WINTER SOLSTICE HOROSCOPES
DECEMBER 21, 2024 | 4:21 AM EST
text and image created by Shane Powers
I suggest reading your Sun, Moon and rising sign to give a multi-dimensional reading to be revisited throughout the winter months. If you do not know your Sun, Moon and rising sign you can cast a free birth chart for yourself here.
The horoscopes I write offer broad strokes based on ancient and modern astrological techniques. Natal astrology consultations express finer detail particular to your sole astrology. Whether you have met with me before or not we can look back, in the present and future together. Book a new client or follow up consultation here.
ARIES
Mars, your planetary guide recently stationed retrograde in Leo in your fifth house of pleasure, creation and risk taking. Determined application of your creative desires at this time could feel elusive, albeit a good time. The fifth house is a fruitful position to experiment or steep in luxuries and romantic liaisons that at this time come with piercing revelations as Mars applies to the opposition of Pluto, god of the underworld. Inclined towards feel-good risks, sparked by the allure of FOMO and friendly competition, this configuration's higher octave is intent on how and where you define and indulge in earthly pleasures; apply your creative muscle and for what good reasons. Mid January, Mars will re-enter Cancer in your fourth house of home, family and origin when matters of ambition and profession come head to head with sensitive issues at home. Your foundational circumstances from which all facets of your life grow upon will be tested and understood more clearly when Mars retrograde is illuminated by the gnosis of the Sun on January 16th. The care for any crumbling walls or cracks in the foundation upon which you share your gifts in this world should be prioritized. This winter is an auspicious time to idle in possibility, keep your cool and know when you’re prepared to step back into the spotlight in accord with sustainable efforts balanced with sanctuary. Along the way, do not bite the hands that feed you.
TAURUS
Transiting your second house of material support, Jupiter, retrograde at this time, guides matters of your livelihood secured through the work you do. This placement asks to balance the current pressures of purpose and calling with more forgiving expectations and financial goals at this time. Be aware of setbacks or fluctuations in financial stability. Take note of spending habits that feel good in the moment but tap resources better spent or saved at this time on creative pursuits sure to pay off in enduring but intangible forms. It's not simply about the money though. You’re becoming a kingdom unto yourself where just enough is more than sufficient and rewards come in unexpected packages versus a looping direct deposit. Pluto, now transiting your tenth house will be the highest planet in your chart raining its influence of enigmatic truths that ripen slowly over your entire chart for the coming two decades. Venus, your guiding planet, has recently made vulnerable contact with Pluto now firmly in the early degrees of Aquarius revealing slowly the most odd gifts you bear; a detached but magnetic sense of identity. Where you’ve “come from” and where you’re “going” are at their core one and the same.
GEMINI
Mercury, your planetary guide is transiting your seventh house of relationships while separating from a spicy aspect with Mars in your third house of communication and daily rituals. Candid conversations within close partnerships have kindled unexpected questions of undermining habits and the manner in which they are discussed, if at all. As Mercury applies to an oppositional but workable confrontation with Jupiter in your first house of self awareness, consider where numbing reliance on a vocational or loving relationship has made it difficult to articulate each other's ultimate truths. Jupiter, who represents your partnerships in life, professional or loving, may indicate a renegotiation of promises made that reveal to be hot air, spread too thin or not what they appeared to be. This winter makes clear where you’re overthinking things you could, or not, have done or said in the past that came with diminishing effects on your visibility in relationships. As the Moon opposes Saturn in your tenth house you are called to be bold but considerate in communicating your worth and needs essential to maintaining a lifestyle of rudimentary comfort, rooted within mutual benefits. The same conversation could be applied to those you break bread with, your chosen family. There is a possibility here for silly misunderstandings to become mountains out of molehills. Common sense versus swollen generalizations are favored for reconciling ambivalence within yourself and others. Note where hypocrisy hides or masks itself behind gullible idealism versus sound conviction.
CANCER
The Moon, your planetary guide, recently separated from a shrill contact with Mercury in Sagittarius in your sixth house of spinning your wheels. Keeping up with the day to day may have recently become an assortment of obstacles, a rash of overwhelm seemingly out of thin air. Mercury in Sagittarius can fuzz the antennae, scrambling signs, messages and language into oblivion. What was straight forward is now chapters of fine print or has been intellectualized beyond recognition. The Moon is comfortably located but forming contacts elsewhere suggesting decision making and actions taken may simply become busy work, things you felt like you had to do versus needed to do. However, while in your third house, the waning Moon is adept at unravelling complications or conservation of what has already been sown. It is an auspicious time to awaken latent tools, revisit folk approaches and learn through repetition rather than novelty. Saturn guides matters of your relationships which at this time may feel distant. If an opportunity or person of interest presents itself, ensure the ecology of circumstances surrounding the appeal is not a mirage or someone far out of reach. As the year comes to a close, building consistency in daily routines and further refining integral communication skills may lower the cost of opportunities that feel good in the moment but come with a high price of admission.
