Capricorn New Moon: December 23, 2022

 

Capricorn New Moon: December 23, 2022

peaking at 5:16 A.M. EST
happening at 1°33’ Capricorn

click links above for timezone converter & to check the placement in your chart

In Ancient Greece, Ananke was the goddess of fate and necessity. Without her and before her, nothing was meant to be, and everything simply was. She was born alongside her brother Chronos, the god of time, and together, they brought direction to the universe. It’s as if before, the world was just one wadded up ball of thread, and then, they started pulling on it, transforming the world from singular point to ever-lengthening line.

They pulled and pulled, unraveling the ball of everything until suddenly, people appeared.

The people had always been there though - hidden inside the furnace of stars - but as the universe kept unraveling and expanding, people were exposed. Exposed as distinct formations of matter, pulled from the ball and now walking along the thread of time, blissfully unaware of the fact that everything inside them and before them and behind them used to exist all in the same condensed wadded up space. Formless, without time.

illustration of an unraveling universe

On December 20, 2022, the planet Jupiter and its moon Ananke crossed the border between two imagined worlds - that of formless chaos and that of perpetually-forming, linear time. And as we prepare to end one year and enter the next, our attention is very much on everything happening here: at the beginning of time, which is not the beginning of things, but merely the beginning of a new perception of things. A shift in the order of the universe, and a shift in our understanding of where we exist in the grand scheme of everything.


On June 14, 2022, I was sitting in a hospital waiting room, flipping through a graphic novel I’d started long ago but had since abandoned. My husband insisted I give it another try, read it before the adaptation hit Netflix. I figured it was the least I could do - try again - while the doctor stood over him with a scalpel and cut into his back.

They don’t even have to cut into the muscle, I was assured, but still, I was anxious. I hoped the book would distract me, but with every turn of the page, I felt both a twinge of wonder and a knot of anxiety. Where is the story going? The one in the book and the one happening now, behind the surgery door.

I closed my eyes and breathed. I imagined the world as a wadded up ball of thread - timeless, capable of being perceived all at once - and tried to get a sense of things: Has he been put under? Is everything going okay? But I didn’t trust the thoughts in my mind, so I simply turned the page again. That’s when I saw three familiar names, written in white ink above the image of a purple lamb: “CLOTHOS, LACHESIS, and ATROPOS.”

I recognized them immediately, for they’d been written many times before in many other stories. These were the Moirai - the three fates. Their appearance now reminded me that the wadded up ball had long ago been turned into a linear thing, an ordered experience of past, present, and future, and all I could do now was accept the veil hovering over whatever was going to happen next.

Suddenly, the name CLOTHO seemed to be plucked from the surface of the page, appeared to float in the air before settling back into the fibers of a tree.

In Greek mythology, Clotho was “the spinner,” the fate who took the ball of yarn and spun it into a single thread. She, like her two sisters, was the daughter of Ananke. The goddess of necessity birthed fate, and of her three daughters, Clotho was tasked with the beginning of things: the birth and rebirth of every human life.

But why am I remembering this now? I step out of a six-month-old memory, find myself lying in bed and typing on my computer.

Clotho, Clotho…I speak her name out loud, as if searching for the reason why it’s crossing my mind, my lips. I look to asteroid #97, the asteroid Klotho - named for her despite its variant spelling - and see that on the day in question - June 14, 2022 - there was a full moon at 23 degrees Sagittarius. The asteroid Klotho was close by, hovering in the sky at 29 degrees while its name - CLOTHO - was hovering in my mind’s eye above the surface of the page.

A series of rapid-fire calculations unfold in my mind like lines appearing between points in time, revealing a pattern that had always been there but that I was only seeing now:

  • The position of Klotho on June 14, 2022, was nearly exactly where the Capricorn new moon is falling now, on December 23rd.

  • In June, Klotho was retrograde, and over the course of the last nine months, Klotho has twice been exactly where this new moon will be (at 1°33’ Capricorn).

  • Klotho’s retrograde cycle dates align with the 2022 retrograde cycles of both the planet Jupiter and the asteroid Chiron.

  • On this new moon - almost exactly one hour prior - the asteroid Chiron is going direct.

And all of this is very nitty gritty and a bit heady and rather than detail exactly how these three retrograde cycles have been weaving together to inform this new moon now, I will simply show you this - a sketch of the lines I see - and ask that you trust me and trust this story. Let’s see where it takes us.

 
Capricorn new moon to full 2022 to 2023 sketch
 

And so I saw that FATE was playing a huge role during this period of time - stretching from December 23 to January 5 - taking us from one year to the next.

