There’s a trick when it comes to developing a powerful imagination. Do you know what it is?
2024 begins with Pluto coming back into Aquarius. Last time Pluto entered Aquarius, we got Chat GPT and a series of bank runs.
When I think about artificial intelligence, I always think about Ted Chang’s words on how AI is science fiction. As a speculative product, AI plays a narrative role in our world. Maybe the tech world and the financial world have this in common. Speculative communities, imaginary stars, and fantastic beasts.
2024 will be the year of the dragon. The wood dragon, to be precise.
There’s a lot of Pisces action in 2024. In March, we’ll see the Sun and Mercury conjoin Saturn together. In April, we’ll see Mars transit Saturn by conjunction for the first time since Saturn’s ingress into Pisces. Both of these events happen before May which is when Jupiter will enter Gemini.
We haven’t experienced a Jupiter-Saturn square for a long time now. The last time we experienced this aspect was back around 2016. That was when Jupiter, an usurper, pushed its influence into Saturn. That transit came to its rupture point during the great conjunction of 2020. Now we will see Jupiter work Saturn again but from the other side. Both times this has happened Jupiter will have been in detriment while Saturn was transiting a Jupiter ruled sign.
In a horoscope, Jupiter stands for the imagination. What happens when a planet goes into detriment? It starts to demand something that hasn’t been done before.
Jupiter in Gemini asks us to think again and to think differently this time. It asks us to grow a spine and to make our imaginations stranger than we know how. Jupiter in Gemini stops us from letting our fear make choices for us. It demands more options. It reminds us that imagination is the only real antidote to fear.
There’s a trick when it comes to developing a powerful imagination. Do you know what it is? The trick is simple. You have to remember that not everything is yours.
Not everything is yours to solve or fix or manage or control. Sometimes good things happen to you and sometimes bad things happen to you. Sometimes good things happen to other people and sometimes bad things happen to other people. When you accept the law of all outcomes being possible and stop trying to use your imagination to control the future—that is when you are able to see the world as it really is.
This is the future. It’s a place where anything could happen. I’m talking about anything. When we fight for the future, we fight for our lives because the future is literally about who is allowed to live or die.
2024 is the year of the dragon. In Chinese cosmology, dragons are rivers. Dragons are different from you and me because they employ a different type of power. For living creatures like you and me, all of our power is sourced from food. We eat which gives us energy for doing things. Dragons don’t have to eat. Dragons, being rivers, flow from a high place to a low place and then all the way out to the sea. As they flow they can push and shape everything in their paths. Dragons employ the power of positioning while living creatures rely on the power of metabolism.
Every single imperial structure, including corporations, tries to use environmental power to its own ends. Living creatures work to eat while corporations employ people. Living creatures try to save a little for a rainy day while governments issue currency and reports on finance like the weather. Living creatures talk to each other while the government standardizes language, trying to shape what we can or can’t talk about.
But guess what? Dragons don’t govern. They flow.
Dragons started as a folk symbol for the people. This was when humanity first started living close to rivers because freshwater fertilizes the land. Only when an usurper king, one who wanted to portray himself as a man of the people, staged a coup did dragons become associated with empires.
Living creatures might work to eat but we are still alive when we don’t have jobs. We just have to find another way to eat. Corporations disappear when they stop governing. Living creatures don’t issue currency but our lives don’t lose any value when our currencies change. Living creatures use unstandardized words to speak and, just by doing this, we create culture.
Dragons don’t govern. They can’t really be governed either. Remember my trick about imagination? You have to recognize the limits to your means of control in order to have any. Guess what? Empires that disappear when they lose control aren’t able to imagine the future. They can only regulate the futures that we living creatures make possible. Why? Because you and I are alive. Empires can only exploit and manage life. It can’t live for itself because it’s not a living thing. Every single empire can and will fall and life will still remain just as beautiful and cruel as it has always been.
This is the principle of water. Water doesn’t stop flowing when it is regulated. It doesn’t stop flowing when it is released either. No empire owns the rivers that it tries to give its own name.
