Satellite of Love

For several years now I’ve been looking ahead to this month, wondering what it will bring.

We’re still getting used to a major shift in mood, as Jupiter moves through Pisces and enlivens our collective sense of dreamy, compassionate, magical thinking. This month brings the first of several major transits Jupiter will make this year as she sextiles (yes, sextiles) Uranus, planet of revolutionary queerness and collective liberation. Picture Jupiter, our cosmic gay cheerleader, hanging out at a loving-kindness meditation retreat called Pisces Energy. Mid-month, she meets and falls hard for Uranus, speculative futurist and lifelong activist of the zodiac who reminds her (and us) that it’s not enough to just feel more love, we actually have to act on it — which means showing up for the work of changing the world. Uranus brings theories, insights, perspectives, rebellion, and a focus on us all getting free together. Jupiter brings enthusiasm, optimism, energy, and in Pisces she’s tapped into her enormous capacity for love and creativity. This, my friends, is a pretty sweet romance.

Around the same time, Mars and Venus are moving into conjunction — a potent transit that will perfect early next month. I’ll go into more depth about it then, but generally this transit boosts our capacity to balance self and other, love and boundaries, giving and receiving. It enlivens us, reminds us we get to experience pleasure, and helps us reach out for what we want. It’s also low-key hot, so add to this scenario any kind of lighting or mood music that works for you.

So, all this sweet, heady, dreamy, sexy energy is happening in February and the world is still on fire. Let’s not forget our context, my friends. Jupiter getting sweet with Uranus can help us tap into our hope, our brilliance, our love for each other and the world — but it’s up to us to act on that. And if you’re experiencing anything like the pandemic I’m experiencing, we are universally and collectively depleted right now. So don’t fall into any stress patterns around “oh no, now is the magic time for me to figure out how to save the world but I can’t even get out of bed, I’m failing the revolution.” That’s not the story here. For the first few months of the year, we are still in moving through the dreamworld. We’re talking about staying in bed and letting your mind and heart expand, meander, break open, heal, and come together in new ways. You don’t have to stay in bed to do this, clearly, but you also don’t have to get out of bed to do this. You get to be slow and, like all true artists and creative geniuses, do a lot of what looks like nothing. That’s the best way to clear a space for this transit to spark in you. Same goes for the Venus-Mars transit and your anxieties about finding love or sex. The bus isn’t leaving without you, you’re on the bus with us no matter what your relational world looks like right now. If you’re not sparking with someone this month, let this transit help you claim your self-love, your boundaries, and your truth about the kind of love you really want.

Meanwhile, the other main event this month concerns the United States of America, a country founded on both high ideals of democracy and equality, on the one hand, and slavery and genocide on the other. This month brings not one but two major transits to the birth chart of the United States — Neptune opposite Neptune and Pluto conjunct Pluto, aka the Pluto Return of the US. For more details on both of these, I’ll be dropping an article mid-month on my Patreon. In brief, both signify a time of crisis and transformation. Neptune opposite Neptune generally denotes a time when we experience discord and confusion around beliefs, with ideologies springing up that can’t be reconciled with consensus reality and are resistant to logical debate. Sound familiar? The Pluto Return, meanwhile, often brings a significant transformation to the government of a country — a metamorphosis, or death and rebirth. With the right-wing of the US growing increasingly authoritarian, with the rise in right-wing political violence (including the attempted coup in January 2021), we are facing a critical year when American democracy will undergo a dramatic change. What that change will be is not predetermined, though. Whether authoritarian regimes gain control depends on so much, including who is willing to fight against them.

Phew. So, remember that your queer brilliance and dreamy imagination and ecstatic love for one another is a key force for resistance, but that you personally don’t have to save the whole damn world. That’s all. That’s what February wants you to remember. Stay open to what dreams come right now. Stay open to what helps you love more fiercely. Stay open to ideas that you might otherwise brush aside as impractical or impossible. You have a part to play in reshaping the world.

My books are open again for readings this month, so get in touch. For the full run-down on the Neptune and Pluto transits to the US join me on Patreon, and for more astro details about these times you can follow me on Instagram, and listen to my New Moon podcast, The Hum. I hope you have the best dreams and sweetest connections this month.

Aries

Stay open to: Ways you can bring what is hidden about you forward into the light. Ways to make decisions that you trust, privileging your intuition over your anxiety. Flashes of insight about how to build toward a life in which you have more of what you need, which includes sweet rest — time when you are beholden to no one for what you’re doing, thinking, and enjoying.

