Aires   Taurus   Gemini   Cancer   Leo   Virgo   Libra   Scorpio   Sagitt   Capric   Aquar   Pisces   Overview

This is a powerful month for you Aries, heading into a potent New Year when many things in your life will alter, and when business as usual is out the window in favor of right livelihood. As long as you can keep your wits about you then your luck is definitely flowing. You begin the year well and how you end is strictly up to you and what more really can you ask? A potentially feisty period could confound you toward month’s end and into February but your days of difficulty and struggle are limited as long as you adhere to the simple maxim of allowing grace to enter. You win by seeing deeply enough into what is actually happening so as to discern the direction that the universe is asking you to go, and then choosing to go that way.

As the month begins, you are feeling extremely energized, riding the wave of the recent Christmas Eve New Moon in your sector of career and professional life, while experiencing as well the tension in your process implied by the First Quarter Moon in your sign that reaches its moment of exact square late on New Year’s Eve in the Western half of the country, or else during the early morning hours of New Year’s Day. This emphasizes quirky and enlightening Uranus in your sign and in direct motion now, and also the radically transformative energy of Pluto in your tenth sector.

The year of 2012 has finally dawned, with the promise of further dramatic change, and you might therefore feel both optimistic and full of the fear of the unknown. You are lured toward a positive and a socially committed approach right now in the turning of this special year. There will undoubtedly be trials and tests of character. Your ruler, Mars, retrogrades later this month, a somewhat unusual event, and one that lasts several months, into mid-April. Mars in retrograde implies an inward turning. This entire first third of the year will therefore be a time of great internal reflection for you especially since Neptune changes signs as well during this period, entering your sector of dream imagination, where it feels right at home, and where it stirs subtle and sensitive perceptions of other-dimensional realities running in parallel with the more obvious mundane world. Then, too, Uranus becomes even more active during the first half of the year, moving further into your sign and making its first exact square with Pluto on June 24th.

Thus these first six months of the year of 2012 will bring even more changes and challenges than the last half of the previous one. You win by taking the best forward-looking angle on unfolding events and putting your faith in what the universe has to offer you, without pre-judgment. The fact is that this year will be one of mixed blessings, as much of the existing ways and habitual patterns will need to be abandoned in order to make room for what is both new and necessary for continued growth.

All these future configurations are encapsulated and pointed to by the very powerful Full Moon of late Sunday evening, January 8th which touches on both the revolutionary ardor of Uranus-Pluto and the testing and self-reflection represented by the presence of Chiron, the Wounded Healer, in your sector of deep internal process. You find yourself in a very optimistic and forward-looking place right now, which you can use to fortify your strength as you tackle some of the tougher issues that you must deal with internally in order that you might move yourself toward greater integration and fulfillment. There are very likely habitual patterns of behavior that have held you back somewhat in the past, and that you are ready now to outgrow, and these must be acknowledged and your seeming flaws accepted at the deepest possible level in order for you to move forward.

The Last Quarter Moon of Monday, January 16th, represents a time for reflection on these issues, as well as perhaps a period of relative tension as you work them out in the contest of whatever seems to stand directly in your way as you do so. Close inter-personal relationships might also be affected by these. You are taking a thoughtful stance on these matters at this time that will serve you well in the interesting and fairly intense weeks that follow.

With the New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd you reach an interesting plateau, which also represents a springboard for further leaps of consciousness. In one way you are extremely energized and enthused about future directions, which have a terrific chance of escaping the grip of the past, representing an entirely necessary departure. In another you are still somewhat held back by the past, as symbolized by the pending retrograde of your ruler Mars on the very next day. You are moving forward at this time in a rapid way of thought but with a slowness of action that permits of careful planning and consideration that can serve you well as you ponder all that has gone before this moment in time and all that will come after it. The final week of the month kicks off an interesting and thoughtful time period. The Mars retrograde lasts until mid-April, and will represent a time for meditation and reflection on where you are heading with your life, and how you might use your energies for the highest good. You are thinking of not only yourself right now, but of the surrounding collective, and this is what you must do in order that you truly move ahead with what you are, at the most fundamental level, all about.


Taurus   (April 20 - May 20)  Earth.  Ruling planet Venus.    Top

This is a time of big action, Taurus, and of imagination in motion. It’s a tightrope walk in which you strive to meet yourself gracefully in many different simultaneous ways, and you are operating without a net. You are all set to experience life in the largest possible dimension and to gain from your experience a truly big-picture viewpoint – as long as you refuse to look down. Whether you consider yourself ready or you don’t, your actions are expanding out into the surrounding universe and making not just a ripple but a stir. You are serving to further society and to enable your own self to take a powerful stand; but it must be a spiritual stand in order for your balancing act to remain on target.

As the month begins, you are feeling energized by the presence of your ruler, Venus, in your career sector. This sector also has much to say regarding how you put your energy out into the world, your place upon the stage of world activity, achievement, even a mild form of fame. Your reputation is riding on your actions now, as you enter upon a huge year of change for you and indeed for everyone, and you do well to take a thoughtful attitude because of it.

There is a way that you are reassessing your entire action plan for yourself and attempting to see how personal goals interface with social and professional ones in this pivotal moment of the dawning of 2012. You are also incredibly optimistic and forward looking at this time, as befits a year of massive and potentially quite positive changes, as indicated by the presence of expansive Jupiter in your identity sector. A time of spiritual epiphany is indicated by the presence of Uranus in concert with Jupiter but residing in your sector of deep intuitive powers. You have a direct channel to the architecture of the universe at your disposal especially through the first half of this year – and this is very exciting.

