THIS WEEK

Big news: Pluto moves house for the fist time in 12 years on Saturday. He’s switching from a fire sign to an earth sign, from the moving, flighty, adventurous Sagittarius to the stoic, unflappable, course-holding Capricorn. This is BIG stuff and it will only ever happen once in your current lifetime. Pluto is the master of Creation and Destruction. Think Heathcliffe meets his double and has to (a) destroy the mirror before him or (b) come quietly, recognise the truth of his own dark side, and begin a healing process or (c) try A and once exhausted submit to B. Pluto, he no likey resistance. This is one deep, unrelenting, merciless truthseeker. And whether you / I / Heathcliffe likes it or not, Pluto will prevail. It’s a long-haul stay for Pluto in Capricorn until, wait for it, 2025. But if you’re feeling nervous that you can’t bear this pressure for that length of time the thing to remember is that at any time in your life, Pluto is doing something somewhere in your chart. As he moves into a new zone the destruction may well come first; the creation after. This week’s cut-out-and-keep astrobabble gives you a heads up for what’s coming during the next 17 years for your sign. The key thing is that this is a long process of change and growth interspersed with occasional thunderclaps. The good news is that it’s going to be a soft landing initially – Venus is holding Pluto’s hand as he makes the move into Capricorn this Saturday.

The smaller but more immediate news for everyone this week is Mercury’s impending retrograde. Virgo, Gemini, Libra, Aquarius and Sagittarians will feel it most but we’ll all cop it to some degree. The only answer is to pack a sense of humour and lack of attachment along with your pot noodle. Nothing is likely to be clear as a well varnished window for sometime to come. Circle Thursday this week and Monday next (and a day either side) as key days to go Zen but if you can keep that vibe about you for the next month, way to go. The planet is heading for shambles especially where communication, technology and travel are concerned. (ie our entire modern world). Everyone back up your computer and if you can avoid it, don’t book important meetings or journeys on 28 - 29 Jan or 18 – 19 Feb.


Aries
This may be a frustrating week. Getting ahead is not your lesson right now so don’t try overtaking that lorry. It’s blocking your view, the turbo you rely on is a bit dicky, plus there’s a Sunday driver round the next bend so you’ll be no further on for all the stress. Tsk. Grr. Something you dearly wish for is so close and yet so tantalisingly out of view. Bide your time. The full picture will be in by early March. Tilt your chair back another notch, put some old school on the stereo - Ella, Nat, Frank - and relax. PLUTO NOOS: what would make you fit better in society, or more to the point, what would make you feel like you were a success based on the mores of society? And do you give a rat’s botty what ‘they’ say anyway? This is Pluto’s stomping ground in your life. His impact may be to push you towards the top perch in the crazy aviary of the material world. He may inspire you to stick two fingers up at society and to walk your dog in your pyjamas and take up a part-time job as a chimney sweep. He may take away your lofty standing now to replace it with an earthy, spiritual Zen-like take on cars and girls. Watch what happens as if it were a movie; try not to resist the changes. The true you is continuing to emerge.

Taurus
Your week this week I hope has more sweet than sour cherries. The Sun moves into your house of social standing so if the boss starts patting you on the shoulder, bask in the glory earthy one. The sweet or sour cherry news is the hook up of Venus and Pluto on Thursday. This is either going to be a final test on a relationship before you part ways - or a deep, passionate, earth-trembling humdinger of a personal connection the like of which has all the hallmarks of a new space time continuum. (And to follow, sir, madam, the weekend promises either some sweet downtime with your heart on your sleeve - or some sweet downtime to cry a goodbye to the past). Either way, the Pluto Venus meeting is a catapult to a shiny future. Look reality straight in the eye and then gather your climbing gear, pet. Your thrusty expansion starts now. Onwards. PLUTO NOOS: Have you emigrated yet Bully? Signed up to floristry degree through the OU? Changed your hat for a headscarf and started stroking crystal balls? Why the jiggins not? As Pluto shifts into one of your favourite signs accompanied by your ruler, Venus, you may feel a sense of relief that something, somewhere, just off screen has sorted itself out and you can now flourish. Pluto is moving into the area of you life that governs expanding horizons – be it travel, learning, or spirituality. Over the next 17 years you could find yourself moving to Tobago, lecturing on atomic science, or making lentil patties at a Buddhist monastery in Todmorden. Conversely the path of expansion that you’ve been taking thus far may be taken from you prior to you finding your right and truer path. That is Pluto’s mission after all. Certainly in the shorter term the next 12 months should really indicate which way you want to be going. Pluto will take care of the 16 years after that.

