Stepping Back to Move Forward
Sometimes, a good, solid nap is just what you need to refuel your mind, spirit, and creative juices. A lunch break overlooking the ocean or a lake, or in the company of a good book, can do the same. Do it for the right amount of time – not too much! – and you’ll be refreshed and productive for the remainder of the day.
As the Sun in hard-working Capricorn sextiles Neptune (Jan. 19, 2026, 1:55 pm PST, 29°50’ Capricorn/Pisces), remember that stepping back from your labors can make you more productive in the end – and certainly, more at peace. Forget the goal for a moment, and be reunited with the story you’re trying to tell with your life. Look to Neptune’s placement in the Pisces house of your chart to locate that narrative, and the Capricorn part of your chart to see what you’ll use to tell it. This week is filled with creative possibilities – but you must take time out to let them come to you.
The Gravity of Other Solar Systems
The Sun enters its Aquarius season this week (Jan. 19, 2026, 5:45 pm PST). Whenever I struggle to understand Aquarius, my opposite sign, it helps me to think of it this way: The Sun always signifies where we shine, and where we come alive—and for a certain kind of Aquarius, that happens within community.
Humans are tribal creatures, and it’s the rare few of us who can be happy with a completely solitary existence. But I think it’s unusual, too, to bloom so spectacularly within a community garden—because we’re each of us little solar systems, too, with ourselves at the center, sovereign Suns who need to shine. The Sun in Aquarius season invites us to understand something of what life could look like if we let ourselves wander into another orbit for a little while, to be a satellite pulled by the gravity of something larger than ourselves. Does it seem dark and cold, a little frightening… or can you let yourself glide happily through the stars, Aquarius style, dancing happily by the light of other solar systems?
Brighten the Darkness
A house in mourning is sympathetically flooded with food and flowers. Of course, in such a situation, the bereaved doesn’t want either one; they just want their loved one back.
But the food is practical. If you’ve lost someone, your house will be filled for days with family, friends, helpers, well-wishers; they have to eat something, even if you don’t feel like it. It’s good to have something to feed them. Flowers are utterly impractical, but they’re beautiful, and they represent vibrancy and life.
As we take stock of the year that’s gone, a little Plutonian darkness can creep in around the edges. We may think about what we’ve lost, even if it’s just another year of life that we can’t get back.
But as Venus, goddess of life’s goodness, approaches its conjunction with Pluto (Jan. 19, 2026, 8:04 pm PST, 3º19’ Aquarius), there are also reminders of what’s lovely. Buy some flowers for the table and light a few candles. Treasure the odd smile from a stranger. It’s dark and cold… but soon the light will return. And until it does, Venus can help us brighten the darkness.
The Rule Maker and the Rulebreaker
Life seems to function most interestingly with a balance of order and chaos, conformity and anarchy, form and dysfunction. When Saturn, the rulemaker, makes major aspects to Uranus, the rulebreaker, they describe a process of bringing those qualities into useful alignment.
The second of three sextiles between transiting Saturn and Uranus arrives this week (Jan. 19, 2026, 9:19 pm PST, 27º33’ Pisces/Taurus). And throughout this series of aspects (the first two were on April 4 and Aug. 11, 2025), the heavens and earth reflect an opportunity to integrate these qualities, and produce advancements that depend on both structure (Saturn) and innovation (Uranus).
Saturn and Uranus previously formed sextiles in 1996 and 1997, a period of exciting technological advancements like the first smartphone, the Nokia Communicator; the first commercial internet browser; the introduction of Hotmail; the launch of Google and eBay; the creation of Wi-Fi.
This time around, the big news is AI – what will it mean for our daily lives, our employment? How will we respond? How about you? Are you a Saturn-Uranus type who likes to jump on the moving train of technology at full speed, or would you prefer to let the train slow down and glide into the station before you leap aboard?
