The Astrology of 2023 and Beyond

Welcome to your weekly astrological weather. This is your place to get practical guidance for not only surviving but thriving with the cosmic tides. This podcast is brought to you by the Inner Circle, your place to learn Astrology in community with the masters, and transform your life in the process. Well, hello everybody, and welcome to your weekly astrological weather. I am so happy that you’ve decided to tune in for the week ahead,

and actually this week we have something very special. Well, we have a couple things. Very special. Number one, we have the one, the only, the legend, Rick Merlin Levine, who is going to be our astrologer covering not only one week, but the next two weeks. So Rick’s gonna take us through to the end of the year.

And you see that he came dressed for the occasion and dressed for the theme because we are moving into, I’ll let him tell you about the theme and why he said, well, It’s a New Year’s, it’s a New Year’s Eve party. It’s not, we’re we’re not talking about the weeks ahead. Yes, We’re talking about the years behind. We’re outta here.

This is it. Okay, we’ll, we’ll spend the time and we’ll trudge through the mud on the way to the party, but we’re heading for a party, and by the time we’re done with the party, it’s 2023, baby. All right. I want one of those. Rick, that is gorgeous. I love it. It’s so much fun.

Okay, so we will be going into the, the weather here very, very shortly. I just wanted to let you all know that our new reading platform, AstrologerConnect, is open. The only people that have access to it right now are the ones who attended our 2023 forecast event. But if you’re interested in getting a reading for yourself or get gifting a reading to someone in your life,

make sure you get on the wait list because we will be opening up spots as they become available. So go to Astrology Hub dot com slash readings, check out our awesome all star cast of Astrologers, and just make sure you get on the wait list. So you’re first to know when we are open for more readings. And Rick, let’s start, let’s talk about the Astrology for the last two weeks of 2022.

I, I, I can’t do it in costume. I have to. I, I, I, I, it’s, it’s one thing to have fun. Yes. It’s another thing to be a serious astrologer. Let’s get down to Business. And you know how serious I am about This so Serious. Everything. Everything. Yes. Yeah. You know,

it’s kind of, it’s, it’s kind of an interesting couple of weeks. I mean, first of all, just as a matter of record, we’re doing this a little bit out of context because we’re recording this at the end of November. And, and normally we do the week ahead. And so we have a couple of weeks in between today and what we’re actually talking about.

And it just adds to the fact that this is a really special event because it does lack a little bit of continuity. And yet the end of the year should have some cont should have some lack of continuity. I’m sure that many viewers know that the Romans had a special way of celebrating the end of the year, and it was called the Saturny Alia.

And so here we are with planets in Capricorn. The Sun is still lagging in Sagittarius, but it moves into Capricorn very quickly. We’ll talk about that in just a moment. And so we have a bunch of planets in, in, in Capricorn that will then be moving into Aquarius. Saturn is the ruler of Capricorn and Aquarius. And to the Romans these days between Christmas and,

and what we call the New Year, were basically off the calendar. They were, they were party days. There were days when there were role reversals. There were days when, you know, when, when the peasants gave, you know, gifts to the wealthy, everything was turned upside down, and it was certainly a party day, hence our grand finale or great celebration or whatever it is.

But of course, if we’re looking at the Astrology, we’re celebrating something else. And that is, we’re celebrating the end of March, 2020. Now, many people say, what the hell is he talking about? But many of us know that March of 2020 was like the, the month that never ended. It wa it was like everything got suspended because of what some people call the pandemic of Covid.

I call it the pandemic of fear of which Covid was the main symptom. But the fact, whenever you wanna call it, it’s okay with me. The fact is that March of 2020 never really came and went. It just came. And there are people who even today, are still living in the tail end of March of 2020, afraid to go out,

afraid to, you know, I don’t know. It’s, the fear is, is is still rampant everywhere. But I really think that as we push toward the end of the year, there’s a couple of astrological shifts that are significant. And then beyond that, into early 2023, there are a number of other shifts that will move us quickly away from what I’m fondly calling March of 2020.

But what we really mean is the Saturn Pluto conjunction, followed by the Jupiter Pluto conjunction, followed by the Saturn Square, all stretched out over a two-year period. And for years, I know you’ve been getting this to Amanda, I say for years, I actually mean for two years. Every month people say, when is this gonna end? When is this gonna end?

When are things gonna return to normal? Well, I don’t know that things will ever return to normal, because I don’t think they were normal when we look back and think they were normal. And that’s what we wanna return to regardless. I think that, that there is a shift. People, many people already recognize it wherever you are in your personal life,

it seems that November has already been, I mean, there’ve been a number of turning points a along the way, but November has already been a little bit of a marker of we’re leaving something behind and we’re moving into some new game, some new territory, some new dynamic. We don’t know exactly what it is. We don’t know how it’ll play out.

It’ll still have a lot of the crap that we’re bringing forward from the old, but it won’t be March of 2020 anymore. And therefore it makes me want to celebrate. We’re right there with you, Rick, in terms of it being a different flavor of energy that we’re moving into, would you say that it’s, it’s as intense, less intense, the same amount of intensity?

