Death is stasis. Change is life.

When I think of too many placements in Aquarius, I think of Huysmans. Huysmans was a guy who wrote a book called A Rebours where nothing happens. In the book, a guy retreats and lives by himself, seeing no one, and dying slowly of syphilis. He makes himself banquets of rotting food and paints every room orange.

The fictional character Dorian Gray describes A Rebours: “It was the strangest book that he had ever read. It seemed to him that in exquisite raiment, and to the delicate sound of flutes, the sins of the world were passing in dumb show before him ... It was a novel without a plot, and with only one character, being, indeed, simply a psychological study of a certain young Parisian, who spent his life trying to realize in the nineteenth century all the passions and modes of thought that belonged to every century except his own ... The style in which it was written was that curious jewelled style, vivid and obscure at once, full of argot and of archaisms, of technical expressions and of elaborate paraphrases, that characterizes the work of some of the finest artists of the French school of Symbolistes. There were in it metaphors as monstrous as orchids, and as subtle in colour. The life of the senses was described in the terms of mystical philosophy. One hardly knew at times whether one was reading the spiritual ecstasies of some mediaeval saint or the morbid confessions of a modern sinner. It was a poisonous book.”

I think the book is a warning. It was written during the Weimar Republic, at a time of growing fascism. Huysmans, who was interested in writing about the lives of working class people before he wrote A Rebours, was born with ascendent, Sun, Moon, and Mercury in Aquarius. His Mars was in Taurus.

A Rebours is about the decay of decadence. It is about inflation, about economic unraveling, and the decline of social trust. It’s about loss. What is absent in the book is any grief. Rather, the character is ambivilent about his own demise. He is isolated. In the entirety of the book, there is only one character.

February is a pretty strange month. It’s a month when almost every visible planet is in Aquarius. Mars is in Taurus, where it squares Saturn who deposits everything. We don’t see months where so many planets are in the same sign very often. Mercury retrogrades, which is may be common, but it is not common that is retrogrades while in the same sign as almost every other visible planet.

And the year restarts on the Aquarius new moon. It’s 辛丑太岁 this year. This is a year of hard negotiations and choices we make while everyone around us is screaming for us to go in the opposite direction.

Death is stasis. Change is life. I don’t believe that Huysmans, someone whose natal placements echo February 2021’s chart so exactly, wrote A Rebours to glorify decay. I believe that he wrote it because he wanted change.

We live in an imagined world. Judith Butler writes that “The white supremacists who stormed the Capitol are also convinced not only that the elections were stolen, but their country as well, that they are being “replaced” by black and brown communities, by Jews, and their racism fights against the idea that they are being asked to lose their idea of white entitlement and supremacy. To this end, they transport themselves back in time to become Confederate soldiers, they occupy fantasy figures on video games with superhuman powers, they dress as animals and bear guns openly, reliving the “wild west” and its genocide of indigenous peoples.”

February may be the coldest time of the year and it may be more dangerous to leave the house than ever before, but it is not the right time for stasis. It’s not the right time for isolation. Everything may appear fixed right now but fixed doesn’t mean stasis. Mars, in adversity, provokes Saturn.

Huysmans didn’t get the change that he was seeking. He embraced idealism and disappeared into another type of seclusion as a monk. He would die in 1907 before he saw fascism become a political reality in Germany and Italy.

Aquarius

If something throws you off of the track that you have been assuming to be your own, don’t react right away. Don’t be so resistant to things being done in a way that you are not used to them being done that you throw any possibility of change out a metaphorical window. Instead, let change happen. Let things run their course and let people speak for themselves.

It is always important to notice all of your emotions when a thing is happening but not all of these reactions are constructive or come from you. Some of your emotions are fears that you inherited from elsewhere. It is better to understand how you can impact your emotions to change rather than assuming that they will always flare in the same way over and over again.

Pisces

February can be a time of deep inspiration if you keep in mind that you change other people as much as they change you. Do not assume that people are unwilling to listen before you speak. Assume the best and hold people to the highest possible standards that you wish yourself to be held at. Have pride for your speaking voice.

February can be lonely if you assume that you know no one who is prepared to change with you. February doesn’t have to be lonely. There are people who want to hear your stories, ask constructive questions about your feelings, and listen to the way your mind works when it changes.

Aries

The idea of community that you once had, whether that concept was too focused on personal freedom or ruled based, has grown stale. These community-concepts are often more about identity than community. In a representative government, these identities might pass for community but in your real life they do not. You have to get a little more honest when it’s your own life that you’re talking about.

Community spaces are not about representing every part of yourself. They’re not about self definition. They’re not about expression or performance. They’re about accountability. That is the thing, sorely needed, that you have to talk about. Try to talk about accountability without using the actual word and figure out what you mean when you say the word. Talk about it with people, actively, and all the time.

