December is about making sense out of what the hell just happened this year.

December is about making sense out of what the hell just happened this year.

Multiple planets are going to be in and out of retrograde this month. Venus enters Aquarius, in opposition to Mars, the day Mars stations retrograde. Mercury goes direct. Every single planet is going to come back in the bounds. In November, a few planets went out of bounds. Whenever that happens, our social expectations get pushed. Now they are coming back in the bounds.

What the hell happened this last year?

Multiple things happened. I’m trying to reflect right now. We had multiple hurricanes, more than usual. Flooding too. We’re still in a drought where I’m living at the time of my writing this and multiple wildfires are spreading across the northeast. The genocides have continued. Multiple protests from Bangladesh to New Zealand. Multiple elections from Mexico to Vietnam. Here, Trump got elected again.

What happened for you this year? What are the events that you are able to recognize right now?

I’m going to speak from a US based position for a little bit. Last time Trump was elected, I noticed that he tends to oversaturate the news. This is actually one style of censorship which is different from complete control or simply erasing information. Trump tends to construct a theater of emotion by overcrowding the news cycle and he does this by constructing punchlines in real life. I’m noticing this happening again. The daughter of the WWE guy is now head of education. What is Elon Musk doing and what can we do about it? Is flood to drought and drought to flood the new climate cycle or something?

What are you able to make sense of right now and who are the people that are helping you do that?

What ways of being help you make sense of things right now? What spirits? Our weather patterns have changed drastically this last year. What helps you understand what is going on?

December is the midnight of the year. Some Decembers, we’re ready to jump into new year energy right away. “Just get this year over with, I want to go to the next year!” I don’t think this is one of those years. This December brings a lot of stillness but a lot of internal clashing too. If we want to feel closer, we also need more distance. If we feel really angry, we also feel conflict avoidant. If we feel tired, we also feel moved.

Whenever I hear internal contradiction, I like to do just one thing. I like to make enough space for everything that is going on. Make room for all of your truth. Then, ask yourself—what has happened for me this year?

What happened to me this year and what happened around me this year?

What did I do this last year? What kinds of impact did my actions make?

The right wing theater of informational overwhelm isn’t just too much information. It’s good to know what is going on, not just things that directly impact you but everyone in your community. We’re all so interdependent. What information overwhelm does, however, is that it situates us in a position of passivity. We feel more and more like things are happening to us. That’s not what a happening is. Things happen around us and we either contribute to them or we interrupt them. There is an importance to your actions that the powers that be will never tell you about.

What is happening for you after this year? What are you a part of? You’re doing something right now and that something that you are doing may be more important than you think it is. Start from there.

Sagittarius

Back when I was hitting puberty, I remember just feeling so embarrassed all of the time. The same time happened when I turned thirty. I kept feeling embarrassed! About who I was from the perspective of who I had become.

I keep wondering what the purpose of embarrassment as an emotion is. This is where my mind takes me—I have a hunch that embarrassment is about appreciating growth. It’s like a marker of growth. Growth isn’t even. When you grow fast, you start to feel embarrassed about random things all of the time. It’s almost like a stretching type of feeling. You realize something about how you’re now different from how you have been and then you start to feel embarrassed.

What do you feel embarrassed about this December? What does embarrassment help you realize about how you have grown this last year? What does embarrassment help you mark in yourself?

Sometimes, embarrassment can feel almost unbearable. You know what helps embarrassment become bearable again? Just simple empathy. Everyone gets embarrassed about farting so we don’t usually feel overwhelmed by our embarrassment about farting. It’s just understood. If you find some of your embarrassments unbearable, go and find someone who gets embarrassed about the same thing as you. Talk to them. Relate.

Questions for Sagittarius for December 2024:
What do you feel embarrassed about lately?
Is this embarrassment bearable for you right now?
Who relates to your embarrassments??