How would you categorize it? Oh, I’m so bad. On multiple choice. I’d go all of the above. No, I, I, I, I think, I think things will be less intense on a grand spectrum. That doesn’t mean we won’t have issues of high intensity. Right. But I think in an overall, look, just looking at where we are on the planet and looking at the trajectory from whatever direction you choose to look at it,

things can’t get less intense because be because the energies have been building, and again, this is, this is what’s the right word? Beyond, I hate to use the word meta just because, but it’s, this is beyond Astrology, this is outside of Astrology. Although the Astrology corroborates it and fits into it, you know, the fact is that as a culture,

as a civilization, as an evolving planetary consciousness, we’ve never been here before. And it’s not, not like just another year or just another decade. The amount of change is so dynamic. And even though for the past couple of years, it seems like maybe we were stuck and there wasn’t as much change. Well, you know, when anyone who’s had kids knows that they don’t grow in an even kind of sense that we have growth spurts.

And the same is true in any sort of psychological development, in any sort of technical development. And in some ways, for a couple of years now, we’ve been in a bit of what a psychologist might call latency, even though there’s been so much going on. It’s like our energy has been siphoned off, sucked off, sapped away, dealing with so many things.

And now as some of those things are just kind of settling a little bit, even if they’re not settling into a place where we would like them to be said to, it’s just like there’s a bit of, maybe we can maintain the status quo now for a bit, which gives us more energy to put toward those changes that have been building that we haven’t seen.

So the intensity of 2023, and really we’re getting a bit of a flavor of it in the last couple of weeks of, of December, kind of as a fractal seed for what will unfold in 2023. Part of the intensity is how much new energy we’re going to be experiencing, which I know is crazy. It’s like some, some people could say,

how could we experience more new energy than we’ve experienced over the couple last couple years? And all I can say is, I don’t know. But we will, You know, it’s interesting. I feel that 2020 and 2021, a little less 2022, but there was a lot of sort of shocking energy. Like, it, it was like things would happen that were just like,

whoa, how is that happening? Is that actually happening? Is this real? It was, it was a lot of disorientation. I feel that was happening. And it sounds to me like we’re still in a period of change and, and, and actually maybe even accelerated change, but that it might not be as like, where you feel like your whole world just got turned upside down.

And E everything is is is backwards. Yeah. Well, look, we’ve, we’ve been in an extended period of time with Neptune a and, and in Pisces in its modern domicile for the last year in and out, we’ve had Jupiter kind of, maybe Jupiter could be considered to be Neptune’s baby brother or something, you know, that those two planets have a great deal of,

of affinity. In fact, I see the affinity, and this is not based upon any specific tradition, but there’s pieces in there. I see the affinity going from Venus to Jupiter to Neptune. You know, Neptune is considered to be the higher octave of Venus. Venus is, I love you. You know, Neptune is, you know, there’s a difference.

Neptune is not individualized and personal, and it doesn’t necessarily have touch. Neptune is agape. It’s Peter Max, for those of you who know the, you know, the psychedelic posters of the sixties and seventies where you had the rainbow and the unicorns running across the planes and you had L O V E. All you need is love to be, that’s,

that’s Neptune, that’s not the nitty gritty of Venus of being in the trenches and, you know, and being involved in a one-on-one, you know, personal and perhaps intimate relationship. And so with Jupiter and Neptune, both in Pisces, we’ve been spaced out more than we usually are. And by the end of the month, remember Jupiter had moved into Aries just as a little bit of a taste,

and then it backed into Pisces again. And, and now it’s turned direct on December 19th, on Monday the 19th. Jupiter is at 29 degrees and 56 minutes. You know, that’s like four minutes to midnight, you know, it’s like, it’s like 29 degrees Pisces in 56 minutes. It’s like, it’s, it’s like right at the tail end. It’s one 15th of a degree from being at the starting point of the Zodiac.

And so when Jupiter moves into Aries, when it did last time, it was just getting its feet wet and giving us a flavor. Now, once Jupiter moves into Aries, it ain’t moving back into Pisces for another 11 years. So this is the beginning of a whole new cycle. And, and Jupiter whizzes through Pisces by by May, it’s on into Taurus.

And so we’re getting some real sweeping energy into, into the new cycle. And even though that, that change doesn’t occur until, until December 20th, or that’ll be Tuesday, yeah, that’ll be Tuesday of, of, I guess this week. It’s weird being a couple weeks out that Jupiter moves into Aries in a way, these last couple of weeks of the year are going to feel like the first couple of weeks of next year.

Mm. Interesting. Do you understand what I’m saying? Yeah. It’s like we’re starting next year, a couple weeks early. Yeah. It’s like, it’s like we’re getting a, a, a, a premature promotion into 2023. And yet what’s what’s odd is that we still have Neptune lagging behind in Pisces. We still have Mars Retrograding, and Mars has retrograded back through a square to Neptune,

but it won’t be until March of next year when Mar Mars is moving direct, that it’ll make that third and final square to Neptune a as the Mars is moving direct. And so I’m thinking that although we get a taste of the clarity in these couple of weeks, we get a taste of what 2023 is. We maybe have some excitement about some of the things that are coming up.

We don’t get it for real until March, April, when a number of planets are now changing signs in including Saturn moving from Aquarius, where it’s been in a Saturn ruled Saturn is at home in Aquarius. It’s been there for a couple of years, and a couple of years prior to that, it was in Capricorn, also a Saturn ruled sign. So by March of 2023,

Saturn is now leaving. That whole heaviness that we had beginning, you know, with the first Covid information releases back in January of 2020. And so we’re getting some real movement forward, but we still have Mars retrograde right now. And on top of that, we have Mercury turning retrograde on the 20 Ninth of December. It’s almost like how close can we get to the new year before we scream?