A new perspective is being birthed in our minds - perhaps spoken through our mouths and written in our words - as Mercury conjuncts Klotho, and we make a decision that informs the direction of the unraveling thread of our lives. Everything that happens now is part of a major Mercury retrograde cycle that connects back to the end of 2021 and is affecting us through February 2023. (You can learn more about this and receive specific guidance for each stage of the cycle in the Mercury retrograde reading: Choosing Your Fate.)

The fate you choose now initiates a new cycle in your life, a cycle that has been building through a series of decisions over the last nine months.

For this next part, you may want to pull out a journal and really sit with the questions that follow. Let this be (if you so choose) your end of year reflection exercise.

To begin, reflect back on the periods of time surrounding the following dates. As always, you may want to turn to your calendar, your journal, your camera roll, your social media feed, and any other record you have of the time in question:

March 14-23, 2022
June 14, 2022
July 19-30, 2022
October 26, 2022

As you reflect on these periods of time, you may want to ask yourself the following questions:

In March: How were you healing your relationship to love? How was your faith (whatever that means to you) transforming?

In June: What aspect of your personal genius was revealed to you? How did this affect your actions and how you chose to do things?

In July: What setbacks/challenges did you experience?

In October: What were you ending (remember that endings often appear as changes)?

Everything happening now is connected to the variety of lessons and choices you made during those times, and it’s connected to a promising destiny, a destiny that has been communicated to you again and again. Together, these points in time formed a line like a foundation, strengthening you and preparing you to make the big material shift you’re ready to make now, a shift imbued with the shining light and brilliant splendor of the asteroid Aglaja.

On December 23, 2022, the moon meets the sun in the sky, just two degrees from the asteroid Aglaja. Aglaja is named after the goddess Aglaea, whose name in Ancient Greek means many things, including “festive radiance,” “shining one,” and “brilliant splendor.” Aglaea was known as the personification of grace and beauty, and her current placement in the sky speaks to a time of forgiveness and appreciation for the beauty in everything, but mainly, this is about the future, the future you are creating now with the choices you make.

If you’ve been going back and forth on something and not really knowing the right course of action for yourself, clarity will unfold during the end of this year and the beginning of next.

You will soon be shining like a clear beacon, directing you what to do next and next and next. You will grow to trust this light in you, this light that was born in the furnace of stars, a light that was once hidden in the black void of space before the great unraveling began, but still, the light was always there. Even when we couldn’t see it. Even when we didn’t have these human bodies.

Before we placed clocks on our walls and alarms on our nightstands and watches on our wrists, we lived an experience of time that was more wild and more honest. It allowed us to honor the difference in time between mountains and valleys, between stillness and a speeding train, between states of terror and calm. It called into question the absolute, quantifiable nature of time, and instead allowed time to be what it is: a perception of the human mind, unique to each of us, and regularly changing.

Who you were before is not who you are now.

Who you are now is not who you will become.

This new moon and this new year is the start of a new order. It challenges the basic “order” of things and grants you the grace to realize that time isn’t some fixed, rigid thing. It isn’t the ticking clock created by society, imbued with notions of permanence, propriety, and impossibility, but rather, it is the flow of something mysterious moving through you, guiding you differently at different times, and whispering something to you now that only you can hear.

What is it saying? If you get really still and close your eyes and maybe place your hands on your heart, feel its particular beating rhythm in your chest: What do you hear?

Maybe a thought pops into your mind or maybe you start to feel something in your body or maybe you’re struck with the sudden, clear desire to do something. Whatever it is, start there.

Wishing you a magical Christmas, a happy New Year, and a festive season wherever you are.

all my love,

Virginia

To be continued…


Long Story Short:

The Capricorn new moon time marks the end of one year and the start of another. It’s carrying us over the threshold from December 2022 to January 2023, and it’s preparing us for a moment of MAJOR REBIRTH AND EXPANSION in July 2023. During this season of shining lights - lights in chanukiahs and lights on trees - the solstice brings longer days to the northern hemisphere. The sun is slowly returning. But wherever you are and however long your days may be, the light from the sun burns in you. Its energy fuels you through every morsel of food you eat. You were born in the burning furnace of stars, and you keep going thanks to the giant star that burns above. All you need to do now is trust the light inside you enough to actually follow it. Let it lead you like a flashlight shining on a darkened path. And if you want to look back at the path you’ve been traveling to see what turns you’ve made and how this has shaped the path you’re walking now, do the reflection exercise above, but also remember that nothing is so fixed, time itself is elastic, and if you don’t like where you are, you can change where you’re going. Fate is the consequence of a collaborative partnership between you and something more. Listen to it, follow it, and keep trusting. Happy New Year!


 
 

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Virginia Mason Richardson

I am a writer, illustrator, and designer with over twenty years of experience, including 9+ years creating custom (no-template) Squarespace designs.

https://www.virginiamasondesign.com
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Gemini Full Moon: December 7, 2022