The first six months of 2012 are magical and powerfully transformative for you. Long-locked doors within your psyche might fly open, and you stand to profit enormously but you must be willing to take a chance on yourself and to explore all the facets of your expanding self-image. The support of the cosmos is there for you so long as you can tune in to it, and to the extent that are able to ignore the tug of any negative early conditioning or feelings of being trapped in consensus thinking that prevent you from allowing yourself to open to wonder and possibility.

With the very powerful Full Moon of late Sunday evening, January 8th all these factors become magnified. You are on a step learning curve right now but you are not likely to fall off if you keep your head held high and your gaze concentrated. There are difficulties to be confronted and you have plenty of energy for it, at least in this mid-month period of time. You might have to work through issues of inner wounding perhaps affecting your sense of self-acceptance. It helps to remember that you are a worthy as you believe that you are, and that nothing is inherently flawed without the power of thought to make that unjust judgment.

At the time of the Last Quarter Moon of Monday, January 16th you will reach the crux of some of these arguments within yourself. There is a moment of tension now in your process and you might perhaps feel compelled to anger or to disparaging remarks toward others but then be forced to the recognition that you are truly angry about something else; even something from the long-dead past that has arisen to haunt you at this time. This is actually a blessing in disguise, these visitations from deep-seated places that represent an earlier stage of your development. Only by acknowledging and accepting and even forgiving these wounded and essentially split-off places within you can you begin to move beyond them. But first for your process comes recognition and performing as a silent witness.

The New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd, gives you plenty of fresh energy for your purpose. And the weeks that have lead up to this point in time have given you the means to find your bearings and the direction to begin to apply it.


Gemini   (May 21 - June 20)  Air.  Ruling planet Mercury.    Top

The hits just keep on coming, Gemini. The series of transformations that you have been engaged in for many months won’t let up in 2012, quite the contrary. Your changes have taken a new turn recently. You are making yet another evolutionary leap in this present month that will take you further along the path that you all along knew you needed to follow. This time your vision really has legs for a new future plan more closely aligned with soul-purpose. A whole new world will open up for you as this period unfolds. It will not be without struggle, and it might not look pretty, but there is a rich spiritual component associated and that’s enough to take you a long, long way down your road.

As the month begins, you are feeling the pull of destiny calling. This is in alignment with the potent Capricorn New Moon that took place just after the Winter Solstice, on Christmas Eve, and in your sector of personal evolution. This is a powerful year for you that is just being born, this year of 2012, which has an excellent chance of living up to its reputation. It’s not that the end of the world will come as some have predicted but it is in many ways the end of the world as we have known it heretofore.

There are powerful currents of change sweeping through the cosmos now and they will affect all of us, but for you that action is accelerated. This is because Pluto, activated this month and increasingly in the spring and summer of 2012, will be for you shaking things up in the very sector of your Solar Chart that represents growth and change. This is your chart from the standpoint of your Sun Sign – what is known as “Sun-sign Astrology” and the basis of this column and many others. From this viewpoint, not only is Pluto in its natural house setting but so also is Uranus, the revolutionary companion to radically transformative Pluto. This other outer planet heavy weight is located in your Eleventh sector, representing the group connections, societal goals and ideals of social interaction, including friendships, that form the basis of your future planning. You have felt the inspiration of Uranus in that sector of your chart for many months now but it is in this year that that idealistic vision turns more directly into action.

There also whispers of a more subtle state of being that you are undoubtedly feeling at this time, ideas and ideals that spring from deep inside you, places far below and beyond the level of your conscious mind and its normal ability to analyze and deconstruct. This is a realm of gestalt, where paradox abounds, and you are strongly affected from this perspective right now, as you make your way through the challenges of this month and year. As you undergo a powerful mandate for change in your own life, and for participating in the changes sweeping through the social matrix that surrounds you, you are also pulled down into a deep spiritual connection that underlies and sustains all of your social interactions as you ponder on life’s surprising twists and turns. This is essentially a meditation on how you might find your way forward with the greatest possible integrity. When you honor these deep stirrings within you, you honor the cosmos and Spirit acting through you, and you honor yourself as well.

The Full Moon of Sunday evening, January 8th, is a powerful one, and illuminates all of these same themes and brings many of them into sharp relief. Your ruler Mercury also enters Pluto’s current domain of Capricorn coincident with the New Moon, so that for the next three weeks you are more strongly pulled toward transformation than ever, and to intimate connection with others, as a natural by-product. You are tuning in more completely to your hidden self, the self that represents your most unconscious parts. Shakespeare acknowledged the power of this unseen but clearly felt inner world when he declared that “we are such stuff as dreams are made of,” although we mostly fail to acknowledge this potent factor that flies in the face of mere logic but still holds sway with our underlying motivations. At this important juncture, you do well to pay all the attention that you can muster to the intuitive understanding that comes your way right now in bucket loads.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Monday, January 16th, you are feeling into a deeply intuitive presence that reminds you of what you need to do in order to be connected to your true heart’s desire. Your attitude right now is one of reflection on where you have been over the course of the past portions of the cycle and what in the final analysis it all boils down to, as you carry the distilled wisdom of this time into the next.

The New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd, takes place in your sector of higher mind, and it finds you integrating all this information and more as you advance to the next stage of your rapidly evolving worldview. You are finding the power of your inner world and entering into a meditative period that takes you to the inside, to your root psychology, your metaphoric dwelling. Your actual physical space might also be subject to reversals at this time, and remodels or plans to move could also go awry, as the year opens into February and beyond. There is a symbolic level at which everything still serves you and furthers your mission. You will have plenty of food for thought as you rearrange your understanding of who you are at base, and as you attempt to discover your true psychological place within home, family, and tribe.