Don’t make me go there. Be because Mercury having moved into Capricorn, and I wanna back up in a, in a, in a minute and talk about this whole movement from Sagittarius de Capricorn that we’re already deep into. But Mercury spends an, an extraordinary amount of time in Capricorn, like Mars is spending a crazy amount of time in Gemini, Mars is retrograde extends that Gemini period for months for Mercury and Capricorn.

It’s just weeks. Normally Mercury moves through a sign in two weeks. But the, the, the fact is that Mercury moved into whoop there. I’m, I got a little Chart here going, and it just ran away without me. There it goes. So Mercury moved into Capricorn on December 6th, and it turns retrograde. The, the end of the month.

Like I said, it turns retrograde on the 20 Ninth, and that turns, it turns retrograde at 24 degrees of Capricorn, and it retrogrades all the way back to eight degrees of Capricorn where it turns direct on January 18th, but it doesn’t move out of Capricorn until, until mid-February. So we have a weight of Capricorn energy as if the universe or the cosmos is saying,

yes, we know you humans are impatient. Yes, we know that Mars has turned direct. Well, Mars turns direct the first week of January. So Mars is retrograde still, but we’re nearing the end of the Mars retrograde period. We’re getting antsy. We want forward movement and into this. All of a sudden Mercury goes, no, we we’re,

we’re we back, back, back. And it’s like, oh. And so we’re, we’re not quite there, but there’s too much energy that has been building, like the bow has been pulled back, back and back. And even though now Mercury turns retrograde, and we have to pull that bow back a little bit more, it’s like our muscles are tiring.

We tiring, we can’t hold it much longer, and it’s going to release and we’re going to move forward. And that’s the exciting thing about what’s coming around the corner. And so we’re feeling some of that, that energy these days, like, like right now. So we’re gonna start out here on, on Monday, December 19th, and like I said,

a few minutes ago, even though the Sun is in the last degrees of, of, of Sagittarius, and the Sun actually moves into Capricorn, and that denotes the winter solstice in the northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. And, and I’ve had arguments or discussions with people as to whether it’s Solstice or Solstice, and the dictionary has both take your choice,

tomato or tomato. But on the 19th, on Monday, the Moon is in Scorpio. And that Moon in Scorpio is making sex tiles with Venus and Mercury and Pluto in Capricorn and Scorpio. And Capricorn is an interesting sextile because it’s heavy. It, it’s not a lightweight, it’s not a lightweight energy at, at all. And so we’re kind of feeling that energy on the 19th as a background.

And, and the other thing is that, is that on the 19th, there’s a bunch of other noise going, going on. Venus forms a square with Chiron on the 19th. And so we might run into some issues around maybe someone not forgiving us or us not forgiving them. There’s some, a little bit of noise around trying to make something right that isn’t quite,

quite getting there. Venus is certainly highlighted, but between its square to Chiron, and its quincunx to Mars. It’s like, I just did this. It’s like I can hear the chalk on the on, on the chalkboard, and it’s like, I want everything to be pretty and nice and the celebrations and whatever, but it’s like, no, something’s not letting me quite go there.

It’s not, it’s not quite right. Now having said that, Mars does make a sextile with Chiron. And so there is some forward movement, and there’s also a bunch of Quintiles. And for those of you who follow my work, you know that Quintiles are often associated with magic. They’re not always easy, but they’re charismatic, they’re magical. They’re,

they’re, they’re expressive, they’re Venetian, they can be beautiful. And on December 19th, we get a whole slew of them between Mercury, Jupiter and Mars. We get this magical three points on a five pointed star. And so I think the 19th starts off a bit tough, but as the day progresses, we find a way to to to, to really make it nice.

We have Jupiter moving into Aries, and Jupiter moves into Aries on, on Tuesday the 20th. Right behind that, we have the Sun moving into Capricorn. And As, and, and because Aries and Capricorn are square, as they both change signs on the 20th, they both change signs. First Jupiter moves into, into Aries, and then the Sun moves into Capricorn for some people,

that’ll be on Wednesday the 21st, that’ll be the solstice. There’s a square between Jupiter and the Sun, which is about Overexuberance overdoing, huh, over celebrating Party Day. There couldn’t be a better day for a Sun Square Jupiter with one exception. And that exception is we pay the price when we over party. And, and this is a year because of all of this,

where we in fact may over party. The fact is also that the Moon moves from Scorpio into Sagittarius on the 20th and on the 20th at 11:12 PM These are Pacific Times with the Moon moving into Sagittarius and Jupiter moving into Aries, the Moon shrines, Jupiter. And this is, again, it’s, it, it’s who cares how hard a year it’s been?