The Restless Earth
As Mars makes a trine aspect to Uranus this week (Jan. 19, 2026, 9:56 pm PST, 27°33’ Cap-Taurus), a brief meditation: Far beneath the earth’s apparently still surface, tectonic plates are constantly in motion. From time to time, one slides under the other, or volcanoes form from the intense heat of their interaction – and mountains are formed by subduction or by lava. Such is the power of the restless earth. It creates rugged, constant mountains that call to the ambitious side of humans, exhorting us to climb, ever higher, and to keep on climbing.
Deep beneath the surface, Uranus in Taurus is busy shifting our tectonic plates. New challenges are arising, new mountains to scale – and that’s just the way Mars in Capricorn likes it. As Mars makes a harmonious aspect to Uranus, the shifting ground beneath our feet suddenly lifts us up – a little higher on the mountain, a little closer to the heavens.
Not Every Opportunity Needs to be Taken
As Mars and Saturn unite, we look for ways to direct our physical energy, determination, competitive influences in constructive directions. Still visible in our rear-view mirrors is the square between the two on Dec. 8, 2025, which demanded we use our Mars resources more efficiently and effectively. If we didn’t heed that directive, we may have hit a bit of a wall and headed into the holidays burned out or ill.
But Mars’ sextile to Saturn this week (Jan. 19, 2026, 10:02 pm PST) brings an invitation to step up our game and take on more responsibility. If we’ve conserved our resources, Mars in ambitious Capricorn will be champing at the bit to move up to the next level and to put practical gifts to best use. But the sextile to Saturn in Pisces is a reminder that not every opportunity needs to be taken, especially if the timing isn’t right. It’s important to listen closely to our intuition before agreeing to more obligations, no matter how much Mars wants to say yes.
Tomorrowland
When I first visited Disneyland in 1967, Tomorrowland was the most exciting area of the park. Standing in line outside Monsanto’s Journey Through Inner Space, we watched with a touch of anxiety as what looked like real people were shrunk to miniatures. The Carousel of Progress spun us through the latest in modern household appliances, unknown on our Midwestern farm. We gleefully boarded the sleek Monorail, and the Autobahn gave six-year-olds our first taste of driving (though it intimated nothing of the epic L.A. traffic jams in our future).
Aquarius is the sign of tomorrowland, a fantastical future where nearly anything seems possible. Place Mercury in innovative Aquarius (Jan. 20, 2026, 8:42 am PST, until Feb. 6), and you’ll spy entrepreneurs in excited conversation over lunch, madly scribbling ideas on the back of a napkin. You’ll catch astrologers excitedly plugging asteroids into their charts, and engineers doodling interesting gadgets and gizmos on their desk blotters. And somewhere, you can be sure that science fiction writers are at their laptops, banging out their visions of the future with renewed zest.
The future is a place that we never quite reach, but it’s important to keep grasping for it. Because though we might not get there, we’ll certainly end up someplace new – and Aquarius makes the process of getting there altogether exciting.
Remembering
One of my oldest friends sent me some blurry photos from our grammar school days. Although my memory is generally not what it used to be, I recalled the names of every classmate in those photos with no effort. But who was that long-haired, fierce-looking, awkward girl with my name scribbled underneath? I remembered her, too, how she struggled to feel good about herself and to fit in. Looking at that photo made my heart catch, made me feel protective of that girl. And for a moment, I realized how far I’ve come in the decades since, and also how much I’m the same.
Mercury is at its superior conjunction with the Sun this week (Jan. 21, 2026, 7:49 am PST, at 1º36’ Aquarius), moving into the evening sky. During its retrograde period in (Nov. 9-29, 2025), it was like a little kid who broke away from Dad and ran backward, a little too far away. After it turned direct, it began racing to catch up with Dad; this is the day Mercury closes that gap, eager to share information and insights it gathered during the retrograde.
This conjunction is good for catching up with yourself, and for remembering who you used to be, who you are now, and how far you’ve come. Enjoy it; from here, Mercury starts racing ahead, a kid that wants to spread the word about you so that the world can welcome you when you arrive.
