Astrology of the Week Ahead: December 16–22

Hey, everyone. This is Adam Elenbaas from Nightlight Astrology. Happy Monday, everybody! Today, we're going to preview the astrology for the week ahead. There are a few major transits that we'll be looking at in summary today and then in detail as the week goes on.

It starts with the Sun square to Neptune. We're also going to be looking at the upcoming Venus-Jupiter Trine. We'll have some horoscopes on that this week too. It's one of the more positive transits of the year, in my humble opinion.

We will also be looking at the Sun entering Capricorn, the Winter Solstice, and the square of the Sun to the nodes of the Moon briefly at the end of the week. Some good things to come! We'll preview them today and give you a sense of what's coming in this week of December.

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Transcripts of any of these daily talks can be found on the website, which is NightlightAstrology.com. A couple of things coming up this Thursday night—if you go over to the website, I’ll take you there right now. Whoops, here we go!

I have a webinar coming up Thursday night on the sixth house. If you go over to NightlightAstrology.com and click on the Events tab, then go to Live Talks, you'll see this Thursday night, the Sixth House webinar that I’m giving on one of the more difficult houses.

We’re going to explore why this house has a reputation for being so difficult and also look at the more positive or beneficial sides of this house, which are often overlooked. If you’ve got planets in the sixth, this might be a good one for you. Or, if you’re a practitioner who works with people and wants to find ways of constructively talking about the sixth house, this will be a great one for you too.

When you register, you’ll get the link to attend the webinar live. It’s Thursday from 7 to 9 pm Eastern. If you can’t make it, we’ll send you the recording afterward.

We also have a Solstice event coming up this weekend. Go to the In-Person Events section under the Events tab. It’s in Minneapolis at the Grapevine Collective, Saturday night from 6 to 8:30 pm. You must RSVP; it’s free to attend. We just need to know who's coming so we can bring enough tea and cookies—gotta have that!

On that note, I’m also promoting our annual Kickstarter campaign. We’re trying to get to 19,137 backers by January 1. As of the time I'm recording this, we have 470 backers. There are about 16 days left in our Kickstarter campaign, and we still need about 14,167 backers.

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One thing I put into today’s content is laughter. I intentionally bake humor into the way I create content, trying to keep it uplifting, lighthearted, and funny. Being able to laugh at myself as a content creator has kept me sane for many years of doing this daily.

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So, on that note, we will now take a look at the astrology for the week ahead. Be sure to stick around at the end to hear more about the rewards, including tuition breaks on all of our classes.

All right, let's get into it. We're looking at several different transits this week. I'll run through them first, and then we'll pop up the Real Time Clock, give you a sense of the timing, and then spend a little time with each one of them. Of course, remember, as the week goes on, I'll be unpacking each of these transits individually, maybe save for Mercury turning Direct, which is today. So, we'll spend a little bit more time on that today, and we've already spent some time on it at the end of last week as well.

Anyhow, the first transit of the week is today. Mercury is direct, kind of yesterday into today, as Mercury stations Direct in Sagittarius. We'll mention that again and spend a little time with it here today, on the 18th. A couple of days later into the week, the Sun will square Neptune, from Sagittarius to Pisces, both Jupiter-ruled signs. I think that’s really fascinating.

As Jupiter is moving into a square with Saturn, a lot of the planetary transits this month are activating or participating through dignities in the Jupiter-Saturn square. So, that continues to be a major theme for the month of December—something we’ll visit a few more times this month as the square draws closer to the Christmas holiday.

On the 19th, we have maybe one of the more benefic transits of the year, which is always the case when the two benefics, Venus and Jupiter, get into a trine with one another. Venus in Aquarius will trine Jupiter in Gemini. That trine is something we’re actually going to do some horoscopes with later this week. I’ll also tell you a little bit about the Master Class series I’m teaching in 2025, which is all about the trigonal houses.

We’ll use this as a way of talking about that. I’ve been trying to find a way to tell people about the Master Class series, which is about the houses connected by trines and how we can make more meaningful connections between them. So, we might spend just a minute talking about the trigonal houses and how they are connected philosophically, and then do some horoscopes for Venus-Jupiter. We’ll look at that this week and talk about it a little bit today, too.