Who cares what work I have to do later in the week? Yeah, let’s go out, let’s, let’s go have a drink, let’s go bowling. I whatever. I’m, let’s not, please don’t make me go bowling. But, but, but all these things that might have to do with however it is you, you normally celebrate. That’s kind of what’s going on on Tuesday,

even into Wednesday. But on Wednesday, when the Sun moves into Capricorn, I always think of the people say, how can it be that the Sun moves into Capricorn and it’s party time? Well, I think that Capricorn can party, but it has to party according to the rules. In other words, you and I have talked a bit about the Capricorn energy,

often feeling safe when it’s following rules. But the fact of the matter is Capricorn is really the party sign of the Zodiac. Although you wouldn’t know that from talking with many or most Capricorns, but when they get permission to, when it’s that time of year when they know it’s safe. And when I say safe, I don’t necessarily mean, or I don’t only mean emotionally safe.

I mean, when they have permission to, when they know it’s okay to party, watch out for those Capricorns because they’ll be the first to arrive and they’ll be there when everyone else leaves. But, but, so the Moon moving into Sagittarius and the Sun moving into Capricorn on the 20th, we have these amazing kind of uplifting in party days, but we’re taking our partying rather seriously,

especially because the Sun in Capricorn is squaring Jupiter. If we have everything taken care of where it’s okay to let go, I would say that late in the day on the 21st, on the Wednesday, that the Moon actually moves into opposition de Mars late afternoon, early evening in the United States. And we may find that our emotions run away with, with,

with, with our actions. We may kind of just get into something a little bit too deep. And in fact, later in the evening, the Sun makes a square and a half with Uranus. And so late on the night of the 21st, there may be some disruption of some sort that we’re dealing with either at home or maybe even on a,

on a political or, or global global scenario. So that’s Wednesday. On Thursday, the 22nd, early in the morning, and we’re feeling this already on Wednesday, Venus makes a trine with Uranus. This, again, it’s not so much it’s party time, it’s time to do something different. It’s time to, it, it it, it’s a time when your friends can talk you into doing shit you wouldn’t normally do.

It’s a time when you might find yourself attracted to or simply wanting something that you never thought you would want or never had before. And yet, Venus trine Uranus is often a time of, of high adrenaline and excitement. And this is with us through Wednesday and Thursday, the 2020 first and 22nd. And by later on the 22nd, by the evening of the 22nd,

the Moon having moved through Party Animal Sagittarius arrives in Capricorn. And now we have the Sun and the Moon and Venus and Mercury and Pluto, all in Capricorn. That’s five planets in Capricorn. And in fact, that leads us up to the new Moon on Friday morning at 2:16 AM and that new Moon on Friday morning, and that 2:16 AM again, is Pacific time.

So it’s 5:16 AM in New York. And, and just after midnight, if you happen to be lucky enough to live next door to Amanda in Hawaii, this new Moon in Capricorn is an, an intriguing new Moon because it is square Jupiter. Remember, the Sun has been squared Jupiter, it’s still only one degree away. The Moon comes sweeping through that the Moon squares Jupiter.

Again, these are Pacific T Coast Times. The Moon Squares Jupiter at 12:13 AM just after midnight on Friday, late Thursday night, early Friday morning, and then the new Moon just a couple of hours later. It’s almost like, again, we wanna follow the rules, but we are tempted to overdo over, expand over-indulge. This is the theme again and again and again.

And in fact, by later in the day on Friday the 23rd Jupiter forms a half square with Uranus. Now, this is something that’s really been cooking, and I took it, I I, I used some words around this earlier without actually saying, you know, what, what it is. But this is the growing Jupiter through doing things different, we’re attracted this year towards not doing things the same way we wanna look at maybe every year for our entire lives,

our parents, and then we have always made ham at a certain recipe for Christmas. And this year, you know, we decide to have, you know, Philly cheesecakes and or Philly, you know, what is the steak sandwiches? Philly steaks? Yes, that’s it. Thank you. Philly cheese Cheesecake. But there’s also a steak, there’s also some sandwich that’s not,

it doesn’t, Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s Philadelphia cheese steak. I think. Oh, what, whatever it is. I’m sure I’m gonna piss off all the Philadelphians, and I’m so sorry. But, but at least I didn’t run for senator in, in, in Pennsylvania without living there. Regardless. The fact of the matter is that I,

I, I think we wanna do things differently. We wanna, we, we wanna shake it up, and the more we can shake it up, the better it’s gonna be. Because part of what this holiday season is about is not doing everything the same old, same old way. It’s about breaking, breaking tradition. And that doesn’t mean trashing tradition.

It, I mean, in fact, we can break tradition with great respect and still honor the tradition and just do things slightly differently. You know what, Rick, it seems like a great opportunity to upgrade tradition too. You Know, that that would be, that would be a, a more capricornian expressed, sane way of doing it. Yes. Yeah.

I mean, I, I’ve felt that that pull for many holiday seasons now. And as a Capricorn, I love the traditions. I, it, it’s like, it, it, there’s something about it that’s so comforting and nostalgic and beautiful, and there’s certain things that we’ve always done that I’m like, why do we do that? That’s just like,

it’s not even that fun. Or it does it, it’s lost all its meaning or it’s lost, you know, the inspiration. So this May surprise people, but I actually love tradition also. And anyone who knows my Chart knows that I have Jupiter in Capricorn. And so when all these planets move through Capricorn, I’m, you know, I’m, I’m into it.

