the call of capricorn season
all hail the sea goat
This winter foretells of majors changes taking place, both here on earth and in the skies above. How do you aim to stay resourced, warm and vibrant in the darkest days?
The world of this late fall season feels markedly different from the one we left behind last summer. I have been thinking a lot about how to thrive within constraint. The shifting of our political – and thus systemic – landscape has me deeply fearful for the most vulnerable among us, and for all of us who are made more vulnerable by the consolidation of wealth and power into the hands of tyrants. Across this country resources are already stretched unbelievably thin, and now this patchwork system of bare-minimum, often-inadequate sustenance and support faces greater strain if not wholesale dissolution.
Winter naturally brings constraint, teaching us how to ration and stretch our resources. The symbol of Capricorn, the sign that brings winter to the northern hemisphere, is the sea goat, a mythical creature. A goat subsists in the terrain of constraint, on hardscrabble cliff sides and mountain tops. And what about the sea goat? In the tarot, water often symbolizes the entry to our inner depths. Aligned to the dark days of winter this side of the Earth, the sea goat becomes our guide to surviving the cold darkness by finding sustenance in the depths of our interiority. It makes me think of the tarot’s Hanged Man, whose halo in the classic Smith-Waite deck belies an inner peace, despite being strung up, trapped, constrained, if you will.
Oh sea goat, won’t you show us the way through?
If you pay attention to astrology, you likely know that 2025 heralds major shifts, with every outer planet changing signs. This is an incredibly rare phenomenon, kicked off by Pluto entering Aquarius this fall where it will remain for the next 20 years. Pluto, the destroyer, the God of the underworld, who brings all that lurks in the depths to the surface, so that it might be transformed.
Last season I (optimistically) hoped that Pluto’s return to Capricorn just in time for the November US election could mark a final transformation of this country’s unequal and inhumane structures towards something more like progress. But instead Pluto’s last gasp in Capricorn for 250 years –at the 29th degree, its original place in America’s birth chart– saw something else take place. Perhaps the logical conclusion of a cycle in a country founded on ideals that its never quite (or remotely) lived up to. A country that calls itself a democracy, but whose true mission has always been the accrual of wealth, land, and resources into the hands of the elite. In this way, the logical conclusion of this country’s 250 year pluto cycle is this coming administration, dripping with plutocrats, and inaugurated on the day of 2025’s Sun-Pluto conjunction. And so here we are, here we go power has firmly coalesced in the hands of those that seek to reify and make permanent this country’s tragic legacy of white supremacist patriarchal capitalist imperialism, the explosive ramifications of which we see around this aching world. Of course this plutocratic dream will be propped up through violence towards the marginalized – immigrants, trans people, and anyone who threatens the further consolidation of wealth and extraction of resources.
These are heavy and fearsome times, and despair is so persuasive. Storyteller Michael Meade, a voice I often turn to when it all feels too heavy, recently said that hope and despair are two poles on the same axis, that of what he terms vertical imagination. If horizontal imagination is attached to linear time, vertical connects above and below, the celestial world of spirit to the chthonic world of soul. It is this form of imagination that our linear world has mostly forgotten, which needs recovering. It leads us through the dark of despair towards our inner well of regeneration. Michael says that when the culture crumbles, it is time for us to turn inwards. It is through our own depths that we can access our hope. And through this hope that we can bring our gifts out into this aching world.
If the skies can tell us anything, it’s this. Astrology, the tarot, these are tools that can assist us in uncovering and using our gifts. Each chart is wholly unique, a complex combination of symbols and signs that, when worked with, can convey deep meaning, a remembering, maybe, of why we are here, at this particular, confounding, moment in time. The planetary shifts of 2025 are into active signs, fire and air. Neptune and Saturn conjoining in Aries promises to show us the limitations of our ideals, while Uranus in Gemini promises rapid movement, communication, and connection, for better or worse. All this is to say, big changes for the collective also bring changes to the individual. The last highly-anticipated sky shifts, which occurred in 2020, proved that.
As these days grow weighty and dark, I have been finding solace and joy in my tools, and in using them with others. Combining astrology and tarot in readings has become my favorite modality, unfolding layers of meaning, timing, and guidance. It is my belief that the answers we seek already lie within each of us, but these tools can help to affirm, validate, and reinforce what we know in our souls to be true. They can re-enchant our world through relationship to the cosmos and the mystery. And they can resource us for what’s ahead, providing support and solace when needed.
If you want to deepen your relationship to the supportive tools of tarot and astrology, this winter season is a beautiful time to do so. I’m currently offering sliding scale sessions and discounts on multiple sessions – readings, lessons, or a combination – for 2025 and beyond. May Pluto in Aquarius, like its archetype the water bearer, bring the gifts of connection, resourcing, and vertical imagination to the people. May your gifts work towards the flourishing of all you hold sacred.