LEO
Reliably at this time of year, the Sun, your guiding celestial sphere, enters your sixth house of efforts that occasionally yield little. This solstice specifically, the Sun forms a quiet but tricky aspect with protective Mars retrograde, transiting your first house of self preservation and life force. Awkward matters straddling home, family and your philosophical compass may be a focus, taxing emotions and other vital resources. Mars retrograde in your first house can offer a strong offense when feeling defensive. Nonetheless, under such frustration so much psychological gas may be burned off that you no longer understand where the irritant emerged from. Clutching resentment becomes a feverish itch that feels better to scratch rather than getting to the root of a problem: treating symptoms versus the disease. The Sun is applying to a supportive aspect with Saturn transiting your eighth house of resources spent to keep relationships alive. This winter is an opportunity to shed light on idling emotions in relationships of matter or spirit that have whirled into unrecognizable loss and yearning for more. More space to develop strength of character untethered to inherited belief systems and environmental circumstances. More subtle but potent sources of power. Address psychic aches and pains swiftly as Mars does not like to wait and will soon re-enter Cancer by retrograde where feelings are not as welcome or easily managed. Clean house while the mess is visible rather than hiding it in a closet with a brief expiration date.
VIRGO
This winter presents to you a crossroads into generative chaos between the self, private life, partnerships and vocation. Mercury, your guiding planet, has recently separated from a revealing aspect with Mars retrograde who sources insight from tender places, where tension is held unknowingly. Idling worries and routines are better tuned to the beating desires of your heart, focused on supplying life force to your creative interests or other collaborative pursuits. The Moon in your first house is preoccupied with sorting out needs versus wants in regard to social upkeep, details essential to the prospering of aspirations and the people who aid in bringing them to light. Notice also this winter where the stresses of ambition are in nonrelation to your creative potentials. Mercury is transiting your fourth house of home and family. Somewhat comfortable in this portion of Sagittarius, Mercury here tends to matters of homelife which feel at odds with an overwhelm of demands with Jupiter in Gemini transiting your tenth house of ambition and destiny. As was true in autumn, Jupiter in Gemini struggles with reigning in big ideas, managing workload and tempering your generosity when you have little left to give. It would be wise to conserve your energy, unraveling gently into the new year close to home. Mercury enters Capricorn the second week of January and later Aquarius, where it will hold the mental grit and perspective to welcome more creative risks. The classic rule stands that you must take care of yourself before you can take care of anything else.
LIBRA
Seeking beauty within complexity, Venus, your planetary guide is in Aquarius while comfortable in your fifth house of pleasure and creative bliss. Radical shifts in your ideals regarding personal freedom have you indifferent to the pettiness of job titles and undermining busy work. As Venus separates from a supportive aspect with Jupiter in your ninth house of mystical matters and higher learning there is a need to express oneself apart from the laws that be, spiritually or tangibly. Perhaps transcending the limits or laws of one's own making. Venus here yearns for perspectives that only experiences along a lone road or off the beaten path can bring. The Moon transiting your twelfth house is about to make an awkward aspect to Venus, an indication of voluntary breaks from those who can not walk their talk or aspects of a calling that offers little but tedious upkeep with chronic let downs. While Mars is retrograde in your eleventh house of friendships, colleagues and aspirations, said relationships may be challenged or up for review. Soon Mars will reenter Cancer where matters of finance and partnerships will unravel within the work environment or wherever you show up with your genius. This winter is a good time to audit the assets and talents that have been applied to the systems and structures that you’ve relied upon as a testament of your legacy. A utopia in flux. Invest in a personal creative savings account where the deposits are in the form of divine inspiration granted through acts of profound wisdom seeking, pleasure and eccentric meandering.
SCORPIO
Your planetary guide Mars is now retrograde in Leo in your tenth house of visibility and calling. The style in which you shine your light is being tried under new lenses. As Mercury separates from a supportive aspect to Mars, the sustainability of that work and the sustenance it provides may feel overly complicated and unresolved. Passions that have defaulted to auto pilot pay some bills but are perhaps no longer life giving. Mars severs, and cuts may be necessary in your responsibilities and productivity levels encouraging healthy budding growth. This winter for you is about realigning, or protecting your ambitions, led only by your heart and gut. Consider skimming the fat off financials as well, in debts or day to day spendable cash until early February when Mercury and Jupiter, who are muddling your finances at this time, form a more constructive relationship. The Sun and Saturn in your chart have a connection to communication at solstice time implying actions will speak louder than words. Choosing your words wisely around topics of goals and personal truths is vital as anything said now may come with regrets and hurt feelings. Especially until mid to late winter, personal goals and creative insights may require the darkness of the womb versus exposure to light. Luxuries and fleeting dependencies are best superseded by quality time with friends and the breadth of view those relationships impart. Or, trade the topics of enterprise and politics for the company of loved ones close to home, clear of personal agendas.
