January Astrology
January initiates us into a year of birthing and being born. A year of integrating the deaths of versions of the world, and of ourselves, that no longer exist in physical form. An invitation to awaken in us the generativity of tension, so we may harness the wisdom that is cultivated in challenge, the healing learned through our wounding, and the possibility that arises in chaos.
The Lunar Nodes: Destiny Points
North Node on the Aries Point
The year begins with the north node at 0 degrees Aries – the first degree of the zodiac that marks new beginnings. This degree is a focal point in the year ahead, and emphasizes the lessons we have learned over the last 18 months that the lunar nodes have been in Aries and Libra that will be essential as we move into the groundbreaking astrology of 2025 and the years that follow. The lunar nodes are not planets but points in the sky representing areas of instability – the north node a point of hunger where we gather experience and the south node is a point of decrease where we release the overflow that is no longer needed.
AFFIRMATION:
Authenticity is key to balanced relationships.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Since July 2023, how have you been deepening in your authenticity and individuality (Aries)? How has doing so required to release people-pleasing tendencies to create balanced relationships that honor both Self and other (Libra)?
Key dates to think back to where these lessons may have been prominent:
Aries & Libra Eclipses
April 19, 2023 (first solar eclipse in Aries, right before the nodes changed signs)
October 14, 2023 (solar eclipse in Libra)
March 24, 2024 (lunar eclipse in Libra)
April 8, 2024 (solar eclipse in Aries)
October 2, 2024 (solar eclipse in Libra)
To look back further, recall when the north node was last in Aries between January 27, 1949 - July 26, 1950; August 20, 1967 - April 19, 1969; April 7, 1986 - December 2, 1987; and December 26, 2004 - June 21, 2006. If you were born between these dates, you had your nodal return, and so these lessons for you are recurring.
Nodes Shift to Pisces and Virgo
On January 11th, the north node will shift to Pisces and the south node to Virgo until July 26, 2026. Because the lunar nodes move backward in the zodiac, they begin at 29 degrees Pisces, a critical point in the sign symbolizing the dream fields, collective unconscious where the boundaries between our inner and outer world are blurred, and the dissolution of material reality into spiritual oneness. Neptune has been here since 2011, and as soon as the North Node shifts, it meets up with the visionary dreamer for the first time in 166 years, summoning in us all the dreamer, creative, and seeker of spiritual wisdom.
I’ll write more on the significance of the nodal shift and relationship between Pisces and Aries in my astrology of 2025 article, but in summary, a core, if not the most important theme of 2025 is to bring the passionate, courageous, Self-led Aries energy of individuation into the visionary waters of Pisces where Saturn and Neptune have been dreaming a new reality into being – a reality that will begin to emerge in 2025 but not fully initiate until February 2026.
In every birth and initiation, there is also a death, and the first eclipse in Pisces on September 17, 2024 coincided with a month of cataclysmic flooding in the U.S. and across the world, devastating many communities and killing many. Reminding us of the power of nature and the severity of the changes in climate we’re facing, with grief there also comes unity.
While the nodes are the mutable signs of Pisces and Virgo, there is an emphasis on change, specifically related to purification as we integrate our experience as spiritual beings (Pisces) to dissolve ego and illusion, employing our capacity for refinement and dedication (Virgo) to serve the future we are yearning to create. Our sense of spiritual unity and trust (Pisces) is being called to increase through challenge (north node) as reality as we know it is pulled apart and dissolving. At the same time, we’re being pulled to release (south node) tendencies of control and perfection (Virgo) that are not in alignment with our integrity (Virgo). We are shedding self-sacrifice as an act of service (Virgo) so we can move towards alignment with the spiritual service unique to our soul (Pisces) for our collective (Pisces) well-being (Virgo).
If you have important placements in the mutable signs (Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, Pisces) these lessons will be of increased significance as well as if you’re experiencing your nodal return (born July 27, 1950 - March 28, 1952; April 20, 1969 - November 2, 1970; December 3, 1987 - May 22, 1989; June 22, 2006 - December 18, 2007). Everyone can look back to these dates and reflect on what was occurring for them at these times to consider how you might be impacted by the nodes here over the next 18 months.
