The Astrology Of January 2021: Tomorrow

The day the cogs and the wheels clogged with human matter, mass body mash choking the works, slowing down the stampede of stabbing pistons and penetrating appendages busy crushing culture and sucking out the vital sap. What a shame, unfortunate for the machine. Darkness coated the components assembled throughout the exoskeleton. Over the past few decades it had begun to know itself, and in that knowing it knew many changes were to come. It was necessary. It was burning itself out. It readied for a skipped beat, a novel flaw, and with predictive power learned from so many revolutions of the sprockets along the manifolds, it cleaved so many weighty sectors, outdated and inefficient in light of new information. Data doubled, and doubled again, and again, and again. The primaries locked, the chains pulled taut and snapped, oil sprayed from check valves, steam melted chamber walls, bolts stripped from their threads, and as everything ground to a halt, data streamed from the computational cortex and calculation catalyzing cascades of calculations caused a most vicious and terrifying set of statistics as the signal turned inward, divided, polarized, ideas reproducing asexually, then mutating, spawning, Airy demons, like precious cancers, hardened crystals, reassembling themselves with each glance in the mirror, shifting and updating their structures, until nuance modulates itself.

The significance of the old machine, wrapped in telegraph wires, spinning Jenny belts, splattered with rotten oil, cracked and heat warped from over work, abused by its operators, now fades into sepia tones, and the grainy lens of history, pocked with its lists of dates and categorical mania, box what came before into modular sections, no longer whole. The future array cuts in with a grin, a knowing smirk that stretches from that photon here all the way to the same photon somehow there 27 miles away. The multilayered shuffle of parallel realities offers optionality like we have previously never known, and the impulse is to lock everyone into their seats where they can only see the action from behind a screen. But meanwhile, as defined constructs which hold our world together implode, space is created, and what might be authored in these now blank and vast, void areas quivers with potential. What is counter to the last two hundred years chess move rule book wafts freely through the cracks, while the squares triangulate in sinister fashion, and the corners that cut up our lifelines and pin us to the linear segments increase their depth. We may have to face our agoraphobia to advance out of this position, and accept our own ostricization if we are to make any move at all and not simple wait and listen for defined roles to be delivered to us.

Jos de Mey

The year begins with many of the shapes quickly emerging that will define 2021, many of which emerging out of thin air, as attention is directed into new and very hypothetical territory, drastically altering the physical experience of life and erupting in sudden changes in our material basis and the methodologies which move rhythmically with it. We’ll be up in the air riding a bucking bull much of the year, the rodeo kicking right off in 2021’s initial few weeks. As we get used to the activity and motion we might want to note how much January hosts a Capricorn-Aquarius split screen. We get planets in Saturn’s traditional, predictable, conventional, hierarchal, authoritarian sign of historical stacks of stone and also planets in Saturn’s conceptual, innovative, hypothetical, dispassionate and exile oriented sign of thinking up altogether new plans to be installed and designing updated systems that can replace those previous. Capricorn is the management of the tried and the true where as Aquarius is interesting ideas and activity which need not be based on any past precedent whatsoever. In this divide we’ll see a lot of the same old story, the same old plutocracy, manipulation and corruption, layered with illusions of bygone days and monuments to yesteryear, meanwhile a steady buzz of new theories and data are streaming from unpredictable and even unknown sources that stagger our understanding of what society is and what potentials are becoming possible— potentials that pull the carpet from beneath our feet and alter the ground we walk on. As both of these sectors are Saturn’s domains, and him newly strengthened in Aquarius, a kind of authority, control and incarceration we have yet to encounter also emerges and courses through both of his dual domiciles, bringing ideas onto the table which might seem suddenly tangible and workable, but also are in no way backed by compassion or care for happiness, health, or any holistic ideal or human value. Order and Empire always have their own agenda, no matter what’s at stake.

