Tag: Moon Stuff

Dignity and Debility, Horoscopes, Moon Stuff, New Moons

New Moon in Capricorn – January 11th, 2024

sitaradidi

The Capricorn Moon is in the sign of her detriment, but sometimes, we don’t actually learn best from a planet at its most supported, at its most unchallenged. When we are facing an obstacle, debilitated placements often show us the path towards resourcefulness and resilience. The Moon loves to feel, to express, to gaze inward. All of these tasks deserve time and reflection, but left unchecked, the Moon becomes solipsism. The Moon becomes a mental trap. The Moon becomes a feeling with a solution that you simply can’t recall the word for. 

Jan 11 2024 New Moon in Capricorn Chart

Capricorn as a sign is often unfairly maligned as inherently capitalistic, when it is often a sign of altruism, of creating a foundation stable and sustainable enough to be shared with others, one that can carry the weight of more than one person. Ensuring you have enough for more than yourself because you never want to be in a position where you can’t share. Chasing growth not for personal abundance, but because you want to create home, create safety, ensure time earned is spent on what would honor you and your loved ones. This is why the Moon feels challenged here — selfless, generous pragmatism highlights the pitfalls of self-reflection as a means with no end; self-reflection to the point of self-absorption, self-reflection as the moon gazing at her own reflection in the water (itself a reflection of the Sun’s light) and seeing nothing else.

Sometimes we work too hard and burn ourselves out with almost the subconscious intent to deny ourselves, to beat down our own egos. “I’m too tired from toiling, so I just can’t take care of myself; it’s not that I want to be self-destructive. I have no time left over to restore myself, because I am working too hard.” (But self-neglect is a harm too often unrecognized.) “I can’t relax until after this deadline, after this presentation, after this project wraps up.” “I need to push through really hard right now to achieve my goals, so I can’t stop to think or reflect.” This is an emotional response cleverly disguised as something we’re trained to think of as noble, normal — a focus on work. This is most often how Saturn, and thus Capricorn, overcorrects.

Kevin Germanier AW18 © Photo: Nikolay Biryukov

At other times, the opposite occurs: we use an overemphasis to the personal, disconnected from the world around us, to shirk our sense of responsibility to others. “I’m focused on my own growth right now, my own emotional wellness, my own spiritual journey, so I can’t invest in my community.” “Engaging with this brand is really important for my mental health journey, so I can’t show support for criticism of it.” “I can’t respond to your text about the acute crisis you’re facing, I don’t have space for it and need to approach my own triggers and tribulations with the reverence they deserve. I owe yours no such reverence.” Pick your poison; we all do this with something, some of the time. We tend to associate the Moon with empathy, with connectedness, but when she withdraws into herself and lets the discomfort overwhelm her other feelings, she is not able to connect outward. She is internal. She is not the Sun. She cannot facilitate warmth where feelings have run cold. Boundaries are necessary, but when they are too rigid, we risk isolating ourselves or leaving someone important out in the cold.

This new moon squares the nodal axis, currently in Aries/Libra, showing us another angle of independence vs. codependence. Their synthesis is found in relationships where we can express ourselves openly without worries of hindering or hurting the other person, because we have done enough listening and read the room enough to know what’s appropriate to say when; relationships where we can give and receive without the burden of expectation that it will be a symmetrical transaction every time. We can be comfortable in the knowledge that that’s perfectly fine because we feel secure in our capacity to handle the rest of what’s left over for us to carry, because we have enough sustainable connections of interdependence to know that the weight of the burden is something that can be shared collectively. And if that weight is not distributed well, we know we can speak up. 

Viktor & Rolf, ‘Russian Doll’ collection, Autumn-Winter 1999-00 © Photo: Bardo Fabiani

It is perfectly natural for us to bounce between these two modes — the Moon/Cancer self-reflecting a la Narcissus and Saturn/Capricorn keeping her eyes so fixed on the prize that she doesn’t have to look at her own reflection — though some of us may find we’re more strongly polarized to one or the other. This lunation is offering us a chance to reflect on whether we’re leaning too hard into one extreme. If our tears are frying our ability to be present and connected with others, if they’re drowning our perspective, it’s okay to dry them; it doesn’t make us cold or unfeeling to set boundaries on the experience of examining our own pain. Likewise, if our impetus to function, to always keep moving, to collect security so that it may be distributed outwards, is blocking us from feeling or being meaningfully present with the people we want to share the spoils of our hard work with, then we can give ourselves permission to put our tools down and rest. Taking care of others is not a valid excuse for us to ignore our own vulnerability. We do have responsibilities to each other, but we do not carry those responsibilities alone. Since this lunation trines Uranus in Taurus, reflect on how working to achieve this balance of perspectives can be a revolutionary influence on our lives, and take your time. There is no rush to perfect this synthesis, but every day is a small opportunity to incrementally improve how you relate to your people, your communities, and your self. 

Is this moon for me?

