The Astro weather for December, as we near this year’s closing, we’re invited to review and plan and do it with discerning gravitas. By the time the Sun arrives in Capricorn on the Solstice, our cosmic Santa Claus Jupiter reenters Aries, which will stay until May 16, 2023. Jupiter’s arrival at 0º of Cardinal Aries just before the Sun also arrives at 0º of Cardinal Capricorn shifts the zeitgeist into an impatient desire for new beginnings.
The mood isn’t for meandering sentimentality that prevents us from taking courageous steps toward what we want and need. What will be required from us is psychological flexibility and a focused and nimble mind. Staunch ideas/ideals will be tested in 2023, and the collective lesson will be knowing how to discern between creatively affirming loyalty and stubborn steadfastness due to fear of change.
But before we can forge ahead, we will need to hold on to our horses because good old Mercury is stationing retrograde within arm’s length of Pluto, both in Capricorn, just before the start of 2023. We can approach this retrograde season as a reminder that we must judicially and discernably clean the slate before moving on. The bumper sticker message is: organize first before starting.
Because from Solstice to early January 2023, the pile of planets in Capricorn (Sun, Mercury, Venus & Pluto) brings our focus to the need to trim it down to the bones, teaching us that lean is more a dirty economic dirty word. Still, it’s also an opportunity for us to reconnect with our resilient marrow and become mature. And for those in the Northern Hemisphere, it invites us to learn how to artfully and mindfully winter/hibernate.
Moving from Idea to Action
As with every month, we start in one realm and end in another. December is notable because it’s time to celebrate the festivities and wrap up a year. So the mood of expansion, optimism, and opportunities of Sagittarius gives way to the serious interiority of Capricorn. Capricorn calls to a combination of solemn gravitas and a focused and sharpened knife to help us cut off the fat clogging up the blood flow of our plans.
So after all the expansion of Sagittarius, as the Sun transitions to Capricorn joining Mercury, Venus and Pluto, we’re called to bring discipline, and focused determination towards the visions received earlier. Add the fact that Capricorn’s ruler is now moving forward, tackling the last degrees of Aquarius until it leaves it entirely in March of 2023; we’re called to make progress (an Aquarian word) in our bigger visions/plans. Plus, with Jupiter, Sagittarius’ ruler, restarting its short jaunt through Aries – after a quick preview during the Spring/Summer of this year – expedient, lightweight movement and action steps are what will be called forth for 2023 – the sliding doors of fate year.
Solstice – The Light of Arthur
In the Druid tradition, the Winter Solstice is known as ‘The Light of Arthur.’ Arthus is equated with the Sun-God, who dies and is reborn as the ‘Son of Light’ at the Winter Solstice. This reborn Sun-God, who has mysteriously escaped and survived the powers of darkness, is still fragile, but its very rebirth signals life and the potential that lies ahead. The theme of the dying Sun-God that is reborn can be found in many cultures and religions throughout human history. The symbolism of the SEED OF LIGHT born in the DARK WOMB serves as a reminder that life’s inception begins hidden from view.
This can also serve as a reminder that for all our desire for light, clarity, and enlightenment, we also need to learn to honor the fertile potentiality of the darkness of not knowing and of not seeing the path ahead. It’s not the time to set out working on our spreadsheet of plans. But a time best served by turning inward and reflecting, and Mercury Retrograde is perfect for this. As the days are shorter and the night’s velvety darkness a heavy blanket, we can use this time to slow down, honor our inner bear and embrace the art of hibernating.
The weeks covering the Solstice, Christmas, all the way to early January, with its many festivities and gregarious celebration, but time-bound and financial stressors can also bring about feelings of depression and a sense of disconnection and isolation. However, each of us can hold within the small spark of light about to be reborn, for we’re its birth canal.
Tend to your Inner Spark
Use this time to celebrate, but reserve some quiet and reflective time to tend to your inner spark of light, the light that will fuel your fire for the new year and all the opportunities and changes it will bring. I like to light candles during this time for their welcoming glow and as a reminder of the light within, but first, I also want to honor the dark for its fertility and in potentia.
In 2022 we sailed some rough and tumultuous seas. We felt the push and pull of our collective’s divisions between forging ahead through accepting the benefits of our differences and the entrenched staunch ways of holding on to a sentimental vision of the past. But as we near the half-point in this Courageous Decade of the 2020s, 2023 serves as a watershed year, as the cosmic train tracks will shift into new pathways with Saturn’s arrival in Pisces and Pluto’s first arrival in Aquarius in March – talk about a shift in our zeitgeist.
Those still thinking we can ‘return’ to a world before 2020 are in for a rude awakening. Although we may not ‘see it’ at first, rest assured that we will have crossed into another experiential realm.
2023 will require us to become more nimble and psychologically flexible in dancing with the changes. Use this month to get scrappy, clean the clutter, unclog your stuck places, and carve some time to tend to your inner fire.
Photo Credits:
Main image: Ray Hennessy – via Unsplash
Subsequent images: Jakob Owens, Timothy Eberly and Alisa Anton via Unsplash