Performance Reviews
I suppose we’ve all had the experience of saying some things that we later wish we could take back. On the other hand, they may have been things that had needed saying for a very long time.
Mercury is ordinarily the expert at saying things in a clever way, to avoid being nailed down to a particular opinion or point of view. But when Mercury connects with Pluto in a conjunction this week (Jan. 22, 2026, 9:15 am PST), there’s no room for small talk, pretense, or equivocation. We say exactly what we mean and let the chips fall where they may.
We can tell ourselves that it’s better to know where we stand, and that telling the truth is always the best policy. And there are moments when we feel exhilarated as hard truth after hard truth hits the pavement and shatters. But if we’re honest – and after all, that’s what this is all about – the truth also hurts. And sometimes, it hurts as much to tell it as it does to hear it.
Detour Ahead
Mars in Capricorn sextiles Neptune in Pisces (Jan. 22, 2026, 10:39 pm PST) at the very last degree and minutes of both those signs, giving the combination extra intensity.
Mars in Capricorn is good at getting things done. It’s an indefatigable worker, and is adept at envisioning a long-range goal and breaking it down in actionable steps. But as Mars in Capricorn comes together with Neptune in Pisces, there are likely to be unexpected detours along the way, so be prepared to go with the flow. Your vision may be clear, but don’t get too attached to the way you get to it, because Neptune might have different ideas for you.
This aspect also encourages us to work towards spiritual goals, not just our worldly Capricorn ones. Will your goals make the world better, even if it’s just your little part of the world? Life is made up not just of the things that we can perceive with our senses, but also intangibles like love and meaning.
Ruffle Feathers
Mars enters Aquarius this week (Jan. 23, 2026, 1:17 am Pacific Time, until March 2). Transits of Mars show us how and what to work and fight for. While it’s an Aquarius, don’t be afraid to be a little bit shocking or controversial. Take your work, which is ruled by Mars, in a new direction.
Aquarius is distinctive, unusual. It’s not like anybody else. And when Mars is in this sign, freedom, equality, and independence are among the things that we really want to work toward and fight for. Speak up about your convictions. Take some inspiration from some of the quirkiest people in your life, who probably have some strong planetary place in Aquarius. What they all share in common is a distinctive individuality and in many cases, being unafraid to ruffle feathers in order to get their point across.
Performance Evaluation
Once each year, The Sun meets up with each planet by conjunction, rather like a boss giving managers their performance evaluations. And like most of us, I imagine the Sun kind of dreads sitting down with Pluto (Jan. 23, 2026, 2:28 pm PST). The problem is that Pluto wants to turn the tables and start evaluating the Sun, and the boss didn’t get to be the boss by sitting around taking lip from his outer planets. So, it’s a tense couple of days when the two sit down together.
What it means for us, their earthly representatives, is a couple of days when we’re apt to be pretty merciless in our self-assessments. That’s fine as far as it goes; it’s important to set high standards for oneself, to delve deep and rip out habits, tendencies, and attitudes that are unworthy of us. But don’t get carried away with the self-flagellation. Take a good look at yourself, decide how to be more effective moving forward – and then stow that performance evaluation away in your mental file cabinet.
Act at Once
The mandate of a First Quarter Moon is to take action, however small, toward a goal. This week’s Taurus First Quarter Moon (Jan. 25, 2026, 8:47 pm PST, 6º14’ Taurus), making a bold square to half the planets in the sky (Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, and Pluto) in Aquarius, reminds me of something my husband’s uncle used to say: “Whatever you do will be wrong, act at once!” We can’t always wait around for the time to be right, or for a predictable outcome, before we act. In fact, taking instinctive action without an assured outcome is the entire point of a First Quarter Moon.
But this puts some stress on the Moon in Taurus, which prefers to take its time and have a little bit of a sense of predictability. It needs to feel it can stand behind its actions and decisions. It might even be able to put the brakes on all those Aquarius planets before they can get out ahead of themselves.
Writing and images © 2017-2026 by April Elliott Kent
