The grand finale of 2020 has arrived and December does not disappoint!
We have a total solar eclipse, Jupiter and Saturn moving from Capricorn and into Aquarius, and the two planets forming a Grand Conjunction on the day of the winter solstice.
This month we have a crescendo of energy and big opportunity for healing if we are willing to walk through the doorway the eclipse will provide us. And we’ll see the shift from earth to air that will usher in the biggest themes of 2021.
Read the below interview with astrologer Rick Levine for your December 2020 Forecast and guidance to help you navigate the cosmic tides.
Amanda: Rick, the main event of December is the Jupiter / Saturn conjunction at 0 degrees Aquarius.
We’ve been waiting for this all year long, which some astrologers are saying is the official heralding of the Age of Aquarius.
I would love to hear your take on that: Agree or disagree? Why or why not?
Rick: Well, it’s not something I would agree with or disagree with. It’s just something that’s incorrect.
I am here to remind everyone that ages have nothing to do with planetary movement through the signs.
There may be resonance, there may be harmonic glimpses at what this will mean. But an age is very specifically related to the procession of the Equinox.
The movement of Jupiter and Saturn and its conjunction cycle through the signs do not herald, do not indicate, do not mean that we are entering the Age of Aquarius.
But it is the biggest event of this month. And it’s not necessarily the biggest event of the year 2020, but it’s the grand finale. It is the exclamation point.
It’s just the final punctuation mark on a pretty intense, crazy, and transitional year.
Amanda: Okay. Quick question before we go into all the astrology of December.
With all that said about this not being the official transition into the Age of Aquarius, would you still say that we’re moving into an Aquarian flavored time?
Meaning, does the planetary placements indicate that it is still a sign for us to be paying attention to and understanding and working with?
Rick: Under direct interrogation and duress? I would say yes.
These markers are in fact pointers toward this Aquarian energy that we seem to be moving closer and closer to, but we’re not there.
Amanda: Got it. Okay, that makes sense. So let’s talk about December. The grand finale…
Rick: Eclipses, planets changing signs, we have Mars moving direct, making only one traditional aspect all month.
And that aspect that Mars is making is a square with Pluto. And that’s the third square.
Mars has been moving back over these squares to these Capricorn planets. What’s interesting is that when it makes the last direct squares, that the planets will be in a different order.
So it’ll end up being Pluto, Saturn, then Jupiter. And this is what December is about because Mars is already back in the picture, kicking up the storm, making it square to Pluto.
And that’s on December 23rd. That’s right in a mix of events. And those events are very, very profound.
That eclipse that we’re coming up to is on December 14th at 23 degrees of Sagittarius.
During the eclipse, Mercury is trining Mars. And remember, Mars is playing an important role in all of this because Mars will be making these final squares to these Capricorn planets.
But the weird thing is that as Mars makes the final square with the Capricorn planets, two of them will be in Aquarius.
It is setting up this whole scenario that will be with us for the next year or so.
Because in ancient astrology, Saturn is at home in Capricorn and Aquarius.
In modern astrology. Uranus is at home in Aquarius. So when Saturn moves from Capricorn into Aquarius, it begins to pick up on a square with Uranus, the modern ruler of Aquarius.
And this is in play all through 2021. And even through September of 2022.
Saturn represents the tradition, the status quo, the old, the structures, but it’s in Aquarius so we’re getting glimpses of the new.
Uranus is the revolutionary, is the future, the disruptor, but in Taurus, it wants to be practical and it doesn’t want to do anything that’s too abrupt.
And so we’re going to get this dance between the old and the new all next year, which is being set up by this movement of planets from Capricorn into Aquarius.
The movement of these planets in particular, Jupiter and Saturn from Capricorn to Aquarius is what’s mostly significant about December. And that they happen on the day of the eclipse…
What that means is that on December 16th, just two days after the eclipse, Saturn moves Into Aquarius.
Now, when Saturn moves into Aquarius on the 16th of December, it’ll stay there for about 2 ½ years, but it won’t return to Aquarius for another 29 years. It won’t return to Capricorn for another 26, 27 years.