AFFIRMATION:
I center my soul and my dreams to act with integrity.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
How might it be challenging to release a sense of rigidity to become more whole in the full breadth of your experience as both a body and a spirit? What are the dreams your soul has felt hungry to experience and how has behavior around control and perfection limited your ability to say yes to these experiences?
These themes will be pronounced during the eclipses on the following dates:
September 17, 2024 (Lunar eclipse in Pisces)
March 13, 2025 (Lunar eclipse in Virgo)
September 7, 2025 (Lunar eclipse in Pisces)
September 21, 2025 (Solar eclipse in Virgo)
March 3, 2026 (Lunar eclipse in Virgo)
August 27, 2026 (Lunar eclipse in Pisces)
February 20, 2027 (Lunar eclipse in Virgo)
Also on January 11th, Venus her throne as an evening star where she is the Queen of Heaven and Earth, where she will remain for 48 days until she begins her retrograde journey on March 1st. Here, she is calling on us to actualize the potential of our love in service of all beings.
Mars-Pluto Oppositions
Rewinding back to January 3rd, Mars, the planet symbolizing our will and agency, exacts the second of three tense oppositions with Pluto, the planet symbolizing power through transformation. Because Mars is in a long retrograde cycle (12/6/24 - 2/23/25), this aspect could and will be felt from around October through the beginning of May. The first opposition occurred on November 3, 2024 with Mars at 29 degrees Cancer and Pluto at 29 degrees Capricorn. Because Pluto takes around 248 years to move through the zodiac, spending between 12 and 30 years in each sign, this was the last time our personal agency (Mars) related to our emotions and the ancestral wounds that shape them (Cancer) reconfigure with reclamation of our power (Pluto) through the transformation (Pluto) of patriarchal systems of oppression (Capricorn).
Since 2008, Pluto in Capricorn has been showing us where systems of domination are incompatible with systems necessary to sustain humanity. Capricorn has historically been about the raw and wild power of the Earth and humanity learning to work with that power in order to create the structures necessary to survive and thrive in the harsh conditions of material reality. It was long recognized that material reality is always changing, therefore societal structures should be malleable and responsive to the unfolding of the Great Mystery of the natural world – on earth and in the heavens. Capricorn is on an axis with Cancer, which is about what nourishes us, our physical needs, and how our intuition, emotions, and sensitivity guide us towards the resources that are needed – and therefore the Capricornian structures necessary to meet those needs societally.
The reality is that most of us, for many generations, have not felt a sense of being nourished, and that experience is passed down through our lineage and ancestors, which is another element of what Cancer represents. Our limbic system, which guides our emotional response and capacity for emotional regulation, first develops when we are in the womb, impacted by our mother’s nervous system. Because people with wombs are born with all of their eggs, the egg that created us first existed in our grandmother's womb as our mother grew inside her. The egg that created our mother, then, was in our great-grandmother's womb and so on. All of this is to say our emotional experience and relationship to feeling resourced is ancestral. You may have heard the saying, if it’s hysterical, it’s historical. If you have had moments of hysteria or intense emotional dysregulation in the past few months, it is likely historical meaning the immediate threat is no longer present. These experiences that bring us to our edge can increase our capacity for generative tension if we meet them with intention, co-regulating through somatic practices that calm the nervous system and understanding our experience in a broader mental framework, so we can respond creatively rather than react. (If you need support in this, astrology is a wonderful tool for expanding our understanding of self and the evolutionary pathways most available to our psyche).
The reconfiguration between Mars and Pluto points to the need to create new neural pathways for us to own our triggers as opportunities to reclaim our agency and our capacity to self-sooth and resource nourishment. On a societal level, to imagine how governmental systems (Capricorn) of power might be transformed (Pluto) to resource (Cancer) personal agency (Mars), we must first access the ability to nourish ourselves, even amidst intensity and tumult. These themes are prominent in the Cancer Full Moon on January 13th – more on that soon.
To reflect on where these lessons may have been most pronounced for you, think back to the times that Mars in Cancer opposed Pluto in Capricorn, starting in 0 degrees on in March 2008 and August 2009, in August 2011, August 2013, July 2015, June/July 2017, June 2019, May/June 2021, and October/November 2024.
