Weekly Horoscope: January 16 – 22, 2023

Here is your Weekly Horoscope for January 16 – 22, 2023

Saturn dominates the sky this week as it resumes its once every 29 year transit through Aquarius at the New Moon in Capricorn. Also, Mercury finally stations direct.

This week’s themes: Having enough, Visibility, and Self-Determination

  • 17 – Saturn in Aquarius
  • 18 – Mercury in Sagittarius, Stationary Direct
  • 21 – New Moon in Capricorn
  • 22 – Venus in Aquarius; Venus conjunct Saturn in Aquarius

This is a sidereal astrology horoscope. Use this guide to cast your sidereal birth chart. Learn to read your sidereal birth chart, and identify its wounds and gifts.

Astrology time and Gregorian calendar time rarely align. Astrology time is segmented, named, and given meaning based on planetary cycles. Gregorian calendar time is segmented, named, and given meaning based on the imperialist whims of capitalists.

Saturn’s transit through Capricorn since 2020 has been all about time. In a recent post on Instagram, I asked what your sign’s inner child is asking your for. For Capricorn I wrote, “To have enough.” If we have learned anything, it should be that time costs money. Whoever has enough money has enough time. Enough time to be sick. Enough time to rest. Enough time to care for their loved ones. Enough time to play. Enough time to waste.

Who has enough money as the cost of everything continues to be inflated by the whims of the same capitalists who determine the value and meaning of time? Who has enough time to rest and fully recover from illness as sickness abounds?

This is what Divination For Liberation is for: The rejection of time as a capitalist commodity we seek to hoard by selling our labor, and the embrace of time as an oracle we use to divine our way to liberation.

Now, if ever there were a week that would explicitly let us know that we are in a new segment of Divination For Liberation time, it is this week. “2023” officially begins with the New Moon in Capricorn, and Capricorn’s ruler Saturn in a new sign–Aquarius.

Saturn started its transit of Aquarius back in April of 2022. [You reflect on what was happening in your Aquarius house April 28, 2022 through July 12, 2022 for insight on what Saturn is resuming in your life.[

Whenever Saturn changes sign our reality changes. Reality in this context meets at the junction of who and what we collectively ignore and who and what we give our attention, too. Yes, the gift of Saturn is sanity. You are deemed sane when you ignore what you are supposed to ignore. And if you do not ignore what you are supposed to ignore…

I would say that we’ve all agreed to ignore COVID. But the truth is that we’ve had our consent manufactured. We have had factual information withheld from us. We’ve been told explicit lies about the origins of COVID and the danger it poses to our lives. Many words have been written about the folks who refuse to ignore COVID. We’ve been called “the last holdouts”, anxious, and many derogatory terms, all as a means to question our sanity. “Why aren’t they ignoring what clearly doesn’t exist? Why are they paying attention to something that’s not real? They must be mentally unwell…”, they say.

With Saturn entering Aquarius, we still have this question of sanity hanging over us. Where Saturn in Capricorn meant that we ignore our bodies as we fall in line with the way that our bodies have been ignored by others; Saturn in Aquarius is about who we ignore.

Personhood is the designation of being human in the eyes of those who hold the power to grant life and make death. Unfortunately, in the capitalist white patriarchy, personhood almost always means white. And those deemed white have the power to extend or revoke that personhood based on their own claim to authority.

A question I pose often is, “whose vision determines what you see?” We assume that we see ourselves, each other, and this world through our own vision. If we are not seeing through our own eyes, whose eyes are we seeing through?

What we call the ‘self’ is an aggregate of internalized gazes. By gaze, I mean who and what other people perceive and/or demand us to be, and how they treat us and judge us. An internalized gaze, then, is the way we consciously and unconsciously see ourselves, each other, and the world through the judgements and perceptions of others. This often happens to the exclusion of our own gaze, until the time comes to see ourselves anew. That time is now.

From “Change My Name: Saturn in Aquarius 2022-25

I won’t carry on about Saturn in Aquarius. You can read the post I’ve already written. It’s linked above. For now, I’ll leave you with these questions:

  • Do you deserve to have enough?
  • What are you willing to do to have enough?
  • What are you unwilling to do to have enough?
  • Who does not deserve to have enough? Why?
  • What is your name (given name, pronouns, self-determined name) and its origins?
  • How does your name impact your ability to have enough?
  • How does your name reveal or conceal who you are in your own eyes?

For a more personal application of this week’s astrology, download the 2023 Sidereal Astrology Guide. In it I guide you through the personal application of the year’s astrology month by month. No previous astrology knowledge required.

