“Susan’s Winter Moonrise,” chalk pastel by Maria Theresa Maggi
The moon is new at 12 degrees Capricorn of the tropical zodiac at 10:33 am Pacific Standard Time on January 2, 2022. The shape of this chart is very distinctly a bowl, with the north and south nodes in Gemini and Sagittarius creating the edges at exactly the halfway point of 180 degrees. All of the astrological space between 1 degree Gemini and 1 degree Sagittarius has no planets traveling in it. That leaves all the planetary action to fall within Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces, Aries and Taurus.
The most prominent aspect the Capricorn new moon (and sun) make is a trine to the planet Uranus in Taurus. Capricorn is the last of the cardinal signs, and it sets up the initial conditions for institutional leadership and power structure in the world at large, as well as the conditions that literally keep our bones mineralized and functioning. It sets of the sharp focus required for crystallization, and it’s been announced by, at least in the Pacific northwest, potentially record breaking winter weather.
So if the initial conditions of Capricorn winter are the introspection and going within and literal crystallization of the air into snow or ice, then the trine this new moon makes to Uranus in Taurus may likely bring us unlikely and surprising manifestations of these conditions.