Cosmic Advice for Your New Year’s Prep
By: Ashleigh D. Jay
Tags: New Year, Reflection, Spirituality, 2021, Astrology

Cosmic Advice for Your New Year’s Prep

Saturn in Aquarius? Check. Money Manifesting Meal? Check. Annual Review? Check.

Photo: Geber86/Getty Images

I’ve always hated the pressure of prepping for the new year, especially when it’s not technically everybody’s new year. Working on someone else’s clock can mess you up since your birthday is your new year. However, I do prep in some ways for the Gregorian calendar’s January 1. Here are my tips.

1. Review, review, review

You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’ve been. I’m serious. As the year winds down, I usually download the Unravel Your Year workbook by Susannah Conway. She offers insightful prompts and questions to help you download the last year and then map the next year. I’ve done that for the last five years. It’s mad chill. She suggests you sit with your fave pens/markers, music, and drink. You don’t have to do it all at once. To me, it’s an intense but cathartic experience that I look forward to each year. Life whizzes by when you’re so focused on being busy. It’s easy to overlook what you’ve done and what’s occurred, especially the events that make us feel uncomfortable.

2. Revisit the hard shit

I know this year has been a lot and so much has happened and people may not easily feel like reviewing the year, but honestly, we need to document some of this stuff and not just leave it to the ether or leave it to bury and forget. Burying and escaping is partially what got us here in the first place. As we move forward into this strong Aquarius energy, there’s an emotional toll that’s taken when you deny the things you struggle with. We need not forget the depth of what has actually happened here. There are key things we need to document; we need not forget the lack of humanity we witnessed. If we want the truth to live on, we have to be the ones to express and establish it. The insights we share now will become the history books our children and theirs read and build their lives around. I know that’s a lot to take into consideration, and it gives me a great deal of anxiety to think about it. Thinking of the future can be a practice of innovation, but overthinking it has been a source of stress—which is why I’ve changed how I plan.

3. Take it one quarter at a time

These days, I am focusing on taking things only one quarter at a time. I used to stress myself about having the year totally set, but I don’t bother with setting major goals now. The process of goal-setting would have me slain in the spirit and feeling overwhelmed. Thanks to Tara McMullin, I’ve begun to wrap my mind around honoring commitments. That concept feels so much better to my Saturnian self.

4. Black new year traditions

Like many Black folks, I make myself a manifestation/celebration meal. However, I make sure to have something green (for money) on the menu. I try my best to clean the house top to bottom. It doesn’t always happen at 100% because Capricorn season is a tough 12th house transit for me. So I’m usually sad, craving solitude, and in my feelings because that’s how my astrology is set up. It’s a full emotional function, and I try to let Spirit be with me. On New Year’s Day, I do as little as possible, which is a rarity for me. I like to relax, pamper myself, journal, and enjoy the fruits of my labor.

5. Notes on the current astrology

As far as 2021 is concerned, one way to prep astrologically is to decide how you want to use technology, money, and nature. We’re going to be dealing with Saturn (in Aquarius) square Uranus (in Taurus), which challenges us to build new social structures and use our resources differently. We have to think about participating in our economy differently — especially now that there are so many millions without jobs that aren’t coming back, and people still need to eat. People are going to have to lean on their strongest skills and engage in a new way. It’s going to be interesting to see how we’re pushed to reform the community and commerce as we know it.