Have you ever noticed the modern cultural tendency for looking back into the past near the end of December? Top ten lists abound, along with “best of,” “worst of,” “most” and “least of.” Then, all of a sudden, on the first day of January it’s all about looking ahead and making predictions.

Such an approach confers more power to the civil calendar than it probably deserves — especially this year.

You don’t need astrology to tell you to be present and take things one day at a time during the first week of 2016. One look at the dips and trips performed by U.S. stock markets yesterday, and you might get the message not to get ahead of yourself.

Nonetheless, the astrology this week is there to remind you of two things. First, the past (especially the recent past) is still very much with us for the time being. Next, the future is highly conditional and dependent on what you do with every moment now.

Begin (as all good astrologers often do) with the Sun. The Sun is the center of the solar system. Its gravity holds the whole shebang together. The Sun is also the most reliable and useful point of reference from which to understand and gain perspective on the Moon and planets, both individually and holistically.

As a case in point, the Sun by definition moves around the zodiac at a rate of approximately one degree per day. Hence, the time the Sun takes to move through planetary aspects gives us some perspective on how the constituent planets in question are currently relating to each other.

For example, you may have heard tell that the era-defining aspects of Uranus in Aries square Pluto in Capricorn are a thing of the past. Au contraire mon frere. Witness how the Capricorn Sun’s conjunction with Pluto tonight at 10:28 pm EST (03:28:07 UTC tomorrow morning) will be followed by a solar square to Uranus at 7:22 am EST (12:22:06 UTC) on Thursday. In other words, the Sun this week is telling us that Uranus and Pluto are less than two degrees removed from being precisely 90 degrees apart.

Yes, the seven separations of exactly 90 degrees from Uranus to Pluto are behind us. Even so, nearly any astrologer you talk to will confirm that a separation of 92 degrees is still a fully functional square aspect. And so it will remain for Uranus and Pluto for quite a while longer. We are not out of those woods yet.

You might do well to see the woods you are slowly emerging from equally as well as any trees up ahead of you. Nor should you be too eager to leave behind the empowerment implied by the Uranus-Pluto square. You just might wish you had these interesting times back someday.

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Speaking of back, there’s nothing quite like a sign-ruling planet beginning a retrograde to remind you not to get ahead of yourself. This is one of those rare weeks when such an occasion happens twice. 

Mercury’s station retrograde this morning just before 8:06 am EST (13:05:34 UTC) was the first such occasion. Jupiter will follow suit with its own station retrograde at 11:40 pm EST on Thursday night (04:40:08 UTC Friday). In both cases, the implication is that revising and reviewing are still appropriate activities, even though you are no longer writing 2015 on your letterheads or checks.

So keep your feet firmly between your head and the center of the Earth as your standing (and ambulating) protocol for this week at least. There is no need to live in the past, but you would be best not to forget it so quickly either. Neither should you be leaning so far forward as to fall on your face at the moment. There will be 12 full months plus one (leap year) day in this year. You will have all the time you need to get ahead as the year goes on.

For now, take things one day at a time. Do what you can. Let that be enough. Take care of your wellbeing as a priority. Don’t let the bastards get you down. They will have their days, you will have yours. If it comes down to it, have your days later if it means having them better.

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The civil calendar used by most of you is based on the amount of time it takes for our Earth to orbit the Sun. Even so, the beginning of the civil new year every Jan. 1 does not consistently correspond with any especially meaningful point in the relationship between the Earth and Sun.

Similarly, the calendar subdivision called a month is named after the Moon. The months, however, do not follow the schedule of lunar cycles (from one New Moon to the next) with any sort of meaningful precision.

Nevertheless, there is an undeniable (albeit residual) connection between how you customarily mark the passage of months and years with rhythms of the sky. For that reason alone, it is worth noting what is new up above as we observe the beginning of a civil new year here below.

Interestingly, the new year 2016 is being ushered in with, marked by and immediately followed up by three instances of one of he most meaningful types of events for astrologers: planets moving from one sign to another.

It is fair to compare a planet changing signs to an actor changing costume. It is no small thing. With movement from one field of expression to another comes an implicit change of character. Furthermore, the nature of the planet in question can, in combination with its new background, usually be observed to correspond to at least some of what you observe in your life. When several planets move from one sign to another in a short period of time, there are indications of several factors combining to indicate the quality of the time.

