How do you say goodbye to the old Capricorn?

Pluto in Aquarius: January 20 – September 1, 2024, November 19, 2024 – March 8, 2043

Pluto transits last couple degrees of Capricorn: June 12, 2023 – January 21, 2024, September 2nd – November 19th, 2024

Venus Retrograde: 28 Leo – 12 Leo, July 22 – September 3, 2024

Mercury Retrograde: 21 Virgo – 8 Virgo, Aug 23 – September 15, 2024

Venus’ current retrograde in Leo brings attention to what our hearts’ desires are and our creative instincts (Leo) and where or how we need to find balance. Retrogrades are time periods where you take a step back and reevaluate and reflect on the sign’s topics. In this case, Leo also involves children and romance so depending on where the later degrees of Leo fall in your chart and if you have planets there will show how much attention these get during the retrograde.

Currently, it also makes a tense square aspect to Uranus’ long-term transit through Taurus, signifying how we might need to compromise our heart’s wants with our personal needs or the needs of someone else or a particular situation. Maybe due to financial strain, we need to become more creative with how we are using our resources to manifest what we want. Developing a relationship with money and how we create our foundations might shift from doing it routinely through old values and habits to new ones. There could be new relationships or changes in current relationships (Venus) developing underneath the surface, which would help facilitate this shift into the future.

Mercury’s upcoming retrograde through Virgo will also have us reflecting and possibly making changes around our health, how we can be of service, and where we could practice more humility. Venus and Mercury retrograding together for about ten days in August could have us possibly thinking about how we can merge our creative instincts with how we are of service. Are we serving the whole in a way that truly comes from the heart? We may also have to look at where our subjective ego (Leo) may need to become a bit more humble. Do we need to do some self-analysis without becoming too overly critical on how we relate and work with others? Mercury will be in its own sign this time so it has an advantage here to make positive improvements more easily.

I saw Barbie a couple weekends ago and thought of this picture of me. I’m 16 years old, standing straight, hands folded, carrying a serious, resigned and focused look. I know how I’m supposed to look, it’s ingrained in me and so natural. Maybe I knew what my future would hold at that time and it would be the usual: a professional woman ending up in a warped Capricornian, male-dominated or dysfunctional world where I would function without knowledge of her feminine and tortured with it. And personally with a partner who is deranged in nature and happy to be with his princess (barf). If I ever get married, will I be able to eat two or three ladoos in front of my in-laws or will I have to hide in the kitchen to eat them?

It’s neat that this movie came out during Pluto’s transit through the last couple intense degrees of Capricorn. It was quite the cinematic display of power dynamics and blinding superficiality in our systems as well as the extra unneeded attention given to Ken in the film. I’m so glad Barbie was able to finally feel her feels and shed a few tears. I’m also glad she didn’t get hounded by a nurse who was astonished to learn that you chose to keep your uterus (at least in the film).  

I’m at a point in life where I haven’t taken a shit in four days. This is the first time this has happened and as a Plutonian and Punjabi person, this does not make me proud. Ever since my surgery last year, I’m having difficulty shitting. Pluto is for good churning and refining our futures. What am I having trouble letting go? Capricorn represents our fate, past and karma, and the rewards and consequences of what we reap. Will my efforts from the past trying to connect with the feminine and true self reap rewards for this life? What will I shit out? What is having trouble coming forth? How much smooth-move tea can one drink without becoming addicted or miserable?

I have become a different version of Barbie 25 years after this picture was taken. This new Barbie is evolving a different power dynamic with what exists, one where she can finally say no to what doesn’t make her feel comfortable, yes to her passions and most importantly, yes to her body and yes to her psyche. Her body is no longer a machine or a nail in the machine that holds the parts together without herself having any concern for her own well-being. She now works with consciousness and from the heart and has decided it is up to the systems and people out there to respond and compromise. I’ll be inventing (Aquarius) a clearer picture of my ‘heart’s ground’ during these retrogrades and seeing how I can be of more authentic service to the world from this ground especially as Pluto moves into Aquarius. And let’s hope I can also find my routine again..