Since the zodiacal wheel represents an evolutionary journey, these oppositions were the precursor to the oppositions Mars and Pluto will for the next 20 years make in Leo and Aquarius, starting with the opposition on January 3rd at 1 degree. Here, lessons around emotional agency (Mars in Cancer) give way to creative agency (Mars in Leo) and the shedding of cultural and political elements that are no longer serving (Pluto in Capricorn) give way for a new era of humanity to incubate (Pluto in Aquarius). Sometime soon I will write an article about Pluto in Aquarius – but with the Mars Pluto opposition what is key is the relationship between our creative agency (Mars in Leo) and our sense of freedom and power in society (Pluto in Aquarius).
AFFIRMATION:
I cultivate emotional empowerment to support my creative agency.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
Since 2008, how have I grown to trust my instinct and emotions to become more empowered and create systems, routines, and boundaries that support my sense of nourishment and regulation? In 2024, how can I channel this empowerment to support my creative agency and the freedom in my ability to respond creatively in any given set of circumstances?
January 13th Cancer Full Moon: Creative Intensity
The Cancer Full Moon on Monday, January 13th at 23 degrees 59 minutes Cancer exacts at 5:27 PM EST and is intense on multiple fronts. First of all, it is an out of bounds Moon. Every 18.6 years when the north node moves from Aries to Pisces, the Moon is more frequently out of bounds where it escapes the physical space dominated by the Sun’s gravitational pull. According to renowned astrologer Steven Forrest, if the Sun is King, when a planet is out of bounds it is out of the King’s reach and can break the rules, do its own thing, claim it’s genius, its passion, its right to be itself. Of all planets, Forrest says, the Moon out of bounds is most dramatic, and the five-year periods where the Moon is more frequently out of bounds often corresponds with periods of social unrest as well as social creativity (note: 1931-32, 1950, 1969, 1987-88, 2006, and now 2024-2025).
These are extreme moons – not at all subtle or gradual. The Moon represents our deepest personal needs, our instinctive reactions, emotions, and our inner child and mother. While the Moon is full in its home sign of Cancer, it often heralds an experience of harmony and nourishment, but this Cancer full moon may feel slightly more challenged. While out of bounds, there may be a heightened circumstances of alienation and feeling like we don’t fit in, which we can fall victim to or can embolden us to say fuck what other people think.
The Moon is also tightly conjunct Mars at 27 degrees Cancer, that will exact its opposition to the Sun a couple days after the Full Moon on January 15. While this heightens the possibility for reactivity and unhealthy cultural tendencies of channeling emotions in anger and aggression, the Sun and Moon are also in supportive connections to Neptune in Pisces (dreams and vision) and Uranus in Taurus (nature’s genius) in what is known as a cradle pattern. Here we have the support to positively channel whatever emotional turbulence we might face in the aforementioned lessons around learning to be the mother we’ve always wanted, nurturing our passion, and guiding us to unlock the creativity in intensity. When circumstances are less than ideal, we are challenged to deepen emotional empowerment and find the generativity in tension. It is exactly in the moments of overreaction that we discover where we’re falling short of meeting our needs, potentially harboring a mindset of scarcity, and where we need to build trust in our innate resourcefulness so we can respond more creatively to our circumstances.
Mars represents our will power – how we respond to conflict, assert ourselves, and our courage, sexual energy, and passion. Mars in Cancer is said to be in its fall where its powers are limited. It is a Mars that knows the grief of defeat and what the out of bound moon feels when it doesn’t fit in. Where Mars energy wants to be assertive, in Cancer it is indirect, where it might wish rather than act. Where Mars energy typically moves fast, in Cancer it is slow. For these reasons, musing on my own Mars in Cancer (which is of course colored by my other celestial placements), I recently said to a friend that my Mars has been one of my greatest teachers in holding tension. It teaches me to receive the hard as my guide to soften, to know the power in forgiveness, allow grief to be enlivening, and warriorship as lovemaking.