I have an ask for you for 2024. I ask you to connect with a river. Each river is a dragon and each dragon is unique. There’s the dragon in the Amazon, the biggest dragon in the world. There’s the Congo river, the deepest dragon in the world. In this river, hundreds of tiny islands form their own ecosystems complete with mutations that aren’t found anywhere else in the world. There’s the Jordan river which halts in the dead sea. There’s the Mekong which feeds the entire world. There’s a northern dragon that flows framed by a wall of stone. There’s the Yellow river which is called the people’s sorrow. There’s the land of five rivers, one of the most fertile places in the world. There’s dragons that flood and dragons that are shrinking.
Every single dragon is unique. Every single dragon has given birth to a multitude of unique cultures. Every single slang word, song, and humor or style arises in relation to the rhythm of some dragon. Every single culture has been shaped by freshwater. We are all children of dragons. If you have any culture in you, that culture came from some dragon out there.
Get to know that dragon. Know its many names. Understand your own why. Why do you tend to believe certain things are possible and other things to be impossible? It has to do with the behavior of some river.
In 2024, Jupiter enters Gemini and squares Saturn. We haven’t had a Jupiter-Saturn square since 2016. Something in our imaginations changed back then and something will change again this year. But I didn’t want to talk about usurpers in this horoscope. I wanted to talk about dragons. Because a dragon flowed, you and I find ourselves alive today. There are no rules when it comes to imagination. There is only mutation and that is something that no one can control.
Capricorn
What’s in a name? The first task that God gave Adam was to name all of the plants and animals of the world. Western philosophical traditions tend to place a heavier emphasis on naming or categorization. Many western philosophical crises culminate when a name loses its meaning. Not all cultural traditions consider the act of naming to be so important.
Every single sign has a duty to let something go in 2024. I want you to reconsider the power of a name.
Because I am an English speaker, I sometimes find myself trapped by the arrogance of assuming that I understand something just because I have heard a name for it. And then language fails. It fails to do the job of interrupting or reflecting. Our liberation struggles cannot be summed up by games of rhetoric. If language is not fed by action, then it contains only a half truth.
I want you to know the power of your voice in 2024. This means liberating your voice from the desire to control. Language is not a means of control but a tool for liberation. Language does not only exist so that we can name things we already know but shows us what we do not yet understand. If you don’t know your own name yet, then take a lifetime to make up your mind. As Audre Lorde says, there are injustices that you don’t know how to name yet. These are injustices around which our tongues are split in half.
Questions for Capricorn for 2024:
What are the injustices that you can name?
What are the injustices that you can not yet name (from Audre Lorde’s questionnaire to self)?
What are the freedoms that you can not yet name?
Aquarius
This last year, I came across the strange phenomenon of Travis King and Charles Jenkins. Both men were American soldiers who had defected to North Korea, Jenkins in the 60’s and King in 2023. Both men left North Korea, King a few months after his defection and Jenkins 39.5 years after, and were put on trial. When I looked at the natal charts of these two people, I discovered that they had the same Sun sign, the same Moon sign, Mercuries that are both at 15º Pisces, and defected on the full moon after a solstice right when Saturn first entered Pisces. Both King and Jenkins were also born on a great conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn.
Flummoxed, I texted a friend. He told me, “Being works through us. We can’t control it.”
Being works through you. If something is yours, then no one can take it away. If someone loves you, then nothing you do can ever stop them from loving you. If someone doesn’t love you, it’s also impossible to earn their love. If a result doesn’t belong to you, then no amount of maneuvering can give you control over a fate that isn’t yours.
In 2024, I want you to become unstoppable. Do things that you really just can’t help but do. Love the way that you can’t help but love. Be the person who you didn’t choose to be born as. Life is inevitable. Live as though yours already were.
Questions for Aquarius for 2024:
What can’t you help but do?
What can’t you help but like?
Who can’t you help but be?
Pisces
Knowing when and how to retreat is a crucial part of resistance work. Retreat can mean a world of things. Retreat can mean hiding in the mountains, resting, or withholding labor. I like to think of the Hermit card in the Tarot when I think of retreating. If you know how to retreat well, then you can win.
