January 2, 2022
10:34 PST / 1:34 PM EST / 6:34 PM GMT
12 Capricorn 20
Every New Year stirs notions of fresh starts, clean slates and getting to work. Something about the turn of an artificially timed calendar page creates the expectation that this time, life can and will be different. We make resolutions or, when that term falls out of favor, set intentions or goals, and then within months or weeks or days we slip back into what we’ve always done.
Maybe not this year. This year, life can and will be different. Because it already is, and because we already are. That’s the promise of this year’s Capricorn New Moon. It’s wired for innovation, stability and pursuing concrete goals.
Call it resolute; call it resolved; the vibe is determined, and how. We come into it significantly stripped down and refocused, fruits of a long process that’s still ongoing, a process of breaking and shedding and cutting away.
Last year’s three-part Saturn/Uranus square disrupted friendships and communities and pitted existing networks and ways against radical new approaches. Venus in Capricorn has been running an in-depth evaluation of desires, relationships, attitudes about money, and values, through both her two December meetings with Pluto and her current retrograde.
The jolts and information and revelations have been updating our thinking, our perspectives and our approaches. We may still be playing catch-up as the New Moon arrives, but we’re already different enough to embrace and live out its potentials, instead of giving lip service and not following through.
We want less. We’re planning less. Instead of the same 10-20 action items that we’ve been carrying forward for years, we have maybe a handful for 2022. Many veer from the previous lists. And this time, we really want them.
Every seed, every plan, every fresh start breaks from the tried and true. The Moon is trine Uranus, agent of liberation, awakening and radical change. What’s set in motion now is an outgrowth of last year’s structural stress testing, with an eye toward building rather than shaking up. New growth involves and intermingles issues of food, the arts, physical safety and comfort, electricity, technology, and our relationship to the land, money and resources.
Think of this Moon as launching your personal version of the New Deal. The innovations that introduced for handling natural resources may end up being symbolic for developments in individual lives mow, as well as for the collective.
The prospect is exciting, if somewhat unnerving, and yet feels eminently doable. The odds favor action. This Moon offers the drive to push forward determinedly and responsibly, following individual moral compasses and yet finding ways to enjoy the effort.
These qualities come from the sextile from action hero Mars in Sagittarius to the Capricorn Moon’s ruler Saturn, planet of order and adulting. The New Moon is semi-sextile between Mars and Saturn, a monkey-in-the-middle position that pushes us out of comfort zones and into the sextile’s potential. Pushing forward may not be our first or conscious choice, but mild irritation will nag and nag us until we act.
This means the Moon has a built-in backstop against backsliding. Set a goal, plant a seed for a project, and energies will nudge you to keep going.
And all of which means: This is the year when making resolutions is in vogue again. And this is the year when keeping resolutions actually happens. Maybe not all of them, but enough to matter.