Reflections on Venus Retrograde in Capricorn:

Venus Retrograde: 25° – 11° Capricorn, Dec 19 – Jan 29 2022

Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, is a yin, earth sign. At first, it appears yang to a lot of people but it’s actually yin, which makes you think that the sign has been distorted or appropriated to some extent. It has lost some of its dark, slow, earthy, downward-seeking nature and instead, has become so associated with what is harsh, hard, structural and upward-seeking, all yang aspects.

Ruler of the 10th house of career, status, authority and rules, Capricorn has taken on some contexts and meanings attributed to it through patriarchal distortion in my humble opinion. Saturn represents your time and space reality, your orientation and understanding of your three-dimensional world based on your house and sign location in your natal chart. And depending on how Saturn currently transits and what planet(s) transit Capricorn, we can understand how our time and space orientation will personally and collectively be affected.

There are so many things a Venus in Capricorn transit reminds me of, especially one that is retrograde within Capricorn, i.e. systems, structures and limits. One can harshly feel the head-butting between the two. How can Venus, as ruler of Libra, representing harmony, balance and justice, possibly achieve its’ aims here?

I recently had my ovary and fallopian tube taken out. My gynecologist removed them and the endometrial growths in my pelvic area. He said it was really bad and had the medical students watching my procedure reiterate the same while I was still in a daze of anesthesia in the hospital. As I left and sat in the car, I could see my father’s eyes were slightly watery and worried. And relieved. In the big scheme of things, losing an ovary and tube is not a big deal. Countless others have lost worse. I can still function (to a certain point) but there’s grief (Capricorn) around it.

I love my doctor. He’s semi-retired and white and I actually wouldn’t trade him for a woman. He is kind, sensitive and gives a big hug. I am lucky in this respect.

I remember one summer in India as a teenager, I was staying with my aunt, Nani and same-aged cousin who I had stayed with before many times but this time my mother had gone to the south on a business trip. She left us for two weeks and I was so happy. Afternoons spent inside the house apart from the outside heat playing Contra and Tetris for hours on end obsessively trying to get to the next level and having all sorts of fun with my cousin and sister was the best time of my life.

Something was nagging at me that summer. I don’t know whether it was the normal angst of a 13 year old but I was feeling limited. I felt frustrated and unfortunately decided to test those limits one careless afternoon against my better judgment. This is an infamous story in the family.

One afternoon, I went to the backyard and walked up to my cousin’s bike, which always lay against the wall at an angle. I had learned from him how to step on the seat and climb up the wall and walk on it like a trapeze but this time I grabbed the bike, wheeled it through the house quickly, and started biking my way onto the street and around the sector. I cycled fast so no one I knew would catch me. This was the first time I was by myself without anyone I knew by my side outside of the house in India (at least on this bike).

It was exhilarating. There was no mom to tell you what to do or what the rules were, no uncles to tell you how far you couldn’t go, no plans or trips or familiar eyes looking at you for whatever reason. It was just me, the bike and the road. I told myself as I started riding that I was going to ride all over the city, through so many sectors, and then boast about it later on.

Although everything looked familiar, I had trouble getting out of the sector we lived in due to nervousness being on the main road, like the really main road, and lack of know-how. I realized I wasn’t going to be able to go around the entire city in just a couple hours. That’s how long I was gone without telling anyone. As I looked at the familiar signs, buildings and people going about their daily business, I felt one with it all but was also terribly focused on controlling the bike. I didn’t want to fall or hit anything. Sadly one of these things occurred.

I ran into a little boy, something I feel guilty about to this day. I was stupidly staring at a temple to the right, my eyes away from the road, and hit his leg. I insisted that I take him to the doctor but he insisted that he was not hurt.

I also had a nineteen year old celebrity look alike who lived down the street and who supposedly was an aspiring actor stalk me. In India, guys do really weird things like stare at you with their friends behind bushes while you’re walking down the street. Or send recorded music on tapes to you through their middle man. It’s frightening and hilarious at the same time. So on this excursion, this guy found me me cycling on the road despite my inner hope that I would not come across him.