Gemini
Do you know where you’re going to do you like the things pom pom de tra la la… This is not the time to issue ultimatums or jump if someone else shows you theirs with a scowl and a pointy finger. Things are cloudy and will be so from Thursday for a month from now. It’s not that you can’t talk and listen, it’s just that you can’t talk or listen without knowing that what you’ve heard or said won’t stand up to the test of time. And that’s just what this is. A test of time. Come early March success and money will be yours. Hold your course Peter. For the time being Tinker Bell will just have to accept that you’re fudging. PLUTO NOOS: Looked at in one way, the terra firma isn’t all it could be to you – you’re air, flying, whizzing, toes barely touching the ground. The earth seems slow, stuck, gravity-laden, turgid. Looked at another way, if you didn’t have the pull of the earth you could disappear into the stratosphere and never experience trees, kisses, apple crumble, libraries even. Better to have both. And so to Pluto’s mission with you. If you are too anchored, you will be released. If you are not grounded enough you will be lassoed. Pluto is offering you a chance to find a way of ending this flighty nature ALL of the time and instead tying yourself to something of the earth but which lets you whizz whizz buzz buzz on a long leash. It may be a relationship ending. It may be a relationship which grasps your heart and not just your mind. It may be work. It may be a whole new approach to your priorities. Money and the material things in life are in the frame. As is sex. Pluto has spoken. The endings and the beginnings begin.

Cancer
The Pluto Noos will add another helping to what I’m going to serve up here but for now, you’ve love if you want it, you’ve deep transformation if you want it. There’s energy and decisiveness and confidence coming too if you want it. Cock on, lovely crab. These are exciting times. Tuesday’s Full Moon will have you worrying about what the piggy bank doesn’t have in it but this is a passing worry so don’t hold onto it and don’t make decisions while you’re feeling this fear. And if someone offers you a quick solution come Thursday that seems too good to be true, cock on again, Cancer. PLUTO NOOS: This is the time of your life, Cancer. A relationship whether through love or play or work is here to knock you over with its power and to shape you. With Mars about to move into your sign and Venus and Pluto conjoining as they burst into your 7th house of one to one partnerships – you can see the lie of the land for yourself. The feisty energy you so often fail to grasp when opportunity strikes is here just when you need it most. There’s certainly lust here, like you’ve never felt before, but a connection too that goes straight through the butterflies in your tummy and on into Narnia. It’s not going to be easy all of the time. Being faced with a mirror that knows all your fears and deepest secrets never is. Give over some time to check the power is a positive one, and then ride your changing life like it’s a wild tiger.

Leo
If you’re feeling a little off your game Monday, and a little overwrought on Tuesday, that’s only natural. The Moon is doing her thing. By Wednesday the bounce will be back in your mane. The Sun is sending soft dappled light into your relationships zone and it’s time for you to S-H-I-N-E shine! Then on Thursday sweet mystical nothings may be making their way to your pussy cat ears. If you’re doling out the feelgoods yourself, make sure they ring true; mystical doesn’t mean imaginary billshut. (And if it’s a business dealio taking place on Thursday, greet the meet with a sense of investigation and investigate.) PLUTO NOOS: Venus in your zone of work and health is lovely. She’s nurturing, healing, beautifying, brings in the money, makes the job feel like it’s more a labour of love than a day on a chain gang. Pluto here is a leetle bit different. looked at negatively Pluto here can mean quitting your job because you can’t stand it, redundancy, hell-bent power-crazed bosses, overbearing pressure, company buy-outs, physical burn out, physical breakdown. But Pluto has immense powers of creation. The positive Pluto here means changing jobs, changing careers, taking charge, getting into the right groove for you. It can mean pursuing regenerative therapies as a profession. It can mean an overhaul of your health for the better – he can bring physical regeneration, new approaches to diet and exercise, feeling fitter than you’ve ever felt before. You may have the tricky bits before the good bits. You may have tricky bits interspersed with good bits. But being at the driving seat of the bulldozer makes much more sense than burying your head and ignoring it altogether.

Virgo
Tuesday’s Full Moon may have you wired and exhausted and unable to sleep but it will pass. It’s in the worrisome 12th house of your chart, the secret bit, so if you start overanalysing yourself and giving yourself a what-for, stop it. And don’t take on other people’s poop because you feel you don’t deserve any better. News around Thursday should be taken with a sense of caution – you aren’t getting the jist or even worse the jist doesn’t want to get got and you’re only holding half the picture. The actual plot will likely be out of view for a while – til at least 20th Feb, so until then best get on with those world-famous research skills of yours, Virgo. Investigate. Analyse. The weekend’s your time for starting a new affair, falling in love with a creative project, getting young at heart and even cooey over children. Just don’t dress them in a sailor suit. PLUTO NOOS: Like Taurus and Capricorn, Pluto’s stay in Sagittarius has tested your poor tiny mind to breaking point. Where was all the common sense in the past 12 years? What was all that choppy changey for? Now the deep, flowing river of molten power that is Pluto is heading into a fellow earth sign and the changes, while far reaching and unavoidable, will feel a lot easier to handle. Pluto in your fifth house is an exercise in refocusing your real, deep, honest, private feelings on love affairs, creativity, and children. If you’ve said forever that you don’t want to breed, you may be about to get broody. In fact parenthood could be an enormous source of change to you. Hiding under the sofa because you don’t believe you can hack it may be a temptation that becomes overwhelming. You can you know. Hide under the sofa – and hack it. Though hacking it will make Pluto a much happier chappie. Creative careers can be launched, stalled, reversed, rethought, and even emerge into entirely new forms under these skies. Love affairs too can be a deep source of change at this time, mirrors even, that Heathcliffe could likely tell you a great deal about. Who said evolution couldn’t be fun as well as scary?