If there is anything to such indications, 2016 will be a year when you will be able to make a difference more than in most years that have come before. It all started with Venus changing signs yesterday. As noted in this space on Tuesday, to have Venus leave Scorpio behind to express itself through the raiment of Sagittarius includes a corresponding implication: that prioritizing the expression of your conscience would be an appropriate way for you to participate in kind.

Tomorrow, shortly before 9:20 pm EST (02:19:41 UTC Jan. 2), Mercury marks the first day of 2016 by entering Aquarius. Then, just after 9:32 am EST (14:32:20 UTC) Sunday, Mars will depart Libra to ingress Scorpio. It is not often that three sign-ruling planets move from one signature to another in a handful of days. It is even more seldom that such a nearly concurrent shift takes place as one calendar year is transitioning to the next.

You know from your own experience that initial conditions are a big factor in how nearly anything eventually turns out. One example is how the nature of your morning effects the rest of your day. So, to get a hint of how 2016 might well turn out, it would probably be a good idea to consider what Mercury, Venus and Mars have in common.

That would be the label “personal planet.” In other words, because their orbits around the Sun (and through the 12 zodiac signs) repeat many times in a typical human lifetime, Mercury, Venus and Mars are thought to correspond with recurring cycles in your life more than is the case with objects that move more slowly.

That’s how the quality of 2016 might be anticipated to emphasize that the conduct of your personal life will be no small factor in the world. Such will especially be the case if you can bring yourself to initiate some changes of your own. Significantly, the first day of January is often taken as an occasion to make resolutions for the new year.

To be in step with the astrology, then, you might want to resolve to make some conscientious resolutions as regards to your own character and modalities of expression — at least to begin with.

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After all, neither Mercury nor Mars will proceed to plunge ahead in the same way Venus will. Mercury’s first ingress to Aquarius will be quickly followed by the beginning of its first retrograde of the year beginning on Jan. 5. That retrograde will return Mercury to Capricorn on Jan. 8.

Hence, if some of your resolutions require you to review, recalculate or simply re-live a bit of what you have been through in order to move on, have faith that some of the more promising initial conditions of 2016 can be revisited once you go through whatever process of closure will be necessary for you move on.

Things will be only slightly different for Mars, which rules Scorpio in addition to Aries. While the red planet will indeed complete a full-length tour of its Scorpio domain, a retrograde beginning in Sagittarius on April 17 will compel Mars to make a slight return to Scorpio — as if to tie up a few loose ends before it consolidates its gains later this year.

Therefore, don’t be discouraged by any apparent setbacks when making or working towards your personal resolutions for 2016. So long as you are doing the right thing (Venus), being mindful (Mercury) of completing necessary processes, and applying your energies (Mars) with consistency and patience, indications are that you will not be alone in enjoying the benefits of making meaningful changes in your character and means of expression in the year to come..

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Getting from one place to another quickly is imperative for many at this time of year. After all, less time in transit means more time to enjoy a brief holiday respite with friends or family. That’s one way Venus is probably correlating with some of your own life right now.

Even if you are not among the tens of millions on the road or in the air recently, it’s very possible you might feel as though you have been. The world itself is moving rapidly.

Venus itself is currently moving around the zodiac circle at a relatively brisk pace, and getting faster by the day. Its ingress to Sagittarius Wednesday represents the second sign change for Venus this month.

It was only about three and a half weeks ago, on Dec. 5, when Venus plunged into fixed, watery Scorpio. Fittingly, a lot of emotional moments (a water sign thing) have presented themselves in rapid succession

There has been a lot of enthusiasm (an emotional mindset that often corresponds with Venus), which some have indulged (an activity related to Venus) in full. By the same token, many have felt it necessary to resist getting carried away (a fixed sign thing). Yet others have been compelled to simply endure (another fixed sign correlation) one form of trial or another during the rapid transit of Venus through Scorpio.

Venus in Sagittarius (from Wednesday until Jan. 23) will implicitly be a whirlwind tour as well, but another sort of trip entirely. Instead of a predominantly emotional background to the abundant values and receptive virtues of Venus, you will probably find yourself being more instinctively proficient than usual.

