In light of this week’s transits, there is a major theme around responsibility when it comes to our perception and our processing of what is happening around us. Mercury (how we think, organize, synthesize information) in Capricorn (a Saturn-ruled sign related to natural reality laws like gravity, and different types of cause and effect) is and has been making dynamic aspects to Mars, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, giving us all a lot to process around the question of “in what ways am I responsible for this?” And likewise, “what isn’t mine?”
It’s easy to feel into then how Libra forms a natural square to Capricorn, because of the tension of approaching this question of responsibility brings out the scales, the deliberation, the judgements, of what is mine and what is yours, what is mine and what is society’s, and what have been the consequences? Where is there more room to be creative, to relate, to these dynamics of social cause and effect?
If we take into account a multidimensional reality configured also with other beings with free will and centuries of cultural conditioning, the discernment of what responsibility looks like inside of this web is a Hero’s Journey type of question. It is a recognition that in the midst of imperfect circumstances and constant evolving challenges, there might be a mythic arc of how we are to metabolize and create within what has been presented to us. That’s literally what we’re doing here as spiritual beings evolving through an earthly curriculum.
People are often surprised to learn that Capricorn is classified as a feminine sign, not masculine. We often see Capricorn as external acts of achievement or status-climbing in the world, as a kind of yang endeavor of climbing. While Capricorn does like to manifest itself in the concrete reality, Capricorn is an incredibly internal, down and in, grandmother/grandfather tree energy. It is the process of reflection where we go into our own internal depths and consider the question of cause and effect, to be able to trace the question of “how did I get here?” by looking backwards and inwards.
People commonly avoid this process of deepening their interiority through numbness or depression, getting stuck in a state of feeling defeated or futile, or by always having external characters or factors to blame so they can loop in a victimized anger state. Beyond blame is grief, and beyond and through grief is a re-opening to life. These are not depths for the faint of heart. They are depths necessary for a complete and rich, regenerative, human experience. Mercury in Capricorn asks us perhaps not to overlook these nuances and to learn how to pay attention to the real messages we are receiving from exactly what is occurring in our lives.
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 forecasts to your inbox and be notified of upcoming educational opportunities, sign up for my mailing list here.
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Here’s our week after a few announcements:
The Evolutionary Astrology Intensive is returning for a spring cohort! I am pushing the date back slightly from the previously announced March 5. Stay tuned for a new date and course page coming soon.
✨ An Overview of the Astrological Houses & the beginning of a series to explore the houses in an imaginal, mythic and expanded way ✨
February 9 at 3-5 PM Pacific
This workshop is for people who have a basic understanding of the houses and are familiar with the basic interpretive themes of the twelve houses. We will be going deeper into the texture, theory, and experiential quality of the houses.
In this class, we are unpacking the meaning of the angles (ascendant, midheaven, descendent, and IC), and the qualities of the angular, succedent and cadent houses. This allows us to understand individual houses through a systems-view of how various areas of life are essentially connected beyond what meets the eye.
We have reflected on the technical details and synthesized them with research, metaphor, and personal and professional experiences from years of astrological practice. We collect these many elements like bees drinking from flowers: to make honey. Our intention is to disseminate essentially enchanting perceptions of the houses so that the framework comes to life in exciting, generative ways out into beyond this workshop. 🍯
INTERMEDIATE class: this is perfect for practicing astrologers and astro-enthusiasts and students who already have some experience with the houses and their meanings. It is not a beginner class. This is perfect for people who want to open a deeper oracular conversation with the “places” – the distinct locations of life the cosmos touches down into represented by the houses in the natal chart.
Sign up here.
You will learn:
✨Evolutionary/Modern & Ancient/Hellenistic influenced perspectives on the astrological houses
✨Why the houses are the most earthly parts of an astrological chart
✨Basic astronomy and how the angles of the chart (ascendant, midheaven, descendant and IC) are formed, and what they symbolize
✨Ways to feel and imagine the particular frequencies of the angular, succedent, and cadent houses
Recording will be available to those who register. Sign up here!
Here’s our week:
January 29, 2024
Mars in 19 Capricorn trine Uranus in 19 Taurus: 3:40 PM PST
Mars and Mercury have just passed their exact conjunction in Capricorn and are still a degree away when this Uranus trine exacts. Mercury and Mars can relate to an potentiated or agitated mental field, activating or irritating information, debate, arguments, and more positively lively or animated discussion.
The Mercury-Mars conjunction in Capricorn could be symbolized by sharpening one’s words carefully and with reserve, like writing an angry letter and reducing it down to the most important and necessary points before sending, or not sending it at all. Unless brought to a breaking point, Capricorn does not tend to spill. Our reserve may be repressive or it may be wise.
Mercury-Mars in Capricorn brought up questions of how to communicate irritation and anger, or likewise what the anger itself was communicating. Individuals may be brimming with frustrations that are not immediately conveyed. Likewise, the time has come for many to verbalize, address, or even become consciously aware of something that was only previously gestating into voice.