On a residential street I was not often on, I felt headbutted as he rode up unexpectedly asking me what my name was. I was scared to give my real name so I came up with ‘Seema,’ a common name. Any coincidence that Carrie’s new Indian friend on ‘And Just Like That’ right now is also Seema? Yes actually that is probably a coincidence.

Needless to say, my family was not happy with me. My cousin was infuriated I took his bike and worried him and received angry talks from my aunt and mother on the phone. My grandmother was not happy but she was generous. Why did I do that?! A teenager on the loose and in a country she doesn’t know that well. Smh.

Was it only the year before that I had failed a sex-ed test because I would do my math homework during class and not listen to the lectures? I didn’t care to know the technical definitions involving the nether regions. I just knew that I had to finish the math homework before it was due. Thankfully I got to retake the test. Why is that we are only allowed to retake sex-ed tests? And of course there was dissatisfaction learning about Alexander the Great and my increasing fear of cactus plants. I couldn’t help but be aware on some level that I was a female, even if just thirteen. My Venusian brain wanted to test the limits that summer, some authority, some rule, as a human and a female. She didn’t think twice about it, her hormones led her on.

And disturbing thoughts come up in the present day, 27 years later. Equality takes on a different nature. Maybe a testicle should be taken out in exchange for an ovary? And crushed in a lemon juicer so the pain felt is equal. Maybe this is what systemic equality should look like. I would like to know how many testicles are currently being taken out worldwide cause I assure you a hell of a lot more ovaries are taken out. Let us somehow harmonize this necessity.

I shed a lot of tears these last couple months but probably not as much as a true Cancerian heart would. The sheer anger and depression, felt so physically, is enough to have wanted me to kill something. My saving grace in life is a psyche oriented around art I guess otherwise I’d be addicted to painkillers. I have no judgment against addicts because they are me and they are my mother, who had her hysterectomy years ago. My fond memory around that is sitting in the hospital cafeteria and basically having a Thanksgiving dinner. Boy was that delicious.

Related post: The Little Ovary That Could

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Venus Rx in Capricorn and the Taurus/Scorpio eclipse cycle – What will it bring?

Venus Retrograde – 25° – 11° Capricorn, Dec 19 – Jan 29, 2022
Lunar Eclipse 27° Taurus – November 19, 2021, Solar Eclipse 10° Taurus – April 30, 2022

Lunar Eclipse 25° Scorpio – May 16, 2022
Solar Eclipse 2° Scorpio – Oct 25, 2022, Lunar Eclipse 16° Taurus – Nov 8, 2022

Recently, my dad and I went over to a close family friend’s house for Thanksgiving. Our friends have a daughter who is basically like my cousin. We have loved cuddling all our lives and talking about Netflix. There was just one other family invited whom I didn’t know very well – a very nice auntie who had to leave early cause she had to work, uncle and son. But it turned out that even with very few people, it was a very entertaining evening.

We started off the evening with pleasant conversation, delicious snacks and champagne. The three ‘kids’ played games beginning with cards while the parents sang Hindi karaoke songs, loud and clear. We played Rumi and Texas hold ‘em poker. First off, I can’t stand it when people bully you by betting abnormously high in the beginning (and I was forewarned by the uncle who pleasantly boasted about his son’s constant winning streak in life. He honestly was very nice to talk to, exuding warmth, smiliness and gratitude). Well guess what, I’m just gonna end up taking my money back, its equivalent from you and generally end up with more. And then everyone has to quit the game because it’s time to eat. Muaaahhahhhahhahhha.

We moved on to Scattergories for a short period of time because we couldn’t use our brains due to food coma. How are you supposed to come up with food items starting with ‘W’ or ‘D’? Very difficult. We then of course moved on to Monopoly. I have not played this game in so long and enjoyed being the laptop who got to traverse the board numerous times due to rolling doubles a lot and acquiring properties, even ones I didn’t want but ended up buying anyway cause I landed on them repeatedly. I enjoyed collecting small amounts of rent, but not as much as my cousin collected due to her numerous properties, and from guess who, from the beloved son who only had two of them AND it turns out, the uncle, who I realized was also playing.

