DECEMBER FORECAST
hope is a dangerous thing for a mess like me to have
Before we get into it, one quick announcement:
I have a few spots left for readings in December - next week and the following. This is the true last call for my current offerings before I do a little remix for 2025. I’d love to sit with you during this final wild month of 2024 :)
Hello bbs. It feels like several lifetimes have passed since I wrote November’s forecast. And here we are, back for another one.
One of my favorite food writers Hetty Lui McKinnon noted in her newsletter To Vegetables with Love, “There is a numbness in the air lately. I cannot shake this feeling. People seem tired, resigned. Even media thanksgiving stories seem muted. It’s a bit unnerving, to be honest.” (The “let’s just get through this together” attitude she’s talking about is very clear in Alison Roman’s Home Movies Thanksgiving special, as well as Eric Kim’s “How to make a turkey that actually tastes good” instructional for The New York Times.)
This made me think of Jupiter’s current placement in Gemini, a sign where the buoyant, hopeful energy of the gas giant is too diffuse to hold a shape. Jupiter thrives in signs like Sagittarius and Pisces that value wide, open landscapes. Gemini’s energy is too curious to leave anything unexplored—half-read books and half-written travelogues are scattered across its terrain. It’s not that the forest is missed for the trees, it’s that all the trees need trimming, and who has time for that?
We’re currently in Sagittarius season, when Jupiter’s hopeful energy is most palpable. And what’s clear is that hope is messy. Jupiter is also in a tense square aspect to Saturn, planet of restrictions and responsibility. Saturn is in Pisces, another sign that bites off more than it can chew. Progress this year has looked like: two curious steps forward followed by three heartbreaking steps back. There’s something meditative about this process. Keeping the faith requires constant maintenance. But all the mutable energy has also left many of us at a loss re: what to do next. Sometimes when there are too many things to believe in, it’s easiest to believe in nothing at all.
The jumbled mess of 2024 comes to a final peak in December (particularly in the first and last week of the month). There’s no cure for the confusion but what if all the frustration, like an over-excited middle schooler, just needs a performance outlet?
There’s a lot going on in December, but we’re going to focus on:
Mercury retrograde in Sagittarius (the mess)
Mars retrograde in Leo (the aforementioned performance outlet)
Venus in Aquarius (weird love wins)
The Jupiter-Saturn square (the forest and all those trees that need trimming)