The Astrology of 2021:
Building the New age

by Juliana McCarthy

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January 1, 2021 — As we cross the threshold of 2021, we are entering a whole new age of humanity and wrapping up the most difficult year in modern history. While more challenges and breakthroughs lie ahead, we may already notice a difference in our lives and the world around us. Fresh energies have taken root, and our shared culture is rapidly shifting, along with our personal perspectives.

Looking back, we can appreciate all that we’ve undergone in 2020. We’ve completed a difficult run of Jupiter, Saturn, and Pluto aligning in Capricorn for the first time in thousands of years, transforming reality as we know it.

In 2021, we are moving from an Earth cycle to an Air cycle, which is ready to unstick us from our ruts and outdated modes of thinking. Practical Saturn and rebellious Uranus are the major players this year, forming three significant squares that will cause friction between the past and the future, freedom and rebellion. But ultimately, they’re here to help us liberate and reinvent our reality. Rather than focusing on confronting and destroying outworn systems, structures, beliefs, and habits as we did in the past year, we can start working toward building the new age, working through any obstacles or stuckness that arise along the way—and there could be plenty.

On December 21, 2020, Saturn and Jupiter conjoined at 0º Aquarius, igniting a new era, while offering a glimmer of hope that we are moving into a freer, more egalitarian world. Since then, we’ve been transforming our uncertainty into cautious excitement. What are we ready to co-create?

Aquarius is the second-to-last sign in the zodiac, representing enlightened society and the pinnacle of human potential. An Aquarian world requires us to think of everyone, not just ourselves, freely sharing our ideas and resources. This new paradigm is ruled by Aquarian types—those who have been outsiders in the past—multidimensional, misunderstood, and too far ahead of their time. They are the rebels, revolutionaries, and inventors, who think outside the box and thrive in chaos, where their creativity flourishes. When all that we’ve known has toppled over, they stand happily in the rubble, envisioning new ways of being. This is exactly where we are now. It’s time to question everything, push the envelope, and feel inspired about the future.

With Uranus, Aquarius’s ruler, still in Taurus, key themes of the year include reinventing our relationships to the economy, food and farming, and environmentalism—though with Saturn squaring Uranus for two years, progress may be hard-won. Redistribution of resources is essential, along with working together to clean up the damage that we’ve caused our Earth. The North Node in Gemini presents more key themes, with the eclipses of 2021 orienting us toward truth, science, logic, and open dialogue. We are purifying faulty belief systems, dismantling our dogma, paranoia, and rigid thinking, and finding new collective meaning. We only have to take care to avoid the overwhelm of too many words and opinions as we decipher between fact and fiction.

This year will be challenging for anyone still clinging to the past and old ways of being. It’s time to break harmful patterns and recognize our mistakes with grace and dignity. Looking toward the horizon, we might see that we are close to embracing one another again. Until then, we can work hard to lay the foundations of a new world. There is no turning back. New pathways will continue to reveal themselves in unfathomable ways.

As we continue into this new age, it’s important to ask: Whose voices have we ignored because of our fear of change and difference?

In our shared isolation, we’ve been able to look at ourselves more honestly, confronting family and ancestral karma, while recognizing how much we truly need each other. We’ve come to appreciate our resilience in the face of great loss, uncertainty, and grief. We can now harness what we’ve learned in order to stand up for a world that is more sensible and kind. 

The era of placating abusive powers is over, and a period ruled by the people is taking root with great resolve. We are joining together to rectify wrongs and rewrite our culture and society with more harmony, intelligence, direct connections to the Divine, and care for Mother Earth and each other.

2021 Aspiration

In the chaos of great change and upheaval, may we break free from the shackles of fear and expectation, and embrace the beautiful unknown. May we join together with hope, inspiration, and mutual care, as we begin to build a new reality.

KEY Transits of 2021

Saturn Square Uranus

Saturn and Uranus form three challenging square angles this year, on February 17, June 14, and December 24. These are the most significant transits of 2021. Saturn represents the past, hard work, systems, structures, and constraints, while Uranus represents the future. Ruler of Aquarius, Uranus is the revolutionary genius who bucks the status quo with shock, courageous rebellion, and impossible vision. Saturn rules gravity, while Uranus is a nuclear force, so we could think of these squares as a slingshot versus an atom bomb—with Uranus’s progressive jolts disrupting Saturn’s attachment to the past. At the same time, Saturn is reality, and he helps to ground Uranus’s newfangled ideas, merging them with what’s practical and reasonable.