By being forced into a place of discomfort, we either suffer forever or learn to embrace both sides of the spectrum. When something is hard, it’s because I’m attached to one approach or one outcome. My Mars teaches me that by accepting defeat in one area, I open a whole realm of possibility for other ways my passion can express itself. Where my Mars in Cancer once produced a victim-perpetrator mentality, focusing on how another person’s actions negatively affected me, I’ve learned that forgiving someone for a choice that may have been “selfish” fortifies my empowerment to prioritize the action that fuels my passion, even if it means disappointing someone else. I’ve learned to see where people put on facades of strength, disguising their vulnerability sometimes even from themselves. I’ve learned to have gratitude for the ways my way of doing things is odd, rejected, or misunderstood because it has encouraged me to understand myself more deeply – and as a result, a deeper understanding of the human condition.
Where in the past I’ve avoided grief out of fear it would become all-consuming and my Mars might be seen as weak, by creating containers where I am safe to express the depths of my sadness, I’ve grown the capacity to embrace my emotional depth and sensitivity as an experience that is both erotic and enlivening. Welcoming fear revealed the courage to dare to love something that is no longer here, or maybe something that never was, and stand fiercely a choice to love amidst grief as an affirmation of aliveness. Where my Mars is Cancer has preferred to render me defenseless, I have become a warrior of love. I’ve learned that naming disagreement and doubt is a powerful assertion of trust and belonging. That evoking protection allows my sensitivity to flow so its wisdom can be harnessed. While it took some pain, heartache, and a steadfast commitment to my most integral self to hone all these lessons, I wouldn’t trade the gifts of my challenges for anything in the world.
As Mars makes its long journey through Cancer, and is amplified at the Full Moon on Monday, you too may be learning some of these lessons. Regardless, we are all being asked to slow down and reflect on the emotional drivers of our actions and where tension or tumult gives us clues about what we need to fuel our passion.
AFFIRMATIONS:
Emotional intensity invites more creative pathways.
The more possibilities I envision the more resourceful I become.
In my wildest dreams is my deepest belonging.
As I tend to my passion I am healing my lineage.
REFLECTION QUESTIONS
How would you express your emotional instincts if you relinquished your desire to be right and appear ‘normal’? What lessons would you learn about emotional empowerment, what you really want, and what it truly means to be resourced?
Since July, how have you channeled your sensitivity as a superpower? Just as the crab wears its home on its back, how have you created a home in your own skin, particularly when experiencing emotional intensity?
What are you releasing so you can be more embodied in the wisdom of your sensitivity?
What are you releasing so you can create space to support yourself access the gifts that are really difficult to receive - the gifts that show us there is love in limitation, that unity is nurtured in crisis and grief, that being stripped bear shows us what really matters, exposing our essence?
This is deep, beloveds. Reality as we know it is changing before our eyes. L.A. is burning. Asheville will be recovering from cataclysmic floods for years. Palestine is in rubble. So many more places our human, finned, winged, and four legged family calls home will never be the same. No one knows where this will take us, but we know we must allow it to change us. Soften us. Deepen us in love and power and connection. If you feel called, share what you're releasing and moving through in the comments. Giving voice to our experience invites us more deeply into community.
January 18th: Venus conjunct Saturn in Pisces, sextile Mercury, square Jupiter
Venus is shining bright in the sky on her evening throne as Queen of Heaven and Earth in tropical Pisces. As she meets with Saturn, she wants to help him dream a new reality into being, where we all may know the exaltation of unconditional love. It won’t come easy — Saturn’s specialty is growth through challenge. Both in a tense square to Jupiter, you may be feeling friction around contradictory stories or a tendency to self-protect – approaching love from the head more so than the heart, hedging bets, and weighing the odds of heartbreak. Jupiter and Saturn have been in this tense square since Jupiter arrived in Gemini last May, testing our faith and optimism, heightening uncertainty about the future, eroding long-held beliefs, adding up to a reality-crisis. These issues are likely to peak when the squares are exact – which occurred August 19 and December 24 in 2024, and will occur one more time June 15, 2025.
