THE ESSENTIAL ASTROLOGY FORECAST FOR 2023
The new year began with a pause, quiet and dreamy. The two retrograde planets (Mars and Mercury) encouraged us to reflect longer on the New Year’s wishes and plans. Looking back, 2022 now appears liminal, as if we traveled between light and darkness back and forth, back and forth. The year’s ending seemed like a deep dive into blackness, and the quiet beginning with that hyper-emotional Full Moon in Cancer on January 6, still doesn’t give us more than a faint blinking light.
If 2022 were liminal, 2023 would crack open doors for us and show the lights we can follow.
As I write this, I think of my favorite lighthouse in the Pacific Northwest and its rays emitted through the thick fog. We still can’t see beyond the fog but know which way to go.
January> Open to (re)visioning. In the vague, foggy January, take advantage of the Mercury retrograde and its willingness to help you conceptualize your ideas, plans, and projects more clearly. January is the perfect month for
creative abandon if you are an artist.
February>Invite the Aquarian mindset. The Sun enters Aquarius on January 20 and remains there until February 18. This Aquarius season appears calm, so use it to set clear goals and map out the imagined projects and the financial structure for 2023. Regarding finances – the new year will bring a handful of economic surprises. Start thinking about future investments with a revolutionary spirit of an Aquarius.
March> Redefine boundaries. March brings us two significant astrological events that will mark a dramatic paradigm change: Saturn’s transition into Pisces and Pluto’s first ingress into Aquarius.
Before Uranus was discovered in 1781, Saturn was seen as the last planet in our solar system. In astrology, the last planet constituted boundaries, endings, and definitions. Saturn signifies form, structure, and limitations. In the human body, Saturn guards the skeletal system and the skin. For the past five years, while Saturn resided in its home constellations of Capricorn and Aquarius, various limitations were forced on us in every possible way. With Saturn’s transit into Pisces on March 7, we’ll start revising adopted definitions of our restrictions (Saturn will stay in this constellation until February 2026).
The last time Saturn was in Pisces was from late January 1994 to early April 1996. Those born during this period will experience their first Saturn return in the next couple of years. According to the astrological calendar, Saturn’s returns signify thresholds into a new era in life: adulthood and elderhood (the second Saturn’s return).
In Hellenistic astrology, Saturn (Greek Kronos, father of Zeus) represented the father and the father principle, and other (male) figures of authority. Saturn helps us understand how we deal with authority and when we are ready to step into our power. Today, we can interpret Saturn as a patriarchal archetype in the natal chart and analyze how we support or resist patriarchy.
In Pisces, where structures liquify, walls crumble, and forms and norms disintegrate, Saturn loses his purpose as a boundary-keeper. In the next three years, we’ll broaden our understanding of personal and social limitations and bend or blur every imaginary line we have drawn as a limit. Nonfunctional old systems will all face major dissolutions.
Yet, as much as this time will prove beneficial and liberating for some of us, others will experience discomfort and panic.
A peek into the Age of Aquarius. Two weeks later, on March 23, Pluto, the planet of power, wealth, and transformation, enters the constellation of the revolutionary Aquarius, where it will stay (in the first round of the transit) until June 11, 2023. During this period, we’ll only get a taste of what we may experience throughout Pluto’s upcoming twenty-year stay in Aquarius, beginning in January 2024. (Last time Pluto was in Aquarius was in 1777.)
Let’s remember that Pluto entered Capricorn in 2008, with a major crisis on the world stock market that eased into the period of late liberal capitalism in which we realized how fragile our financial systems are. The post-pandemic period and the war in Ukraine have further destabilized already weakened economic systems. Pluto exits signs similarly to how it entered—causing major turnarounds.
The ingress of Pluto in Aquarius relates to the Great Conjunction (the joining of Saturn and Jupiter at 0-degree Aquarius) that happened on December 21, 2020. This conjunction initiated a 200-year period in which these two planets will join in Air signs.
When Pluto enters Aquarius, the world will transition from materialist standards to a new state of humanitarian consciousness.
The power will no longer be with those who control wealth but with those who control information and knowledge. All pyramidal systems will break and be replaced with new structures. Organization of power and wealth will decentralize.
Pluto will return to Capricorn in June 2023 to end the old stories and close some doors before opening new ones.
Let’s move on to the themes of personal development.
April> Abandon your ego. It is important to understand the messages we receive during the eclipse season. The nodes of fate will change signs from Taurus/Scorpio to Aries/Libra. Solar eclipses will happen in the Aries and Libra constellations, and Lunar eclipses will continue in Taurus and Scorpio.
The growth process we begin with the first solar eclipse in Aries on April 20 will inspire us to create a healthy and sustainable balance between personal desires, needs, and plans and the desires and needs of others (our partners, family members, and the community to which we belong). The solar eclipse in Aries will come with hard lessons for Scorpios and Virgos, and the solar eclipse in Libra will greatly challenge all Pisces and Taurus.