Libra
What in heaven’s name is the actual point of a sweet nothing? Why, for the love of all that is straightforward, do we kid ourselves that a fleeting whisper of sugar-coated horseshit - because someone has the horn and/or a rush of girlish sentimentality – will ever be solid enough to build a garage on? If you are on the receiving end of someone’s impromptu, vacuous token – or, even worse, you get overtaken by the urge to spout something similar yourself later this week – don’t start humming the wedding march; indeed it may come to nothing sweet in the end. Oh! But then again, it might… So enjoy it! Oh to love!! My darlink leetle fluffy wuffiness I am drunk on your beauty, bathe me in the shattering glory of your eyes forever … On Tuesday make a wish – and if that wish is to be able to bite your lip and not have a row with a friend, then so be it. PLUTO NOOS: The big urge for Pluto is for you to move. Your home and your family are stores of healthiness or entrenched bad habits. They can be expanding or reduced, practical and supportive, or energy-sapping and imbalanced. It is these two areas where the destruction of the old ways and creation of new ways are written large on Pluto’s marching orders. How this all plays out will be revealed over time. Permutations include old battles being resolved as if a problem never existed, tough love, overbearing parents / needy children being forced to confront and rebuild their familial relationships in a more balanced way, fall outs with resolution not coming until the later stages of this long cycle if at all. In terms of moving home it’s about changing the notion of what a home is to closer suit where you are now in your life and where you’re going. It may be traumatic – moving home is one of the top stressors in our crazy modern playing field that is life. You may move many times during this transit before you get it right. The Buddhists say that the body is the guesthouse to the soul. In a similar vein, if you see a building in a dream it often represents your sense of self. In this earthily world, your home is where your heart, soul, clutter, memories and sense of self are. Pluto has some new ideas to share about what it should look like.

Scorpio
Monday and Tuesday are days than you would rather be anywhere than work and especially as the Sun makes his move into your house of home and family for a month-long stay, you know your attention, energy and happiness are going to be found in these areas. With all the activity don’t overlook important details that spring to light on Thursday. Either some dreamy news, or a document that doesn’t quite add up, are due that day. Check it over and if you can’t get to the bottom of it, have another look when your mind is sharper. PLUTO NOOS: There are two big shifts for you during this looong Pluto transit and they may overlap for all or part of this journey. The first is the shift from evaluation of who you are based on what you earn and how you earn – to a revelation of who you are based on how you live your life in the every day – how you communicate, how you feel about your neighbourhood – what your choice of neighbourhood says about you, how you feel you stack up to your neighbours, your brother and sisters, your peers. The other shift is that Pluto, you very own lord and master, is moving from the rather jumpy fire energy of Sagittarius into the earthy, responsible energy of Capricorn. This is a call to begin a grounding process, to come up for air from the deep chambers you find yourself hanging out in all too often, and to plant an orchard, build a shed, save the planet or at least your little community slice of it. The grounding process may feel exceptionally hard as it begins, primarily because you’re moving into a rather matter-of-fact reality and away from fiery, adventurous lucky dip. Give it time. The apples are gonna be juicy.

Sagittarius
If you’re planning on launching a business, taking on a new work challenge, and setting course to earn more lucre – make sure it’s got a creative thrust to it Archer. I’m not saying redecorate your office space or invest in natty tie backs, I’m saying be sure your business plan allows you to put your own personal stamp on whatever it is you’re doing. With Venus heading into your house of money you’ve a chance to earn more now. What’s coming too, though, is Pluto (see PLUTO NOOS) and what you’re starting now has to be a truer reflection of what you are than what you thought you were even a week ago. For you the forthcoming Mercury phase maybe a royal pain in the Arch, u-turning as he is in your house of communication and transport – the exact things he rules. Back up your computer, don’t skip the car’s service if it’s due this week, and take a large dose of linctus of insouciance twice a day until further notice. PLUTO NOOS: Pluto is bearing down on your piggy bank, Archer. It’s not necessarily a raid on your savings so much as a good ole poke around your attitude towards wonga. Money’s an energy. We need it in today’s world. At this time though, if you’re using too much energy generating money, or you’re wasting the financial energy you have at your disposal, or you’re just not taking the earning of dosh seriously enough then expect an overhaul. It may take the form of gradual realisation that what was important to you in the past vis spondooliks is no longer valid. Or it may be more upfront than that. But you can bet your bottom dollar the dimes they are a-changin’ (to coin a phrase).

