Hi friends,
Astrologically, there isn’t anything particularly profound about the clock striking midnight, pushing us over into a new year. Personally, I celebrate the new year on the winter solstice; other traditions celebrate the first New Moon of the calendar year (sometimes called the Chinese New Year), which this year is the New Moon in Capricorn on January 13th. But there is something undeniable around the collective energy we all put into the transition from one year into the next.
Still. The pressure behind the new year can be exhausting — resolutions, plans, goals. The urge to shuck off one year and slide into the next can ignore and elide the muck and mire that is the cocoon.
Process is not pretty, nor is it precise. Life is not a fairytale, where the chime of midnight means the ball is over — or just beginning. Sometimes, time is just time, slowly trudging onward. But as Mary Oliver reminds us,
Things take the time they take.
Don’t worry.
How many roads did St. Augustine follow before he became St. Augustine?
Today’s letter offers some questions that center around the major themes that 2021 will bring you this year. If it feels good to work with them this first weekend of the year, do so. If you want to keep them on the shelf for later, do that. Listen to what your body and your mind are telling you. There’s no need to make any of this “special”; it’s just here to be a prompt, if that’s useful for you. And if not, I’ll see you for the New Moon newsletter mid-month.
Also: Registration is open for my new course, Astrology for Writers: How to Make Your Writing Work For You. Course registration closes on January 31st. (Newsletter subscribers can take $100 off with the code “solstice.”) I’m so excited for what we’re going to do together.
Xx,
Jeanna
Major Astrological Themes for 2021
These are not the only things that will come up for you this year, nor is this meant to be an end-all, be-all list. These are, however, some of the most prominent themes that we will continue to address in this newsletter as the year progresses.
For those of you who are curious, the bullet points include: Saturn/Jupiter’s cohabitation in Aquarius, including the year-defining Saturn/Uranus squares; Jupiter’s brief excursion in Pisces; the last of the Gemini/Sagittarius eclipses; and the Mercury Retrogrades, which are vital for writers and folks who work with language.
Aries & Aries Rising
Investing in your communities (friendships, professional networks, writing groups) in ways that feel intellectually rejuvenating dominates your year. The groups you want to be a part of are clarified in new ways, as are your roles, responsibilities, hopes, and dreams.
Potential tension arises between groups you’re a part of and your personal finances. Get clarity on the terms before signing on the dotted line. Alternately, there may be friction between you and groups when it comes to value systems and decision making processes.
Behind-the-scenes projects get a dose of healing energy mid-year and then again more fully come the end of 2021, becoming more prominent in 2022. This also significantly aids your unconscious life and any therapy or mental health work you’re personally invested in.
Increased hunger for new writing projects, as well as attending to daily rituals and routines that support that creative work. Potential creative ventures with siblings, extended family, and/or close friends.
Shedding patterns and/or aspects of your commitments re: teaching, publishing, educational pursuits, and/or long-term plans and beliefs.
Reviewing your communications, ideas, and conversations around communities and friendships (Jan/Feb), writing and daily life (May/June), and committed partnerships (Sep/Oct).
Taurus & Taurus Rising
Career, public roles, and legacy are front and center for you this year, bringing up issues around authority and power — particularly your relationship to your own. New structures are seeded, as well as relationships that support those structures. Rampant career growth is possible and, indeed, probable. Be mindful of where you put your energy, particularly early in the year, as your efforts dictate the yield.
Potential tension between the person you’re becoming/the persona you’re presenting to the world and the career you’ve been building — but friction always produces interesting and complex results.
Community commitments are buoyed with an infusion of connective optimism, abundance, and healing mid-year, with more coming at the end of 2021.
Increased hunger for tackling issues around personal finances, whether it’s creating more income streams or creating a budget that works for you. Your relationship to value — what you value and why — is likely to undergo some major shifts.
Releasing collaborations and shared projects that no longer work and recalibrating your relationship to shared resources, including debt, inheritance, and taxes.
