9:00 pm PST, 1/12/2021

7:00 am UTC 1/13/2021

New Moon in Capricorn

January 12^th, one year ago was the date of the exact Saturn conjunct Pluto configuration that changed everything we know, everything we relied upon to be our usual way of life. At that significant moment, just two days after a powerful Lunar Eclipse, the Sun, Ceres, Pluto, Saturn and Mercury all aligned, creating a wake-up call for humanity. (Jupiter would soon follow). Capricorn (and Saturn) rules our societal structures and our ways of living, and Capricorn being an Earth sign governs our relationship to the ways we manage our resources (hoarding vs generosity). Now we know that the wakeup call was to pay attention to how compromised the integrity of our biosphere has become, the compromised integrity of our governments, and the compromised integrity of the shared immune system of our human family as well. They’re all pieces of the same puzzle, symptoms of each other.

This New Moon in Capricorn is nearly at that same degree, asking us to remember how we got here, what are the lessons of integrity we still need to learn.  Unlike in 2020 when the major planets Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto were in Capricorn, this year Jupiter and Saturn have moved into Aquarius and are at the vanguard of the kinds of changes that will bring new life, new reforms into our lives.

And yet, we are seeing greater disruption, greater internal turmoil than this country has seen in anyone’s present lifetime. Astrologically, the root of this is Pluto, who is still in Capricorn, and is coming around once again in its 248 year orbit to the degree of Capricorn it was in when the US was founded in 1776. That was a time of great turmoil as well. But now we are on an over-populated planet with a greater degree of chaos and with far less coherence than a fledgling country in the 18^th century. And with more exposure and interconnection. Pluto’s intensity of focus will not let us go. Its power is insurmountable, as it represents the very foundation of our being: our connection to the bottom line truth of how we use our power. Pluto’s “job” is exposure. To those who are true to their hearts and have little to hide, it can serve them well. To those with closed hearts, using subterfuge, hatred and rage, Pluto’s forces are destructive.

We are on a threshold. So much is on the line right now. We are teetering on the brink of deciding as a human race whether or not we will survive, or go down in flames. Change, or hang on to the sinking ship of the past. Even the Georgia election, and the current status of the US Senate at 50/50 is an indicator of just how razor-edge our balance is. The tightrope we are walking is not just political. We are facing our shadow, that part of our collective psyche that we have faced many times before, especially during WW2, that still thinks in black and white, good and evil. The US was a “winner” and with all that Light gathered to it, its shadow was deeply buried, pushed down by our inflation and our ignorance of it. Our roots of slavery and racism and their inherent assumptions fortified the colonialism that ravaged Native Americans, people of color, and countries in Central and South America, Africa, the South Pacific, pretty much everywhere there was a “third world” country to dominate and pull resources from.

The rule of karma: what goes around, comes around. And with Jupiter and Saturn in Aquarius now, it’s coming around. If we’re about freedom, independence and democracy, (Aquarian themes) how/where is that manifesting? What’s coming around is an awareness of how broken our initial assumptions about reality were. How we’ve allowed militarism to take the place of peaceful activism. The US became a power-over country. It was okay to disrespect Indigenous peoples, to, for example, herd inhabitants off the island of Bikini who had lived there in harmony for centuries in order to repeatedly detonate atomic bombs and contaminate the entire area, forever making their tropical island home a tragic wasteland.  The US has been a house built on a flawed foundation. Pluto is exposing the violations against human lives that the wealth of the US has been built upon.

We are entering a period this Moon cycle of great instability astrologically. This New Moon is conjoined tightly with our friend Pluto. A cycle of renewal? Well, yes. But breakdown must occur before old systems and beliefs can be replaced. That is where we are now, globally and personally. Mars the activator and Uranus the revolutionary are buddying up together in Taurus, and forming 90˚ angles (squares) to Saturn and Jupiter. We are testing the limits of our present reality, and our beliefs that create it.

Assistance during this turbulent time comes from Venus, in the less cuddly sign (for her) of Capricorn. She is trining (forming harmonious 120˚ angles) the activating and destabilizing Mars/Uranus conjunction. This is tough love, sober love, discovering how the power of love isn’t always about being “nice,” it also involves good boundaries and limits. But it’s still love. It’s the grounded kind of love that is about understanding the larger pattern at work, that we are on a journey of emerging consciousness, letting go of polarization, grieving our misdeeds, looking toward what we must embrace. We need love as the currency or pathway toward inner discovery, toward how we must change and grow during this period, despite the urge to hate and fear those who are causing harm and disruption. It allows us to accept for now that we are “at sea,” looking for where to land. And we’re all in it together as a planet, fighting a pandemic, working to somehow heal these disparate factions. And we don’t have much time to save the integrity of our biosphere, or our race.    

Ceres, the dwarf planet symbolizing the Great Mother archetype of fertility and abundance, is now conjoined with Neptune in Pisces. In symbolic language, the Goddess has gone underground (since November of last year) to the territories of Neptune’s deepest oceanic realms of the psyche, there to gather greater wisdom, to prepare for her emergence into Aries on February 20^th. In that sign she will have a more expressed outer manifestation. Until then, it can feel as though her influence of abundance and kindness has disappeared from our midst. Since Neptune is associated with the sensitivity of the  immune system, and in Pisces is the most sensitive, perhaps her emergence into Aries will signal a turning point in the progression of the pandemic.  Since Ceres is now in the land of our dreams, we can use the currency of love to open to Her guidance. If we allow ourselves to risk going into those dark depths where shadows lurk, but also where inspiration and beauty reside, we can emerge with gifts of healing, strength and vision. No-nonsense Saturn in Aquarius reminds us, “It’s an inside job.”

Photos: 1) Phillippe Petit between the World Trade Center towers. 2) 30,000 year old Venus of Willendorf.