So you think ’21 is gonna be a good year…has anyone else been singing The Who for weeks now? Or is that just me – it is certainly not generationally appropriate for me to know every line to Tommy but here I am…
2021 is going to be a very different year energetically from 2020 but there are some common elements. For one thing, Saturn is going to play one of the starring rolls all year as it slowly makes its way through Aquarius and squares Uranus in Taurus a whooping 3x (almost four…it just barely misses a fourth exact conjunction). It’s safe to say that things aren’t going to get easy anytime soon.
And…that’s okay. Easy wouldn’t even make sense after the year that we have had. We’re still applying a lot of pressure to the cooker we call life but it has morphed quite a bit.
2021 is a 5 year numerologically – 5 years tend to be driven and energetic with perhaps a bit of frenetic thrown in for good measure. Things happen fast in 5 years – they tend to herald great change. Everything tends to move a little bit faster so it’s a good year to schedule your downtime (and stick to it!), to watch how fast you are driving, and to watch out for mania or other symptoms of an overactive brain/nervous system. Depending on your nervous system and temperament – you may jive well with 5 energy or feel really put off by it. There’s no “meh” in 5 energy – it’s all love or hate.
It’s also a number very associated with breaking free from the structure of the “4” (2020 was a 4 year) – this is echoed with the astrology of the year. In February alone, there will be six planets in the sign of Aquarius – including our heavy hitters Jupiter and Saturn – and Aquarius is the sign of the revolutionary. Jupiter and Saturn will remain in Aquarius (basically) all year – as I’ve said before, 2021 is the Great Unbinding.
The overall theme of 2021 is resoundingly freedom, but at what cost? This is an idea that we will have to experience as a global whole, as a culture, as individuals, and within our family and social groups.
Something has got to give – a lot of somethings, actually. The big astrological weather of the year is that (as mentioned above) Saturn in Aquarius will square Uranus in Taurus 3x (2/17, 6/15, and 12/24) while coming close to a fourth conjunction for 12 days in September as well. This is a clash of the titans – Saturn wants to create structure and Uranus’ singular job is to break that structure down.
What is old, what is outdated, anything that does not serve the now, that does not serve the path forward has got to go.
That sounds so easy when you write it down. If only we all agreed on the future path and what has to go! There will, unfortunately, be little compromise to be had when Taurus and Aquarius square off. This isn’t going to be the year to get others to see your way – your best bet is going to have to be to let them do what they are going to do and hope for the best.
I see the lesson in this – we’re coming hard out of a year that was built around boundaries. Saturn in Capricorn reigned hard on the message that we HAD to stay home and wear a mask. But there was a deeper more subtle lesson – the only thing that you can control in your life is yourself. The only thing that you can do is put on your own mask. You can ask other people to do – but what they do is on them. And the consequences – no matter how dire – need to be on them.
People get really stubborn when faced with Saturnian lessons that they don’t want to face. We are going to see a lot more of this – now that Saturn has entered Aquarius for good (of note – Saturn briefly entered Aquarius in March of 2020…you may see where I’m going here) – Saturn in Aquarius very much has the “but my freedoms” feel to it. We can extrapolate on what that might mean globally or culturally as we continue to battle this pandemic but I want to talk about it as it might happen personally.
2021 is gonna be a year of “Don’t Tell Me What To Do” – expect the people in your life (including yourself) to balk STRONGLY against perceived restrictions over the course of the year. If you start to feel that way, you are right on time. If you see it in others, try and cut them some slack – Aquarian energy wants and needs to come to its own conclusions, in its own time.
This is going to be a year when you may need to let people in your life fall flat on their faces as they run into a wall of their own design. This is really hard for perpetual “fixer” types, I know. This is not a year where you are going to be able to fix other people – if you need to fix someone, you are gonna have to fix yourself. If you try to course correct another during 2021, expect a full-on toddler level tantrum of “Don’t tell me what to do! Don’t Tell me what to do! Don’t tell me what to do!!!!!!!”
Again, that is a Saturnian boundary – now of the Aquarian variety rather than Capricorn. People don’t learn from the mistakes that we don’t let them make. Read that one again twice.
I’ve probably given you a lot to chew on – verbosity is also a very Aquarian trait. Of note, both our Mercury retrograde cycles and our eclipse cycles fall entirely in the air-fire signs in the coming year – if you’ve got a problem, 2021 would be a great year to write it out. Start a journal. Start a blog. Hell, write a book if that’s your jam! Find the skills and a strategy for keeping yourself in your own business and out of other people’s. Even your partners/besties/parents/children.
There are going to be some significant upsets – relationships, long term business partnerships, other long-term contractual agreements are going to come to an end. If that is something that scares you in particular in relation to your own life – it’s a sign that there’s still some work to be done. Remember: more freedom, not less.