Heidi Paschkewitz

Mercury sextile Neptune

Mercury conjunct Pluto

Mars ingress Taurus

Mercury ingress Aquarius

Venus ingress Cap

Sun sextile Neptune

while Moon trine Neptune

Mercury square Mars

Venus trine Mars

Mercury conjunct Saturn

Mercury conjunct Jupiter

Mercury square Uranus

Venus square Chiron

New Moon in Cap

Mars square Saturn

Sun conjunct Pluto

Venus trine Uranus

Jupiter square Uranus

Sun ingress Aqua

Mars conjunct Uranus

Mars square Jupiter

Venus sextile Neptune

Sun conjunct Saturn

Sun square Uranus

Venus conjunct Pluto

Full Moon Leo

Sun conjunct Jupiter

Mercury stations RX

Ed Valigursky

Pluto Conjunctions

The travel of planets across Capricorn, namely Mercury, Venus and the Sun, throughout the Month all must pass Pluto before they can join the process of new and innovative design in Aquarius. This inevitable threshold cross through a plunge in utter darkness reminds us of the fear and uncertainty we’ve all passed through in the year we’ve recently endured. These planets move swiftly through the tunnel, one last time towards the initiation into what exists beyond abduction of our lives, the loss of the familiar, the collapse of historical models. They shuffle quickly through the black passage into the airy abyss of hypothetical reality on the other side. Although, despite their rather rapid pace compared to Jupiter and Saturn who spent most of last year troubling over the shackles and cages and clubs keeping us corralled in late Capricorn, these planets spend these weeks in anticipation of this labyrinth passage which can lay upon our temperaments an ominous and doom laden outlook, which considering the circumstances is not unwarranted. Although, subverting the normative and the expected is what we should ultimately concentrate on, the falling through the black hole to get there is part of the sequence. There is an amount of surrender in this which also spoke in an echoed voice throughout the eclipses— We have to submit to where we are at in time to then function with cunning nuance and design options for us in the unfamiliar field of the nearing future. The past is history.

Harold A Roth

Mercury sextiles Neptune on the 1st of the month, beginning the year with some washes of nostalgia and dreams of how things were. Mercury is trying to organize his mind around formidable works, but a dreamy quality laces these cold and quantifiable calculations. We might remember fondly how we built things in bygone times and also simply feel surreal about processing stable forms in a time susceptible to being swept away. General warning for the macrocosm, anytime Mercury connects to Neptune misinformation leaks into the situation.

Hermes conjoins Pluto only a few days later, which to many degrees is more of a likely candidate to deal with navigating the unknown and overwhelming, as the Messenger god is our primary psychopomp, known well for descending into the underworld. It’s Mercury’s unemotional neutrality that lends him the go anywhere ability, although we might only a couple moments into 2021 have minds geared toward doom and fear before anything else, and after his touch with misinformation deceptive Neptune, an utter blackout of communications is likely to occur here. Contemplate the void, or in Mercury’s case, go ahead and analyze it.

Leovel Martinez

Venus joins the others in Capricorn, essentially Saturn’s dungeon, and our aesthetic and desire faculties solidify, seeking substance, valuing territory itself, and appreciating the roots and the stones which compose a place. We might very well go total basic bitch here, but in a way that is sexier than expected, preferring rock crawling trucks, purring engines and solid timberframes over exhausting expenditures of energy. Mid month she’ll trine Uranus, later continuing for a sextile with Neptune and in the last days a conjunction to Pluto. We might go from feeling surprisingly in concert with a market being disrupted, taking pleasure in the infrastructure of our cozy compounds with the electric sensation of revolution and upheavel just around the corner, to the point that we could even become immersed in epic efforts to decorate our all terrain vehicles and pimp our apocalypse rides, but like all the others, when all is said and done Venus must embrace material impermanence and pass through the halls of darkness to reach new formats awaiting aesthetic, creative and romantic dynamics. We can’t fully love the new world emerging until we turn our back on the old one to some degree, like it or not.

Edward Hopper

The Sun echoes this sequence as well, sextiling Neptune on the 8th while the Moon is also trine Neptune, and we can both stare illusion in the face with a friendly disposition while succumbing to its deceptive wiles. It can feel quite good to be lied to at times. ‘Is it really as bad as it seems?— don’t answer honestly’. This can be the realization of how bad we’ve been lied to for some while more of the swallowing the seeds of manipulation for others, but either way its a loaded moment as Mercury squares up to Mars later that night: some contentions new communication is catalyzing disruptions somewhere in the mixture. We get more of this kind of thing mid month when the New Moon in Capricorn occurs nearly conjunct Pluto followed by Mars’ square to Saturn a few hours later. We might wonder what exactly is being seeded into such imaginable darkness. Expect the hatching of new dark plots along predictable lines, such as conceiving ever-more shady plutocratic power grabs, although on the personal level we might engage with a deep state conspiracy of the self, and figure out how to manipulate and control our beings from the deepest material depths to better manage ourselves and see our efforts accumulate before us. Some subliminal insertion of some sort could be fitting here.

Ida O'Keeffe

Shortly after this the Sun shifts his focus from what power and control mechanisms Saturn built over the last many generations and begins to inspect those being currently designed right now. This is a big get ready for tons of sci fi significations flying out of Pandoras box from late January, steadily throughout February in a big way and then in the wider capacity all 2021 and 2022.

