As many of you will know, the astrology of midnight at the beginning of January is not just a chart for the month but also a chart for the year and in the latter in particular, we get provided with some broad brush strokes in the energies that will impact all of us on the planet at this time.

And, we are reminded that, due to retrograde motion, we get three or four separate peaks of any significant transit in the course of a year or two. I’m pointing this out because the chart for this month, and this year, includes many repetitions that coloured 2021.

This is astrology’s way of saying that we are still in process with many of the challenges, and opportunities, that showed for us in this last year. The most significant of these are the Saturn/Uranus square, intertwined with Saturn sextiling in the Chiron/Hekate/Lilith conjunction in Aries.

What is new for us this year however is Jupiter leaving Aquarius and going into Pisces, the North Node of the Moon entering Taurus and, all of the outer planets, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto moving slowly into new territory as they transit the signs of Taurus, Pisces and Capricorn respectively.

So, let’s see what useful information we can draw from this myriad of alignments.

Sun in Capricorn trines Uranus in Taurus

This is a positively fluid, and exact, line up between the structurally creative sign of Capricorn with the great spirit of dramatic and liberating change. The Sun represents that part of us that wants to literally shine, to express its heat and light and, within ourselves, is the driver for ever expansive personal evolution and growth. A joining with Uranus can inject a great deal of energy towards entrepreneurial vision, upper chakra insights and awareness as well as the urge to express our individual authenticity, however crazy and eccentric that might appear to conservative others.

Note that both of these are an earth signs, so it’s not just about elevated ideas or possibilities; it also demands that these have the ability to be manifested physically, in grounded, practical and achievable ways. So, Capricorn Sun can assist in lighting up these possibilities while providing a healthy realism to them.

Saturn in Aquarius square Uranus in Taurus

Normally, if you are well attuned to the energies of Uranus, it comes with feelings of excitement, inspiration and greater personal freedom. However much we might be tempted to rave about the possibilities of the Sun/Uranus, these are rather heavily compromised by Saturn squaring the latter. It can produce a situation where we may know that we are onto something quite innovative, but then get met by internal and/or external resistance. Or, where we know that we need to make some significant changes in our lives but “circumstances” seemed to conspire against us. All of which can be highly frustrating and can hook us into feelings of pointlessness and despair.

However, we’ve been having this transit on and off over the last year, so whether we know it or not, we have learned some things about it. While Saturn can appear to be purely obstructive, it is useful to see him as simply delaying and, that there is always a deep wisdom and intelligence behind his actions. One target of the alchemy that he creates here, is to sort out the difference between reacting to life from a rebellious adolescent or excessively privileged place, as opposed to using the restrictions of this time to work with our own inner dream stealers, the internalised voices of the patriarch, while digging more deeply into our own authentic knowledge and wisdom.

Capricorn Sun squaring the Chiron/Hekate/Lilith conjunction in Aries

The latter conjunction on one level is extraordinary, a combination of healers, medicine women and sacred activists. However, as with each of them, they carry significant wounds from deep historical sources and the ability to wound others, all depending on the degree of healing we’ve been able to do around the wounded masculine, and the consequences of the suppression and betrayal of the sacred feminine.

Here is another place where the forward movement of the Sun gets compromised, but in a way that presents the hard and fast reality, that if we don’t actively work on our wounds here, it will keep tripping us up. It is quite easy to see this playing out in the climate debate, in the Black Lives Matter movement and in the re-emergence of fierce and increasingly effective, feminism. Denied wounds will always come back to bite us.

Mars conjunct Moon in Sagittarius!

Oh, what a fiery moon this is! There is a ferocity here, a great passion that demands expression, a great desire for freedom of thought, movement and action. It is very much an activist combination that wants to act on its beliefs and not just think about them. The warrior god Mars is given greater emotional potency, so our ability to act on what is emotionally important for us is heightened and empowered.

At its best this is a dynamic, bighearted and generous energy but we need to be aware that not all centaurs were wise and noble creatures. Amongst them were wildly aggressive, drunks and rapists who acted more like pirates or bikie gangs. So, we need to be conscious and careful around how this manifests as if this energy attaches itself to destructive emotions or beliefs then there will be trouble.

Mars in Sagittarius, squaring Pallas/Neptune conjunction, opposing Black Moon in Gemini

For all its initial enthusiasm, Mars very quickly enters some dark and disillusioning territory in this very challenging T-square, which will also tighten in the first weeks of this month and year.

Mars squaring Pallas Athena mirrors a very old archetypal battle between masculine and feminine warriors and in this case, between the elements of fire and water. Mars is a great lover of fire and air where he can operate with freedom. But he struggles with the watery, vulnerable and nebulous energies of both Neptune and Pisces, at a time when his sister/rival is far more comfortable and far more subtle in her expressions. (Imagine the debate between Trump and Marianne Williamson for instance!)

