This week Mercury, Venus retrograde and Pluto join up in Capricorn, Mercury will enter Aquarius, and we have a New Moon in Capricorn (among other transits this busy week).
Pluto relates to our most intense and cathartic passions, the deepest magnetism we possess and recognize in others, and ways that we are engaged in energy exchange and power dynamics. Venus and Mercury come together for elegance, dance, lyrical poetry, craft, and creative intelligence. Capricorn, the sign they all join in, is a sign that relates to concrete reality, structures, architecture, integrity. While there is a potential for rigidity with Capricorn, it is also a sign that relates to great works, masterpieces, excellence, meaningful solidity.
The three planets (Mercury, Venus, and Pluto) in this sign could play out in so many unique permutations, but intense attraction to one who nimbly/skillfully moves through life as an art is one that comes to mind. The type of elegance that appears effortless, but took years of practice for it to look that easy. Think of the kind of power a person learns to channel in this process. Think of the ways this person intentionally invested their energy for all of those years. Something so focused, so disciplined, so intentional, and it ends up looking like wind and butterfly flight embodied. We are ultimately also relating to this dimension of ourselves, in its realized or nascent form.
Capricorn is a long game, and it’s possible that this week the long game is showing its fruits in the beautiful display that is this triple conjunction. We may feel our hearts lighting up with new desires, as well, that feel beyond the scope of something that can be accomplished in a matter of days. Perhaps if we follow it, this desire has the power to deeply transform us.
When it comes to having a longer-term goal or an aspiration we know is going to take time, part of the craft of this process is finding how this larger arc of transformation is wanting to show up in our daily lives. And rather than focus solely on the end result, learning how to love the process of becoming – getting to love the person we are becoming.
Welcome back! Or 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 zeitgeist feels 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 and be notified of upcoming educational opportunities, sign up for my mailing list here.
No YouTube version this week, but I’ll be back soon. In the meantime you can subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell for updates when you do!
Here’s our week after a few announcements!
Astrology reading books open – I am taking a small number of clients and hope to open my books more frequently than I have been. You can purchase a reading with me here (while spots are available).
METEORITE 2022: We begin again March 6, 2022! This is a yearlong advanced course for alumni of the Evolutionary Astrology Intensive (and the previous Meteorite). This group is an experimental adventure. Like a meteorite making it from outer space to the surface of the Earth, a purpose of this group is to become receptive to downloads and novel insights and to embody them. This is a high level practitioner group for people wanting to strengthen their astrology practice both for their own enrichment and for their participation in the world. By being in community and the unique field that opens up in this group, we’ll spark and accelerate our creativity.
The course facilitates each student to produce a project of their own invention within the year program, whether this project is creative, scholarly, or personal.
Here’s our week:
December 29, 2021
Mercury in 24 Capricorn conjunct Venus retrograde in 24 Capricorn: 2:27 AM PST
(Image: Kohei Nawa)
This conjunction occurs one degree away from Pluto in 25 Capricorn.
- Mercury and Venus come together for lyrical language, enjoyable and harmonious conversation, and beautiful ideas. Next to Pluto there’s a significant base tone here: it’s not just the voice of the heart but the voice of the primal, deep body.
- Considering that Venus is retrograde, she is in a more internal & reflective position related to her joining with these two planets. Mercury and Pluto together can have a sharp tongue, and in Capricorn they can be stern, or even severe. Mercury and Pluto could relate to ways that we are holding/storing words because we know they are potent, as well as releasing those words like a spell or injection. Situationally, we may be choosing our words differently than we normally would or differently than a first impulse, as the heart reflectively deliberates.
On another note with this transit:
- Consider the promise: the (often) verbal agreement that creates an expectation. Capricorn relates to integrity, and integrity relates to a coherence between the inner and outer: so expressing ourselves authentically is a form of integrity. When we agree to something, does it resound at a deep level of our being – is is true? Is it something we can deliver? Promises are interesting in the way they are often (though not always) offered in moments of uncertainty or need and are meant to create more certainty/security. Promises require trust – trust in ourselves to fulfill promises, trust in others to keep to theirs.
