The Week Above - Weekly Astrology Forecast for Jan 5th - 11th 2020

The Week Above is a weekly astrology weather report detailing the major planetary configurations for the week ahead. All times and dates given are in Eastern Time. There will be references to your birth chart throughout. If you aren't sure of what these references mean, check out Astrodienst for free online chart drawings, and this video for the basics of how to understand a drawn chart.

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Void Moons - January 6th and 8th

The Moon is considered "void of course" or "void" for short in the period between it making its last traditional aspect before leaving a sign and it entering the next sign. "Void of course" just means wandering about without direction, more or less.

When the Moon is void of course, actions taken either go nowhere, go in completely unexpected directions, or cause regret, although there are sometimes exceptions. Planning meetings produce plans that have to be thrown out to start from scratch. Things purchased either go unused or otherwise generate regret in the buyer. People met usually are people you never see again, with some exceptions. It's a great time for hanging out without much of a plan and letting things happen as they will. It's not a great time to try to be productive.

The Moon will be void of course for two particularly long periods this week - on January 6th, from 7:08am to 9:11pm EST, and from January 8th at 5:16pm to January 9th at 3:43am EST. Convert to your local time zone to be aware of what times to avoid, for example, doing your grocery shopping - you'll just end up eating out. And maybe work from home on Monday if you're based in the US or Canada and that's an option - not much will be getting done anyway.

Mercury Cazimi, Lunar Eclipse, Uranus stations Direct - January 10th

Uranus's direct station by some measures is the least important astrological event on January 10th, but it's one you'll feel for the week leading up to it and following it so I'm starting there.

Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto don't generally have a significant difference in how they function based on whether they're retrograde or direct (backwards or forwards in apparent motion [motion from the perspective of us here on Earth]) But when they stop in the sky and start moving in the opposite direction - what astrologers call stationing - it creates ripples outward that affect things all around them. Think of it like a groove in the dirt dug by a vehicle stopping suddenly. The bigger the vehicle, the bigger the groove it digs. Uranus is the planet of sudden changes like unto a bolt of lightning. Revolutionary, experimental, innovative, radical, and disruptive, Uranus shakes things up. So expect wires on the fritz this week, and if you have anything important in your chart between 0-5 degrees of Taurus, Leo, Scorpio, or Aquarius, expect those points to feel agitated and impulsive and needing to do something different.

Mercury's cazimi is when Mercury dives into the heart of the Sun, to be burnt up in the Sun's flames and emerge reborn. Happens pretty regularly to Mercury, once every few months, which goes along with Mercury being such an ever-changing guy. Mercury makes two types of conjunction with the Sun - the inferior conjunction when he is retrograde, which places Mercury directly between us and the Sun; and the superior conjunction when he is direct, which places the Sun directly between us and Mercury. January 10th holds the superior conjunction, the absolute center of which is Mercury's cazimi.

The cazimi of a planet is generally a powerful time to go inward with that planet's functions - in this case, analysis and left-brained intellect generally, as well as one's manners of communication and other verbal and mathematical ways of being and thinking. In Capricorn, I'd normally recommend this as a time to do serious long-term planning towards your goals, but it's complicated by the lunar eclipse happening at basically the same time.

So let's talk about that eclipse.

At 2:21pm EST, there will be a lunar eclipse at 20 degrees of Cancer. It's not the eclipsiest of eclipses - if you're in the part of the world where it'll be visible, it'll mostly look like a full moon that gets a little bit darker for a few hours. But the spiritual potency continues nonetheless, if relatively mild compared to a total eclipse.

Eclipse time is a time when capital-F Fate takes over. We plan and the gods say nah, you're doing this other thing instead. "Life grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go" as that Pachelbel's Canon in D cover song once said. Among magicians like myself, it's generally considered the worst possible time to do magic, because it's a time when human will gets overcome by forces greater than us. It's useful to be humble about it - we're not the biggest fish in this pond, and hubris does tend to get punished sooner or later.

So I'd recommend instead of spending time sitting and thinking about your long-term plans, go do your normal everyday thing and let your mind be open to new long-term plans emerging organically from your thought process and conversations with others. It's very likely to go your way in the end, or at least turn into the way you end up going.