​Today Venus ingresses into Pisces, the sign of its exaltation, where it will remain until March 21. In Pisces, Venus is rendered extraordinary, exceptional, elevated to places of esteem. Venus is an honored guest in the sign of Pisces—ruled by Jupiter—and whatever area of your chart is occupied by Pisces or ruled by Venus may receive special prestige or celebration during Venus’ transit through Pisces. As Venus moves through Pisces, we are reminded that love is an abundant resource that we can cultivate within ourselves, our intimate connections, our communities, our chosen families, and our collective movements for social change. Venus in Pisces teaches us that creating and centering beauty and pleasure in our lives can be strategies for pursuing justice and liberation. Our visions of beauty and our experiences of satisfaction are pathways toward goodness. This is a time for indulging in deep and meaningful care, for cultivating expansive emotional expressiveness and responsiveness, for investing in artistry and creativity that nourishes and enriches our sensory experiences. Throughout the whole time that Venus transits Pisces, it will be moving closer and closer to the Sun, in a condition the Hellenistic astrologers described as “under the beams of the Sun”—meaning that Venus will be obscured from sight in the sky. When a planet is under the beams, it is hidden from view, and its effects may be taking place behind the scenes. This can be a powerful invitation over the next few weeks to devote ourselves to practices of love and beauty, pleasure and connection, not for the sake of posting about it on social media or proving to others who much we are loved or how beautiful our lives are. Rather, this is a time for dedicating ourselves to being fully present to the felt experiences of connection, care, affection, and aesthetic rapture—for ourselves and for those we love, the only witnesses who matter.
 
[Image reads VENUS INGRESSES INTO PISCES 25 February 2021 in rose lettering on a dark green background]

​Today is the first exact square between Saturn in Aquarius and Uranus in Taurus, one of the biggest stories unfolding in the astrology of 2021. The Moon will be conjunct Uranus in Taurus as the square perfects, suggesting seismic collisions that reverberate throughout our embodied emotional lives. Remember that your body—this body that you are—holds the truth of your most authentic impulses and the keys to your own liberation. If you find yourself crashing into rigid narratives about the ways in which you are insufficient or not enough, your fears of your own body or your own pleasures, shame for what you are feeling or for what you want to feel, remember that the land of your body is sacred. Even if you feel that ground shifting beneath you, ride the currents that carry you toward yourself, your own desires and pleasures—even if that requires moving away from the external restrictions that you have internalized as identities. María Rodríguez writes in Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings: “Against the soul-numbing pressures of everyday life, we come back to our bodies again and again, and look for pleasure there—in dance, in sex, in touch, in the warm sweetness of a ripe fig against our lips. We reach for the touch of joy. And as it brushes past, we are reminded of the gap between our psychic lives as sexual subjects and our lived experience as desiring carnal bodies living in the belly of a hostile world. Because we fuck against the walls of violence, the memory and threat of other forms of touch must forever serve as the constitutive outside to our utopian desires. In a world where so many of us are defined as abject, perverse, old, colored, crippled, illegal, ugly, and outside love, embodied forms of social connection and carnal pleasure become sites of possibility where our survival becomes imaginable.” Come back to your body and look for pleasure there in the midst of whatever internal or external systems might refuse your survival.
 
[Image reads SATURN SQUARE URANUS 17 February 2021 in green letters on a brown background]

​Throughout the year, Jupiter will make a series of supportive aspects with the second benefic, Venus. Venus is the planet of love, union, relationships, desire, pleasure, beauty, aesthetic harmony, and justice. Jupiter is the planet of abundance, expansion, growth, wisdom, faith, and belief. Together they create supportive conditions for collaboration, for investing in shared beliefs and values, for connecting our personal desires and pleasures with something larger than ourselves, for making art and love that can guide us to more expansive wisdom and perspectives of the world. Today Venus will make a conjunction with Jupiter at 12º Aquarius. On May 8, while in its domicile of Taurus, Venus will make a square with Jupiter in Aquarius. On June 3, Venus in Cancer will make a trine with Jupiter in its domicile of Pisces. Then on September 6, Venus in its domicile of Libra will make a superior trine to Jupiter retrograde in Aquarius. Finally, on September 30, Venus in its antithesis or detriment in Scorpio will make a superior square to Jupiter retrograde in Aquarius. All of these aspects could describe auspicious events in the houses occupied by the signs through which Jupiter and Venus are moving—Aquarius for the conjunction, Aquarius and Taurus for the square, Pisces and Cancer for the first trine, Libra and Aquarius for the second trine, then Scorpio and Aquarius for the final square—especially if Venus or Jupiter is an important planet in your chart—like ruling the ascendant for people who are Taurus, Libra, Sagittarius, or Pisces rising. In other words, these aspects will offer opportunities for some measure of ease and support for all of us, and those opportunities might become particularly pronounced depending of factors in your own birth chart or timing cycles through which you may be moving.
 
[Image reads JUPITER CONJUNCT VENUS 11 February 2021 in pink letters on a purple background.]

​Imbolc—one of the eight sabbats in the Wheel of the Year—is the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, usually observed from sunset on 1 February until sunset on 2 February. Imbolc is often translated as “in the belly,” describing the forthcoming spring germinating beneath the cold ground of winter. At Imbolc this year, there is a full stellium in Aquarius—what Chris Brennan recently described as an “assembly” of planets—with Venus, Saturn, Jupiter, the Sun, and Mercury all in residence in the same sign. This puts considerable importance on the sign of Aquarius as well as Saturn—the ruler of Aquarius—who is then responsible for overseeing this assembly. Saturn sets boundaries, rules, and limitations, and in Aquarius, these concerns are often directed toward the future, toward worlds we are building, and that which exceeds the parameters of the old order. As the five planets convene to take part in creating new structures as the old institutions fall away, they are all in a whole-sign square to both Uranus and Mars in Taurus. The Sun is exactly square Mars, both at 13º. Building new worlds founded in ideological integrity amidst challenging upheavals assaults from those who feel disempowered is difficult work. The disseminating Moon in Libra suggests a time for sharing equity, equality, and justice. At this Imbolc, may we gather in our own assemblies, developing clear parameters and strategies for bringing new worlds to term. Whether in group or solitary rituals, may we pour our love and intentions into justice, community care and accountability, and everyone having access to all that they need in the worlds to which we will give birth.
 
[Image 1 reads Astrology of the Wheel of the Year Imbolc 1 February 2021 in gold letters on a background collage of stars and flowers. Image 2 shows the chart for Imbolc on 1 February 2021 at sunset, 5:48pm in Columbus, OH, USA]