- It may be with this Venus retrograde transit that we are called into reflection for promises we’ve made in the past, even promises we’ve made to ourselves. For example, sometimes when people are intentionally working with their abundance mindset from a spiritual perspective, they will make a point to break poverty vows from prior lifetimes (where abstaining from wealth was a form of virtue).
- What is the point of a promise if it can be broken? Or, does the possibility to enter and exit contracts offer opportunities to refine one’s devotion(s)? Perhaps the point is not so black and white as to promise nothing (because nothing is promised) or at the other extreme always rigidly follow through with one’s word even when it compromises a deeper current of truth.
- To promise and deliver in the best possible scenario (where the promise was meaningful and honest) reflects self-knowledge and self-trust – the capacity to accurately know one’s intentions and limits. Individuals for example who are learning self-trust may do so by creating intentions or plans and then actually fulfilling them, proving to themselves that they can show up. In this we also learn the art of making promises that are in real relationship with our limitations (rather than overpromising and under-delivering).
- When we learn something profound and promise to ourselves that we will apply this lesson the next time it is needed, we’ve bookmarked our own experience with a degree of gravity that holds us to account. When we engage in relationships where agreements have been conscientiously formed and held to, we may feel securely bonded.
- Promises are not an ultimate form of security (and not always even set in stone for as contradictory as that is to the concept of the promise), but they do alter our stories or the stories and bonds of trust we create with other people. With this triple conjunction of Venus retrograde, Mercury & Pluto in Capricorn our relationship with promise and specific promises made may be undergoing transformation. Whether that is revising agreements, refining or reifying them, is a matter of choice.
Sun in 8 Capricorn square Chiron in 8 Aries: 3:53 PM PST
- There is a dynamic tension here between the long term plan, the experienced one, the veteran (Sun in Capricorn) and the initiate or the one who has just begun and made the first leap of ‘yes’, perhaps the first initiatory action (Chiron in Aries).
- This dynamic tension may be internal (such as when years into a project, we compare ourselves to the way we were when we first set out) or external (such as youth and elder coming together, initiate and sage).
- The tension is not necessarily outright conflict, though there are archetypal, timeless tensions here: just think about intergenerational tensions. The tension can also be generative, such as when generations trade perspectives from a place of mutual respect, or the initiate (the one who just has set out) is merging with future version of themselves who has already achieved the goal or built the realm, or the person years-deep into their success stays in connection with the spark that began it all.
- Consider that each time we either reflect on a past version of ourselves or envision ourselves in the future, we are connecting with ourselves as ancestors – the past us that brought us here, or the way we are currently working for a future. A memory or a daydream could be mundane. Or… it could be an ancestor calling. We might seek to find the deeper significance of a time in our life that’s knocking at the door of our consciousness.
Mars in 11 Sagittarius sextile Saturn in 11 Aquarius: 4:22 PM PST
- When we feel limited in our perspective, we also feel limited in options and movement. To feel limited is also in some sense to know that there is more. The mission or task then becomes to find freedom, to find the opening.
- This transit may highlight moments where we are rattling against limitations we perceive – and through this tension or through the spaciousness of even giving up/surrendering for a moment – we notice we do have options to engage the situation in a novel or explorative way. And when we make those new choices, we enter a new story.
- Similarly, if our paradigm or perspective has recently expanded due to new information or insight, we might feel new reserves of vitality or direction that correspond. In many cases new worlds are opening up and not always because the game has changed but because we’ve had an internal shift. If the external game or world has shifted, we’ve also been flexible enough to recognize and seize the new opportunity.
December 30, 2021
Mercury in 25 Capricorn conjunct Pluto in 25 Capricorn: 1:53 AM PST
(Image: Kohei Nawa)
See the Venus-Mercury conjunction on December 29 – the three planets are still conjunct one another. A few more thoughts…
- Mercury-Pluto can relate to mental obsession, fascination, and research rabbit holes. It’s fanatical at times. It can be thinking so much it’s hard to sleep.* But, this is the hyper-aroused version of this transit. What about mental stagnancy, boredom, apathy?
- A friend and I were talking last night (last night before writing this) about boredom from the perspective of it being a fertile void. When the mind is not occupied by something to be genuinely interested or engaged in, we feel uncomfortable and seek to alleviate this discomfort by finding some form of distraction or entertainment. In so doing, we can miss out on following the thread of boredom all the way through to its gift form.
