Performance Evaluation
The Sun takes about a year to make its planetary rounds. Once each year it meets up with each planet by conjunction, rather like a boss giving managers their performance evaluations. Like most of us, I imagine the Sun kind of dreads its annual conjunction with Pluto (Jan. 21, 2025, 4:29 AM PST). The problem is that Pluto wants to turn the tables and start evaluating the Sun, and the boss didn’t get to be the boss by taking lip from his outer planets. So, it’s a tense couple of days when the two sit down together.
What it means for us, their earthly representatives, is a couple of days when we’re apt to be pretty merciless in our self-assessments. That’s fine as far as it goes; it’s important to set high standards for oneself, to delve deep and rip out habits, tendencies, and attitudes that are unworthy of us. But don’t get carried away with the self-flagellation. Take a good look at yourself, decide how to be more effective moving forward – and then stow that performance evaluation away in your mental file cabinet.
A House Raising
The Sun in Aquarius tends to feel that its aims are objectively in the best interests of all and that they delineate the best path to a fair and equitable future. But there is a potential shadow side to Aquarius’ view of progress, and our investment in seeing ourselves as champions of freedom and equality benefits from the occasional reality check.
Enter the Last Quarter Moon in Scorpio (Jan. 21, 2025, 12:31 PM PST, 2º03′ Scorpio), injecting a healthy amount of self-examination. Scorpio is the sign most likely to engineer a hard fall from grace if our ego gets out of hand, so it’s a good time to reflect with honesty: are we driven entirely by altruism, or is there a touch of power and control in our motivations?
But introspection needn’t keep us from the Aquarius season’s joyful sense of community. The Sabian symbol for the Moon is 3 Scorpio, A house-raising; think of Amish communities pitching in to build a house or barn for someone in the community. Participating full in communal activities can keep you from getting too much in your head about things.
Meanwhile, the Sun’s Sabian symbol 3 Aquarius: A deserter from the navy. This Sabian symbol always brings to mind for me the question: How do you prioritize important responsibilities? When is it important to be alone with your thoughts, and when do you need to be part of the group?
Showing Up
Here’s something that all professional creatives know: Your deadline doesn’t care whether or not you’re feeling inspired. If you’re a writer, for example, some days you write not because you have something you’re burning to say, but rather because you owe your editor 1500 words by 5 pm.
But here’s something else we know. If you sit down in that chair every day and write, then you’ll be in just the right place when inspiration strikes.
Today, Mars, the work planet, is sextile Uranus, the planet of inspiration (Jan. 23, 2025, 7:08 am PST, at 23º16’ Cancer/Taurus). Just maybe, that means our work is about to take a new and exciting direction – but first, we have to show up for it.
The Truth Will Set You Free
I believe it was Gloria Steinem who once said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off!”
How well this describes today’s combination of the communication planet Mercury opposed angry Mars (Jan. 23, 2025, 12:49 pm PST) and trine liberating Uranus (2:07 pm PST)! Sometimes we have to let ourselves get good and angry, mad enough to spit tacks, before we feel free to say and do exactly as we please. Just one insensitive person hurting our feelings will often do the trick.
So, if some curt know-it-all provokes you today, get good and mad – and let your wrath set you free!
Inevitable Attraction
The combination of Venus and Mars tells a story of passion, where beauty and pleasure meet physical desire. This week, Venus in Pisces meets Mars in Cancer in a rapturous trine aspect (Jan. 25, 2025, 3:54 pm PST). When this aspect is exact between two planets, it means they’re in signs of the same element, and their natures resonate with the same quality and disposition. Their attraction to each other seems inevitable, like the relationship between the head cheerleader and the captain of the football team.
At this trine, Venus and Mars connect in the water element, in which a sympathetic connection of the hearts is the key to intimacy. These lovers woo each other with music, with flowers and candlelit dinners. It’s an aspect that passes quickly; is it the beginning of a great love story, or a fleeting moment of romantic interest? It hardly matters; one day can be enough to conceive a child – or any other act of creativity that can live on long after the lovers have parted.
If you’re already in a close relationship that’s been struggling, a day either side of this aspect could be very positive for sorting things out. Go on a long drive that will give you plenty of time to talk, rekindling warm feelings and helping you remember what brought you together in the first place.
A Touch of Whimsy
There are some who mostly place their confidence in what they can experience with their senses. Mercury in Capricorn can be that way, a bit. And it likes formulas: this action + this action = this outcome.
And the thing is, this is a perfectly fine approach to dealing with the practicalities of the physical world. If you’re having a house built, you want an architect who knows the rules, one who can create a solid, leakproof building with straight walls and level floors.
But, just maybe, a little bit of artistic flair would be nice, too. In my part of town, huge condo buildings are springing up like mushrooms. Few have so much as a trace of anything non-essential, graceful, or beautiful.
But around the corner from us, a utilitarian, post-war house is being transformed into a split-level full of whimsical angles and interesting design choices. It makes me feel kindly toward its owners; I like that they seem interested in making a home that nurtures inspiration, not just a storage box for people.
Likewise, when Mercury in Capricorn sextiles Neptune (Jan. 26, 2025, 10:33 am PST), seek opportunities to elevate the functionality of your life by introducing a touch of whimsy, a playful smile, or a soupçon of imagination.
The Disruptor
On an episode of one of my favorite podcasts, one of the hosts pointed out that you spend your whole life trying to get to an age where you know something, and once you get there, no one wants to hear what you have to say! They see you as old and irrelevant and assume nothing you have to say pertains to them. I certainly don’t think that’s a universal sentiment, but as a person of a certain age it made me smile.
This week, Venus makes a sextile to Uranus (Jan. 26, 2025, 3:11 pm PST). Venus in Pisces is happy splashing around in the flow of its inspiration, but the job of Uranus, the disruptor, is to break up the flow, to make us more awake and engaged. Uranus represents a unique way of looking at things that can help us avoid the blind spots that come from just being too insular, too caught up in our own process to see other possibilities.
The disruptor comes in all shapes, forms, and ages, and this aspect is an opportunity to pause and consider its wise input.
Writing and images © 2017-25 by April Elliott Kent
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