“Remember this—historically, the people have always been the most powerful in the aftermath of a pandemic.”

The thing that I keep coming back to in my head, throughout all of this, is something that someone said to me once in a Zoom meeting early in the pandemic. I can’t remember who said it though I wish I did. I’d like to give them credit for what they said but I just can’t remember who it was. If you’re the one who said this to me and are seeing this, please let me know who you are because I’d really like to find you and talk with you. All I remember is hearing someone tell us, a virtual room full of people: “Remember this—historically, the people have always been the most powerful in the aftermath of a pandemic.”

The last time we’ve had a domicile Saturn with a domicile Jupiter in the sky was in 1962 and 1963. That was one of the heights of the Civil Rights Movements, with the March on Washington bringing a mass of peoples towards one goal once Jupiter went into Aries. That was the height of the Cultural Revolution, during which Mao anticipated his power wane and strategized mass movement to bring down his opponents. That was also when grassroots leaders got better healthcare and services in long neglected rural regions.

I’ve never predicted an end to the pandemic during all of this. I still remember, back in 2018, getting on a call with a bunch of astrologers speculating about survival and the great conjunctions of 2020. We could tell that something was going to happen. But I’ll never predict an end to the pandemic mostly because I don’t think that pandemics really end. It’s like how a loss never really leaves us. Pandemics happen and then we try to figure out how to grieve and grow around them. They don’t end. We’ve only managed to eradicate one infectious disease in all of human history.

The last time we saw Jupiter fall in Capricorn was back in 2008. By 2010, Jupiter had already entered Pisces. And, still, we were feeling the effects of that last big recession. There are many of us who still, to this day, feel the effects of that last big recession. 2010 was the worst time for many of us. Many people lost jobs in 2010 because of 2008. Greece declared austerity measures and negotiated help from the EU. The effects of Jupiter in Capricorn, which is about fitful change, don’t go away after it leaves Capricorn even if it enters a place where it loves itself. Change is permanent. There is no going back to pre pandemic times.

But I do think that Jupiter in Pisces is about stabilizing. There’s no such thing as going back to 2019 ideas of “normal.” There is no such thing as going back to before a loss. However, we get to grow bigger around our grief anyway. Jupiter in Pisces is about trying to build some kind of emotional equilibrium after the crisis of a Jupiter in fall so that we can understand how grief has changed and shaped our world. It’s about recovery, which doesn’t happen at the end of a crisis but overlaps with its unfolding.

“Historically, the people have always been the most powerful in the aftermath of a pandemic.” The aftermath of a pandemic is not its ending but its reconciliation. Sixty years ago, when Saturn was in Aquarius and Jupiter was in Pisces, political changes that we tried to understand for sixty years took place. I see things happening now that excite me. I see the antiwork movement and the debt collectives. There’s work that we began during the pandemic as new crisis that we will continue as the pandemic changes.

The Mars retrograde, which begins to affect us not in October when the retrograde begins but in August when Mars enters Gemini where it will stay until it enters the sign of its fall in March of 2023, will be about adjustment. In Gemini, Mars is ruled by Mercury which is the planet of labor. I’m most excited about what is happening with labor right now. There are new moves towards unionizing despite all of the obstacles that we haven’t seen for a very, very long time. There are small business owners, who would have been against unions just a few years ago, supporting boycotts and unions. Something is changing about how we imagine work. The last time Mars retrograded was in the fall of 2020 and the last time a planet retrograded in Gemini was when Venus did so in the summer of 2020. I don’t think we’re finished with the issues that came up around then. It will be good to remember those times and all of the inadequacies of looking for support through work in the fall of 2022.

It’s important, I think, to keep in mind that the choices we make now around how to handle an infectious disease that impacts the old and immunocompromised will be choices that affect not some of us but all of us. We are not just making decisions around how we treat our old and disabled kin today. All of us are temporarily able bodied. Those who live abled bodied now are also making decisions around how we expect to be treated when we are old and when we become disabled. If we ever treat the ill and the old as burdens, we are treating our own futures as burdens.

