Insights for Capricorn
As the World Turns and Turns again…
If you need some astrological guidence for reading your way into the new year, try this.
December 21
Sun enters Capricorn: 04:48 PM EST
The downside of Capricorn issues have been front and center since at least 2020, actually since 2008 for those with the eyes to see. Essentially Capricorn is about the right (or wrong) use of resources. Perhaps the actual problem began much earlier, when corporations became legal entities with the rights of individuals. That was 1867. You, most likely have your own litany of things you judge to be falling apart: the economy, the climate, health care, supply chains, housing and more. These are the innumerable cracks, letting in the light of possibility for better, more honest management of our resources: Capricorn’s better nature. As the wheel of the year turns, as we step into Capricorn, we instinctively want celebration for the hard work we have done as well as the work that awaits us in the coming year. Some of us continue to struggle with the notion that if the cornerstone of celebration is consumption maybe it’s not celebration at all. Traditions change, they are meant to change to reflect the times.
Then there is Jupiter who wants in on the celebrations.
Today is the actual birthing of the Sun into a New Year. Yesterday, today and tomorrow we experience the subtle, silent mystery of the Sun appearing to stand still. And then it is no small miracle that it will begin (again) to wax or grow in light as the days, weeks and months of the year unfold.
Imagine that this new baby of the year is swaddled in its cradle around which stand the Blessings for the year (the ‘good’ fairies). Jupiter, the uninvited guest joins them. He is not happy, not full of blessings, but rather like the 13th fairy in the story of Sleeping Beauty, the uninvited guest who presents the challenge that will make or break this new being.
What challenges you at the gate of the coming year? Jupiter may feel like a push toward action but so close to the New Moon we might hold back on impulse. We might instead imagine ourselves as stewards of valuable resources. As we do our best to manage in these times of unsteady social supports how will you manage, given what resources you have? Is there a way to do that which benefits others as well as yourself?
December 22
Venus trine Uranus
It can make your heart lurch to witness the gap between abundance and poverty and yet they seem to coexist. Is it possible that for the rich to feel rich requires there to be the poor? Are we so polarized that we only know ourselves in contrast to something else? Today the greatest gift appears when we share our bounty outside the usual circle of those we know we care about: not in the spirit of charity which looks down upon those less fortunate, more in the spirit of common sense and mutual respect. To share resources is to manage them correctly. To ease the way for one individual benefits us all.
December 23
New Moon: 01 degree Capricorn: 05:16 AM EST
Chiron stationery direct
If you share in the wonder of the winter solstice as the birth of the New Year, the return of the light, you might appreciate that a New Moon on the heels of a New Year promises the earliest glimmer of hope for the way forward into 2023. It’s not the gun at the starting gate, more of a seed beginning to sprout; fragile and in need of cultivation and nourishment. A time to let your little light shine. Time and space converge when a whole lot of little lights, little seed lights, shine together at the newest moment of a new year. People everywhere are lighting candles tonight and all this week. You could light one too.
December 24
Mercury sextile Neptune
December 25
Re-read December 23 and 24th.
December 28
Venus sextile Neptune
Kindness isn’t condescending: Not something to be bestowed upon poor unfortunates. It is recognition between equals that there is no one on this earth more or less deserving of kindness and compassion than anyone else. Including you (and me)! It staggers the mind and opens the heart, if you let it.
If the night is clear and you have a good view of the western horizon just after sunset take a look for Venus and Mercury conjunct.
December 29
Mercury stationery retrograde (sextiling Neptune)
Venus conjunct Mercury
Neptune’s theme continues: We have a responsibility or maybe, an ability to respond to the sentient world, which may include the entire earth, with kindness and compassion. It’s a love story. Mercury’s retrograde journey seems to want to take us to the practical applications of kindness and compassion, this love.
January 1
Venus conjunct Pluto
Some things matter more than others. Out of these matters evolve our values. From our collective values arise the economies of the world. And damn it if it doesn’t seem that someone ran off with what matters and turned it into a commodity! So we step back and ask, “What really matters? What is the matter? How will we manage what matters?” These can be heavy questions but even so, there is no requirement of a heavy heart to explore them.