And then, of course, the 21st is the Winter Solstice. I’ll spend a little bit of time talking about the Winter Solstice and Capricorn from the perspective of ancient astrology, some of the symbolism that Capricorn participates in through the seasonal journey of light and dark. That’ll be fun, just a little bit, also helping us deepen our understanding of Capricorn's celestial symbolism.

I think there are a few signs where we get part of our understanding correct, but then, we miss a lot. Capricorn is definitely one of those signs. We think, "What is Capricorn? Grumpy, unbearably hard, and practical?" Well, that’s part of it, but there’s a lot more there.

Actually looking at the Winter Solstice moment from the Northern Hemisphere can give us a lot of insight into the deeper, richer, earthy, and feminine side of Capricorn. So we’ll do a little bit of that this week, acknowledging this ritual moment in the calendar year. Of course, for people in the Southern Hemisphere, you have the opposite solstice.

I’ll say a few words about what to do with a moment that isn’t oriented toward your hemisphere when we get to the Winter Solstice talk. Anyway, that’s it! Let’s go through each of these now with the Real Time Clock, starting with Mercury turning direct. I’m going to put the chart up on the screen here.

Here, you can see Mercury. If you’ve got Solar Fire like I do, you’ll see the little "S" underneath it, which means it’s not moving, but it’s now just turning direct today. So, if we bring this forward a touch by a few hours, we’ll see that the "S" disappears later in the day here, Monday, December 16, and Mercury is now in direct motion.

One of the reasons this is significant is that we just had a Full Moon in Gemini over the weekend, ruled by Mercury turning direct. We looked at that last week. What else comes to mind? This is a Mercury that has a lot of work to do as it moves back direct through some of the degrees covered in the retrograde.

First of all, the opposition with Jupiter is absolutely huge. How many times have we talked about that opposition with Jupiter now? Mutual reception by detriment through an opposition. This is a negotiating table between these two planets. They are working something out. They are coming to terms. They are stepping into each other’s perspectives and out of their own, working through some tension or difficulty to come to an agreement.

There is a tension of opposites being amplified by this change in Mercury’s direction, and also a process of holding and working with opposites that will continue this month. That will be different for each of us depending on the house location. We did some horoscopes for the Full Moon in Gemini and told you to look at that house location. You could also easily look at the opposite house of Sagittarius or consider the duality between the two houses as a pair.

As we track where Mercury is heading for the rest of this month, let’s go forward a bit. Here it is—the opposition that Mercury creates on December 26, just after Christmas. You can see Mercury opposing Jupiter. This is the peak moment of their dynamic, because it’s the last one at the exact same time.

What I want you to notice is that this is the peak and crescendo of the Jupiter-Saturn square. The Jupiter-Saturn square is also coming through at the same time. If we back this up a bit, we’ll see that on December 24, Jupiter and Saturn are square to one another as Mercury is coming through, creating a T-square.

Now, it’s not a perfect T-square, but the three planets are coming through at the same time. So, from December 24 to the 26th, we have the final word from these three planets. But we can start to feel this process shifting right now at the beginning of the week, as Mercury turns direct and starts picking up momentum.

One thing that’s really important to remember is that, just like in the sky, events slowly start to form and take place when a planet changes direction. And the next place Mercury is heading is into a T-square like this. That anticipation and sense of something shifting toward an event horizon is something we may feel intuitively or psychically in our lives.

So, what I would look for this week is noticing what you can feel starting to shift or change—whether inside, in a relationship, or at work. Pay attention to how that change culminates and reaches its peak expression around December 24 to 26. This is also the peak of the Jupiter-Saturn moment. Some of the events happening around this time are very important for the deep structures of our lives that are transforming via Jupiter and Saturn.

The Mercury change of direction at the start of this week may not feel like much, but it’s really shifting everything toward the event horizon of the 24th to 26th, which isn’t far off from the 16th. So we’re talking about a change of direction that’s putting us on track for something in about 8 to 10 days.

Okay, another thing I’d mention about Mercury turning direct is that Mercury as the morning star has a distinct personality. It’s very different from an evening star Mercury. Especially Mercury in a fire sign, as a morning star, Mercury is bolder, more assertive, more aggressive, and passionate.

Morning stars have that quality of announcing the start of something, like a rooster crowing at dawn. It’s the feeling of the day beginning, the rising of the light after the darkness. This kind of Mercury reminds me of the Judgment card in the Tarot, where an angel blows a trumpet, and people rise from the grave.