For 2022, there’s a Venus retrograde that kicks the year off and the Mars retrograde that carries us into 2023. There’s three Mercury retrogrades, four if you count the one that begins at the tail end of December. There’s also a Saturn that acts as a nodal bender in the spring.

For the first time in a long time, the summer is no longer this string of eclipses and retrograde. Saturn will still retrograde during the summer but spring and fall will become busier and more transitional. There’s a lot happening in the spring of 2022. There’s the eclipses, a Jupiter ingress into Aries, and there's Saturn challenging the nodes.

I do think that spring of 2022 will be when we have our realizations around how the last few years have changed us permanently. When a planet enters a sign that squares the sign it was in when an event took place, that is when we finally have the room to understand that past event. Jupiter squares Capricorn from Aries. I think spring of 2022 will be a time when we begin to make decisions around living in a new era. 

And this is a new, permanent era. COVID-19 is just one of the ways that climate change will affect us and COVID-19 is not going away.

I think that, when Jupiter comes back into Pisces, that this will be about recovering what we can from the past. Spring of 2022 will be when we make decisions that are about recognizing ourselves through change. Both Jupiters in 2022 will be about accepting and understanding change. You just saw the world move through a crisis that killed more than 5 million people. We are all grieving right now. Of course your aspirations, inspiration, and motivations have all completely changed. This type of grief changes a person. You’re not who you were back in 2019 and you will not be that person again.

Capricorn

Have you forgotten how to make new friends? How has the last two years changed your capacity for friendship or how you define the term? You might feel like a new kid at a new school fresh out of a long summer break in 2022, trying to figure out how to begin awkward conversation and share interests. That’s okay. Remember that we’re all new kids alongside you. No one really knows how to make new friends anymore.

You might find relief, this year, around knowing that there are things that you just can’t control. Min Yoongi says in his interview with GQ that the pandemic is something that he’s realized he can’t outsmart or control. I know that you become rebellious when there are things left out of control and I know that you’ve been feeling insecurity around your money these last few years.

My advice for you in 2022: be uncool, be awkward, and keep showing up in the ways that you can do so. This is about feeling like a younger version of yourself and remembering puberty. There are some things that you don’t know how to reconcile for the time being and, yet, you get to enjoy your unfinished form just as freely as anyone else. You’re awkward because you changed, not because you’re strange. Let yourself take some time to get used to yourself.

Aquarius

You have found yourself in the bewildering situation of having more choice than you are used to. Remember when you used to have colds every winter because your family didn’t have warm shoes for you to wear in the snow? You have more choices than you did then and you’re still just discovering all of the things that taking care of yourself means.

Self care means saying yes to some things. It means refusing others. It can mean building rigor in certain ways and looseness in others. Self care is about giving yourself permission. Oh, Aquarius—what will you do with all this permission?

You can do whatever it is that you want to do. Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t it terrifying? What’s so terrible about it? You’ll make choices that make you realize that there have been ways in which you’ve doubted yourself all this time. That’s what relief feels like sometimes—a tumult of the past. You’ve earned some regret and, still, regret only becomes visible when you earn hope.

Pisces

2022 is about enjoying yourself, about enjoying your knowledge of your own being and of your own life. There are things that you know about yourself now that you didn’t know two years ago. You get to live as a person who knows those things about yourself now. That’s confidence and it’s sexy. This is a year that is about your own grandness.

And then, there’s the issue of rest which you’ve been contending with these last few years. You’re struggling to fight for your rest, feeling oftentimes like you have to earn it to enjoy it. Rest isn’t something that you have to earn or buy. It’s something that you collapse into, oftentimes against your will. It’s something that happens without you realizing it.

2022 is going to be about slowing the fuck down. It’s about finding thrill in having the confidence to say no to things. You need time in order to dream—time that is spent not needing to have any dream at all. You need dreamless sleeps and you need time to zone out. You need a lot of existence pleasure in order to get excited instead of worn out by dream pleasure. 2022 is about realizing that you don’t need to do anything to prove yourself to anyone. You get to be you, confident and cool. 