I’ve created sidereal astrology transit iCals that you can upload into your personal calendar. This will allow you to see the dates and times of planetary and moon transits right in your phone or on your device. Want to know what time the full moon is in your time zone? Or, the precise moment that Mercury stations direct?

Find the Moon sign changes, new and full moons, and eclipses in the 2023 Moon Transits iCal.

Find the sign changes and various aspects between the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn in the 2023 Sidereal Planetary Transits iCal.

Saturn in Sidereal Aquarius 2022-2025

Change My Name

Saturn will transit sidereal Aquarius April 28, 2022 through March 29, 2025.

An illustrated collage of face parts cut up into squares and strewn amongst pieces of cut up newspaper. Face parts in all shades of skin, browns, oranges, beiges. Face parts include eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, noses, mouths, etc in all different shapes and colors. Black text inside  white partially transparent rounded rectangles say "Change my Name. Saturn in Sidereal Aquarius. April 28, 2022 - March 29, 2025."

I told Jesus
Be alright
If he changed my name
I told Jesus
Be alright
If he changed my name

I told Jesus
Be alright
Be alright
Be alright

“I Told Jesus” by Roberta Flack on YouTube

One thing the God of the Bible was gonna do was change somebody’s name. Story after story is about the new identity that emerges from leaving behind one’s former self for a new self, one’s old name for a new name.

The God of the old testament gave new names to those God called to lead their people towards liberation, and to those given mantles to change the trajectory of their family lineage. Abram became Abraham while Sarai became Sarah. Jacob was called Israel.

This practice of changing names has been important for people, past and present, both as political statements of self-determination and as a reorganization of one’s sense of self. The latter is political, too.

Just as Jesus of Nazareth changed his disciple Simon’s name to Cephas (as a prophecy for how Cephas would soon carry forth Jesus’s work and legacy), Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s father changed both of their names from Michael to Martin Luther. He did this in honor of the legacy of Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation. Malcolm Little was called Malcom X and then el-hajj Malik el-Shabazz in the tradition of the Nation of Islam, relinquishing the surname of their ancestors’ enslavers. He was renamed as an acknowledgment of a new identity from a new lineage, no longer seeing and knowing himself as the offspring of chattel.

There are also instances in the Old Testament of the Bible where colonizers changed the names of those they colonized. Pharaoh changed the name of Joseph, son of Israel (Jacob), to Zaphenath-Paneah. Daniel became Belteshazzar under the reign of imperialist ruler Nebuchadnezzar. Both Joseph and Daniel were given names as a way for their colonizers to appropriate and claim ownership of their gifts.

Though this particular kind of name change is not unique to the Bible, it illustrates the legacy of colonialism and imperialism. Empire makes objects of its subjects by supplanting the subjective gaze for that of empire. The colonized must see and know themselves as empire sees and knows them in order to survive empire. They must answer to the name that empire calls them.

What does it do to one’s identity, one’s sense of self, what one even defines as oneself, when one’s name is changed? Name changes are not in any way superficial or aesthetic. They form the shape and content of identity. They are symbols that allow us to conceptualize (see in our imaginations, our minds) ourselves. We come to know and see ourselves by the words and names we are called, for good or ill.

Whose Vision Determines What You See?

A question I pose often is, “whose vision determines what you see?” We assume that we see ourselves, each other, and this world through our own vision. If we are not seeing through our own eyes, whose eyes are we seeing through?

What we call the ‘self’ is an aggregate of internalized gazes. By gaze, I mean who and what other people perceive and/or demand us to be, and how they treat us and judge us. An internalized gaze, then, is the way we consciously and unconsciously see ourselves, each other, and the world through the judgements and perceptions of others. This often happens to the exclusion of our own gaze, until the time comes to see ourselves anew. That time is now.

The gazes of those who have, and have had, the power of life and death over us comprise the most of this self that we identify with and project outward. That which makes up the self that you identify with and as “me” comes from other people in direct proportion to the amount of power they have over you.

Enslavers’ power of life and death over the African’s they kidnapped and tortured.

Parents’ and other adults’ power of life and death over children who have no power of their own.

Whiteness’s power of life and death over all who must survive its obsession with dominance over all.

Capitalism’s power of life and death over all who must be fed and housed under its perpetual theft and hoarding.

Patriarchy’s power of life and death over all who must survive its entitlement to authority, assumed and enforced with violence.

One’s parents and caregivers, government and all proxies for the state, the dominating culture and their cultural norms⎻these all have the power of life and death over us in varying degrees at different points in our lives. Whatever self one might identify with as “I” is most certainly the self that has managed to survive these forces of life and death.