Capricorn

Numbness can be really useful. Numbness usually helps us pull through things when our emotions are too overwhelming. It’s a protective thing. I believe in letting numbness be and then just letting feelings come whenever they come. You never have to force it. You don’t have to feel more than you feel equipped to feel at any given time. Numbness serves a function. Let it work for you.

I also believe in naming numbness when we feel numb. Being numb isn’t some kind of defect. It doesn’t make you more broken than someone who is crying and feeling. It’s just a thing. We can call it by name.

Even when we are numb, we are still experiencing the emotions that we are experiencing. Sometimes, we see our emotions out in the world or even in other people. We read our rage into the faces of our loved ones. We read our fear in the stars and in astrological reports. Numbness doesn’t remove your feelings. It doesn’t even make you less aware of them. Every emotion that you are feeling right now is still there because your connection to the world still exists.

Trust your connections. To do that, you might have to accept your body’s way of protecting yourself from feeling connected all the time. That’s okay too.

Questions for Capricorn for December 2024:
Do you ever feel numb these days?
What do you think numbness is trying to do for you?
What are you grateful to numbness for?

Aquarius

What has been helping you make sense of how your friendships are moving and changing? Is there anyone who you are hoping to be friends with? Anyone who you feel more distance from?

Friendship is so weird. I find myself putting all of my hopes and fears that don’t fit inside of familial relationships or romantic ones into my friendships. When we feel uninspired by life, we look for inspiration in friendship. When we feel distant, we seek intimacy in friendship. When we feel overwhelmed, we seek distance in friendship.

This December, let yourself feel contradictory about friendship, about solidarity, and about who’s got your back. I’m thinking about what bell hooks wrote about how many of us find our firsts in friendship. We learn how to trust someone for the first time in friendship. But friendship isn’t always the end all be all. We don’t need to find every emotional need met in friendship. There’s just so many different ways of relating.

You are a good friend. Let yourself be a good stranger too. Let yourself be a good witness, a good apprentice, or a good parent. You don’t need to be friendly all the time. In fact, you might need all kinds of different connections to define trust.

Questions for Aquarius for December 2024:
What do you hope from friendship?
What do you fear in friendship?
What needs do you currently meet outside of friendship?

Pisces

This December, I want you to make sense of your full range of parenthood. Your parents aren’t just your biological parents. Your parents include anyone who has done the work of parenting, of instructing and protecting and planning, for your generation before your time.

That includes people who fought against borders, against oppression, against mass incarceration in all kinds of ways. Your political parents fought legal battles, protected people, and argued for your education. They planted life and thought of you, their future generation, even if they did not have biological children of their own.

Who planned for your existence here today? Who anticipated your being enough to think about you and prepare something for you?

I’m talking about all of the people whose effort and risk won the bare minimum in civil rights. I’m talking about people who invented recipes and made sure that future generations would have food to eat. I’m talking about all of the people who put labor into making something that could become a political home for you.

December is about appreciating your parents. Doesn’t have to be your biological parents but can be if you’re feeling it. A lot of people have done parental work for you.

Questions for Pisces for December 2024:
Who planned for your education before your time?
Who planned for your protection before your time?
Who planned for your nutrition before your time?

Aries

In December, I want you to think about who is allowed to appear knowledgeable. I’ll give you an example. If you study Chinese medicine in the anglosphere, you might find that what you are learning is actually a very diluted and rigid interpretation of a unified version of diverse medicinal practices. Chinese medicine isn’t one thing. Chinese medicine is village specific and site specific and many oral traditions have been lost. However, you’ll find that a lot of people who appear to know what they are talking about because they adhere to resolute principles about authenticity and preservation.

What is the difference between a belief and bullshit? That’s the question that this upcoming new moon asks you.

If you talk in a certain tone of voice, you can pretend to know a lot about things that you don’t know very much about at all. The human mind also tricks us. It fills in gaps based on what we believe. What is the difference between a belief and bullshit? What tone of voice do you usually speak things in when you parse through your beliefs?