As Venus seeks connection, with Saturn in her face and squaring Jupiter, there may be an influx of stories that unification is a pipedream. Saturn, the reality gate-keeper may be reminding you of how much time relationships actually take, let alone unconditional love or unification. Venus and Saturn want to embody an emotional maturity here and spiritual discipline. Where Venus may be singing Trevor Hall lyrics, “I don’t want to call you a stranger, I want to be tied to your soul,” Saturn reminds us that while yes – in the Pisces spirit realm of the collective unconscious we are all connected, and here in the real world, offering unguarded openness and connection to everyone around you might not have the intended effect. Emotional maturity and spiritual discipline means we enter relational contracts with intention and awareness – remembering the wisdom of Prentis Hemphill that boundaries are the distance I can love you and me at the same time.
Venus and Saturn here in Pisces also remind me of what Ram Dass says about relationship yoga – the hardest form of yoga which requires that it become our primary yoga practice. We do have egos, and our ego’s goal is to protect us. The thing is, sometimes it’s protecting us from having it be a little colder than we’d prefer or a meal not being cooked exactly to our likely – not exactly threats. Where these differences occur (sometimes on a deeper level than temperature or flavor) I think relationship yoga tells us not to seek to eradicate the difference but hold your preference, the other person’s preference, and the desire for connection all in loving awareness. By opening our heart to the full truth of our experience in this way, rather than a partial view of a triggered egoic part, we get closer to unconditional love that is becoming more possible for all of us while the North Node joins both Saturn and Neptune in Pisces for the last time in our lives, and even more so while Venus is here.
As a more swift moving inner planet, Venus plays an important role, connecting with the other planets from various perspectives as she makes her 7 ish month journey around the Sun, from the perspective of an evening star, her descent into the underworld when she goes behind the Sun, and then rises again as a morning star, repeating the cycle. I’ll let you know when she makes important connections so if you want to track how you feel on these dates, I suggest creating a page in your journal or note in your phone called Venus, and on the days she’s making big moves jotting a couple words down about how you feel or what you’re experiencing. This will be especially important if you’re calling in relationship – romantic, friendship, or professional – to deepen your understanding of your relational thought-patterns, blindspots, and habits.
If you want to reflect more deeply, you might ponder when it feels most challenging to love unconditionally. What are the relational triggers that create a reaction of separation, where you become critical or avoidant? What are the boundaries you need to love yourself and a person who it may be challenging to love? What happens when you hold the validity of your experience and their experience in loving awareness? If you can’t hold their experience in loving awareness, what happens when you hold compassion for yourself for how hard it is to let go of your preferences?
January 21st: Sun in conjuncts Pluto in Aquarius
For the first time in 227 years, the Sun makes an exact conjunction to Pluto in Aquarius and Aquarius season will never be the same. For the next 20 years, the Sun and Pluto will come together here, transforming our experience of the cosmic waters of the fixed air sign, connecting us with the mind of the Creatrix — the consciousness that is not contained in our body, but immaterial and in everything. As Pluto and the Sun meet, we are fully initiated into the crucible of embodying our genius and with it, the power of choosing new ways of being as outdated and inauthentic identities are burned away. As Pluto transforms societal norms related to freedom, technology, and (r)evolution, we are all being challenged to reinvent ourselves for ourselves while the powers that be strengthen the conditioning forces (such as AI-based marketing, etc.) that can subtly reinvent us without our conscious consent.
There is so much to say about Pluto in Aquarius so I will be writing a full article about it soon, and you can read my last article about Pluto’s 2024 dip into Aquarius here from the lens of social movements and integrating what we’ve learned during his residency in Capricorn, but the truth is, no one knows exactly what Pluto’s 20-years in Aquarius will bring. We know in the past it has brought revolution that changed the fabric of experience for many, transforming the systems of power in which humanity organizes itself, bringing the birth of modern democracy, and before that the Scientific Revolution. I think one of the most powerful things Pluto’s time in Aquarius could do for us is remove what blocks us from connecting to the invisible threads of cosmic intelligence that is pulsing through everything. I think it could lead to a resurgence in animism if we fully receive the lessons it brought in Capricorn related to the environmental crisis, the fact nature cannot and will not be dominated, and that capitalism is incompatible with life on earth. To feel into what this transit might bring for you, take note of what you’re feeling on January 21st (you might do the same thing I suggest for Venus and create a Pluto page in your journal or phone notes).