Sometimes, we assume that hermitting has to do with going into a cave and not talking with anyone. Not only is this impossible, I’m not sure that this idea of pure isolation gets at what hermitting really does. If you have ever lived in a cave (my dad grew up in the mountains) you’ll know that cave life is intrinsically connected to the seasons and to other living things.
Hermitting has to do with breaking out of social alienation. When we retreat or hermit, we disobey our social roles. This rupture of expectation gives us the distance necessary for examining the ways that our lives fit into our identities. Hermitting has the power to break the social rules that make us compete with one another, tell us to blame each other, and fool us into thinking that our loneliness is some sort of self protection.
I want you to hermit this year. I want you to choose real intimacy. I’m talking about being with people who you can rest with, people who you can fail alongside with. You don’t have to perform for anyone or be anyone you’re not. Let all pretenses drop. It’s easy to share victories now and then but retreating together takes real empathy. Surviving political defeat and still staying in the struggle takes some retreating and other strategies of care.
Questions for Pisces for 2024:
Who can you rest with?
Who can you fail with?
Who can you win with?
Aries
This year, I want you to commit to doing one thing, just one thing, for yourself because you think that it is the right thing to do.
When people with governmental power don’t want to do something, they will usually gather a lot of shareholders to deliberate over the issue at length. Whole nations will form very large delegate blocs over a problem when they want to stall any progress on solving it. A local government might form an agency about some injustice to negotiate with their people instead of just addressing what is wrong. You see this happen with climate justice a lot.
When you work within structures that are built to stall and delay, don’t let any of your energy go to waste. Preserve your energy by acting as effectively as possible. Just do what you can do and don’t talk about it too much before you do it. Do things as soon as you understand what needs to be done. If you need support, you will find support. Support is something that comes to you when you take action first.
Mars conjuncts Saturn this year around the time of your birthday. This Mars Saturn conjunction is like an inflexible rod. When you have a rod that cannot bend inside of your mind, all of your other thoughts tend to shape themselves around that rod. Don’t get trapped in ideological debates. You’ll only tire yourself out. Asking for every single person’s opinion on something will only strengthen your pre-existing beliefs this year. Instead, just try doing something. Taking action is the only thing with enough kinetic energy to break an ideological rod.
Questions for Aries for 2024:
What is one thing that you can do that you believe to be the right thing to do?
What will for sure happen if you do that thing?
What might happen if you do that thing?
Taurus
For the last ten years, I’ve been making wishes on 11:11. If I see the clock and the time reads 11:11, I stop what I am doing to make a wish. I do this if it’s 11:11 AM and if it’s 11:11 PM.
For the first few years of this practice, I made a goal and used the time to lay out a plan towards that goal. This only worked if I really believed in that goal. When I felt disillusioned, it became impossible to focus on that goal for the entire minute. Focusing for a whole minute is harder than we think it is. I started doing something else instead. I started to empty my mind and just see what comes to mind when I tell myself to make a wish. That gave me time to glean information about my wishes, to try to feel into what wishing means to me.
I think that you’re going to have a great 2024. I think that you will see what is most beautiful in other people and find yourself with people who see what is beautiful in you. I want you to take the energy of making wishes, to touch that capacity with your fingers, and spread it across the whole year.
Emotions are funny things. We might be absolutely livid at someone one moment because they said something kind of off and then lose our temper the next moment. Emotions really just help us understand other people better. When we understand what it is that we want to understand, emotions start to take on deeper meaning.
Make your wishes but don’t lose your wishes. Seize them and understand them. Wishes are unconscious things that we often feel we don’t have enough time to examine. Wishes influence our every desire and choice. Feel things about them, for them, and with them. Every wish is a note in the melody of your psychic life. Let them pass as though you know they will come back in time.
Questions for Taurus for 2024:
What is the first thing to come to mind when you tell yourself to make a wish?
What is the second thing to come to mind when you tell yourself to make a wish?
What is the third thing to come to mind when you tell yourself to make a wish?
Gemini
All my youth, I thought that growing up meant assuming more and more responsibility. Then, I learned that maturity takes humility. Being an adult means accepting that you aren’t in control of everything. When you realize that you’re not in control of everything, you start to understand your real responsibilities. Responsibilities aren’t just the things that you have to do because someone out there thinks you should do them. They are the things that you want to do.