That’s the energy we get with a morning star Mercury in Sagittarius—bold, direct, passionate, and heralding a new beginning. Mercury here is about voicing what we feel passionate about, without worrying about who it ruffles. It’s a time for announcements or messages that might be provocative or even shocking.

This is also a time for reflection on our convictions and a deeper look at how we’re evolving and becoming wiser. Mercury in this position invites us to speak, advocate, teach, learn, and share what we’ve realized or discovered.

There's nothing wrong with this world not being able to embody perfection. We still need images of perfection to lead and guide us.

You know, I know, like, for example, in the stage of writing a book that I'm in right now, there's a way in which I realize that everything I hope or wish or think a work of art can be, the final result will be an approximation of the original idea that I had in my mind as a creator. And I have to live with that. I have to accept that, and then I have to rejoice and be glad in what comes through, as opposed to being disappointed that what came through is only an approximation of the ideal I had in my mind as a creative.

If we don't learn how to live with that sort of falling short, then, you know, we'll draw back a bowstring, but never let it go. Very Sun and Sagittarius square Neptune in Pisces. Let's aim for something, but then I realize, "Oh, there's no way for me to hit the sun with an arrow." So I just won’t. I'll release the tension of the bow, you know, release my aim. I'll throw my bow down. I'll give up.

No, no, holding the tension of an ideal, alongside whatever we're capable of approximating, and the grace and acceptance, the surrender to live with however good we can do relative to an ideal—this is also why people struggle to stop drinking.

I mean, this is something I've noticed as someone who had some addiction issues in my early 20s, which, thank God, I've been in sobriety since then. But when, like, no, I don't condemn people who have a moderate relationship with anything. But for me, it was like, "Oh, this feels good. This feels great. Well, let's do more." You know, let's make the good feel even bigger and more.

Whereas, you know, someone like my wife, who's never had an issue with drinking, will say, "This feels good. It doesn't need to feel more good than this. Like, this is enough." And so, her one drink would be fine, whereas I'd have to have five or six, right? Everyone's different. Different genetic backgrounds. There's alcoholism in both of our families. One person responds a little bit differently.

So, you know, we all have to learn how we relate to things that feel good, that look good, that draw us toward something beautiful or good, and then live with the sort of middle path, which is that I'm only going to be able to get so close to something so ideal, or something that looks so good, or makes me feel so good. I have to be careful that I don't try to fly too high, because Neptune-Sun is a little bit like Icarus. You get your wings burnt off because you fly too close to the sun, and then you crash down into the ocean.

This is often what happens with people who have trouble modulating their relationship with pleasure, right? Or, you know, kind of regulating the nervous system with things that feel really good or things that are very overwhelming.

So, the Sun square Neptune aspect this week is a fascinating one, given that, again, that's taking place in these Jupiter-ruled signs. Jupiter has the tendency to be so big and unifying and abundant and fertile and rich, and so I feel like there's a lot of charisma in this square that we're experiencing this week, and the potential to feel really high and good about things.

We just have to remember that when we move through archetypes, there will be a come down. One thing that I'll never forget that James Hillman said, which really had a big influence on my life when I first read it, was this: "So much of how we live a life is how we live a life toward death."

Like, wow. Okay. I mean, it sounds kind of obvious, but what he meant is that to the soul, the thought of our death, and the keeping the fact of our mortality, and that we have to think to myself, "My life is about dying." Well, it sounds kind of morbid, right? It sounds kind of like, "Oh, sort of bummer, I'm going to live. I don't need to think about death."

But a soulful life, from his perspective, that he wrote about quite a bit, is one that is not spent in denial of our eventual death. It's not spent like a puer, like an Icarus, trying to fly so close to an ideal within a mortal framework that we somehow try to abandon or move beyond our mortality. Neptune's Sun will hold out an image of eternal youth, right, of eternal bliss. But you're going to die someday, you know? For all of us.

So, how do we hold things of tremendous greatness or beauty in perspective, given that we're also here to live with a kind of intimacy, an intimate knowledge of our dying? The soul has an interest in our death as much as it does our life. Death, and how we die and how we move through the portals of death, are just as valuable to think about and live for, from the perspective of an eternal soul, as the living portions are.

