Your December Horoscopes Will Have You Challenging Old Sets Of Beliefs

It’s December, the final month in the Gregorian calendar, but in the sky, some things are just beginning. November closes with a full moon in Gemini, a lunar eclipse whose analytical and unflinching energy clings to us until we greet the solar eclipse in Sagittarius on December 14. Eclipse energy is considered a bad time to work any kind of magic. Eclipse energy that activates the Gemini-Sagittarius axis is all about refining your relationship to knowledge and knowledge acquisition. How do you know what you know, and in what ways can you challenge old sets of beliefs to more honestly reflect the contemporary moment you are in? How does ideology fortify you, and how does it compromise you? What are your values and are you still the same person you were when they were formed?

If your vision for your life has changed, then surely your values have changed as well — even if you forgot to notice. Rather than trying out an invocation you’ll regret later, the moons of the month support your commitment to clarifying the visions you have for yourself and taking steps to become more knowledgeable with regards to those visions. In the Northern hemisphere where the days are short and the nights are long, reading for personal illumination is time well spent; in the Southern hemisphere, where the long days stretch on indoors (because, hey, pandemic), a book or two for company is just as nice.

It never hurts to try your hand at a new skillset, especially if it’s calling your name and you’re not making risky pandemic choices. Jupiter and Saturn’s shift into Aquarius this month, followed by a conjunction on the 21, is a shift toward new approaches and perspectives. We have more options than we know and we don’t have to do things the old way when the old way no longer feels appropriate. Whatever we can imagine we can make real, so why not imagine a world where every living thing is sacred and no one is expendable? So be it. See to it.

ARIES & ARIES RISING

For much of this year, Chiron, the wounded healer, has been in your sign. On December 15, the asteroid stations direct but won’t leave retrograde shadow for months. Whatever Chiron has taught you about the wounds you carry, as well as how to heal them so that you might teach others to heal, will be reviewed this month. This review can feel like a kind of release — but not the kind that puts you in the clear, especially since Mars has also stationed direct in Aries and remains in retrograde shadow until January.

Here, there is a sense that to move on, one must walk through the burnt field and see what has been cleansed by fire and what new life is possible. If you’ve worn yourself down this past month or two, if you’ve burnt your candle at both ends, the walk might be increasingly difficult. To move through the present moment with clarity takes both psychic and physical energy.

Perhaps, to give yourself some grace, some time, it’s better that you move toward clarity not as a state that happens all at once. Rather, you can visualize yourself as going through the process of clarifying. Surveying the landscape of your life one angle at a time until the whole picture forms, asking yourself questions when you find yourself saying something you don’t fully believe, getting closer and closer to an answer that feels right, right now.

TAURUS & TAURUS RISING

On the part of the Earth where it is winter, bears began getting ready for hibernation in late November. Getting ready, of course, is all about getting fat with food and preparing to have those resources stored in their bodies. Now it’s December, and while you haven’t been preparing for torpor, you have been stacking and storing. As the days get shorter leading up to solstice, the nights stretch, and you have plenty of time to sort through the resources you’ve collected for the year ahead and figure out just what security looks like.

If it’s true that at this moment you have everything you need to rest and reflect, then perhaps sitting with your holdings has less to do with figuring out how to keep fattening your cache and more to do with sorting through what you already have and what you want to claim for yourself in the long run.

Even if you’re still feeling unsteady, your ruling planet in Sagittarius mid-December presents a great time to transform your relationship to abundance and — its cousin — debt. You can cultivate a new approach to negotiating what you owe and what you are owed. There’s a call here toward investing in yourself first, investing in your joy as your first wealth. Then, you can think of what investment means in other ways, like starting your own business, or breaking a contract with someone because you’ve made a new contract with yourself.

GEMINI & GEMINI RISING

It might not feel like it now, dear Gemini, but you are exactly where you should be. Even if you have broken some promises to yourself, even if you’re feeling isolated, even if you are feeling powerless against old habits you thought you knew how to break. Sometimes coming into yourself is the opposite of feeling whole. Sometimes integration begins with unweaving the self as you know it. The parts and stories, loose, ask to be witnessed as separate entities, and then to be acknowledged for what they add to the whole picture.

What if this month, instead of focusing on the parts of you that seemingly refuse to evolve, you focus on your relationship to your own evolution?

Ask yourself, Gemini, where you store your will to change. Go back to the philosophies that inform your process and don’t rely on memory. Remind yourself of all your selves, read your journals, or the underlined sections of old books you could never part with. Marvel at your adaptability, born of curiosity and cleverness. Don’t let your feelings about where you are now obscure the work it took you to get here, or the skills that work has imparted upon you. Those skills are not one-time use, they are meant to be refined and, eventually, shared.