Well, you’ve, you’ve upgraded many Christmas carols with your astrological, basically Rick has gone through, I don’t even know, 20 Christmas carols. No, I, I, I a bunch Rewritten them with an astrological lens and they’re awesome. But, but this year we’re gonna be able be, because Mercury does turn retrograde during the holiday season, and I have to the town of Oli,

the Song of o Little Town in of Bethlehem, you know? Oh, Mercury retrograde da. Yeah, so good. Yeah, yeah. Maybe, we’ll, maybe we’ll get that played for you guys someday. Anyhow, so that brings us to the, to to Christmas weekend, to the 24th Christmas Eve Day. And we have the Moon still moving through Capricorn,

which means that the, the Moon will conjoin Venus and Mercury and Pluto all through the 24th. And so I think that we’re gonna have a lot of work to do on Christmas Eve day. Now, I know for many people they do every year, but this is different. There’s something about having to ha having to make sure that things are in order for some reason,

more so than what we normally do. We do have a midday Venus quintile Jupiter, which to me is just a magical aspect. I mean, that is, you know, again, I’m, I’m trying to focus on some of the party aspects. Venus and Jupiter are the greater Jupiter, Venus, lesser benefic. And when they make a quintile between them,

it’s almost like Venus. It’s, it’s like Venus is getting Jupiter’s permission to party even more. So I’m looking at the Christmas Eve events as being quite significant. As we get closer toward the evening, we also have Mercury sextile Neptune, and this allows us to bring in the, the celebration that’s based upon fantasy dreams. You know, it’s the Christmas wish,

it’s the, you know, make-a-wish and anything can happen, kind of a thing with Mercury sextile Neptune. And yet also, we’re not just often Playland, because remember the Moon moving through Capricorn started with a conjunction to the Sun yesterday, the, the new Moon. And then today on the 24th, the new Moon conjoined Venus and Mercury, by the evening time that Moon in Capricorn will catch up with Pluto.

And what that means is that we actually will have a Moon Pluto conjunction, which intensifies our emotions and can create a, a, a great deal of volatility. It’s not, it’s not an easy one, but it doesn’t last long. And, and it’s late in the evening, so some people might already, you know, be be asleep for that period of time.

But I, I think the day before Christmas, the 24th, is overall it gets two thumbs up in my review for, you know, potential fun on Sunday, on Christmas. Great. Cause I remember a very different story last year. Remember Christmas Eve Eve, December 23rd, That was the last of the ju of the Uranus, of the Saturn Uranus squares.

Yes. And that was, I mean, the whole holiday season was basically covered. I, I mean, colored by that transiting. And I know a lot of people had a very, very, very difficult, intense, yeah, Christmas and New Year’s and holiday season in general last year. So I’m happy to hear that this year. The energy feels a lot different.

Well, we also have those planets in Capricorn. The Moon does it on the 24th, but over the next day or two, Mercury makes a sextile with, with Neptune, then Venus makes a sextile with Neptune, then the Sun makes a septile sextile with Neptune, it’s Almo. And, and then as three of the four planets move from Capricorn into Aquarius,

they’re all gonna make sextiles with Jupiter. So we have some very sweet aspects coming up, including on Sunday is a pretty quiet day. Astrologically, interestingly enough, it’s much noisier on Christmas Eve day than it is on Christmas day day. Can you do that? Christmas day? Day? Doesn’t matter. We do have the Moon trying Mars mid-afternoon, and we have the Moon Square Uranus later in the evening.

So there’s a little bit of action. But basically this is, there’s, there’s nothing hugely significant happening on the 25th or the 26th. Now, on the 26th, because the Moon is moved into Aquarius, the Moon actually moved into Aquarius late on Christmas Eve at 11:13 PM For some people it won’t be until Sunday on Christmas day, early, very early in the morning.

But as the Moon moves through Aquarius by Monday the 26th, that Moon will reach Saturn in Aquarius. And so we’ll have a Moon Saturn conjunction, and that might be a little bit of post holiday. I shouldn’t have eaten so much. I shouldn’t have drank, drank so much. I shouldn’t had so much to drink. I should have gone to bed earlier.

I spent too much money. You make up your own story. But the moon’s, the moon’s conjunction to Saturn mid-morning on Monday is certainly a bit of hangover. And I don’t necessarily mean an alcohol hangover. It’s a good time hangover. I don’t mean it’s a good time. I mean, it’s a hangover from having too good of a time. All right,

by Monday evening at 11:33 PM again, Pacific time, the Moon moves into Pisces and we get a bit of softening of the energy. There’s not a lot else happening on Tuesday. We’re kind of in a period of quietness. And as many people know, astrologically, when there is quietness, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we are quiet, because sometimes it’s the quiet that allows the stuff that’s been fomenting and,

and bubbling and, and in turmoil. But we don’t get to express it on Christmas Eve, cuz there’s so much happy Jupiter, so much this, so much. And now all of a sudden we get a couple of days of a bit more quiet and, and it’s time for, you know, the proverbial whatever it is to hit the spinning device that splatters it everywhere.

No, it, and, and I don’t think it’s quite as serious as having anything hit the fan, but I do think that by Tuesday there is a, a either a separation from the party energy and, and yet there’s a quietness where stuff can come up and some of the stuff can come up. Some of the stuff that can come up, interestingly enough,

may be having to do with dreams and fantasy. Why do I say that? Because late on Tuesday night and or early Wednesday morning, depending where you are, Venus forms a sextile with Neptune. I talked about that earlier, that the planet’s wood one by one make those sextiles to the Neptune. And when Venus makes a sextile with Neptune, this is about a sweet fantasy.