Cancer   (June 21 - July 22)  Water.  Ruling planet is the Moon.    Top

This is the truly the first month of the rest of your life, Cancer. Many opportunities are presenting themselves to you in this New Year. You are still engaged in where your life is taking you, and still surprised at some the new directions that have been opening up, so that in many ways it seems as though not much has changed. And yet there is a qualitative difference now. You are starting to get on board with the notion that your life is moving through a distinct and startling evolution and that you cannot by any stretch return to where you once were. This is more than a little scary, but exhilarating also and happening no matter how hard you try to resist. It’s refreshing to realize that in fact it really is all up to you.

As the month begins, you are feeling a degree of tension in your current evolution, which is one of coming to terms with on the one hand your own unfolding self-discovery and the exploration what you might consider your life mission, and on the other the working out of some important aspects regarding the concept of relationship in your life. This month is all about relationship for you, only not. There is a way that connection with essential partners is all-important to you now, but in another way your ongoing and evolving process of engagement with significant others in your life is but an adjunct to your own arc of development. These important persons in your life that come under scrutiny now and during especially the first half of January could be business partners as well as intimate partners or close friends, and the potential conflicts that could becoming up for you at this time might equally arise in the context of how to strategize career options for yourself as well as personal ones.

In any case there are likely to be issues there to be processed through, and the working out of these issues is important not only for the sake of harmony on the home front but also so that you might make your move toward greater happiness and peace of mind in all the departments of your life. Doing so involves important realizations that you can either investigate more fully now, or else push away from yourself in a form of denial; not recommended but definitely one possible way to proceed. Whichever route you take will have its future outcome in greater clarity concerning the details of your current situation, and likely an eventually positive outcome.

Over the next six months the pressure will mount for taking action of one form or another to help to resolve these and similar issues, and so the many paths toward resolution, the high road and the lower ones, will eventually converge.

In the present month, the Full Moon in your sign of late Sunday evening, January 8th, presents you with more choices, and with a determination to see everything through no matter what. There could be ancient patterns of behavior that come up now for greater acceptance within your mental as well as your spiritual grasp, that by announcing themselves when your eyes and your consciousness is more open to admitting them to the circle of your awareness, give you the chance to move beyond them. These could be wounded places within you that you have carefully avoided for many years; the residue of childhood trauma that you were unable to deal with at the time and so have walled away in a veiled compartment within your psyche. It may be that only by accepting these hidden and relatively dark places within you will you be able to profitably engage them and neutralize their secret power over your life.

The Last Quarter Moon that follows a week later, taking place in the early morning hours of Monday, January 16th, might give you the opportunity to reflect more fully on what is going on for you and also with your connection with important others in your life. This is traditionally a time of looking back and of summing up the events of the past three weeks of the lunar cycle, with the idea of better understanding these events. You and the surrounding cosmos can both win when you can succeed in carrying that renewed sense of comprehension forward into the next cycle as a better standpoint for action more fully congruent with soul purpose.

The New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd, brings loads of fresh energy to your intention for self-development, including inner initiatives all your own and also how you connect to others. That process has been well-started over the previous weeks and even over the months that preceded this dawning of the new year of 2012. And a process of spiritual evolution, once begun, cannot easily be stopped or even put on hold; at least not for very long.


Leo   (July 23 - August 22)  Fire.  Ruling planet is the Sun.    Top

The plot is thickening, Leo. The time has come, as the Walrus said, to talk of many things; and these are things not normally covered in your pre-existing worldview. A new year and a new mandate await you. You might normally feel as if you are the center of your own universe, apart from the rest of the society that surrounds you, but lately, not so much. You are seeing the world and your role in it with new eyes. You feel more compelled to join up somehow, and although still somewhat on your own terms, enter into a mode of service to the surrounding collective. Even more, through the trials and challenges of this sense of mission you will come to understand your stance much more clearly – and ultimately yourself.

As the month begins, you are riding the wave of intention represented by the recent Christmas Eve New Moon in your sector of service, health and day-to-day concerns; this is what seminal astrologer Dane Rudhyar called the house of the discipleship to your higher self. Logically your health and everyday activities are strengthened most by your being in closer alignment with soul intention. This new month and new year is also quite powerful for you due to this portentous New Moon also lining up with Jupiter in your tenth sector of career and professional life, and also with Uranus in your sector of higher mind. You are fortunate with career goals now, and what is more, you are confident enough to forge new territory with them as well, as represented by the eccentric energy of Uranus in combination. You have been feeling this pull – and seeing the world around you with different eyes – throughout the final half of the previous year.

You are therefore starting to make it your very first priority to proceed in concert with soul purpose, taking that consciousness into not only what you say but what you concretely do, and this trend continues with even greater gusto into the first six months of 2012. This period for you is a time to watch everything quite carefully and to pare down to what is really important for you. By the time your birthday rolls around you might hardly be able to recognize your former self.

Along the way you might also be forced to confront some inner demons, the ones that guard the gate to your true heart’s desire, and if so you benefit when you can face this challenge head-on. If you can muster up the courage and the single-pointedness to not only confront these dark spaces within you but to accept yourself at all levels, at even the hidden places within you that correspond to early childhood trauma, than you will have taken some significant and very necessary steps toward integration and what you seek: a stronger sense of yourself all the way down to the ground.

