How Philosophies Are Born
New moon at 20° of Sagittarius
On Tuesday at 3:32pm PST, this year, the moon goes officially dark and renews herself at 20° of Sagittarius. Sagittarius is the cosmic philosopher. It activates the part of us capable of seeing the big picture and working to arrive at some greater truth that will help us understand, and live with, and ultimately transmute our suffering. It’s a mutable fire sign, following the fixed water of Scorpio season, a time of death rites and great emotional intensity, of healing through feeling. Sagittarius helps us to complete that emotional descent and reignite our inner fire. Its job in the northern hemisphere is to guide us through the darkness of the last month of fall, taking us all the way to the winter solstice, the longest night, and the renewal of the sun. It’s ruled by Jupiter and has its generosity and high spirits, its ability to expand and leap into new dimensions. It reminds us that we can feel our grief and our joy at the same time, and we might have to, to keep going. Winter is coming — more life is coming, more inner work, more outer work — we have to fix our spirits now, we have to reconnect with meaning now, or we might not make it.
If any sign knows how to draw wisdom out of heartbreak and struggle, how to turn it into courage and epiphanies about love, it’s Sagittarius. Typically its new moon is inviting us to rest, reset, and receive hints of a new big picture or Truth—the greater consciousness and purpose it’s ours to realize. It wants us to check in with our guiding stories and our spirits and our hearts, to imagine this last six months as an integrity check to our life philosophy and values. And then it wants us to begin again; to fire our arrows into the dark, to call the light back. This new moon, however, is receiving a very watery, dreamy square from Neptune in Pisces, which will likely dissolve the focus and drive of our heart arrows. It’s also happening on the same day that Mercury stations retrograde in Capricorn; a call to slow down, stop, and review our creative plans before proceeding in the new year. Whether we want it or not, we have some time now to take stock; to do some dream work, or to conjure a dream.
There are two particularly sweet times coming soon for manifestation rituals—the winter solstice next week, on December 21st, which coincides with Mercury’s cazimi; and the coming new moon in Capricorn on January 11th, after the new year has begun, and Mercury has stationed direct. So think of this new moon as a time to prepare for either or both of those moments. What new ideas and motivations are tingling their way up your spine? What emerging growth edge are you just now realizing you are on? See if you can sense what you might need to call in on this coming winter Solstice. What healing is yours to claim, if only the entire universe conspired to bring it to you? What life is yours to create, if only you were liberated enough, and brave enough, and foolish enough to create it?
If you need some more inspiration, scroll back up and take a good long look at this photo of petrified wood. Look at it until you start to feel something like wonder. Like how did this happen? How did this wood transmute its insides into a gem sunset? A long time ago, longer than you or I can properly imagine, some trees came to the end of their life cycle and died, and fell, and came apart. Some great rains came, again and again, and the once-trees washed into an ancient river system, and travelled along until they regathered and formed log jams that slowed the flow of the river. There they rested full, half-buried in sediment, being washed and washed by the river and the rains. The waters infused the wood with minerals, which were once born in supernovas, although that’s an even longer story. Over hundreds of thousands of years, those minerals crystallized, growing to fill all the cracks and openings and hollows as the organic matter of the wood broke down. They hardened into every color — clear quartz, purple amethyst, yellow citrine, the greens and blues of manganese the reds of iron oxide. Then, lifetimes later, someone picked this one piece up and held it in the sunlight, and got hit hard by the secret beauty of the world. They photographed it, posted it; the National Park Service posted it, and it fractaled out a bit, reaching me, and now you, all of us tripping out on these crackling colors, this ancient water, transformed. That’s the journey a life, a tree, an idea, can take.
Imagine something that’s ending now, or some possibility you are only waking up to, could take a journey like that. Imagine what all this could become.
Ritual & Writing Prompts
(Disclaimer: Prompts are suggestions, not instructions. Play with what inspires you, ignore what’s doesn’t. Adapt in any way you see fit.)
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