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.

Apologies for being a day late on this one — TWA might be released Mondays / Monday nights for a few weeks. Anyway, on with the blog.

Venus trine Neptune - December 21st

Love can be a grand ideal. Love can be a confrontation with cold hard reality. Love can be both of these things at once.

As Venus travels through Scorpio, she is more concerned with the latter for much of her time here. It is a time when she knows what she needs and is willing to sacrifice what she wants in order to get it. Beauty isn’t beautiful if it’s built on a lie. Heartache happens, but the need to know the truth is more important.

Neptune is on a long, long trip (she’s there until 2026) through Pisces, the sign of Venus’s exaltation. Neptune has great affinity with Pisces, although the jury’s still out on rulership there (a topic for another time). Regardless, anything in Pisces is in a good position to remind Venus in Scorpio that love can be dreamy, that beauty can be unearthly, that something’s value can be beyond measure. The heart feels a bit lighter this week as Venus moves towards her trine with the phantasmagorical planet. Dreams, after all, float.

This transit will affect you most if you have the Sun, Moon, or Ascendant in Taurus, Libra, or Scorpio.

Mercury conjunct Jupiter - December 21st

Mercury is a flexible sort of planet, adapting their style to whoever’s holding them closest at the moment. This works out for them some times better than others, but this is one of the good ones.

Jupiter is big, and friendly, and wants to make it rain on a mortal. He likes to go a bit over-the-top, but he’s generally bringing good stuff where he goes. Mercury, analytical as they are, could use to let their hair down sometimes.

Mercury also is the psychological function responsible for keeping everything organized, which they’re having a hard time doing in Sagittarius. Everything’s so big-picture there and Mercury prefers the detail work. But JupJup drags them up into the clouds to see things with a sky god’s eye view this week, and can make us forget about the little tasks that need doing in favor of what can be held to a Higher standard. Philosophy, religion, and the ideal of justice are JJ’s bag too.

Of note is that this conjunction takes place very close to the fixed star Antares. Antares is one of the most powerful fixed stars when prominent in a natal chart, though his effects are more short-lived just by transit. Antares gives things prominence and high profile, but can also live for the drama and the fight. Expect big stories in the news around this time of fights started for no good reason, possibly over ideals vs. details, big picture trying to harmonize with more day-to-day concerns.

Alternately, if you’re prone to getting into fights with your family, particularly over your beliefs, expect more of those arguments if you go home for the holidays this weekend, and try not to say things that don’t 100% need to be said. But in all honesty, between the Venus-Neptune trine and the Cancer Moon, it’s more likely to end lovingly if your family is a good one.

This transit will affect you most if your Sun, Moon, or Ascendant is in Gemini, Virgo, Sagittarius, or Jupiter, and especially if you have the Ascendant, Midheaven, or an inner planet (anything this side of the asteroid belt) between 8-12 degrees of Gemini or Sagittarius.

Sun enters Capricorn and Full Moon in Cancer - December 21st-22nd

Capricorn season is here, and it starts with a lovely full moon.

The Moon is at home in Cancer, the sign it rules. In Cancer it can do what it does best—care, nurture, cuddle, bake cookies, know its own emotions, have a good cry, have a deep heart-to-heart, be cared for, etc. This weekend is a good time for that. If you’re going to go see family this weekend for the holidays, wait until after the Moon enters Cancer and you’re more likely to have an easier time of it, as opposed to arriving Thursday or Friday.

If you don’t have a good relationship with your family (I’m one of the few people in my friends circle who does, so I understand completely), this weekend is a good time to be your own mom, your own dad, your own cookie-baking aunt. A friendsgiving-but-for-Yule isn’t a bad idea either—be with the people who help you feel whole this weekend.

If you want to get a lil witchy about it, doing a lunar meditation immediately after the Moon enters Cancer (11:28am EST) to help you connect with her energies is pretty juicy timing.

This Capricorn season is the second of three while Saturn is transiting Capricorn, and the South Node is there too, along with Pluto who’s been climbing through the goat’s territory for a while now. The cold in the North should get quite a bit colder, if only in one’s psyche. These are lean times, serious times, buckle-down-and-work times. Think through what you want out of the coming year, and what you’re going to do to get it.

Until next time,

Arthur