Happy Solstice! The longest day of the year is coming up and during a time that is/used to be my favorite time of the year. It makes sense that the winter holidays coming during Sagittarius, ruled by Jupiter, the bringer of joy, as the fire signs like having a good time, and Sagittarius likes to enjoy the bounty of the earth, but in a different way than say, Taurus: whereas Taurus is about being in the moment enjoying the very material and sensual things that the Earth provides us, Sagittarius is focused on the fact that these things bring us together, and through togetherness and cooperation (Libra), we pool our resources to create something bigger than what we each individually had (Scorpio), and we can enjoy our very humanness that frees us from the confines of basic survival.

But this year, we are having another pandemic holiday, but unlike last year, I think it’s less of a bummer – either you’re exhausted of the pandemic and just don’t care anymore, or you’re just stoically moving along, or you’re just reviving the depression from the year before. However, this year, Jupiter is at the tail end of Aquarius, and while it’s not exactly happier than Jupiter in the tail end of Capricorn, it’s certainly less likely to expand restrictions and expand austerity as it is to expand on being weird and doing what works for you as opposed to what traditions you tenaciously tried and failed to cling to the winter of 2020 when you had to do socially distanced Christmas/solstice/Hannukah/Kwanzaa/Festivus/whatever.

The fact that I celebrate the solstice and take time off for that and don’t really worry about being out of work early on December 24th is my own weird thing that is here to stay. The fact that I’m also spending it alone again isn’t that big of a deal either, because there is something magickal about spending the solstice alone, in the dark, in the quiet, if you’re lucky enough not to have any work emergencies from people who don’t know that this is a Sabbat.

But if you recall (or not), Jupiter entered Aquarius on December 20, 2020 and was at 0 Aquarius for the solstice through Christmas Eve, and in America, where the entire season of Sagittarius through the early part of Capricorn is like a high holy season to our god Consumerism, this was a big deal. It was like “so…now what? I guess whatever we want.” And there were still families giving each other Covid, and people who felt a sigh of relief that they didn’t have to spend the holidays with family after all, and then there were people who didn’t have any time for it because they either had Covid or had loved ones suffering from Covid – it was almost as if Jupiter entering Aquarius was giving America permission to “skip” Christmas and do what feels good to them. And I think we needed that.

But now, Jupiter will enter Pisces late on December 29, 2021, and it’s just holding onto it’s freedom in Aquarius before it beautifully expands all the boundaries to the point where they simply disappear, and who knows? Maybe this is the dawn of the era I’ve been waiting for, a new dream in which we remember the amazing, magickal children we were and let them tell us what to believe in.

But until then, this holiday season fucking sucks.

Where is the snow?

It’s springlike in Chicago right now, and while we’ve had a few fleeting flurries, it hasn’t lasted. The weather fluctuations have been killer on my migraines, and the general stress of Mercury conjuncting my natal Neptune and Mars transiting my Sun (more migraines!) hasn’t helped, but it’s survivable. It’s not like a Saturn transit that’s just suspended animation, or a Neptune transit that every part of my animal nature tells me to fight despite that being the exact thing you shouldn’t do. But it’s also not helpful that it brings in a flurry of activity, which in my line of work, means emergencies that have to be addressed right now.

But it doesn’t feel like winter is coming, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, I’m sort of okay with milder weather — if it was mild and we were easing into it as my body wants to do — but on the other hand, I’m still enchanting by snowfall, and I find myself putting on 4K videos of snowfall on my television at night because I want that gentle silence.

I’m from the North. It doesn’t make sense for there to be so much darkness but also so much relative warmth and no snow. It’s depressing in a way I didn’t anticipate, especially since I have an intense love affair with snowfall and right now, I feel like snow is cheating on me, that it ran off to Hawaii suddenly and now I’m standing here feeling like a fool as I look down the street at all these holiday decorations that just look like they’ve been left up way too long, and I wonder if it’s something I did:

Snow, honey: are you sick of me? Is it something I said?

Because I can change.

I mean, really: I can change. I’m a highly mutable person, with 8th house planets: it’s basically what I do.

It’s not the same when it snows in February. I’m sick of it by then. February snow is the worst. January snow is boring. November and December snow is the best, and we’re quickly running out of December.