And so this is definitely a shifting in the zeitgeist. But right behind it, on December 19th, Jupiter moves from Capricorn into Aquarius.
On the 21st, which is the first day of winter, which is a Cardinal point in the world of astrology. The equinoxes and the solstices are Cardinal points.
The Cardinal points in astrology are important because they are placeholders that everything turns around. And astrologers often look to the charts of the Cardinal moments of the time.
This particular chart of the solstice has in it the Jupiter / Saturn conjunction. It occurs eight hours after the solstice itself. That’s how close it is. And this is extremely important.
It would be extremely important in any sign, but because this year has been such a whirlpool stagnation, a vicious cycle groundhog day of Capricorn energy, not willing to let us go to what’s next, we replayed the energy from different directions.
And it’s almost like, as this conjunction occurs in the next sign, there’s something that goes… Next.
And that is huge. That is absolutely significant. And it’s significant for many reasons.
And another reason why this conjunction is so significant is that we have to go back to Johannes Kepler.
Kepler, being the crazy mathematician that he was, basically did these calculations for Jupiter and Saturn conjunctions. And he realized that every 20 years when this conjunction occurs, it occurs, roughly a few degrees prior to where it occurred the time before, but 120 degrees away.
120 degrees astrologers recognize as a trine. Trines are elemental. What this means is that for long periods of time, the Jupiter / Saturn conjunction would occur in one element. But each time it was reversing backward a little bit.
And Kepler calculated that it would take 800 years for the Jupiter / Saturn conjunction to reoccur in the sky, in the same place as it was before 800 years.
Now, there’s a lot of excitement about this conjunction. And a lot of the stuff that I’m seeing online is not quite right.
So if there are four elements and the cycle goes all the way around once in 800 years, that means it’s roughly in the same element for 200 years, roughly we are at the point at which the elemental shift has been confirmed.
And when I say it’s been confirmed, it’s not that it’s occurring. It actually occurred in 1980. And a lot of people just forget this. They go, “This is the first time it’s been in air in 200 years”. No, there was a Jupiter / Saturn conjunction in Libra in 1980.
In 1980, the conjunction occurred in Libra, but in 2000 it was back in Taurus, back in earth. So we’ve had this glimpse into air. And now with this conjunction, this kind of sets the tone where the next cycles will in fact be all in air for the next 160 years.
The fact of the matter is that this is a huge deal.
2020, historically, will stand out as an extraordinary year because there’s been a confluence of so many different major cycles that have all been rare, relatively rare, or extremely rare under themselves that have all come into a stream.
December is the punctuation mark. It’s the exclamation point. December does not disappoint.
And we’re not even to the most intense part of it yet, it will be around the solstice, the shift of first Saturn, then Jupiter, then the alignment of the two of them on the solstice itself. And then Mars square Pluto on the day before Christmas Eve.
And then once we move into January, we have Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius, and we have Mars finally moving out of its shadow into Taurus.
And as it moves into Taurus, the first thing it does is it bumps into a square with Saturn and then a square to Jupiter.
And then it conjuncts Uranus. What day? Oh, Inauguration Day. We’re not allowed to talk about that until we get to the January forecast, but that’s all part of December.
I mean, astrologically, it won’t be until Mars clears the squares to Saturn and Jupiter and its conjunction to Uranus that we really can look back and go: Oh, so that was 2020.
And it actually may take decades for us to really understand what the hell happened in 2020.
Amanda: Wow. Okay. So when is, what are the dates in January?
Rick: Mars goes into Taurus on January 6th.
Mars makes the square first with Saturn on January 12th. It then makes the square with Jupiter January 21st and January 20th, factually.
And then it makes the conjunction with Uranus. And so have Jupiter squaring Uranus at the same time. Around January 18th / 19th in that period of time, Jupiter is squaring Uranus with Mars coming in squaring Jupiter and conjuncting Uranus.
This is going to be hugely expressive.
Amanda: So, on December 21st… Jupiter / Saturn.
Is that a Grand Conjunction or a Great Conjunction? And is there a difference? I’ve seen both.
