I thought I would have a little happy news since I’m getting some more traffic, and it’s not smoke I’m blowing up your ass because we have a New Moon and Mercury is now in Aquarius, which is kind of cool. I mean, I like it.

New Year’s New Moon at 12 degrees Capricorn: stay the course

Today’s new moon is in Capricorn, and early in the new calendar year, so it kind of feels like we’re gonna make even though now we have the possibility of flurona, or a double infection of the flu and coronavirus, so the good news is that you’ve got the Moon and Mercury in two signs where the only thing they can do is laugh.

Because you know what? Yes, there is a global awakening, and yes, there is something primal waking up in us, and my sincerest hope is that we all embrace the power of our utter humanness – the animal joined with spirit — so as to shed our fears of each other, of the future, and what we can accomplish and this is what I’m working toward as an astrologer even though I am very very cynical and snarky as a writer because damn: it’s hard to be human.

But right now is the moment for dry, dark, gallows humor, and Capricorn and Aquarius do those both exceptionally well.

The Moon is in fall here because this sign isn’t necessarily the most comfortable outfit for the Moon. Imagine a baby in a three-piece suit, and that’s Capricorn Moon.

So, the new moon is in Capricorn, which is not a favorite place for Capricorn, since the instinct is to not be emotionally expressive, to be contained — and that is really the right word, contained. Capricorn Moon is self-possessed and acts when it is prudent and refrains from action when it would interfere with its ambitions and long-term plans.

So I really need to heed this one, don’t I? I mean, I heed every New Moon because every new moon brings a spiritual, and hormonal, monthly cycle, so I don’t have much of a choice, but I was thinking about this today and I tried to nap and use up as much time idly as I could before all the work of the week begins: I really need to lean in on this month’s lunar energy to steel myself for the work of this month, and the work I want to accomplish this winter and thereafter.

So I am setting my intentions for that, but I’m also indulging in a little less-celebrated Capricorn quality:

Dry as fuck humor.

Like Ben Shapiro-reading-the-lyrics-and-shuddering-dry.

I am going to use this moon to set ambitious goals but I’m also going to make it a point to look on the dark side of life and laugh at it instead of lament it and wonder when the dark clouds will lift.

After all everything is kind of ridiculous right now. Omicron is highly contagious which is the reason it’s dangerous: if delta was a guy walking around a crowded mall with a loaded pistol, omicron is The Flash on meth hitting everyone in the knee with a pipe. Even though omicron isn’t likely going to end up killing, crippling, or incapacitating most of the people it hits, it’s leaving so many more people in its wake who need help and can’t help others because they’re injured. And here’s the real kicker: these guys are actually brothers working independently of each other with absolutely no motive than to simply attack.

I mean, wtf.

So I’m staying in as much as I can this January. Chances are I won’t get very sick. Chances are maybe I caught it already and didn’t know it. But in the event that I do, I have to do it alone, and something tells me that this moon is too much of an opportune time for an illness like that as it’s trining my natal Mars in 6th house Virgo and my Chiron in 2nd house Taurus. As I’ve said before, trines are easy energy, not necessarily beneficial energy. I’d rather be using that easy energy for the work I want to do rather than catching an illness I have to fight off. Just after I moved into this apartment, a fourth floor walk up, I badly sprained both my ankles and could barely walk and couldn’t drive. I don’t want to be sitting in my 4th floor walk up trying to figure out how to get to urgent care or the hospital or which one would be able to see me if I get very sick.

I said this was going to be about humor this month. Sorry.

The good news is that Mercury is in Aquarius, and it’s comfortable there.

Mercury in Aquarius: Happy to be of service to humanity in ways it never asked.

Mercury is the cerebral planet, and it’s comfortable in Aquarius. It’s the ruler of brainy Gemini and the ruler of analytical Virgo. In Aquarius, it’s quick, it’s contrarian, it’s fearless (with words), cutting, and brilliant. However, it’s Aquarius, so it can be brilliant in ways no asked of them, at times no one asked of them. Mercury in the fixed signs can be a mark of eccentricity, but in Aquarius, it just gives zero fucks: zero fucks for reality, for status, for money, for even it’s own present circumstances. It’s the future-minded smarty pants whose mother is still paying his car insurance.