Reviewing your communications, ideas, and conversations around career (Jan/Feb), income, assets, and resources (May/June), and daily work and health (Sep/Oct).
Gemini & Gemini Rising
Publishing, teaching, higher education, long-term plans, and life-defining beliefs take center stage, raising questions around how you structure your life and follow through on those big ideas. Existing structures and belief systems get a refurbish or a total makeover in a way that feels both challenging and deeply healing.
Potential tension arises from how the unconscious is becoming conscious and made manifest in those shifting life systems. What underlying beliefs (about yourself, others, etc.) are you realizing are up for review in ways you didn’t anticipate? May relate to ancestral inheritance, self-sabotage, behind the scenes projects, sorrows, or loss.
An extra infusion of healing comes through mid-year via collaborations and shared resources. This picks up again end of year and more fully in 2022.
Increased hunger for the growth you’re experiencing around your identity and selfhood, for the new ways you’ve been getting to focus on and invest in yourself, particularly since November 2020. Who you are becoming is a major focus.
Shedding partnerships, patterns in partnership, and ways of relating and committing to others that worked for former versions of yourself, but not this newest one. Making room for new commitments to come in.
Reviewing your communications, ideas, and conversations around publishing, teaching and higher education, and spirituality and beliefs (Jan/Feb), self and identity (May/June), and creativity, passion, sex, and children (Sep/Oct).
Cancer & Cancer Rising
Collaborations and the resources you share with others are a primary focus. Discovering new ways of building with others, especially intellectually, is a source of rejuvenation and excitement. Getting clear on boundaries, money, authority, and an abundance mindset is a major task.
Potential tension between your collaborations and your communities — potentially because collaborators are from your communities, or because of the project’s impact on the community. Regardless, these corners where structure and responsibility meets instability and upheaval are learning opportunities.
Healing and abundance offers itself mid-year through teaching, publishing opportunities, travel (depending on where you are in the world and the state of the pandemic) and perhaps even a new relationship to your belief system or spirituality. This theme will come through more clearly and consistently at the end of year and in 2022.
Increased desire to attend to your unconscious life: To bring what’s under the surface to consciousness, to work with ancestral legacy, to work with a therapist or mental health professional, to journal and notice and observe the patterns in yourself that are often missed in daily living. More desire for alone time than usual. Incubating behind the scenes projects.
Releasing unconscious patterns around your daily work and health. Recalibrating daily routines. Adjusting how you manage your body, diet, and wellness.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around your collaborations (Jan/Feb), behind the scenes projects and unconscious life (May/June), and home and family life (Sep/Oct).
Leo & Leo Rising
Committed partnerships are on deck for you. Agents, editors, co-writers: Whoever and whatever this means for you, how you work closely with others, who you want to work with for the long-term, and the kinds of relationships you want to build (and how you want to build them) are a major focus. Understanding what you bring to the table in these relationships and collaborations becomes ever more clear.
Potential tension arises between your partnerships and career — whether this means friction between the ideals and reality, or between personal partnerships and career, or something else altogether, the year is marked by a few bumps in the road around navigating who and what matters and why.
A healing infusion comes along to help mid-year with a dose of optimism, abundance, and extra faith coming to you via your collaborations and the resources you share with others. This becomes more prominent come end of year and 2022 and helps bring more overall connective tissue to your relationships.
Increased hunger for investing in community, friendships, and groups. Starting or joining a writing group, joining a conference committee, or some other network venture may be in store.
Releasing old passion projects and creative ventures that have been on the back burner for years.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around partnership (Jan/Feb), community and friendship (May/June), and writing projects and daily life (Sep/Oct).
Virgo & Virgo Rising
Daily work life is getting an overhaul, as are wellness routines and general commitments to health and how you take care of yourself. The interconnectedness of mind, body, and spirit becomes more clear to you than ever before, and there is renewed energy and clarity for how to address and structure this area of life in ways that work for you.