Taurus

Stay open to: How to understand yourself as both and individual and a member of a larger group — without either one making the other seem less important. The brilliance you can tap into when you find that balance. Your needs matter, but not more than everyone else’s. Nor do they matter less. Your positionality matters but it does not determine your worth. Stay open to the fundamental goodness of you being exactly who you are, and how who you are is both shaped by and helps shape the world you’re part of.

Gemini

Stay open to: Retreat as a valid response to overwhelm — even if what’s overwhelming you is positive. Maybe you love your job, your family, your activism, your packed social calendar — and you still need to rest. Stay open to the voices that call you inward and downward. Sit on the ground and stare at the sky this month (if you’re in a warm enough climate — otherwise do this through a window). Pay attention to how the contours of your own mind are reflected in whatever the sky is doing — when do you feel cloudy, when is there dawn in you?

Cancer

Stay open to: Your capacity to learn. No matter how old you are or how much you’ve already experienced, this year is stimulating a strong receptivity to learning what you don’t yet know. There is a social aspect to this, with the potential to be forming lasting bonds with fellow learners or teachers. This may or may not involve being in a literal class or school — you could be learning about relationships through experiences of polyamory, learning about grief through a support group for those who have lost loved ones, learning about your own upbringing by immersing yourself in a different culture. Wherever you find yourself this month, treat it as educational. Take notes. Challenge your assumptions. Notice where it feel good to grow toward the unknown.

Leo

Stay open to: Letting your old painful past ripen and release and drop off the branch and into the compost pile. Shaking yourself out of the muck. Throwing away old love letters from people who did you wrong. Throwing your image of yourself from their perspective, while you’re at it. Believing in what you’re choosing now. Believing in a future where your actions matter, where your creativity matters, where your love matters. Choosing the world, broken as it is, over nihilism.

Virgo

Stay open to: Partnerships as entities that are grow and learn. Releasing the need to do it all (or most of it) on your own. Letting others show they can meet your needs. Expanding your intimate circle beyond what’s familiar. Making new friends. Teaching what you know and learning what you don’t know. Accepting feedback and perspective, especially about anything that makes you anxious. Learning how to build trust. Hint: it’s not your job to trust anyone who hasn’t proven themselves trustworthy.

Libra

Stay open to: Messages from your body. Let sore muscles, twitches, gurgles, blushes, and blockages all teach you what needs tending to. Befriend your nervous system. Remember that rest and digest is the default, and figure out what can help you rest more. There’s a lot that needs releasing right now — years of pent up grief, fear, frustration — but you need to learn the pacing that can help your system heal. Learn more this month about what you need right now — not what you used to need or what you think you ought to need. And when you know what it is, teach your loved ones how to care for you in this present moment.

Scorpio

Stay open to: Letting life surprise you with moments of delight, joy, and connection. Trusting your intuition about people you know and love as well as those you’re still figuring out. Trust your boundaries when your gut says no, no matter how pleasant someone may be, and that means you’ll understand what yes feels like, too. Stay open to sensing that vibe that is a low-key, subtle signal that you’re okay, that you can even be happy sometimes, that you do not owe the world constant vigilance or constant grief.

Sagittarius

Stay open to: Staying put when you want to go on a tear. Not stagnating, but rooting down. Getting curious about the present moment instead of the future. Inspirations about how to enliven your daily routine, like maybe you want to challenge yourself to wake up before dawn and watch the sunrise for 10 days straight, or maybe it’s time to learn a new language or read a beautiful but challenging book for 10 minutes a day. Lead with joy, not self-discipline, or these new activities will stop being generative and become just another chore. The magic of this time, for you, is in making discoveries about how to feel expansive possibility within the limits of your daily life, your physical health, all the circumstances you’ve been chafing against. Change, joy, and discovery are still possible for you.

Capricorn

Stay open to: Unexpected conversations and your own creative impulses. Romance that sweeps away your cynicism. Gorgeous moments that remind you of how sparkly the world was when you were very young. Reaching out when you miss someone, instead of just wishing they would text you first. Brushing off your journal, your typewriter, your camera, your keyboard. You have a lot to say right now. Find your medium and let it flow.

Aquarius

Stay open to: Finding a home in this world that will hold you well without suffocating you. Encounters with soil and animals and delicious food. Journeys that lead you back to your beginnings. A way of living that matches the pace of your own body’s rhythms. Leaning into ease whenever you can. Reaching out toward your chosen family with reminders that we’re all going to be okay, that we’re all still in it together.

Pisces

Stay open to: Being present with exactly what you’re feeling as you feel it, without needing to know what it means. Letting your story change. Finding different language to describe what’s essential to you. An ongoing process of transformation that is moving you from the past to the future, from all sorts of shadowy potential or past versions of yourself

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