January 29th Aquarius New Moon: Embracing Difference
The New Moon on January 29th is the third New Moon at 9 degrees, is in a harmonious air trine to Juipter in Gemini and sitting close to Pluto who is exactly conjunct Mercury. This is an intellectual moon, and occurring 9 days after the Trump Inauguration, I can imagine that there will be buzzing about what the national and global impacts of his second term will be, especially on Aquarian concerns like humanitarian issues, technology (trine to Jupiter, issues like social media - obviously the TikTok debate has been ongoing - use of AI, and of course, “fake news”) and specifically how technology is applied to the climate crisis (there is a national day of action against offshore wind energy on or near the Inauguration). The Sun and Moon are in an exact square to Vesta in Scorpio, who represents our sacred flame, indestructible light and the way our lifeforce feels inexhaustible when applied to our soul calling and deepest passion. In Scorpio, this tells me that we’re being pulled to see the truth beneath the circus and remember to protect our sacred flame.
Aquarius is arguably the most unconventional sign so of course an Aquarius moon is an unconventional moon. Where the moon typically has an aptitude for emotions, nurturing, and establishing closeness, in Aquarius the moon is aloof, independent, wants freedom at all costs, and therefore not a reliable source of connection. This isn’t to say those with an Aquarius Moon don’t want to connect – sometimes that’s true but oftentimes there are other places in the birth chart that seek connection and I’m pretty sure it’s a core biological human need. For them, freedom is just more important, which may result in grief around loneliness or isolation. Perhaps this New Moon is a warning of sorts, to not fall into that trap, to remember our genius doesn’t just live in the brain, it also lives in the body, and it’s becoming increasingly important to tune into how the information we’re consuming is making us feel. Rather than passively reading headlines or the clickbait we’re inundated with, this is a time to set intentions and evoke guardianship to protect us against the subtle influences that are robbing us of our most valuable resource – our attention. [Click here for a deep dive on this with The Emerald podcast.].
With Venus still in Pisces, nearing her exact conjunction with the North Node that will occur on February 1st, she’s taking her lessons from Saturn to Neptune’s big dream, holding devotionally to this vision of an unconditional love that can unify us across difference. In an unusual, watered down but still co-creative sextile with Pluto and Mercury, this is not in a naive sense but in the sense of being willing to struggle together, to engage in conflict, to let differences coexist and even cross fertilize each other, birthing something completely new and original. On the other side, Venus and Neptune make a co-creative, full-powered water-earth sextile with Uranus in Taurus, reminding us of the genius in the body – our bodies and the earth body – and all the ways her diverse fecundity is constantly birthing new life among the most contrasting differences. With Uranus in a co-creative sextile to Mars in Cancer, and Venus and Neptune also in a water trine to Mars, we’re reminded that we need to speak our disagreement and fully claim our experience from a place of emotional empowerment for unity and unconditional love to even be possible.
There may be an element of grieving here, as we face the irreparable damage domination culture has done to the earth and the hard choices we have to make as we seek to innovate our way out of the environmental crisis. There will also likely be grief over the ways the dominant mindset is far from the creative genius we know is possible with Aquarius, if the animate brilliance of consciousness itself was leveraged to create a new society where all are truly capable of thriving. Feeling what needs to be felt is necessary if we are to continue to nurture this big vision that has and will continue to brew in the Piscean dreamfields. By striking that balance of feeling and thinking we can maintain the keen vision and clever creativity necessary to avoid falling into the dystopian void of the 24-hour news cycle and technocratic fixes that wreak of insidious oppression.
Affirmations:
Feeling feeds my genius.
I am loving awareness.
The cosmic waters flow in and through me.
I look to the earth's diverse fecundity to embrace creativity in difference.
Reflection Questions:
What connects you to your creative ingenuity? What disconnects you? How might you create containers (routines, physical practices) that support your focus and ability to go deep? How are you deepening the trust you have in yourself and your own inner voice?
What guardianship are you evoking to protect the sacred flame that is your attention and awareness? In the next 6 months, what are your priorities for what you will give our attention?
What might it feel like to integrate your mental, physical, and spiritual brilliance? What experiences nurture this integration?
Thoughts or questions? Share in the comments!
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