What do you want? What do you dream of? What does excess feel like and what is it like to go almost to excess and then to stop yourself? What does spoiling yourself with wishes look like? Explore that this year.
Always take accountability with a vision for what happens after accountability. Never restrain yourself because you like the feeling of being disciplined. Your responsibilities are just shapes that route you towards something new.
You were born a Gemini. This means that you were born to live an unconventional life. Take your responsibilities seriously. They’re the things that feel the most weighty to you, the things that you take seriously even when no one understands why. Let your responsibilities matter so much to you that you’re willing to break rules in order to lift them.
Questions for Gemini for 2024:
What is the most unconventional thing about you?
What does responsibility make you think of?
Where do your responses towards the previous two questions overlap?
Cancer
Every single person who passes leaves this world with unspoken stories. Your great grandparents left some things unsaid between themselves and your grandparents. Your grandparents left some things unsaid between themselves and your parents. Your parents left or will leave some things unsaid between themselves and you.
Those stories don’t disappear. They still happened. You still remember them. Every story is communicated again and again through tactile gesture and suggestion. But every story is also a mystery. What’s the mystery? Why some things were said and some things unsaid.
2024 will be about education. History is the backbone of education. History doesn’t change but it contains a marrow. There are mysteries in this marrow.
Spent some time with this marrow of history. When we tell people to grow a spine, we are telling them to find their emotional strength. Where else do we source our strength but from the knowledge of those who walked before us? Our spines contain the nerves that form our instincts and the bones that allow us to hold our heads high. We use our spines every single day, every waking moment. Feel into yours and treasure it well.
Questions for Cancer for 2024:
What strength do you find within your spine?
What instincts do you find within your spine?
What dignity do you find within your spine?
Leo
In fiction, realism is a genre that normalizes all kinds of things. It is also a genre that unpacks or disassembles ideas. Realism is subjective. It is sometimes cynical or hopeful. It is rarely didactic and it almost never tries to teach.
I want you to use realism in 2024. Treat it as a perspective that you can enter into and use. I think that good listeners use realism often in conversation. “What is your most realistic outlook?” “What really happened?” “What’s the most realistic outcome for this situation?”
But if you can enter into realism, then you can also leave it. Remember—realism doesn’t teach. It’s not an ideal. It’s a mirror, a mere observation tool. Realism can tell you what you already believe.
Just because a result is more realistic than another result doesn’t mean that it will happen. We don’t live in a realistic world. We live in a surreal and fantastical world. If we lived in a realistic world, then we wouldn’t have creatures such as tiny blind fish that live in wild waters or caterpillars that are shaped like witches' hats. We wouldn’t live amongst elephants that only eat poisonous leaves.
Enter into realism. Use it to understand your beliefs. Then, figure out what you need to exit it so that you can enjoy the real world for what it really is.
Questions for Leo for 2024:
What is your most realistic outlook for 2024?
What does this tell you about what you already know?
What do you want to believe in for 2024?
Virgo
The internet is a powerful tool. With it, resistance movements can organize people around an issue spontaneously without having to form giant organizations for years beforehand like in the past. Almost every recent mass protest has utilized the internet in some way. The internet is also a place where almost everything gets mistranslated.
When it comes to the internet, there is no such thing as speaking precisely. In the past, words were precise. They were handled with diligence and care. Now, we read Arabic and Tagalog through embedded translators. On the internet, we witness storytellers speaking to us about global struggles and catastrophes in unique dialects that we can’t even hear. We can only witness half meanings when we lack the ears to hear the full story.
And, yet, language is still powerful when it can only be careless. The internet can be a powerful organizing tool.
I want you to spend some time thinking about the internet in 2024. How has it shaped your language? Your imagination? Has it consolidated your imagination in some ways? Dispersed it in others? In what ways is the internet a place of experimentation and in what ways does it form your habits for you? Do you need to understand all of the things that the internet tries to show you?
Questions for Virgo for 2024:
How has the internet shaped your language?