SAGITTARIUS
Slippery considerations surrounding partnership, career and your four walls come into sharp focus this winter as your guiding planet, Jupiter makes a few critical contacts at solstice time. Relationships hovering on the surface magnify voids where you’ve felt drawn into other people’s affairs unintentionally. There is good reason to doubt the circumstances of those relationships as Jupiter is retrograde in Gemini spreading thin your attention span, forming gaps in personal boundaries. As Jupiter applies by retrograde to Saturn in your fourth house of home and family notice where the emotional taxes of ambition and said relationships have become limitations on the foundational aspects of your comfort and peace of mind. Winter inspires new priorities, cutting loose ends and funneling your efforts into new, or fortifying existing friendships apart from the rat race. Friendships that may be adjacent to your career networks and growth. Friendship that gives a familiar sense of a queerer self seen for their eccentricities rather than tending the flame of all business, all the time. Jupiter in your seventh house brings incredible adaptability and the balance to hold contradictions within yourself and for others but knowing when those differences pale your identity is key. You crave fluidity and freedom, viewing your local horizon from a perspective that can only come with embracing an unconventional relationship to place and others. At this time, you’re better off a fine friend and companion to yourself than a lover or servant to a title.
CAPRICORN
The Moon opposes Saturn, your planetary guide illuminating the habits of others that create uninvited burdens of emotional care. Financial burdens as well, as Saturn governs matters of the second house and your sustainable resources. This winter you are looking directly into the eyes of close partnerships that have outgrown their welcome or have become more effort than they are worth. There is a great opportunity here for contemplating your understanding of unconditional love, where it begins and never ends. Where until now you have tried quite hard to please at all cost, figuratively and spiritually. The tried and true of the past is up for consideration as you seek to be fed where once malnourished. The Sun enters your first house, as it does each year at this time, initiating a perennial reminder to take your emotional and physical needs seriously. The Sun's presence in your first house offers a radiant crown atop your head directing your focus on opportunities appearing out of reach; fitted with a GPS system led by wisdom and inspiration rather than rhyme and reason. The lunar nodes will soon move into your third and ninth house axis where understanding the value of ritual and the potential of your voice will diminish the exhaustion of external influences. You desire to have your feelings seen and understood where they once were put aside for the sake of family obligations or hanging onto any morsel of intimacy because it was simply available.
AQUARIUS
Winter begins with a formidable opposition between Mars and Pluto across your axis of identity and compromise. This configuration reveals unconscious power dynamics in the roles you tell yourself to play, embossed by the expectations and demands of vocation and career which are not necessarily, but may be related. A calling and career are not assumed one and the same. Retrograde Mars for you can feel like a melt down or drain on identity, purpose and relationships, professional or platonic. There are subtle planetary aspects involved with Mars indicating perhaps there has been a glamorization of this position you’re in, the comfort and avoidance over the reality of conscious seismic action honoring fairer compensation at a job for example or an integral change of lifestyle. Be mindful of blowing off steam this winter with indulgence and luxury that will only harden the tension between your second and fifth house opposition involving the Moon and Saturn, where financial matters and the emotional weight you bear from others may be more than necessary, or of your own making. Consider where you hold onto others' “stuff” when nobody asks. There is the feeling of being trapped in histories one has been looped into by choice, passivity or obsession. Venus transiting your first house offers perspective around sustenance and the importance of establishing poles of permanence in your life apart from the pressing thumb of entanglement.
PISCES
Venus recently separated from an illuminating configuration with your guiding planet Jupiter, a configuration that carried idling worries of debts in relationships or shared resources out of the dark and into hopeful presence. Aided by an optimistic approach, with others you are able to work through buried fears of sustenance, reenvisioned from a place of options versus dangling obscurity. Earnest and communicative work is significantly possible as the Moon applies to a frisky but constructive aspect with Jupiter revitalizing efforts to make pleasure and creativity a vital ingredient in lasting relationships. Delights held close to home will be an antidote to more grave truths revealed among others this winter as the slow release of weight placed on your shoulders by colleagues and social media are weaned off incrementally. Your focus may be directed on prioritizing your physical and mental health as demands on your skills and talents will culminate with Mercury transiting your tenth house of life’s work opposing Jupiter in your fourth house of foundational well-being. There is mutual support from others close to you and an accommodating home base that together will make this ambitious configuration possible if you commit to beneficial habits. The structure woven into work, routine and relationships this winter will be rewarded come spring when Jupiter will enter Cancer in your fifth house of pleasure, adding truth and levity to a burgeoning new sense of confidence.