The Full Moon that comes along late on Sunday evening, January 8th, represents one important confluence of all these energies that surround you now and into the weeks to come. This day and the remainder of the week makes for an excellent time to meditate on where you are currently heading and how to make your stand for a better world, at the very least and in arguably the most important place, within your own mind and heart. You are filled with grace these days and can sense the direction that the cosmos intends for you to be heading in, so that the question is not whether you can perceive it but whether you can heed the call.

With the First Quarter Moon of Monday, January 16th, some obstacles might arise to hinder your progress. You are in a meditative space in this particular part of the lunar cycle, reflecting on what has gone before, during the preceding three weeks, and on how to view these events in the light of recent experience. It’s an excellent time to journal. You are attempting to come to some new comprehension that you can carry forward into your next phase, and tapping into some perhaps hitherto unexplored caverns within your psyche in order to do so. Your goal is to enrich your understanding by distilling the wisdom thereby encapsulated into a seed pod for prospective growth.

The New Moon of the following weekend, taking place late on Sunday evening, January 22nd, brings important partnerships more firmly into the picture to offer their perspectives for a surprising amalgamation with your own. This is another crux of potent energy and represents a springboard for future stages that have yet to unfold, but whose outline can be discerned during this time of transition.


Virgo   (August 23 - September 22)  Earth.  Ruling planet Mercury.   Top

The wave of metamorphosis keeps on coming, Virgo. This is for you a continued season of spiritual sustenance and deep transformation. Your worldview is changing and you along with it, so that you find that you are reinventing yourself. A moving target is difficult to squarely hit and there are also volatile emotions accompanying this shift that so that everything could be up, down and all around for quite a while. You can perhaps no longer subscribe to any non-functional relationship patterns that survive to the present day. Inter-personal connections suffer, but then eventually improve. The important thing is that you are on your way. The path that is opening up before you now is profound, life-altering and scary, but you are on the road to freedom and nothing can stop you now.

As the month begins, you are energized by the residual effects of last month’s powerful Christmas Eve New Moon. This Capricorn New Moon took place in an important area of your chart for self-definition – namely your creativity sector – and you have not only been feeling frisky but also on track with your plans and with your highest intention for yourself as you enter this new year. There is an important form of spiritual evolution that you can sense at the very core of your being when you look inside, and this makes for a strongly philosophical approach to your self-definition and to your life generally. You are pursuing a higher mind these days, and with increasing enthusiasm, from what turns out to be a surprisingly primary spot on your priority list.

There are factors in this month’s configurations that point the way into the next six months, namely the presence of Pluto in your sector of creativity and self-expression and that of Uranus in your intimacy sector. These are in forming square configuration, an aspect that grows closer to exact as the late winter and then the spring season unfolds, and that will eventually put a great deal of pressure on you in terms of an emerging sense of self which is still in the early stages of development. It is likely that you will conceive of yourself far differently at the end of this period of time than you do right now.

This is especially so since Mars also retrogrades over this same period, right there in your sign, which symbolizes a desire and even a necessity on your part to turn toward an introspective attitude in attempt to better understand what you personally are up to in this climactic year of collective transformation. You are on somewhat of a roller coaster ride over this period with changes coming down, at times quite suddenly, and at other times more slowly but with seeming inevitability, that will take you into the next phase of your life. As we always wind up saying about the radical transformation implied by Pluto, in one form or another, you can either go kicking and screaming and therefore more painfully, or else you can feel into these cosmic forces more deeply and allow yourself to breathe into them and allow yourself to let go of the past.

In this current monthly cycle, the Full Moon of late Sunday evening, January 8th, offers you for a heads-up regarding these future happenings and changes in life direction. This is a cycle that strongly aspects Pluto so that his energy is powerfully constellated now, implying an eventual thorough-going metamorphosis of how you see yourself and your world, going forward. Even though you are not complete with these changes, you might be sensing what this future worldview might feel like. You benefit by allowing yourself to be as open as possible at this time. Sharp shocks to the way you connect intimately with others might be a factor is shifting your path out of familiar tracks that have not as much relevance to your future as to your past. There are undoubtedly habitual methods of relating to others, perhaps relics of childhood difficulty or even trauma, which have long out-grown their usefulness for your present state of emotional maturity.

With the onset of the Last Quarter Moon of Monday, January 16th, you might be tested still further in this regard, as you both look back on the events that have taken place thus far in the lunation cycle that was begun in the final week of the previous month, and also look forward to the next one. You are confronting limitations now that you were not always able to acknowledge in prior periods of reflection, and becoming more aware of ancient wounds that have prevented you from fully inhabiting your actual desires, perhaps especially regarding intimate connection with significant partners. There may be dark places inside you that have long been walled off from your more conscious awareness and if so, you benefit enormously from acknowledging these places and accepting yourself more fully at these deeper levels.

The New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd, is another important juncture, when many of the same concepts and challenges could come up for you as you continue climbing the mountain road of your destiny. Nothing repeats; if similar issues do arise they do so in a different context and on another curve of the spiral.

Libra   (September 23 - October 22)  Air.  Ruling planet Venus.    Top

You are digging deep this month, Libra. The psychological basis for your root security needs and as well the fall-out from scenes on the home and family front are very much up for you right now, including new relationship initiatives that are both exciting and destabilizing all at the very same time. Surprising inter-personal developments could lead to drama or increased tension as the month unfolds. There could be ancient patterns of behavior stemming from early childhood trauma which come up for you and that are finally ready to be acknowledged and integrated. Spiritual solutions are waiting in the wings. Your challenge is to respond as gracefully as possible to events as they arise, just taking them in, without getting hooked, and yet without turning your gaze away.