CANCER & CANCER RISING

It’s not easy for you to let go, Cancer, no matter how good you are at packing your bags and falling off the radar. The firmness of goodbye, whether it’s directed at a lover, a job, or a city, might seem finite to those you part with, but rarely does it extend to the inner chambers of your heart where what you loved lived and became part of you. It must be at least a little exhausting to live in the tension between the resolution you embody and the grief you feel — especially if your resolve feels precarious, if it depends on hiding your grief.

It’s understandable, then, that there are days when you must dress up your grief in anger, in distraction, or bitterness. It’s understandable if you’re too tired to face it fully and let it move through you.

Take your time, dear Cancer, and be sweet to yourself — even if you don’t feel sweet, even if you feel monstrous. On the other side of an ending, we begin again like children, relearning our relationship to time and to each other. Children can be monstrous when they want for sweetness; when they need it most. Children can hide their grief when they take care of their caretakers. It takes a long time to realize that grief is what teaches us who we are and what we value. Now that you are your own mother, what can you teach yourself about the transformative power of loss?

LEO & LEO RISING

Lots of love songs have fire in them because fire is passionate, consuming, cleansing, and — of course — it burns. Lots of real life love stories have fire in them too, and you should know, Leo, since you are both the lover and the keeper of flames. In a love story, whether it’s about sexual partners, friends, or even family, fire is a sign of energetic investment. As long as it’s crackling, fire is a sign of life. That’s why, on the occasion that someone feels distant from their beloved, it’s not uncommon that they generate conflict. Conflict is a kind of closeness, a stone striking another stone praying for sparks.

It is said that conflict can be good for our relationships when it is approached with care, that conflict teaches us how love each other without losing ourselves in the flames.

But, there’s a difference between the occasional communication breakdown, resolution, and conflict cycles that fall over you in waves, drowning out reason. There’s a difference between conflict that leads to deeper intimacy/trust and conflict that takes the place of intimacy — that fills the space that trust longs to pour into. Conflict as intimacy, conflict as a cord that binds you to another person through your anger or your fear (of being known, or getting hurt), is a wildfire. An uncontrolled burn. It spreads over our other relationships and it blocks our creative channels — it distracts us from the work we are here to do because it serves fear: fear of love, fear of ourselves.

VIRGO & VIRGO RISING

It would be nice if all work had to do was sustain us financially, wouldn’t it? If human beings had an excess of time and energy with which they could attend to their creative ambitions, their financial security, their interior world, and their relationships to others. While there are some people who are quick to point out that one’s job doesn’t have to take up the same space as one’s passions, the truth is there are only so many hours in a day — and so many years in a life.

The truth is, whether your purpose is defined by your job, or what you find yourself doing after your work is done, managing your energy means making compromises.

It’s likely that you are someone who learned long ago how to juggle many different commitments. You probably have spreadsheets that date back decades, an alarm set for two hours before children wake or it’s time to clock in. These systems usually work for you and so you rely on them. The trouble with any system, as you know, is that it eventually needs to be updated to reflect the needs of the user. This month, when you find yourself running out of energy, consider the possibility that your exhaustion is information about your relationship to what you are doing and what it means to you. Your physical state is wiser than your spreadsheet and knows more about your availability.

LIBRA & LIBRA RISING

Having a strong set of beliefs and practices that arise from those beliefs is a gift. For some people, this gift is the result of an early life that allowed for certain kinds of freedom. Perhaps these beliefs were nurtured by a childhood where curiosity and questions were encouraged, either by guardian or mentor. Conversely, perhaps it was a gift that arrived in terrible packaging, an inner world built substantially to protect you from an insecure outer one.

Of course, the conditions that led you toward your personal values are noteworthy but, ultimately, what matters is that the world you build inside yourself and the logic of that world sustained you into your adulthood.

What’s beautiful about having strong principles, dear Libra, is that you have the opportunity to recognize where ideology fails and individual circumstances come into play. You don’t have to fear compromising yourself in the face of new information because your values shift and change as you do. The stronger your relationship to your values is, the more aligned your own behaviors are, the easier it should be to recognize when the values of other people can inform your own and when they’re none of your concern.

SCORPIO & SCORPIO RISING

Scorpio is a sign often associated with secrets. Sometimes, Scorpio people are called secretive, sometimes they are described as the detective of the Zodiac. While these descriptions are not entirely inaccurate, they stand to be enriched by a couple of other interpretations. For instance, this month, it might be worthwhile to think about your relationship to information (mining, uncovering, and safekeeping) as a kind of dance rather than a preoccupation.

When you are called toward information — whether that takes the form of researching a new bird that has alighted your fire escape or listening to a friend’s troubles — you are invited to dance.

