Weekly Hello

Monday is not just any Monday, it’s Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year. Twenty years ago, a travel company came up with the term in order to sell holidays: it figured that at this point in January people were battling with a surfeit of bills and regrets over Christmas past and needed a boost. It may be pseudo-science, but, as I gaze out over my dead back yard, looking even more moribund under a charcoal sky, I get it.

Monday is I-Day in America. President Trump will be inaugurated for a second term. He is coming into office on a Sun-Pluto conjunction, which underscores the radical agenda he has promised. This powerful conjunction has already placed its signature on the ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel, and we must hope that Pluto’s theme of death and rebirth – transformation – will apply in the best of ways, and a new era will begin for this turbulent part of the world.

In my individual sun-sign forecasts and week ahead audio forecasts, I have focussed on the theme of getting rid of toxicity wherever it may lurk – habits, relationships, health, for instance – in order to cleanse and clear our lives. I strongly believe in consciously embracing the positives in the astrology, otherwise, especially with the slower moving planets and the difficult alignments, we find ourselves pitted against our fate.

Seven years ago, at this time, I was in Kirkenes, northern Norway. Our guide informed us that there was a special celebration on the 17 January each year because that was the day the sun finally appeared over the horizon in the dip between 2 mountains. Each year, at this time, I make a point of noting that daylight remains that little bit longer, and even if I can’t see the sun, I know it will be making its appearance over the mountains in Kirkenes.