Time for another astrology column from yours truly. At 5:51 am on January 30, the Sun will enter Aquarius II, and a new Decan will get underway. Best to be prepared.

Well. That’s how it looks to you, the reader. In point of fact, I just published the Sun in Aquarius I column about five minutes ago, and I’ve started writing the Sun in Aquarius II column — or at least setting it up. That means finding the picture in my archives that’s shown at left, an image of the personification of Astronomia from a diagram of the Seven Liberal Arts; creating the chart from iPhemeris software by using a screen-shot program; and laying out the text framework of Planetary Positions and Horoscopes by Rising Sign, and all those bits and pieces that help make this column work. It’s all about moving heaven and earth between when I started this column, and when you read it.

Curiously enough, that’s the name of this Decan in Austin’s book, Heaven and Earth. It’s the place where the current, writer’s present, begins to zipper into a future that is still ten days away… and where your reality as readers merges with my reality from ten days ago. It’s an odd experience, discovering how the ongoing stories that I read in the stars has gone on to become part of your experience ten days later on Earth.

Planetary Positions

We open this Decan with the Ascendant in Capricorn, nestled among the South Node and Jupiter above the horizon, and Pluto and Saturn below. We’re urged to keep the big picture in mind in a public way — but re-size and re-assess our genuine limitations in private. The flavor of these ten days is also going to touch on the wild wastes of untamed earth, and it will bring changes and mutability to the very grounds which we walk. The upper part of the First House, centered in the first and second Decans, indicates that we’re likely to find out where the bodies are; and we’re likely to see new structures rise over those bodies — partly to conceal, and partly to celebrate, the lives of the fallen. (As I write this, piece by the way, the screens in the airport are filled with the news of the death of Kobe Bryant and his young daughter, and it seems like every third person is walking by in a blue anti-contagion mask — the start of this decan is four days away in my timeline, and the news is full of stories of bodies: people falling out of the air, and people dying from a lack of air. New structures and strategies might be in place shortly, but change is definitely coming.) The grimmer outer planets, Pluto and Saturn, continue to occupy the Throne — in one sense commanding and directing change from above, and in another sense reducing greatness to compost.

The Sun, of course, is in the second decan of Aquarius at this moment, co-present in Aquarius with Mercury in the third decan (called “The Knot”). Our minds are wrestling with knotty and complicated problems right now, and it’s likely that their flavor will be that of money matters and moveable property — the indication is that it will be a weighty matter and mentally challenging to work out finances, due to the Sun’s detriment intros sign. The Suzerain of Intelligence Perfectly Applied (one of Mercury’s multivalent titles) ties themselves in knots these ten days ahead, trying to make sense of what must still be done.

Moving on to the Third House, we find Neptune and Venus in Pisces here. We’re likely to find that our creative lives branch out into new fields, and that we have a chance to develop new creative optionality for ourselves. However, the square with Mars from Sagittarius creates potent and burning provocations which are likely to be troublesome. The warrior planet’s own position in Sagittarius is not particularly favorable — trapped in 12th house loneliness, he’s nonetheless planning a comeback in the near-future: the champion boxer welcomed to the wild underground fight club of Capricorn.

Uranus hangs by himself in the realm of pleasures — our ordinary forms of happiness, food and drink and music and sex, dancing and drugging and living it up, face some significant upheavals (or upchucking… are you planning on too many celebratory nights in a row?). Prepare for a little enforced moderation if you’re usually a party animal; or more than a few late-night shindigs and a fair bit of ecstatic hullabaloo if you’re normally an early-to-bed/early-to-rise kind of person.

The Moon, waxing and in the First Mansion and the Fourth House, signals a growing light in the realm of house and home. In the next ten days, a significant clean-up and clear-out is needed in your household, in order to make room for what must come in — signified by the two stars Al Sharatain and Menarism, the Two Signals of the first Mansion, which indicate both creation and destruction. (Sidereally, the Moon is the 27th Mansion, indicating ruin or damage to household goods — and the image is a winged figure holding a sieve and a bone. Don’t invest too much in money-pit style repairs to your home until later in the month, and don’t put clothes or furniture in the trash, until you’ve checked those pockets and drawers thoroughly).

