Here is your Weekly Horoscope for January 9 – 15, 2023
Finally, after 2.5 months, Mars in Taurus is ready to resume forward movement. We also get a brief stellium in Capricorn with the Sun’s Capricorn ingress. It joins Saturn and Venus there.
This week’s themes: The morality police, self approval, and being “good”
- 9 – Venus TRINE Mars
- 12 – Mars in Taurus, Stationary Direct
- 14 – Sun in Capricorn
Mercury took the reins last week. With a Full Moon in Gemini at the midpoint of Mercury’s current retrograde journey, we saw how easily the truth gets lost in our own prejudices. One of those prejudices is our collective and individual moral compasses.
The ideal human, the “good” person, is one who fulfills all of their roles. They conform to their gender assignment so that they can be deserving of all that’s good in capitalism. Private property protected from “the poors” by the police, comfort, and an A*azon P*ime membership for speedy deliverable of a myriad of consumable goods.
“Good” women are mothers, altruistic, and self-sacrificing. They don’t complain. They dress modestly. They dutifully perform household labor, emotional labor, intellectual labor, and reproductive labor for the whole of the capitalist patriarchal society.
“Good” men are providers, strong, viral, and proud. They leave the hearth to “hunt” for tokens from a capitalist overlord who will chose them and their labor. They protect their kin with brolic and guns. They tolerate their wives for their wives’ caretaking skills, superior executive functioning, and gentle empathy. Can’t be caught being “soft”.
The majority still holds this view in 2023. During the entirety of this Mars in Taurus transit which began August 10, 2022, we’ve rehashed the same gender conversations. The clock app has been full of guides instructing women on becoming stay at home wives and girlfriends. Most folks do their best to conform the ideal version of their assigned gender without questioning who has determined those ideals. The consequences for failure are shame and rebuke… and violence. Emotional violence, psychological violence, and physical violence.
In Iran the morality police are explicitly named so with authority granted by the state. We don’t have an institution like that here in the US, at least not one named and identified as an entity in its own right. Yet, we each have morality police in our minds, and we are each policing each others’ morality. Social media is our favorite place to do so.
I don’t have to tell you about the coordinated attack on trans people of all ages, but especially children. Nor do I need to tell you about the ongoing dismantling of state protected access to abortion. And you know very well about putrid hate spewed at Meg Thee Stallion for holding that man who shot her accountable for his violence.
If only the children would be “good boys and girls”. And maybe people should be “good” and “virtuous” according to the Christian nationalist evangelicals and they won’t even want abortions anymore. And of course, Meg Thee Stallion is too self-possessed, to in touch with her body and sensuality and sexuality, too successful. If she would just “stay in her place” then she would not have been shot.
Morality is the ultimate prejudice. And it’s incredibly difficult to recognize because it often looks like common sense “right” and “wrong”.
As Mars resumes forward movement in Taurus, this question of what it means to be “good” looms over us. Approval seeking for Taurus is about conforming our external appearance to what will be deemed as “good” by others. However, I think this Mars retrograde which rides on the heels of eclipses in Taurus and Scorpio 2020-22, has been about how to cultivate self approval.
In the 2023 Sidereal Astrology Guide I wrote: “Gathering the resources for self approval…” as the fill-in-the-blank for the Mars direct station in Taurus. You can read more about Mars Rx in the 2023 Sidereal Astrology Guide January monthly summary. There are reflection questions which help you to apply the astrology to your personal chart.
- Observe your inner morality police this week. What kinds of things do you shame and rebuke yourself for? What do you shame and rebuke others for?
- How do you define a “good” person?
- Can you create a definition that does not center or include a person’s gender, race, national identity, or class station?
- What does it feel like to be disapproved of by others?
- What does self-approval look like for you? What resources are available to you to manifest this for yourself?
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.
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.