There are so many mutual aspects between planets in the Capricorn New Moon chart — even if you don’t look beyond the grand cross in the cardinal signs — it can be difficult to find one’s bearings, or to find a point of orientation. One that could be useful is Mercury since it signifies our minds, our thought processes and communication.
In a chart connecting four personal planets (Sun, Moon, Mars and Mercury), a transpersonal planet (Jupiter), and two generational planets (Uranus and Pluto) all in a grand cross with a New Moon, the message is clear that what is set to change within us and what is set to change around us are connected. (I just almost typed “without us,” meaning “outside”; it raises an excellent point: that the world will change without our participation whether we want it to or not. The choice to adapt and evolve is not automatic, but it is empowering.)
On one level, Mercury in this setup represents news events that reflect the pressure and concentration of energy in the astrology. Consider recent news stories like the twin bombings in Russia that killed at least 31 people Sunday and Monday; or the jobless benefits that have just been allowed to expire by the U.S. Congress, leaving 1.3 million people without a lifeline despite unemployment being its highest since World War II. Or consider that a federal judge this week just ruled to uphold the NSA’s bulk collection of data, just days after another federal judge in a separate court called the NSA’s actions “almost Orwellian.”
Speaking of the NSA, on another level, Mercury — which is conjunct the Sun, Moon and Pluto — asks, what do you really know? Are you willing to delve into whatever material is coming up for you now to truly understand it? Impatience with any confusion or mystery could work against you. Can you tell the difference between going with the flow and pushing the river?
Mercury’s respective squares to Mars in Libra and Uranus in Aries are separating, but still very much in effect. Together they suggest you act on your more inventive, inspired ideas, but that you take a moment to think everything through from multiple angles. Temper, dishonesty and exaggeration are not your friends this week (then again, when are they ever?).
What is your friend is your awareness — both of any persistent intuitive tugs or sudden bursts of insight, and of what’s happening in the world around you. The question is, what do you do once you are aware?
Consider Mercury’s opposition to Jupiter in Cancer. This opposition is still applying, meaning that it is not exact yet but will be in the near future, and therefore is growing stronger. According to Isabel Hickey, Mercury opposing Jupiter in cardinal signs means that right action must be backed by good judgment.
So we have an equation here: ideally, awareness leads to right action backed by good judgment. With the era-defining Uranus-Pluto square in the mix, our awareness includes the wider world and very long cycles of time. With Jupiter in Cancer, there’s an emphasis on, and expansion of, ‘home’.
In other words, it all comes back to thinking globally, acting locally. Fear of the unknown may rear its head, but ask yourself: what do we ever really know before that moment when we finally know it?
Here, at the end of time we are one.
Here my praise-song carries news of your being to the edge of all hearing, all seeing, all feeling, all knowing, that you may know my heart holds you real as may be and much more precious than dreams perfected in your mind.
What do I know? I know that to my taste you are more refreshing than water purified and sweetened from journeying through the earth, flowing down through smoothed silver-greyed rocks to meet my mouth.
I know experience has dragged us parched through terrain falling again and again clothed only in scars and sweat and tears. Now, our scars, our sweat, our tears are joined in our embrace, so, we, as many other seasoned travelers have, may yet drift care-less lost upon a salted sea of love.
Yes, in stillness, here we are at the end of time.
Thank you, Diva Carla, Lyd, Suria, Amanda. I think I will honor the 4 directions tomorrow. Suria, I appreciate your words about trusting and believing.
My fingers are still stumbly. I may not make it out the door to the party after all.
Amanda, it would be amazing if you could join us one day. It’s fun! Others come up from Portland and Bath, so it’s doable.
Thanks for correctly my slip into the past. Mars in Virgo was such a strong influence that my fingers typed it, even though my mind knew Libra. I was still thawing out from digging out the lodge and the woods when I wrote.
Happy New Year! and good luck with the clearing.
diva carla — thank you for that suggestion! i wish i could join you for the sweat lodge, but it’s a bit of a drive and i have some ideas for my day already — hopefully some serious home reorganizing/cleaning, including putting together a new work desk. 🙂
btw — i’ve just made a correction to your comment — Mars is in Libra, not Virgo.
😉
all the best to everyone for a happy, prosperous and peaceful new year!
Happy New Year, everyone. Thank you, Amanda, for this description of the energy.
Tomorrow I am holding the annual New Year’s Day Sweat Lodge. I am struck by the congruence of the Grand Cross with the Medicine Wheel. The Sun and Moon rise together in almost exact conjunction tomorrow, in the eastern time zone. The medicine wheel I work with begins in the east and the east is the direction of mental energy. There are many Medicine Wheels, or circles of life in many traditions. Some start with directions other than east, and the energies may be different. Like the wheel of the sky that we can read in so many different ways, the wheel of life is a hologram that can be known in many ways.
If I may be so bold as to make a suggestion that can help orient to the energy of the Grand Cross. Sometime in the next 24 hours, acknowledge the four directions. The east is a good place to start, since the New Moon is the main event, and the moon and sun travel together all day. But start in any direction. If you don’t a four directions practice in any tradition, then use the planets! Honor the Sun, Moon, Mercury and Pluto in the east (at dawn). Turn a quarter to the right and honor Mars in Libra to the South. Turn 90 degrees and honor Jupiter and BML in Cancer, and turn another quarter to honor Uranus in Aries. You can connect with the elemental energy of each direction/sign too. You are in the Center, and you have oriented yourself to the powerful energies of the Cardinal Cross. It’s a practice in consciousness, and will help you stay centered, balanced, and work with what life brings you. I’ll be saying a prayer for all of you and the gift of Planet Waves in the lodge.
What a beautiful New Year!!!
…and this…
“We are here simply to love and care for one another. As more and more people discover this, the world will change in ways we have not even imagined.”
Ron Atchison
..imagined, yet….
Thank you, Amanda, for all the reminders ((())).
I know that I don’t need to know everything now – that what I need to know, I know, and all else shall be brought to me in its own time…trust.
Amanda…what delightful questions you suggest we ask ourselves on the eve of a new year…love love love the last one! Thank you.
When I remember that I “know” very little, I am kinder to myself and other people. Thanks Amanda.