Rick: Although I have no planets in Virgo, it was really important for me to figure out which one was right. And I’m not sure I could.
It appears that Kepler called it a Grand Conjunction. Now, how do you translate a word from German into English and is grand and great the same word?
Then there are people who are calling it a Grand Mutation of a Great Mutation of the Grand Conjunction cycle. I honestly don’t know.
You have to understand, these terms are all new enough, no one has historically defined these. This is stuff that really has not come into existence until the last couple of centuries.
I’ve been referring to this cycle as the Grand Conjunction cycle for years because I believe that’s what Kepler referred to it as. And then, and the change of elements is a mutation of the Grand Conjunction.
Amanda: You say December doesn’t disappoint, would you say January also doesn’t disappoint as a continuation…
Rick: I think January is a continuation. To me, December is like the beginning of the end of 2020, and January is really the end of 2020.
Amanda: All right. So the biggest things we have this month really are starting on December 14th with the eclipse. It’s setting up what’s coming around the 21st.
Would you say that the events, or the things that are happening in people’s lives right now, between the first eclipse on November 30th and the second eclipse on December 14th are the content that’s playing out all month?
Rick: What I’m expecting is a continuation and a building, a crescendo of what’s been playing out and building all year going all the way back to January and maybe even pre January.
I think that this first eclipse kind of set it up. As you know, I have this affection for making up words and for naming things. And I’ve coined the word eclipsicle — the time in between two eclipses.
Amanda: It sounds like a popsicle flavor.
Rick: Yeah, well, it’s a popsicle that I would lick with caution.
Eclipses are portals. They shift the polarity and they can be rather disruptive.
They can be Saturnian, meaning that what’s useful stays what isn’t useful goes, but with a Uranian influence, and that is, it happens overnight, or it seems to happen rather suddenly.
The effects of eclipses are not just the day or the week or even the month of the eclipse. They kind of open up these weird time portals that we can walk through months before the eclipse or months after the eclipse.
And so the fact that this particular eclipse is tied so closely to this transition of Capricorn to Aquarius energy, I think is important.
I think it’s about the lingering, unresolved energies that might move towards some sense of, at least temporary, resolution. But I don’t think of the resolution as long lasting with a Saturn / Uranus square all of next year.
The conflict is definitely, in my mind, between the old and the new, between the status quo and the revolution. And when I say revolution, I don’t mean physical, I don’t mean guns.
I mean a revolution in thinking, a new way of looking at the structures, a systemic overhaul.
Amanda: Okay. So the biggest events… We have the December 14th eclipse.
December 16th, Saturn is moving into Aquarius, with Jupiter catching up with Saturn very quickly after that and moving into Aquarius on December 19th and then catching up on the 21st at the solstice.
And then Mars square Pluto on the day before Christmas Eve.
And then on the 27th, the Sun trines Uranus.
And then moving into January, we have all this Mars action. Mars moving into Taurus on January 6th, Mars square Saturn on January 12th, Mars square Jupiter on January 20th and Jupiter square Uranus between January 18 / 19.
So these are all these big crescendos.
Rick: And the Mars conjunct Uranus itself on the 20th.
Oh. And incidentally on the 20th, within a half an hour of the exact Mars / Uranus conjunction in Taurus, the moon moves into Taurus.
Which means that 12 hours later, the moon will be conjuncting the Mars / Uranus conjunction squaring Jupiter. Kapow. This is a big one.
I just wanted to mention one thing that we didn’t talk about.
The Cancer full moon on December 29th at about 8 degrees of Cancer. It’s squaring Chiron. Chiron is also a player this month. There’s a lot of potential for healing.
It’s almost like the eclipse opens the door. We have to walk through the door, through the portal, in order to reach out and acknowledge other people’s points of view (which can be just as painful, regardless of which side of any issue you’re on).
Acknowledging them so that there can be the potential for healing. Because if we don’t figure out a way to heal some of this riff, we’re in trouble, regardless of who wins any election, regardless of what policies are in play or not.
Amanda: Yes, absolutely. Okay. I have a question for you.
This is also the close of Saturn and Capricorn that we’ve been in essentially for three years.