And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we also didn’t 1) just come out of Neptune retrograde, 2) if Mars wasn’t sitting in Sagittarius putting pressure on us to have a good time, 3) if Venus wasn’t conjunct Pluto in late Capricorn, because my god is that depressing for those of us who don’t already have a high-profile love affair that would make others envious, 4) and if Jupiter wasn’t exaggerating the current full moon in late Gemini, and 5) if Saturn wasn’t squaring Uranus right now, which feels like I cut my toenails too short in a feeble attempt to fit into some very pretty shoes that I know I bought half a size too small but they were on sale.

The current transits: yes, I’m calling bullshit on the Jupiter trine to the Moon in Gemini tonight.

Trines make things easy, not great – whatever energy is around flows more easily, whether that energy is helpful to humanity or not. In a birth chart, it shows what comes easy, like talents, but also where a person may be lazy because they don’t have to try. Me? I have Mercury and Uranus trine the ascendant. I don’t have to try to be an eccentric loner who says weird things: it just naturally happens, and it’s arguable whether that’s actually helpful to me or not. Sure, when you just naturally drift along the path of your own interests, it’s easy to explore taboo things without much cognitive dissonance because even when you try to fit in, you end up talking and then you stop fitting in, and yes – it’s been great for being alone during the pandemic. With these being in water signs, there is a definite emotional/spiritual element to this ease, and being involved in the spiritual and occult always came naturally, much to the chagrin of those around me. I don’t think I’ve reached peak eccentric yet, not by a long shot, but I can say that this pandemic has given me a few rare gems, like moments of complete lack of self, of ego dissolution, or rather, ego dropping, when I am alive and living, here on earth and a part of the universe in which I am connected to all things and who I think I am or what I’m about is just one more thought that has no form or matter that floats up into the aether and disappears from view. And I wasn’t even trying: I was just walking alone in the forest, or on the beach, or driving in my car (but I swear it wasn’t rush hour or on I-90), and I conjured my way into transcendence.

But that type of energy isn’t necessarily helpful when you’re in a situation in which you have to make small talk, because it’s just way too easy to slip into the kind of conversation you’d rather be having rather than the one you’re actually having, even when you actually know that no one else wants to have a discussion about hypothetical situations.

And I wish I knew more people who did. I could have silly conversations about hypothetical situations all day.

But it’s 7 p.m. and I have not spoken aloud to another person yet today, and at this rate, I likely won’t, and you know: that’s another sweet thing about this trine.

But what about the trine from Jupiter in Aquarius to the full Moon? I think it’s helpful in that it will easily expand the great need to communicate right now, to learn, and to share information. It’s like the doors opened but all the thoughts, pics, ideas, and memes are blocking the door because there’s so many of them trying to get through. Granted, the ruler of this moon is in aloof and reticent Capricorn anyway, so it may not even feel prudent or a good use of energy to attempt to share this open treasure chest of ideas anyway. The full Moon is on the cusp of my 4th house, and while I don’t want to stay home, I’m frankly not sure where else I would go today. My mind went blank. There was nothing I needed to buy (this moon opposes my Venus in Capricorn who actually doesn’t like to shop), no where I want to go that I’ll avoid risking catching something from people, no movies I want to see, no museums I want to go to right now, no forest preserve that wasn’t muddy or wet from the recent weather, and no one I particularly wanted to drag on an I’d-don’t-know-what-do-you-want-to-do un-adventure today.

Jupiter trining this energy makes it easier to simply expand on the theme of whatever is happening right now, to the point of exaggeration, and that’s not always a good thing. For me, it’s just kind of exacerbating the full Moon effects in my 4th house and perhaps it’s opposition to Venus and square to Saturn, so it’s like, yeah, better just be a hermit, like really be a hermit, because relationships just aren’t going to feel good right now, and you’ll likely be disappointed with people, even if you know they’re all suffering from the same shitty energy we all are. Sometimes, shit sucks, and then it passes, even if it feels like it really sucks now and you’re going to die alone even though it’s obvious that you designed your life this way even if it’s not what you intended…but anyway, that snowball effect? Full moon crisis expanded by Jupiter, and that’s not so great. On the other hand, if I was say, starting a family, or I was making a choice between career and family, Jupiter *might* make it easier to choose family, because it’s trining the Moon in the 4th, as opposed to career and public life, because it’s sextiling the Sun transiting the 10th. But it has – I slid right back into my austere hermit habits, the simplicity that makes me happy, and Venus can wait to make a grand appearance until the new moon passes over her in a couple weeks. Rest and simplicity create beauty and peace, and eventually, blessings.