And there are nice things about Mercury in Aquarius, namely, just wanting to be different. This, as opposed to Mercury in Capricorn, which is very conscious of the rules of engagement and that silence is power, Mercury in Aquarius is the sci-fi fan fully immersed in socialist, utopian worlds in which the hierarchies of this one either don’t apply or are troped in those worlds to show just how ridiculous they really are.

And it’s time once again to get lost there.

I’d like to think Mercury in Aquarius is a lot like Mercury in Gemini, but I think it’s more like Mercury in Virgo, the sign inconjunct. Signs inconjunct tend to annoy each other: they each have a quality they share, usually something negative, that they don’t like in themselves and therefore don’t like in the other sign. For example, Virgo can be pedantic, but so can Aquarius. Mercury in Virgo and Mercury in Aquarius are like two nerds fighting over the relative merits of Star Wars vs. Star Trek while trapped in an elevator in a burning building: no one else gives a shit, but in that reality in that elevator, to be right about something that’s really only important to you is everything. Then, when the last cable is about to snap and the smoke is seeping in, the two of them look at each other, quickly devise a plan to escape, and actually do it.

They escape.

Then on the way to the hospital, they use their last breaths to continue that argument in the ambulance.

And that’s the silver lining of Mercury in Aquarius: genius, and sometimes when you actually need it.

And that’s unintentionally hilarious.

Because right now, I think I’m like the astrology version of the comic book guy, but in better shape, with far less aversion to the outdoors, far fewer collectibles, and no store to mind, reminding everyone of what I think about this or that despite what other people think, failing to actually write about what is good about Jupiter in Pisces.

So I’m going to use some of this contrarian nature to write about the positives of Jupiter in Pisces, but not too in depth. I’ll just make a list.

Jupiter in Pisces: the good stuff. In bulletpoints.