As the month begins, riding the wav of the Christmas Eve New Moon from the last week of December, you are delving down into your very depths. And who knows what you will find there… transformation certainly. You are in some sense like the caterpillar in waiting for the rebirth out of the cocoon, not a lot of fun perhaps as you feel your organs begin to dissolve, but optimistic with anticipation for the coming glorious event when not even the sky will be the limit. This is a big year for you, just like they tell it in the Mayan Calendar story that is so familiar, only while it is in some ways the end of an existing world, it is simultaneously the beginning of another. You are not so secretly hoping that the one that emerges to take its place will be lighter and fuller for you and for everyone you know. And of course this goes for the society in which you find yourself. In one way of looking at civilized life here on planet earth, things had to get so dire in order for them to get better, and the very same might be said of you over the course of this climactic year that is now dawning.

The next six months will not be particularly easy, but they are almost guaranteed to be enlightening, and ultimately rewarding as well, especially if, instead of fighting the tide, you have the good sense to go with the cosmic flow. Trickster Uranus in your relationship sector presages unexpected comings and goings in that department of your life, while that other outer planet heavyweight, Pluto, will continue to sit in forming square to Uranus residing in your sector of home and family, and your psychological roots. The aspect between these cosmic heavyweights intensifies until their first exact hit in June, to be followed by many more, seven in all, so that this combination in the heavens is extremely active right up until nearly 2020. In other words, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

This is more than a little crazy-making for you; it is important to remember to breathe, and to recognize that things are changing in a big way as you reconsider your home turf from all angles, and your relationship to family and to tribe. You will also be revisiting and revitalizing issues of relationship over this period, and particularly intensely over this first half year, especially since Mars, the ruler of your relationship sector, is retrograding through another depth sector of your chart, referring to unconscious process and chiming with you home and family sector where currently Pluto resides.

With the Full Moon of Sunday evening, January 8th, all these issues are up for you in a relatively balanced way. Many realizations are rapidly coming to you, and from a deep intuitional level of your psyche. You do well to pay the closest attention to everything that is happening at this time. Relationship issues are definitely on your mind, and you are likely to be feeling a strong determination to make adjustments of some sort, or else encountering that determination in significant partners. You are at the beginning of a longer series of stages of development in this important area of your life. A spiritual component to what you are attempting is an absolute necessity for you right now, and this becomes more evident as the weeks unfold.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Monday, January 16th, you are questioning everything that has come before and reevaluating all your existing arrangements. Critical voices could arise. It might also be that you become more overtly aware at this juncture of old patterns of behavior that stem from prior incidents and woundings, and that have long outlived their usefulness in your present level of maturity. These carry-overs from earlier trauma can never be erased or nullified, but they can definitely become more comfortable to live with, once you take the time to really understand their nature and to accept their existence within your psyche as valid parts of yourself. Awareness is the start.

Then, you come into a burst of energy and a more optimistic outlook generally with the advent of the vibrant New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd, taking place in your sector of creativity and self-expression. This is the day before Mars, ruler of your sector of partnership interaction, turns to retrograde motion, so that you are still dealing with issues in the area of relationship, but there is the feeling of a fresh start. You win when you sense the course that your fate is taking and begin to transition in that direction.


Scorpio   (October 23 - Nov 21)  Water.  Ruling planets Mars, Pluto.   Top

This is still a time of deep reflection, Scorpio, even though your vision for the future is very active now. These ideas are taking you mentally where you need to go. You are seeking a better fit with an internal soul purpose that is becoming clearer to you by the day. Be advised, however, that it might take you a lot longer to get the actual walking of your talk into true alignment with your fledgling concept. You could be struggling somewhat at this time as well with ancient issues. You are engaged in discovering your true self-concept and making of your fundamental service orientation an act of conscious sharing rather than one of knee-jerk reaction to early conditioning and to feelings of lack. When you discipline yourself to watch and wait, you will find the right direction to allow your feet to travel.

As the month begins, you are feeling energized in the wake of last month’s Christmas Eve New Moon that conjuncted your ruler Pluto and fired up your communications sector as well. One consequence – one that you have no doubt been increasingly aware of – is terrific communicative outreach that is both idealistic and passionately intense while at the same time subject to sudden alterations and discontinuities. Pluto and Uranus are once again in the midst of their forming square, so that over this entire year the pressure will mount within you for meaningful change. One way of seeing your true situation regarding this would be to imagine that there is an army full of revolutionary enlightenment just over the next horizon and it is inexorably marching your way.

Another might be to recognize that there is an evolutionary necessity being thrust upon you now, in your climb up the mountain of your destiny, such that you will see yourself and your world entirely differently by the time you get to the next ridge. Although these changes involve access to information, habitual thought forms and higher mind perspective, they really reflect changes to your entire being as seen through the lens of these important areas of your life, including teaching and learning and the exploration of new mental horizons. As the weeks go by, at some point the incentives for transformation become more important than the conservative urge for holding back, although both of these are powerful forces that are currently operating within your psyche.

You are entering into a six-month period in which these factors will continue to grow, perhaps even exponentially, as you head into the spring and the first exact hit of the outer-planet heavyweights Uranus and Pluto, while the third member of this team, namely Neptune, crosses over into your sector of self-expression as early as next month, revivifying your creativity and bringing also a component that is dreamy and vague to every product of your imagination. Next month also, Saturn stations within half a degree of your identity sector, which we would have to characterize as an important near miss, a taste of what you will experience in October of this year, when it finally crosses, that is to say a slowing down and a concentration upon your isolated self. This is obviously somewhat of a trial but also has the benefit of allowing you to really focus on the transformation with which you are at present so powerfully engaged.