How has it shaped your imagination?
What do you need from the internet and what do you not need?
Libra
In the birthplace of Laozi in Zhoukou, there is a well that is called the Yearning for the Moon Well. The well has a humble look. It doesn’t appear like much. It’s made of stone, cylindrical, and not very ornate. Every sixty years in the year of the Wood Rat, on Mid Autumn Festival, you can look inside of the well and see the moon fill up the water.
What use is a well like this? You can’t really draw water from it. The hole is too small. You can only gaze upon the moon for one night every sixty years. For most people, this moon gazing can only happen once a lifetime.
The well is an ancient metaphor for metaphor itself. It stands for what you can see but cannot obtain.
I hear people question the utility of art often these days. “There’s so many sick and sad things happening—what use is art that I make?”
A lot of people think of daoism as a very peaceful or useless religion. You might be surprised to learn that daoism isn’t a religion at all and that it formed out of a very chaotic period of unending wars. This is why so many daoists are also martial arts practitioners. Whether daoism is useful is up for debate. Someone once told me, “You can be a daoist or you can make money.”
Art is always useful. Art is a medium. Art is the means with which we narrate our lives. Without art, the world is just nonsense. Think about the Yearning for the Moon Well this year. Try to see if there are any moons reflected in wells in your own life. You don’t need to constantly inspire people with your art. Sometimes, like daoism, art offers us some refuge from the constant struggle for survival. A good medium functions well when it is mostly empty.
Questions for Libra for 2024:
Give yourself permission to make uninspiring art. What does this do to your imagination?
Give yourself permission to make empty art. What does this do to your imagination?
Give yourself permission to make useless art. What does this do to your imagination?
Scorpio
There’s a common saying that goes something like, “stop putting your joy in other people’s hands.” What’s up with this saying? What does it mean?
So much of our own joy is held by other people’s hands. Even if our lives are completely stellar, I don’t think we can feel happy if we live amongst suffering people. If the most vulnerable among us don’t have stable housing or consistent food then there is no way that our own lives can hold much fortune.
I think that 2024 will be a joyous year for you. Much of this joy, most of it, will be held by the hands of other people.
You’ll see your mom enjoy her talents to her fullest. You’ll watch your partner’s face transform while biting on some yummy thing. You’ll see your friends become wiser and your siblings get richer. Your best friend will see their dreams come true. All of these things will mean joy to you because the success of every person who cares about you brings you greater luck.
Find ecstatic joy in the hands of other people. I wonder what your imagination seeks to provide for those around you. Daydream for them a little. See if you can imagine joy for someone else, joy that they can’t yet fathom. Tell them about the joy that you wish for them. That is one form of inspiration. 2024 is a year of inspiring those you see well.
Question for Scorpio for 2024:
What is the best form of joy that you wish for your family?
What is the best form of joy that you wish for your friends?
What is the best form of joy that you wish for your people?
Sagittarius
Put your less dominant hand down towards the ground and reach for the floor. Now, stretch your dominant hand up high and use it to reach for the sky.
Your dominant hand knows what it is doing. It can calibrate every flick of motion and attune itself to subtle changes spontaneously. If something comes that you want, you can recognize it and grab onto it immediately. Your less dominant hand is less practiced. Its movements are less directed. You have less control here. Even if something came close enough to touch, you might have to stroke it for a long time before you can even figure out what it is.
The upward reaching hand is your external life. The downward reaching hand is your internal life.
This is your 2024. Your external movements are practiced. I have no doubt that you will grow and that you will grow well here. You will explore your circumstances to the fullest and you will think tactically without losing initiative. Remember that you have a less dominant hand reaching down below. Every decision feeds a larger narrative that you can only glimpse one piece at a time. Even if your attention is focused on what you know how to do, you are part of a larger movement that you can’t and don’t need to understand fully.
What does it take to trust your left or less dominant hand? Who do you think will reach out and hold that hand? Who do you hope will reach out and support that hand?
Questions for Sagittarius for 2024:
What are you looking for with your right hand?
What are you afraid of touching with your left hand?
What are you hoping to touch with your left hand?