But the feeling that I should have done all of this yesterday because it’s a Gemini full Moon doesn’t help, especially since the things I want to do just keep mounting as Jupiter in Aquarius keeps coming up with weirder and weirder suggestions.

Saturn square Uranus: just keep going. I mean, you have no choice anyway, right?

The Venus/Pluto conjunction and the Saturn/Uranus square is like an intense bummer in which we’re all feeling deprived of something and desperately wanting of that thing, whatever it is, that the world is keeping from us, specifically – Uranus in Taurus and Saturn in Aquarius can’t decide if it’s all of us or one of us, or it’s a targeted attack, or it’s just the way things are, because Saturn in Aquarius could feel like personal limitations on becoming whatever unique thing one strives to be or it could feel like the collective is crushing us personally, and Uranus in Aquarius can feel like this is just the way the world is turning, and we have to get used to it, but also the world does owe us at least some peace and we can’t even get that, but because it’s Uranus, we forget that we, as individuals, are part of that collective “we” because Saturn is all like “I’m warning you, one misstep, it all falls apart,” because Saturn feels like the powers that be, and perhaps they are, and it can be difficult to tell if and when you’re part of the powers that be. That was a pretty breathless way to say that two paranoid (albeit differently paranoid) planetary placements are having an argument on the Internet right now, except we’re all currently living in that argument. Right now, with Neptune turning direct (and thus, fucking up the weather) in Pisces, it may be hard to understand when Glinda tells us that we’ve always had the power to go home this entire time, but we can’t even appreciate or understand it until we’ve gone through the type of journey through the impossible (Aquarius) that will teach us (Saturn) to accept as natural (Taurus) the very magick (Uranus) that makes that possible, which doesn’t come from the Wizard of Oz (Neptune in Pisces) although we are living in his world.

So just watch out for flying monkey poop landing on your head.

Venus conjunct Pluto: for those willing to sacrifice it all

So, immediately, no: I don’t think this is great energy for business in and of itself. It’s great if you’re already at the top, and it’s hard if you’re at the bottom. Capricorn likes pecking orders and hierarchies, and Pluto is the root word of plutocracy, and Venus is wealth, riches, beauty, and blessings. This is a time in which people are more prone to believe in the fantasy of meritocracy as being a real thing in a capitalist economy, in a world in which we’re calling kids who were already born wealthy and obviously benefited from nepotism “self-made,” because they did something on their own that one time in their life and it was caught on camera and broadcast on E! But its also a time in which the illusion will be challenged more openly, with the help of Saturn and Uranus. I mean, there are signs all around us. Bernie and AOC are still popular. Rage Against the Machine got back together.

Now, this energy is obviously not so great for the talented (Venus) who are fighting an uphill battle (Capricorn) when you’re able to both be noticed immediately and ignored immediately for something that the algorithms favor more (Pluto), but it’s also not so great for the type of people I mentioned above. Capricorn likes to be on top, but the goat doesn’t want to be carried up the mountain – it’s made to climb – and it wants to get there itself. Try it. Goats don’t want you to pick them up. Baby goats are kind of okay with that, but adult goats freak the fuck out and they will headbutt you, and their skulls are designed for butting but your ribcage isn’t. And it doesn’t matter if Capricorn comes from the trailer park or the gated community – even if it could use someone else’s name, it won’t. The microgeneration of Gen X with the North Node in Capricorn shows us this – this cohort brought Internet 1.0, when someone could put up a website and that’s where they got their attention, based on that, regardless of who their parents or siblings were. You’ll notice in that cohort, born in the early 70s, that there is a general lack of love for celebrity even though Capricorn north nodes, you’d think, would strive toward public accomplishments. And they do, but being accomplished and being a celebrity, as we know, aren’t the same thing. I mean, so what — they all have businesses that have their name on them but it’s not like they’re the COOs, right? — but there are people who are famous because they produce things of value to people, and there are people who are famous largely because they’re spectacles. There’s artists and thinkers, and then there are people who take a lot of selfies and make their personal lives public. Reality television, Instagram, TikTok, and such isn’t really their thing: Capricorn won’t sacrifice it’s integrity for worldly success.