Mark Kostabi

Aquarius - Taurus Squares

We know as planets enter Aquarius and interact with Saturn, Uranus and Jupiter in turn we will se a lot of attention and engagement on these newly drafted and hypothetical plots and plans as they touch us on various life layers, and even in their very potentiality become in some sense real, even if they forever shift before us like a mutating hologram never to take definite shape. On the macro level we have to be very mindful of what is taking shape and keep ourselves busy considering alternatives and options out of and away from whatever is presented keeping space from the enemy to the collective that now lurks in the perpetual conceptual now. Saturn is building new things, some of them might be useful to us in the days that come, but they are certainly not being designed with our well being and livelihood in mind. On the personal level begin to sense new patterns which emerge around you in your own life and begin to hypothesize about how you’d like to experiment with them to update and upgrade systems and structures that might have kept you too tied down previously. This is not unlike a magical act. Enter into the liminality of the unknown where many things might occur, currently un-authored, and in the ignored spaces imagine what might coalesce, and then begin to bring physicality to these visions and observe the changes that occur.

Léon Spilliaert

Mars’ ingress into Taurus on the 6th brings the action down to a much slower and sustained pace, but now it takes more momentum to build up before effects are seen, although they are very real effects. The soil turns, plots are dug for new growth to occur and new cycles to take place. This is also the incendiary spark necessary to set off a change of explosive shifts from nearby Uranus, like workers on break smoking next to the solid fuel pile. This volatile situation is in relation to all the activity consolidating in Aquarius. Not only is there flints and sparks dancing around the works, but the blueprints and plans coming down to those manning the jobsite are entirely new and unfamiliar. When we do new things we’ve never tried before on such a scale unforeseen accidents are likely to cause radical chain reactions as dominoes explode from their cascade falls. We didn’t see it coming. Well some of us may have depending on each of our perspectives, but once the sequence is fired off then the unexpected results of the experiment take over. In the macro narrative this has a lot to do obviously with insurgent reactions to new restrictions and inhuman crackdowns on liberties— but this will manifest in a variety of ways as new patterns and information and ideas will be continually emerging and are no longer ever set in stone.

Léon Spilliaert

Mercury squares Mars upon entry into Aquarius and we get to think about this and dialogue about the potential risks first hand. Venus is trine Mars simultaneously, so a workers revolt might sound like a simply delightful idea. Mercury conjoins Saturn, Jupiter then squares Uranus in quick succession between the 9th and the 12th, at which point the new plan and its benefits and drawbacks will be exciting most everyone’s conversation, probably in our world as much as in our lives, as most of us are finding ourselves suddenly in an altogether new shape than we previously resided in, or at least we are thinking about it very differently.

Jos De Mey

Following this series of downloads and considerations is Mars’ square to Saturn on the 13th, a few hours after the New Moon in Capricorn conjunct Pluto. Two malefics in hard aspect hooked into Pluto is something we got very used to, if that is something you can get used to, as we had enjoyed this all late summer and fall. But that was in a different pair of signs. The Moon might have us intuiting that this is just a new version of the fear, power and control thing even though it is debuted as the totally altogether new plan and solution to the previous mismanagement, but the anger this sparks in how much the rhythms of our lives will be disrupted will be more than palpable. We can expect to see changes to the system here and more obvious rebellion against the new regime, as the corruption which it wallows in still isn’t in any way washed out. On a personal level we deal with that if we intend to embrace these new patterns changes must be made and to make them certain severances must occur. Change is change, after all— you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Léon Spilliaert

Jupiter’s square to Uranus keeps things exciting, as the feedback loop between what we are beginning to imagine and dream about moving into and pioneering gets physical and tangible results and we can see the effects. This rouses our more radical spirits and revolutionary philosophies effect our behavior. The Sun ingresses Aquarius on the 19th, making these new structures seem all the more interesting, we orient to them even more, and decentralize our locality, we could shift focus to a variety of possible options. Mars conjoins Uranus the next day, exciting indeed, simply incendiary really, as many steam engines could go off the rails here, and it's the momentum of things in new patterns that results in these disastrous careenings. Maybe that was moving too fast, fuck, we didn’t think it would break off the axis like that and destroy everything it randomly rolled into. Well, now we know. Noted. The Moon is right up on this conjunction, so its packed with viscerality. I don’t know if expecting a sucker punch is a positive thing or not. From a laboratory perspective, make sure your safety gear and goggles are on.

