The Week Above is a weekly astrological "weather report" detailing the major planetary configurations for the week ahead. All times given are in Eastern Time. There will be references to your birth chart and your Sun, Moon, and Rising signs throughout. If you aren't sure of what that means, check out Astrodienst for free online chart drawings, and Cups & Crowns for the basics of how to understand a drawn chart.

If you enjoy my writing and find it valuable, consider supporting me on Patreon. Future posts will feature horoscopes for all twelve signs if certain goals are met. I’m also available for readings.

Sun conjunct Jupiter and Mercury - November 26th - 27th

The Sun’s annual conjunction with Jupiter would, under normal circumstances, be a time for beginning new things, starting new projects, launching new ventures. This time, however, it takes place right in the middle of a Mercury retrograde period. Not generally a great time for those sorts of things.

But Mercury’s conjunction with the Sun at the half-way point of their retrograde cycle is a good time for inward contemplation and deep thinking. Where are you coming from? Where are you going? What’s left to accomplish? In Sagittarius, what’s the greater meaning or grand idea at work here?

Jupiter’s time in Sagittarius over the coming year is filled with opportunities and hopes. A buoyant optimism in spite of things will keep coming through under Jupiter’s influence. A newfound religiousness or spirituality or philosophical outlook is likely to arise. A sense of justice can come through. A desire for travel and adventure may arise.

Spend some time during the first part of this week contemplating your plans for the future. Thinking about what you want to expand in your life. Figuring out your goals and desires for the coming new year. Getting clear with yourself about the next steps on your journey. Write things down.

Just don’t try to put those plans into action right away. You may have big ideas and big goals, but spend some time working out the details with yourself before you try and take them out of the workshop.

Venus opposite Uranus - November 30th

This is the third and final opposition of Venus and Uranus as part of Venus’s retrograde cycle this fall. She’s direct now, but has not yet left her shadow - the celestial territory she passed over during the retrograde. And that territory brings her across the table from sky god Uranus.

The first opposition, with Venus direct, was on September 12th. The second was on October 31st. Look to themes that came up on both of those dates for you, give or take a day. If you see a pattern, it will likely return between November 29th and December 1st. To look for a pattern, don’t think it terms of literal events, but what those events meant to you, or for your path through life. Think symbolically.

Symbolism is likely to be in the realm of sudden shifts, changes, disruptions, flashes of inspiration or insight, endings, or beginnings in relationships, love, sexuality, aesthetics, beauty, worth, or value.

It’s likely to be the easiest transit of the three, as these three-part transits tend to go that way, so if the previous two were stressful don’t fret too much about this one.

Even if you can’t pick out a connecting thread, the symbolism above is likely to show up somewhere, so keep that in mind this week.

Mercury and Venus enter Scorpio - December 1st - 2nd

The skies take on a much more chthonic flavor after this weekend, with the two innermost planets moving into the Scorpion’s dark waters in quick succession.

Mercury, planet of communication, analysis, and transit will not be Scorpio for long. They will station direct there on December 6th, and reenter Sagittarius on December 12th. While they are in Scorpio, however, it is a time of darker truths being told much more readily, and investigation into the shadow sides of things penetrating much deeper.

Venus spent most of her retrograde this fall in Scorpio, and now she returns to finish what she started and sort through what she dredged up. Venus is far from home in this sign, not operating according to her usual way of doing things. She finds beauty in the ugly, harmony in confrontation, love in fierce focus. She wants what she wants and she wants every last drop of it.

On one hand, it’s a time when artistic and romantic pursuits struggle to go according to their usual ways and means. On the other hand, when artists are forced to make use of unwanted materials and lovers are forced to reckon with not very nice truths about their relationships, something beautiful can emerge from the wastage.

It is a time of digging through the trash to discover jewels, and of learning how to be with someone when they’re not surrounded by floating rose petals. It is the time when folks end up having define-the-relationship conversations, aka DTRs, and making use of what emerges from that hard-to-have talk.

Venus will remain in Scorpio until January 7th, at which point she will join Jupiter in Sagittarius, which is a whole new world I’ll tell you about when it comes.