We begin this year very much in the midst, despite this fresh blank page we’ve turned to with only “2024” written at its top. I think there’s something powerful in the ritual of beginning again that happens at each New Year, like the fleeting feeling we get when we see fresh snow that has no animal tracks in it yet. (Or for us city dwellers, that has not yet become dirty slush on the side of the road.) And yet, I find myself struggling to tap into that sense of possibility right now. I’m still holding so much that has been heart-wrenching from 2023. I want to honor what we’ve all been through in 2023, especially since the violence escalated in Israel/Palestine. I want to hold infinite space for how not-okay everything is as we turn to this new, blank page that — if you look closely — is already dissolving into dirty slush around the corners.
We begin in the midst.
Astrologically, we are at a turning point that’s unlike anything anyone alive today has lived through before. This year, Pluto is continuing its ingress into Aquarius, where it will come to rest for the next two decades. It has been moving back and forth over those two degrees — the last of Capricorn and the first of Aquarius — since March of 2023. It will continue to do so until November 19th of this year. We are at the end of an era and the beginning of a new one, and in these transitional times we find monsters. We also find hopeful monsters, those theoretical creatures that represent huge evolutionary leaps. The last time Pluto moved through Aquarius was in the late 18th century, what is called the Age of Revolutions — including the American, French, and Haitian revolutions.
As Pluto consolidates its move to Aquarius this year, we are revisiting the dreams of that old world — the hope people placed in democracy and equality, in the dream of citizenship — and fully immersed in birth pangs of a new world. In twenty years, what seems normal and inescapable to us now may have been entirely transformed. For each of us approaching this blank page, now increasingly criss-crossed with the tracks of ghosts and the dirty slush of history, we can ask ourselves: How can I begin to imagine an unimaginable world? Our future depends on this.
We need to be able to think the unthinkable.
Our collective imagination needs to take us beyond where the 18th century left us. What can we imagine that is not war, is not poverty, is not colonialism, is not climate disaster, is not nationalism? Where can we nurture and encourage those hopeful monsters, adapted not to our current world but to the future we want to see?
If you want to read more about this Pluto in Aquarius, and a massive Year Ahead Horoscope for every sign, join me on Patreon for only $2 a month. I’m also available for readings, so please reach out if you need some help thinking about your place in the world right now. For more astro details you can follow me on Instagram. May you all feel loved and encouraged at this turn of the year.
Aries
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: The courage to name what’s wrong, even when it’s an unpopular opinion. The willingness to stay engaged with the trouble. The vision to see a better world.
Taurus
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Tools for nervous system regulation. Softness and endurance when everything feels hard and urgent. Pleasure activism.
Gemini
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Energy, enthusiasm, and a sense of humor. Willingness to keep asking questions and drawing “wash me” signs on dusty assumptions about how the world works.
Cancer
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Snacks for all. Emotional intelligence. The capacity to distinguish between discomfort and danger. An ethic of revolutionary care.
Leo
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: My voice, my vulnerability, my story. Ways of connecting the personal to the political. My capacity to listen. My love for the world.
Virgo
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: My fierce analysis. Acts of service. Checking on people who may fall through the cracks. Faith in a better world and strategies to try and get there.
Libra
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Capacity to hold multiple perspectives. A sense of when and how to deescalate, and when not to. Insistence on hearing the voice that isn’t in the room.
Scorpio
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Ancestral healing. The poetry and spirituality and medicine that can heal our culture’s wounds. Zero tolerance for bullshit.
Sagittarius
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: Everything I have. All my lived experiences, all my analysis, all my intuitive faith in what is possible. Willingness to keep trying.
Capricorn
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: The wisdom of my own successes and failures. A longterm vision that tracks generational impact. Integrity and followthrough.
Aquarius
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: New ways of being human. Insight and inspiration for transforming oppressive systems. Both urgency and revolutionary patience.
Pisces
I’m packing for collective liberation and I’m bringing: The capacity to breathe with the living organism that is our species. Sensitivity and attunement to our whole. Boundless love for what lives, what dies, and what is to come.
