Planet Waves Monthly for January 2025
Today's extended readings look at the astrology for January, which starts with the mysterious New Moon conjunct Pholus that I describe in the accompanying article.
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Capricorn Sun + Rising (Scroll down for other signs. )
The Sun enters your sign this year with the reminder that you are truly at a turning point. Everything you’ve ever thought was true about yourself is up for reconsideration. You have made significant progress on several matters related to your family over the past year, and now the lights will come on and you’ll get to evaluate what you’ve learned. Yet more than ever, an evaluation will remind you that you’re at a point of decision. This may seem like the choice to go one way or the other — however that manifests for you. Seen another way, you are choosing between several options that it would be helpful if you articulated. One is to take developments as a matter of fate. Another is to imagine that your life is a quest for survival. A third is to consider that your existence is a creative adventure, and one of the most important ingredients is an element of uncertainty and even a touch of chaos. If you cling to certainty, you will contract your awareness. If you allow for the uncertainty factor and make friends with it, you will feel better and open yourself up to greater possibilities. You will see possibilities that you might otherwise have missed, because you’re perceiving your reality with a broader spectrum of thought and perception. Be glad when you get to a point where you know that a decision is both imminent and necessary. That’s the place to stop and ask yourself: on what basis do I want to make this choice? What would help, and what would hinder?
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About My Horoscopes
My horoscopes offer ideas for how to think about the flow of your existence. I have devoted my life to service and creation — not to survival — and that is what I offer and teach. You have many other options for self-help, though that’s not what I’m offering. My work is more tuned to the wavelength of self-creation, and how to make the most of your potential in these trying times of human history.
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ARIES Sun + Rising
You are about to embark on one of the most exciting years of your life. What you experienced in 2024 was merely preparation, and gave you a push in a certain direction. Check your map and compass to determine just what your heading is. Initially, you will experience the developments in your life as changes to your social environment. You may have a prescient sense of what is about to be rearranged over the next few months, and you will have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve. Yet remember at all times that however dramatic society becomes, the actual changes are being driven by an impulse deep within you. It will be easy to get distracted by the world around you; it will be less easy to maintain your focus on your specific requirements of growth. Yet if you keep your locus of awareness within yourself, you will find it much easier to navigate through the upheavals that are about to take place on the planet, by which I mean in society. The question I am urging everyone to ask themselves involves assessing how overexposure to the digital environment has changed you. It is easy to think that the world has changed, though we have all been impacted, each in different ways. It’s vital that you understand what has happened to you, because much of the theme of the coming few months will be a recovery operation — what might best be described as soul retrieval.
TAURUS Sun + Rising
Do you feel a calling to leadership? Do you have a sense that you’re the one person who can get things done when nobody else can? That may actually be true. It may seem, for now, that others are not quite onto the extent that you feel called to make your mark. Partners — whether in business or in personal relationships — may seem to be stuck in past habits and ways of seeing the world. Yet this condition might be affecting you more than you think. I suggest you monitor closely several different emotions, which include guilt, resentment and jealousy. The problem with these feelings is that they are considered normal and understandable. One could say that someone is not human if they are not experiencing them. But that is merely an excuse. And though it’s never said often enough in our world of endless battles of words, the only leadership is by example. That includes the example of what you do with your feelings. This is about your relationship to the past — and what you feel certain figures from the past have deprived you of. This calls for a reckoning, if you are going to get yourself to a position where your example is worth following. You are, at this moment, seen as a kind of avatar: a manifestation of something far beyond your own personal life. Perhaps that is true, though remember that leadership does not allow for any self-obsession, solipsism or sense of yourself as better. Keep your feet on the ground, and notice how many people are struggling to get through the day.
GEMINI Sun + Rising
Put a pin on the map to mark where you are today. Then consider the many directions you could go from here. On the earthly plane, you have all 360 degrees of the compass rose to choose from. You do not need to keep going in the direction that you are. Therefore, be circumspect. Look around at your surroundings all the time, and consider the possibilities. This includes letting yourself conceive as possible that which you are certain may be impossible. Note your points of frustration. One struggle you might be encountering is difficulty saying what you feel. Sometimes this is easy for you; sometimes it’s slippery and elusive. The challenge at this time seems to be admitting what you feel. There may be something deep that you have to retrieve. You might proceed on that theory. With Mars currently retrograde, you’re likely to make inner discoveries of a very rare kind, which will have the effect of helping you set your priorities. The hangup is likely to involve something your mother told you, or some example she set a long time ago. The thing to look for is where your emotions are driving your choices, rather than your heartfelt values and priorities. The matter comes down to one of entitlement. Is there such a thing? Many people feel that way but have not investigated the truth of the matter. Even fewer can admit their prejudices about how they feel they should be treated. This is where the real work — and your most important process — can happen. Soon you will understand that your real goal is freedom.