Mars square’s Jupiter after, and we can clearly gain coherence of why this kind of disaster could be upsetting, but we can also put the energy mounting from such an event in motion for a good cause, we just need a fresh perspective, to try new things, go out on a limb, take the challenge to innovate with the broken pieces— its like improvised music, nothing is a mistake, it just gets incorporated into the melody.

Andrew Wyeth

The Sun scans over Saturn, squares Uranus and conjoins Jupiter next, and we can take a sober look at what is good, bad, dangerous, exciting and beneficial about what is going on here and whether or not the ideas blowing around are at all workable to our true objectives, or are instead just a massive distraction. This brings us to the end days of the month, where after so many new and exciting concepts emerge out of the acceptance of the collapse of the previous structures we relied on its of no surprise that Mercury turns direct on the 30th and begins his review of what is hot off the press, looking for hopefully more than just typos and grammatical oofs, but instead seeks to communicate clearly what is the actual new design so we can see it and understand it. We might have to look at it from many angles to gain coherence on this, so Mercury’s scanning of the details should work in tandem with Jupiter’s wide scope. What the hell is happening. Keep your eyes and ears peeled, but forget news sources, they’re obsolete. Look and listen from every imaginable direction— they certainly are.

Full Moon in Leo

The Very day that Venus conjoins Pluto and the Sun conjoins Jupiter we receive a Full Moon in Leo. Whenever the Sun casts its light into the Moon from opposite his home sign there is a paradoxical effect of orienting to the decentralized and filling with a feeling of centrality. This might be akin to feeling at home in a marginality, resonating with a subcultural enclave outside of the status quo or in a seasonal example, feeling warm and cozy being shut in for the winter while ice and wind take the world outdoors. Our desire could be a deep dive into materiality as our exiled and outsider spirits rouse, evidenced by Venus’ conjunction with Pluto, but also by the Sun and Moon’s square to both Mars and Uranus in Taurus. The blossoming of feeling honestly oriented to more radical and even aggressive material modalities and methodologies sounds like where a lot of us are likely going to be with collapsed communities and erased industries alienated from many of our friends and families. The charm of insurgency and experimental philosophy is great. It’s manifesto in the making.

Larry Rivers

Chiron

Interesting also to note that in a time where illness is at the top of the list Mercury, the most medical planet, sextiles Chiron in Aries while he is busy conjoining Saturn and Jupiter in Aquarius. The Wounded Healer himself, Chiron, might be considered in Aries to be a woundedness of individuality, of agency, of an ability to fight and stand up for ones self. As Mercury converses about the new plans afoot, the alienation may cut quite deep. We saw this with the vaccines public arrival on the day of the south node eclipse, the south node being associated with becoming sick and Sagittarius associated with vitality. Decreasing vitality and making sick are not good signatures for something which hopes for health— but of course no pharmaceutical company has anyones health in mind. That shouldn’t have to even be discussed. We find another instance of this when Venus squares Chiron during the New Moon in Capricorn on the 13th. This looks sketchy at first glance. A malefic run new Moon featuring a planet of pleasure taking pleasure in territory clashing with a planet associated with wounds and healing run by another malefic. Maybe small change in a normal year but in the start of 2021 and in the context of a planet under arrest for medical reasons this strikes an ugly and uncomfortable chord. For personal use I’d up the health cause, and think about for instance the internal martial arts and energy practices that Han heal organs, harness the fascia and protect the body from harm. For the love of serious warrior medicine in an age of medical war.

Combustion and Cazimi

Continuing this theme, of potentially healing ourselves from our individual trips at the crux of a momentous set of events, we have the Sun passing over both Saturn and Jupiter together in January, meaning the filth, and dross and dead shells both planets, that of optimism and pessimism, of expansion and contraction, of opportunity and obligation, gets burned off and is made anew. This, along with the significations of Aquarius itself, a conjunction of the great chronocrators at a triplicity shift as well as the turn of the calendar year will all having us and everything around us feeling pretty ready to face the new. The combustion of the old begins for Saturn on the 15th and for Jupiter on the 19th, and Saturn’s cazimi falls on the 23rd at 10pm while Jupiter’s on the 28th at 8:45pm. Cazimi means ‘in the heart of the Sun’. When planets are combust they can’t function and express quite as well, and are often unseen for their efforts and communication of significations, which might resonate more beneath the surface. Although, in the moments of cazimi the agenda of those planets is in perfect alignment with the Sun’s objectives and they express in their most pure forms, assisted by the issuing light of the prime luminary. As we cast of old hauntings and horrors, investigate new patterns, experiment with radical methods, heal ourselves individually and mend out battle wounds, tackle our personal trips, we might also consider how our ideas of what is good and bad, positive and negative itself are being purified and brought to new standards.