• More traveling by water. Now, this could also be due to rising sea levels, but depending on where this lands in your chart, particularly the 3rd or 9th house, it could mean you’re doing some water travel. It may also mean more water — Neptune going direct tends to screw with weather patterns (weather is mostly about water), and Jupiter increases what is already there, and Pisces is vapor and mist, so if it’s auspicious in the chart of a location, expect more precipitation. No, I don’t think Americas droughts and wildfires will all be cured, but possibly mitigated?
• Short-term spiritual journeys or bon voyages. I say short term because this transit only lasts until May, after which it enters Aries before retrograding back into Pisces until about the end of 2022, so roughly one year overall — it was in Pisces this summer, remember? That was kind of nice, a little sangria buzz on the balcony after a hard week at work with no A/C, but it didn’t last: it brought a false sense of being in the clear, and then delta crept up on us. But now that it will be here a while, it could mean spiritual journeys that are beginning and will lead to action when Jupiter enters Aries, or are short-term and only meant to last through Pisces. For those of us who will experience them, they may consume us. The good news? If you’re not doing much because of the pandemic, go for it. Literally, if you want to go be a hermit in the mountains right now, not only is this the energy, but chances are the world is more apt to leave you be and assume you’re just socially distancing.
• Big time imagination. Please someone ease my mind and tell me there will be original movies again: The Matrix anti-reboot/anti-sequel was so Aquarius, but upon rewatching the entire series, I realized how Piscean the movies are. We may not see it now, but Jupiter will bless those who are receptive with more imagination, and may also bless those who have the money to make things happen with enough imagination and faith to let the creative people be creative.
• More weird shit from Heaven. Meteors, sky and space-related phenomena that Aquarius can easily explain but still inspires awe and wonder in Pisces. But I also mean this spiritually: this is a time of more dreams, more visions, more interconnectedness between humans: if Pisces is the dissolving of boundaries, Jupiter is dissolving it all the more, so if you’re already a seer, medium, visionary, psychic, or artist, expect more of it, and don’t expect all of it to have an explanation.
• Booze surprises. I’m not an expert, but it appears Jupiter in Pisces tends to favor the lesser known wine regions of the world, so if you’re say, a fan of Finger Lakes or New Zealand wines, this may be a good time for you. Of course, I don’t really follow vinoculture much anymore, but if there’s an astrologer who dedicates times to this, please, please let me know. I would love to see someone do astrological vinoculture cycles, and if not, fill the niche. There’s got to be some winery that needs an astrologer in case I need a visa.
• Stay the fuck home. I’ve written before that my Neptune transit to my ascendant is actually not too bad for a pandemic, but Jupiter in Pisces increases the desire to retreat into one’s own world, so it’s a lot easier to retreat back into one’s own world if we must. The difference is that we all have a pretty good idea of what we like to do in our little worlds (if we didn’t already), and we don’t have to find ways to keep ourselves occupied until the world opens up, nervously wondering how much Netflix is left before we run out and we’re still under orders to stay home: we know the drill. We know how to knit now. We know how to bake bread. We know how to paint by numbers. We still have all those adult coloring books sitting next to that stack of puzzles we never finished. And, for better or for worse, we know how to teach (Jupiter) our children remotely (Pisces) now, should we have to do it again.
• Dream travel: This means two things: first, astral travel and traveling in dreams, externally and internally. It can also mean idealistic or dreamy travel, as in, bucket-list type stuff, largely because it’s cheaper and probably surreal to go travel overseas in a pandemic. But we may be looking at another spring of lone road trips, of distanced cruising, and then again in the fall when Jupiter re-enters Pisces in October. But moreover, dreams will cross the bridge between worlds, and you’re more likely to meet the deceased, to have encounters with guides, to have visions, to be shown the past and the future. Only trouble is that with Neptune in Jupiter as well, things can go from dreaming to confusing, or from dreaming to waking but not being sure if you’re doing either. In fact, you may increasingly feel that life is more surreal – albeit not in a bad way if you’re not a fuddy-duddy – and that you’re moving in more than one world. And you may say to yourself that it’s not the spoon that is bending, it’s you, and that the real truth is that there is no spoon. And you may do that while you’re in the kitchen at the office, stirring your morning coffee, and your boss walks in and sees you talking to yourself and turns around quietly, and later that day, gently suggests you use some of your PTO to maybe, you know, travel, see your folks, talk to people you know…you sure you’re okay?
• Toys and big nostalgia. Toys aren’t just Piscean and neither is nostalgia – it shares that with Cancer. However, the imaginative play of toys is Piscean, and Jupiter is the joy they bring as well as the sense of wealth they bring to children: for many of them, even if they don’t play with all the toys, it’s really the only things they can call their own, and everything is a toy, from the literal toys they got for Christmas to the stick they picked up in the park, to the wrapping paper that the literal toys were ensconced in while sitting under the tree. Jupiter in Cancer is really more nostalgic overtly: think family reunions and Vermont Country Store. However, when you think of Jupiter in Pisces, think of a more exploratory place of wonder, like Borders used to be (sigh. I loved that place), vintage toy stores where you just happen upon one of the pieces of plastic whatever you used to own in the 80s [for me, it was first-generation My Little Ponies, a small collection I cultivated in my 30s when Jupiter was transiting my Sun and the North Node transiting my ascendant that I left at my parent’s house in a far corner of the attic that I’m pretty sure only I can reach. But if you want to pay me in these for an astrology reading, let’s talk). This is a good time to get lost in the things you loved in the past and just focus on that and the joy it gave you then — oh look, Harry Potter reunion, to speak of the devil.
• Finally, the big dissolve. Pisces can circle the drain in it’s own fears, but Jupiter brings optimism. Did you ever think you’d be happy to know that we’re all going to die someday? Because we will, and that’s fine, so it doesn’t matter that you accidentally called the judge Mom; in a year, in ten years, in twenty years, not only will they forget, so will we, and we have Jupiterian beliefs that we will be so far removed from all the things happening today, that it’s all kind of just pages in a novel that we’re reading on the beach of eternity. I mean, in a way, this all true: life is a simulated world each of us are living in our own minds, and if we’re lucky, we get to meet people living a similar enough simulation who are also going our way down this winding road called life, and we will be that lucky this year. If that’s beneficial to us forever, it’s hard to say, but it’s time to let your freak flag unfurl and fly so the others can find you.

Happy 2022. Stay warm, stay safe. Thank you for reading my Mercurial list; I suppose that was rather contrarian of me. Well, tis the season.