December is here to help you figure things out about what you believe. Make sense of the BS. It’s all around you and it’s coming from somewhere. You can trace its origin.

Questions for Aries for December 2024:
How do you know when knowledge is lost?
How do you approach learning by honoring what has been lost first?
Where do you see bullshit around you?

Taurus

December may be about saying no to people. You’re allowed to say no to people when “no” feels good and empowering. You’re also allowed to say no to people when “no” feels not good or sad. People ask us for all kinds of things. Sometimes, they use the question form but not always. Sometimes, requests are delivered in the form of statements or shares or even gifts. Sometimes, people try to tell you who you are when they are really asking you to be a certain way.

This is my favorite thing to ask people who work with me on consultations—what is your favorite way to say no? Your favorite way to say no might be verbal. It might be silence or hesitation or a re-questioning of the context. I understand that we can’t always rely on our most favorite way of saying no but, still, it’s nice to know what our preferred style is.

I’ll admit this to you too. Most of my betrayals to friends have to do with instances where I had trouble saying no. When I fail to say no, I fail to protect people around me. I’m saying this not to confess a personal fault but because I know that I’m not alone in sometimes choosing compliance to protect my personal safety.

What is your favorite way to say no to people? If you don’t have a favorite way to say no, then what makes saying no at least bearable for you?

Questions for Taurus for December 2024:
What is your favorite way to say no?
What makes saying no bearable to you?
When was the last time you said no?

Gemini

Who are some people who you like or are curious about who you haven’t chatted with in a long time? December is going to be a great time for catching up with old friends.

It’s not awkward to hit people up. You can always do it. You also never have to do it. It’s never too late. Friendship is flexible like that. You can find a friend again, even after years or just a week, and ask them if they have a few minutes to chat on the phone. Who are you most curious about? Instead of stalking them online, how about just giving them a call?

Back when I was going through a divorce, my best friend from Kindergarten found me and gave me a call very randomly. It was so weird. We found out that both of us are gay even though we had no idea at the time of our being friends. We caught up, this white girl from the Midwest and me. We didn’t keep in touch. We didn’t need to. The call wasn’t about that. It was just about socially situating ourselves from a very long time ago.

Are there any people you are curious about hitting up for no well defined reason? You don’t have to feel any social pressure to keep something going just to catch up on people, to hear their voices and about what they have been doing since the last time you saw them. Think about it. It could be a good time.

Questions for Gemini for December 2024:
Are there any people from your past who you feel curious about?
Would you be interested in asking them for a chat?
Why or why not?

Cancer

Are you angry? I’m angry. Mars just moved through your sign and the threat of global fascism has us by our throats. Fuck. But are you also compliant? I am in so many big and small ways that I haven’t gotten around to naming yet because we are all so busy with work all the time. The more the media talks about the rising threat of China as an economic entity, the more conflict avoidant I find myself becoming because I try to make myself smaller and smaller as a Chinese person. What about you? What’s gotten into your head these days? What is happening right now is alienating so many of us.

It’s possible to feel full body rage while also feeling heightened fear about conflict. But solidarity isn’t precious. It can’t be. Avoiding conflict makes us feel more and more politically alone. We have to trust that people will make enough room for our honesty here.

December will be about trusting your own honesty, your own personhood. You exist here. You’re here! People know you and they will make room for you so that you can be together with them. Or, they won’t and you’ll have to go somewhere else to find solidarity. Real conflict will always create more possibility than fake friendships. Shoot for the former. Never let your anger be the loneliest part of you.

Questions for Cancer for December 2024:
Why are you angry?
What would being honest about your anger look like?
What might your anger need before it is ready to feel together with people?

Leo

December is about letting other people love you. As a Leo, you’re a fire sign. I think that fire signs love to love in a very active way. You like to give your warmth away. You like to do things for other people. Fire is literally a release of heat energy. That’s fire and that’s fire.