And knowing that, if say, you are the kind of person who did obliterate (Pluto) your integrity (Capricorn) instead of transforming it (also Pluto) to something of power to institute lasting change (also Capricorn) for yourself or others in a way that makes life better (Venus) because you wanted the sparkle and ease instead (also Venus), this is a time to question one’s hollow existence, whether one deserves what they have, whether there’s any point in keeping up, because even if you’re the top spectacle, there’s always a new spectacle coming up. No one, so far, has managed to remain a spectacle their entire lives. And it’s not even just for the people on top, though they’ll be feeling this the hardest, but all the people trying to climb up the mountain they’re sitting atop.

This a time when we’re all wondering if we deserve the good things we have, or why we haven’t earned the good things we want, and what more we have to do to get those things, but you can’t have imposter syndrome unless you’re in a situation in which you could be an imposter.

And that’s really kind of depressing, isn’t it?

And yes, Venus conjunct Pluto in Capricorn could mean restrictive obsession and jealousy and perhaps even extravagant spending to give the appearance of success, but in reality, Venus in Capricorn doesn’t like living on credit, and she doesn’t feel right about this: if it’s not her socio-economic class, then it just feels like she’s carrying that designer purse for the ego she works for, not for herself. There’s no mile-long fake eyelashes, no catfish filters, no Shein if she can afford more. Pluto is kind of reminding her of that deep need to earn her luxuries, reminding her that deep down, she is powerless — the Queen consort is not the ruler of the country, after all — unless she has gained power…but is she willing to do what it takes, and what sort of power does she want: the fake power of being on top of a paper mountain that could topple at any time under the weight of so many people trying to get where you are, too, or the quiet power of integrity that is okay with not watering it down or becoming mediocre for the money?

And are you willing to do what it takes, whichever one you want?

It sucks, doesn’t it? In another year of the pandemic (and in America, what appears to be an insurrection coming when Jupiter enters Aries in a year), it almost seems like it doesn’t matter, since it can be swallowed up by the ocean at any time, because Neptune — remember her, Neptune? — is squaring that Full Moon right now, and it’s hard to see the purpose in making your mark on a world that will forget you, in making a contract with a world that will never hold up its end of the bargain anyway.

Jesus, Miriam. Any good news?

Yes. The good news is that you’re still alive. It’s still Sagittarius season, and Mars is here to get the party started, and Mars in Sagittarius knows how to have fun. It’s trining Chiron in Aries, so it’s a good time to find a way to have fun in your own manner, because even if people are looking, you have to be paying attention to consider what they have to say. You’re still alive, right now, and there are things to enjoy. Okay fine, so Venus is hooking up with Pluto right now, but that’s some intense enjoyment, and really, Venus in Capricorn is good for self-care, even though Venus in Capricorn is often self-effacing to put others at ease. No one else is around, so go ahead and spend a day in the bathroom, or eating all the dark chocolate, or replacing your winter boots with something nice: do the work that needs to be done. It’s time to transform (Pluto) your idea of pleasure and beauty and how much work needs to be done to accomplish pleasure. Maybe you don’t need as much as you think you did, or maybe you need more? And maybe you need to be choosier about the company you keep and start thinking about transforming your social circle to better reflect where you’re going in life?

Jupiter in Aquarius trining the Moon in Gemini makes it easier to talk to people very different from you, or people will differing opinions. Maybe you won’t be getting into a fight over politics this holiday season? Who cares when Mars in Sagittarius makes it easier to laugh everything off, because no sign laughs everything off the way Sagittarius does, which is why the winter holiday season falls in Sagittarius and ends with Capricorn – I mean, who would naturally celebrate the austerity of Capricorn as if it were Sagittarius than a church that’s trying to compete with pagan holidays?

And try to get some sunshine when you can. vitamin D is good for the skin and bones, so Venus in Capricorn: beauty needs a strong foundation. The sun is coming back soon, but the dark holds so much quiet and so many mysteries, acting as the veil for all of our deepest desires, that we should try to enjoy this long night, the first day of winter, like a Venus-Pluto in Capricorn indulgence in the naughty and forbidden. Even if that indulgence is only in the mind, there are some perks of this isolation we’re all experiencing: the luxury of deeply transformative privacy, and if that isn’t Venus/Capricorn in Capricorn, I don’t know what is.

And then write about it if you want, later on, even if only anonymously on Reddit – Mercury in Capricorn is trine Uranus in Taurus, and that kind of stuff is easy now, too.

Happy full moon. See you at the solstice.