Rising Sign Horoscopes

Our Ascendant is in Capricorn this time around… a lot of things are going to see their beginning in the next ten days, but you’ll feel like it’s a scramble to finish, or you’ll find that they continue on into the next Decan… or three. It may take a while for the big things that begin, this time around, to wind up and complete themselves.

Capricorn: The lords of old surround your royal throne,
to do your will and carry out your scheme;
but some bits they change — some they keep unknown;
to serve some plan that leads astray your dream.

Aquarius: Your wealth and your self are hardly the same;
take care that one becomes not the other —
nor linger long in chains of secret shame;
win praise for helping friends in bad weather.

Pisces: All you create is revolting your kin,
while your friends drown in their own private storms.
New learning incites a broad public grin,
while siblings review their neighborhood norms.

Aries: New set-up at home awakens your soul,
though work demands (and requires) your all.
a friend’s tangled stresses singes like coal;
play puts your purse near the edge of a fall.

Taurus: Upheaval begins to wrangle your fun:
you can loose on earth what heaven’s knotted.
Practice begins where the learning was done;
event staff answers to one who’s plotted.

Gemini: When you do the work, the money arrives,
as people look to you to unmoor their boats.
That means revving your own creative drives—
and stay ashore while duty weights your coats.

Cancer: Night brings troubled head, though day-fun earns cash.
your work needs slash-and-burn, in black and white.
Spouse takes the throne of a kingdom of trash,
charting a course toward a vision unknown.

Leo: A measure of power is out of your hands,
shining a light on one with tangled speech;
Only work and home obey your commands;
steady love and career seem out of reach.

Virgo: The love of creation becomes your wife;
wealth’s discovered in company with friends.
the jesses of home are burned off in strife;
dream-trip starts — pleasures meet with destined ends.

Libra: Two fires sparkle in a lover’s fresh heart:
destroying comfort, and forging anew.
Some honor and money your friends now impart;
home and career stick together like glue.

Scorpio: A set of long-deserved gifts come your way:
siblings long for helping hands and relief.
You can burn cash for each pleasure or play;
what work makes and destroys, just beggars belief.

Sagittarius: Mars tugs the reins of solitude’s despair;
and Jupiter puts gold in Pluto’s purse.
Friends are a garment that’s ready to wear —
your work’s an infant that still needs to nurse.

Addendum

So, I try to launch this column about 12 hours before the start of the Decan-season. Obviously that didn’t happen. I launched the podcast, “The Astrologer’s Palace”, on Wednesday… and somehow about 80% of this blog post got deleted in the process of setting up the podcast-systems on the blog. Which meant re-writing it today. It’s kind of the thing that I’m trying to explore around developing this column around some animistic ideas.

I have to assume that if the post got eaten while I wasn’t watching, then at least the hungry, hungry hippos in the river of time got well-fed. Maybe the spirits felt that the earlier version of this column wasn’t properly written, and that I needed to adjust. Unseen editors sometimes do these things, in order to make sure that the column you were supposed to read, was the one that actually got written.

And maybe time is like that.

Colophon

I use iPhemeris for my charting software, and screenshot it to make charts. I use Christopher Warnock‘s The Mansions of the Moon as the basis of my Moon placement delineations, and Austin Coppock‘s 36 Faces as the basis of some of my planetary delineations. Neither gentleman endorses me.

Any errors in these columns are my own.

If you want to read some of my other astrologically-oriented poetry, To the Mansions of the Moon is a collection of hymns to the angels of the Mansions mentioned in these columns. For the Behenian Stars is a collection of hymns to the first/brightest sixteen stars. The Sun’s Paces are hymns to the thirty-six Hellenistic-era deities and ascended souls of the Greco-Egyptian Decans-calendar. While not astrological, Festae contains hymns to some of the older Roman gods and spirits from the calendar created by Numa Pompilius, the second ancient King of Rome.