Potential friction arises between the new structures you’re building for yourself and rumblings coming from your publishing and teaching/higher education commitments — or, perhaps simply very old underlying beliefs and plans that you didn’t realize were impacting your actions so deeply.
A powerful dose of healing medicine comes through mid-year via committed partnerships. Whether these relationships are personal, romantic, or professional, something feels deeply optimistic and blessed about what you uncover through connection.
Increased hunger to grow your professional or public life. Investment in legacy. May connect to events from the fall of 2020.
Desire to release, shed, or otherwise reframe old patterns around the past, home or family life, and/or heritage.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around daily work and health (Jan/Feb), career and public roles (May/June), and income, assets, and resources (Sep/Oct).
Libra & Libra Rising
Your relationship with your creativity is a major focus this year. Discipline feels more accessible. The muse shows up when you do. Passion funnels itself toward you in a way that feels healing. If children are a part of your life, their interest and free-for-all relationship to their own creativity may help you find more playfulness in yours.
Potential friction arises between your creativity and any collaborations you are involved in, or collaborators you are involved with. If money is involved, clarity and clearly defined contracts are your friend.
A helpful dose of healing comes through for you mid-year when it comes to your daily work life, making responsibilities feel easier and connections with colleagues feel more emotionally abundant. Your relationship with your body and wellness also gets some extra love. These themes pick back up in a major way in December, moving into 2022.
Increased hunger for publishing and getting your work out in a major way that connects to what you were working on in November 2020. Teaching and higher education opportunities may find their way to you. Long-term plans and big ideas are abundant.
Releasing and shedding old writing projects and ideas that don’t connect to where you’re moving in your work. Potentially, even, moving neighborhoods.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around creativity, sex, and children (Jan/Feb), publishing, teaching and higher education, and spirituality and beliefs (May/June), and self and identity (Sep/Oct).
Scorpio & Scorpio Rising
Home, family, and heritage are up for review in a major way this year. Your past does not have to be your present. What you take with you into this year, and into your life moving forward, is your choice. Keep what feels healing, and know that you can rewrite your story and build foundations that feel solid for you.
Potential friction arises between your home life and committed partnerships, between feeling firm in your foundations and certain about the people you’re also building a life with personally or professionally (agents, editors, co-writers). Alignment of value systems may be a factor.
Healing medicine helps bolster your efforts mid-year via your creative life and the pleasures and play you’re investing in. Important children in your life may be a factor (if you are trying to have a baby, this is a good time to try, and if you’re not, and are someone for whom this is a possible outcome of your sex life, it’s a good time to be extra cautious with the birth control). These themes become more prominent come December and into 2022.
Increased hunger for collaborations and resources you’re building and sharing with others. May connect to work begun around November 2020. Possibly includes addressing and resolving issues around debts, inheritance, and taxes.
Shedding old ways of money-making that aren’t suited to this present moment. Releasing ideas around money and budgeting that were harmful, constricting, or otherwise unhelpful.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around home, family, and heritage (Jan/Feb), collaborations and shared resources (May/June), and behind the scenes projects and unconscious life (Sep/Oct).
Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising
Writing and communication projects are seeded in ways that feel both structured and medicinal to the soul. Whether you’re taking an existing project to new heights or are implementing something entirely new, your work pulls focus in a way that feels nourishing and exciting.
Potential friction arises between your writing projects and daily work life or health. Whether your schedule has to be recalibrated or your body is talking to you about your hydration or sleep — or it’s the simple matter of having a day job alongside an exciting creative project — this is a balancing act that will begin to resolve by year’s end.
A healing infusion comes through your home and family life. Whether natal or chosen, the people you purposefully surround yourself bring medicine. The physical space you create for yourself offers sacred respite. This theme becomes more prominent come end of year and into 2022.
Increased hunger for committed partnerships and creative connections, which may well include agents, editors, co-writers, and more.
Releasing old versions of yourself, such as different personas and social media behavior, in order to make way for the new sprouts of self and identity that you’re growing into.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around writing projects and daily life (Jan/Feb), committed partnership (May/June), and community and friendship (Sep/Oct).
