities at play. At one octave, Pisces wants to escape what is happening and retreat into a world of fantasy. Done temporarily, retreats are incredibly restorative. But done repetitively, one may become out-of-touch or prone to addiction. At another octave, Pisces heals what it touches through deep and profound acceptance, and the ability to love things and people as they are without feeling the need to “save” or “heal” them of their suffering and imperfections. Simply being with, and witnessing, can do the healing, without an agenda.
- Being in love with a fantasy, such as another person’s “potential”, is a trapping of Venus in Pisces. Wielded well, interacting with others’ potential could be the mark of a profound teacher or guide. It’s not that people don’t have potential! But interacting with others’ potential in an imbalanced way at the expense of what is actually happening or repeatedly presenting itself is a way of being delusional in relationship.
- Pisces relates to our longings to ravish/rapture and be ravished/raptured. Venus in Pisces longs for a total experience that dissolves boundaries. Working with this Venus can open tantric, world-altering states. I was pretty blown away by trying out a guided heart-opening breathwork practice (for women) offered by one of my favorite content creators, Layla Martin that you can try here. Feel free to leave suggestions and resources in the comments of what has helped you open up to deeper states of love so we can share the wealth.
Thank you for meditating on the planets with me this week! I really appreciate you being here with me as I know that if you connect to this writing we have likemindedness and that is so special. Please share this article with a friend who you think would resonate!
Please let me know what you think in the comments – truly I want to know so leave a note! I love you and you are soul family to me, thank you for finding your way to these words and resonating with them in whatever ways you have.
“I have been enthusiastically following Sabrina’s forecasts for years and was elated when she began teaching her evolutionary astrology course. I immediately knew that I wanted her guidance. Though I had a very rudimentary foundation of astrology, I have always been drawn to Jungian psychology, the unconscious, the esoteric, and archetypal aspects of the psyche. I wanted to deepen my understanding of the individual and collective psyche, and their purposes in this lifetime through connections to archetypal blueprints and the universe. Evolutionary Astrology, compounded with Sabrina’s knowledge and intuition, provided me with invaluable perspective on my purpose in this lifetime. I have greater knowledge and awareness of myself, others, and the significance of relationships in my life, as well as the confidence and tools necessary to maximize the potential of my natal chart. It has been a very humbling, yet incredibly empowering experience.
Thank you, Sabrina. You’ve helped unlocked a part of the universe for me. I’m so grateful to have you as a guide on my journey.” – Czarina M.
If you enjoy these forecasts and would like more personalized guidance re your personal astrology, I would love to read your natal chart and transits for you! If you would like me to explore the themes in your chart, book a reading with me here.
I meditate on charts before the reading and combine my knowledge of astrology with my clairvoyant abilities to offer you some insights about themes you are working with in this life based on prior lives, and what is the evolutionary purpose of this lifetime. I recorded an episode on my podcast recently titled Befriending your Intuition and Clairvoyance if you’d like to learn more about my relationship with clairvoyance along with tips for increasing yours!
I can work with your specific questions and shed light on ongoing issues or patterns you would like to shift, as well! Book with me here.
I’m also becoming increasingly expressive on instagram (minus a recent winter hibernatory social media break), so go find me there @sabrinamonarch and say hello! I’m posting a lot of content there that I don’t share anywhere else and I love interacting with you there.
With love,
Sabrina Monarch
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