The Full Moon of late Sunday evening, January 8th, brings these themes to your attention even more strongly, since it touches all these factors in the current skies, highlighting their effects. You might feel as though you were being forced to take a stand for what you concretely espouse and are willing to fight for, in terms of what you believe to be the right path for you to follow from an inside perspective. These ideals could perhaps seem to go against the grain of consensus thinking but yet might seem totally right to you from an intuitional standpoint, and the difficulty comes in deciding which road ahead makes most sense to you right now.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Monday, January 16th, you are re-evaluating these and other matters that have come up over the course of these past three weeks since the New Moon, summing up your truest response in the face of potential criticism. Old and perhaps essentially dysfunctional patterns of behavior could come up for you and evidence themselves as, rather than assisting you to get away from the starting line and achieve forward motion, contributing to factors that are holding you back. You might feel that some of your past decisions were being made from a standpoint of lack rather than from a place of abundance so that the contrast could seem dramatic. Working through these realizations is a challenge but the rewards are obviously there for you when you do.

The New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd, brings fresh energy and an even stronger intention, continuing from a deeply internal perspective. You are still fighting the good fight in your quest for wholeness, summoned by the universe to be the best that you can be and still be yourself, and rising to the occasion.


Sagittarius   (Nov 22 - Dec 21)  Fire.  Ruling planet Jupiter.   Top

It’s a tricky business now, Sagittarius, as you enter the New Year. This is a time of putting security needs uppermost and yet it is not financial security that you truly seek. There is also the stability and the deep psychological security that comes from knowing that you are on the path dictated by soul-purpose and that no matter how far away you remain from actually articulating that inner vision, you have done your best to do so. To this end, you have cosmic forces coming to your aid. You are ripe for significant progress there. You are undoubtedly dealing with financial fluctuations and issues with resources, but they take a back seat compared to finding your true pathway forward, the road that is aligned with soul purpose, which is the place to put your full attention.

As the month begins, you are struggling somewhat to keep it all together, but feeling fundamentally optimistic. The Christmas Eve New Moon from the end of the previous month has illuminated certain concerns, such as with financial and other resources, but also revealed opportunities for service to the surrounding collective which could have the effect of leading you out of the trap. It is a trap to begin with when you think of finances first and service second, instead of the other way around. Putting everything into proper perspective – and into true alignment with your highest purpose for yourself – takes the determination and the daring to be different, and that is a big part of what is up for you right now.

Heading into the first six months of this new year of 2012, you are completing the forging of a new self-image. This continues to the next level the work that was begun over the period of the last several months or even seasons in preparation for this moment in time. You are standing outer world achievement on its head, seeing everything from a spiritual vantage point in which soul-purpose is served by results and completions for inner rather than outer arenas. You simultaneously have trickster Uranus in your sector of self-expression and radically transformative Pluto in your sector of values and financial security, with their square is getting closer leading up to June 24th, the first of seven exact hits. The net result is that many curve balls are being thrown at you right now and over the next few months which ultimately serve to jolt you out of complacency and into the next phase of your spiritual evolution.

During this time period also, Mars retrogrades in your action sector of career and professional life; as it does so you may find that you are gathering your energy for the late spring, when Mars returns to forward motion and also the Uranus-Pluto square completes. In any case it will be an interesting journey over this first half of the year, one that it pays you to observe with the widest latitude and the fewest preconceptions in order that might take full advantage of these interesting and compelling cosmic influences coming down, and ride them to the best possible outcome.

The Full Moon of late Sunday evening, January 8th, is a potent one that touches on all these building energies for epiphany and change. This is a time when you will be gathering your energies and thinking also how significant partners in your life might be helpful to you in fulfilling them. Finances are likely on your mind, both your own and shared resources with others, and the test of this time might be to relax and let go of judgment surrounding definite bottom lines or what happens next. Your self-concept is blossoming in a creative way that wipes out previous conceptions and seeks to establish a fresh start, but one that you are surprisingly energized about remaining committed to.

These ideas might be tested by the time of the Last Quarter Moon, taking place on Monday, January 16th, since this lunar phase is typically one of re-assessment. You are looking to the future now but there might be a greater sense of limitation in your vision than you were previously willing to acknowledge. It pays to remember now that nothing’s either good or bad but thinking makes it so, and that a seeming downside can turn into a positive with the passage of time. You are storing up your impressions of what you will take forward into the next lunar cycle and indeed the next few months, and you are being challenged to take things from the standpoint of the largest possible picture. Old patterns that have held you back for far too long might be ready to be accepted as relative flaws that nevertheless do not in any way define your true nature. If so, then you can accept them for what they are and move on.

With the New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd, you are taking another shot at the gold ring down inside you and perhaps coming closer this time to catching it.


Capricorn   (Dec 22 - Jan 19)  Earth.  Ruling planet Saturn.   Top

Your month and year kicks off with a bang, Capricorn. You are both inspired and destabilized by the archetypal currents swirling about you now, in this your birthday time of the year. There is excitement at leaving behind in some ways all traces of the past – although something important also remains – so that it is a bit dizzying. With your ruler Saturn beginning to slow down, stationing to retrograde motion next month, and Mars also after the New Moon of January 22nd, you might find yourself operating in stop-and-go mode, with one foot on the accelerator and the other on the brake, simultaneously. There is wisdom in both approaches. To maximize happiness and avoid misery you must relax into the paradox, taking something of the new and unknown as normal while with another part of your psyche remaining skeptical and holding back.

