The Good, Hard, Worthy Struggle

Full moon at 29° of Capricorn

The Badlands of Utah, a Capricorn sandstone temple if there ever was one, photographed by Mike Dowdell.

Friends! Early Sunday morning, at 3:16am PST, the moon peaks in fullness again in Capricorn, cosmic saint of maximum adulthood, holy sea goat conqueror of all life’s most precarious heights and breadths and depths. The last one happened the day after the Solstice, at 1° of Capricorn (The Joy That Makes The Impossible Task Possible), inviting us to enter summer reflecting on the first half of the year and also where we were/are at in climbing the mountain of our calling and life’s work, what toll it was all taking on us, and how our spirits were doing. That then delivered us into a few desperately needed weeks of peak Cancer energies, Capricorn’s partner and opposite, which tried to create some good conditions for us to step back a little and tend to any unmet physical or emotional needs. We were called to attune to and care for each other, be tender with anything vulnerable and hurting, remember what and who matters most, reset some boundaries and protection spells, and just generally recharge our life force for the second half of the year. That hopefully prepared us, at least a little, for the more volatile, Plutonic energies that initiated on the 12th. Astrologers had been pointing to the Mars Uranus conjunction in Taurus on the 15th as a disruptive hot spot in the year, and certainly in collective, possibly in the personal sphere for you, too, it has indeed been intense, and harrowing. And now, this second Capricorn full moon is happening at 29°, the anaretic degree or breaking point/ending degree of Capricorn, in a near-exact conjunction with Pluto at 0° of Aquarius. Hi. Let’s breathe on purpose together right now.

I really want to talk about the Pluto of it all, and what to tune in to around how to maybe use or even just be with these big change energies. But first, I want to honor something I am just now noticing. Not only is this our only double dose, full-moon-in-the-same-sign-twice happening this year; this calendar year also both begins and ends with a new moon in Capricorn. That’s four lunations in Capricorn’s cardinal earth, helping to form the beginning, middle, and end of the story of the year. In general this year is a fiery year, with the north node amplifying the cardinal fire of Aries, with the grand fire trine that Mercury is weaving with its retrogrades, and the Mars retrograde in Leo kicker coming at the end of it all, so, so much fire. But two Capricorn new moons and two Capricorn full moons in a year—four earthy, serious, studious, guardian moons—is so significant.

One way I’m reflecting on this by remembering, again, that the moon just has a hard time in Capricorn. The moon is always tuning us into the body and emotions and the subconscious levels of the psyche, the receptive parts of us that are intuitively feeling and sensing and processing. The moon wants comfort and security and tenderness, permission to go at our own pace and rhythm, time to just be, gentle incremental change, and that’s just not what the Capricorn archetype is about. Capricorn is so determined and productive. Capricorn goes towards the hardship and the burden, and just figures out how to shoulder it. Like, if your kids are sick, it doesn’t matter if you as the parent are also sick, you have to get up and take care of them somehow, and put their needs and greater vulnerability first. That’s Capricorn adulthood. So it’s like an indication of how difficult and uncomfortable this whole year will feel. This year is a trial, a year of facing painful truths, and uncertainties, and changes. Many of those changes will be for the better, but it’s a lot. In Capricorn, there’s a kind of grim determination to take on and meet our responsibilities, especially to what’s going on with collective survival structures. We may be more aware than usual of the harsh consequences of not doing so. And, we might have more strength and stamina than usual because of it. But also we might be waiting until we are completely depleted to rest, at which point we are in a full spiritual crisis, and not just physical burnout. That’s not great. That’s not what we’re going for.

Another way I am reading this, is that these moons are trying to give us the exact medicine we need to get through this. They are repeatedly constellating this deep, subterranean earth, this ambitious mountainous earth, to ground all this fire and freak out and violence and change. They are initiating us, even more deeply, into the spiritual mystery of Capricorn’s profound selflessness, so that we can continue to show up steadily and reverently, so that we don’t miss this opportunity to accomplish something big for each other and future generations. Vaclav Havel’s words resonate here, that self-transcendence may be the only alternative to extinction.

So here we are, getting a second full moon in Capricorn in the middle of this high stakes year, to pause and reflect on what is happening, both in the collective, and for us personally. In wherever Capricorn is leading in your chart, it will be activating themes around maturity; answering the call of your personal individuation and its entanglement with our collective evolution; facing the difficult work of life, and the difficult emotions, rather than avoiding or attempting to escape them; and really growing up in some new way, and taking responsibility for how we are approaching the intractable situations and impossible tasks of life. The last full moon we were also in the peak of the light, and I focused on joy — joy as a kind of spiritual epiphany that Capricorn is secretly teaching us to cultivate. It’s what Ram Dass was on about when he said, “You can do it like it’s a great weight on you, or you can do it like it’s part of the dance.” I loved writing that, and I loved practicing that this last four weeks, even when I was failing at it.