This is, again, this is about a dream. And, and, you know, dreams are sometimes we’re, we’re we, we get down on fantasy because it doesn’t lead anywhere or that’s just a pipe dream, that’s just a fantasy. But let’s say that when Venus sextiles Neptune late on Tuesday the 27th, and on into Wednesday, the 28th morning,

that those dreams actually can lay a desire down for us to then want to make it real. Remember, a dream is elusory, but an illusion does not have to be untrue. It’s tricky languaging, an illusion can manifest as truth. In fact, many of the most important events in our lives that manifest begin as illusions, they begin as dreams. So we can’t just pass that off.

Now, as a punctuation mark on that, by Wednesday mid-afternoon, the Sun makes a half square with Saturn. And this is a bit of disillusionment. Now, for those of you who go, oh, bummer, I was lost in my fantasy and now I’m disillusioned. Disillusionment is required. If you’re gonna make a dream real, it’s all it means is it takes the illusion out of the picture.

And unfortunately, sometimes when the dreams of illusion precipitate into the three-dimensional world, Saturn, they’re not as pretty as they were when they were dreams, but they’re real. And so to be disillusioned with the reality of what our wish was is better than still being in an illusion. So that’s kind of where Neptune’s energy cooks. And because the Moon moving through Pisces catches up with Neptune,

I think Wednesday is a day of back and forth between fantasy reality, fantasy reality. And if we can be aware of that, and if we can work that energy, then we can make something of our fantasies. Meanwhile, we also have on Tuesday and Wednesday we have Mercury slowing down. Mercury having reached 24 degrees of Capricorn Mercury turning retrograde on Thursday the 20 Ninth beginning,

its three week. I always find it funny. I always wanna say that it does the moonwalk, you know, because, you know, I think of Michael Jackson walking backwards. So it’s like Mercury does, the moonwalk never sounds exactly right. It sounds like confusing the images, but when Mercury looks like it’s stepping backwards, this is a time to focus on those intellectual things that might not be making as much headway as we would’ve liked.

Because Mercury retrograde is far from a bad thing. Mercury retrograde should go out and hire a public relations firm so that it can clear up all the misconceptions about Mercury retrograde bummer. Don’t buy a computer, don’t buy a card, don’t take an airplane trip, don’t go to the movies, don’t do this. Don’t sign any contracts. God, it’s retrograde for almost two and a half months out of the year,

you know, three times three, like nine weeks a year or so. Mercury is retrograde. And, and I know of people who some of the most important events in their life have occurred when Mercury is retrograde. The thing is that when a planet is retrograde, and we, I covered this pretty, in pretty great detail in Astrology foundations, which as I know most of us know,

is still available, you know, at through Astrology Hub. But when a planet is retrograde, it looks like it’s going backwards, like Mars is right now in the sky, but it’s not really going backwards. It’s an optical illusion because we lose our perspective cuz we’re close to it. And therefore it, it, it, it looks like it’s moving backwards against the backdrop,

but it’s not. However, what it is, is that it’s closer to earth than it is at any time in its normal cycle. So when Mars is retrograde, Mars is close to earth. And in fact, over these next couple of weeks, if you go out and look at Mars in the nighttime sky, it’s as bright as it ever gets.

Why? Because we on Earth are on the same side of the Sun as Mars. And in fact, we’re in a close line. So that if you draw a straight line from the Sun to the earth and to Mars, it looks like Mars and the Sun are in opposition and they are. But we’re all on the same side of the Sun. So we’re close to Mars as we normally can get.

So Mars is bright and Mars is like, all planets are like radio stations. Mars is anger. People are getting angrier easier than they normally do when Mars is close to earth. You know, countries yell at each other and send more nasty messages and people say meaner things and people start boundary wars and people actually create fighting, even though there’s rarely, if ever a time when there’s not a war or fighting going on on the planet when Mars is retrograde,

whatever it is that’s going on heats up even more. And we are certainly seeing some of, of, of that. But when Mercury retrogrades as it will on starting the end of on Thursday, the end of the month on Thursday, December 20 Ninth, what happens is that our mental processes heat up because Mercury, the planet of mental, the pro the planet of of language,

the planet of interactive communication becomes more active. And what that means, it’s like everything happens interactively. Like we’re in rush hour and in rush hour strange things happen. We get stuck on freeways and we run outta gas cuz we didn’t know we’d be stuck on the freeway for four hours or during rush hour. If you think of rush hour in the phone system,

in the old days, there were wires that carried all the messages back and forth. Obviously we’re wireless now, but during rush hour when the phones got busy, the wires could heat up and they could burn fray during rush hour, a bridge might even collapse because of the weight of the bridge. So what ha so Mercury retrograde is not bad, it just intensifies communication and it shows us where our communication links may be weak.

You know, they say it during Mercury retrograde, don’t sign a contract. That’s such bullshit. What it really means is that during Mercury retrograde, we’re so excited that when we get the contract, we don’t read it, we just sign the damn thing done. And yet, if you’d taken the time to read it, like you would normally do when you got a contract,

you go, wait a minute, this doesn’t make any sense, this isn’t good for me. And you’d negotiate it and you’d take it out if need be, and then you’d sign the contract. So what the, the bad decisions that we make when Mercury or retrograde, when Mercury is retrograde are simply because we feel like there’s so much going on that if we don’t do it now,

if we don’t sign it now, if we don’t say it now, we’re never gonna get a chance. So it’s a good time to just cool our jets and to realize that it may take us longer to get that purple Porsche that we’ve wanted because this one may have a problem and we may not find out that problem until we get it home, unless we can make an arrangement to drive it around for a day or two before we buy it.

