This month’s new moon occurs on 22nd December 2014 at 1.35 am GMT just after the winter/summer Solstice as the Sun enters Capricorn at 0 degrees on 21st December at 11.23 pm GMT. The coinciding of this new moon with the solstice makes this an extraordinarily rare time, emphasising this potent, powerful first degree of the sign of Capricorn, a cardinal point.
Wherever you place your focus at this new moon is where you will likely see substantial rewards, so be clear on where you focus your energies. Of course with Capricorn, it’s unlikely that the rewards of your endeavours will be swiftly met with the results you want to see. Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, is in for the slow, long haul.
Whichever hemisphere you live in – north or south – you can perceive the stillness of the sun as it appears to pause on the horizon in a contemplative stillness – the word solstice derives from sol (sun) and stice (to stand). As the the year ends and the seasons turn, the northern hemisphere landscapes are snowily still, while the southern, high heat of summer brings its own variety of still fire.
With Saturn teetering at 29 degrees Scorpio – a potent degree in that its about to change signs into Sagittarius – and Saturn being the ruler of this Capricorn new moon, equally at the potent cardinal degree of 0, the Capricorn/ Cancer themes of birth and death come into the astrological landscape. Wherever Saturn is involved, we are being urged to bring things to a conclusion, close the chapter and move on, clearing the way for something new to come in and fill the space. These are perfect energies for this now.
Its a good time to commit to a long-term plan or commit to discipline yourself to establish a new positive routine. It time to create and claim what you want in your new year and especially think about how you want people to see you, what vision of yourself you want to present to the world. Your public image at work might be on your mind, pay some attention to that but be weary of your projections or pushiness with authority at this time.
This strong Saturn influence urges us to think about the timing and discrimination of things. When beginning anything new, we often jump to share our ideas before we allow ourselves time to anchor it well enough in ourselves. This is a dissipating approach that might end in us even castrating our fledgling ideas in true Kronos style – telling ourselves it wasn’t a very good idea anyway, giving up before we’ve even started.
With a stellium of five planets in Capricorn – Sun, Moon, Mercury, Pluto, Venus and Vesta – there’s lot of heaviness and potential castrating that we are resisting/fighting. These heavy, slow, dense energies suggest a time of slow digestion, gestation or incubation before we move forward. This is a potentially an exhaustive time and we are likely to feel it both through our body and the soul, take good care of yourself and follow rather than fight that Saturn energy – sleep, rest and recuperate this Christmas.
Rather than see that you need to apply yourself fully now, it’s better to understand that its a time of brooding and gestating. Saturn wants us to immerse ourselves into the domain of duality and separation – sometimes we just need to dwell there, without doing actually that much, just being patient with the passage of time. Working now will require a lots of hard graft and its likely to pay off long term, but it might be better to just really follow yourself, be sure work is what you are meant to be doing, check in with yourself around this.
If we think about the manifestation process itself or the changing of a whole new approach to something, then you need to take into account this three steps forward two steps back idea now, and over the forth-coming year. Firstly on 23rd December, Saturn ingresses into firey Sagittarius, but then 6 months later it does a two steps back move, re-entering Scorpio for a few months on 15th June to 18th September 2015, before returning to stay in Sagittarius until December 20th 2017.
So with this powerful new moon, think extra long term and factor in this reflection retrograde period from June to September. Don’t fall into the Capricorn trap this month, or later next year, of believing nothing ever changes in your life etc and understand turning back on ourselves is quite simply a part of the manifestation process. Turning back is in a sense a time of letting things die, fundamental to creation, and allows a deeper absorption and integration (more substance) of our creations.
Change doesn’t happen overnight – it takes time to filter through all the levels of manifestation, down to the physical. This is an inherent part of the creative process and it requires us to be grown up and realistic about what we need to do rather than self-chastising or giving up hope. Although its more than conceivable that we might be feeling a time pressure now, the expectations of others, society or some other vague force, we need to listen to our own inner needs and rhythms. Even things that appear to be wasting time can be just what we need to be doing.
It’s always good to know what sort of aspects are coming up for us on Christmas day. Those inebriated conversations with loved ones need to be managed ‘mindfully’ as we become more vulnerable to regression into the child (or at least I do) or become more intolerable. So we have a couple of aspects to look out for, Mercury square Uranus conjunct Pluto and sextile Chiron. Potentially this means impulsive, forceful, deep communications or perhaps some surprising news, certainly not boring family conversations over Christmas dinner…. Lets see those Christmas reunions as both times of both illumination and intensity, which ultimately we heal and grow from… especially with Chiron helping us find those right, healing words just in the nick of time!
Finally for those that want to look into 2015, we have Uranus and Pluto within one degree of their exact square throughout December and beyond, leading us into a dynamic springtime, their final exact hit in mid-March of 2015.