More has unfolded since that moon, and this full moon is transmitting another message, one directly influenced by Pluto. 29° of Capricorn is the most mature point of Capricorn, the height of its material power and influence. It is also the ending degree, the point of breaking and transition, impermanence and death. This degree feels especially significant in Capricorn, because it’s the completion of the work of earth and form in the Zodiac development cycle. Capricorn represents the pinnacle of a single life’s work, and where it makes its contribution and giveaway to the collective, and then is complete. Aquarius, the next sign in the cycle, is where that self and its clear boundaries dissolve. The individual dies, and remembers its true nature as just one wave in an ocean, just a single spark of the one cosmic fire. While there is still some residue of separation and duality in Aquarius, (we won’t lose that entirely until Pisces), there is this massive leap in consciousness. Greater understanding of the whole cycle, the whole whole, is possible. Grief may arise over what is ending, but eventually a kind of liberation and ecstatic expansion wins out. Inspirations and ideas for new, better, more enlightened forms start suggesting themselves. So the point that Pluto is activating right now, and that this full moon will move into just hours after becoming full—0° of Aquarius—is a point of awakening to collectivity, and life after death. It’s a degree of realization. This will be the last full moon in Capricorn in the long, 16-year era of Pluto’s Capricorn transit.

I don’t know how this moment in the astrology is striking you personally, but I’m sure you feel the resonance with this quality of time in the collective. And I know these are the exact conditions for a full on dark night of the soul, or a passage through the abyss, that lost place between destruction and creation, death and new life, so that’s where many of us will be. This moon is not offering comfort, but it is offering support. We are transitioning and transforming. Realization and rebirth are coming, but we aren’t there yet, we are in the in between, in the chrysalis. Remain open and in process in the land of numberless possibilities. Don’t give up. Whatever seems permanent right now, whatever seems certain or inevitable, is not. All prophecies, either doom-filled or optimistic, are false. What is true is that opportunity is still here to participate in unfolding events, to influence the outcome—in our lives, and in the world. We must harness our free will, our better natures, and our most loving energies into this participation. We must be determined Capricorns in the face of all obstacles, welcoming the obstacles, embracing them as the path. We must love each other and organize each other and protect each other from the curses of defeatism, dread, and despair.

We have all learned a lot in the last eight years about despair and dread, and how dangerous and contagious they are. Be very mindful of your own and others’ words and energies in this regard. Tend to your fear and heartbreak, of course, you have every right to feel that. But do not preach and spread despair and defeat, and limit your consumption of the words of others that do. It inspires defensive cynicism and collapse, which will surely bring about the very outcome we want to avoid. If you are feeling that high level of anxiety or burnout, please give yourself permission to check out for awhile. Take a break, go on vacation, get out into the beauty, pray with the trees. If that doesn’t get it done, that’s totally understandable—when we get stuck in a dark state, we often can not come out of it alone. Please reach out to someone you can trust, someone with skills, to a therapist, a shaman, a decent priest, a friendly local energy worker or body worker. Get them to help you feel safe and feel the ground again, to let go of the toxic fear and stress and overwhelm you are carrying in your body, and recharge the faith crystals of in your heart. When you have more capacity, get back in this fight with us, in whatever way feels right and possible to you.

Consider the possibility that it is an actual gift to be alive at this time, in this place, in this form, in this chaos. The work I have dedicated so much of my lifeforce to, the work of healing, it goes beyond what we think of as healing, that kind of retreating from the world and contracting so that processing and tending and restoration of the lifeforce is possible. That kind of healing retreat is often necessary to achieve a kind of baseline wellness and capacity, a kind of inclusion of change, and, it is a foundation for healthy expansion and passionate participation and fully embracing our power as cocreators of this life and the world we live it in. On this full moon, just notice honestly, and with warmth and love, where you are at in your process and cycle of healing and creating, contracting and expanding, being and doing, Cancer-ing and Capricorn-ing. As new energy and pressure arrives in the coming weeks and months, energy and pressure that can be channeled into your own course of empowerment, ask yourself if you will be ready to harness it. Ask how you might get ready to stretch yourself, and be stretched by this year.

The full moon illuminates Dinétah/Navajo land, photograph by Derrick Kosea.

Ritual & Writing Prompts

Below, for paid subscribers, guidance for personally working with this full moon and inspiration for rituals, as well as a creative writing prompt for those feeling called to climb the writing mountain.