I can’t cease crying. None of us can. Oceans of grief roll by way of for a large number of causes at any given time. It’s exhausting to suppose, plan, or assemble a full sentence. The larger Los Angeles space remains to be in an acute disaster as I write this. The winds aren’t by way of with us, the shortage of rain looms, and the electrical present of worry that extra untold devastation could also be across the nook is palpable.
Complete neighborhoods have been worn out. Altadena, a historic Black neighborhood birthed within the Civil Rights Motion, is gone; the Palisades and Pacific Coast Freeway charred; wildlife terrorized; and ecosystems decimated. There are toxins in our air that can do god-knows-what to our our bodies, our infants, our meals, our earth, and our communal well being.
If there’s one factor that turns into clear in these moments, it’s how a lot we’d like one another. The way in which I’ve hung onto each phrase that anybody round me says, determined to know what different persons are feeling and pondering and deciding and processing. Who misplaced what? What number of? Who wants a house? The place did they go? They misplaced every thing? They don’t know but? Who else do I must textual content, name, depart a voice memo for? It’s a trauma response to make sure, but it surely appears like historical know-how embedded deeply inside us. Attain out. Keep in contact. Verify in. Neighborhood is how we survive this. Caring for each other is how we uncover one of the best of ourselves — it’s the which means of our lives. The best objective we may ever stay into.
We’d like us. Particularly as a result of we’re utterly unprepared for the repercussions of local weather collapse. We’re in the course of one of many worst disasters recognized to this metropolis of angels, and we’re amid the inauguration of the following President of the US who’s (amongst so many different exceptionally difficult issues) a climate-change denier. About to take the throne is a person who has sworn to open the floodgates for much more capitalist, colonial, company violence to happen.
The present villains of our story are unmasked and unashamed, pleased with the income they’ll reap from our losses.
Months in the past, once I initially appeared on the astrology of January, I grimaced. Filled with signatures that learn as relentless challenges, the opening monologue of 2025 was not one I used to be trying ahead to. Particularly realizing the outcomes of the US election.
The month started with a Mars–Pluto opposition on January 2nd. That is the mark of one thing grueling, merciless, harsh, ruthless, volcanic, excessive, and scarring. It’s additionally a mark of main energy performs. It coincided with per week of maximum violence in New Orleans, New York, and Las Vegas right here in the US, in addition to Trump’s claims that Canada ought to turn out to be the 51st state, that Greenland and Panama must be underneath American management, and that he wouldn’t rule out utilizing army pressure to make that occur.
On January sixth, Mars retrograded again into Most cancers (the signal it has a very tough time in), signaling a sticky state of affairs that may take months to clear up (will probably be retrograde right here till the tip of February). In Most cancers, Mars brings up problems with safety, household, and residential.
Dwelling.
It was, after all, on January seventh that the fires in Los Angeles started. The Palisades and Eaton fires, among the many largest, instantly evacuated hundreds, destroying avenue after avenue of our neighborhood’s houses. A long time of recollections, proof of lineages, lives up in smoke. And we’re nonetheless counting losses, readying ourselves for no matter is subsequent. Praying for rain.
The Full Moon in Most cancers that sat with Mars retrograde (nonetheless inside orb of the opposition to Pluto) on January thirteenth magnified tough themes about house and household. From a distance and the “consolation” of my vantage level in 2024, this Full Moon appeared painful as a result of Mars so usually aligns with occasions wreaked with havoc — worse in an indication it doesn’t do properly in, and extra devastatingly so when retrograde. Most cancers is an indication that is aware of activate our most primal feelings, has us swimming within the depths of our emotions, and makes us need to curl up within the fetal place and cry for mother.
It was clear that the center of the month would damage.
However this ache that we’re in, the intense loss we’re experiencing, is at the very least partially man-made. To not say that fires aren’t a part of the cycles of nature, however the colonial challenge that we stay inside seeks to dominate and decimate the pure world, quite than respect its rhythms. The local weather disaster we’re in is due to the large abuse of assets firms have been capable of get away with. And warfare. The greed of a only a few swallows up the lifetime of all of us en masse, finally. It’s a lure that we all know we’re all ensnared in, and moments like these give us a glimpse of the longer term we don’t need. A future that’s positive to come back if we don’t be taught from these classes, if we don’t grieve and switch that grief into motion.
We will do every thing attainable to avoid wasting every thing attainable. And every thing we save reclaims a world of potentialities. If main astrological occasions in Most cancers educate us something, it’s that care is our biggest forex.
This subsequent week brings us a really totally different, however equally ominous signature: a Pluto–Solar conjunction in Aquarius. Occurring on January twenty first, it’s the first of its variety on this register 248 years or so. It’s a mark of a brand new period that sadly aligns with the inauguration of a president that has promised us his imaginative and prescient of plutocracy.
I’ve a number of ideas about this signature and this second — how bleak it seems, how heavy, how excessive and all-consuming, and the way bizarre the tech battles will turn out to be. However I need to depart us with this: If we’re speaking about Pluto in Aquarius, now we have to middle the truth that, collectively, we’re extra highly effective than they might ever be. We all know this, however we have to act on it. On daily basis, all day. With or with out reward. If that is the dawning of a brand new period, let or not it’s one which brings us complete readability about what we are able to change and all that we are able to save.
By no means miss a memo.
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