Reindeer Games
The Sun in its Capricorn season shines most brightly on individual ambitions. This is the time of year when we contemplate what we intend to build, achieve, and create in the coming calendar year – by and for ourselves.
But being a happy human means balancing the supremacy of the individual with the human need to feel part of a group. Twice each year, when the Sun trines Uranus (Jan. 13, 2025, 00:13 am PST), harmony seems to reign: we like who we are, and others like us, too.
It’s a brief transit, but instructive. Seeing only through the solar lens of individual ambition is isolating. Here’s a day or two for joining in the reindeer games and enjoying simple pleasures. The world needs its leaders, but we need one another, too.
Where the Center Lies
This week’s Cancer Full Moon (Jan. 13, 2025, 2:27 pm PST, 23ºCancer) is conjoined Mars, opposed the Sun in Capricorn in the vicinity of a conjunction with Pluto. Mars and Pluto are quite incendiary, and it feels like a lot of things are burning down – and not just in Los Angeles, where terrifying wildfires continue to rampage as I write this. Even 120 miles away in San Diego, it’s been terrifying to watch those fires, because the same scenario could so easily happen here.
We’re leaning into a time of rapid change, with Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and the Lunar Nodes shifting into new signs in a period of just six months. The winds of change can sweet us up and deposit us somewhere new and exciting, but they can trigger destructive fires as well. When too much changes too fast, we can feel disoriented and lose our center.
Cancer is the sign of home and family; of those we love and want to care for. It’s hard, when things get tough, to keep trudging forward, reaching out, giving our hearts to those who need us. But that’s where the center lies.
Things Change
Venus squares Jupiter this week (Jan. 14, 2025, 11:48 am PST) at 11º59’ Pisces and Gemini. This aspect asks us to examine why getting what we want doesn’t always satisfy us, and how getting too much of a good thing doesn’t mark the road to happiness, either.
This lesson has a lot to do with mindset. We think of Jupiter as a lucky planet, but you know what makes folks lucky a lot of the time? It’s the determination to be happy and to see whatever comes their way as luck.
And of course, it’s not always clear what is luck and what isn’t, except in hindsight. In the film Things Change, Don Ameche plays Gino, an elderly shoeshine man who resembles a notorious gangster and who agrees to go to prison his place. As a young gangster supervises him before his court date, Gino meets a series of changes in fortune – money won, money lost, mistaken identity that sometimes works for him and sometimes doesn’t. Whether the wheel of fortune swings up or down, the old man’s response is a calm shrug, and the observation, “Things change.”
In the end, this square reminds us that things change, and what might seem fortunate could soon turn unfortunate. But the reverse is true as well. Whether we’re up or down, what makes us lucky – and happy – is the ability to look for the sunshine after the storm.
Storm in the Canyon
The Sun opposes Mars this week (Jan. 15, 2025, 6:39 pm PST, 26º12’ Capricorn/Cancer) on the Sabian symbols 27 Capricorn: A mountain pilgrimage and 27 Cancer: A Storm in a canyon. The Sun’s Capricorn season does encourage climbing on our individual mountain pilgrimage with slow, steady determination.
But it isn’t that easy to keep your eye on the trail with a storm raging in a canyon below. We sometimes overlook the degree to which steady support at home contributes to success outside of it. As Mars continues its journey through Cancer, conflicts or emergencies connected to home and family might make it difficult to focus on those more worldly New Year’s goals.
Birds of a Feather
The Sun in Capricorn is the executive who delineates the path to achievement for everybody. But Capricorn can sometimes be a little harsh, a little too committed to the bottom line, and impatient when we don’t live up to its standards.
As the Sun in Capricorn sextiles Neptune in Pisces (Jan. 17, 2025, 3:20 pm PST), it’s guided a bit by softer considerations. How can our structures, forms, and plans work to make the world a better place? How can they help others in need and to make us better people as well?
The Sun is at 27º35’ Capricorn on the Sabian symbol 28 Capricorn, A large aviary. We’re birds of a feather, all of us, flapping around together in one big earth-shaped cage. If we must focus on the constrictions of that cage, let it remind us that to get along, we have to be flexible about our boundaries and share our space and resources.
Grace for Your Struggle
When successful artists are asked to give advice to young people considering a career in their field, they usually say something like, “If you can be happy doing anything else, do that instead.” Success in certain fields is so unlikely, such a long shot, that you need be not just accomplished but tenacious and determined in order to succeed.
That’s the lesson of Venus conjoining Saturn (Jan. 18, 2025, 5:26 pm PST). Sometimes, we only know what we really value when are faced with adversity, self-doubt, and discouragement. If you truly desire something, you will stop at absolutely nothing in your pursuit of it.
But this quick transit of Venus with Saturn offers something else, too: grace for your struggle. When you’ve been trying hard for so long, breaking your back, picking yourself up and dusting yourself off repeatedly, it can be easy to forget why you wanted to do something in the first place. You may be on the brink of giving up altogether. Until…
…A word of encouragement comes your way. A good review, maybe, or some money. A kindly hug from someone older and wiser. A little touch of Venus to brighten the long, tiring days, and to remind you what you loved in the first place…about this career, or this project, or this person.
Little Solar Systems
The Sun enters its Aquarius season this week (Jan. 19, 2025, 12:00 pm PST). Whenever I struggle to understand Aquarius, my opposite sign, it helps me to think of it this way: The Sun always signifies where we shine, and where we come alive—and for a certain kind of Aquarius, that happens within community. As a Leo, I fear the eclipsing of my hard-won individuality within a group. A Leo with a stronger sense of self might worry that, like the Sun itself, it must be at the center or else the universe will careen off into chaos. The primordial Leo motto, immortalized by my double Leo cousin as a teenager, is “What about me??”
I know there must be some people who take refuge in groups because they don’t want to take the risk of standing out. But then there are Aquarians who simply come alive within fraternities of shared interest, whether they gather to make music or build a community; who find their light through playing with others.
Humans are tribal creatures, and it’s the rare few of us who can be happy with a completely solitary existence. But I think it’s unusual, too, to bloom so spectacularly within a community garden—because we’re each of us little solar systems, too, with ourselves at the center, sovereign Suns who need to shine. The Sun in Aquarius season invites us to understand something of what life could look like from a less heliocentric vantage point. See how it feels to let yourself wander into another orbit for a little while, to be a satellite pulled by the gravity of something larger than yourself. Does it seem dark and cold, a little frightening… or can you let yourself glide happily through the stars, Aquarius style, dancing happily by the light of other solar systems?
Writing and images © 2017-25 by April Elliott Kent
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