As the month begins, you are reveling in the energy since it remains your birthday time of the year, and since last month’s Christmas Eve New Moon took place in the early degrees of your sign, near Pluto, making for a powerful symbol of transformation. The degree in Capricorn was the third, and the Sabian Symbol for this New Moon was “the human soul receptive to growth and understanding.” Marc Edmond Jones has this to say regarding this Sabian Symbol: “a symbol of mankind’s fundamentally naïve capacity for experience and of every individual’s equally fundamental dependence on the understanding and support of fellow participants in each moment of self-discovery” and this is particularly appropriate for you at this dawning of 2012 with the presence of electrifying Uranus in your home and family sector along with expansive Jupiter in your sector of creativity and self-expression. You are indeed exploring mightily the potentials and the possibilities of your life and of the psychological roots of your very being, all in the context of radical transformation that has been on-going for many months now, and that in fact still has a long way to go.

If growth and understanding were ever necessitated by your life experience, now is definitely the time. Uranus and Pluto, highlighted by the Sun and Moon In perfect square with each other at the turning of the year, are still participating in their own square, now forming, that will perfect for the first of seven times on June 24th of this year. This is exactly six months after this powerful Christmas-time New Moon that also saw Jupiter changing to direct motion and therefore becoming a more powerful factor as well. Jupiter was also trined by the New Moon, and aspected by Uranus and by Chiron, and also by your ruler, Saturn. Saturn comes closer and closer to his second opposition to Jupiter – or close to it – before stationing retrograde in early February. This opposition can be read as either a negative pull on your sense of faith in the cosmos to deliver good things to you, or else as a chiming of the positive pole of the polarity from yourself to the universe and therefore fundamentally optimistic; it represents an echo and further development of what took place at the end of last March when the opposition was exact.

The presence of Uranus in your home and family sector is both unsettling and inspiring. You might be relocating in unexpected fashion over the next few months or you could also find that enlightenment comes to you in surprises that are unveiled in the context of home, family and tribe. These factors will wax and wane over the next six months to emerge in greater force by June.

In the present month, the Full Moon of late Sunday evening, January 8th, touches on all these areas. You are both energized and also perhaps almost painfully aware of current limitations and unsettled places within you, and yet also willing to take a stand internally in support of your most basic truth. It’s all very confusing. Communicating with your peers, while in some ways quite powerful for you only seems to confound matters even more.

With the Last Quarter Moon of Monday, January 16th, you enter into an essentially reflective state of mind, summing up everything that has gone before over the previous three weeks of this cycle and attempting to put a new understanding in place for yourself going forward. You are searching for a way out of what you have considered in the past to be “business as usual” and possibly even finding it. You have a certain degree of tension in your process also to spur you on, and as well a deep source of intuition available to you now that can be a tremendous resource for you to the extent that you can open to it. You are in an interesting cusp in your life whereby you seek the new and untried but with only half your initiative, while you remain wedded to the old ways, the habitual patterns which have sometimes led you into problematic results but which are at least familiar territory. You must make the attempt to break past old barriers but without entirely leaving behind your base.

The New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd, represents another powerful juncture when many things will become more clear. You are taking a sustained closer look at security issues, including finances, and also at what you might call family values, what that ultimately means and what this important area of life holds for you as you re-examine your philosophical approach to family. These basic factors are everlastingly important to you over the long haul, and will sustain you through the ups and downs of your sometimes rocky road over these next few months, which is essentially a journey into wholeness.


Aquarius   (Jan 20 - Feb 18)  Air.  Ruling planets Uranus, Saturn.   Top

This is strangely evocative period of time for you, Aquarius. You are in the midst of intense transformation right now, but little of it is visible, as this takes place in the deeper parts of your psyche, somewhat cloudy to your conscious mind. You are spiritually connected and dream-world oriented, so that it might be best to extend your closest attention to what your inner world reveals to you in the form of dreams and visions. You become more available to friends and colleagues after the 22nd, but the influence of these unconscious parts of yourself remains. Never underestimate their power. Your real-world approach will be forever altered by the changes that are brewing now beneath the surface, and will shortly make themselves manifest at all levels of your being and in your outer-world presence also.

As the month begins, you find yourself in a meditative and reflective space, riding the energy of the New Moon from the final week of the previous month that has taken place in your sector of dream imagination and the unconscious. This is a very special time of the year for you, when you inhabit your own inner world more fully than the outer one that is superficially available all around you, and when your angel guides are speaking to you more clearly than usual in the guise of promptings that arise from intuitional levels deep within your psyche. The darkness within you is not darkness only but is full of omens and portents for the future if you can read its riddles aright.

This month is an excellent time for journaling, since what comes to you might be understood more completely only with the passage of time. Perusing the pages at some future date, illuminated by the experiences of months or even years, you might in fact be amazed by what you encounter. In another way, there is a paradoxical flip side to what is going on for you in that you are now very much out in the world as well as out of it, and simultaneously making a study of the way you operate in the public arena in terms of previously unknown belief systems and new models of reality that have been percolating mentally somewhere below the level of conscious awareness.

Over the first six months of the new year your perceptions will become more enriched and, eventually, fine-tuned. Your communicative outreach over this entire period also reflects these deeper visions for a more complete future self, because as you speak your truth to others it becomes more apparent to yourself as well. You are currently student and teacher, experienced wise oldster and newborn babe attempting to grok the universe for the very first time, all rolled up into one being. You are also traveling back this month to fundamental home base in a philosophical, psychological and perhaps even physical sense, or at least finding a strong focus on home, family and tribe; as well as on the dwelling space that you actually have at your disposal. In this way you make a positive attempt to ground the profound realizations of this time period into the concrete practicality of your living space and, functioning equally on a symbolic level, of the very roots of your psyche.