Capricorn
Big stuff goat. Not all of it as sweet as cherry pie. If you’ve been getting to the end of your tether in the pouring rain on a soggy hillside Tuesday’s Full Moon could just about push you into a meltdown. It’s passing. Hang tight. Double check the small print on any financial contracts, bank statements, invoices, cheques on Thursday. It may be as simple as a missing signature but dot your i’s, cross your t’s, check your 0’s. As Venus shimmies into your sign now too it’s time to think about how you present yourself to the world – your hairdo, choice of blouson, quantity of cleavage. This evaluation in front of the mirror happens once a year. But this time it’s all going to get much much deeper than the length of your collar or the colour of eye shadow you wear… PLUTO NOOS: It’s Pluto deep. Pluto’s move into your first house is not to pick out a pair of shoes for the ball but to shift who and what you are at a profound level. His transit here will insist that the secret parts of yourself that have been lying dormant all this time can become part of a new authentic you that you take out into the world. As these deep changes ebb and flow you may find that your friends, lovers, work regimes, career ambitions, addiction to soap opera no longer reflect who you are deeply enough. It can be a time of attracting new experiences or people into your life to reflect the deepest sides of your nature back to you and to inspire you to be more upfront about yourself, more confident, more inyaface. A primal urge with Pluto here is to become tyrannical, wanting to control everything and everyone within spitting distance. The key is to know thyself and be the boss of the tyranny itself. As the new you escapes into the open, remain gentle. Acceptance is all.

Aquarius
Happy birthday, airy one. You’ve an interesting birthday present this year. A mixed blessing some might say. An amazing chance insist others. With the Sun and Mercury in your first house helping you plan, negotiate, and shine while you’re doing it – you’ve simultaneously got deep rumblings that things are going to change – for you personally and then for the world around you. As Mercury prepares to turn backwards early next week, remind yourself that the negotiations you so dearly want to push forward will have to be reworked but only so they become more solid in March. Frustrating as this may be, this really is your big chance. Mastering this process of delay and review will be good disciplines to have at your disposal as Pluto moves on in to your secret room. PLUTO NOOS: As we discussed last week, Pluto has been drifting up the corridor towards your secret room for many years. And at last this week he arrives. It’s not a picnic, having him lodging here, but then it doesn’t have to be annihilation either. The extremes of this are the Heathcliffe scenario, above. The more everyday picture is one of gradually taking the layers off – because events and/or people, make you. [It’s Pluto making you of course. The events and people are just there to do his bidding.] The stuff that’s been holding you back, your imagined enemies, your perceived weaknesses, your pride, your childhood wounds – this is what Pluto is about to start emptying out onto a trestle table before you. Don’t be surprised if you don’t recognise half of it at first, denying it’s yours vehemently and with well-formed argument. But it is, and Pluto has 17 years to help you accept that it is. Once you recognise each one and accept it, only then can you dissolve it into a tiny hillock of ash before it’s swept gently away on the breeze. You’re becoming so much lighter, Aquarius. So much freer.


Pisces
Early doors this week, if you’re feeling a bit throaty and world-weary, take an extra vitamin tablet along with a dinner of spinach and broccoli and have an early night. The Full Moon is overburdening your immune system while your head is wired with work. This is also a time for reflection and navel-gazing. This time of year is akin to the last hours of the night before the Sun bursts into your room. Each year you have the chance to peer into the dark and work out what it is you do that sabotages your own progress – childhood behaviours, laziness, lack of clarity, saying you’ll do something and then not delivering. Godamyou. With time, space, and a vitamin-intense stir fry you get a chance to bolster your system and jettison your outdated ways of behaving. PLUTO NOOS: Your friendships and the general direction of your life - and how those feed each other are coming up for change. With Pluto accompanying you now you can expect to seek out powerful personalities and intense experiences to make you feel more alive and more enchanted by life. Old friendships that have become a force of habit are likely to fade away as new, more purposeful opportunities arrive. Watch out for handing over your power and following like a sheep though. Powerful friends can be scary, persuasive, corrupting. Your wish should be intensity and depth, not to be assimilated. And in case you feel the urge, don’t become the overbearing power-crazed friend yourself. It’s just not cricket.