Aries

Just let it go. There are some things that you don’t need to keep anymore. There are defense mechanisms that you’ve outgrown by now. There’s a certain version of you, as devil may care dangerous sweetie, that you’ve outlived. You’re growing out of your villain phase. How does that suit you?

You’re getting used to being happier these days. You’re losing your comfort with old rebellion and anger. You’re no longer satisfied with simple rebellions. You want to start making positive changes and you’re sick of only reacting.

It takes a long period of rest to get to a place where you know yourself outside of your reactions. 2022 is going to be about letting yourself live as easily as possible, about doing things the easy way and not the way you think you need to do them. You don’t need to be ready to survive the worst all of the time. Sometimes, you need to figure out how to live through the best.

There will be ways in which your sense of community has changed recently that will follow you into 2022. Your community has changed, hasn’t it? People don’t talk to each other in the same way anymore. You notice the conflicts that you have space for in your heart. When you realize disagreement, it’s evidence that your heart has grown.

Taurus

2022 is going to be about feeling like you’re part of something that is larger than just yourself. You’ve been obsessed over your own future and all of its uncertainty. That uncertainty doesn’t go away. There will always be things that you can never predict. But, in 2022, you find other things to fascinate your attention.

There’s a relief that comes out of no longer needing to dig deep into the questions of “who am I?” and “who will I become?” and a wonder around the questions of “who are we when we come together?” and “what becomes possible when we know each other?” Remember that there are things you are powerless to do on your own that become easy in a crowd.

It’s nice when big planets leave our angles. There’s this feeling of getting over ourselves, of having taken enough time to ask big and important questions, and exploring another possibility or framing. You get to explore not just who you want to be in 2022 but the person you become when you share your feelings and your things with other people. You get to step away from the question of “what must I do?” and into a question of “who supports me and who do I support?”

Gemini

When big planets move into our angles, sometimes we get this “oh shit” kind of feeling during which we realize that we need to start using our time in different ways. That’s okay. Let the urgency draw your attention to what it wants you to pay attention to and then commit to giving yourself enough time to do your thing.

It’s been a while since we’ve had big planets in the mutable signs and, so, it’s been a while since you've been under the urgency of a hard angle. Remember that urgency is sometimes where big and cool ideas start but that it’s never where they finish. You’ve going to start some cool and new things in 2022 but you won’t know the scope and meaning of these things until much later. Remember that you have time.

That old question you’ve been wrestling with around visibility and self performance—you can let that question settle for the time being. You’re unsure of how much you’re meant to show to the world and you’re suspicious of the attention economy. Don’t sweat it. You won’t resolve that question for quite some time. For now, just figure out the things that you want to explore on your own two feet. You get to think about what you want to see rather than who sees you for a bit.

Cancer

It’s time for school, Cancer. Not so much an actual school, unless you’re into that kind of thing, but actual school. It’s time to learn from a walk through the neighborhood, time to read all the books that you’ve always wanted to read, and time to teach the classes that you feel called upon to teach.

You get to grow in 2022. Learn about things that you have only heard of and see sights that you never thought you would see. I understand that you’ve been feeling heavy these last few years. I know that you’ve been feeling frustrated with your trauma, afraid that you’ll never find a way of living that doesn’t make you ran your head against it.

You get to grow despite your trauma, even when it is unhealed or half healed. You get to grow despite confusion and pain. Your trauma doesn’t leave you but you get to grow bigger, more empathetic, and larger in heart around it so that the container for your wound looks different even when the wound itself is remembered. 2022 will be about growth not in spite of trauma but around it. You get to find inspiration even if there are also parts of you that you have grown accustomed to numbing.

Leo

You’ve been dealing with the question of whether or not anyone will desire you the way you want to be desired. You’ve been craving more attention than you’ve been getting, I know, which is not necessarily a bad thing but can be an uncomfortable thing. You’re getting to name, specifically and exactly, all of the things that you want in relationships.