Rick: Correct. December of 2017.
Amanda: Right. Does it have a significance that we’re closing something here?
Rick: Yeah. I’ve actually given this quite a bit of thought because Saturn has been in Capricorn for almost three years and Jupiter has been in Capricorn for a year.
They’re both moving into Aquarius, which is encouraging us to look ahead rather than behind.
However they’re leaving Pluto for another four years. And so, anyone who thinks that this Capricorn dance is done, Pluto has another four years.
It’s actually during the next presidential election that Pluto is thinking about moving from Capricorn into Aquarius. Pluto’s coming in to clean out the pipes.
And with Saturn and Jupiter there for a year, there’s been a real focus on the hard work that needs to be done. And in some ways, Saturn has held back the process of change. Because that’s what Saturn does. It enforces it, but it makes it go slowly.
Pluto moves into Aquarius at the end of 2024, which is a presidential election year.
Basically, that will be the time when Pluto has finally said, these changes that have needed to happen institutionally, structurally, corporately, governmentally, changes of the decay of capitalism, our banking systems, our roads, our bridges, our… wherever you want to go with it.
When Pluto moves into Aquarius, that work will be done.
But until then, even though Saturn and Jupiter are moving ahead, they’re leaving it in good hands because Pluto ain’t gonna leave anything undone that is undone.
In other words, we’re not getting out of this prematurely.
Amanda: Well, that’s probably good.
Rick: And what’s also interesting is that in that same year, in 2025, not only does Pluto move into Aquarius, but Neptune moves into Aries.
So by 2025, this is a different country.
I mean, okay, It may be a different country than it was a year ago. I don’t mean just even the United States, I mean, around the world.
But the change of Neptune and Pluto shifting signs in 2024 / 2025, Pluto into Aquarius and Neptune into Aries, and right behind it, Uranus comes screaming into Gemini by 2026.
So all of a sudden think about this. We have Uranus in Gemini, Saturn and Neptune conjunct in Aries and Pluto in Aquarius making trines and sextiles with each other.
That’s a completely different flavor than what we’ve had now.
Amanda: Wow. All right. Well, it sounds like we’re all going to be hanging out for a while.
Got a few more years, huh?
Rick: Well, it also sounds like for those of us who make it through 2025, we have some pretty magical times coming up and that may have made these difficult, stressful times worth it.
Amanda: Okay. So we have for the month in summary, this is a big opportunity for healing.
This eclipse portal has opened up a doorway. We have to walk through it and be willing to go into it. But when we do, there is a potential for healing.
And a lot of that is acknowledging different points of view, acknowledging different experiences, different ways of seeing things, different ways of perceiving what’s happening, acknowledging different perspectives.
We have a crescendo of energy of this year. You called it the grand finale. And it sounds like it’s moving into January, but this crescendo energy, we are probably gonna see some inkling of a temporary resolution.
You used the word temporary because the next year indicates that nothing’s really over.
Rick: Yeah. It’s like going to a doctor and getting a drug to make the horrific symptom go away, but you still got something on a systemic level.
That’s not going away yet.
Amanda: All right. And next year we are moving into this conflict between old and new, which is going to hit several times throughout the year and will be one of the major themes for 2021.
Any words of wisdom for all of us as we’re going into this crescendo final act of 2020?
Rick: Keep breathing.
And I don’t mean that from a standpoint of just surviving. I mean that deep, long, strong breathing.
Whether you get that from working out, from pranayama, from fire-breathing, Kundalini yoga, great sex, I don’t care where you get it from, but it’s the breath that basically keeps us present.
And I think that being present is important, but it’s only the ticket in. Once we’re in the show, then the practice is compassion. The practice is kindness.
I love the fact that the Dalai Lama once said, when asked what is your religion?
He said, “My religion is kindness.”
To learn more from Rick Levine, check out his Astrology Hub courses:
Astrology Foundations and The Astrology of Relationships
Get your Horoscope sent to your inbox every Sunday
Subscribe to The Astrology Hub Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or TuneIn
The above interview has been edited for readability, you can watch the full length forecast here: