The Moon waxes through Aquarius today, smile ready for an evening conjunction with fun, quirky Venus in Aquarius, which does a nice job setting the stage for a social evening.

In addition to providing a quantum of conviviality, the evening also hosts Mercury’s entrance into Capricorn. While amongst the Goat’s stony hills, the Messenger slows down cogitations and conversations, and favors those who take the time to understand systems in their entirety before spouting opinions. Mercury in Capricorn prefers pragmatic designs to fanciful ruminations and exerts a consistent gravity on the thinking process. Mercury is thus in an excellent position to help us to map the recently eclipsed terrain we now traverse. Mercury will be in Capricorn until January 16th.

The Sun makes its annual conjunction with Jupiter today. This year, the two meet up somewhere in the stony, solstitial hills of Capricorn. From here we look down, not up. This is not a meeting to discuss the heights to which the human spirit can aspire, it is strategy session to plot a smart route through an unimpressive moment in human history.

Jupiter in Capricorn tends to reward a bottom-up, Maslow’s pyramid-style approach to success. As you build your life, make sure you’re not skimping on the foundation to buy an extra golden toilet. Jupiter’s time in Capricorn will be a big corrective for step-skippers and spiritual bypassers.

The daylight hours are relatively bereft of planetary action, giving us a chance to digest yesterday’s eclipse. Evening holds the Moon’s vaguely soothing sextile with Neptune, but the late night sees Luna conjunct heavy Saturn and Pluto, weighting the wee hours with ponderous thoughts.

This Christmas day is host to an annular solar eclipse in Capricorn, which will be visible primarily in southern Asia, but felt globally.

This eclipse, which takes place astride the Dragon’s Tail, has as its theme the great gift of absence. The darkened circle of the Sun is in fact the Holy Grail of Marie Kondo. What the empty cup contains is a treasure to rival any glittering hoard— space. Without sufficient space, truths must contort themselves into cramped, mangled abbreviations. The same goes for loves, only doubly so.

The eclipse this evening sprinkles the seeds, but it will take much of the next month for them to flower into a bouquet of delightful absences.

Small, practical revolutions occupy the mind today as the Sun in Capricorn perfects a trine with
Uranus in Taurus. There may, however, not be sufficient bandwidth to think through it all. The Moon is waned down, and a square with Neptune sprinkles distractions across the mid-day.

After sunset, the Moon slips inside the perimeter of tomorrow’s solar eclipse. Night has a strange depth, thick with darkness, but streaked with bright, momentary trains for thought.

Santa busies himself through the night, racing to plant an eclipse in everybody’s stocking, good, bad or true neutral.