Astrodharma Transit Update: January 2024

The New Year reeks of strategy, straight out of the gate. Mercury Retro goes direct on the 1st, goose-stepping us closer to an auspicious 4 planet pile up in Capricorn that culminates in a project-launching crescendo from the 25th to the 30th.

Time to roll up our sleeves and lay down a pattern that can weather the storms of February, March and April in a spirit of welcome seriousness.

But first a few words from this month’s sponsor, Saturn in Pisces, squaring Venus in “adventure junkie” Sagittarius on the 1st and 2nd.

Vintage Capricorn Love

Admit it. The romance you restlessly scan for exists nowhere, if not directly in front of you. Every face: brimming with mysterious arresting allure. Every moment: wet with the possibility of meditative relating.

Father Saturn’s prescription for vintage Capricorn love? Two steps:

  1. Catching the meditation-parched mind turning flashes of sexual chemistry into a tour de force that far eclipses the evenly distributed awesomeness of god.
  2. Admitting that we like it this way, because the outward leaning lust-a-thon pulls attention away from the achy emptiness at our core.

There. Now we’re ego-flattened enough to survey the play of flesh with the eyes of the Merciful Witness, exuding the aura most likely to lure a realistic, work-a-day partner; the one we can happily lose everything with.

Note for fridge:

Luminosity exudes undeniable confidence. All other stabs at surety: an octopus squirting clouds of defensive ink.

Launch the Project

On January 4th, Mars enters Capricorn, followed quickly by Mercury. This earthy Mars/Mercury conjunction trines Jupiter for the entire month: an excellent time to strategize and take the steps to achieve a goal or begin a new course of study.

Best time to launch the project? After Mercury and Saturn exit their imagination-soaked square to Neptune on the 16th.

My vote: on the 29th when the Moon in Virgo forms a Grand Trine with the Mars, Mercury and Jupiter. Great time to lay down a grounded pattern that can weather the storms of February, March and April.

Pluto in Aquarius

The big moment this month is when Pluto and the Sun move together into the sign of Aquarius, forming a powerful Sun/Pluto conjunction on the 20th/21st. (Traditionally: a toppled king or the aristocracy, exposed). This is an era-defining moment, as Pluto will now park itself in the sign of Aquarius (minus 6 week intermission this Sep/Oct) for the next 20 years.

How dramatically will Pluto overhaul Aquarian social structures through science and technology? The question is intriguing, but somewhat pointless- like asking a pedestrian during the late 1800’s to imagine how the world’s landscape and way of life will be transformed by the invention of the internal combustion engine.

Looming Questions

Will our Aquarian humanness get crushed by the bots, erasing individual will for the sake of some maniacal collectivist vision? Will the digital revolution descend into dystopia?

Will Presence-activating gaps in the play of personhood be systematically sucked out of the masses through a relentlessly time-bound, ego-hardening educational system?

Will distraction become institutionalized and impulses to meditatively merge with the Aquarian collective consciousness be redirected into digital assimilation and body-numbing trance?

Initially, the answers to these questions may be, “yes.” Later, from 2026-2028, when Uranus and Pluto form five empowering Trine aspects, Aquarian groups and communities may well rise up against the entrenched political powers and institutions that sought to control and manipulate them.

In The Mean Time

In the mean time, the best we can do is use our otherwise impersonal Aquarian technology to invite others to gather, face-to-face, in communities and groups that hold space for each other’s hurtable humanness in an atmosphere of soul-mirroring presence.

However Pluto in Aquarius plays out, our eternally spiraling souls will continue to thrill at the following dharmic pointer:

Thought so grey
like a metal fragment
Born to fly
to Your holy magnet

Storm clouds feel
like a muscle relaxant
What looks through me
never absent

-Hunter Reynolds
January 2024

Planetary Transits for January 2024

Jan 1st- Mercury goes Direct in Sagittarius
Jan 3rd- Last Quarter Moon in Libra
Jan 4th- Mars enters Capricorn
Jan 11th- New Moon in Capricorn
Jan 13th- Mercury enters Capricorn
Jan 20th- Sun enters Aquarius
Jan 20th- Pluto enters Aquarius
Jan 23rd- Venus enters Capricorn
Jan 25th- Full Moon in Leo
Jan 27th- Uranus goes Direct in Taurus


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