6:35 pm  AHST 12/18/2021
8:35 pm  PST   12/18/2021
4:35 am  UTC   12/19/2021

This Full Moon is happening just a few days before the Winter Solstice, and holds much of the power of that event, adding to it several important planetary movements that are happening this month (moon-th). Additionally, it is happening when the Sun is conjunct the Galactic Center, what the Maya called the Hunab Ku, or the heart of the Creator. This alignment can connect us with our soul’s purpose, with a sensing of why we are here on Earth.

Full Moons are always halfway points in the lunar cycle, asking us to take a look at where we are in the balance of opposites: in this case the Sagittarius energy which deals with our beliefs, and our world view that creates our reality, versus Gemini, which rules our thoughts and how we gather information from the day to day world around us. In this information explosion age, the Gemini/Sagittarius polarity is strongly accented, since there is so much information that is out there, all of it vying to mold and shape (and manipulate) our beliefs, and our overall world view. Can we maintain our curiosity in the face of info-onslaught, while trusting our inner gut feelings? Often our assumptions are based on the suppositions of our cognitive thinking, rather than what our bodies feel is good for us and true.

Every 18 months our sister planet Venus goes retrograde, an important cycle that has been watched and storied for thousands of years. As her position changes, she moves from an evening star back toward the Sun, setting earlier and earlier, eventually disappearing from our view, and then spends 40 days (and 40 nights) in an underworld kind of darkness from our point of view, (but actually she’s getting a solar charge of transformation.) Then she emerges as a morning star, where she is visible for another 18 months. Importantly, she is conjoined with Pluto much of her underworld time, and as mentioned in previous entries, this Persephone-like combination heralds a change in the power of the feminine in our culture, the planets being a reflection of the archetypal drama of life here on Planet Earth. As those aligned with patriarchal values attempt to roll back women’s rights (and LGBTQ and immigration and voting rights of black, indigenous, and non-white races, etc.), the feminine archetype is under siege at this point in our paradigm shift. When Venus re-appears as a morning “star” at the end of January 2022, she is called “Lucifer” meaning bringer of the light. Given that this happens only a few weeks before the Pluto return of the US, February and much of 2022 will be transformative times.

Chiron goes direct just six hours after Venus turns retro, highlighting the increasing power of recognizing that our wounded nature (especially the feminine in all of us) is able to be put into action, to re-shape our path toward stepping into the power that we have been denied. Chiron in Aries asks us to reformulate our relationship with how we take action in our lives, our relationship to the archetypal masculine. On Christmas Day, Venus will exactly conjoin Pluto, symbolic for a heady stripping away of all that is superfluous about this holiday.

Venus also rules not only the feminine but also what we value, since she is the ruler of Taurus, the sign of our material world. With Uranus now in Taurus, we are in the midst of a revolution around the materialistic values of our world culture, just as, for one example, the phenomenon of cryptocurrency is sweeping the planetary financial culture. Since Venus is spending 4 months in Capricorn, as opposed to the usual 4 weeks, the values concerning how we structure our society are being brought to the forefront of everyone’s attention. How can we use the boundary-setting energy of Capricorn to our advantage to rein in our debt-ridden ways of spending? And this goes for not only money, but also how we spend our emotional energy in relationship to others.

Also on December 23^rd, Saturn and Uranus will form the final square (90˚ angle) of this year. These two have been facing off all this past year, the god of Chaos versus the god of Time, highlighting the challenge of integrating the old and the new, the conservative and the radical, what has worked before versus what needs to be reformed. This exact square is a tension point which, being the third and final point, indicates a testing time for how we will be able to make the important changes to the traditional ways we manage our resources.

Jupiter will be moving into Pisces beginning December 28^th. Though it was briefly in this sign in mid-May through July, it will once again give us a chance to connect with our deepest most spiritual self until May of 2022, where it will cross into fiery Aries until it retros into Pisces again toward the end of October. Jupiter, the expansive force, is quite different in Aries (stay tuned) but for now, this is a good time to pay attention to dream messages, and to use whatever methods you can use to connect with your higher, or inner self, the wisdom of our soul awareness. We will not be able to connect to these realms if our inner dialogue is babbling away, so meditation is essential, in whatever form you practice, to take advantage of this window of opportunity.

Solstice is on the 21^st, if you haven’t already read my essay on that, you can find it here.

Blessings to all at this time of darkness and transition.