Free your souls from the old and dreadful emotional patterns. The Moon will eclipse in constellations of Taurus (May 5) and Scorpio (October 28) to help us disentangle the old and unnecessary emotional patterns that we have come to understand the past year thanks to the 2022 eclipse cycles. The lunar eclipses will benefit the fixed signs (Scorpio, Taurus, Aquarius, and Leo), helping them break free and move forward.
May> Stay humble. Following the first eclipse season, Jupiter, the planet of expansion and optimism, leaves the fiery Aries and enters the earthy Taurus, opening us to a significant shift in how we look at pleasure and wealth. This transit will open questions related to our ideas about happiness and leisure: what we enjoy, what we want more of, and what we lack. But also the question of what wealth is for us and what we mean when we think of abundance.
Taurus rules the senses. With Jupiter in Taurus, our senses will open to new experiences. But Jupiter tends to exaggerate. Taurus helps us materialize our ideas, which makes this time fruitful for artists. But Jupiter loves the magnifying glass. Taurus is realistic and connected to the earth, earthly recourses, and known paths. But Jupiter loves to explore the roads no one has taken before.
You get my point now. Pop some corn and enjoy the show.
If I had to offer you one word or phrase to describe the upcoming period of Jupiter in Taurus accurately, I would choose luscious embodiment.
Taurus is also the constellation in which our investments materialize - use the following year under Jupiter in Taurus to pick the fruits of your previous hard work. (Aquarians and Leos: something will finally push you toward building or buying a new home or finishing the renovation of your home or office space that you’ve been dreaming about or working on for a long time).
The time of Jupiter in Taurus will stress Sagittarians, Pisceans, and Geminis. All the talk about wealth and money and the material pleasures, the excess in spending, and it's opposite – the scarcity mindset – will infuriate the signs who seek wealth in the intellectual, spiritual, and theoretical realm. Advice: stick together and don’t engage in meaningless arguments. This is transient, and if it’s worth mentioning, Jupiter doesn’t like being in Taurus either.
June> June starts with fireworks. The Party-loving Full Moon in Sagittarius is on June 3, after which Venus joins Mars in Leo to increase heat. Sagittarius, don’t hesitate to enter the spotlight the first week of June. You deserve recognition. The second part of June will open to Pluto retrograding back to Capricorn to request the inevitable endings. And Saturn will station retrograde, too. Saturn will ask us to abandon all illusions and delusions before we can ask Saturn to help us materialize our dreams.
July> July will open us to heartbreaks. The constellation of Leo and Taurus will be energized. Venus in Leo will square Uranus in Taurus and request a sincere conversation about equality or lack of equality in your relationships. Then, Mercury in Leo will square Jupiter in Taurus and illuminate the truth about the (dis)balance of power. Feelings will arise and flood our hearts. The New Moon in Cancer on July 17 will initiate the healing.
August> Venus will retrograde this summer in Leo and blur emotional waters. Venus, the planet that governs our relationships, especially romantic ones, will slow her movement in the second half of the summer (July 22 – September 3), causing problems and quarrels on the love front. So, however lovely August is for weddings, I would choose another month in 2023 for such an important event. August 13 is the only day within this period that lends itself to a fantastic celebration of love.
September> Jupiter will retrograde from September 4 to December 30 and slow down the execution of our plans and projects, pushing us from a period of embodied optimism and sensory expansion into a scarcity mindset.
We may wake up thinking about everything we don’t have or doubt our ideas will ever take form. This is an excellent period to begin the process of introspection and healing, especially if you are a person who is more oriented towards sensual and material than intellectual and spiritual pleasures. Unfortunately, this will not be a favorable period for opening new businesses. Any project or business started around this time might operate with difficulties and insufficient funds.
October> The fall eclipse season is the time to heal Venusian wounds. Because both eclipses (the solar eclipse in Libra on October 14 and the lunar eclipse in Taurus on October 28) are ruled by Venus, the Venusian wounds related to money, beauty, talents, and love will resurface.
The Solar eclipse will ask us to rethink our gifts and priorities. Libra loves mirrors and long and even impossible to-do lists. They always want it all, and now. These eclipses will illuminate our doubts and deficiencies. We are asked to grow and evolve under eclipses. However, if we refuse the call, events that happen to us push us toward change. October will open challenges for Libra, Taurus, and Pisces.
November> After the ecliptic turmoil, November starts with Sun and Jupiter's opposition to remind us once again that growth is inevitable. November is always the deeply felt, introspective month when we slide into the unknown. The season of the witch. The season of yin. Pause to feel. Then rise with new insights with the Full Gemini Moon on November 28.
December> We end the year the way we started it – with the subtle awakening of Jupiter now direct again in Taurus and Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius. A staycation that deliciously feeds our senses will be a much better option to end the year than a glamorous holiday trip.