But fire also needs nurture. If a fire stops being fed, it becomes embers and then ashes. Fire can’t eat just anything. It stops at concrete and at soil. Earth drains fire of its heat. Wood feeds it. Fire needs life, living things, to eat.

Your heart is made of fire. You need life, real life, to eat. December is about letting other people love you but you’re going to be discerning about real love versus fake affection. If love is real, you will take it. You will accept it and you will love it even if that is hard to do or awkward or even painful. If it’s not real, then you won’t be able to take it in. It will give you a stomachache.

Accept real love from living people, from people who show you how to live and who teach you how important life is. Trust your ability to tell the difference. You are like fire. You can metabolize life. You will walk around all that drains you.

Questions for Leo for December 2024:
Whose voice revitalizes you when you hear them speak?
Whose touch revitalizes you when you let them touch you?
Whose promises revitalize you because you know that they are made in good faith?

Virgo

In December, you’re not going to judge yourself by how other people treat you. You’re going to judge yourself based on how you treat other people.

People will treat people inconsiderately for all kinds of reasons. They might be very stressed about something at work. They might have some kind of social fear. They might not know you and they might not know how you want to be treated. None of that matters. If someone does something inconsiderate to you, that’s not a read on your character. They’re not treating you in an off way because you deserve it. How someone treats you almost always stems from something in themselves.

That works in the reserve too. How you treat other people stems from something in yourself. That is something you have access to feeling and analyzing and understanding. That is something you have control over.

So, all this is to say…keep being the cool person you are. You’re good to people when it counts. Keep an open mind. Keep your joy by deriving it from the sheer pleasure of treating other people well.

Questions for Virgo for December 2024:
When was the last time you did something that made you think, “I’m really good to people”?
How does that memory make you feel?
What does that feeling make you want to do?

Libra

This upcoming new moon is about accepting the beauty of multiple approach. When you encounter any kind of problem, there are always going to be a million different ways you could approach that problem. There’s going to be a million different ways to describe that problem. One way of engaging or resolving a problem is never better than another way.

I think that Libras like to keep options open. The reason why is because you can see so many perspectives and possibilities growing out of those perspectives. That’s the beauty of your multiple approach. But I think that Libras also try to look for the best way or a better way. That’s the scales weighing all of the options and guessing and guesstimating.

No one way is better than all of the others. You have to really just do you. Time passes and that is inevitable regardless of whether you make a choice or not. You don’t lose anything when you make a decision because possibility is empty without action.

Let your hopes and fears remain hopes and fears. As Saul Williams said recently, hope and fear are both empty. You have to take action. You have to use the beauty of your multiple approach because that’s an incredibly cool part of you. Action doesn’t mean doing just one thing. You can do many things together.

Questions for Libra for December 2024:
Regardless of your options, what is one action that you feel ready to take?
What is another action that you feel ready to take?
Can you do both of those things together?

Scorpio

I’ve been noticing something recently. I’ve been noticing that a lot of people who grew up religious, myself included, have a really strong sense of shame because we actually have a shallow sense about what is good and what is bad. In December, you’re thinking about your values and about what makes you feel like your efforts are valuable or valued. Let’s talk about morality and systemic analysis for a moment.

I’ve been noticing that, when it comes to work, we often jump to really strong conclusions about what is a good job and what is not. We jump to fast assumptions about what is good work and who gets to do it. We jump to conclusions about who is a good worker and who is rightfully excluded from work.

What if “good work” doesn’t exist under capitalist exploitation? What if you can’t earn your way into goodness? What if the question of doing a good job is irrelevant to the way reality functions? What if well paying jobs don’t exist because the value that workers generate will always exceed the value that can be realized in the market?

The new moon in Sagittarius gives you the chance to analyze the systems around you. The part of you that wants good and bad to be stated very clearly to you might be a childish part of you. Take care of that part of you. Get to know your own needs for yourself. And describe reality.

Questions for Scorpio for December 2024:
How did five year old you define good or bad?
How did five year old you define good works?
Do you still believe in these definitions?