And that is something that can really get lost on the Sun square Neptune when we get captured by these images of living forever, with these images of things that appear to eternally solve the problem of pain, or eternally solve the problem of suffering or boredom, or of the kind of disappointment we feel when this world can only just get so close to things, but not go all the way with respect to those images of beauty.

So, this is stuff that can be very deep, Sun-Neptune moments, although many of us will just experience it as a flash for a day or two of intense feelings, desires, longings, stirring of hope, and then, you know, a kind of sloping back into our lives.

Paying attention to those moments, though, is important because it's not that often in our lives that we get the experience to look at visions of things like the Sun-Neptune that they provide us with, and sort of look right into it and go, "I see you. That's beautiful. And I choose to move toward all the beautiful things in the world with full acceptance of the world I live in, and exactly what makes it beautiful and sacred, just as it is. That my death is as important as my life."

Things like that, that I'm not trying to do away with suffering. There's no, "I'm not going to allow myself to be frustrated with the presence of darkness." I'm going to live with it, and then beauty becomes something richer and more textured and more personal.

Anyway, all right, waxing philosophical and poetic about Sun-Neptune—just totally captured by the spirit of the transit as I talk. So let's go on to the next one, Venus Trine Jupiter.

Now, this transit, by the way, that Sun-Neptune dynamic you'll feel here at the beginning of the week, will really fade by about Friday into Saturday, when the Sun switches signs into Capricorn.

Now, let's look at the Venus Trine Jupiter. Here we go. So Venus is trine to Jupiter, one of the more benefic transits of the year. And Venus here in Aquarius, trining Jupiter in Gemini.

We're going to do a couple talks on this one. We'll do a talk about what to watch for. We'll also do some horoscopes where we'll connect those trigonal houses. For example, if this were a birth chart with Cancer rising, you'd see houses 8 and 12.

We're going to talk about the fact that these two houses were both considered Moksha houses. And what does that mean? In Indian astrology, the houses connected by trines are all connected through one of the four major philosophical concerns of human life: moksha, dharma, artha, kama. We're going to talk about what those are, how they translate into some of the topics of the houses, and how we might connect the benefics in their trine through two of the houses.

So if this were, again, a Cancer rising chart we’re looking at right now, this would be a preview of what we'll be doing later in the week. I'll connect houses philosophically like this all through all horoscopes, which will be really fun.

The connection between the benefics here would suggest that there is an important sort of benevolent opportunity for some liberation from attachment, from sickness, from false perceptions, from things that undermine. Or there might even be positive things coming in for a Cancer right through their relationships with other people that serve to give them some perspective that goes beyond themselves, or that is somehow otherworldly, or that begins a process of spiritual and psychological liberation from various unconscious dimensions of their life.

What a benefic connection!

I mean, it's a little darker in the Moksha houses, for sure, and that's part of why they're associated with spiritual liberation. Because spiritual liberation, for many of us, involves processing difficult things. Spiritual liberation, from the standpoint of Indian astrology, has to do with relinquishing things that darken our consciousness, right?

So, this benefic transit would, in a sense, be helping Cancerians to liberate from areas of darkness. What kinds of resources come in to do that? That's a little sample of the kind of horoscopes you're going to be doing later this week. But what I want to talk about more generally right now is just Venus and Jupiter connecting.

Now, imagine that in the ancient world, the basic meaning behind Venus and Jupiter's benefic status had to do with the fact that they were planets associated with the kinds of things in consensus reality that we all go, "Yeah, like that." You know, good food, sex, romance, humor, entertainment, sensuality—things that give us pleasure, happiness, harmony, or connection. These are the things that make us feel as though the events in our life are able to be synthesized, harmonized, integrated.

All of that was generally given the name of good fortune or good luck—that's Venus. Now, there can be lots of other meanings for Venus, but just generally speaking, Venus had the meaning of being about pleasant, happy, fortunate, lucky, good things in everyday life. For example, today, I'm pretty happy I don't have a lot of work after I do this. Afterward, I’ll go to the gym, and then I have the afternoon open. I’ll probably play my guitar or just hang out a little. Not every day is like that, but today feels like a fortunate day.