Taurus

You’re not always right, even when you are righteous. This is because, when you are right but hurt, you can sometimes sacrifice yourself to a cause that is unworthy of you. Feeling the need to be right can be an act of minimizing the self. Feeling the need to be right to be safe minimizes the self because it is about believing that you are not worthy when you are wrong.

Let your emotions happen as they happen. It might take years before a single emotion has run its course. It might take minutes. And, as always, remember that your emotions are not permanent but are parts of your body that learn how to react to a changing environment.

Gemini

You’re not going to be able to say the right things this month so just keep saying the wrong things and practice unlearning in real time instead. Our mistakes do not define us but the way we act when we do make mistakes does define us. Practice creative revision and don’t let saying the wrong thing hold you back from speaking more.

Love yourself when you say the wrong thing by taking time. Your growth is slower than your changes. Time is not an absolute thing but a thing that becomes more plentiful when you give more of it to yourself. Stay present. Do not disintegrate just because you are bored. This month is about learning the source of your anger. It will not do to let apathy blunt your keen intuition.

Cancer

You’re not as open as you think you are. There are things that you keep close to the heart. You think that you are being vulnerable when you drop hints about your mental state but direct and courageous vulnerability is not about hint dropping. It’s about saying the thing and not anticipating the response.

Figure out what you need to share, with whom, and when once you have fully convinced yourself that you are a self respecting person who does not need any specific response in order to feel safe. Say the thing before you are perfect or before you know how to deal with it. Share without feeling the pressure to offer a contingency plan. This is harder than it sounds. It takes self knowledge to do.

Leo

You don’t have time for all the ways in which you might want people to exist in your life and you will have to be better about saying no if you want to make the changes that you know you need to make. Do not perform goodness or wellness for others. You are not someone else’s vehicle for growth. You are your own person and being your own person means that you do not always have pure motives at heart.

This is a moment when your own goals matter more than public opinion. Stop worrying about what other people think. You know how you want to change. Prioritize those changes over appealing to anyone, even if you want to please another person from a place of love. Love, after all, is just a word for what eventually and inevitably outgrows insecurity.

Virgo

Stop being bored if you are bored. Being bored is not about keeping occupied. It’s about knowing purpose and meaning in our actions. If you are bored, then it is a signal that your goals have gotten stale and need some updating. What do you want your day, your year, and your decade to mean?

This isn’t about micromanaging details but about dreaming big possibilities. Allow yourself the grace to make your resolutions be things that do not aim to improve the self but abolish rotten systems. Destroy something instead of rebuilding it. Dream big instead of being bored. Understand that boredom is a decision that was often made for you so that pieces of technology can benefit from your split self in an attention economy.

Libra

It’s time to love yourself and not the imagined ideas of other people that you keep filed away in your own head. These people-concepts are not real people. You can’t possibly know what another person thinks of you, even if you’re as wise at social interaction as you are. That is none of your business and another person’s thoughts of you will never define you.

Keep yourself for yourself. This isn’t about privacy per se but about how you conceive of your own gaze. Own your gaze, especially the one that you look in the mirror with. Do not shapeshift into another’s gaze when seeing the face reflected back to you. Honesty is not just another aesthetic among many but a type of self commitment that requires constant effort.

Scorpio

If you’re not happy living the way you are living, talk about it with people. Stop trying to go through the things that you are going through by yourself. You’re not as isolated as you think you are. When you try to go through things on your own, it is about controlling certain parts of yourself that you do not feel ready to change.

You are ready to change. You are always ready before you feel ready. Don’t belittle yourself into thinking that you need to be pushed before you have to go. Take initiative and move in the direction of trust. Do not keep things that rot you on the inside but see how many people might share your distress.

Sagittarius

When you’re smart like you are, Sagittarius, it is easy to assume that you have done something because you have said that you will do it. If you have said that you love anyone, including yourself, consider putting those words into practice instead of waxing poetic. This isn’t the time for navel gazing.

Saying that you will do something without doing it will make you feel more insecure down the line. Doing things that you want to do proves to yourself that you are both capable and worthy of change. Do not be an empty slogan. Practice your principles and build self respect, even or maybe especially if these principles contain some contradiction.

Capricorn

Accountability is not about self punishment. Stop assuming that you can get to a place where you no longer need to change. Stop assuming that you can’t commit to action before you get to that place. Stop thinking that the people who ask you to be accountable to your principles are operating from anywhere aside from a place of deep love.

You’ll need to have compassion for your mistakes, both past and future, for you to change. Remember that change is the goal, which is the only goal that continues to support itself, rather than stasis. Remember that life is the answer and that concepts will never be good enough on their own.