But, 2022 is about the pleasure of privacy. Your questions around desirability aren’t meant to be resolved with a quick and easy answer. You get to have something else instead, which is a sexy confidence in your own ability to discern and trust. You get to truly love yourself this year, which is so much more important than desirability. You get to notice the things that are sacred not because you share them but because you keep them for yourself.

This will be about accepting lack of control. Remember that you have no choice about whether someone loves you or not—if they do, you can’t do a thing about it and, if they don’t, you still can’t do a thing about it. Remember that accepting love means accepting a lack of choice. Remember that the insecurity of desirability doesn’t go away when you’re in a certain type of partnership. You don’t get to resolve everything around desirability in 2022 but you get to become more powerful than you’ve ever been.

Virgo

You may be surprised to find that, at long last, you understand how to share some kind of responsibility with the people who share space with you. It’s taken some trial and error, hasn’t it? It’s taken some weird controlling behaviors, apologizing, and a lot of confronting insecurity?

And, yet, you’ve made choices that kept your best self in mind. You’ve found some friends who will always be with you. You’ve found lifelong friends. You’ve realized that you need some things in relationships that can’t simply be described.

2022 will be about enjoying other people. Maybe you’re finally comfortable with your level of social anxiety not because it goes away but because you can predict it. Maybe you’ve found people who will never stop loving you. Maybe you found joy in new meetings. It may be weird to hear but 2022 will be about enjoying who you are when you’re noticed, recognized, and understood by other people.

Libra

You’ve had a few years during which you’ve been meeting all of these old regrets around childhood head-on. That’s been about forgiving yourself for having to be the person you were when you were a kid and about realizing that the context motivating certain decisions haven’t existed for quite a while.

2022 is going to be getting over yourself. You still have those old pains and you might carry them for a while. However, there are new things happening with your life. There is the pain of childhood but there is also the sheer joy of getting to drive to a new town and get lost in a weird neighborhood. There are things that don’t have to do with the major themes of what you are actively moving through and challenging.

In 2022, you get to make space for all of you. You get to have your regrets but you also get to decenter them. You get to make some of your biggest tumults just one of the things happening in your life. You get to choose who you listen to. There will always be one person telling you one thing and another telling you the opposite. You get to decide where you grow the thing that is your attention. This is what growing around yourself looks like.

Scorpio

Honestly, I think that 2022 is going to be the year in which you get to be the free spirited, big hearted, and beautifully slutty bimbo that you have always wanted to try being. I know that you are a thoughtful, provocative, and sometimes cynical sign, Scorpio. But 2022 is going to be a year about pleasure.

Yeah, you’ll probably always be a little too cool for school and hopelessly analytical. But it’s easier, easier than ever, to just focus on presence in 2022. You get to learn the art of turning your brain off and realizing what you actually experience instead of what you think you should experience.

You might fall in love with something in 2022. Falling in love is when you have too many doubts to count but you still let yourself risk it. You get to be naive in 2022. It’s important, this year, that you do not try to reason with yourself or to negotiate your desire. It’s important that you let yourself just hope to have the things that you want to have.

And you remember that old grief, too, the same way you always do when you form new attachments. You’ve become very experienced in holding yourself through those moments and letting yourself grow beyond your grief. Take that time and realize that, even if you feel like you’re less than ready, you’re ready.

Sagittarius

You’ve found so much pleasure in privacy these last few years. Now, you get to enjoy those findings. What did you find? Was it a forest close to your apartment? Was it the magic of a certain sunset hour during which you don’t feel the need to sit any kind of task? Was it the early morning, during which no one can possibly bother you?

2022 is about keeping your pleasures for yourself and on your own terms. You get to play, really play, without anyone getting to see your thrill in 2022. This is about falling in love with the real things, about rediscovering your love for poetry or music or dancing without the pressure of having to make anything out of these things.

There are people you miss, also. There is a sense of shared neighborhood community that you haven’t found for a bit of time. Or, maybe, you miss the person you had been around the people you had previously known. Letting yourself miss your old friends isn’t a bad thing. Missing people can be about celebrating your change—all of it. Remember who you were most comfortable around and remember to play silently as well.