Capricorn New Moon – 2 January 2022

So this is how it feels to be spinning out in space
when I thought I was standing on flat earth!
Capricorn comes to steady the ground
for Aquarian ideas to be expressed without fear.

But it’s the Aquarian ideas that are shaking the ground, because we can’t go on in the unconscious Pisces way. Each one must take, responsibility for their effect, without pressure, control or coercion, but because we care about the whole of the human family.

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Dear friends,
.       This letter may read like a sort of personal blog, or it may just be how the energy is taking us this month. Bear with me; astrology shows the backdrop to our experience, and it’s the experience (Capricorn) that I’m expressing here today . . . so perhaps put yourself in my shoes!

Let go of trying to understand the bits, when moving fast

.       It’s all a bit confusing. I think the trouble is trying to focus on shifting patterns. It’s a bit like trying to focus on the trees passing the window when sitting on a train whizzing through the landscape. Everything keeps changing, and we’re not sure what will be thrown up into our space day by day. In the train analogy, I find my eyes are better focusing on a distant view, where, although my perspective keeps changing at the same-moment-by-moment rate, at least the angle of shift is not so difficult for my eyes to adapt to. So perhaps what we really need for our inner eyes is the realisation of the great shift of evolution of the human being over lifetimes. It’s the blur of apparently passing time that is confusing, and the best thing to focus on is actually the inside of the train, the practical physical experience that my body encounters moment by moment. It’s trying to understand beyond my practical experience that has me reeling.

.       So staying with practical experience – Capricorn – I know how to handle the things of daily life. I can dress, eat, get to work ‘on time’, manage the situations I’ve become accustomed to, deal with what I’ve learned to relate to. And more distantly, there’s the understanding of why I do these things, the backdrop of the life I’ve led so far – I can maybe see how that has unfolded throughout the years, and maybe why things have turned out for me the way they are now – or seem to be. So it’s the link between the near and the distant that is maybe shifting too fast for my ‘eyes’ to adapt to. I’m having to learn things I thought were not true. I’m trying to see how they might be applied to familiar situations, which means having to give mental space to allowing what maybe I would rather not see.

Illusion or inspired vision?

.       Have I lost you yet? Is this just the ramblings of 4am in winter? The zen of mindfulness on waking! – I have to smile. We are all limited by the style and speed of the ‘train’ we live in, never mind the terrain through which we are speeding! So let’s smile and be compassionate, and remember the loving feeling in the body’s heart. Then I remember to breathe, and to enjoy my fingers on the computer keys – now we’re getting somewhere (the ground of Capricorn) what do I really know? The hunger in my stomach that calls to feed this body well, while pleasing my palette. I’m reaching towards the Capricorn New Moon for stability, standing on the known, the tried and tested of my life. But this month, I’m having to recognise that all is not as it was, that even what I thought I knew is based on things I didn’t see before. So that’s what this rambling is about – perhaps this is how it feels to be spinning out in space when I thought I was standing on flat earth! (Sun/Moon trine Uranus in Taurus)

.       And meanwhile, the way I think it could/should be is definitely not how it seems to be right now. Is there perhaps, though, a sense that maybe what seemed a desired pipe-dream might actually be in some way possible? (Saturn squaring Uranus is at last starting to fade after a year of lurching between movement and blockage.) From now on, there is likely to be much more discussion about forward or backward changes in our lifestyles, and from mid-February, we will be moving decisively into discussion as to how to go forward from here. (Mercury at the beginning of Aquarius, then back into Capricorn later this month.)

Capricorn – control or self-mastery

.       From the Full Moon on 17 January, the emotional-psychological impact of changes will not be forgotten. There is also a shift in the general movement for humanity as a whole, which will be more practically focussed, because it has become obvious that massive changes in our lifestyle are necessary (Full Moon in Cancer trine Neptune, and North Node into Taurus). As individuals, we need to maintain the freedom necessary for the growth of self-mastery. Saturn rules Capricorn, and if we continue to focus on the controlling aspect of this energy, the rules that get implemented will be about controlling our behaviour. In fact the rules need to be for guidance rather than control.

.       Self-mastery is learned through the freedom to choose how we manage our lives, and includes individually choosing to behave supportively to the whole. It is the natural stance of the true Aquarian Human Being, who would control only from necessity when faced with dangerous circumstances. Apart from human rage and greed, I think the only circumstances that create real danger are the conditions that the earth imposes on us as it moves its tectonic plates, oceans and winds, and the sun imposes through its solar flares and winds throughout the solar system, not to mention the movement of galaxies through space! So apart from one person behaving in a harmful way to another, no human who experiences themselves as a member of the human family would ever seek to control another. It would be dividing wholeness, like a tree breaking up from disease or parasites inside. The result would be death of the wholeness. We experience this individually as separation, leading to disintegration of our human family.

The power of emotions

.       During 2022, the encouragement will be to develop consciousness of inner spiritual reality as the backdrop and foundation of daily life, a much larger awareness (Jupiter is now in Pisces). Pisces represents the sea of total human emotion in which we swim constantly. Whatever you feel emotionally, there will be many others feeling the same, and the current is continually surging and changing around us. Rather than trying to control how we feel, we need to learn how to let it be, letting it flow through so that we don’t get stuck in one emotional place. The boundless sea is also a lovely image for spiritual reality, and remaining steady within oneself, while allowing the flow of emotion through and out, brings awareness of our own spiritual strength.

.       The ‘tipping point’ that people talk about is really about our choice for the positive inner human being or for the fear of pain and loss. It’s not the pain and loss that bring the contraction, it’s the fear. Choosing compassion for self and others deals with pain and loss in growthful expansive ways. So let’s go for being kind to ourselves and everyone else. Love them all.

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Contemplation for this New Moon in Capricorn

Enter! Come in, you are so welcome.
Don’t be afraid, it is YOU who are welcome,
not your hopes or anxieties, not your egoic self
but your heart-felt magnificence.
You are known, the universe sees you as you are
part of itself, part of the vast silence
the stillness that is
the eye of the storm of experience
the moment between dying and death
the precipice for each drop falling over a waterfall
letting go into the glory.

And how to live?
Why worry about that – just move
as your mind and body dictate
and your life slides from one action to another.
But don’t forget that poised drop of water,
pause your breathing
and let go . . .