This Capricorn New Moon falls on Christmas Eve, inviting us to let "love bloom bright and wild' on the most magical night of the year. Can we open ourselves to Spirit, to our passionate heart which loves unconditionally, so there is room in our "inn' for this divine birth? We celebrate the rebirth of the Light at Winter Solstice as Yule, Hanukkah, Christmas or Kwanzaa - let's remember the Mother who gives birth to the Light.

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Capricorn New Moon, December 24, 2011

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild. Had Mary been filled with reason,
There'd have been no room for the Child.¹

This Capricorn New Moon falls on Christmas Eve, inviting us to let "love bloom bright and wild' on the most magical night of the year.   Can we open ourselves to Spirit, to our passionate heart which loves unconditionally, so there is room in our "inn' for this divine birth? Whether we celebrate the rebirth of the Light at Winter Solstice as Yule, Hanukkah, Christmas or Kwanzaa, let's remember the Mother who gives birth to the Light of the World.   She is Mother Earth, Mother Mary and the Feminine Spirit within each of us.   We all get a chance to give birth to our deepest Light in this darkest time of year.

Our wild, passionate feminine nature is the ground of our being.   She is strong and full of Life!   Matter is Spirit's manifestation on this physical plane. It is the container of the spark of Spirit's life.   We are taught by our patriarchal religions to treat our bodies as "temples of spirit' but then they judge and condemn what that spirit wants to experience.   When we have a belief system that demonizes and desensitizes the physical plane, the feminine and women, we are denying our place and purpose here on Earth.   Under patriarchy, this feminine nature has been colonized, raped, used and then ignored. But when we ignore the wisdom of our intuitive, feeling consciousness and our instinctual life of the body, life becomes bleak indeed, as we can see around us.   We've ignored this feminine knowing to our own detriment - a polluted environment gives rise to virulent diseases; depleted resources create competition and wars; inequality gives rise to cruelty and violence.   The light touch of feminine love and compassion is missing in global politics.   We can bring it back in our personal responsibility.

The lost Feminine Spirit is needed to give birth to our new society.   Otherwise, we'll just get the same old society, wrapped in sheep's clothing. The Feminine sees matter as Mother, as Sacred.   We are spirits having a human experience.   Our feminine consciousness connects us to dis-incarnate Spirit -- it is our direct line to our spiritual awareness which helps us to cooperate with each other, to see holistic solutions to our common problems and to co-create our world, which is our purpose for being here.   It is Feminine Spirit which is open enough to the "unseen real' to conceive and give birth to a new order of consciousness and Being.   That's why we celebrate this season as a Birth -- the Mother is ready to give birth to the next stage in our collective evolution.

Winter Solstice and the Capricorn New Moon

Winter Solstice, arriving on December 21-22, marks another turn of the Wheel of the Year, the point in the cycle where the Sun once again "stands still' in the sky for three days in the far South (where our southern neighbors are celebrating Summer Solstice!).   Our ancient ancestors celebrated this promise of the return of summer with feasts and gift-giving and decorations of ever-green branches to remind them of the life that had disappeared under the snows of Winter.   This is another fire festival, the wheel of life marking a change in our relationship with the Sun.   Don't forget to light a fire and look into the flames, opening your imagination to the pictures there. Let your imagination soar!   What are you going to Birth in this next year? In the next few weeks, although it might not feel like it, the light will slowly begin to return in the northern hemisphere -- with the promise of summer to come.

New Moon is the secret time of the Moon's cycle when the new seed wanting to blossom within us sparks into life.   A Capricorn new Moon sparks a new vision of our society as well as a new vision of how we want to live our lives.   We attend to our personal dharma or responsibility to our society and to our standing in our community.   What do we want to contribute to the whole? Saturn rules Capricorn, asking us to take up our social responsibility and our personal authority, and do what is right.   This is the theme for this coming year.   These are the seed ideas that will take us through this pivotal year of 2012.

Since Pluto has already gone over this degree in Capricorn, this new Moon occurs in newly fertile ground.   Think back to what you were going through when Pluto went over 3* Capricorn from early 2009 through late 2010.   Is it coming to fruition now?   And transiting Pluto at 8* Capricorn is part of the new Moon energy, so watch what things slip away from your life this Moon cycle.   Ask yourself what aspects of society no longer serve our collective life.  

