Happy Capricorn New Moon! Happy solstice! If you’re in the northern hemisphere, it’s the start of a new season — winter! Time to start fresh in all things Capricorn — career, status, leadership, ambition, and success. The new moon will be exact on December 21, 2014 at 8:37 pm EST, 0 degrees Capricorn.
The solstice is a power day; it’s the return of the light after a time of increasing darkness. Here in New York City the sun sets around 4:30 pm. The days are short and we are as far as we can get from the flush of summer. So there is a beauty in the solstice. No longer are we sliding toward darkness, but reaching back toward the light. We celebrate this by lighting candles and burning the yule log.
And by golly do we need to celebrate.
The last couple of years have probably been the darkest we’ve experienced, yes? (C’mon, raise your hand.) On the astrological side of things, Saturn has been in Scorpio, a sign that contains within it some of the darker lessons of life. And let’s not forget about the Uranus/Pluto square. Life is almost unrecognizable compared to a few years ago. But the solstice new moon is like a flicker of a candle and hope for the coming year.
That said, there’s an interesting interplay in the chart of the new moon. In astrology 0 degrees is the start of a sign. There’s a raw and fledgling quality to it. And 0 degrees of Capricorn is the start of a new cycle, a new season. It’s the cardinal axis, one of the world degrees. (In astrology there are certain degrees in certain signs that have a lot of power to them and tend to indicate status and events in the world at large — 0 cardinal, 15 fixed, 7 mutable, for example.)
When we look at Saturn, the ruler of the new moon, it’s over at 29 Scorpio — another action packed degree. Wow. Twenty-nine degrees of any sign is akin to having your bags packed and ready to go, but feeling the weight of everything learned over the course of the journey through the sign. Twenty-nine is the last degree. In astrology we say it’s anaretic. It’s the purest distillation of the sign and 29 Scorpio — with Saturn there no less — is the darkest before the dawn.
So there’s definitely a push and pull with this new moon. On one hand we can see the new world starting to come into focus, we can see the light. But on the other, we have loose ends to tie up. Saturn is karma after all, the lord of cause and effect. Pay attention to the events that are happening in your life around the new moon. There’s a lot of stuff there — deep emotional stuff, karma, a feeling that we need to get things right this time.
Saturn will get back to 29 Scorpio in June 2015 and again in September 2015. We may feel the clock ticking on certain issues in our lives, but we’ll get a second and even third chance to wrap it up. That said, don’t slack off however tempting. Just because Saturn is getting ready to enter Sagittarius doesn’t mean that he isn’t riding us hard. He’s setting a high bar for us. What have you learned over the last two years? It’s time to take the test.
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