Capricorn & Capricorn Rising
Focus on your income streams and relationship to money, resources, and value, generally, rises to the forefront. This can feel uncomfortable, but the push to develop discipline and opportunities for healing, rising in simultaneity, offers the chance for some deep realizations and life-changing habits to take root. New money-making structures are likely to be built.
Potential friction arises between surviving and thriving, between the work that makes the money and the work that feeds your passions, between the need for income and the need to be creative. Where is the overlap, and where do they exist in tension?
A dose of healing medicine comes through your writing life and the projects you’re working on every day, which feel particularly supported, buoyant, and optimistic mid-year. It’s a preview of the abundance that is coming through this part of your life toward the end of year and into 2022.
Increased hunger for daily work that feels intellectually stimulating. A desire for integrated wellness that addresses body, mind, and soul.
Releasing behind the scenes projects that are over and done with. Letting go of self-sabotaging patterns that get you nowhere. Possibly doing really valuable and deep work through therapy, mental health, or otherwise therapeutic practices.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around income, assets, and resources (Jan/Feb), daily work and health (May/June), and career and public roles (Sep/Oct).
Aquarius & Aquarius Rising
Goodbye, past self. Hello, new you. After years of rebuilding yourself from the inside out, you’re ready to show yourself to the world — and be appreciated for it. The spotlight is on you, which can come with a certain amount of attention that is uncomfortable, but promises that if you show up for yourself and your commitments, the rewards will be ample. Being true to yourself and your integrity is the key to success.
Potential friction arises between your present and your past, between yourself and your natal family or home life, between the life you’re building for yourself and expectations or baggage of cultural heritage. What is new and challenging is often uncomfortable for others, but it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
Your healing infusion comes mid-year through your income streams. If you are showing up with discipline, your bank account is almost guaranteed to benefit. Your relationship to money and value, generally, are also likely shifting in ways that feel helpful. This is also a preview of your financial setup come the end of year and into 2022.
Increased hunger for creative life, pleasure, and play. Children may also become more of a factor in your life, in some capacity. (If you are interested in having children, this is a good time to try, and if you’re not, and have a sex life where pregnancy is a potential outcome, it’s a good time to be extra cautious with birth control.)
Letting go of community commitments, friendships, and groups — while the pandemic has done this for all of us, to an extent, for you, it’s been a more intentional and prominent theme.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around self, identity, and persona (Jan/Feb), creativity, passion, sex, and children (May/June), and publishing, teaching and higher education, and spirituality and beliefs (Sep/Oct).
Pisces & Pisces Rising
Get ready to restructure your relationship to your alone time. The focus is on your most quiet self this year. A potentially deeply creative year, this is deep thinking, reflection, and solitude. Sifting through the losses and sorrows that you let simmer beneath the surface. For you, this year is about processing and taking it slow.
Potential friction arises when you try to write about experiences you’re still deeply processing, particularly if they’re experiences you’re trying to publish or put out in the world before they’re really ready for others’ light on them. Give things the time they need. Give yourself all the time you need.
A healing infusion of optimism comes mid-year when you get a brief moment of the spotlight on you. Whether it’s a moment of validation for all the behind the scenes work you’ve been doing on yourself or simply a burst of energy for getting out there with everyone, this is a preview of next year.
Increased hunger for home life and building relationships with family, natal or chosen. While it’s hard to imagine after being cooped up with a pandemic, this may be a big homebody year for you, at least energy wise. You may redecorate, move, or totally redo your space.
Releasing something related to your career and public life. Some aspect of your career isn’t working for you anymore, and a new direction is needed.
Reviewing communications, ideas, and conversations around behind the scenes projects and unconscious life (Jan/Feb), home, family, and heritage (May/June), and collaborations and shared resources (Sep/Oct).
Great horoscopes! I especially like the Saturn-Uranus sq bullet points.