Not surprisingly, as I'm making this, Venus is basically at my midheaven in Aquarius. So, I have a workday that's a little lighter, right? So, you know, it can be that simple—Venus just represents the kind of fortunate, flowing, pleasing elements of everyday life. Venus was also associated with conditions that make plants grow, like the moderate, moist, sunny, warm weather, something like that.

Jupiter is also associated with good fortune and good luck, but bigger, more cosmic. So, when you think of Venus, you're really thinking of the everyday world, the mundane world. When you think about the good luck of Jupiter, you're thinking more about a larger, benevolent sense of the cosmos conspiring to support you. It has a bigger, more cosmic container behind it.

When I think of Jupiter, I think of the fact that there’ll be a day in your life when you’ll say, "Okay, I’ll give you an example from my own life." I remember when I met my first teacher of horary astrology. I was giving a talk on Chiron at an NCGR group in Long Island, and I met a guy named Chris. He ended up becoming my horary teacher. When I met him, and then I started studying horary with him, I just had this feeling that the universe had benevolently conspired to bring a teacher into my life who I genuinely liked.

He was an Episcopal priest. He would end up doing my wedding and baptizing my daughter. Just when I, you know, so that was a really nice Jupiter transit happening in my life when I met him. Long story short, when you have that feeling, like your faith, your hope, your sense of the universe being a coherent, supportive place, is putting you in touch with the people, the teachers, the ideas you need—those are very Jupiter moments.

We all have moments in our life that are very Jupiter, where we feel like that greater form of cosmic confirmation or affirmation is sort of the wind at our back. Not surprisingly, Jupiter is associated with the trines. All the houses connected by trines are connected through the aspect that was considered Jupiterian in the Trine, and the paradigmatic example of a house that embodies the Trine and Jupiterian energy is the 11th house—the place of allies and friends. It’s the place of powerful resources that confirm and affirm our life, path, or ambitions.

When you're in business and you have the feeling that you're meeting the right people and connections, and things just open and start building and growing, there's a feeling—it’s very Jupiterian. So now, take that everyday version of good fortune, pair it with that broader sense of cosmic support, bring the two together, and you’re like, "Wow, things are feeling kind of lucky. Things are feeling good, and things are feeling connected in this broader sense."

At the same time, there’s a feeling of things coming together, conspiring together in both simple ways and bigger ways, in both basic, everyday human physical ways and in ways that conspire in a larger, philosophical, paradigmatic way. Now, some people may feel this more than others, and the reason for that is going to be with respect to the houses they land in and where you feel it. Also, you know, are they hitting planets in your chart? This is why we'll do horoscopes later this week and connect these trines.

I think you're going to love that episode because, as I just showed you, the connections between the houses connected by trine philosophically are fascinating. That's also the subject of my 2025 masterclass series available through the Kickstarter. So we’ll talk about that, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about where I’m heading with all of that.

All right, finally, the winter solstice. All I want to do is tell you about a few suggestions I have for ritualizing the winter solstice if you're in the Northern Hemisphere. I’m going to talk a little bit about why it both does and doesn’t matter which hemisphere you live in with respect to astrology. I’m also going to tell you why there is so much more to the sign of Capricorn. It's actually rooted in the meaning of the Winter Solstice and some of the deeper Yin qualities of Capricorn that we frequently miss—especially when people say Capricorn is a sign of patriarchy.

Well, there’s nothing that drives me more nuts than that ridiculous claim, but I'll tell you why. It's because Capricorn is a really deep, earthy, feminine sign. I think there’s a talk I did actually somewhat recently on this, where I talked about Pan in the nightmare, an essay or a book from James Hillman. I read some passages and talked about Pan and the relationship with Capricorn as this very nocturnal, deep, earthy, Yin sign.

So anyway, I won’t go off on my soapbox. Now, you guys, I should—there should be like a little flashing icon that comes up: “One of Adam’s soapboxes is coming!” He’s going to start harping on people who don’t like Capricorn because I have a Capricorn Moon, and I have to defend myself.

Okay. Well, anyhow, I love all of you. I hope you're having a great day today, a great start to the week. This gives you some good things to think about and work with. Remember, we have a long way to go to meet our backer goal. We really need your support. Any donation, every donation helps, and you’ll pick up a great reward through the Kickstarter.

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That’s it for today. Stick around to learn more about the rewards that are available when you support the channel. Bye, bye.