Given how Sagittarius is ruled by magnanimous Jupiter, the instinct that distinguishes between right and wrong (conscience) is likely to be especially sharp. When you add in the fact that Mercury will be retrograde from Jan. 5 to Jan. 25, you might even want to prioritize conscience over intellect for the next four weeks or so — especially when you need to make a quick decision.

Indeed, Venus will soon be moving faster than Mercury (which is slowing down on the way to turning around). All the more reason to default towards doing what’s right. By way of determining what’s right, of course, you will want and need to take others into account, in addition to your own interests.

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As a matter of fact, when you consider the spiritual associations often to attributed to Sagittarius, the term “enlightened self-interest” could come to be more understandable and vital for you than ever.

In order to practice enlightened self-interest in the environment implied by Venus in Sagittarius, be constantly mindful of how your actions, words, even thoughts might conceivably boomerang right back at you rather promptly. Then, make your choices with the assumption that such a rapid return on your ‘investments’ in the world are indeed probable.

At least one thing is for certain. Venus will not be in Sagittarius for very long. If you want, you can simply choose to go on living your life without any consideration for either the perils or potentials of its rapid passage. You could simply allow things to happen to you with the assurance that “this, too, shall pass.”

But consider the extent to which you might be able to to expand, open and pioneer new vistas of conscientious interaction with the world. Why would you simply want to stand by when you will implicitly be able to get from one place to another in your life with such effect?

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If you are aware, you are halfway there. That maxim applies to many (if not most) of the situations you will ever face in the course of your life. Rarely need you know all the details in depth. So long as you are conscious of what’s going on in general, you will nearly always have all of the information you need.

For instance, if you intend to cross a street, simply pausing to look both ways before stepping off the curb makes a huge difference in the probable outcome.

The same principle applies with weather forecasts, purchasing decisions, relationships and (yes) astrology. A little bit of awareness goes a long way to help you understand what you are observing. That understanding, in turn, helps you to make good decisions.

Once you can correlate what you observe here on Earth with some basic information about the sky, you can often put two and two together all by yourself. As noted here on Wednesday, for example, simply knowing a little about the historical context of today’s Cancer Full Moon has the potential of indicating what it’s now time for in your life.

It so happens that today’s Full Moon will almost immediately be followed by another astrological development that will allow you to at least conduct an experiment in awareness. Shortly after 10:52 pm EST tonight (03:52:23 UTC tomorrow), about five months of Uranus retrograding back through the middle of Aries will come to a close. From that point, until Mercury begins its next retrograde on Jan. 5, all of the sign-ruling planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto) will be in direct motion.

There are a lot of stories about what retrogrades mean, but none of those accounts can carry as much weight as your own personal experience. First, however, you need a baseline for purposes of comparison. That is what the next 10 days will provide. All you have to do is pay attention.

Beginning tomorrow and through the fourth day of next year, pay attention to how your life proceeds. Take special note of any trends that seem somehow unusual.

Endeavor to be especially conscious of that which does not proceed (for good or ill) as your experience would lead you to expect. Keep track of both pleasant and unpleasant surprises.

As the events of the remaining days of this year and the first days of next year gradually add up, see if you can discern any patterns developing. Then, when Mercury stations retrograde on Jan. 5, keep an eye out for any changes in the direction of developments, and in what parts of your life those changes take place.

While the phenomenon is not as rare as a Full Moon on Christmas, it is not often that the entire solar system (as represented by the sign-ruling planets) is in direct motion. Now that you have read this, you have awareness of when that situation will begin and when it will end. Try experimenting with that awareness. It could very well be a life-changing experience.

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For most of you reading this, the Full Moon on Friday will be the first to take place on Christmas day since 1977. That’s nearly four decades. By most human standards 38 years is a long time — enough for a lot of metaphorical water to have passed under the proverbial bridge.

Adding extra meaning is that any Full Moon on Dec. 25 would (by definition) oppose the Capricorn Sun from Cancer — the water sign where the Moon rules supreme.

Hence, what we have coming up is a day with meaning for nearly anybody. It will be a major holiday, wrapped in astronomical significance inside of an implicitly powerful astrological event. By all indications then, it must be time to at least evaluate all that has taken place since there was last a Full Moon for Christmas, nearly half of an average human lifetime ago.