If you accept the invitation, you move from the position of witness toward partner. This is a collaborative process which necessitates attention and adaptability. You must admit that there is something you don’t know, you must create space for the knowledge of others. In this dance, it’s likely that the source of your information is the lead but, in following, you can learn a great deal about both yourself and them. The process of listening to someone, of getting to know living things, is sacred even if most of what you learn is better kept to yourself. Accept the invitation only when you’re ready for all that it entails; remember that you’re always free to decline.

SAGITTARIUS & SAGITTARIUS RISING

Happy birthday, Sagittarius! Whether your birthday just passed or is coming up, December is a month of blessings and opportunities for you. For one thing, the Sun is in your sign and that is a kind of magic, a light that shines down on the crown of your head and warms your days. For another thing, December’s eclipses along the Sagittarius-Gemini axis are bound to cause some chaos for the animals of the Zodiac but you thrive in upheaval — galloping into the distance and forging a new way for others.

Jupiter, your ruling planet, leaves retrograde shadow on December 6 and reignites your faith in the universe and the abundance available to you. Your words are very powerful now and how you speak to yourself, how you define your limitations or lack therefore, will shape your reality.

Of course, our self-conception plays a huge part in shaping the course of our lives. Yet, there’s something especially charged about this moment for you. Certainly, the eclipses play a part and it’s important that you spend time leading up to the new moon in Sagittarius on December 14 trying your best to recognize what you’re capable of accomplishing vs. what feels impossible or out of reach. This isn’t about anybody else’s expectations, it’s about what feels right and true for you. It’s time to set the bar a little higher in honor of yourself.

CAPRICORN & CAPRICORN RISING

Perhaps it will be a relief to you, Capricorn, to hear that both Saturn and Jupiter are bound to leave the auspices of your stars and drift toward Aquarius after the 17 of December. Saturn, your ruling planet, feels plenty at home in Aquarius. There, Saturn’s concerns shift from singular structures toward the networks and communities that sustain them. Saturn in Aquarius wants to delegate and disperse responsibilities, changing our relationship to power and our sense of responsibility to the collective.

Less pressure on you and a whole lot more wiggle room. Saturn in Aquarius isn’t afraid to try something new, especially if something new has the potential to bring objectively better results.

With a conjunction to Jupiter on the 19, this energy can certainly be challenging, especially if you’re a creature of habit. Growth is never easy and, for those of us who would rather be dragged than let go, growth can feel a lot like structural collapse. Perhaps it might help to remember that whatever falls was not built to last and what remains is a testament to what holds true. When you’re ready for a new chapter, you’ll find you’ve got everything you need to begin beautifully.

AQUARIUS & AQUARIUS RISING

It can feel a little bit out of touch to write about money or deadlines or jobs in general when so many people are in a state financial precarity. So, maybe what we can talk about instead is the economy of energy, how you spend your time and who you spend it on. Like all fixed signs, you’ve known who you are for as long as you could remember, even if you took a while to grow into yourself. Yet, despite your abundant self-knowing, these months have often found you wading through self-doubt and hesitating when you should have been stepping forward.

What is it about your current circumstance that pulls you away from yourself? What outside forces take up the majority of your energy so that when it’s time for you to show up for yourself, you find yourself exhausted?

Answering this might be simple enough, there are quite a few worldwide issues at hand. But, it’s likely that while much of your exhaustion and self-doubt is a natural response to an uncertain and heartbreaking world, some of it is the result of influences that are within your control. This month, rather than lamenting time lost or wondering which is which, you might find it fruitful to begin your days by envisioning what you’d feel proud to spend your day doing and scheduling uninterrupted blocks of time for that activity. What disrupts you and breaks your concentration is all the information you need.

PISCES & PISCES RISING

It’s true that this year has been a juggernaut rolling through our lives and demolishing whatever it encountered. But, it’s also true that this year has been a kind of rallying call toward right action and toward a daily life that acknowledges our human need for connection and creative expression. If the stars have had their way with you, it’s likely that you’ve moved recently or, if not, you’ve seriously reshaped your relationship to what “home” is. If, as you’re reading this, you find yourself on the other side of all that, situated and steady, congratulations!

Hopefully, with your home life taking on a more familiar and consistent shape, you can turn your attention away from the mundane and toward the magical.

This December is a great time to revisit your dream journal or sharpen your astral projection skills. Return to the old story that keeps haunting you and figure out what the secret message is. Record the song you keep singing under your breath, choreograph a dance to the song, upload it to the internet. If you’ve been having visions of taking on new roles in your career or your community, write them out and read them for possibility. This winter, you can imagine the road map for a new path. Come spring, you’ll be the one rolling down the road.