January 2
Mercury (Rx) sextile Neptune (again)
Sun square Chiron
Venus enters Aquarius
Mercury has been hovering around the sextile with Neptune since the 24th of November. In the midst of which it stationed retrograde. This gives us an idea of what this particular retrograde is about. In Capricorn, Mercury is turned toward ‘real things’. Perhaps the most real is nature itself. Even if you aren’t living in a forest, even if you’re surrounded by too much concrete, too many right angles, you are part of a living organism. It’s alive. Our mandate is to care for it responsibly, to use and replenish it according to the cycles of life. To do that we need to shut out or at least dampen the voices telling us that consuming one more thing is the solution to a broken world. It’s not broken. It’s in transition and we are in the process of giving birth to it. We do well to listen without expectation to the world as it is in the here and now. In this way we learn from our losses and widen the scope of who we acknowledge as part of this great circle of life.
January 4
Venus sextile Jupiter
Get used to the notion of inclusion. The more passion we bring to our compassion the quicker we can get on with the business of bringing the Age of Aquarius into being.
January 4 - 9
These days are of a piece. The planets seem to be working together even as we are called to do the same with each other. At the start, a blessing with Venus sextile Jupiter. At the end Venus trine Mars offers encouragement to take action in a reasonable but firmly focused and idealistic manner.
January 5
Sun trine Uranus
Radical shift on our swiftly tilting planet which appears hell bent on changes both terrible and wonderful to imagine. Diving into the ‘full catastrophe’ seems the best advice. There is no going back.
January 6 & 7
Full Moon: 16 degrees Cancer: 06:07 PM EST
Mercury conjunct the Sun
Last month the Full Moon was all about Mars, this month it’s about Mercury. The heart of the Sun where conjunctions take place is the ultimate haven of renewal, where planets go to die and be reborn: just as humans are said to do. Listen, with all your heart for the story or the message or the simple expression of living things. Imagine renewal in the mind, in the body. Imagine it touches and changes everything. Epiphanies are everywhere.
January 8
Mercury trine Uranus
Fling open the doors of perception, your senses, and invite in your recent revelations, your latest ‘Aha!’. Open your mind to new ideas. Sometimes, not always, a new idea might improve upon an older one. Mercury retrograde loves a revision and Uranus is some kind of awakener.
January 9
Venus trine Mars
Fly your best idea, like a kite on a windy day. It may get tossed about on the wind but that’s what makes it fun.
January 11
Mercury Rx square Chiron
It can be scary to realize that all the things ‘I’ go through, all the things ‘I’ feel, everything ‘I’ react to is something I have in common with someone else on this planet. This awareness is a revelation of connection and responsibility to all that lives. Do not turn away from the sufferings you see around you. Let this touch you inasmuch as it is real. Narrow your focus. See what you can possibly do.
January 12
Mars stationery direct
Venus sextile Chiron
Some little idea that started like a trickle high up in the mountains of your mind has meandered into a waterfall or mighty river aiming for the sea. In Iran it started with the murder of one woman and surged into a mighty protest. In Ontario there is outrage regarding broken promises and lies about the Greenbelt. Some of us worry at the erosion of democracy as its glaring insufficiencies stare us in the face. On a bad day it looks like the end of something but perhaps it’s the inevitable turning and churning of an idea that needs to be exercised regularly to be any good. Whatever your good ideas are, the time for action, the time to bring them to the people around you is now and over the next two months.
January 13
Sun sextile Neptune
An arroyo is a gully, a kind of river bed that gives water an opportunity to flow rather than flood. We don’t have to live in the drylands of the southwest to make use of this image. Give the flow of emotion, grief, compassion any and all feelings, a container and make things easier. (Photo: Arroyo)
Photo by Migsar Navarro on Unsplash
January 14
Venus square Uranus
When do we ever learn that thinking inside the box of an old idea even as changes spill over the edge of such a box cannot work? Don’t throw your hands up and walk away. This is not a ‘my way or the highway’ moment. A bit of awe, fear and amazement might be in order till you can stretch your perspective to meet the change. (Remember the tumult of the bodily changes of adolescence? There was no figuring it out back then, we just had to ride the waves and one day we had a new body and a new outlook to go with it.)
January 18
Mercury stationery direct
Sun conjunct Pluto
If the planets had a highlighter, some garish neon color would underscore today’s message: Something akin to “There is no planet B” or “Get real!” , how about, “Don’t waste my time with promises of how it will be some day in the vague future”. If not now, there is no when.