So Mercury turns retrograde December 20 Ninth on the same day, actually just an hour before the Moon moves into Aries. Now remember, Jupiter has just moved into Aries a week ago, and now the Moon moves into Aries at 2:36 AM and that’s on Thursday the 20 Ninth. And at 4:11 AM just a couple of hours later, the Moon catches up to Jupiter. Now granted,

this is middle of the night for some people, but it may be worth getting up for why to make a wishlist to state your intentions to do something that in some way catches that energy of the Moon lining up with Jupiter. And even if you’re an hour or two or three or five hours late and you do it first thing in the morning, you can still catch that growing energy.

It doesn’t have to be at the exact moment of the conjunction, but with the Moon and Aries, there’s that sense of wanting to take a risk and do something new. And what’s really exciting is, on that same day, again, just another hour or so later, Mercury now retrograde backs into Venus. So we have kind of a weird deal with Venus and Mercury that have been moving together for weeks,

but Mercury, which is normally way faster than Venus and will separate away from a conjunction to Venus, that Mercury joined up with Venus last week, and then it stopped it to go retrograde, and now it’s retrograde joining up with Venus again. And so this is also a tremendous period of time for being able to give voice Mercury, even though it’s retrograde to what it is we want to,

our desires to our needs. And this is still all on Thursday, Mercury turning retrograde, the Moon moving into Aries, the Moon joining up with Jupiter, making it even bigger and Mercury as it’s stationary, retrograde, hanging out with Venus and, and both that Mercury and Venus making a square and a half to Mars something doesn’t feel quite right as to how we’re gonna make it happen.

We don’t need to make everything happen that we want, but we can still give it voice. That’s the important thing here. Then on Friday, December 30th, the Sun moves into a quincunx to Mars. Oh, I don’t know, is it we, I don’t want the year to end or I’m not ready. Taxes isn’t right. This isn’t right. The New Year’s Eve party that I was gonna have,

I’m not ready for it. I don’t wanna go. There’s something here with the Sun Quincunx Mars that’s basically saying, I’m irritated, I’m annoyed, I don’t wanna party. Yes, I get that this is a big party day or getting ready for it, but it’s just, it is, it is just something isn’t quite going right. And I may get into an argument with someone that’s an irrelevant,

unimportant argument that blows up in, in, into something that then leads us to Saturday, which is New Year’s Eve Day. See there we can do that, right? That’s New Year’s Eve Day on Saturday. We start off very early in the morning with some Moon squares. The Moon in Aries is making squares to the planets in, in Capricorn uncomfortable.

But then the Moon at 9:08 AM Pacific time, the Moon moves into Taurus. The Moon loves being in Taurus, especially for a party day because it gives us the stability to relax and to be able to enjoy ourselves. In fact, by midday that Moon is forming a semis sextile to Jupiter, which again, is a connection to that kind of buoyancy in the optimism and the overdoing.

And yet by as evening approaches, we realize that everything is a bit more serious than it seems because, because as the evening approaches, we have Venus moving into a conjunction with Pluto, end of Capricorn. You remember, Venus at the end of Capricorn Venus will move into Aquarius on January 2nd. I mean, that’s, that’s just a couple of days away.

And Pluto will move into Aquarius in March. That’s just a couple of months away. And so we’re at the very tail end of that Capricorn energy, that energy about structure and stability and, and, and making things work. And Venus joining up with Pluto on New Year’s Eve. It’s not necessarily anti-party, it’s just anti meaningless party. It doesn’t wanna just go out and drink and make noise and,

and be distracted. Venus conjunct Pluto wants to get to the meat of it. It wants to get to the nitty gritty. It wants to get it, it, it wants to find that jugular vein of emotional intimacy or of meaning for life. And so all I can say is that if you’re thinking about playing or partying on New Year’s Eve, put something together that is serious.

It doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. In fact, it can be more fun and meaningful than anything else. But Venus conjoining Pluto on New Year’s Eve, and it’s exact at 9 30, 9 20 4:00 PM Pacific Time. So it’s 11 tw it’s just after midnight on the East coast in Hawaii. It’s a little bit earlier in the evening still. But the fact of the matter is,

if you don’t put something together that supports the, your desire for the level of intensity and meaning, you will end up being dis disappointed. So going out of the year is a very interesting thing because that Venus Pluto basically says, I’m taking this more seriously than I normally take a New Year’s Eve. I wanna use this as a marker, as a separation for what was as,

as a heading into what will be for those people who do New Year’s resolutions, they may be more, oh, what’s the word I’m looking for? They may, may be more, they, they may attack it in a more serious and respectful manner than normally than just making, than just making a a list. And that brings us up to Monday,

January 1st. Is that Sunday January 1st? It is Sunday, January 1st, which is still within our week. And so I, I don’t think I would get paid if I didn’t talk about that last day of the week because the, the Moon is still in Taurus all through, all through Sunday, January 1st. And that’s a good day to laser around. Hey,

the Moon will be trining, the Sun, Moon and Taurus Sun and Capricorn. And you know, this can be a really lazy day except for the fact that by two o’clock in the afternoon, 1:52 PM actually Pacific Time, the Moon moving through Taurus catches up with Uranus and Taurus and it might want a little bit of action. And when I say a little bit of action,

it just wants to go do something. It wants to turn something upside down. It wants to, you know, go out and, and take a walk. It wants to go sh it, it just needs something, it needs something mid-afternoon and then it settles back down again. And by evening, Mercury is making that sextile to Neptune. We talked about that earlier because Mercury did it on a direct and now it’s doing it on a retrograde.

