Starcodes Jan 3, 2025

Be kind to tender hearts, choose battles carefully, and get back to work on some long-range plans. This week brings both conflict and industriousness, confusion, and a more sensitive emotional environment.

Behind the fresh New Year’s action, keep an eye out for strange accidents, attacks, and notice a new map of arising conflicts sketching out the rough terrain of the coming year. Tension or transformation that started in November, needs work now even though it won’t be resolved for months or years. Militant, willful Mars opposed Pluto early in November, just in time for the election, now retrogrades opposite Pluto again this week, and will oppose Pluto one more time in April.

It’s easy to see these conflicts in sweeping political terms, but this tension could be interpersonal or internal, acting out some tension between our desires or between our goals and some harsh reality. But remember tension isn’t always bad, it can be the motivation, the combustion engine that gets us places.

Venus is now in perceptive, creative, Pisces and on Monday, Mars backs into sensitive, defensive Cancer early next week, and our emotional patterns move from relatively outgoing over the holidays to a more sensitive, self-protective, and relatively introspective phase in the weeks ahead. It will be tempting to overeat emotionally, which can add fuel to the fire, but it’s even…