Jimmy Carter was spending his first Christmas as President of the U.S. in 1977. In many ways, it’s encouraging that he is still alive. Of course, there are many who have transitioned from earthly life since then. The cinema pioneer Charlie Chaplin, for example, passed away only hours before the Moon was precisely full over his Swiss home on the morning of Dec. 25, 1977.

Under the Christmas tree of more affluent households in 1977 you might have found one of the first home computers or gaming consoles. If you were in the U.S. and poor, Christmas dinner may have been made possible by food stamps.

Were you to go out for a holiday movie back then, you might have seen the very first Star Wars film (released in May, but still in some theaters at the end of the year). Or perhaps you would have gone to see Saturday Night Fever, which played a big role in disco going mainstream. Punk rock and improvisational artists rapping along to accompaniment by DJs and their rudimentary turntable setups were also emerging from the cultural underground into wider (and ever more commercial) popularity at that time.

Were you to look up at the Cancer Full Moon on Christmas night of 1977, it would have been a pretty sight with Jupiter right next to it in a Cancer conjunction. Contemplating that tableau, you might have been thinking about the two Voyager spacecraft launched earlier that year on their way to a grand tour of our solar system to take close-ups of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Or you may even have been among the few musing on Chiron, which was discovered less than two months beforehand.

For the Cancer Full Moon coming up on Friday morning at 6:11 am EST (11:11 UTC), Jupiter will once again be in the sky with it, but further East in Virgo. You will also have reason to think about the two Voyager spacecraft once again, as both are still working and sending us data from the edge of interstellar space. Chiron, in the interim, has earned a column of its own alongside the sign-ruling planets in the online Swiss Ephemeris — which is a pretty darned amazing distinction.

Because the parallels between the Cancer Full Moon of Dec. 25, 1977 and the one coming up on Friday are many and compelling, it may very well be worth your while to make some comparisons of your own. This is not just any Full Moon. It is one of those rare events featuring an astrological return in confluence with astronomy, the civil calendar, popular culture, economics, technology, art and ancient mysteries all looping around to intersect in ways that indicate, to any thoughtful person, that it must be time for something.

Precisely what it’s time for will be your privilege to help determine, because you have the good fortune to be alive now. Regardless of how you feel about Christmas, you might want to accept the gift of that privilege and put it to some good use. These days must certainly, in some way, be made into a special time by — and for — you.

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All that you touch, all that you see, all that you taste, all you feel. All that you love, all that you hate, all you distrust, all you save. All that you give, all that you deal, all that you buy, beg borrow or steal. All you create, all you destroy, all that you do, all that you say. All that you eat, and everyone you meet, all that you slight and everyone you fight. All that is now, all that is gone, all that’s to come, and everything under the Sun…

— Roger Waters and Pink Floyd

So far as we know for certain at this time in our history, we are the only people anywhere. So far as we know, all of us are gathered together on only one planet in all of the Universe.

Someday we may know differently, but that’s what we know for certain now.

We are all children of the Earth. You are among us. We, all of us, resemble the Earth just as children resemble their biological parents.

One of the things that characterizes life on Earth is its seasons. One of the things that distinguishes astrology as it is practiced here at Planet Waves is that it is synchronized with the seasons.

You experience the seasons as a cycle. That cycle oscillates between two extremes, with two points of equilibrium in between. Hence the seasons are four: two seasons begin at the extremes, and the other two begin at the points of equilibrium.

The season initiating either late Monday or early Tuesday (depending on your time zone) is synchronized to begin at the precise moment the Sun enters Capricorn. That moment represents one of the two extremes on the seasonal cycle.

Regardless of what time it is wherever you are, the extreme known as the Capricorn solstice will take place at the same moment for all of us. It will be a reminder that we are all in this, whatever it is, together.

To the extent that your life and all of us together are synchronized with the seasons, the events of your life should (and often do) reflect them. In the case of the season about to begin, we might earnestly hope so. Everywhere you look, things have gone about as far as they can in one direction.

When the Sun enters Capricorn next week, it will implicitly be time to come back from extremes and move in the direction of balance once again. If you will simply do what you can to be in tune with that motion, you will be participating in synchrony with the world. You will be doing your part to turn the cycle around, implicitly turning the world around, to keep things going.

What form your participation takes will be yours to choose.

That’s all we know for certain, but that alone is pretty darn special, and so are you.

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