- From a mental health perspective, people might have limits or boundaries around certain depressive or apathetic states, knowing how to stay afloat – what adaptogenic mushrooms to consume, habits to maintain, meditations to practice, affirmations to speak. For the one keeping themselves together, it’d be taboo maybe to just get depressed and be in a funk. Individually, learning how we relate to these states is like going into frontier underworld zones and knowing we can move between the worlds, like Mercury.
- A few days ago, I was in a funk that I felt possessed some kind of intelligence in it so I didn’t try to snap out of it or fix it. I spent a day hardly doing anything, feeling depressed and burnt out. I also felt absolutely tired mentally of trying to think myself out of it. At the end of the day, I was scrolling on instagram and found a dancer whose movement inspired me. From the void of a day there was a genuine spark that happened without force. I saw she had a dance course, which I immediately signed up for because of this magnetic attraction I had to her transmissions, and proceeded to then have this massive and transformative experience and come back to life from just the first module.
- Just because Pluto is a planet that has to do with passion and intensity does not mean it’s one particular kind of intensity! Often before feeling that real magnetic click or the sense of being animated and alive, we can feel extremely dormant, disinterested, numb (an under-aroused intensity). At some point in the journey it may be extraordinarily useful and healing to know how to snap ourselves out of it with will and discipline. At other points in the journey, finding the void unfurl itself (and trusting in the darkness) will be medicine, too. Ideas and transmissions can arouse us because we’ve touched into an emptiness that prepared us. Emptiness becomes less threatening, and more a natural cycle of life.
- As far as thinking so much that it’s hard to sleep, developing a practice to create some boundaries around mental activity before sleep can support more restorative rest. Let’s crowdsource this one: if you have practices that help you rest your mind before bed, leave them in the comments.
January 1, 2022
Sun in 10 Capricorn trine Uranus in 10 Taurus: 1:49 AM PST
- This transit may speak to the ways that unconventional ideas or plans can be solidified and can work, as long as the structure has the integrity or foundations for it. Conventional ideas and plans already have a ‘tried and true’ map. The less conventional something is, the more frontier it becomes. Unconventional here could also be unconventional relative to our personal norm – so we want to express ourselves in a new way, or embody a less familiar (to us) persona. What would root and ground the desire, so that even though it’s different, it is possible?
Mercury enters Aquarius: 11:10 PM PST
Mercury will stay in Aquarius until March 9. The longer stay in Aquarius is due to a Mercury retrograde – Mercury stations retrograde in 10 degrees Aquarius on January 14, re-enter Capricorn on January 25, and station direct again February 3 in 24 degrees of Capricorn. Mercury will then re-enter Aquarius on February 14 before ultimately leaving Aqua on March 9.
- Mercury in Aquarius highlights the *electricity* of connection-making – the way we feel awakened by certain ideas, or even feel buzzing/tingling in the body or chills.
- Mercury in Aquarius could relate to ways that we tell and project stories onto what is happening (and live in our own matrix, accordingly) versus where we are in electric resonance with deeper levels of truth with what is actually happening.
- Cognitive dissonance becomes another form of electricity, but it’s more like the electric fence: revealing the boundary lines of a perspective or paradigm.
- Mental revolutions can take place – whereby we leave the confines of one paradigm or one way we’ve been telling a story of our lives & enter a different paradigm. There are fruitful moments of epiphany that help us ‘pop’ into a new reality field, but there is also the process of becoming more aware of our thoughts and reflecting/rethinking that creates more availability for those epiphanies to sparkle through.
January 2, 2022
New Moon in 12 Capricorn: 10:33 AM PST
The New. Moon in Capricorn is conjunct asteroid Juno, and square Chiron in Aries.
- Capricorn relates to architecture and infrastructure, and the way that structures enable/disable experiences. Outside my window I can see roads, and this is where the cars have space to drive. For the most part, cars are on the roads – so these roads have greatly determined the flow of energy! When we make an appointment on our calendar, we set aside time and space for a particular objective. We might have a loose floating idea that is conceptual, but when we make a pathway for it on the physical plane, we ‘conduct’ it. Social media platforms, neural pathways, mental or emotional habits, choices, specialized skills we cultivate – are other forms of “roads”.