Every lunation is for everybody, but here a few things to look out for to see if you should take particular interest in working with or thinking about things during this New Moon:

  • Natal Capricorn moons (it’s your New Moon!)
  • Natal Cancer & Capricorn placements (particularly rising, sun, moon; less so other personal planets)
  • Natal Aries & Libra placements (particularly rising, sun, moon)
  • Those currently in their Saturn Return
  • Those who have a prominent placement in a cardinal sign in their solar return chart, or who are Saturn dominant in either their natal or solar return charts
  • Those in a cardinal profection year
  • People who are looking to set long-term intentions for the year around work-life balance, community building, emotional wellness, or sustainability
  • People who are seeking an opportunity to renegotiate their boundaries, particularly with emotionally overwhelming situations, with resource sharing, with work, or with their own reputations
  • People who are embarking on or planning a new project, and want to do so with a sustainable balance between internal and external motivations

Cover art is a little art exercise I made within a few hours of Mars entering my 5th house

Astrology Lessons, Moon Stuff, New Moons

So, How Was Everyone’s New Moon In Taurus? | Some Moon Stuff, and then some moon stuff

sitaradidi

Mine was stressful. I don’t recommend scheduling large-scale product fulfillment during good ol’ Mercury Gatorade, and in fact, I did not, but Mercury did anyway. It’s cool though, except your new moon ~ insights ~ are a little late this week. Sometimes I think I need a Gemini moon to write.

But the fact that they’re late is totally fine, because for some reason, everyone loves to talk about the moon on the day that she’s doing something exciting, but then forgets that her influence lingers for a lot longer than that.

You probably know already that the moon takes almost exactly a month to complete an orbit around month. The length of time it does in fact take is called a “lunar month” — it’s 29.5ish days. (There are slightly different figures for it depending on whether or not you’re using a sidereal system of astronomy / astrology or a tropical system. I’ll tell you about them in a later post because an explanation of them is necessary to understand why Ophicius is a scam and a lie. For now, think of them like the Celsius and Fahrenheit of figuring out where in the heck we are in relation to the other stuff in our neck of the galaxy.)

Throughout its lunar month, the moon passes through different “phases” depending on how much we can see of it. The amount we can see of it is directly related to where it is in relation to both the Sun and Earth. The moon just reflects the light of the Sun. The less of it that’s facing the Sun, the less we can see. You’ve probably incorrectly been told that the new moon is caused by Earth’s shadow; it’s actually the exact opposite. It occurs when the moon is between Earth and the Sun. The side of the moon that’s facing the Sun is getting all of the sunlight, and the side facing us isn’t getting any, so we don’t see a moon at all.

This is reflected pretty directly in astrology, too. At the new moon, from Earth’s point of view, the Sun and moon are lined right up — and so they’re in the same region of the zodiac, the same sign. We call this a conjunction. (As you might imagine, the full moon is when the opposite happens, and the moon is on the other side, directly opposite the Sun. That one is called an opposition.)

Anyway. The energy of the new moon and full moon are very different, which is why in astrology they’re said to “set” for different time periods. At the new moon, the Sun and moon are in the same sign, and working through the same kinds of energy. Since the Sun represents our will, and the moon represents our emotions, this loosely means that the new moon is the best time for us to act upon an intention to try and set it in motion — our desires and energy are lined up with our hopes and feelings, and we can set a goal more easily. The full moon, instead, is a time when things feel pulled apart or amped up by the oppositional activity, and is a time more prone to conflict (or passion, or elevation, or conviction.)

The new moon is the setting of the scene, and the events of the full moon usually come from and relate to it. So its themes have more a longer life than the period of opposition and conclusion that follow it. In this way, most astrologers will tell you that a typical new moon usually sets the tone of an entire month, where a full moon defines the following two weeks. Both have a tendency to completely “conclude” one month later during the next lunar cycle. (Eclipses are the same thing but longer.)

So, why am I telling you all this moon stuff now?

Because every lunation is impacted by the aspects it makes with the rest of its chart, and this one was really beautiful and special — it doesn’t have any.

The rest of the zodiac is doing all kinds of weird stuff, and on this month’s New Moon, the Sun and moon just kind of sat there quietly together, alone, ignoring everything, in lush and restful Taurus.

Sometimes we are completely honest that the things we have been through affect us emotionally. We can be really on top of unpacking and feeling it through just sensing the wear-and-tear the world puts on our hearts daily. We move into a period where pain feels pressing and understanding it intimately is necessary to survival, and analyzing where it came from is so clear as to be almost subconscious — because it’s obvious. We can feel exactly where it hurts.

But sometimes, even if we have gotten really articulate about how the history of ourselves has written us into being, and even if we have identified the places in ourselves where trauma has snagged and loosened our weaknesses, we still fail to trace the thread through to how we allow us to hurt ourselves through it. We can be unable to see how those emotional blockages, tensions and traumas that we have gotten so used to impact our ability to recognize what we deserve. We don’t slow down enough to feel the way the stress carries on. It’s through connecting with other people that we can often identify parts of ourselves that need attention and work, but actually unwinding it often requires real isolation, even though that’s the time when it’s sometimes the hardest to feel. Like a chronic condition or a mark on the body, we become so acclimated to its existence that we might almost forget that it is there. This might make our emotional states more manageable on a day-to-day basis, but it can also make us forget the injustice of the cause of our stress and distress in the first place. If you can’t remember that it shouldn’t have been done to you, you forget that you need to treat yourself with kindness and softness, and think of yourself as someone who is deserving, because you need it, right now and always from now on.

This New Moon falls in Taurus, a sign that always wants us to acknowledge what we materially need in every sector of our life, and even asks us to spoil ourselves a little, with any experience that stimulates and soothes our bodies. Since it does have the luxury of occurring unaspected by other planets, the whole month is about a part of you that is only for you. Every other planet can retrograde. Everyone in your life can be going through something you can’t fix or handle. Every step of the process can hit a roadblock. Everything else can go wrong, but there is one place in yourself that you trust enough to just be there. Accordingly, the new moon this month wants to let you know that no matter what else is going on, you can create a part of your life that feels good, and you can use it to treat yourself to space, solace, and rest. I hope you do.