And again, we’re back in fantasy land. And so it’s almost like on New Year’s, let’s see, this is not New Year’s Eve Day, this is New Year’s Day Eve. No, no, no, this is New Year’s Day. This is, but I know, but we’re, but it’s in the evening that I want to talk about it.

Whoa. So the night, the night before New Year’s Day is New Year’s Eve, right? And that evening is New Year’s Eve Eve, Right? On New Year’s Day, that evening is New Year’s Day E Exactly. There you go. I think I’m correct language wise here. Yes, regardless on Sunday, January 1st, as we get closer and closer to the evening,

as Mercury backs closer and closer into that sextile with Neptune, it’s almost like we can get more involved in the dreams and the wishes and the fantasies that we would’ve liked to have on New Year’s Eve. But the seriousness of Pluto Venus wouldn’t let us. Now we get to go there. Rick, everything that you’ve shared illustrates that we are in new territory.

I don’t, I can’t remember a end of year holiday forecast with this much a celebratory kind of party energy, but, but I’m getting what you’re saying. It, it’s not just frivolous partying. It’s, it’s reconsidering our traditions and, and upgrading them. It’s actually making intentions that we’re gonna keep, you know, there’s a seriousness around it. It’s having a party,

but having it, you know, have some sort of depth to it and have some sort of, you know, going beyond the surface. So it, but at the same time, there is a lot of let’s party, let’s let’s do the things that we Treat Yeah, yeah. There is, We wanna do around the holidays, which I feel like for the last few years we haven’t really been able to do because the energy has been so different.

Yeah. So I, I I agree with that completely. And again, you know, this is setting the stage for, in January when Mercury and then eventually Venus and then eventually the Sun all move outta Capricorn into Aquarius. They’ll all catch up with Saturn and Aquarius. It’s another round of review and of heaviness and of seriousness. But once they’re on the other side and they’re moving on into Pisces and then they’re moving into Aries,

Jupiter’s and Aries, Chirons and Aries, and there’s, and, and, and then right behind that, you know, Saturn is gonna move out of Aquarius into Pisces, and then we’ll get a taste when Pluto in March also moves outta Capricorn into Aquarius. These are bigger changes that are much longer scale changes than the pressures that we’ve been dealing with that are more focusing the big changes onto now.

Now we’re getting to focus the now onto a longer trajectory. Mm. Wow. I can’t think of a better astrologer to help us usher in the new year Oh. To help orient us into this new time that we’re going into. I mean, there’s such, such, it’s so nice that we’ve had continuity with you because you really have walked us through via the Cosmic Connection,

which is the other show that we do on the podcast together. You’ve walked us through the months and months and months since March of 2020 and so to be at this point. And for some of those months we didn’t really march through them, we just trudged along in the same place. It’s like, what’s new? Nothing. We’re still here. What’s,

what’s new? Nothing. We’re still here. What do you see next month? Is it getting better? It may seem like it is, but it’s not. I mean, and it just, it just kind of went on like that for forever. I remember you saying many times to our community, just hang in there. Like, it is really hard right now,

but don’t give up, keep going, keep, you know, just it’s, it’s gonna be okay eventually, but right now is really hard and just keep Going. Winston Churchill said when walking through hell keep going. Wow. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think a lot of people would agree that it, it has felt like that on many levels and it’s really,

really nice to be in this new, it just, it feels new. It feels, there’s like a sparkliness to the energy that we haven’t had for a or lightness, you know, just like a, hey, we’re, we’re, we’re onto something else, which is great. So Rick, thank you very much for being here with us as we move into the new year.

Thank you for covering two weeks, not just one. And just so you all know, It just seemed like a l just seemed like one long week. It was one long week for sure. But we will not be releasing a new episode that last week in December. We are actually going to take some time off, which is something that we rarely do here at Astrology Hub,

but we will, we wanted to make sure you were covered even though we’re gonna take a little time off. So that’s why Rick generously volunteered to do two weeks instead of one. And I’m just grateful to be here with all of you. Thank you for being with us. Whether or not you came into our communities at some point during this year, or you’ve been hanging out with us for years,

we’re very, very grateful for you and your presence and your curiosity and interest in Astrology. And thanks for choosing us as a place where you come to for, for insight and guidance and inspiration. So we love you. Thank you, Rick. You’re the best. Thank you so much for the Old acquaintances, whatever that Is. May old acquaintance be forgot.

Why? That’s kind of sad. Yeah, let’s not, let’s, let’s sing your Christmas carols instead, Rick. Maybe, maybe on another episode here. Here’s here’s To the future. Here it, here’s to it. Thanks everybody for being here. Happy Solstice, happy holidays, and we will see you in 2023. Take care, everyone.