The trine to the electric, ‘shocking’, connected-to-trauma Uranus emphasizes the ‘nerviness’ and activated quality of the general mood. But this is also a planet of breakthrough and freedom. Some thoughts on this configuration, considering:
- At a higher level, many of our irritations (or even more lighthearted curious impasses) are pointing to a deeper question of responsibility. People who refuse to take responsibility will play victimized games of blaming or woe-is-me-ing, but when issues are chronic it points to an essential fact that we have not mastered it, or for the things we truly cannot change we have not mastered our relationship to it.
- I’ve been reading the Shaman’s Body by Arnold Mindell lately, and finding a lot of correlations to how I work with transformation in daily life — playing with life events (new and reoccurring patterns) as dream symbols within the waking dream of this life. One quote I want to bring here:
- “Taking responsibility means accepting everything you say, feel, hear, write, see, and communicate as part of you. Accepting your accidents and your lies is an act of compassion. Taking responsibility means that if you are sick, you must understand that the body is bringing up a dream you have not yet known. If you have relationship difficulties, accidents, or world problems, things are happening to you with which you are not in agreement. Taking responsibility means focusing awareness not only upon the events you identify with but also upon the events you want to disavow.”
- I teach a form of astrology (Evolutionary) that poses that every experience we have is connected to the evolutionary journey of our souls – that we incarnated into our set of gifts, inheritances, flaws, and deepest challenges because it was all for us and what we were vibrating with at a soul level (to experience, to learn). This idea is provocative in some sense and the resistance to it is that people would have to internalize the bad things that have happened to them, as though to find out why they “deserved” it. I have realized recently that taking the perspective that our soul has CALLED IN our challenges is specifically connected to power and responsibility. They say that with power comes responsibility, but it also goes the other way. With responsibility comes power. When we ask in a deeper way, “how did I create this?” or “how am I participating?” we are asking questions that foster the development of authority.
- At a human level, we can be irritated and victimized by our problems and that energy may need our witnessing. Frustrated people vent. But deeper than that, it is likely that the things that grab our attention the most at the moment are also part of our awakening, if we’re willing.
February 2, 2024
Mercury in 25 Capricorn sextile Neptune in 25 Pisces: 2:54 AM PST
(The Cook – 1918)
- Mercury has just made contact with Uranus, then will sextile Neptune here, and its next aspect will be a conjunction to Pluto in Aquarius. Effectively Mercury is having conversations with each outer planet. The outer planets represent subtle, transpersonal, ‘beyond’ forces. Mercury is exceptionally practical in Capricorn, but practicality is not limited to “ordinary life” matters.
- Mercury in Capricorn has wisdom about efficiency. Moving about processes in ways that leak energy the least. If we consider this in a more magical, transpersonal sense, this might be looking at ways we do not indulge our personal energy leaks. That can look like having boundaries against rumination or thought patterns that weaken our aura — unless we intend to go all the way into them to alchemize them from the root. Like no dabbling in fragility.
- Common Capricorn illusions & mental energy leaks have to do with veins of thought around having lost time, around being too late, around being deeply ‘wrong’, around having failed beyond repair. These types of thoughts have no boundaries. These types of thought rarely complete a grief process. These types of thoughts overlook the subtleties of what resources there still are to garden with.
February 4, 2024
Mercury enters Aquarius: 9:10 PM PST (in orb of, and forming an exact conjunction to Pluto the following day)
(Image: Janet Fish)
- While Mercury in Capricorn is well-resourced to approach the hard facts and boundaries in sober reality, Mercury in Aquarius is well-resourced to plug into entire mental/conceptual/vibratory paradigms, like an oracle tuning into a particular channel and information is downloaded.
- There is something experimental here, like you can tune into different ideas and perspectives and feel into if they resonate, but first you have to try them on or tune into them – even if they are outside of a normal scope of thinking.
- We may be pressed to become more aware of our biases. To be able to feel truth or resonance, anything that clouds our filter will be removed in that process. Developing psychics learn how to discern their own judgement from truth. People developing deeper trust with their bodies learn to discern between true needs and desires, versus chemical/neural addictions.
- At highest, we would find perspectives and frequencies to tune into that help us have the energy and insight to practice this discernment, as opposed to perspectives and frequencies that heighten and confirm our biases.
Since I took a significant break from the weekly forecasting writing practice, I found myself deepening into my spiritual and embodiment practices (and tracking those weather patterns a lot more) that I hope and only anticipate really will integrate with my astrological writing.
Thank you for spending time with me here to reflect on this week’s transits. If you have anything you want to share, please write in the comments. You can find me on instagram @sabrinamonarch (be mindful of scammer/impersonator accounts) and tune into my podcast Magic of the Spheres where you listen to podcasts. Sign up for my mailing list to be in the know about forecasts like this as well as upcoming opportunities for readings or studying astrology with me.
with love,
Sabrina Monarch
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