CANCER Sun + Rising
This is likely to be the year that you make astounding progress in your professional life. You’ve been working up to this for a while, and many factors are aligning that will increase your call to duty and your confidence level. As a necessary byproduct, you will soon be a much more visible person, and you will also be judged based on the actions that you take. There is no getting around this one fact: your example and the choices that you make will set the tone for many people around you. This condition will increase in a series of steps that occur over the next three to five months — the immediate future. There’s just one way to do this safely, which is to remember who you are — and to be that person at all times. If you are acting like you’re someone else, you will know because you feel unstable. The sensation will be similar to a high altitude with a too-low railing, situated beneath your center of gravity. Part of how you will keep your balance will be honesty, particularly in your home. If you have a clear conscience with the people you live with, you’ll have a more stable and consistent experience outside your home. As the year develops, your visibility will increase and that sense of solid grounding will become increasingly important. Most of the people you see in apparent leadership lack this one property. They undermine themselves with hypocrisy. You are old and wise enough to know this does not work for long.
LEO Sun + Rising
The miracle of the next two years will be a degree of self-discovery you may have never imagined. In the digital age, most people coexist with many obstacles to their growth and self-awareness that they have not identified as such. In sum, existence within the digital realm means projecting everything outside oneself. The screen is the ultimate metaphor for digital life. Being surrounded by them and little else all day makes true self-awareness impossible. Yet many factors will conspire to bring your locus of identity inward. This may arrive with a nauseating sense of the spiritual crisis that has dragged humanity into its clutches, swallowing so much that is good and helpful and human. Though there will be many changes to your outer circumstances over the next 12 months, all that matters is your commitment to understanding your purpose. And if you don’t fully understand now, your desire to know — and to live your life with that as your central question — will protect you from many of the most toxic qualities of life as we are currently living it. Your ability to hold your center will be a source of leadership and a reference point for many around you. As a Leo, your role is to hold the solar system together, and to provide heat and light to everyone who surrounds you. No matter how bright you may shine, this is a humble role to play. You know that if you go astray, many may follow. Be aware of that without fretting or obsessing. Do not dilute the power of self-knowledge, which will be the great gift of this time in your life.
VIRGO Sun + Rising
As the fog clears, you will get a new sense of the landscape of your life. One effect is likely to be that what appeared complex, intricate and fraught with obstacles may start to reveal itself as much simpler than you thought. The world is illuminated with stage lighting and adorned with theatrical smoke. It would be easier to make an honest assessment of reality entirely in the dark. But you don’t need to do that; a clear view is much more helpful. So hold the image in mind of the scene of your life — with the house lights coming on and the scenery and curtains being hoisted up to the rafters — and you will see you have more room to move around. Perhaps this is the time to remind you of a theme associated with the imminent departure of Neptune from your opposite sign Pisces. Such a placement can create the illusion of isolation without it really being there. Now, in the digital age, in the post-covid world, and a planet of people who are frightened of their own shadow, it’s easy to feel like you’re worlds apart. When you look back on this time, you are likely to see that was not really so; and you may wonder why exactly you felt that way. So I suggest you proceed as if the veils have already lifted and the illusion of separation has dissipated. And while you’re on this wavelength, you might size up any emotional or mental habits you have that tend to push people away when they want to come near you. Even if you assess three instances where you’re pretty sure that’s what happened, you will see the pattern and be able to make the appropriate adjustments.
LIBRA Sun + Rising
I promise you one thing: 2025 will be one of the most exciting years of your life. Astrology coming in from every angle seems designed to move you toward your greatest possible potential. Yet if there is one clue I can offer, it’s about considering that what seem to be your external experiences are some indication of what is going on within you. Now, “experiences” are usually one’s responses to life and the environment in which it is lived. The response is much more significant than whatever worldly event, which is always subject to interpretation. The idea “you make your own reality” is much more about how you perceive things than what they “actually” are, which is often difficult to pin down. Many new and unexpected developments will be arising on your event horizon. And it’s essential that you maintain your role as the observer and the interpreter more so than the experiencer or the creator. The highly unusual developments of the next year and a half will bring you many opportunities to leave behind situations that have been problematic, or that you were stuck in. These developments can be used as tools and resources that will provide — if you want — the ability to reshape your external world consistent with a vision that you have within yourself. Therefore, for maximum success, work your way to that idea. But more than anything, experiment with what you want to be real. See it as so, and live as if it’s already true. Yes this is daring. And hardly anyone else is doing it. So be careful whose advice you take, because most people you meet lack the creative imagination to dare. Thankfully, you have it in abundance.
SCORPIO Sun + Rising
At the core essence of Scorpio is fully inhabiting the work you do as an expression of your personal truth. A great many people feel it’s enough to make peace with going to work, and there are others who do so unhappily. You must love going to work, and it’s essential to your wellbeing that your occupation be a true expression of who you are. This necessity, already hankering you all your life, is going to rise to the surface over the next year and a half. And that will come with opportunities to clear your agenda and make new commitments that arise from a deep inner desire rather than some external necessity. Similar influences will be arriving from many directions, including a need to socialize with people with whom you can go to deep places that foster your sense of adventure rather than require that you conceal yourself. You may along the way discover something about the emotional motives that would lead you to conceal your talent and your abilities. You may get closer to the source of the paralysis that feels like the need to do the same thing every day. For you to do something different, you must be someone different. It doesn’t matter whether the chicken or the egg comes first, though action is a form of being. It’s a way to test existence and to experiment with yourself in a way that gets you out of your head — which is your most cautious body part. As the eminent Fritz Perls once said, get out of your mind and come to your senses.
