* * ENERGIES AFOOT * *

JANUARY + 2025

REST + RELEASE + REBIRTH

This new year is A LOT!

As we finish out the burgeoning energies of the Capricorn new moon of last week, time remains to set “fresh start” intentions in those areas that could benefit from a new work routine and steady efforts toward solid life structures.

We’re sitting inside the second of a series of three Mars/Pluto oppositions taking place through April, which promises volatility in the national and global arenas. On a personal level it will be important to find healthy outlets (pillow-screaming, anyone?) for our more volatile, aggressive and angry energies and to practice a mature neutrality with those who come looking to pick petty fights.

Mars’ retrograde back into Cancer this month suggests that actions are most productive when taken toward protection and fierce nurturing . The full moon in Cancer on the 13th also connects with Mars, asking us to acknowledge our true feelings, especially to those with whom we tend to suppress our emotional needs or come into conflict. Mars will go direct next month and call us gradually into more assertiveness, once we’ve aligned more deeply with our innermost desires for the year and years ahead.

Venus has entered her exaltation in Pisces, adding some calm, romance and peace to this simmering cauldron. She squares Jupiter, perhaps expanding our dreams toward the unrealistic, but her conjunction to Saturn suggests the setting of gentle boundaries and the building of practical containers for the year’s biggest dreams and goals.

The Sun enters Aquarius on the 19th — welcome Aquarius season!— and immediately conjoins Pluto, bringing illumination to the revolutionary, “power to the people” themes that will govern our collective evolutionary impulses in the times ahead. Over the next 20 years, Pluto’s transformative energies will also establish these transformation and empowerment themes in the Aquarian section of our personal natal charts.

The new moon in Aquarius on the 29th heralds the Chinese New Year of the Wood Snake, trining expansive and lucky Jupiter. One day later, Aquarius’ ruler Uranus stations direct in Taurus. Auspicious beginnings are promised for commitments to on-the-ground strategies for freedom, liberation and future-mindedness, for ourselves, but especially for our communities.

Saturn in Pisces continues its clarion call, nudging us toward the discipline of regular spiritual practices that will sustain and stabilize us through the intense year of change ahead. There will be a lack of Earth energies as we move into an atmosphere of cleansing Waters followed by the fast-paced, idea- and action-focused energies of Air and Fire. Grounding and stillness practices will be essential this year for maintaining mental and emotional stability.

A convergence of cycles portend that 2025 will be a year like no other. The unprecedented movements of Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus into new signs, ALL within a four-month period, herald the dawn of a new era. There is an opportunity from now until April for a gentle and self-respectful but thorough review of how much we’ve changed since 2020. Prepare now, and attend with steady effort over these next few months to those things you wish to see blossom, prosper and thrive, come June and the years ahead. The shift into an abundance of Air and Fire energies suggests a breakneck speed to changes and developments over the second half of the year.

Lastly, there is a directive to surrender into the cleansing waters of Pisces— the last sign of the zodiac— in order to release what no longer serves us, and to ready ourselves for a rebirth into Aries, the first sign of the zodiac. Both Saturn and Neptune will move back and forth across the cusp between Pisces and Aries this year, suggesting both dissolutions (Neptune) of old orders and rebuilds (Saturn) of new ones, both collectively and personally.

I wish you sustenance, strength, centeredness, blessings and peace on the road ahead!