The Sabian Symbol for 3* Capricorn is: A human soul, in its eagerness for new experiences, seeks embodiment. Here is the image of the Child of Light born in the midst of great darkness.   Not only is the Earth and our physicality full of spirit, our soul is our unique spark of Spirit that wants to experience life here on Earth.   We all have a powerful yearning to increase the depth of our contacts with others, for it is "soulful' connections that bring us happiness.   Since this image comes in the sign of Capricorn, we have to suppose that this soul incarnates in a certain social structure to experience what humans can do as a group to make life enjoyable and fulfilling.   And when that social structure needs renovating, it is up to each of us to help leave it in better and stronger shape than we found it in.

Capricorn New Moon

The Capricorn new Moon occurs on Christmas Eve at 10:06am Pacific/ 11:06am Mountain/ 12:06pm Central/ 1:06pm Eastern/ 6:06pm GMT.

As I mentioned, the Sun and Moon are joined by Pluto in Capricorn, deepening our need to birth a new life and a new society.   Capricorn's ruler Saturn, in the last degrees of Libra, is testing our ability to compromise with others and stand for fairness and justice in all our relationships. (You can see the flip side of this energy -- it is NOT working in the US Congress. Saturn in Libra tests our balance, our ability to be just and fair to others.) Saturn will go to 30* Libra before turning retrograde in early February.   As Saturn sweeps through the end of Libra, we need to get our thoughts in order and understand what we need to do to achieve balance in our lives and in our society.

The conjunction of the new Moon and Pluto can also draw on the energy of Jupiter in Taurus, taking to heart the need to share resources and new perspectives for stewarding the Earth.   What kind of life do we really want?   What makes life worth living?   Jupiter turns direct on Christmas Day at 1*Taurus: A clear mountain stream.   This is an image of pure, uncontaminated nature, flowing from the source.   It is an image of our original nature -- not sinful, but pure and uncontaminated before society re-structures it. It's time "to get back to the Garden' -- only this time, do it consciously and conscientiously.    

Venus, ruler of both Taurus and Libra, moves into Aquarius on December 20^th, asking us to learn Philia (φιλία philía ), a dispassionate virtuous love, a love that includes loyalty to friends, family, and community, and requires virtue, equality, and familiarity.   Philia is practical; everyone benefits from the relationship. It is an idealistic love.   Venus will be a very prominent energy this next year.   It is important to learn her lesson of philia -- an unselfish love for all the world.

Uranus, which turned direct at 1* Aries just before the lunar eclipse, challenges us to take a stand in our own originality and find ways to enhance this new Moon energy.    Otherwise, we'll just be disruptive (with the additional Uranus/Pluto square).   

Neptune at 29* Aquarius and Chiron at 2*Pisces offer us opportunities to show our compassionate love "for all our relations' as we restructure our lives and our society.

Mercury is picking up speed now that it is no longer retrograde (although it still feels like Mercury retrograde) and will conjunct the Moon's Sagittarius north node again on December 27^th.   Give yourself time to meditate on what you really believe during this "time out of time'.   Why put God in a box?   Why not a God and a Goddess?   Why not a non-judgmental Goddess/God who is waiting for us to discover the miracle of the divine birth within our own souls?   " Had Mary been filled with reason, There'd have been no room for the Child."

With warmest regards in this most blessed season,

Cathy

1. L'Engle, Madeleine, The Irrational Season, New York, Seabury Press, 1977, p.27.

Authors Website: http://www.cathypagano.com

Authors Bio:

Cathy Pagano is a spiritual advisor and Jungian psychotherapist, storyteller, author and teacher.

She is the author of a book on the return of the Goddess, "Wisdom's Daughters: How Women Can Change the World".

Cathy trained at the C. G. Jung Institut-Zurich in dream interpretation, has an M.A. in Counseling Psychology in Feminine Spirituality, and is a certified Life Coach.

As an astrologer and storyteller, she weaves the Cosmic Stories written in the stars. From The Bard's Grove, she writes about emerging archetypal themes in movies and books.

Cathy works with the tools of the imagination - dreams, alchemy, myths, astrology, symbolic language, storytelling, ritual - to awaken the Soul's wisdom.



I believe that Americans are called to a higher consciousness at this point in our history. We are called on to live up to our ideals and create the country our forefathers imagined. Inner consciousness needs to be acted upon for social justice.



Cathy believes that our writers and artists must take up our responsibility to create art that inspires, teaches and heals our humanity.



Cathy writes about political, psychological/spiritual, and cultural issues.