While there’s a strong element of unpredictability in these transits, what we know for sure is that our timeline is about to speed up. The planets are indicating that revolutions will continue this year as we stand up against oppressive powers that have caused harm to humans and our planet. We will write new laws and create fresh systems that hold a long-lasting resonance of change.

With Uranus in Taurus, we will fight for the Earth and a redistribution of resources. The economy is also ready to transform. Things like Universal Basic Income and cryptocurrency will gain momentum as we close out an era of Reaganomics, which began with the last Saturn-Pluto conjunction in 1982.

What happens if we house the homeless, direct money toward education, infrastructure, and healthcare, and increase taxes on the very rich? Whatever our politics, these are the questions that the planets are asking us as we move toward greater financial egalitarianism and innovation. We may find that when we each have more, we are all much wealthier—individually and collectively, materially and spiritually.

Aquarius Stellium

Another noteworthy planetary event of 2021 is a stellium in Aquarius, which arrives in February. A stellium occurs when three or more planets fall in one sign. In February, six planets gather together in revolutionary Aquarius, including the slower-moving planets Jupiter and Saturn. The last time an Aquarian stellium included these planets was in 1962, a launching point for the Civil Rights Movement and the Sixties Cultural Revolution. When Saturn first moved into Aquarius last March, we saw two glimpses of the future age—a world without pollution and another major Civil Rights Movement as people hit the streets worldwide, protesting police brutality and systemic racism. These are the types of themes that will continue in 2021, coloring this new era in humanity. We are becoming more Aquarian, ruled by the people, rather than steep patriarchal hierarchy—defined by egalitarianism, rather than oppression.

Jupiter in Aquarius + Pisces

We begin 2021 with Jupiter in Aquarius, sparking breakthrough, revolution, and hope for humanity. In the first part of the year, Jupiter zips through Aquarius, then dips into Pisces by mid-May, where he remains until the end of July. In retrograde, he returns to Aquarius for the remainder of 2021. For those few months that Jupiter visits Pisces, we are likely to feel our hearts growing. We will hug one another again, after more than a year in the isolation of quarantine. While this won’t end our need to be careful, this will mark a period of great ease, elation, and peace. Jupiter co-rules Pisces, so here he’s in his natural domicile. Saturn, planet of restriction, has been impeding Jupiter’s bounty for a couple of years. But now he’s able to stretch his wings and restore our joy and expansion. Bright light is melting away the ice of Saturn, as we experience a collective sigh of relief.

The 2021 Eclipses

The four Eclipses of 2021 fall along the Gemini-Sagittarius axis. Gemini’s lessons persist throughout this year, teaching us to respect logic, science, curiosity, and open dialogue. We’re becoming smarter and more discerning of truth, as we carry on with our journey of growth that began in May of 2020, when the North Node first entered Gemini.

The North Node represents our highest evolutionary potential, while the South Node is what we need to clean up karmically. Eclipses occur along these points, speeding up our spiritual growth. With the South Node in Sagittarius, we are still purifying our faulty ideologies and releasing ourselves from fearful dogma and paranoid conspiracies. In 2021, we can open to Gemini’s enlightened qualities, mastering paradox and nuance, while questioning our unfounded beliefs.

As we work together to transform our shared values, our culture is ready to change drastically. We are beginning to step into unity and more sophisticated notions of good and evil. With greater clarity, we might recognize that we are all basically good. There is no evil entity outside of us that we need to destroy. Instead, we might recognize that evil lies within each of us—the battle takes place inside ourselves as we wrestle our own demons, facing our fears so that we can become warriors of love and inclusivity. Forgiveness and healing are possible this year, but they first require Aquarian acknowledgment and rectification.

In this Aquarian Age, we are taking responsibility for ourselves and holding one another accountable as we work within a framework of justice and compassion. From here, we can join forces, harnessing logic and heart to build a sustainable new world that radiates with the possibility of utopia.

Happy New Year and New Age to all!

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