SAGITTARIUS Sun + Rising
Currently you are in a box, and you need to think outside of it. If we are to use the puzzle from which this cliché comes as an example, that means draw one line longer than the box is supposed to be, and then see what your options are. Change your point of view, and see how the situation looks different. Consider what a close partner has to say. Ask yourself how seeming disadvantages can be used to get a positive effect, and how delays can work in your favor: for example by giving you more time to prepare or get other projects out of the way. Currently your ruling planet Jupiter is in a square or 90-degree aspect to its antithesis, Saturn. This is the ‘box’ to which I am referring — but really, it’s half a box; or you might say two legs of the full square. The way that squares work is that you have to take them one element at a time. Jupiter in your opposite sign is saying this is a matter of partnership. Saturn in Pisces is about your personal sense of security, and how you manage your emotions. You may notice that both positions make you averse to taking big chances, one out of fear of disrupting a relationship and the other a matter of confidence. What’s really happening here? To what extent are your perceptions of a relationship and your insecurities limiting your power of choice? And to what extent is this merely an excuse for not wanting to act? That said, you have time to work this out — and the option to use that time well.
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CAPRICORN Sun + Rising
The Sun enters your sign this year with the reminder that you are truly at a turning point. Everything you’ve ever thought was true about yourself is up for reconsideration. You have made significant progress on several matters related to your family over the past year, and now the lights will come on and you’ll get to evaluate what you’ve learned. Yet more than ever, an evaluation will remind you that you’re at a point of decision. This may seem like the choice to go one way or the other — however that manifests for you. Seen another way, you are choosing between several options that it would be helpful if you articulated. One is to take developments as a matter of fate. Another is to imagine that your life is a quest for survival. A third is to consider that your existence is a creative adventure, and one of the most important ingredients is an element of uncertainty and even a touch of chaos. If you cling to certainty, you will contract your awareness. If you allow for the uncertainty factor and make friends with it, you will feel better and open yourself up to greater possibilities. You will see possibilities that you might otherwise have missed, because you’re perceiving your reality with a broader spectrum of thought and perception. Be glad when you get to a point where you know that a decision is both imminent and necessary. That’s the place to stop and ask yourself: on what basis do I want to make this choice? What would help, and what would hinder?
AQUARIUS Sun + Rising
Many factors suggest that you have the freedom to express yourself more than ever. The world has a problem now, which is if anyone speaks freely for more than five minutes, they will invariably say something that offends everyone in the room. (Hence, people tend to do their talking in podcasts, where everyone comes to be offended.) I would propose as a personal goal completely dumping the notion of “offended” and not recognizing it as a valid thought or feeling in everyone. Rather, it’s a big game, which would better be called “justified in being judgmental.” And as with most things, this is described by the very unusual digital problem faced by humanity. We now all live inside a robot, as our humanity is gradually being depleted day-by-day and year-by-year. In 2025, a very large pile of chips is being put on the gambling table, with some of them as bets on the success and survival of humans, and the rest on the success (and supremacy) of artificial intelligence. Yes, many people feel that humans have outgrown our use, so they have taught something else to think for them. I would assure you of this: if a human did not think it, it’s not thought. Your ideas and creative expression are far better than anything a robot could ever do. Yet you’re under constant pressure to concede this may not be true, and that you are replaceable and nobody will know the difference. This is a final attempt to extinguish the human soul, and you know better than to fall for it. But it will take strength and passion to hold your course.
PISCES Sun + Rising
One of the blessings of this year is that some of the pressure you've been under is going to be lifted. The feeling will be the kind of relief where the sound of an engine stops, and you suddenly realize how noisy it was — and you appreciate the silence. Yet the sound of an engine is not an appropriate metaphor as the ‘noise’ has been a silent pressure created first by Neptune starting in 2011 and then by Saturn starting in 2020. It’s difficult to describe the conditioning force of Neptune, which creates all kinds of distortions — particularly of isolation and a sense of invisibility. With Saturn, there is always the pressure to get things done and conform to authority, and you’ve had a good bit of that to contend with in recent years. And Saturn, too, can have a lonely feeling. Yet these transits have changed you and compelled you to square up with yourself. You have taken yet another step in learning how to work effectively under pressure. These planets soon move onto Aries, which opens a new chapter more focused on matters of self-worth. Yet as they leave Pisces, you may notice that you miss something about having the kind of intense guidance and environmental constraints to address major transits that serve as boundaries and as focused lessons. As they end, you are left to be your own teacher and to study independently. Now the experiment is synthesis: creating something within yourself that is entirely new in your experience — new talents, breakthroughs in efforts long made, and more. Your best friends are your curiosity and sense of adventure. Keep them with you at all times.
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These are sitting so well, Eric. May we all awaken to guidance living within us. Thank you. 💫
Thanks for the free pass.