Winter Solstice / New Moon in Capricorn / Saturn into Sagittarius

From the Madonna del Parto by Piero della Francesca

“but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.”


As of today (20th December), we have 3 planets in Capricorn: Venus, Mercury and Pluto, all conjunct and squaring Uranus in Aries and the north node in Libra. We also have Capricorn's ruler, Saturn, on the last minutes of the last degree of Scorpio.

This is intense heaviness and seriousness. A profound reckoning is coming due. Capricorn and Saturn are about commitment to earthly reality, perseverance, work. Sobriety and absolute realism. What's before you may not be easy, but the path will be coming clear now...

Venus conjuncts Pluto exactly later today, and squares Uranus. The sextile between Mars in Aquarius and Uranus in Aries is also nearly exact.... This stuff is about endings, final ruptures – also commitments. Breaking with the past and starting anew.

The Venus-Pluto conjunction is difficult, and might involve the ghost of Christmas past rising from the grave and shimmying around in front of you beguilingly. Dead loves come back to fuck with us under Venus-Pluto aspects, and you have to beware – remember what's dead is dead for a reason. “The best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour”, per Dr Phil.

But there is such a counterbalancing push for the new at work - I don't think the ghosts are going to be able to do much damage. This looks more like a summation or final reckoning than a scenario where you get pulled back into past patterns.

The death-and-rebirth symbolism of the next few days is extraordinary. One door is closing forever, another door is opening. It's profound and it may be very painful - but it must be accepted. We are dealing with reality here, which is as it is, not as we might wish it to be.

Tomorrow (21st December) is the winter solstice: the darkest day of the year, but also the moment when the light begins to return. It's marked by the moment the sun enters Capricorn, which this year happens at around 11 pm (GMT). At around the same time we have Uranus (revolution and liberation) going direct in Aries, a sign representative of birth and new beginnings. This is a big jolt of light amid darkness – a significator of intense change. It's really beautiful and hopeful.

Then we have the new moon a few hours later, as the moon enters Capricorn. 22nd December, around 1:30 am GMT, 0 degrees Capricorn. New moons represent new beginnings – in Capricorn, we see the beginning of something austere, true, reliable. The symbolism here couldn't be clearer or more stark – or more beautiful. Like the face of the Madonna del Parto above: she looks like she knows exactly what she's getting into.

This is the 3rd in a series of 0 degree new moons – we are moving from possibilities (Sagittarius) to realities (Capricorn) here. This is the door opening into a new world. It might not be the life you've dreamed of, but it will be something you can trust – it will be credible.

Hope and change we can believe in. (Ha. Black humour. Black humour is very Capricorn.)

Then, the next day (23rd December), Saturn changes signs – from Scorpio, where he has been for the past 2 years, to Sagittarius. Because Saturn moves so slowly, a sign-shift is a momentous occasion.

Saturn is about limits, karma, duty, responsibility. He rules Capricorn, and we will have a total of 5 planets in Capricorn as he shifts signs. And this is all about the concrete solidifying on the road ahead.

Saturn in Scorpio was about dealing with our psychological shit, and it was not an easy transit. Many of us have been to some very dark places over the past two years. Hopefully we've come out of it with a lot of our garbage and dross burned away.

Saturn in Sagittarius is not as psychologically heavy at all – it's more about grounding (Saturn) a vision of the future (Sagittarius). So again, we are looking at a death-and-rebirth scenario with Saturn's sign shift - from purgation (Scorpio) to building a future (Sagittarius) - and this is fully in keeping with the symbolism of the winter solstice and the new moon in Capricorn.

There are some difficulties to be expected of this transit, though. For one thing, Saturn in Scorpio has been in a mutual reception with Pluto in Capricorn over the past two years. Pluto in Capricorn is about the rot underlying the old order – the process of unearthing that rot (Scorpio) has been relatively measured and grounded during Saturn's transit of Scorpio. But with the end of that beneficial relationship, we may see accelerated societal breakdown, and extremism spreading like wildfire.

Another difficulty is that Saturn will be squaring Neptune in Pisces for much of his transit of Sagittarius. This is about reality dissolving, and it reinforces the theme of societal breakdown that the end of the mutual reception portends.

“All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away; all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind.”- per Marx.

How do you build a new reality when the ground keeps dissolving underneath your feet? That's a question we'll probably be looking at in detail over the next few years.

But for now I am not going to speculate - we have enough to be dealing with over the next few days, and into Christmas (as detailed in the post below as well). Happy solstice to all.