The Full Moon of late Sunday evening, January 8th, touches on all these many and varied issues and departments of your life, preparing the way for something potent and positive to come out of your recent arc of development. You are more fully invested now at this juncture in the practical as well as the theoretical approaches to what you say and do and their ultimate influence of the world around you, while still staying very focused on your powerfully internal vision.

With the Last Quarter Moon a week later, taking place on Monday, January 16th, you enter a slightly difficult time, when you are forced to re-evaluate everything that has gone before, up to this point in the cycle. The test of real-world functionality is now being applied even more strongly, so that if what you conceive does not seem to have any way to pan out in practical terms it loses significance for you. The glow stemming from your inner world is still very much present but now must compete with the stir of voices that are outer more than inner.

There is a huge shift with the New Moon of Sunday evening, January 22nd in your sign. This gives you tons of energy and stimulates the more outgoing side of your social nature, with the potential for brilliant mental gymnastics tinged with idealism. Even your finances improve. You are launched on the road to your next phase and do well to reflect that as you move toward the springtime you are fated to climb still more mountains and reach for yet higher peaks.


Pisces   (Feb 19 - March 20)  Water. Ruling planets Neptune, Jupiter.   Top

This is an essentially optimistic period, Pisces. As the New Year gets underway, you are looking ahead to a brighter future for yourself; one that more closely matches your true heart’s desire. There are implications also for significant relationships that you cherish, as every part of your life settles into a new blueprint for future activity. You could continue to feel fluctuations in finances, and old patterns of behavior might be triggered and demand to be dealt with, but even these issues can be exciting as well as scary, the harbingers of important life changes that you are more than ready to make. It’s all in the perspective that you bring. You win when you are able to put your trust in the surrounding cosmos and take comfort in the realization that time, like a river, never stops moving forward.

As the month begins, you are definitely in more of a positive rather than a pessimistic space, which is a remarkable tribute to the power of the human spirit considering all that you have been through lately. You are particular adept perhaps in recognizing that seeming difficulties give rise to great rewards down the line, and that the easy road may not always be the best road for your soul to travel in order to reach its most advanced stage of spiritual evolution. This burst of optimism likely arrived coincident with the powerful Christmas Eve New Moon in your sector of friendship, group affiliations and future plans. The particular knot that you are attempting to unravel at this time therefore concerns the thrust of your forward motion into an uncertain future, and the vision that you can bring to bear on making that upcoming reality the best that it can be for yourself all ways around. In this mission you have cosmic guidance in the form of Uranus which is highly activated in your sector of values and resources, and also Jupiter which has just turned to direct motion in your communications sector.

You are a natural teacher these days as you reach out to others, and you are also in a good position to learn from these experiences as well, and this factor holds true for the next several months, through the important New Moon of late February in your sign and on into April and May. The other upcoming headline for you is that Mars will retrograde in your sector of partnership over this same period making it better a time for reflection and introspection in this area rather than for charging ahead. Meanwhile there are also implications for philosophical setting of intention and for a more grounded and practical approach to intimacy that takes your own concerns into greater account. You are seeking a better handle on all these things as the spring approaches.

As you look ahead you are also looking back, attempting to see what the past offers in terms of either congratulatory or cautionary models for the future. Your notion of what the future holds for you has been a moving target lately and you are perhaps ready to accept a different set of priorities there than heretofore, a profound change that is only just beginning to take hold. You win when you apply the notion that whatever route you take must be consistent with the spiritual unfolding that you can feel inside yourself. You are aligning with a deep sense of intuitive counsel that is strongly constellated for you right now and symbolized by these significant outer planet configurations in which your soul is currently being marinated.

The Full Moon in your self-expression sector that comes along late on Sunday evening, January 8th, is a powerful one for you, and puts the icing on the cake of many of these realizations and initiatives, touching on all areas of your life. You are reaching a plateau of understanding now that will sustain you while you watch and wait for the opportunity to make your next move. You are simultaneously both idealistic and cautiously grounded in practicality at this juncture, so that sometimes an attitude of cock-eyed optimism prevails, and at other times pure cynicism. The truth, as always, lies somewhere in between.

With the Last Quarter Moon taking place on Monday, January 16th, this contrast intensifies. This is a time of re-assessment and reevaluation, when you look over the past events of this cycle with an eye for the future. You are finding the flaws in your argument now and perhaps in yourself as well, and also perhaps in your patterns of partnership interaction. But in another way of looking at things, these are not really flaws at all but a natural consequence of particular events that happened in the past. It might be that old wounds of relationship come up for you now, and if so, the best possible outcome is that you thoroughly examine your feelings and even your history that might be referenced in this way. These issues likely stem from early childhood trauma of one kind or another. If you can get to know yourself at the deepest possible level, and understand where your feelings of lack or hurt really come from, you make a huge stride toward being able to accept these early woundings and enable yourself to move past them.

The New Moon of Sunday, January 22nd, represents a fresh start in many ways, and yet you are still reviewing and settling into depth areas within you. As Mars begins its retrograde the next day, you are concerned with values and have a view to analyzing the important relationships in your life and how best to move them forward. This end-of-month period, and heading on into February, is a powerful time for you, when much of what you currently believe about yourself could alter. You are preparing the way for your future self and for a brilliant new start that comes next month with the advent of your birthday time of the year.