- If we want to come to know ourselves as creators within the domain of Capricorn, we can engineer a pathway for energy to flow through. If I want to condition myself to be happier generally, I might practice tuning into gratitude & I might concretely engage in activities that I enjoy. If I want to meet new people, I may put myself in situations where that is likely to happen. If we want people to engage our writing, we might publish it. If we want to get in shape, we might work with a personal trainer and create a regular routine. While all of these seem practical and straightforward, not always are people concretely executing their ambitions and creating literal pathways for their dreams to manifest into material form. This is a kind of intelligence that can be engaged & we actually have to show up for it.
- Capricorn contains a tension within around its own capacity for discipline and delaying gratification. Because results are not always immediate, we might not know right away if a given pathway is going to be fruitful. One exercise routine, for example, may not produce results because it’s not the correct one for us. Plans can have varying degrees of success. So we navigate along the way how willing we are to stick something out, or when we feel like we need to adjust/change course.
- What if there were intuitive cues along the way about our path? If we are only focused on results and delaying not just gratification but delaying consciousness until the end point, we are less sensitive to these signals.
- This New Moon holds the opportunity to see ourselves as conductors/architects, where the concrete ways we show up in space and time or build pathways for energy to flow through is our art form. Imagine not just that you are the architect, toiling away for a final product… but that you are an architect reveling in the genius and illumination of the whole process of the project. What would it be like to really be intimate with ourselves as we build our dream life? To feel the dream imbue each step? What kinds of goals are we willing to be in daily relationship with? How might these larger goals shape our lives?
January 3, 2022
Jupiter in 1 Pisces square the lunar nodes (south node in 1 Sagittarius; north node in 1 Gemini): 3:39 AM PST
- There is a burgeoning optimism or sense that things are possible, that there are adventures to be had, and kinds of magic to this reality we’d never been aware of before (Jupiter in Pisces). And, this burgeoning abundance is at a crossroad with the types of stories, mythos, and ideas we’ve collectively been weaving and disseminating the last year and a half (the nodes in Sagittarius and Gemini). Personally, it’s where we’ve internalized streams of information as truth, where we’ve developed worldview.
- So there can be some impetus to dream bigger, and to contest certain narratives we’ve been holding onto. We might have more perspective that, to integrate it into our worldview, would necessarily change our worldview (at varying degrees).
- In a more local sense, (less about our whole vision of reality itself!) these shifts in awareness could be about certain areas of our lives, about particular people and our perception of them and our relationship, or something like the meaning we’ve attached to an event in our lives.
- It may not always be about dreaming bigger – sometimes our dreams have already been massive, but creating a fog that just thickens the Maya and we’ve not yet awoken from that dream we’ve been weaving. Disillusionment can also be healing and clarifying.
- Whether your dream cloud is growing or popping, the energetic to tune into here is how your vision of what is possible is challenging a narrative that you hold, especially one that has been kicked up or reified in the last year and a half or so. Jupiter will move out of orb with the nodes soon, and the nodes will shift into Scorpio and Taurus. In these nodal positions, the collective focus will be less about truth and information, philosophy and logic, beliefs and semantics, but about psychological clarity and sustainability, letting go and building, resource distribution and tending to the garden. This Jupiter square the nodes moment now is like a threshold moment, allowing our perspective to grow and shift in accordance with the reality that there is more to life than we’ve previously acknowledged, no matter how sure we were of our position.
Thank you for meditating on the planets with me this week! If you would like further guidance, I have been increasingly focused on longer-term experiences in the form of the Evolutionary Astrology Intensive, higher level courses for alumni, and 1:1 mentorship – helping people form a depth relationship to their natal chart and personal transits over time, to develop themselves, to be in their power, and to reach their goals, all through the soul-making lens of evolutionary astrology. I would love to support you in building your relationship with astrology. The intensive is currently in session and will be offered again and I am taking applications for METEORITE 2022 here.
Find me on Instagram @sabrinamonarch, get on my mailing list to stay apprised of all upcoming offerings and events, and I’ll see you next week!
With love,
Sabrina Monarch
(Top Image: Yoko Akino)
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