We begin 2022 with a New Moon in Capricorn that promises change and at the same time gives us a heads up that change will call for work.
Do we work for change? To change? With change? Against? This New Moon will want answers.
The Saturnian influence is very strong. Saturn in Aquarius rules the New Moon and also Venus and Pluto. Themes of hard work, patience, and perseverance in the face of delay are all present. These are not our favorite themes. Unless we’re very Capricornian, of course. And they are important. Worthwhile. Grounding.
I doubt anyone has come in thinking this new year would be easy, or that 2022 would magically solve everything. But if you did, even a little, then our first New Moon signals otherwise. This will be a year to do work and get stuff done.
The New Moon and Venus are applying and close enough to count as conjunct. Venus is beginning her journey and invites us along.
It’s a New Moon, a new beginning. We’re making this beginning alongside Venus retrograde. Something about this journey will be highlighted this lunar cycle. If we choose to pay attention and work with it (that “work” word again), our journey with Venus will be more meaningful.
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Venus retrograde in Capricorn offers many avenues to explore. It’s likely to affect key relationships as each of us confront places where things are, and are not, working. Structure, effort, and responsibility are keywords here.
Does the way we structure relationship lead to everyone involved being supported and affirmed? In other words, are we happy? Our needs met? Others’ needs met?
No relationships are perfect, since we’re all human, yet this Venus retrograde can point us to structural issues that might need to be addressed, if we have the strength to look.
Venus rules valuables: jewels, luxury items, and also money, investments, things that build value over time, good food, decent housing.
How do we relate to value? What feels important? Worth holding on to? One potential gift of these pandemic times is the reorientation of value. We see (if we look) what brings support, comfort, and security in dangerous times and what does not.
In Inanna’s descent story, she must remove, one by one, her valuables as she approaches the underworld. Insignias of power. Adornments for her beauty. Basics of her identity. All of these came off. This Venus retrograde asks what are we willing to give up to approach the depths of who we are?
Venus also governs social values. Ethics. How we conduct ourselves. How we construct workable societies. What feels right to us, just, fair, defensible.
These pandemic times also present issues of values in stark ways. Choices have consequences that go right into the deepest questions of life and death. Who gets to choose when personal choices lead to the deaths of others? Who has access to care? To support? Even to information that is truthful and reliable?
So Venus asks, are our values solid? Do our values reflect the life we want? The world we long for? And–here’s Saturn again–do we bring our values into our actions? Are we walking our talk?
I began with Venus because she is close to the New Moon and beginning an important journey that holds challenges and benefits for each of us. The closest aspect to the New Moon is, however, a separating but still very tight trine to Uranus in Taurus. The revolutionary. The bringer of change.
I keep hearing the words of Galadriel at the beginning of The Lord of the Rings film: The world has changed. And it has.
It’s worth noting that in the book, these words are spoken by Treebeard, the Ent. A shepherd of trees, he is older than old. Part of the deep structures of the Earth, he has seen great upheavals in past ages and still remains as help and witness. He lives in slow time, as does Saturn. He does not welcome change. Nor does Saturn.
Yet when the world has changed, so must he. So must his kin.
Uranus’ presence in Taurus signals the deep changes happening on Earth. Our choices as human engineers of vast civilizations have changed patterns of weather we do not fully understand. We see the consequences in losses that are frightening in their scope. We don’t know where this will go.
Capricornian ways of interacting with the world create structures that sustain us. What happens when those structures begin to break down? Or we see how some parts of those structures were toxic from the beginning? Or when we have changed and now need and want something different?
When the Fellowship reaches Lothlorien, they receive disturbing and challenging messages from Galadriel, a Venusian figure in this world. But she also says that even now, hope remains.
Venus and the Sun and Moon are sextiling Neptune in Pisces. These are applying, strengthening connections that offer insight, magic, and hope. Perhaps Galadriel is more Neptunian, connecting as she does to vast realms of time and worlds beyond this one.
However we see her, she counsels hope, not simply that we hope things will get better, but that we embrace hope as a choice, as a vision that acts as a guide and support when times are dark.
Certainly some experience figures like Galadriel as dark, a magical force to be avoided, to treat with suspicion. That too can be a Neptunian experience: doubt, confusion, feeling lost.
The presence of Jupiter newly arrived in Pisces supports hope and optimism that is based not in a frivolous and ungrounded positivism but in deep wisdom and experience.
Mercury newly arrived in Aquarius just as we meet the New Moon offers clarity of thought and a call to create a new vision for a future in which new structures can be created.
This is complex stuff. The stability of our societies faces real threats in the coming year. Our choices in the year head are also complex. Today, as we begin, we don’t even know where the unknown unknowns are lurking.
This New Moon, joined with Venus and Uranus, asks us to plan our work. Then we work the plan. Step by step. With hope.
We live in interesting times. I wish each and every one of you the best of this new year and New Moon.
I’ll close with my new fave song, Higher than the Higher Hierarchy by Moderate Rebels. It’s good medicine.
Title adapted from Christopher Burns
https://unsplash.com/photos/8KfCR12oeUM
Crown adapted from wildan alfani
https://unsplash.com/photos/DNLU53qdsNw
New Moon dancer adapted from Javier Allegue Barros
https://unsplash.com/photos/55bVEzGVnzY