Tomorrowland
When I first visited Disneyland in 1967, Tomorrowland was the most exciting area of the park. Standing in line outside Monsanto’s Journey Through Inner Space, we watched with a touch of anxiety as what looked like real people were shrunk to miniatures. The Carousel of Progress spun us through the latest in modern household appliances, unknown on our Midwestern farm. We gleefully boarded the sleek Monorail, and the Autobahn gave six-year-olds our first taste of driving (though it gave no intimation of the epic L.A. traffic jams in our future).
Aquarius is the sign of Tomorrowland, a fantastical and innovative future where nearly anything seems possible. Place Mercury in Aquarius (Jan. 27, 2025, 6:53 pm PST through Feb. 14), and you’ll spy entrepreneurs in excited conversation over lunch, madly scribbling ideas on the back of a napkin. You’ll catch astrologers excitedly plugging asteroids into their charts, and engineers doodling interesting gadgets and gizmos on their desk blotters. And somewhere, you can be sure that science fiction writers are at their laptops, banging out their visions of the future with renewed zest.
By definition, the future is a place that we never quite reach; but it’s important to keep moving in its direction. And Aquarius makes the process of getting there altogether exciting.
The Exhilaration of Hard Truths
I suppose we’ve all had the experience of saying some things that we later wish we could take back. On the other hand, they may have been things that had needed saying for a very long time.
Mercury makes a conjunction to Pluto this week (Jan. 28, 2025, 11:52 pm PST). Mercury is ordinarily the king of knowing how to say things in a clever way, to avoid being nailed down to a particular opinion or point of view. But when Mercury connects with Pluto, there’s no room for small talk, pretense, or equivocation. We say exactly what we mean and let the chips fall where they may.
We can tell ourselves that it’s better to know where we stand, and that telling the truth is always the best policy. And there are moments when we feel exhilarated as hard truth after hard truth hits the pavement and shatters. But if we’re honest – and after all, that’s what this is all about – the truth also hurts. And sometimes, it hurts as much to tell it as it does to hear it.
Ephemeral
This Aquarius New Moon (Jan. 29, 2025, 4:36 am PST, 9º51’ Aquarius) is in a wide conjunction with ominous Pluto and a closer trine to more fortunate Jupiter.
For most of my life, Aquarius has been a foreign land to me. I was born with several planets in its opposite sign, Leo. But as I grow older, I can more easily locate Aquarius on my inner landscape: the bracing snap of dry, frigid air, the glint of an ice skate’s blade hovering over a frozen lake, and a friendly, distant wave to fellow skaters. I recognize it in the sudden, violent protest that lets loose in me when I feel walls closing in, and in the itchiness that comes from having gone too long without time alone. There is something hard and detached in this sign, and Pluto, the planet of hard reality, has no problem finding a comfortable place to perch here. But Aquarius is unruly and wild and beautiful, too.
This New Moon trine Jupiter in Gemini opens the doors to a future filled with adventure, if only of the mind and imagination. The New Moon degree is on the Sabian symbol 10 Aquarius: A popularity that proves ephemeral. Some look down on Gemini for its love of novelty and variety, but sometimes, we need to let our imaginations loose and play with ephemeral pursuits – the random course at a community college, a novel that’s filled with fanciful ideas but a bit light on real substance. While Jupiter is in Gemini, light pursuits like these are like giving our minds a day off from the gym so its muscles can rest.
Whoosh
Uranus, retrograde since September 1, 2024, stations to turn direct this week (Jan. 30, 2025, 8:22 am PST) at 23º15′ Taurus. I’ve come to expect a whoosh of energy when the outer planets change direction. Feeling unsettled and rebellious without cause are hallmarks of a Uranus station, along with an irrational impulse to do something that can’t be undone. There are moments in life when that’s just what’s needed.
But a few days either side of this station, extremity and overreaction are in the air, so proceed with caution. Uranus will want to shake us loose from ways we hold ourselves back from pleasure and prosperity, but that rarely comes without consequences.
Wind at Your Back
While the Sun is moving through a sign each month, it describes the activities or approach that will light us up. While it’s in Aquarius, we’ll get that energetic boost from spending time with friends, organizations, and making dreams and plans for the future. And as the Sun in Aquarius meets Jupiter in Gemini in a flowing trine aspect (Jan. 30, 2025, 2:59 pm PST), we’ll find our reward in a life that is not only socially rich, but which perfectly supports us in the Big Picture pursuits represented by Jupiter in Gemini – learning, writing, teaching, speaking, travel. Even for those with the Sun, Moon, Ascendant, or other key points in the birth chart in Leo (which is ruled by the Sun), this week, the wind is truly at your back.
What Love Uses to Manifest
In my earlier incarnation as a singer, I enjoyed my time onstage, singing for an audience, more than any other part of my life. It wasn’t applause I was looking for; it was the feeling of being connected with a roomful of people in a pleasurable exchange of emotion, as though I were simply the conduit for the song I was singing.
That’s the feeling, I think, as Venus conjoins Neptune (Feb. 1, 2025, 8:33 am PST, 27º59’ Pisces) on the lovely Sabian symbol 28 Pisces: A fertile garden under the Full Moon: as though we’re just the thing that love uses to manifest. Embrace any moment around Feb. 1 when you find yourself feeling “in the flow,” happily engaged in doing something you love for the sheer ecstasy of it, and because it somehow dissolves the barriers between you and someone else.
Dance Partners
In the current dance between the Lunar Nodes, the finest moves and the best partners are quick, light, and improvisational. This week, as Venus conjoins the Moon’s North Node in Pisces (Feb. 1, 2025, 1:42 pm PST), cherish the people in your life who make you laugh, and most importantly, make you feel loved. They are the dreamers, the artists, the mystical – and they are the ones who are dancing you toward the right direction.
This is the first of three conjunctions Venus will make with the North Node over the next few months. The other two are on April 1 (while Venus is retrograde) and April 23. Someone you meet now could turn up again around those dates, and possibly end up sticking around for the long haul.
Writing and images © 2017-25 by April Elliott Kent
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