I thought he was singing with the others but suddenly how many spaces we all had moved in relation to the dice was being thoroughly checked by him. His face turned very serious when his son handed $120 over to me, and respectfully so, because I owned the Electric Company and the other utility. They repeatedly landed on Chance and contributed to Free Parking. I was also laughed at by guess who because I needed change and suggested exchanging a 50 in the parking for some change from the bank. Somehow we aren’t allowed to do that. He kept laughing and looking at me and I quietly questioned in my head yet again how I end up in these situations. I just smiled at the other player, sharing in the understanding of this totally absurd moment.

Needless to say, I should have expected an Indian uncle whose family is in the top 1% highest income category in the United States to be incredibly and visibly upset that his son had little money and not enough properties. If it was ten years ago, I would have been really irked by this team offering to buy one of my properties for $200 when I just bought it for $180. Really how much work must you be really doing in life and how hungry could you possibly think I am that I would just want a $20 ‘profit’ from this exchange. Sometimes those with more just don’t understand the correct exchanges. I counteroffered by saying he could buy it from me for a $1000 and for the other player it would be $600. The suggestion was also enthusiastically made to do a trade with the other player and collect rents, but it reeked of money laundering and I went into shock.

After having our necks breathed down on and only a couple glasses of alcohol because you’re around family, it was time for the game to end and certain people to leave. What was once a warm, smiley uncle turned into a low energy and concerned one but who left amicably and who we nevertheless had compassion for. Even being annoyed, I was unable to control my inner laughter, sending emojis and texts to my cousin afterwards. We wanted to send him sore loser gifs like ‘Don’t be Upsetti, Eat Some Spaghetti’ and that handsome black guy doing a crying face.

This is how the Universe works. It brings scenes into the grand play of your life of what’s about to unfold and what will come up. A lot of people will be excited.

~ Happy Holidays ~

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Transit update: Venus Retrograde in Scorpio/Libra

Venus, the planet of reconciliation and harmonization, began its retrograde motion on Oct 5 at 10°Scorpio and will go direct on Nov 16 at 25°Libra. This is not an easy transit as it asks us to enter spaces that haven’t been grasped yet and to face vague fears as they come up. As we go through this process, emotions and experiences start to congeal into some coherency and understanding, and we are then pulled again to go deeper and integrate along the way. This transit is about exploring unknown spaces and there is great potential to expand the psyche combined with Jupiter’s continued transit in Scorpio.

Scorpio is a sign that wants to get to the heart of the matter, and has very low tolerance for confusion and bullshit. Venus as balancer will slowly help synthesize the reality coming to the surface while Scorpio’s presence won’t let it fall into its tendency of superficializing the reality away and keeping things ‘peaceful’ and ‘nice.’ Venus as natural ruler of Libra also brings relationships and intimacy into focus so issues around control and manipulation can surface internally and/or externally. Where is Venus Retrograding in your chart? This is the area that becomes activated and because this transit works in 8-year cycles, the last time it occurred was in Oct 2010. Are certain matters coming up for you now that were relevant at that time? Mercury’s current transit through Scorpio will also naturally align our thinking around these topics.

As we surrender to the depths, Jupiter’s influence will help us develop new philosophies as well as a view of the bigger picture behind the events in our lives. There is a greater potential to also merge and unify the separated parts within the psyche. Unification (Libra) is the theme underlying all this, also accented by the new moon in Libra on Oct 8. The Full Moon in Taurus on Oct 24 may provide some inspiration as to how we can ground this energy and actually apply it in our lives. Understanding Truth involves realizing what we need to actually become honest about and the journey is by no means an easy process. Scorpio is a fixed water sign so it’s best to just flow with the energy and make necessary adjustments along the way.