Are All People Persons?

Who lives without fear of physical violence from their caregivers? Who is conditioned to expect violence as a consequence for existing?

Who is granted the dignity of safe housing and food security? Who suffers from chronic housing insecurity and hunger?

Who can move freely without fear of imprisonment or an untimely death? Who constantly faces the threat of imprisonment and death?

Who is granted the freedom to embody and express their feelings as their evolving authentic self? Whose is stripped of bodily autonomy, the right to feel and to control what they do with and what happens to their body?

The one who conforms, without error, to the gaze of the forces of life and death is granted the rights and privileges of personhood. They are granted freedom from a life without fear of violence, houselessness, food insecurity, or an untimely death. And when they err, they are punished and expected to repent and atone.

Under these definitions, who is seen as a person and at what cost? Are all humans granted personhood? Are all who are granted personhood humans?

Who has assumed the power to determine what a person is? This answer is simple. Those who harness and then weaponize the power of life and death over others determine what a person is. The definition of personhood precludes the self-determination of individuals and once sovereign peoples. The right is violently stolen.

Reclamation As Revolt 

Name changes are a political act of self-determination. They expose and reject internalized gazes. They reclaim the power and the right to see oneself through one’s own eyes.

Name changes get to the root of imperialism and colonialism. The root is when and where the three-headed beast of patriarchy, capitalism, and whiteness claimed dominion over you by stripping you of your right to decide what name you will answer to.

Self-determination, as the gift of sidereal Aquarius, is the process of, right to, and survival based need to:

  • Recognize and name the gazes you have internalized;
  • Realize that those gazes are not your authentic self;
  • Reclaim the right to see yourself through your own eyes and imagination;
  • Reimagine, redefine, and rename oneself.

Self-determination is the difference between identifying with who and what has power over us, and identifying with a real imagined self that exists independent of who and what has power over us.

So, whose vision determines what you see?

Saturn Return in Sidereal Aquarius

An illustrated collage of face parts cut up into squares and strewn amongst pieces of cut up newspaper. Face parts in all shades of skin, browns, oranges, beiges. Face parts include eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, noses, mouths, etc in all different shapes and colors. Black text inside a  white partially transparent rounded rectangle says "Saturn Return in Sidereal Aquarius. April 28, 2022 - March 29, 2025." Birthdates for Saturn Return in sidereal Aquarius: Mach 2, 1993 through June 2, 1995, August 9, 1995 through February 16, 1996. January 27, 1964 through December 19, 1966.
Birthdates for those having their Saturn Return in sidereal Aquarius

You are having your first Saturn return if you were born:

  • March 2, 1993 – June 2, 1995
  • August 9, 1995 – February 16, 1996

You were born after a decades long fight against apartheid in South Africa “ended” with the election of Nelson Mandela. During the 1980s crack cocaine ravaged Black communities in the United States. It culminated in the 1994 Crime Bill which has irreversibly harmed generations of Black people. That same year HIV/AIDS became the number one cause of death for Americans aged 25-44. Also in 1994 was the Rwandan Genocide and the start of the First Chechen War.

Underlying all of these events is the same thing: the colonial exploits of whiteness, patriarchy, and capitalism and the movements of self-determination that rose up in reaction. 

Your Saturn return begins the very first time Saturn enters sidereal Aquarius which is April 28, 2022. Your Saturn return does not end until the very last time that Saturn leaves sidereal Aquarius which is March 29, 2025.

You are having your second Saturn return if you were born:

January 27, 1964 – December 19, 1966

You were born at the height of the 1960s Civil Rights struggle in America which culminated in a polarized combination of wins and losses: the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the assassination of Malcolm X, the formation of the Black Panther Party, The Vietnam War and the anti-war movement, The Cold War, desegregation.

Underlying all of these events is the same thing: the colonial exploits of whiteness, patriarchy, and capitalism and the movements of self-determination that rose up in reaction. 

Your Saturn return begins the very first time Saturn enters sidereal Aquarius which is April 28, 2022. Your Saturn return does not end until the very last time that Saturn leaves sidereal Aquarius which is March 29, 2025.

Preparing For Your Saturn Return

Download and work through the content of my 2 workshop Saturn Return in Sidereal Aquarius – 2022-25. This download includes 2-hours of audio, 13 slides, and 6 worksheets. I cover the following topics:

  • What is Saturn?
  • What is the Saturn Return?
  • What does Saturn in sidereal Aquarius mean in my birth chart?
  • What is my Saturn Story?
  • What will I experience during my Saturn return?
  • How can I prepare?