With Mars in hard aspect to Neptune, an analogy I like to use here is a wild centaur at full gallop unexpectedly running into a swamp. Big initial splays of energy and expressions of will that become progressively more ineffective, the more you struggle. Neptune almost always demands some form of surrender from our egos and its superficial drives. As the great songwriter Neil Young once wrote, it’s a bit like pissing into the wind. There are some things that are simply beyond our control.

Archetypally, the Black Moon meeting Neptune also speaks of the spontaneous flushing of psychic emotional residues and debris in our systems, particularly those that stem from the cultural, ancestral and even past life sources of the suppression and rejection of the sacred feminine. This then is an opportune time for purificatory practices that work directly with those residues, such as the Golden Kali meditation found in Andrew Harvey’s book The Hope (and my own adaptation of that on my website here)

Related spiritual practices can include working directly with Durga and Kali, both of whom are included in the symbolism of the Black Moon. Whether through mantras, meditations or visualisations, the more we can choose into what the Great Mother is asking of us, the better we can align our own personal will with that greater intelligence.

Sally Kempton’s “Awakening Shakti” is a brilliant guide for this form of inner work.

Mercury conjunct Pluto and Venus in Capricorn

At a time like this it is natural for our thinking to be drawn towards deeper issues around our lives in general, particularly around the different uses of power, around processes of deep change and around understanding our inner mysteries, of both light and shadow. As the planetary ruler of our conscious intellects, Mercury conjuncting Pluto can also represent the desire to use the mind to initiate significant changes in our lives.

There is however always cause for caution when attempting to consciously use Plutonian energy, as Pluto have a habit of dredging up unresolved emotional and psychological baggage for us to deal with. If that coincides with the desire to use power, we need to be very clear, and clean, about our intentions. Some people get seduced into misusing that power in manipulative and controlling ways or, get sucked down the rabbit hole of obsessive and compulsive thought patterns and beliefs.

Retrograding Venus conjunct Pluto and Mercury

These challenges and opportunities for real change also apply to our love lives, due to the presence of Venus in this mix. Mercury/Venus contacts automatically bring our relationships into conscious focus, with the Pluto- assisted possibility of a much deeper understanding around the ways we give and receive love. This includes being able to identify unhealed patterning that can sabotage the fulfilment of our heart’s longings.

Traditionally a Venus retrograde initiates a period of reflection around the availability of our hearts to ourselves and to others, and a time of reviewing our most important relationships. This then dovetails very well with the demands of Pluto and together it is possible to get down to the deeper truths about what is working and what is not in our core relationships. With this comes the power to heal, restore and transform those relationships that are valid for us, and can lead to a tremendous deepening in those love bonds, emotionally and sexually. However, if a relationship has lost its validity, psychologically, spiritually, karmically then Pluto, more often than not, can bring it to an end.

Saturn stays in Aquarius in 2022

During the year Saturn will reach the 25° mark of Aquarius in June, then retrograde back to 18° by October, before moving forward towards Pisces, who he will reach in March 2023.

His current square with Uranus will ease out by the end of January, which will contribute to some lessening of the current stress levels that most of us are feeling at this time. This will also take some of the brakes off the energy of Uranus, so there will be some significant refreshing of this wizard of creative and innovative change.

His positive sextiles to Chiron, Hekate and Lilith are embedded in this year’s energetics and the message that this gives us is that, if we really want to take our gifts, our individual brilliance and visions out into the world, we need to take deeper responsibility for healing the wounds that diminish these three spiritual warriors.

Jupiter now in Pisces!

On the morning of December 30th, Jupiter completed his 12 month transit of Aquarius and quietly entered watery realms of Pisces. His passage though is very unusual this year, as he will fly rapidly through Pisces without retrograding, to go into Aries in mid-May.

As an agent of growth and expansion, Jupiter in Pisces will serve our causes around spiritual and creative advancement, around claiming more of the exquisite sensitivity and psychic/spiritual availability of the Fish, and for connecting more with the magical, mystical child within each of us.

This transit can also be brilliant for reclaiming the subtler dimensions of our emotional selves, supporting us to take healthy risks in vulnerability, in expressing our organic creativity and most importantly, in reversing some of the emotional numbing and anaesthetising that many of us needed to do to survive our childhood wounds. This can go a long way in allowing our emotions to flow much more easily in our hearts and in our bodies. You can imagine what improvements we can make in terms of our mental and emotional health!

One of the shadows of Jupiter energy generally though, is to go into excess. Jupiter in Pisces can turn us into a semi-enlightened bliss bomb but also make us scattered, ungrounded and ineffective. It can heighten our capacity for compassion and empathy but can also dissolve our boundaries in ways that are unhealthy for all involved.